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The eschatology of being and

the God of time in Heidegger
a
Jean Greisch
a
Institut catholique de Paris , France
Published online: 03 Jun 2008.

To cite this article: Jean Greisch (1996) The eschatology of being and the God of
time in Heidegger, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 4:1, 17-42, DOI:
10.1080/09672559608570823

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09672559608570823

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 The Eschatology of Being and the
God of Time in Heidegger
Jean Greisch
translated by
Dermot Moran
(University College Dublin)
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Abstract
This is a study of the figure of the 'last God' as it appears in Martin
Heidegger's Beiträge zur Philosophie. In what sense is this figure related to
philosophy of religion as traditionally understood? It is certainly closely
related to the question of the relation of time and eternity. Heidegger's
earliest accounts of the relation between time and eternity are examined,
and Heidegger's reflections in the Beitrage are examined in the context of
the accusation of 'theosophy' which Heidegger levels against the most promi-
nent of the ancient thinkers of time and eternity, namely Plotinus.
Keywords: Heidegger; time; eternity; eschatology; God; Beitrage

The only thing that is truly new in science and in philosophy is the
genuine questioning and struggle with things which is at the service
of this questioning.1

These reflections are an extension of my study of the figure of the 'last

God' in Heidegger's Beitrage zur Philosophie. I am returning once again
to this enigmatic Heideggerian text - a veritable nest of difficulties and
aporias - seeking to extract some intelligibility from it. I shall conduct
this analysis by focusing on a problematic which is central to philosophy
of religion as a whole, namely the relation between time and eternity.
Undoubtedly, the question of Heidegger's connection with that discip-
line of such problematic status, which, for the past two centuries at least,
has been officially entitled 'philosophy of religion', would itself demand
extensive treatment. For example, why is it that Heidegger in his earliest
lecture courses adopted the label 'philosophy of religion', given that,
equally early in his career, he severely criticized the views of Max Scheler,

International Journal of Philosophical Studies Vol. 4 (1), 17-42

© Routledge 1996 0967-2559
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
the principal pioneer of a phenomenologically inspired philosophy of
religion? In this essay, I will forgo answering this question (even allowing
for its importance from the methodological point of view), so that, from
the outset, the question of the place from which Heidegger speaks will
rest in brackets. In fact as we shall see, the exact determination of this
place is precisely what is problematic. It is only following an examination
of Heideggerian themes that we shall eventually be in a position to charac-
terize this unique place.
Furthermore, Heidegger is the philosopher of time - this assertion appar-
ently stands in need of no further comment. It is worth considering,
however, how Heidegger displaces the traditional metaphysical approach
to the articulation of the concepts of time and eternity. Among the first
generation of Heidegger readers, Karl Lowith was one of the earliest to
draw attention to the importance of this displacement. It is significant,
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however, that Lowith developed this theme in the context of a confrontation

with Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption, in effect representing the
inverse of Heidegger's move.2 Today another generation (in this case, ours)
of readers of Heidegger and Rosenzweig is invited to ask the following
question: taking into account the texts of the Gesamtausgabe which have
become accessible in the meantime, is it not appropriate to re-examine
the meaning of the opposition previously sketched by Lowith? Here, I
would like to develop the question of the articulation of time and eter-
nity - a question which is obviously decisive for all philosophy of religion
- by situating it, first of all, in the broadest context of Heidegger's thought,
before turning more explicitly to the figure of the 'last God' in the Beitrage.

1. Time and Eternity: The Problem

I shall begin by emphasizing an eloquent contrast between two brief
Heideggerian declarations from the 1927 lecture course, The Basic
Problems of Phenomenology. At the very moment where he begins
treating the problem of temporality, Heidegger presents a list of those few
philosophers who, in his eyes, are significant in this respect: Aristotle,
Plotinus, Augustine, Kant, Leibniz and Bergson. Heidegger accuses
Plotinus (whom the whole of antiquity regarded as the metaphysician of
eternity) of giving 'us more of a theosophical speculation about time, than
an interpretation adhering strictly to the phenomenon itself and forcing
the phenomenon into conceptual form'.3 Undoubtedly, Plotinus is not the
only author who attracts the reproach of 'betraying the phenomenon'.
Several lines further on, Bergson too, with his concept of la duree
interieure, stands accused of not responding to the authentic phenomenon
of time. The reproach directed at Plotinus is given singular relief, however,
when contrasted with Heidegger's praise for Aristotle on the following
page:
18
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
Aristotle was the last of the great philosophers who had eyes to
see, and, what is still more decisive, the energy and tenacity to
continue to force inquiry back to the phenomena and to the seen
{die Untersuchungen wieder auf die Phdnomene und das Gesehene
zuruckzuzwingen), and to mistrust from the ground up all wild and
windy speculations, no matter how close to the heart of common
sense.4

Consciously or unconsciously, this praise of Aristotle, precisely in its choice

of words, hardens the opposition to the enterprise of Plotinus. On the one
hand: 'wild and windy speculations' (wilde und windige Spekulationen),
that is to say 'theosophy', and the impossibility of seeing the phenomena.
On the other hand: phenomenological lucidity, adequacy of interpretation,
conceptual rigour.
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Eine das Phanomen in den Begriff zwingende Interpretation: Leaving

aside the question of ascertaining exactly why Plotinus is treated here as
a 'theosophist', I want to highlight the three principal concepts contained
in the phrase just cited: phenomenon, interpretation, concept. The following
question seems to me to be not only decisive for a discussion of
Heideggerian theses but for the problematic itself: what are the condi-
tions for seeing the 'phenomenon1 of 'eternity'? In what does an
'interpretation' consist, which transforms this phenomenon into a 'concept7,
without doing violence to it? Once again, let us make the horizon of these
questions precise: has not the principal error of metaphysical treatments
of time and eternity been to have led us too quickly to the conceptual
element, without sufficiently interrogating the means of access by which
eternity comes to the idea - without sufficiently thematizing the modes
of givenness of the idea? Hasn't our phenomenological-hermeneutic task
ever since consisted in exploring this trajectory in an inverse manner,
namely by going from the phenomenon to its interpretation before, finally,
arriving at concepts?
In an exploration of this kind, the most difficult part probably consists
in the determination of the middle term of this trajectory, that is, the status
of interpretation. What exactly does interpretation mean in the present
context? How should it be grasped? To find an answer, we must perhaps
pose the following questions: is it truly a matter of indifference for under-
standing the canonical definition of eternity, authoritative throughout the
tradition, as 'aeternitas est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta
possessio', to know that it was forged by a philosopher on the point of
death, and that it appears in the work of Boethius with the famous and
suggestive title of De consolatione philosophiael How can one determine
the similarities and differences between this canonical definition and
approaches which are more directly associated with the religious search
for the divine attributes, for example, the elevation of eternity to the rank
19
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
of a divine attribute by the Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40, 28f; 40, 8; 45, 17);
or, again, to cite a no less famous text, the Augustinian meditation on the
enigma of time, enveloped and encapsulated in a meditation on eternity?
Paul Ricoeur, in a recent, detailed analysis of the celebrated Book XI
of the Confessions, has inquired at length into the significance of the
Augustinian thematization of the contrast between time and eternity which
frames the Augustinian meditation on intentio-distentio animi. At the
conclusion of his analysis,5 he distinguishes three major incidents in the
meditation on eternity concerning the speculation on time, which could,
at least in a first approximation, serve to characterize the three moments
- phenomenological, interpretative and conceptual - which I shall now
explore.
1. Eternity is first presented in the Confessions as a regulative idea
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(Ricoeur's term: idee-limite), which invites us to think the other of time

