Skepticism and Religion: Towards a Possible Marriage (3/4)
Qohelet’s Peculiar Belief in God
I would like to approach the peculiarity of Qohelet’s belief in God on the basis of Heidegger’s Ontological Difference. As far as God can be associated to Heidegger’s notion of das Sein and all other Being with his notion of das Seiende, we can say that in this scheme there are two main reasons why God couldn’t be the object of any opinion or belief. In the first place we can call in the ontological condition of das Sein as the absolutely undeterminable. Since any opinion needs to determine its object in someway to be an opinion, this peculiar one would be, if any, an opinion without a proper object. Let us call it hence a void opinion.
The second issue obtains by facing this non-object that the believer calls God (or plainly das Sein for those who don’t mind religion), and of which we can’t display any opinion whatsoever. However, if we take Heidegger seriously, this non-object-God is nonetheless the Horizon of Possibility (Horizont der Möglichkeit) of all Being (Seienden) as such. This means that the sole presence of a Being will point out to the One Horizon of its possibility, and point it out as the Undeterminable tantum. As the Absent-paradoxically-present-in-all-Presence (sorry for that), das Sein des Seiendes is utterly non-objective and non-determinable, making the whole opinion about it void. Therefore, facing this Horizon no opinion could cope (not even this one, which is Heideggers’s of course, not mine). But, nevertheless, the absent Horizon is paradoxically present, which means that—although absolutely absent—the mind is able at least to talk about it.
Is this what we have just read (heard) the symptom of some kind of mental illness or can we assume that we are talking soundly about religion? There seems to be something ‘there’, at least in language, which may be referred to by some set of nouns that at their turn mean some special kind of void belief. If I were concerned exclusively with tradition I would call this a mystical belief in God, but since I’m trying to reach people of our time that are poorly concerned with historical issues, let me call it a post-metaphysical belief, i.e. one that not being nihilistic supports no knowledge and no opinion of God.
But before I try to convince you about the soundness of my effort, let us consider again why, in the first place, the belief in das Sein des Seiendes can be equaled to a post-metaphysical belief in God?
There is certainly no possible knowledge of the horizon that makes all knowledge possible. Heidegger’s genius seems to rest in the ability of forcing us to use his philosophical jargon. I must confess that I profoundly dislike it. So let me put things this way: When you see actors in a stage you can conceive the actors and the stage as Beings. But if you were asked to conceive everything that exists—i.e. every Being, possible or real, including your notion of God—without exemption as the actors, and after that you were inquired about the stage upon they act, then you may get perplexed: There must be a stage because, in fact, there are actors (die Seienden), but since you have ‘all’ Beings on stage you cannot conceive the stage (das Sein) as Being as well.
By the way, it would be unfair not to say that Heidegger isn’t entirely original respecting his famous Ontological Difference. Many thinkers in the philosophical and Theological Western Tradition have pointed out the same awesome capacity of the human mind to reach a transcendent difference between Being (the existing actors) and the Source of all Being (the stage that makes their acting possible), and this in a way not to be blamed as Onto-theo-logical. Those smart intellectuals of the past were fairly aware of this quite astonishing condition of the human mind of being able to talk about that that only can be named but not talked about any further. Saint Anselm, for instance, in the XI Century spelled this perplexing border line of human reason as id quo maius cogitari non possit.
What we are assuming here is that human reason is able to reach this border Heidegger calls das Sein des Seiendes or even Nichts—and for that reason, great mystical thinkers as Meister Eckardt or John of the Cross also used ‘Nothing’ as the best expression for this Otherness conceived beyond the last frontier of the mind. It is indeed Nothing what we are talking about. Now, let’s immediately add ‘Nothing if compared with all Something’, i.e. with all Being, but nevertheless Nothing.
As to Saint Jerome’s theology, it should be mentioned that we are trying exactly the opposite reasoning. What he called nothing when compared with God is ‘all Beings’, precisely the ‘Something’ par excellence in the Ontolgical Difference approach. Every Being is capable of being conceived, and therefore of being determined as an object. Furthermore, because of this, every something is capable of being subject of opinion and belief. But if God is this Nothing of which the mind cannot even form opinion, it turns as such into a kind of void belief that can only show itself to the mind, when it does, as—let us say—id quo maius cogitari non possit.
Turning around the famous Anselmian proposition into its positive form, we obtain id quo maius cogitari possit, that that is the greatest the mind can think of. So, what we are saying is that this Nichtendes Nichts, i.e. ‘the Nothing that nothings’ in the presence of all Presence is that that nothing greater can be thought of. So, as far as it can be thought of, it presents itself to the mind in the form of its ultimate limit, which means that it exists in the utmost simple and mysterious manner. So simple and mysterious, that we can’t even form an opinion of it.
This is what I would like to call a post-metaphysical non-nihilistic insight that has Nothing in sight or, if you wish, that has God as Horizon of all Being in sight. As already implied, I call it post-metaphysical in attention to Heidegger’s efforts of qualifying Metaphysics as Onto-theo-logy and blaming that traditional approach for the Vergessens des Seins.
As a matter of fact I’ve been hanging around with Heidegger because I do belief that his Ontological Difference gives us a chance to exploring why the demolishing Qohelet doesn’t bother to give us account of his faith in the existence of God. The reason could be as simple as this: if God is the Last Horizon or Ultimate Stage, God must ‘be’ somehow; otherwise we wouldn’t be there (Dasein). Moreover, I think that Qohelet would be justified in saying—if asked of course—that there is a certain empirical proof of the existence of God in the fact that we are on stage. The precondition, however, for the soundness of such a proof would be: If and only if God isn’t thought of as a Being (Seiende) itself.
