Chris asked:

Heidegger seems very similar to medieval thinkers — there are parallels between the coincidentia
oppositorum and Heidegger's notion that truth and falsity lie at the same essence. Also, I know that
Heidegger did his essay on Duns Scotus. Heidegger has also been quoted as saying that he would
close down his thinking shop if ever he were called into the faith.

My question is threefold:

Is Heidegger trying to establish a revival of medieval thought without the emphasis on God?

If so, do you find his attempts convincing?

Furthermore, how could such a 'religious' person support Nazism?

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I expect you know John Caputo's early work on Heidegger: The Mystical Element in Heidegger's
Thought (1978) and Heidegger and Aquinas(1982). Caputo became disoriented about truth and
method in Demythologizing Heidegger( 1993) and then dramatically converted to Derridean theory,
which of course brought him the kind of success reserved for such things. Heidegger does not believe
a return to the Medieval or Medieval ways of thinking is possible, even were it desirable. He is very
Hegelian (after his own unique but profound manner). He reiterates Hegel's point, only is better heard
and understood, perhaps, that we are at the end of history. This, in his interpretation of Hegel, does
not mean that history stops like a clock, because that is not how the being of time is. What it means,
Heidegger thinks, is the end of metaphysics. Heidegger did not think the end of metaphysics meant
theology had to shut down or that God was finally 'disproved'. We need to think about God otherwise,
was his view. How so? Out of the question of Being. The Seinsfrage, Heidegger's one and only
question, was the key to the way ahead.

Yes, I think there is something to be said for a thinking in ontology which is irreducible to Kant —
based epistemology (i.e. a theory of knowledge that would subsume ontology and ontological
discourse in its entirety). I think the best commentator on Heidegger is Levinas, who basically thinks
that Heidegger's redemptive reasoning is not 'otherwise' enough, that we need a reasoning "beyond
totality" and "otherwise than being". Most commentators write about Heidegger's philosophy, which
Heidegger, while he was alive, again and again, said it was a mistake to do, and he never did it in his
discussions of past thinkers. For him the history of thought was contemporaneous, all of it equidistant
from that which is most worthy of thought (in a play on Ranke). As an attempt, and I think you have
used the right word, it is thought-worthy (to use the Heideggerian expression). As for Nazism.
Heidegger's silence about the Holocaust has been mostly interpreted as a denial of any engagement
and implication of guilt, but I believe in all sincerity that it shows exactly where he is at a loss for
words, and where, therefore, thought needs to begin, even thought that would think out of his
thinking. Emile Fackenheim's To Mend the World (1982) is the place to start with reading therefore.
That Heidegger was involved in the early 30s in the Nazi movement, but that he then distanced
himself from it, but not far enough for witch-burners, is a fact. That he received Holy Unction and died
a Catholic is also a fact. None of us are innocent.

Matthew Del Nevo

www.sicetnon.com