(I'autre du temps). This regulative idea allows new perplexities engendered
by the confrontation between time and eternity to be raised to a concep-
tual level, arriving at the articulation of those perplexities which already
characterize temporality itself, and which the dialectic of intentio-distentio
animi and the paradoxical concept of the 'triple present' attempt to
encompass. The principal effect of this new contrast is that a kind of onto-
logical negativity of time appears within the psychological experience of
the distentio animi.6
From the hermeneutical point of view, what commands attention here
is the subtle conjunction between the strictly speculative questioning
(carried along by the singular dynamics of the inquiry) and other literary
genres, for example the encomium, or hymn of praise. Augustine, for
Ricoeur, does not limit himself to thinking eternity (as Ricoeur puts it:
Augustine does not enclose the concept of eternity 'under the function of
a Kantian regulative idea'), rather he transforms it into an experience.
Instead of being simply a boundary concept, a kind of buffer to the under-
standing, eternity becomes a 'lack that is felt at the heart of temporal
experience'.7 At this initial level, Ricoeur's analysis offers a hint which
is extremely useful in confronting the Heideggerian critique of the
metaphysical concepts of eternity. Instead of thinking of the relations
between time and eternity under the sign of negation (an eternity which
knows nothing of time, as is the case with mathematical idealities), he
attempts to think the relation under the sign of alterity (eternity as
the other of time). Thought under the sign of negation and of exclusion,
eternity neutralizes time; thought under the sign of alterity, eternity can
become 'the other of time' which, moreover, intensifies the experience of
time.8
2. Intensification of the experience of time: this is the second function that
Ricoeur attaches to the Augustinian contrast between time and eternity.
20
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
Here, also, the intensification of the experience of the distentio animi
expresses itself in a particular expressive register with recognizably Biblical
resonances: the lament which makes of temporal existence an abiding in
the regio dissimilitudinis. Undoubtedly, one could show that the Duino
Elegies of Rainer Maria Rilke in their entirety (but more particularly the
second, which confronts the angelic manner of being with the perishable,
ephemeral, transitory mode of being of human existence) also proceed in
an analogous expressive register. The distentio animi is confounded with
the mournful consciousness of a gap, a particular aspect of which each
elegy explores.9 At this point, what is important is the discovery that the
dialectic of time and eternity, gathered up in the dynamic of praise and
lament, far from neutralizing the play of the distentio animi, intensifies -
we might equally say dramatizes - temporal experience.
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3. Finally, there is the emergence, at the heart of temporal experience, of

a hierarchy of levels of temporalization which represent so many approx-
imations of eternity.10 What has been presented up until now as an
unbridgeable gulf, now takes on the appearance of a Jacob's ladder.
According to Saint Augustine, it is thanks to the eternal Word that time
can be raised up above itself, until it attains eternity.11 In place of the
regulative idea of an eternity which reduces time to nothingness and thus
abolishes it, the intensification of temporal experience allows the resources
of an internal hierarchization to be extracted from within it. Moreover -
and this is the hermeneutical aspect - attending to the expressive regis-
ters allows us to ascend, in some sense, the Jacob's ladder joining time
with eternity. According to Ricoeur, this ladder is ascended with the aid
of fictive works, which in their play, offer many imaginative variations of
time, permitting us to discover that 'eternity - like being, according to
Aristotle - can be said in many different ways'.12 Speculative philosophy
always risks forgetting this possibility when it is too quickly enclosed in
a unique conceptual scheme - that of the soul in repose. This hermeneu-
tical idea of an eternity which is said in many ways seems to me to be
particularly fruitful for engaging with the Heideggerian problematic.
This brief summary must suffice to show that different attempts to trans-
port time beyond itself are ordered according to expressive registers
anchored in specific religious and literary traditions. Regarding Saint
Augustine, Ricoeur shows that eternity is not spoken of in exactly the
same way in the languages of praise, of lament, and of hope. The spirit
of praise celebrates the eternity of the Word which perdures, even after
human words pass away. The spirit of lament deplores the ephemeral char-
acter of all that passes and takes place in the regio dissimilitudinis; the
thrust of hope relies on the God of the Covenant whose unfailing loyalty
is the shadow of eternity cast on the moving history of humans. Biblical
narrative thus attests to the possibility that eternity can work within the
21
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
temporal experience by hierarchizing it into levels. Thus, there appears 'a
multiplicity of significations that prevent eternity from being reduced to
the immutability of a stable present'.13

2. The Heideggerian Formulation of the Problem

Returning to Heidegger in the light of this phenomenological and
hermeneutic perspective, the following question can be asked: did
Heidegger himself ever embark on the way to a properly phenomeno-
logical elucidation of the idea of eternity? Or was he simply content to
criticize a conception of eternity which he considered deficient because it
represented a clear threat to his own ontological programme which made
time 'the primary horizon of transcendental science, of ontology'?14 At first
sight, the indications seem to be negative. In fact, nothing corresponding
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to the idea of eternity is to be seen, since it has nothing more to do with

the movement of transcendence, henceforth entirely absorbed, or to put
it another way, entirely monopolized, by time. In this context, it is not
a matter of indifference to note that Heidegger reconnects the trans-
cendence of the Idea of the Good, announced in the Platonic motif of
epekeina tes ousias, with temporality, on the basis of an indisputably
violent interpretation.15 But one must not stop with these negative indi-
cations; on the contrary, one must relaunch the interrogation by posing
at least two questions: against what and against whom exactly is the
Heideggerian critique of non-temporality directed? Obviously, Heidegger,
ex-mathematician and ex-theologian, 'converted' to philosophy under the
double figure of the manifold meanings of being in Aristotle and
Husserlian phenomenology, could not have failed to encounter the
contrasting views of the kind of 'eternity' offered by mathematical ideal-
izations, and also by the discourse of Christian theology. But the more
decisive question is to know if his own concept of originary temporality
frees up a new way of approach to the idea of eternity.
In agreement with a number of commentators,16 who see the lecture
entitled The Concept of Time which Heidegger delivered on 25 July 1924
before the theologians of Marburg as having special importance, I shall
try to define the meaning of these questions with reference to a partic-
ular passage drawn from this lecture:

What is time? If time finds its meaning in eternity, then it must be

understood starting from eternity. The point of departure and path of
this inquiry are thereby indicated in advance: from eternity to time.
This way of posing the question is fine, provided that we have the
aforementioned point of departure at our disposal, that is, that we are
acquainted with eternity and understand it. If eternity were some-
thing other than the empty state of perpetual being, the aei, if God
22
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
were eternity, then the way of contemplating time initially suggested
would necessarily remain in a state of perplexity so long as it knows
nothing of God, and fails to understand the inquiry concerning him.
If our access to God is faith and if involving oneself with eternity is
nothing other than faith, then philosophy will never have eternity and,
accordingly, we will never be able to employ eternity methodically as
a possible respect in which to discuss time . . .
The philosopher does not believe. If the philosopher asks about
time, then he has resolved to understand time in terms of time, or in
terms of the aei, which looks like eternity, but proves to be a mere
derivative of being temporal.
The following considerations are not theological. In a theological
sense - and you are at liberty to understand it in this way - a consid-
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eration of time can only mean making the question concerning

eternity more difficult, preparing it in the correct manner and posing
it properly.17

How should the argumentative logic underlying these declarations be char-

acterized? Can it be connected back to the frank and brutal decision of
a Heidegger, anxious to part company with the theologians, who pretty
much says to them: for you, eternity; for me, time - and to each his own!
Perhaps matters are less simple and less obvious. What seems indisputable
however, is that in a text which predates by three years the passage quoted
above, Heidegger had already taken sides with Aristotle against Plotinus.
In fact, of all the thinkers in antiquity, it is perhaps Plotinus who, in Ennead
III.7, takes up in the most decisive way the path which Heidegger here
rejects, namely, to begin - in the ordo essendi as in the ordo cognoscendi
- with eternity; that is to say, with an idea of eternity which is clearly
positive and not merely negative, in order to be able to think the being
of time, and to give it an intelligibility which would otherwise be undis-
coverable.
Moreover, in a sudden about-face, Heidegger acts as if the theological
approach to the problem of eternity is, without further ado, perfectly
assimilable to the Plotinian approach. Does this mean that the theologian
himself is also only a kind of 'theosophist'? A Biblical theology, hoping
reflectively to reactivate the path which leads the Second Isaiah to make
eternity a divine attribute, would have difficulty recognizing itself in this
kind of description. Nothing, therefore, permits decreeing in advance
which of the following alternatives is best formulated: whether to begin
with eternity to arrrive at time, or whether 'to understand time from the
standpoint of time'. Now it is precisely these alternative formulations
which appear to dominate the different deconstructions of the concept of
eternity marking out Heidegger's work. In fact, a rapid survey of the few
texts where Heidegger broaches the problem of time and eternity, shows
23
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
that even if the formulations change, the argumentative structure at the
core remains strictly the same.
This deconstruction, sometimes taking the shape of a fairly prompt rejec-
tion, rests precisely on two points: the inadequacy of the paradoxical
concept of the nunc stans, and the impossibility of the concept of sempi-
ternitas shedding the representation of a purely linear, indefinitely pro-
longed, temporality. Both are merely complementary aspects of a meta-
physics of presence. This negative slant need not detain us for too long.
The appropriate Heideggerian texts have been the subject of an exhaus-
tive analysis by Gerd Haeffner,18 with whose conclusions I can only concur.
His analyses agree with the following declaration of Francoise Dastur, in
her recent work on Heidegger and the problem of time:
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If, following the approach to time proposed by Heidegger, some-

thing like an eternity is still thinkable, it could only be in a totally
other sense, and from the standpoint of a temporality thought in a
more originary manner. For, it is not from the standpoint of eter-
nity that one can think of time, but on the contrary, eternity itself
can only be understood from the standpoint of time.19