So call it God, Last Horizon, das Nichtendes Nichts, das Sein des Seiendes or whatever name you may want to use. To be sure, the main reason why Qohelet didn't bother to give such fancy philosophical names to God is that these or any names are nothing but vanity of vanities.
So let us move on now for something completely different.
The second issue obtains by facing this non-object that the believer calls God (or plainly das Sein for those who don’t mind religion), and of which we can’t display any opinion whatsoever. However, if we take Heidegger seriously, this non-object-God is nonetheless the Horizon of Possibility (Horizont der Möglichkeit) of all Being (Seienden) as such. This means that the sole presence of a Being will point out to the One Horizon of its possibility, and point it out as the Undeterminable tantum. As the Absent-paradoxically-present-in-all-Presence (sorry for that), das Sein des Seiendes is utterly non-objective and non-determinable, making the whole opinion about it void. Therefore, facing this Horizon no opinion could cope (not even this one, which is Heideggers’s of course, not mine). But, nevertheless, the absent Horizon is paradoxically present, which means that—although absolutely absent—the mind is able at least to talk about it.
Is this what we have just read (heard) the symptom of some kind of mental illness or can we assume that we are talking soundly about religion? There seems to be something ‘there’, at least in language, which may be referred to by some set of nouns that at their turn mean some special kind of void belief. If I were concerned exclusively with tradition I would call this a mystical belief in God, but since I’m trying to reach people of our time that are poorly concerned with historical issues, let me call it a post-metaphysical belief, i.e. one that not being nihilistic supports no knowledge and no opinion of God.
But before I try to convince you about the soundness of my effort, let us consider again why, in the first place, the belief in das Sein des Seiendes can be equaled to a post-metaphysical belief in God?
There is certainly no possible knowledge of the horizon that makes all knowledge possible. Heidegger’s genius seems to rest in the ability of forcing us to use his philosophical jargon. I must confess that I profoundly dislike it. So let me put things this way: When you see actors in a stage you can conceive the actors and the stage as Beings. But if you were asked to conceive everything that exists—i.e. every Being, possible or real, including your notion of God—without exemption as the actors, and after that you were inquired about the stage upon they act, then you may get perplexed: There must be a stage because, in fact, there are actors (die Seienden), but since you have ‘all’ Beings on stage you cannot conceive the stage (das Sein) as Being as well.
By the way, it would be unfair not to say that Heidegger isn’t entirely original respecting his famous Ontological Difference. Many thinkers in the philosophical and Theological Western Tradition have pointed out the same awesome capacity of the human mind to reach a transcendent difference between Being (the existing actors) and the Source of all Being (the stage that makes their acting possible), and this in a way not to be blamed as Onto-theo-logical. Those smart intellectuals of the past were fairly aware of this quite astonishing condition of the human mind of being able to talk about that that only can be named but not talked about any further. Saint Anselm, for instance, in the XI Century spelled this perplexing border line of human reason as id quo maius cogitari non possit.
What we are assuming here is that human reason is able to reach this border Heidegger calls das Sein des Seiendes or even Nichts—and for that reason, great mystical thinkers as Meister Eckardt or John of the Cross also used ‘Nothing’ as the best expression for this Otherness conceived beyond the last frontier of the mind. It is indeed Nothing what we are talking about. Now, let’s immediately add ‘Nothing if compared with all Something’, i.e. with all Being, but nevertheless Nothing.
As to Saint Jerome’s theology, it should be mentioned that we are trying exactly the opposite reasoning. What he called nothing when compared with God is ‘all Beings’, precisely the ‘Something’ par excellence in the Ontolgical Difference approach. Every Being is capable of being conceived, and therefore of being determined as an object. Furthermore, because of this, every something is capable of being subject of opinion and belief. But if God is this Nothing of which the mind cannot even form opinion, it turns as such into a kind of void belief that can only show itself to the mind, when it does, as—let us say—id quo maius cogitari non possit.
Turning around the famous Anselmian proposition into its positive form, we obtain id quo maius cogitari possit, that that is the greatest the mind can think of. So, what we are saying is that this Nichtendes Nichts, i.e. ‘the Nothing that nothings’ in the presence of all Presence is that that nothing greater can be thought of. So, as far as it can be thought of, it presents itself to the mind in the form of its ultimate limit, which means that it exists in the utmost simple and mysterious manner. So simple and mysterious, that we can’t even form an opinion of it.
This is what I would like to call a post-metaphysical non-nihilistic insight that has Nothing in sight or, if you wish, that has God as Horizon of all Being in sight. As already implied, I call it post-metaphysical in attention to Heidegger’s efforts of qualifying Metaphysics as Onto-theo-logy and blaming that traditional approach for the Vergessens des Seins.
As a matter of fact I’ve been hanging around with Heidegger because I do belief that his Ontological Difference gives us a chance to exploring why the demolishing Qohelet doesn’t bother to give us account of his faith in the existence of God. The reason could be as simple as this: if God is the Last Horizon or Ultimate Stage, God must ‘be’ somehow; otherwise we wouldn’t be there (Dasein). Moreover, I think that Qohelet would be justified in saying—if asked of course—that there is a certain empirical proof of the existence of God in the fact that we are on stage. The precondition, however, for the soundness of such a proof would be: If and only if God isn’t thought of as a Being (Seiende) itself.
So call it God, Last Horizon, das Nichtendes Nichts, das Sein des Seiendes or whatever name you may want to use. To be sure, the main reason why Qohelet didn't bother to give such fancy philosophical names to God is that these or any names are nothing but vanity of vanities.
So let us move on now for something completely different.
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