Sophia, Vol. 44, No. 2, October 2005. Copyright 9 2005 Ashgate Publishing Limited.

BEING GRATEFUL FOR BEING:

BEING, REVERENCE A N D FINITUDE

DAMON A. YOUNG
Department o f Philosophy, University o f Melbourne
Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia
youngd@unimelb.edu.au

Atheists are rarely associated with holiness, yet they can have deeply
spiritual experiences. Once such experience of the author exemplified
'the holy'as defined by Otto. However, the subjectivism of Otto ~ Kan-
tianism undermines Otto's otherwise fruitful approach. While the work
of Hegel overcomes this, it is too rationalistic to account for mortal life.
Seeking to avoid these shortcomings, this paper places 'holiness 'within
a self-differentiating ontological unity, the Heideggerian fourfoM'. This
unity can only be experienced by confronting groundless finite mortality,
and the resulting existential disposition is characterized as "reverence'.
Reverence is gratitude for mortal existence, and existence itself Moreo-
ver, it is as much political as it is ontological, atheistic as it is theistic.

As in the evening's buoyant breeze there lightly sails

the jasmine's stifling and seductive scent, so does
the fragrance of sweet holiness come winging by. 1

The mountain is red. The sea is green.

The sky is yellow. The earth is blue.
Between a bird and a leaf sits death. 2

1. Introduction: Trains, Malls and the Kantian Sacred

In Melbourne, Australia, there is an underground train station called 'Mel-

bourne Central'. It was once 'Museum Station', named for the nearby library
and museum building, but it now has the same label as a shopping mall.
A sterile warren o f characterless tiles, vending machines and standard blue
paint, Melbourne Central is an unlikely place to encounter the sacred.
Nonetheless, some years ago I felt the presence of the holy in this very sta-
tion. Standing on the fluorescent-lit platform as an unseen train approached, I
felt a light breeze on my face and fingertips. Atter a few moments o f silence
there was a low rumble, and then the shaking o f the track through my feet
and stomach. Rather than feeling a train approaching, I felt a tremendous
power; something fearful yet magnificent, humbling yet exhilarating. This
32 DAMON A. YOUNG

was both fear and fascination, and I was reminded as I stood there of the lines
of Genesis: 'And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. '3 I felt
assailed and yet embraced by a vast power. 4
To anyone familiar with Otto's work, The Idea o f the Holy, 5 this seems
like a textbook case of a numinous experience - the manifestation of the holy.
I felt humility and dread, fascination and awe. It seemed to me that greatness
was present, though this was marked by the absence of conscious reflection.
Similarly, the silence held joyous yet dreadful expectation for me. As Otto
argues, the negative presence of silence reveals the 'wholly other' of the holy
in opposition to the positive minutiae of the here and now.6 Even the dark-
ness of the tunnel was a negative sign of this kind, evoking the mysterious
'absolute other' that is the holy.7 Put simply, in Melboume Central Station,
beneath the gauche fetishism of the mall, I experienced what Christians
would call 'God'.
However, there are a number of problems with this account of transit
agiophany, or revelation of the holy. First, I am an atheist. I do not mean
by this that I have refuted the Ontological or Cosmological Proofs or, like
Kazantzakis' Odysseus, 8 destroyed my God and gods to bear them anew.
I even lack the intellectually-aggressive atheism of Dostoyevesky's Ivan. 9
Rather, by 'atheist' I simply mean that there is no God for me; mine is not
a Divine cosmos, in the traditional sense of the word. While my experience
may accord with Otto's account, I cannot speak of any encounter with the
Christian God, a God Otto valorizes. 1~Indeed, for many secular or 'spiritual'
moderns, words like 'holy' and 'divine' otten bring with them the semantic
baggage of oppressive organized religion, fundamentalist dogma and intoler-
ance. In this sense, I am an odd candidate for Constantinian revelation, and
wary of the words I use to explore this revelation. Secondly, even if I separate
Otto's insights from their Christian prejudices, I cannot in good faith accord
sanctity to an automated object, particularly one enframed by the mechanistic
and atomistic 'logic' of neo-liberal privatisation. Put simply, the train was not
holy. Yet if not the train, then what?
For Otto, our experience of the numinous is grounded in our own subjec-
tive capacities. Consequently, there are no holy 'things' in the world, 11 but
rather holy experiences evoked by such things. In this way, the sacred flpws
from 'a hidden substantive source.., which lies in the mind independently
of sense-experience; a "pure reason" in the profoundest sense.' 12 Grounded
in neo-Kantianism, Otto's account of the holy combines subjective mind with
objective divinity, but this unity is only subjective. Our numinous feelings
stem wholly from the activity of subjective a priori categorical capacities,
rather than from objective externalities. 13 Otto's account thereby abjures
idolatry, where 'things' are abstracted from their sacred context and reified.
 BEING GRATEFUL FOR BEING 33