Close examination of the Heideggerian texts which treat of the relation-

ship between time and eternity shows that the purely negative critique
does not have the last word. Here, too - as everywhere else - there is a
subtle but real difference between a rejecting critique and deconstruction.
The true movement of deconstruction, as I understand this notion, consists
in traversing deficient conceptualizations to free up possibilities of ques-
tioning which the tradition has not yet explored. Now, each time Heidegger
applied himself to a critique of the opposition time/eternity, it is as if he
entertained the possibility of another concept of eternity. We therefore
obtain the following argumentative structure: 1. Critique: the deficient
character of metaphysical concepts of time; 2. Thesis: one must under-
stand time from the standpoint of time (i.e. understanding time as the
horizon of being: transforming ontology into ontochrony); 3. Promise: to
free up another concept of eternity, conceived from the standpoint of time
itself. That is to say, to repeat once more the formulation from the lecture
of 1924: 'to render more difficult the question of eternity, and to prepare
for it in a correct manner and to pose it correctly'.

3. Originary temporality and 'the god of time'

Was this promise kept or abandoned? The argumentative scheme offered
above finds a particularly remarkable illustration in a 1934 text which par-
ticularly stands out because it appears to announce the problematic of the
Beitrdge fairly directly. I refer to a page of the lecture course devoted to
24
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
Holderlin's hymn Germanien of the Winter Semester 1934, that is, exactly
two years before the writing of the Beitrdge. In this passage, Heidegger reit-
erates once more his criticisms directed at the habitual concepts of eternity
- criticisms which he had already formulated many times since 1924:

Ordinarily, one places the gods and the divine outside time and
considers them as eternal. . . . However, the determination of eter-
nity is nothing in itself: on the contrary, the representation of what
we call eternity and its concept are always determined as a function
of the dominant representation of time. In general, two conceptions
of eternity are known: 1. as sempiternitas - the uninterrupted contin-
uation of time, an incessant et caetera, never a final now; 2. as
aeternitas - the nunc stans, the immobile now, the indefinitely
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prolonged present. These two concepts are products of ancient

thought, followed by Christian thought, and they reappear subse-
quently in the work where, ever since, the thought of eternity is
manifest in its most rich and most profound, that is to say, in the
philosophy of Hegel. All that follows is only poor imitation.20

To understand the meaning and significance of this passage more fully, it

is important not to be misled by the polemical slant of these declarations.
The manner in which Heidegger arrives at these declarations is more inter-
esting. It is appropriate here to pay attention to the immediate context
of our quotation. The exposition of the saying of a poem (in this case,
the poetry of Holderlin) signifies in Heidegger's eyes a double disposses-
sion: accepting that we do not know who we are, or to put it another way,
letting ourselves be dispossessed of our identity, and inscribing ourselves
in a temporality which, being proper to the poem, wrests us from our
habitual chronological reference points. Doing this, we are made only to
participate in the same destiny of the poet who 'questioning for his own
time the true time . . . puts himself each time outside the time of his own
today'.21 It is not atemporality which characterizes the relationship with
the time of the poet, but a very particular kind of 'extra-temporality',
which does not liberate from time, but founds another relation with time.
These two aspects just mentioned are obviously tied together, as the
following formulation indicates: 'We do not know who we are when we
pose the question of our specifically temporal being'.22 Immediately after-
wards, Heidegger gives a first characterization of this other, originary
temporality (into which poetic saying allows us access, just as, in a different
but analogous manner, the creative work of the thinker and the founder
of the state also afford access) as a 'time of summits' which overhangs
ordinary time; 'these are the times which unfurl on the earth, with their
own flux and their own law'.23 One could ask right now whether this qual-
ification of the 'time of summits' - an inverse transcription of a formulation
25
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
of Holderlin, who speaks of 'the summits of time' - might not be connected
with the hypothesis of the hierarchization of the levels of temporalization
evoked earlier. A second, even more enigmatic qualification, also
borrowed from Holderlin, presents itself - this time of the summits is
presented as a time 'fissured with abysses'.24 Let us keep this formulation
in mind - we shall see that it recurs in the Beitrdge.
In talking of a 'time of summits', we might seem once more to be in
the process of climbing a Jacob's ladder, with eternity representing the
highest echelon. It is probable that Heidegger introduces the critique of
the two metaphysical concepts of eternity discussed above at this point in
his commentary, to avoid the risk that the time of summits might be
confounded with the idea of eternity. Heidegger reproaches both concep-
tions as 'equally products of a certain experience of time, that is to say,
of time as the pure unrolling of the now in succession1 ?5 This reproach is
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twinned, however, with two more positive indications: 'But this concept
of time does not attain to the essence of time any more than the concept
of eternity which depends entirely on it attains to the essence of eternity,
in so far as, at least, we are capable of thinking it'.26 Here we have a
perfect recurrence of the argumentative strategy already encountered in
the 1924 lecture and in Being and Time: Heidegger leaves a door open
for another approach to the idea of eternity. But what would this approach
consist of? Here recourse to Holderlin becomes indispensable. Holderlin
also speaks of eternity but in a way which departs from metaphysics. An
eternal thought must be that which does not allow itself to be carried
directly 'by the tide into the atemporal or the supratemporal'. On this
route, a figure appears - the Holderlinian figure of the Remarks on
Oedipus - the god who is 'only time'.27

4. The Turning of the Beitrdge: Putting in Place the Thought of

the Ereignis
We could multiply the examples, but it seems to me that the passage I
shall examine next furnishes the indispensable interpretative keys permit-
ting us to penetrate the labyrinth of the Beitrdge without immediately
getting lost in it. Leaving aside an attempt to take up more 'systemati-
cally' the immense Seynsfuge2S which make up the aphorisms of this
volume (which I have discussed elsewhere29), I would like to focus here
on the problematic of the Beitrdge guided by a triple procession of signi-
fiers: the notion of Ereignis and its semantic field; the notion of
Augenblickstdtte; and finally the notion of the last God (der letzte Gott).
A careful study of the different occurrences of these three notions will
show the very strong connections between them. My aim is fairly modest:
concentrating on some particularly remarkable formulations, I shall try to
elucidate the connections between them.
26
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
Before demonstrating the inaugural originality of the thoughts Heidegger
develops here, it is appropriate first of all to emphasize their continuity
with the programme of fundamental ontology which found its canonical
expression in Being and Time. Underscoring the ambiguous and transi-
tory character {iibergdnglicher Doppelcharakter)30 of his programme of
fundamental ontology, Heidegger comments on the title 'Being and Time1
in the following terms: 'this title is laid down with a clear awareness of
the task, no longer being and beingness [Seiendes und Seiendheit], but
Being [Sein]; no longer "thinking" but "time"; no longer "Thinking" but
"Being" [Seyn]\ And he adds: "Time" as naming the "truth" of Being
[Sein], and all this as a task, as "on the way" [unterwegs] not in as
"doctrine" and dogma'.31
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(i) The New Face of Being

