Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

69. Philosophy, Diversity, Dignity : Heidegger, Spengler, Tillich

                           Spiritual Apostasy and Abandonment of Being in Heidegger's Metaphysics

         "We have said that the world is darkening. The essential episodes of this darkening are: the flight of the gods, the destruction of the earth, the standardization of man, the pre-eminence of the mediocre. What do we mean by world when we speak of a darkening of the world? World is always world of the spirit. The animal has no world, nor any environment. Darkening of the world means emasculation of the spirit, the disintegration, wasting away, repression, and misinterpretation of the spirit" (Heidegger 45). This passage from Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics (Yale University Press 1987) suggests that man's spiritual apostasy stems from his abandonment of being. Man no longer turns to God to commune with Him in the quiet of his soul. Heidegger explains this process or interrelationship between man and God by exploring the nature of faith, being, and spiritual growth. The ideas of Paul Tillich, Karl Jaspers, Blaise Pascal, and Oswald Spengler parallel Heidegger's notions in numerous places.

             In the opening page of his Introduction, Martin Heidegger poses the question "Why are there essents [existents or things that are] rather than nothing?" In that same passage, he suggests that this question "looms in moments of great despair, when thing tend to lose all their weight and all meaning becomes obscured" (Heidegger 1-2). Ironically, man questions the meaning of his existence in those times of greatest loneliness and isolation. For the believer, the solution lies in a person's faith, a condition which Paul Tillich terms in The Dynamics of Faith as one's "ultimate concern" (Tillich 1-2). According to Heidegger, "One who holds to such faith can in a way participate in the asking of our question, but he cannot really question without ceasing to be a believer and taking all the consequences of such a step." Here lies the irony of suspended belief, that faith cannot answer a question concerning its own nature. The second irony is even greater, however, that the exclusion of intellectual distance essential in asking questions of this nature destroys the possibility for faith itself to grow. Heidegger expresses the paradox in this manner: "On the other hand a faith that does not perpetually expose itself to the possibility of unfaith is no faith but merely a convenience: the believer simply makes up his mind to adhere to the traditional doctrine" (Heidegger 7). In essence, the growth and consequent testing of one's faith becomes a part of a spiritual cycle expanding and contracting, so to speak. In this sense, ambiguity and inconsistency contribute to the intellectual distance that strengthens one's faith. As Blaise Pascal suggests in Thoughts, "There is sufficient clearness to enlighten the elect, and sufficient obscurity to humble them. There is sufficient obscurity to blind the reprobate, and sufficient clearness to condemn them, and make them inexcusable" (Pascal 193). Heidegger observes, "Every essential form of spiritual life is marked by ambiguity. The less commensurate it is with other forms, the more it is misinterpreted" (Heidegger 9). Heidegger views philosophy's function as "a form of thinking that breaks the paths and opens the perspectives of the knowledge that sets the norms and hierarchies, of the knowledge in which and by which a people fulfills itself historically and culturally, the knowledge that kindles and necessitates all inquiries and thereby threatens all values"(10). Tillich expresses a similar sentiment in his definition of faith as a social and cultural phenomenon, when he says, "If a national group makes the life and growth of the nation its ultimate concern, it demands that all other concerns, economic well-being, health and life, family, aesthetic, and cognitive truth, justice and humanity, be sacrificed" (Tillich 1). In these two instances, both philosophy and faith threaten the established norms of society, although they appear to most people on opposite ends of the intellectual spectrum. Heidegger suggests that it is philosophy that "opens up the paths and perspectives of such knowledge"; however, he goes on to say that man's being in these circumstances molds the philosophical pattern. In his words, "We can speak of historical destiny only where an authentic knowledge of things dominates man's being-there" (11). In his Decline of the West (Vintage Books 2006), Oswald Spengler posits a similar notion when he says that the philosopher must also be a man of action, manifesting his existence in thought courage and understanding (Spengler 32-33). Heidegger also quotes Nietzsche who maintains that the philosopher must be a man of action --"a man who never ceases to experience, see, hear, suspect, hope, and dream extraordinary things . . ." (12). Heidegger interprets essents or being as a growing and changing form whose etymology alludes to a Greek root derived from nature or rebirth, which denotes "self-blossoming emergence, for instance the blossoming of a rose, opening up, unfolding' (14). The author uses Oedipus as a model of the heroic self-assertive personality whose passionate disclosure for truth, knowledge, and being motivates his quest for self-identity (106-107). This understanding of self or being derives from what Heidegger terms unconcealment, a state of self-awareness resulting from work. As the author suggests, "We know from Heraclitus and Parmenides that the unconcealment of being is not simply given. Unconcealment occurs only when it is achieved by work: the work of the word in poetry, the work of stone in temple and statue, the work of the word in thought, the work of the polis as the historical place in which all this is grounded and preserved" (191). Spiritual growth, in essence, comes from physical and mental work. Paul Tillich describes this courage to be as "an ethical act in which man affirms his own being in spite of those elements of his existence which conflict with his essential self-affirmation." For Tillich, courage can empower one to act in spite of the forces opposing it, or encourage one to sacrifice all or a part of the self in the name of spiritual or emotional fulfillment. He uses the soldier-warrior as an example of the former condition and Socrates, the martyr for truth, as the latter (Tillich 5) Spengler views history in a comparable fashion by interpreting it as a growing, organic process. According to Spengler, "Cultures have with equal certainty evolved out of themselves. That and nothing else will impart completeness to the philosophy of the future, and only through an understanding of the living world, shall we understand the symbolism of history" (Spengler 19). Spengler condemns the notion of the world-as-history in favor of what he terms the world-as-nature, or the thing-becoming as opposed to the thing-become" (20). Heidegger's perspective corresponds in this case, when he says that physis, the Greek word for being, means "the power that emerges and the enduring realm under its sway. This power of emerging and enduring includes becoming as well as being in the restricted sense of inert duration. Physis is the process of a-rising, of emerging from the hidden, whereby the hidden is first made to stand" (Heidegger 14-15). Heidegger also uses the phrase transcendental horizon in reference to being. In this context, he suggests a spiritual level of consciousness beyond the subjective, one that defines itself "in terms of the existential-ecstatic temporality of human being-there" (18). In his Reason and Existenz (Noonday Press 1955), Karl Jaspers employs the word transcendence, a term comparable to Heidegger's concept of being. Jaspers uses the term Encompassing to describe that "empirical existence, consciousness as such, or spirit," through which being occurs (Jaspers 54). According to Jaspers, "Empirical existence and spirit produce forms of reality; consciousness as such is the form in which we envisage the Encompassing as the condition of the universally valid and communicable" (Jaspers 59). Man exists in the Encompassing. Jaspers goes on to say, "Being itself is the Transcendence which shows itself to no investigative experience, not even indirectly. . . I am Existenz only as I know Transcendence as the power through which I genuinely am myself" [and that] "Without Existenz the meaning of Transcendence is lost." And finally, "The individual before his Transcendence, in which position alone man is man, struggles against the evaporation of his own fundamental ground into something universal, but also against his own loss of himself through defiant self-assertion and the anxieties of his empirical singularity" (Jaspers 148). From Jaspers' examples, one can better understand Heidegger's concept of a spiritual level that transcends the subjective consciousness, a condition to which man must surrender his personal desires and attitudes to Truth or God. As Jaspers suggests, it is only through total surrender of self can transcendence or spiritual growth occur (Jaspers 91). He, like Spengler, also suggests reliance upon symbolism in discerning the role of philosophy and religion. Jaspers says, "Philosophy in principle recognizes all phenomena as relevant to it only insofar as they can serve as symbols of the prior actuality of Transcendence. In its search, it grasps symbols as possible vestigial dei, not God himself in his secrecy. The ciphers mean something for it insofar as they point to what is hidden as the final authentic Being which they cannot unveil" (Jaspers 147).