It reveals that the holy is evoked through infinite mind rather than finite
'things'. Consequently, though the feelings of divinity were real, my Mel-
bourne Central train was not holy. Rather, the feeling were wholly in me, and
the result of perfectly natural a priori categories.
However, Otto's subjective position has the unfortunate consequence
of leaving out the objective content of these categories, the very 'divin-
ity' I seek. This particular difficulty can be traced back to Kant. With his
inquiries into the a priori possibility of knowledge, Kant distinguished
between the noumenal and phenomenal realms. The former is the things-
in-themselves, the world as separate from human creativity. The latter is
the world we actively re-cognize through active a priori categories. In
drawing this distinction, Kant 'released a new principle - a universalized,
disembodied Cartesian ego'. 14This universalizing ego - though no Hobbes-
ian atomistic individual - is in no position to speak of holy 'things', for
these in-themselves are outside our realm of knowledge. In this way, we
are somewhat trapped inside ourselves, distant from the concrete reality of
the world-in-itself. 15 Indeed, we cannot even know what we might clum-
sily call ourselves-in-ourselves, since we can only re-cognize ourselves as
phenomena. 16All in all, in Kant's account the sphere of our experience and
knowledge is the subjectivication of objectivity, and this extends to Otto
also. For Otto, as Hegel writes of Kant, 'subjectivity comes to embrace
the ensemble of experience.., and nothing remains on the other side but
the "thing-in-itself".' 17The holy ground of the mysterium tremendum may
live, but I cannot know this ground on its own terms. All I can articulate is
my distant feeling, and logically infer the a priori capacity for universality
that grounds it.
Of course, in Otto's account we do still retain a vague a priori grasp of
things divine, 18 similar to Kant's explication of our aesthetic conceptualisa-
tion of space.19 In both senses, we intuit the phenomena upon which we will
later premise synthetic judgement. Theology could thus be characterized as
primarily a synthetic analytic of the aesthetic divine, its scholarly truthful-
ness a function of feeling combined with logical perspicacity, rather than
metaphysical truth p e r se. Nonetheless, in the works of both Otto and Kant
there is a sense in which this capacity is grounded in a more fundamental
ontological alienation from the world, hardly what we need more of in late
modernity. While Otto's account is fruitful insofar as it gives us an account
of the phenomenology of the sacred, it seems to exact too high a price for
this emphasis on experience. This notion of the sacred gives skeptical atheists
a brilliant grounding in matters of divine feeling, but it seems to distort our
worldliness, sacred or profane. Consequently, if I accept Otto's compelling
account of holy experience, I am still none-the-wiser about holiness itself.
34 DAMON A. YOUNG