Naming the truth of Being: this is certainly what is decisive in the lexicon
of Ereignis as it is put in place in the Beitrdge. It expresses the novelty
of a task Heidegger thinks ought to be undertaken - first, since in his
eyes from Plato right down to pre-hermeneutic phenomenology, 'no one
has ever interrogated the truth of the interpretation of Being'.32 From the
very first pages of the Beitrdge, the superabundance of this lexicon of
Ereignis is immediately striking, a lexicon which, precisely in the years
1936-38, Heidegger elevated to a level of major significance. What must
be thought under this lexeme is the unfolding (Wesung) of Being itself -
which owes nothing to beings - in its originary truth. Wesung instead of
Wesen {pusia): this term forms a part of a long chain of signifiers, each
of which indicates that the verbal forms are more fundamental than the
substantive. That holds equally for the Ereignis itself, which more than
once is written as Ereignung.
The foregrounding of this signifier has as a consequence other profound
mutations of the style of thought and of the corresponding modes of
saying. Thus, for example, the discourse related to Ereignis - related to
the very truth of Being - is neither doctrine, nor opinion, nor system, but
simply, pointing (Weisung).33 Is this to say that we are in a domain of
perpetual allusiveness with no grasp on anything? Certainly not, for this
Weisung, simple pointing, presents a 'projective', poetic aspect which
brings this discourse close to poetic saying, in so far as the latter, as is
the case notably with Holderlin, is presented as the 'founding' (Stiftung)
of the very truth of Being.34
The 'knowledge of the unicity of Seyn'35 which Heidegger puts to work
here is the knowledge of the origin in its pure upsurging. That is to say,
the thinking which puts this knowledge to work (the thinking which accom-
plishes the 'leap') can neither be the order of representation nor that of
judgement:
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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
The Origin - understood in its original sense - is Being [Seyn] itself.
And conforming to it, thinking is itself also more original than re-
presenting and judging.
The Origin is Being [Seyn] itself understood as Ereignis, the hidden
reign of the Origin of the truth of Being as such. And Being [5ey/i]
in so far as it is Ereignis is the Origin.36

How can thinking act in the face of such an abyssal origin? It will be
fundamentally the avowal of belonging to this essence.

However, where Seyn is understood as Ereignis, the essentiality is

determined from the standpoint of the originariness and unicity of
Being itself. The essence is not the universal, but it is precisely the
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unfolding (die Wesung) of the unicity, in each case singular and at

the level of the entity (des Seienden)?1

Concerning the problematic of temporality, the following traits must be

emphasized. First of all: the question of the conditions of access of thought
to a truth so profoundly hidden as that of Being itself. Now, the royal
way which permits, if not the understanding, at least the intuition or the
presentiment of the Ereignis, is precisely temporality. This means at least
two things. On the one hand, the unfolding {die Wesung) only becomes
thinkable on condition that the trait thus far dominant for the compre-
hension of Being - namely constant presence - is renounced. For (an
affirmation ceaselessly repeated) metaphysics is radically incapable of
tearing itself away from the determination of beingness (Seiendheit) as
constant presence. On the other hand, from the moment that one frees
oneself from this main determination of the meaning of Being itself, one
penetrates into a rather strange landscape signified by a metaphor
borrowed from geology: Zerkliiftung (suggested translation: 'the foldings
of being'). Wesung and Zerkluftung are two different aspects of the truth
of Being itself, the task being to think Seyn from the standpoint 'of its
originary unfolding in the plenitude of its folds'.38
Representational thinking (Vorstellung) totally ignores these folds and
creases which constitute the richness and the depth of the truth of Being
itself. Only one thinker - Nietzsche, the thinker of nihilism - caught a
glimpse of them, and then in a purely negative manner. But the true signif-
icance of nihilism remained hidden from Nietzsche who wanted to be
diagnostician and clinician of it. Nietzsche was unable to discern that
nihilism is only the surface manifestation of another, more profound event,
the abandonment of Being (Seinsverlassenheii) which is at bottom a de-
essentialization of Being (Ver-Wesung des Seyns)?9 The term lVer-Wesung'
- as the true designation for what Nietzsche named 'nihilism' (which makes
it possible to say that this abandonment of Being, Seinsverlassenheit, is
28
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
'the most profound mystery of the current history of Western meta-
physics'40) - clearly does not mean (without giving an account of the more
concealed origin of the term) that Being itself is voided of its essence,
because that is impossible. Moreover, its essence and in particular the
folds constituting it can be hidden, and this precisely constitutes the aban-
donment of Being: 'dissembling the essence of Being (Wesen des Seyns)
and in particular its folding: the fact that unicity, rarity, instanteneity
(Augenblicklichkeii), irruption and eruption, gathering and freedom, shel-
tering (Verwahrung) and necessity belong to Seyn\M This gives us a
preliminary idea of the more than cryptic discourse the Beitrage constantly
maintains. To what does this astonishing enumeration correspond? The
term Zerkluftung is directly borrowed from a version of Holderlin's hymns
to the Titans. But, however close this association, the task of the thinker
is nevertheless distinct from that of the poet.
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Just as instructive as this borrowing from Holderlin's lexicon is the

manner in which Heidegger criticizes a very determinate conception of
ontology, namely, a modal ontology. This criticism constitutes a denial.
Although he denies that he wishes to revive the ancient modal ontology
(such as Nicolai Hartmann was doing), Heidegger has, in spite of every-
thing, to propose a thought of the internal richness of the truth of Being,
in order to avoid making of the unicity of Being an impenetrable mono-
lithic entity. In this sense, Zerkluftung, as 'the unfolding which remains in
itself of the intimacy of Being (Seyn) itself,42 opens up a perspective
which, as we shall see further on, is just as much concerned with the orig-
inary temporality construed as 'Zeit-Spiel-Raum' as with the figure of the
last God.
Concerning the problem of temporality, Heidegger rails against 'the
strange erroneous belief that Being (Seyn) must always be, and the more
durable and longer lasting it is, the more being (seiender) it is'.43 Such a
'heresy' (Irrglaube) is not possible for the thinking of the Ereignis which
recalls that 'Being [Seyn] is the rarest because the most unique, and no
one can divine the rare instants in which it founds for itself a site and
unfolds [west] itself there'.44 We begin to catch a glimpse that there exists
a necessary relationship between the notion of the instant (Augenblick)
and the idea of Ereignis.

(ii) The New Status of Dasein

If we allow that the problematic of the Ereignis is inscribed in an exten-
sion of fundamental ontology - albeit fundamentally modifying its status
- then the existential analytic itself and, primarily, the understanding of
its central term, Dasein, cannot but be affected by this turning. Two key
terms express the relationship which Da-sein ('human nature' ceases to
exist in order to make room for Da-sein) holds with Being: Brauch and
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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
Zugehorigkeit. The belonging of human being to the very truth of Being
(Ereignis) has its foundation in Being itself, but this belonging is never
definitively guaranteed. This is why, as we shall see further on, a sui
generis temporality is required which reverberates certain traits of the
ecstatic temporality proper to Care, with the distinction that Care itself
has changed its nature: it becomes watchfulness over Being (Wachterschaft
des Seyns). Only one who grasps fully the 'absolute strangeness of the
unfolding of Being towards beings: becomes Da-sein\ Once more, all the
determinations are in the form of verbs and ought to be thought as such:
Wesung, Zerkliiftung, Befremdung, Ereignung, Grundung. At first sight,
these determinations are formulated very abstractly. This should not
mislead us, as though it were the case that Heidegger had abandoned
himself in unbridled speculation. Thus, for example, Befremdung mani-
fests itself concretely in the unusual and each time unique character of
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death, such that 'death is the supreme and most extreme attestation of
Being'.45
The most remarkable peculiarity of the new comprehension of Da-sein's
solidarity with the thinking of Being is that it becomes the foundation for
a human being who does not yet exist, and undoubtedly will never exist,
if to exist means necessarily to be present-at-hand, vorhanden. Human
being will become 'futural', kiinftig, so that he or she can take charge of
the 'there' as a mode of being (das Da zu sein), supposing that he or she
could comprehend himself or herself as watcher over the truth of Being,
a vigilance indicated in Care. The characteristic of Da-sein, never reducible
to a pure occurring (Vorkommen) is the supporting (Ertragsamkeii) of
Being. And it is thus that ipseity becomes authenticity. It is this 'authentic'
people of the future (and only of the future), a people who will never be
a 'public' and whose fundamental attitude is retention (Verhaltenheii), who
are entirely devoted to the passing of the last God.46
In the Kantbuch and elsewhere, Heidegger established a very strong
link between the Kantian doctrines of the schematism, imagination and
temporality. This link is maintained in the Beitrdge, with this difference,
that the doctrine of the imagination is entirely re-elaborated, losing in the
process its specifically transcendental character. The there, the place where
a human maintains himself or herself in Being, opening up himself or
herself to his or her truth, is the essential incident (Zwischenfall) which
only a thinking of the transcendental imagination can comprehend. In the
imagination it discovers the event of enlightening itself.
To put the notion of the Ereignis in perspective it is worth attending,
for our purposes, to one last peculiarity. If the Ereignis designates the very
truth of Seyn, then Being necessarily presents a historical-destinal aspect.
In fact, the history of the very truth of Seyn leads back to a more funda-
mental eventuality than that of the history of different conceptions of
truth. The thought of the Ereignis is thus inseparable from a determinate
30
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
conception of the history of Being. The historicality which Heidegger intro-
duced in Being and Time as a constitutive dimension of Dasein, now has
for its first subject the Ereignis itself: 'the Er-eignis is originary history
itself.47 In such an eschatalogical-destinal conception of history, history is
'more' than acting and willing. For destiny itself belongs to history without
however exhausting its essence.48 The distinctive mark of this history is
that it is structured by 'decisions' which no longer relate to the initiatives
of a human subject and its corresponding projects. These decisions have
their origin in Being itself. To embark in search of the truth of Being is
already a paradoxical decision of this type.
The history of the very foundations of the essence must be thought,
that is to say, a history 'which has only rare instants (Augenblicke), widely
scattered from each other'.49 Now the knowledge related to this essential
history of truth can no longer be a knowledge in the usual sense of the
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word, it must be a manner of holding oneself in this very essence.50