             The process of surrendering the self to truth or a higher authority requires a re-assessment of one's priorities. Heidegger suggests that America and Russia's struggle for dominance had created a technological environment based upon materialism and mediocrity rather than spiritualism. In many ways, similar conditions exist today. According to Heidegger, "The lives of men began to slide into a world which lacked that depth from out of which the essential always comes to man and come back to man, so compelling him to become superior and making him act in conformity to a rank. All things sank to the same level, a surface resembling a blind mirror that no longer reflects, that casts nothing back." Heidegger contends that the abandonment of talent and creativity in favor a mass uniformity in thought and behavior "grew into a boundless etcetera of indifference and sameness—so much so that the quantity took on a quality of its own." In this case, the two countries' struggle for supremacy created an "indifferent mass" which he described as "an active onslaught that destroy[ed] all rank and every world-creating impulse of the spirit." This movement marks the beginning of what he terms "the onslaught of . . . the demonic" (46). Heidegger suggests that technological society has removed the spiritual aspect of intelligence by defining it materialistically to mean cleverness in the field of mass production." Although this practical skill or adeptness proves useful for technological progress, he stresses that mere intelligence is "never true of the spirit"; it only serves as "a semblance of the spirit, masking its absence." In this manner do countries redefine truth and spirit by substituting nationalistic and materialistic goals. Spirit is redefined as enthusiasm and intelligence, while truth becomes a matter of existing policy. According to Heidegger, "The spirit falsified into intelligence thus falls to the level of a tool in the service of others, a tool the manipulation of which can be taught and learned" (47). The same process occurs today in the use of propaganda and subterfuge. The spirit redefined falls within the purview of culture or nationalism, and truth misinterpreted falls under the category of science and technological (48-49). Heidegger's description this gradual transformation in early stages of Communist Russia foreshadows the dangers of what could occur in countries today. According to the author, "In the end the spirit as utilitarian intelligence and the spirit as culture become holiday ornaments cultivated along with many other things. They are brought out and exhibited as a proof that there is no intention to combat or favor barbarism. In the beginning Russian Communism took a purely negative attitude but soon went over to propagandist tactics of this kind" (49). In essence, if man is to avoid similar consequences, he must first look within himself to discover the spiritual purpose of his being; otherwise, the mass interpretation of spirit and truth will rob him of his identity and deprive him of his freedoms. In this context, he calls for a rebirth or new awakening through Christianity which "reinterprets the being of the essent as created being "(193). It is at this point that the person recognizes his Creator and begins to establish a meaningful relationship with Him.

                                   Works Cited for Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics

Heidegger, Martin. An Introduction to Metaphysics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.

Jaspers, Karl. Reason and Existenz. U.S.A.: The Noonday Press, '1971.

Pascal, Blaise. Thoughts and Minor Works. New York: P.F. Collier & Son, 1910.

Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. New York: Vintage Books, 2006.

Tillich, Paul. The Courage To Be. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.

Tillich, Paul. Dynamics of Faith. New York: Harper& Brothers, 1958.