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[following Nancy's lecture]
Schirmacher: I hope you do not hate me because I feel the presence of Heidegger in this room. He would be surprised that you are able to use Christianity in order to do what he called "overcoming metaphysics". This is not, however, an overcoming strictly speaking, because in overcoming there is still action involved. It's more like when you are in pain and you are letting it dissipate and disappear. It is rather a kind of disappearance of metaphysics. Also Heidegger always insisted that the position we would need to take to overcome metaphysics would be not outside of it but from within. However, he never pointed at Christianity. His idea was that it would be Greek philosophy which would tell us how to overcome our way of thinking, our way of feeling which is still so strongly connected with the Greek world view. So in some way what you're doing here is very new, in demonstrating that a world view like the Christian world view which is always seen as reliant on metaphysics is also a possible way out, a possible way of letting metaphysics go. To let go you cannot allow doctrines and theories to dictate what kind of life you should lead, you have to find a way how to live the life first. Get a life, before you get a theory! But Jean-Luc, your way of doing this is to say, "No, wait, the theory, the dogmas, the ideologies, at least the Christian ones, have a built–in way out. They are paradoxical because all their fullness is aimed at emptiness", something like that. To find this in Christianity is I think a very important way to deal with this project. Nowadays our concern is to live a non–metaphysical life, not an anti-metaphysical one, but exactly how to live a non–metaphysical life after metaphysics is still very problematic. Another way Heidegger phrased it is "getting out of metaphysics by getting in". He saw that you have to go through all history of philosophy back to the pre-Socratics to find out when it started. Jean-Luc Nancy has another powerful way, which in fact might be more powerful — it is Christianity which has the same power as Greek philosophy to make us subscribe to an ontological perspective and might now have the power to help us forget this view.
Nancy: Thank you! Yes, of course, of course. Thank you for all that you have said because it's all is very important… Well, I could say first, of course all that is a way towards resuming a non–metaphysical way of thinking, but this is precisely the question: what is the non-metaphysical? This is perhaps a way of putting the question — not a negative of metaphysics, but what would be given by a kind of going out of it. How? Where? Through a kind of returning. In Greek you know already that for Heidegger the question was of reversing the Plato of the supposed Platonism. As you yourself reminded us, the coming out of metaphysics shall come from inside of metaphysics. I can discuss briefly how much Christianity there is in Heidegger, if you want to develop that. How it is possible for Heidegger to behave as if Christianity was a kind of pure accident? Christianity is for Heidegger a bad translation of the Greek, like from physis to natura, but this accident is at the same time what constitutes onto–theology as such. So there is a little, I don't know, a little discrepancy, or even a contradiction by Heidegger. What is technology? Technology is on one hand taking nature as stock, Gestell, and that is all, but technology is also a making sense or making visible an absence of reason, which would be the Abgrund [abyss]. Technology as the achievement of metaphysics is already the self–deconstruction of metaphysics. The self–deconstruction shows how at the place of the Grund, the founding reason, there is no founding reason, there is an absence of founding reason.
Schirmacher: But the paradoxical part is as you said that this is the protection of metaphysics.
Nancy: Yes.
Schirmacher: While it is enframing or Gestell it is also the possibility for Ereignis to come. There is also here in this perfection a built–in way out which is a way in. There is a world after Being …
Nancy: In one way Heidegger remains kind of dualistic. We have the perfection of metaphysics and then something else other than metaphysics, something else that would be at the same time before, with the pre-Socratic, and after, with thinking after philosophy. However, Heidegger finally reaches the conclusion that even the Greeks did not have access to Being, which is one way to understand that the constitution of metaphysics started always-already before. So within this constitution there is the possibility of deconstructing metaphysics, which is not exactly a going out of it but a disassembling of its parts in order to grasp something which is under the composition but remains invisible by or through the composition itself. Then of course, take something which Heidegger never stated explicitly, which is when you go more within metaphysics itself, you have to go into onto–theology, which means into theology as well as into ontology. Heidegger's main statement about Dasein, that he affirms the possibility of Dasein recovering its proper being through the act of assuming its individual being–towards–death, along with Verfallen and Ereignis, are to be taken as Christian. I can understand why he never wanted it to be understood that way, because he was very aware of the other side of Christianity, that which is dominated by the Church, etc, but the very possibility of onto–theology and of course of the self–deconstruction of onto–theology is as much in the Judeo–Christian tradition as in the Greek, because both compose one unique thing which is onto–theology. I am absolutely sure about that. Additionally, why is Heidegger, after Husserl, the first in the tradition which he quotes himself as his own tradition, to take Christianity apart so much? In all of his relationship to Hegel, which is so important, there is nothing about the fact that all of Hegel is a translation, a transposition of Christianity. So here is something here which resists, and I would say which has certainly to do with many other things, so we will not remain with this too long. In particular, this has to do with Heidegger's political affiliation — with the fact that the Nazism was so strongly anti-Christian.