Heidegger declares at the end of a very long analysis of the notion of
truth, that this holding is a 'believing', but a believing which has nothing
in common with the type of belief which is rooted in religious faith.51

5. Originary Temporality and Thinking the Ereignis

This brief recapitulation of some of the tensions in the problematic of
the Ereignis has already shown up the very strong connection between
this thinking and the concept of time. In one sense Heidegger remains
absolutely faithful to himself: it is always a matter of thinking time as
horizon, developing an understanding of Being no longer reducible to
constant presence. But it is appropriate to look at matters a little more
closely. Here again we can simply let ourselves be guided by the termi-
nological choices made by the author himself. I shall thus take as a
guide the two principal notions of 'Time-Space' (Zeit-Rautri) - or better
still, under the more developed form of the notion of 'Time-Play-Space'
(Zeit-Spiel-Raum) - and Augenblicklichkeit (itself explicated by the
formula which neatly associates topological and chronological values:
Augenblicks-Stdtte). Taken together, these notions permit the problem of
eternity to be sublated 'outside metaphysics' and accordingly, they provide
access to that most difficult theme with which my analysis will conclude:
the figure of the 'last' or the 'ultimate God' {der letzte Gott) which
concludes the Fuge of Being.

(i) Spatialization and Temporalization as the Effecting of the

Ereignis: the Zeit-Spiel-Raum
In at least two programmatic aphorisms of the Beitrage, both entitled
Durchblick, it is explicitly affirmed that the notion of the Ereignis contains
31
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
a new problematic of spatiality and temporality and of their reciprocal
relationships. Both passages speak of the Ereignis (the truth of Seyn) as
the foundation and the abyss which is Time-Space itself. Whence the
following programmatic commands: 'It is a matter of first taking into view
the relationship between Being and truth and of following how, on this
basis, Time and Space are founded in their original co-belonging, notwith-
standing their reciprocal strangeness'.52 'Save the genuine essence of space
and time'.53 This is precisely what traditional thinking about time has not
known how to do. For this same reason, all current revisions of the concept
of time, invoking Bergson's duree interieure or Dilthey's lived time are
equally of no help. A more originary interpretation of time and space and
their reciprocal relation is required.
Here we come up against a first fundamental difficulty: how exactly to
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determine the relationship between the Ereignis and Time-Space (Zeit-

Raum)? It is very striking to realize that, by Heidegger's own admission,
this relationship can be read in a two-fold sense: sometimes it is Time-
Space which permits access to the thinking of the Ereignis; sometimes -
and this is certainly the dominant perspective - everything proceeds as if
the only way of breaking away from the usual concepts of time is to take
up the problem 'from above', that is directly in the light of the Ereignis
itself. The truth must be determined as 'founding Time-Space, but for this
it is also at the same time essentially determined from out of itself.54 Why
this approach 'from above'? It is required to escape from the determina-
tion of time as presence (Anwesung) and constancy (Bestdndigkeit). This
determination, from the origin of thinking, has prevented 'time itself and
in so far as it is the truth of Being [Wahrheit des Seins] having the honour
of questioning and of experience'.55 This same determination immediately
excludes both the past and the future from the comprehension of the
meaning of Being. In a conception of reality assimilated to constant pres-
ence, there is no place either for memory or for expectation. These
attitudes have only a purely inessential, subjective signification and do not
enter into the reckoning of the meaning of Being. They do not teach
anything about the Wesung of Being. Another beginning of thinking
changes this.56
Contrary to what one could be led to suppose from the title lSein and
Zeit\ thinking time as the truth of Being does not however imply the
priority or the superiority of time over space. Only vulgar time can be
opposed to space. At a more originary level, far from being simply asso-
ciated or linked together (Verkopplung), time and space are rigourously
inseparable; The term Zeit-Raum expresses this essential co-belonging.
Accordingly, it is helpful to translate it literally as 'Time-Space' rather
than 'space-time', since the latter would risk introducing a confusion with
the spatio-temporality of contemporary physics - precisely the confusion
Heidegger is seeking to avoid.
32
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
Zeit-Raum: here too, thinking the Ereignis demands that nominal forms
should be thought verbally.57 We must now add to the already impressive
series of verbal expressions which end in -ung, the words: Zeitigung and
Einraumung, temporalizing and spatializing. These two movements explain
the primordial co-belonging of time and space. Here the hidden link with
the determination of Being as ousia, as constant presence, is attested.
There is nothing arbitrary in this determination; on the contrary, it carries
a hidden truth: 'the unity of temporalisation and spatialisation, known
under the guise of the presence constituting the essence of beingness, the
intersection'.
As to the metaphor of play, it has already been prepared for in Sein
und Zeit which, under the cover of originary temporality, 'had to make
possible the experience of "time" as the space of the "ekstatic" play of
the truth of Being. Even if the peculiarity of the treatment carried out in
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this work can henceforth be wiped out, it is still necessary to retain the
orientation to the Time-Space-Play of Seyn\ To speak of play in this
context reminds us that all the dimensions and all the connections to be
explored here escape the principle of reason. That does not necessarily
mean that the term lGrund' as such is forbidden. In fact, spatialization
and originary temporalization are nothing other than abyss, Ab-Grund,5*
but an abyss which itself only has meaning (or only opens up) out of the
Ereignis itself, which Heidegger designates by the expression Ur-grund.59
What game is being played here? If one calls to mind the typology of the
four fundamental forms of play proposed by Roger Caillois,60 the answer
is easy to find: from all the evidence, it is not a matter of a game of repre-
sentation (mimicry), since the thought of Ereignis wholly leaves behind the
horizon of representation; nor of the game of agon, notwithstanding
the metaphors of struggle and combat (das in sich Strittige eine Streites), as
this game presupposes the rivalry and competition of subjects; certainly not
a game of chance (alea), because this game is difficult to make compatible
with the 'destinal' values of Ereignis. So there remains only the fourth pos-
sibility: the game of vertigo (Minx). Caught by originary temporality,
Heidegger abandons himself totally to this vertiginal temporality, feeling
the full force of speculative vertigo, a vertigo communicated to the reader.

