3 - Death as God: A Note on Martin Heidegger

Summary

At the end of his lecture “Reason and Revelation,” immediately following the eleven steps of the genealogy of faith in revelation, Strauss considers three possible objections to his sketch. The first concerns the problem of the presence of God or the experience of the call. In that context, Heidegger's name comes into play in an unusual way. The problem of the presence and the call is not characteristic of the Bible, Strauss remarks succinctly. The phenomenon under consideration is not confined to the monotheistic faith in revelation. What is at issue, in other words, is not the experiences or the interpretations of experiences for which historical uniqueness is claimed – as it is for the revelation that took place in the past, for the divine law or the commandment that requires absolute obedience. Regarding the asserted presence of God or the call that people believe themselves to hear, what is at issue is not unique events that – if a link to nature is to be shown – first require a genealogical reconstruction or whose explanation makes necessary the demonstration of a logic of historical transformation. What, Strauss asks, was the presence of the god Asclepius in Athens, for example? Hallucination. Then he notes: “Cf. also C. F., Heidegger: God is death.”