Worse still, I cannot speak of what the sacred is, for there is no 'is' - it is
apparently defined by its opposition to Being. 2~
However, far from an abyss, we find here at our feet an exhortation to
investigate this revelation further. As an atheist philosopher confronted by the
passions of the sacred, I should be able to speak of what I feel. Certainly, this
would be welcomed by many modems. Atheists and agnostics can experience
agiophany, and such experiences can have all the hallmarks of traditional
revelation. The popularity of New Age 'spirituality', for example, indicates a
secular familiarity with manifestations of the sacred, even if it is characterized
by the worst aspects of late capitalism. 21 What is required is a rearticulation
of holiness or sanctity that allows for both secular and religious agiophany,
and also abjures the epistemological solipsism of Otto's Kantianism. It is this
task that concerns us here.
To this end, we will first contrast Otto's Kantianism with Hegel's phi-
losophy of religion, and attempt to clarify the superior elements of Hegelian
theology (2). Admittedly, reasons of space do not permit a full and deep
explication and analysis of Kant and Hegel - my hope is that their basic
insights will be satisfactorily revealed, and the superiority of Hegelianism
over Otto's Kantianism demonstrated. We will then turn to Heidegger to
address the shortfalls of Hegelian thought (3), and then further develop a
Heideggerian account of divinity (4). It will be argued that the Heideggerian
notion of the 'fourfold' is a fruitful account of divinity, and that we must
speak of this as 'reverence' (5). However, we must then address the question
of how I experienced reverence in the face of a train - a mechanized object,
with little p r i m a f a c i e holiness (6). While 'things' in the Heideggerian sense
can reveal Being anew, it will be argued that objects incorporated into tech-
nological rationality- what Heidegger calls ' G e s t e l r - cannot do so. In short,
the train was not holy, and cannot be implicated in my reverence. So how
did I experience reverence? While I cannot defer with Otto to the superior-
ity of my subjectivity, I maintain that Heideggerian reverence is associated
with a very specific form of selfhood (7). Drawing briefly on the works of
Foucault and Castoriadis, I argue that one necessary condition of reverence
is a humble recognition of mortal selfhood. In other words, the mortality that
allows for authenticity in 'early' Heidegger, allows for reverence in 'late'
Heidegger. This revelation of death not only facilitates reverential awareness,
but also an ethical and political self-creation inspired by this awareness. In
short, I conclude that our ethical and political struggles should be grounded
in reverence. To begin this odd journey from Otto and Kant to Heidegger,
let us first turn to Hegel, whose works suggest alternatives to Otto's Kantian
subjectivism.
 BEING GRATEFUL FOR BEING 35

2. Holy Prussian Steamroller: Hegel and God

In his Lectures on the Philosophy o f Religion, z2 Hegel reconceptualizes the

divine - the source o f the sacred, the all holy, God - as the absolute concept.
As an undifferentiated potential, the concept negates itself to become dif-
ferentiated, determined particulars. As a movement of self-negation, this is
spirit: the animating principle o f Mind, compared by Hegel to Anaximander's
nous. 23 Qua humans, we are of and in spirit - particularized actualities, but
capable of consciousness by virtue o f our being spirit in and for itself. 24
In this way, knowledge o f the divine is not a matter o f grasping derivative
phenomena, but rather o f absolute content given to consciousness insofar as
consciousness is self-grasping spirit. This spirit is the becoming of God.
Consequently, by beginning logically with the absolute in its self-grasping
movement rather than the a priori categories o f the subject, Hegel abjures the
less fruitful aspects of Kantianism. We cannot know the world apart from God
- or the all holy - as we are ourselves the dialectical movement of this God
qua spirit in its finite moment. When self-conscious, we are able to facilitate
the self-grasping of God and, in so doing, return to the divine ground of our
existence. At the most basic level o f faith, knowledge o f the holy is thus
knowledge of self; o f the divine qua spirit in and for us. 25
The immediate fruits o f this position are certainly sweet. Not only does
Hegel place us in divinity as divinity - albeit with many caveats about
finitude, determinateness and so on - but he also accords with much of the
content of Otto's work. In the movement of spirit we see all the feelings Otto
identifies. 26 While Hegel's animated lectures do not suggest a state of divine
frenzy, his writings still speak of dread, as the absolute suggests the nihila-
tion o f our one-sided singularity; humility and dependence in the face of our
finitude; urgency and force in the unfolding o f spirit; and the 'wholly other' of
the concept, and the fascination this engenders. In this sense, Hegel does do
justice - perhaps implicitly - to the experience of the holy, while grounding
this experience in a divine self-creating cosmos. Not only does this Hegelian-
ism make some sense of our alienated secular modernity and its one-sided
deficiencies, but it also articulates a rational universe wherein this alienating
world might be overcome; a vision of sacred homecoming.
However, the difficulty with this account is that it reunites subject and
object through a logic o f thought seemingly estranged from the concrete
conditions we find ourselves in. While Hegel's Absolute Idealism is far more
complex than caricatures allow, there is still a sense in which Hegel places
far too great a burden on our cognitive capacity. Hegel acknowledges that all
human knowledge- even immediate- is mediated, 27 but his work nonetheless
defines thought as transparent to itself. Indeed, the very definition o f thought
36 DAMON A. YOUNG