(ii) Augenblicklichheit and Augenblickstatte: the Lightening of the

Instant
In this other beginning of thinking, the originary temporality which has now
taken the appearance of Time-Space requires a reconsideration of the
notion of Augenblick which occupied an important place in the existential
analytic. This is not the place to rehearse the pre-history of this paradoxi-
cal notion, which from the exaiphnes of the Platonic Parmenides down to
Kierkegaard,61 passing through Plotinus and Pseudo-Dionysius, has played
33
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
an important role in Western thought, precisely because this concept
enabled the articulation together of the thought of time and of eternity.62
Before asking whether or not the Heideggerian notion of Augenblick
opens up a perspective on a non-metaphysical concept of eternity, it is
first of all appropriate to comprehend this notion itself. It implies a deci-
sion as to the manner in which human being (that is to say, Dasein) is
situated with regard to the truth of Being and with regard to the origi-
nary temporality which the truth of Being shelters. In fact, in one sense,
the notion of Augenblicks-Statte says nothing other than the notion of
Zeit-Raum, to the point where, in certain formulations, it would seem the
two are identical.63 Their affinity is evident: both terms imply the same
coupling of 'temporal' (Augenblick) and topological (Sta'tte) values. But
their viewpoints are different: the second expression involves Dasein as
the place where Time-Space is manifested and deployed. It is, in fact, only
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here that is effected - so to speak, at the same time - the movement of

the temporalization and of the spatialization, or the movement of a
'spatializing temporalization' and of a 'temporalizing spatialization'.64 The
'there' of the expression 'Da-Sein' must be precisely understood as the
'site' where the destinal foundation of the truth of Being is brought about,
the Wesung which absolutely escapes any reference to ordinary
chronology.65 Here we arrive at a concept of the Instant at least as para-
doxical as the lightening of the Platonic exaiphnes. It concerns the
unfolding of Time-Space in its essence as the Augenblicks-Statte of the
Ereignis. But, Heidegger says, this instantaneous 'blink of an eye' has none
of the ephemeral punctuality of a vanishing present, it is not 'the minute
remainder of a time which one is just able to catch'.66 The instant is that
which allows us to gather the truth of Being 'which never "is", but which
unfolds [west] itself. For it is the truth of Being [Seyn] which unfolds itself
"only". This is why everything which belongs to truth, Time-Space and
consequently "space" and "time" unfold themselves'.67
Moreover, it is for this reason that the notion of the instant must be
put in relationship with the notion of Zerkliiftung mentioned above. All
the 'modal' values already mentioned are temporal and spatial at the same
time. In other words: the internal folds of Seyn (Ereignis) are only unfolded
and deployed across the movement of temporalization and spatialization.

(Hi) The Instant of Eternity

This penetrating critique of the inadequacy of commonplace concepts of
eternity is pursued in the Beitrdge, as elsewhere. This critique has many
facets:
1. On the first level, it is simply directed at the return of the signifier 'eter-
nity' in totalitarian ideologies. Here, critique merges with the exercise of
34
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
a suspicion connected with the question of nihilism. Especially noteworthy
is Heidegger's attempt to make clear that Machenschaft and Erlebnis, the
two attitudes which dominate the present age, are different but comple-
mentary experiences of the same nihilism, bent on negating limits. Because
they are driven by a logic of transgression and negating the limits,
suffocating every word beneath screams, these attitudes, typical of the
contemporary epoch, noisily lay claim to a limitless duration, that is to
say, a pseudo-eternity:

They are condemned to think that they inhabit the totality [im
Ganzen] and the lasting [das Dauernde] and this is why nothing is
more familiar to them than 'the Eternal' [das Ewige]. Everything is
'eternal'. And the eternal - this eternal - how could it not be at the
same time esential?68
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The concept of eternity invoked and brandished by totalitarian ideologies

is a major symptom of nihilism, as Heidegger understands it, namely, the
abandonment of Being. This attitude, however, goes hand in hand with
another symptom of pervasive nihilism, the reign of the Gigantic (das
Riesenhafte) which has as its consequence the obligation to think space
and time as simple quantities. In the face of this reign of the quantitative,
whose political expression is massification (das Massenhafte), Heidegger's
act of defiance is precisely to think time and space as something totally
non-quantitative.69
2. At another level, the concept of eternity made current by Western meta-
physics is directly put in question. Heidegger asks how the strange fact
can be explained that beingness (etantite) itself is seen as having escaped
from and superior to space and time. The impression that it is possible to
escape from time is particularly strange, since time is present in the funda-
mental determination of beingness as ousia - constant presence. The
reason for the forgetfulness of time as the unsurpassable horizon for the
comprehension of Being here carries a name, 'Logic', which has its root
in an erroneous determination of the relation between thinking and Being.
'Logic' makes of thinking an operation which takes place necessarily
in the non-temporal and the eternal.70 'Logic' understood in this manner,
is the reign of a representational thinking which has, quite simply, forgotten
what 'representing' means: a Gegenwartigen which takes account of the
temporal aspect of presencing. The thinking of the Ereignis, in contrast,
demands that the truth of thinking be not thought as such, 'but Time-
Space, as the unfolding of truth in which all re-presenting takes place'.71
Let us add another quotation which shows that the argumentative
structure analysed above remains in place. Under the title 'Time-Eternity-
Instant' Heidegger declares:
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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
The eternal [das Ewige] is not that which perdures [das Fort-
wahrende] but that which is able to retract itself in the instant, to
return another time. What can return, not as the same, but as that
which transforms anew, the One-Unique, Seyn, in such a way that
this being-manifest [Offenbarkeit] is not at first recognised as the
same.
What is it but eternalisation [Ver-ewigung]V2

Despite its laconic character, this passage provides an important sugges-

tion: outside the metaphysical concepts of eternity, eternity must itself
participate in the very movement of Wesung. Ewigkeit must become
Ver-ewigung. But the only place from which this Ver-ewigung could be
thought is the lightening of the instant in which it manifests itself
'for a time' and in the always unforeseen manner of the very truth of
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Being.73

6. The 'Passing' of the 'Last God'

On the basis of the preceding considerations, let us now risk an inter-
pretation of that most enigmatic figure with which the Heideggerian fugue
of Being culminates. It is obviously impossible, in the present context, to
propose a coherent interpretation of all the texts wherein this motif
appears. Here we shall focus only on those aspects directly connected with
the problem of temporality. On the one hand, how is the meaning of the
expression 'der letzte Gott' to be understood? On the other hand, what is
the exact meaning of the expression 'passing' (Vorbeigang)?

(i) Ereignung and Gotterung

Besides knowing the truth of Being, the thought of the Ereignis is the
watchfulness (Wachterschaft) over the passing of the last God. 'In the
unfolding of the truth of Being, in the Ereignis and as Ereignis, the last
God is hidden'.74 That is to say that the divine is implicated, according to
modalities which will obviously have to be determined, in the very self-
unfolding of the truth of Being. Certain lexical indications are revealing.
Thus Heidegger speaks of an Erzitterung, a trembling, or an internal distur-
bance to the being which gives birth to a Gotterung.75 Before there can
be a question of naming God and of identifying him, there must be the
possibility of this Gotterung which must itself be thought. Being itself,
which, as we have seen above, must be thought as an absolute Befremdung
over against the more or less familiar visages which beings offer us,
encloses within itself this extreme possibility of Gotterung, of the mani-
festation of the divine, which carries to the pinnacle, so to speak, the
strangeness belonging to Being.
36
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
This kind of manifestation - visitation of the divine, resting only on
'signs' (Winke), represents an extreme, abyssal possibility, exceeding all
'numerical' approaches to the divine. Whatever might be said about the
notion of the last God, in no sense does it name the last term of a series.
This is why Heidegger declares that 'the last God has his own unique
unicity'76 which he opposes to the diverse, historical mono-, poly-, and
pan-theisms. For the same reason, we should understand that these spec-
ulations are situated absolutely outside the whole of philosophy of religion
in the strict sense. What is left over, then, for a positive determination of
the notion of 'last'? In my view it is simply this: even though the thinking
of the Ereignis and of the Zeit-Spiel-Raum excludes every teleological
interpretation of history, it implies an eschatology of Being which conjoins
with the idea of a destinal history of the meaning of Being. This escha-
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tology is at the same time an archeology, for, Heidegger says, 'the last
[das Letzte] is at the same time the most profound beginning'.77