Schirmacher: I am not so sure. They worked very well together in Nazi Germany as far as I know …
Nancy: I'm not speaking about the church but about the fact that Heidegger didn't want to recognize that there is in Christianity something that cannot allow any return to myth. Heidegger, I think, still even very late thought of the possibility of a new myth, in very post–romantic terms.
Schirmacher: There I disagree, but an interesting part of what you said is that we all have become kind of Christians through technology, through that which Heidegger calls the Planetarisierung der Technik. Technology has become global so everyone who uses Western technology also buys into Western ideologies. So the whole world in some way has became Christian in practical terms. That is why your investigation is so important. I totally agree that Heidegger has many blind spots, and obviously one of them was his Christian heritage.
Nancy: I am just asking myself if this is a blind spot or something else. He was very much aware of theology.
Schirmacher: Yes, Augustine, etc, but his point was to say that a philosopher can never be religious because then he would know the answer. Because a philosopher needs a question, a radical question to which he doesn't know the answer. It is not the same as doubting the answer. A philosopher is basically unable to believe, that was his point.
Nancy: Of course, of course, but the blind spot there is that perhaps Heidegger was not able to recognize that Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the self–deconstruction of religion. Christianity is a religion which would be an exit from all religion. My opinion is that to think Christianity in this way is partly made possible by Heidegger and all non–dialectical way of thinking of Dasein, exposition, existence, etc.
Schirmacher: But still as long as you use any of the Western technology you are under this spell. What actually is it? A spirit, of technology?
Nancy: No, it is not the spirit of technology, it is that technology is the making endless of any teleological process, as thinking towards an end. Technology, and this is what Heidegger was not able to see, shows that there is no end to its own process. The infinite in general, I would say, comes from Christianity, certainly not from the Greek. Heidegger is partly right in thinking that the question is on finitude – the finite and how to think of it was a question open from Kant and Hegel, etc. It's not then the finite alone but how to think the infinite through the finite. This is exactly the Christian thought.
Audience: Can we talk about one Christianity? What is the thread? Comparing, for example Southern Baptist to Catholic, to Latin American Christianity?
Nancy: All of these can be infinitely multiplied. Of course there are many differences. Regarding Latin America, without wanting to overgeneralize, there is something different on the whole South American continent in the relationship between philosophy, theology and literature. There's a way in which the development of philosophy did not take place in exactly the same way as in Europe, perhaps as well because the theology of liberation was developed there. What I'm saying has very little to do with what happens now in Rome, you know, what I say in a certain way has nothing to do with the label "Christian". What happens in Rome is for me a sign of a kind of internal decomposition of Christianity. I am happy for the Pope, if he recognizes what he is in charge of, but for me I'm as far from Catholicism as from Protestantism. What I mean is that the presence of what I designate as a Christian structure is without any visible Christian sign, without any religion.
Audience: The structure of the Trinity?
Nancy: No, no, no. What is the Trinity? Not the structure of the Trinity, on the contrary, the working of the Trinity. The Trinity is not three gods. The Trinity is not return to a polytheism. Trinity is one god in three persons. Who are the three persons? The Father, the Son and the Spirit. The Spirit is the relationship from Father to Son, from Son to Father, and from God to all men. What does that mean? I can decompose this question in two. What does that mean if not that God itself is not a person, is not a substance, but is a relationship to itself? First. Second, perhaps what is more important is how it is that I can and even I shall ask "What does that mean?" Do you know any other religion where it is not only possible from the outside, but necessary from the inside to ask — "What does that mean?" No, that is not religious at all. In classical religion you have a whole story of the gods, you have to obtain the grace and protection of the gods, you precisely don't have to ask "What does that mean?". If your Christianity is without putting the question "What does that mean?", excuse me, but this is a little strange, because the whole Christianity is made of "What does that mean?" Take for example the appearance of Jesus in the gospel for the very first time. Before the gospel you did not have Christianity. When do you start to have Christianity? When the dogma of Jesus as the Son of God is made. How is it made? From the question posed through the gospel, through Paul and John, etc. "What does that mean?" This is so complicated that one must agree "What does that mean" started with Hellenic Judaism, for example, with the translation of the Bible by the Greeks. "What does that mean?" What do these Hebrew words mean, and how do we translate them? Take the gospel of John which is in Greek. Already behind John you have "What does that mean?" taken and elaborated and given a text in Greek. This text starts with a lot of Greek concepts — arche, logos. What do you do with that? You can't read the gospel of John without asking "What does that mean?"