as infinite or universal relies on the supposition that thought can be purely

self-grasping. 18 Similarly, spirit is characterized as the purely self-grasping
movement of the concept. 29 In this sense, while we are thrown into a world
of apparent caprice and contingency, it is possible for the finite subject to
know the infinite. So confident of this is Hegel that he writes that 'we must
not have such absurd respect in the presence of the infinite. [...] The starting
point is certainly the finite, but spirit does not leave it all subsisting. '3~ For
Hegel, the self-negating movement of spirit is one from the concept to finite
consciousness, to consciousness of the infinite, all in and as a movement of
the concept within the limits of itself, by and for itself.
Certainly, this makes much sense as a self-subsistent logic, abjuring vul-
gar empiricism or the one-sided reifications of the scientific understanding. 3t
Still, what is unclear is the relation of this movement to the actual thinker
situated in the world, perhaps finding the sacred in a train. While finite
consciousness may be a derivative mode of the infinite idea, it is not clear
that finite consciousness is capable of exhaustingly grasping itself. Thought
thinks thought, but does it know the thinker, the world in and of this thinker,
and v i c e v e r s a ? For example, the implicit contingencies of culture, as Drey-
fus writes, 'are not given in such a way that their intelligibility can be traced
back to lucid absolute consciousness'. 32 While in pure logic it is the nature
of thought to think thought in infinite self-encountering, this transparency is
seldom the reality for we humble thinkers. 33
What is required, then, is an approach that does justice to the experiential
insights of Otto and the ontological unity of Hegel, without the difficulties
of each. The sacred must be phenomenologically-compelling without a Kan-
tian chasm between phenomenal and noumenal realms, and this chasm must
be bridged without deferring to utterly self-transparent thought. Any such
approach to the sacred, then, must begin with a primordial unity between man
and world - sacred, profane or other - and give due attention to the manifesta-
tion of this world.

3. The Humble Swabian Prophet: Heidegger, Hegel and Self-

Transparency

One such approach to this problem is that of Heidegger. Rather than initiat-
ing his analysis with the subjective human or the objective world, Heidegger
begins with both: Being-in-the-world. 34 In this mode, we are not subjective
beings with objective categories. Instead, we are Being's stance upon itself.
In this sense, to be D a s e i n - 'being-there' - is to exist in a common world
manifested by virtue of a common preunderstood sense of Being. Conse-
 BEING GRATEFUL FOR BEING 37

quently, there is never Being per se, but rather Being-in-and-for-itself: the
self-manifestation of Being for Being.
In this way, Heidegger reconceptualizes Kant's notion of 'phenomena'.
Rather than being the manifestation of the Self qua transcendent ego, phenom-
ena are truly self-manifestation: the rising-up of Being in, as and for itself. 35
This, in turn, abjures the Kantian split between noumenal and phenomenal,
as things-in-themselves are only in-themselves insofar as they manifest them-
selves qua Being. As Heidegger notes c o n t r a Otto, 36 we are not subjectivities
stranded far from a distant objectivity, but rather the self-manifestation of an
ontological unity. For this very reason, '[o]nly as phenomenology, is ontology
p o s s i b l e ' .37 TO encounter phenomena is to encounter Being as self-manifesta-
tion, rather than as merely definite beings.
However, it would be misleading to say that Being has no definite 'is' for
Heidegger. While it is the nature of Being to hide and reveal itself, this in
itself is an 'is'. Just as for Heidegger it is our nature to have no nature, 38 so
too is it the Being of Being to have no definite Being. In this sense, Being
is not 'stuff', but the rising-up of the possibility for encountering anything
at all. To capture this notion of the revelation of Being in, as and for Being,
Heidegger draws on the Greek notion of Being as 'physis'.39 While physis
has been translated through the Latin natura as 'nature', Heidegger argues
that this is a distortion of the 'original' Greek meaning. Rather than mere
'source' or 'that-which-bears', physis is the rising-in-itself of all things; the
self-manifestation of existence itself. By stressing the process-nature of real-
ity, 'this idea of Being moves away from a "thingly" obsession with beings,
and allows us to appreciate Being as a kind of creative becoming. We may
say that something "is", but [as] a child "is" an adult, a bud "is" a flower, and
God "is" the world. '4~ Consequently, it is precisely because Being is physis
that Being is the plenitudinous manifestation that it is. We might say that it is
also the reason why the abstract Being of the Hegelian logic is problematic
- Being is never 'the poorest and most abstract', 41 as Hegel maintains.
Of course, while Hegel says that Being 'is the blank slate we begin with', 42
he does not mean that Being is an abstract formalism. Rather, he means
that Being is the primary existence that precedes all definite beings. It is, as
Hegel puts it, 'the very first of all' .43 While Hegel admits that this can only
be thought,44 rather than felt or intuited, he nonetheless maintains that this is
not the abstract eradication of actual beings. Instead, it is the primordiality
that is the fundamental character of everything that may be. Similarly, Hegel
is no stranger to 'is', writing that we often forget to make 'is' a matter for
analysis.45 In his articulation of the syllogism, Hegel shows how this 'is' is
not bare identity, but instead the self-revealing nature of the Absolute Idea.46
For Hegel to say 'is', is akin to placing the statement in a humble position
38 DAMON A. YOUNG