(ii) A God Who is Nothing but Passing

How, on the basis of this idea of an eschatology of Being (of which the
Zeit-Spiel-Raum is but a spatial and temporal explication) can the notion
of Vorbeigang, passing, be justified? In my view, we must resist the tempta-
tion to invoke possible analogies with the Jewish or Christian inter-
pretation of the Paschah. Heidegger is concerned with something quite
different: the 'last God' - if it manifests itself, or even if it makes a sign to
us (since its presence is confounded with its signs, Winke) - will never be
present in the sense of a constant, available presence. Its being will be noth-
ing other than passing. The Ereignis is the space of encounter in which such
a passage can be produced. But it is a passage which has nothing of the
ephemeral and transitory. It is not a nomadic God in perpetual transit. On
the contrary, it is itself accorded an Augenblicks-Stdtte. Therefore the last
God necessarily is connected with time - no doubt not in the vulgar sense
of clocks, nor in the vulgar space of geometry - but in the originary tem-
porality of the Zeit-Spiel-Raum. This connection is so strict that Heidegger
can even say, in a very strange comparison, that the Ereignis and its abyssal
fugue into Time-Space 'is the web which the Ereignis itself spins in order
to tear it up and to let it achieve itself in its unicity, divinely and lonely, and
the strangest in the whole of being'.78 As disturbing and strange, as per-
fectly hermetic as this formulation may appear to be, does it not also sug-
gest that Vorbeigang is Heidegger's way of speaking of divine eternity in
'post-metaphysical' terms?
I end my analysis with this question. These reflections represent simply
a first attempt to delineate the location from which Heidegger speaks in
the Beitrage. As I have indicated from the outset, it is undoubtedly impos-
sible to discover in the Beitrage the expression of a philosophy of religion,
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 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES
assuming at least that we understand this notion of a philosophy of reli-
gion in a sufficiently technical sense, that is, as the expression of a
consistent philosophical effort to understand the effectiveness of positive
religions and the whole of their manifestations, rites, beliefs, spiritual atti-
tudes, and also their mental and discursive categories, placing them in the
more global perspective of a reflexion on the religious evolution of
humanity.79 If such is the proper task of philosophy of religion, then it is
clear that Heidegger's claims, as analysed above, do not belong there.
Does this mean that philosophy of religion must leave Heideggerian
discourse to its own strangeness? In one sense, yes; in another sense, no.
For, regarding the link established here between the thematic of the 'last
God' and the idea of an eschatology of Being, one must ask the following
questions - probably iconoclastic from the point of view of Heideggerian
ultra-orthodoxy. What is the philosophical status of the Beiträge? What is
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the place from which Heidegger himself speaks? What has rendered such
discourse possible? Or, more directly, in line with our initial question:
fascinated by the figure of the last God, has Heidegger himself not
'departed from the phenomena' in order to deliver himself over totally
to a speculation which could itself be misunderstood as a strange kind of
'theosophy'?

Institut catholique de Paris

NOTES
1 M. Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, Gesamtausgabe Bd
24 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1989), p. 467, trans. Albert Hofstadter as The
Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1982), p. 328.
2 Karl Löwith, 'Martin Heidegger und Franz Rosenzweig. Ein Nachtrag zu Sein
und Zeit', in Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Stuttgart: J. Metzler 1960), p. 68. For a
more detailed confrontation between the two enterprises, see Bernhard Casper,
'Sein und Offenbarung', Philosophisches Jahrbuch 74 (1967), pp. 310-39.
3 Heidegger, op. cit. note 1, p. 231. [Translator's note: in all citations the German
reference will be given first (Gesamtausgabe = GA) followed by the English
translation where available, e.g. GA 24, p. 328, Hofstadter, p. 231. Greisch
quotes the French translation of the Grundprobleme: Problèmes fundamen-
taux de la phénomenologie, trad. par J.F. Courtine (Paris: Gallimard, 1985)
which has une spéculation théosophique, (p. 280) correctly translating the
German text, p. 328. Hofstadter's English translation (p. 231) has 'theolog-
ical speculation' in place of 'theosophical speculation' which is clearly incorrect
- D. Moran].
4 GA 24, p. 329, Basic Problems, Hofstadter, p. 232.
5 Paul Ricoeur, Temps et Récit I (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1983), pp. 19-53,
trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer as Time and Narrative, Vol.
1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 5-30. For Ricoeuer's discus-
sion of the Kantian regulative idea, see p. 26.
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 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
6 Ibid., p. 26.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 On the distentio animi specific to the third elegy, see my study, 'L'autre scène
temporelle' in La Part de L'Oeil (Bruxelles, 1991), pp. 237-45.
10 Ricoeur, op. cit. note 5, p. 28.
11 Ibid. p. 29.
12 Paul Ricoeur, Temps et Récit III (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1985), p. 195, trans.
Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer as Time and Narrative, Vol. 3 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 136.
13 Ibid., p. 265.
14 GA 24, p. 461. Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Hofstadter, p. 323.
15 The traces of this interpretative violence are particularly observable in the
following lecture courses: Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie (1927);
Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz (1928), GA
26 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1978) trans. as The Metaphysical Foundations of
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Logic by Michael Heim (Bloomington: Indiana U.P., 1984); Vom Wesen der
Wahrheit Piatons Höhlengleichnis und Theätet (1932). In another study, I
intend to offer a detailed analysis of the numerous Heideggerian texts where
this Republic 509b passage is discussed.
16 In the analysis which follows, I am particularly indebted to the very searching
study of Gerd Haeffner, 'Heidegger über Zeit und Ewigkeit', Theologie und
Philosophie 64 (1989), pp. 481-517. In that study, Haeffner does more than
clear the path on which my own reflections advance. He precisely draws the
point of transition which provides access to the Beiträge, namely, the notions
of Augenblick and Augenblicklichkeit. But his study stops at the threshold of
the problematic of the Beiträge. It is precisely this threshold which I, in my
reflections, wish to cross.
17 Martin Heidegger, Der Begriff der Zeit: Vortrag vor der Marburger
Theologenschaft Juli 1924 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1989). Published
in a bilingual edition as The Concept of Time, trans. William McNeill (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992), pp. 1E-2E.
18 Haeffner, op. cit. note 16.
19 Françoise Dastur, Heidegger et la question du temps (Paris: PUF, 1990), p. 22
and Dire le temps (Paris: PUF, 1993).
20 Hölderlins Hymnen, 'Germanien und Der Rhein', Gesamtausgabe, Band 39
(Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1980), p. 55, trans. into French by François Fédier
and Julien Hervier as Les hymnes de Hölderlin: la Germanie et Le Rhin (Paris:
Gallimard, 1988), p. 61.
21 Ibid. GA 39, p. 50; French trans., p. 57.
22 Ibid.
23 GA 39, p. 52; 59.
24 Ibid., pp. 53; 59.
25 Ibid., p. 55; 61.
26 Ibid.
27 GA 39, p. 54; 61.
28 Throughout the Beiträge, Heidegger plays on the difference in writing between
Sein (such as is understood by metaphysics) and Seyn (the very truth of Being
independently of all relation to beings). All questions of interpretation aside,
it seems to me that the best way of rendering in French this written word-
play is to have recourse to an ancient word: l'estre. I thank Silvio Venn for
this suggestion. (Translator's note: I have rendered Greisch's I'estre as Seyn).

