Reflection 7

March 15, 2011

              We had sufficient reading material to ponder over this week; however, one philosopher that had me in suspense was Martin Heidegger. In studying further, I discovered that his second cousin was Nobel Prize laureate, Albert Schweitzer. Heidegger was a respected philosopher until his political involvement in 1939 with the Nazi regime which affected his legacy.

          Heidegger was very enthralled with the philosophy of Edmund Husserl who stated that we must go back to things themselves and let them show themselves as they are in themselves. Heidegger sought a resolution to Husserl’s teaching and came to the opinion that relating human beings to the world was not a subject related to objects at all, and that awareness and consciousness did not play any role. I will say that Heidegger seemed to be consumed in his search of the “being,” which according to his view is the process of becoming. He eventually abandoned his religion, but his Biblical schooling gave him foundation. After reading his article on “Language,” I feel that his writing leads back to his search for God. He says “The place of arrival which is also called in the calling is a presence sheltered in absence" (Heidegger, Norton 991). He speaks of a present in the presence and one knows that there is a presence about spiritual, human, and things. Just as Dr. Wexler was asking about meaning, Heidegger is asking where is the presence of being? He also states that language speaks and it is an expression. In the Bible it is written, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,--And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us…”( The Holy Bible, John 1:1; 14). The Word was what God thought and spoke and it was that Word that formed man and the universe in Genesis 1. God’s presence is everywhere and can be felt. Heidegger wrote, “What is spoken purely is that in which the completion of the speaking that is proper to what is spoken is, in its turn, an original" (Heidegger, Norton 988). He also qualifies it further on the same page when he says “…speech has come to completion in what is spoken" (Heidegger, Norton 988). This brings things full circle in regard to speaking and presence.

          In delving into Heidegger’s philosophical view about calling into a nearness on page 991 of the text, reminds me again about the Biblical occurrence in Numbers 22 (The Holy Bible) where the ass is given voice and speaks to Balaam about the Angel of the Lord standing in front of him with his sword drawn to kill him. After that, Balaam’s eyes were opened and he saw the Angel. There was a presence, a nearness, and the spoken word, and also a thinging of the thing. Heidegger did not feel that philosophy was a science. “According to him science is only one way of knowing the world with no special access to truth" (Heidegger, Phenomenology 7). He emphasizes in “Being and Time” that “an appearance is ‘that which shows itself in something else" (Heidegger, Phenomenology 7).  I leave you with some "food for thought."
Word Count: 535

   Works Cited

“Phenomenology (philosophy).” En.wikipedia.org. Wikipedia

           Web. 20 March 2011.

The Holy Bible King James Version. New York: Oxford

           University Press. 1945.