Audience: I think the analogy with Judaism is perfect. Judaism is nothing but questions. My question about the gospel of John is, ok, we could ask what does that mean but two thousand years ago those words that we are reading today had much more currency, I mean John was writing in common Greek…
Nancy: I do not say that the gospel of John was questioned in his time. I only say that the fact that it is from the beginning in Greek implies a former interpretation through the translation, etc, and implies a starting point of the enormous relationship with Greek philosophy that the father of the Church engaged with, and that gave the possibility to elaborate the dogma of Incarnation. For me there is no Christianity without philosophy. Of course on the side of practicing, believing in Christ and the Holy Trinity and all that in a religious way, there's not this problem I'm talking about. However, I put the question, why is it that in Judaism and Christianity there is, at the same time parallel to the religious level, this other level where there is this enormous elaboration which after the Middle Ages is present throughout the modern history of philosophy, including Heidegger, including all of us? I mean of course including by deconstructing, by causing the religious side to disappear. This is a very complex process because, for example the Reformation, Protestantism going out of Catholicism — what is it if not a re–elaboration of all the religious relationships out of a certain level of rituals, out of a certain theology beside the faith, going into the new thinking of subjectivity, of interiority, that's all.
Audience: You described Christianity as the manifestation of the three major religions, and the beginning of the text you are talking about globalization and technology as the ultimate expression of the Christianity, which I agree with completely. I wonder if you can elaborate on the relationship which Christianity has with representation – what does this relation mean for technology?
Nancy: Good, that's very important. I would say perhaps that Christianity has a very important relation to representation precisely because Christianity elaborates a theory of the face, and of God being outside of any representation. There is through Judeo–Christianity the whole question of representation. The main mystery is a name not only for the unrepresentable as that which is beyond our limited powers of representation but available to the superior mind of an Angel, for example, but of something that doesn't belong to any realm of representation because it doesn't belong to presence. The main thing is that the Judeo–Christian, monotheist God doesn't belong to presence. It is not and acts not by presence, it is and it acts by absence or by retreating itself. From there I would once again come back to Heidegger. You have to consider that the Greek world is a world of the retreating of the Gods. The religion of the Greek is already no longer a religion in the sense of religion in the mythical world. There is the old question: Did the Greeks believe in their own myths? It is obvious that the Greek did not, meaning of course the philosopher and the scientist, that's all, not the people of Athens who were still practicing. So, the Greek world as the first step of the Occidental world is a world of retreating divinity in general. Historically speaking, the rise of Christianity certainly did not mark a kind of return of religion. Certainly it was similar to other religions that were spread around the Mediterranean at this time. At the same time it was shown to be an elaboration of something quite different, that is to say a religion of the exit from religion. Of course at the first moment it was not visible as such. So, I would say on one side Christianity depends on an impossibility of the representation of God. That means that God of the truth or the presence, of the sense of meaning is retreating itself away from representation. At the same time it gives the free space to any representation, and this is the possibility given to both scientific and aesthetic representation, as each of them as independent. With the Greek this is already the case with science but not exactly with the aesthetic. This is, I think, the double bind between Christianity and representation.
Schirmacher: It gives a free space for other forms of representation like science, but it also installs a deadly disease in these representations because all representation can be exited again. So, in science, science can be revealed as something which has a presence without absence and therefore misses something. Science can be criticized by this kind of being–representational. So somehow there is really something like a virus, a virus of absence is in all these representations.
Nancy: Yes, I agree and it is perhaps in science as you say that there is something that we are more able to take now even more than Heidegger could, because we are now totally finished with what has been the ideal ever since the beginning of this century, the unique scientific totaling view of the world. No one scientist today believes in that. What you call the virus of absence I would say is a Christian virus… I know what I try to say may simultaneously hurt the philosopher on the one side and the believer on the other side. Take even Nietzsche who in all this fight against Christianity, it remains so close to him and he deconstructed it. This is why that even when engaged with Nietzsche I still mention the image of the pure, authentic Christ. So, why after that are we still in a status where there is philosophy on one side, religion on the other? But the philosopher looks at religious people and says, unfortunately … those poor people are…
Schirmacher: Idiots!
Nancy: There is a lot of a return of religiousness which seems to be very empty, but at the same time, as I said before, it seems to me to help to make Christianity more empty. As philosophers, however, we stopped in a certain way to put the question between us. As if religion would be simply out of the game for the philosopher, and as if there wasn't anything to take from something that was such an important part in the construction of the Occident.
Ronell: According to a certain structure of the promise, one could explore the possibility that Christianity is yet to come in terms of its own promising structure. We are assuming that it has the structure of having–been and having achieved itself in a certain place that we articulating or disarticulating right now.
Nancy: Yes it is. It is, but you know, I would like to say, not to be too ambiguous, that what is perhaps to come I would not name Christianity, but the West coming out from the self–deconstruction of Christianity. Something which will make Christianity possible – in that way I am totally faithful to Heidegger and his sense of deconstruction to dissemble and to let come in the future something which was behind us and in a way hasn't even come yet. I would also say that if something comes, there will be nothing given to show that it comes. Certainly it will be, I would say, something as different to our world as Christianity at the beginning of the tenth century was in the eyes of the old Romans.
Ronell: Or one could say that in the way that Christianity, in certain crucial places, offers itself, it hasn't yet lived up to its name. One could argue perhaps that Christianity has not yet been, that it never has become Christian enough.
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