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29 'Les "Contributions à la Philosophie (à partir de l'Ereignis)" de Martin
Heidegger', Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 73 (1989), pp.
605-32. For a general interpretation of the Beiträge, see Friedrich Wilhelm
von Herrmann, Wege ins Ereignis. Zu Heideggers 'Beiträge zur Philosophie'
(Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1994).
30 GA 65, p. 182.
31 'Dieser Titel ist aus einem klaren Wissen um die Aufgabe gesetzt: nicht mehr
Seiendes und Seiendheit, sondern Sein; nicht mehr "denken", sondern "Zeit";
nicht mehr Denken zuvor, sondern das Seyn. "Zeit" als Nennung der
"Wahrheit" des Seins, und all dieses als Aufgabe, als "unterwegs"; nicht als
"Lehre" und Dogmatik"'. (GA 65, p. 183.)
32 GA 65, §94, p. 188: 'Denn seit Plato ist nie nach der Wahrheit der "Seins" -
auslegung gefragt worden'.
33 'Dieses denkerische Sagen ist eine Weisung'. (GA 65, p. 7.)
34 GA 65, p. 11.
35 'Wissen um die Einzigkeit des Seyns'. (GA 65, p. 32.)
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36 'Der Anfang - anfänglich begriffen - ist das Seyn selbst. Und ihm gemäß ist
auch das Denken ursprünglicher denn Vor-stellen und Urteilen.
Der Anfang is das Seyn selbst als Ereignis, die verborgene Herrschaft des
Ursprungs der Wahrheit des Seienden als solchen. Und das Seyn ist als das
Ereignis der Anfang' (GA 65, p. 58.)
37 'Wo dagegen das Seyn als Ereignis begriffen wird, bestimmt sich die
Wesenlichkeit aus der Ursprünglichkeit und Einzigkeit des Seyns selbst. Das
Wesen ist nicht das Allgemeine, sondern die Wesung gerade der jeweiligen
Einzigkeit und des Ranges des Seienden'. (GA 65, p. 66.)
38 'aus seiner ursprünglichen Wesung in der vollen Zerklüftung'. (GA 65, p. 75.)
39 'Seynsverlassenheit ist im Grunde eine Ver-Wesung des Seyns'. (GA 65, p.
115.)
40 ' . . . als dem tiefsten Geheimnis der jetzigen Geschichte des abendländischen
Menschen'. (GA 65, p. 219.)
41 ' . . . Verstellung des Wesens des Seyns, zumal seiner Zerklüftung: daß
Einzigkeit, Seltenheit, Augenblickheit, Zufall und Anfall, Verhaltenheit und
Freiheit, Verwahrung und Notwendigkeit zum Seyn gehören'. (GA 65, p. 118.)
42 'in sich bleibende Entfaltung der Innigkeit des Seyns selbst'. (GA 65, p. 244.)
43 'Seyn - der merkwürdige Irrglaube, das Seyn müßte immer "sein", und je
ständiger und länger es sei, um so "seiender" sei es'. (GA 65, p. 255.)
44 'Und dann ist Seyn das Seltenste weil Einzigste, und niemand erschätzt die
wenigen Augenblicke, in denen es eine Stätte sich gründet und west'. (GA
65, p. 255.)
45 'der Tod das höchtste und äußerste Zeugnis des Seyns'. (GA 65, p. 284.)
46 'die wesentlich Unscheinbaren, denen keine Öffentlichkeit gehört'. (GA 65,
p. 400.)
47 'Das Er-eignis ist die ursprüngliche Geschichte selbst'. (GA 65, p. 32.)
48 'Auch "Schicksal" gehört zur Geschichte und erschöpft nicht ihr Wesen'. (GA
65, p. 33.)
49 'Die Geschichte der Wahrheit, des Aufleuchtens und der Verwandlung und
der Gründung ihres Wesens, hat nur seltene und weit auseinanderliegende
Augenblicke'. (GA 65, p. 342.)
50 'Das wesentliche Wissen ist ein Sichhalten im Wesen'. (GA 65, p. 369.)
51 GA 65, p. 369.
52 'Es gilt, im voraus den Bezug von Sein und Wahrheit zu erblicken und zu
erfolgen, wie von hier aus Zeit und Raum in ihrer ursprünglichen
Zugehörigkeit bei aller Fremdheit gegründet sind'. (GA 65, p. 69.)
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 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF BEING AND THE GOD OF TIME
53 ' . . . das Eigenwesen von Raum und Zeit zu retten', (GA 65, p. 70.)
54 'Die Wahrheit als Grund des Zeit-Raumes, aber deshalb zugleich von diesem
her erst wesentlich bestimmbar'. (GA, 65, p. 354.)
55 'Der Größe des Anfangs entspricht es, daß "Zeit" selbst und sie als die
Wahrheit des Seins gar nicht des Fragens und Erfahrens gewürdigt werden'.
(GA 65, p. 189.)
56 GA 65, p. 257.
57 'der Zeit-Raum ist nur die Wesensentfaltung der Wesung der Wahrheit'. (GA
65, p. 386.)
58 GA 65, p. 379.
59 GA 65, p. 383.
60 Roger Caillois, Les Jeux et les hommes (Paris: Gallimard, 1958).
61 On the contemporary reception of the Kierkegaardian problem of the Instant,
see Jacques Colette, 'L'Instant chez Kierkegaard et après', Les Cahiers de
Philosophie, no. 8-9 (1989), pp. 69-82 = Kierkegaard et la hors-philosophie
(Paris: Gallimard, 1994), pp. 157-70.
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62 For the history of this notion, see the seminal study of Werner Beierwaltes,
'Exaiphnês oder: die Paradoxie des Augenblicks', Philosophisches Jahrbuch
74 (1967), pp. 271-83, which retraces the decisive stages of the genesis of this
notion.
63 For example, GA 65, p. 235.
64 'Zeitigendes Räumen - räumende Zeitigung'. (GA 65, p. 261.)
65 'Das Da-sein als der Zeit-Raum, nicht im Sinne der üblichen Zeit-und
Raumbegriffe, sondern als die Augenblicksstätte für die Gründung der
Wahrheit des Seyns'. (GA 65, p. 323.) 'Der Zeit-Raum als die Einheit der
ursprünglichen Zeitigung und Räumung ist ursprünglich selbst die
Augenblicks-Stätte, diese die abgründige wesenhafte Zeit-Räumlichkeit der
Offenheit der Verbergung, d.-h, des Da'. (GA 65, p. 384.)
66 'nur der winzige Rest der kaum erraffbaren "Zeit"'. (GA 65, p. 323.)
67 'Die Wahrheit "ist" nie, sondern west. Denn sie ist Wahrheit des Seyns, das
"nur" west. Daher west auch alles, was zur Wahrheit gehört, der Zeit-Raum
und in der Folge dann "Raum" und "Zeit"'. (GA 65, p. 342.)
68 GA 65, p. 131.
69 GA 65, p. 136.
70 GA 65, p. 196.
71 ' . . . sondern der Zeit-Raum als Wesung der Wahrheit, worin alles Vor-stellen
sich halten muß'. (GA 65, p. 197.)
72 'Das Ewige ist nicht das Fort-währende, sondern jenes, was im Augenblick
sich entziehen kann, um einstmals wiederzukehren. Was wiederkehren kann,
nicht als das Gleiche, sondern als das aufs neue Verwandelnde, Eine-Einzige,
das Seyn, so daß es in dieser Offenbarkeit zunächst nicht als das Selbe erkannt
wird!
Was ist dann Ver-ewigung?' (GA 65, p. 371.)
73 'Erblitzen des Seyns aus dem Beständnis des einfachen und nie errechen-
baren Ereignisses'. (GA 65, p. 409.)
74 'In der Wesung der Wahrheit des Seyns, im Ereignis und als Ereignis, verbirgt
sich der letzte Gott'. (GA 65, p. 24.)
75 'Wagen wir das unmittelbare Wort:
Das Seyn ist die Erzitterung des Götterns (des Vorklangs der
Götterentscheidung über ihren Gott).
Diese Erzitterung erbreitet den Zeit-Spiel-Raum, in dem sie selbst als
Verweigerung ins Offene kommt'. (GA 65, p. 239.)
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76 'Der letzte Gott hat seine einzigste Einzigkeit'. (GA 65, p. 411.) Regarding
the notion of 'eschatology' of Being, see R. Kearney, Poétique du possible.
Phénoménologie herméneutique de la figuration (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), pp.
125-30.
77 GA 65, p. 485.
78 'Das Er-eignis und seine Erfügung in der Abgründigkeit des Zeit-Raumes ist
das Netz, in das der letzte Gott sich selbst hängt, um es zu zerreißen und in
seiner Einzigkeit enden zu lassen, gottlich und seltsam und das Fremdeste in
allem Seienden'. (GA 65, p. 263.)
79 For a detailed analysis of the genesis of the concept of 'philosophy of reli-
gion', see K. Feiereis, Die Umprägung der natürlichen Theologie in
Religionsphilosophie. Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte des 18.
Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Th. Benno Verlag, 1965); James Collins, The Emergence
of Philosophy of Religion (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1969).
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