of finitude within the overall movement of the infinite Idea. In this sense,
Heidegger and Hegel are not at odds over the full potential of Being, or
the contingency of human existence - both admit these in spades. Neither
Heidegger nor Hegel treats Being as a formal abstraction, and neither thinker
omits a concrete analysis of mortal contingency.
Nonetheless, Heidegger and Hegel are fundamentally opposed on the
issue of the relationship between thoughts - of Being, for example - and the
ontological condition of contingency and finitude. Hegel stresses the self-
transparency of Thought, and counsels a rejection of humility. 47While he may
see some bourgeois thought as a disease, 48 Hegel also prescribes thought as
the cure: a self-healing logical development wherein the contingency of our
thought within determinate historical Being is overcome in and as Thought.
In contrast, Heidegger stubbornly maintains that Being always claims us,
asking '[c]an and should man as transition try to leap away from himself in
order to leave himself behind as finite?'49 Put simply, we cannot jump over
our own shadows, and to try to do so is destructive. 5~As a philosopher I can
certainly think and write of Thought, but I cannot be purely in thought as
Thought. Following Heidegger, we might say that Hegel's work is fruitful in
the world of philosophy, but not always for philosophers in the world.
What does Heidegger offer us, then? Taken as an ontology of Dasein, the
Heideggerian approach allows for the appearance of things-in-themselves as
phenomena, and the primordial unity of Being, beings and Being-there. In
this way, the creative element of Kantian phenomenal manifestation remains,
as well as the Hegelian primordial unity. However, contra the works of
Kant and Hegel, the abyss between the phenomenal and noumenal realms
is bridged through a primordial ontological unity, and this bridge does not
require an absolute unity of self-transparent Thought.

4. Being Grateful: Heidegger and the Divinities

What, though, of the sacred? As Heidegger is explicitly critical of

ontotheology,51 there are prima facie reasons for questioning his relevance
as a thinker for holy revelation. This can be seen in the relationship betv~een
Heidegger and theologian Paul Tillich, both working in the field of ontology,
and influenced by similar thinkers. 5z As Clayton writes, '[a]ccording to
Heidegger, the existential is grounded in the ontological. According to Tillich,
however, the ontological.., i s . . . grounded in the theological. '53 In this way,
Heidegger rejects God as the ground of all things, a stance that - for those of
the Abrahamic faiths- would also reject holiness, sanctity and divinity. Despite
this, in his later works Heidegger often speaks of 'divinities' or 'immortals'.
 BEING GRATEFUL FOR BEING 39

Indeed, in an infamous post-Holocaust interview, Heidegger maintained

that we can only wait for a god to save us from our modern destiny.54 If this
were to be taken literally, it would cast one of the twentieth-century's most
influential philosophers as a mediocre apologist for dull religious quietism.
However, Heidegger's notion of divinity cannot be understood outside its
context of poetic phenomenological hermeneutics. In his earlier works, he
gives an enlightening though straightforward phenomenological account of
the 'structure' of Dasein grounding religiosity.55 In his later works, however,
we can see a far more fruitful account of the holy. Therein he rejects the
identification of God with Thought, and Thought with Being, but retains a
grasp of both Being and the sacred. Moreover, he gives an account that resists
some of the more 'humanist' tendencies of his earlier writings, including the
Phenomenology of Religious Life lecture series.
In the humbly-titled essay 'Thing', 56 Heidegger discusses the divinities.
These are not supernatural beings or an Abrahamic Elohim, but are rather one
aspect of what Heidegger calls the 'fourfold': earth, sky, divinities and mortals.
Insofar as we are Being-in-the-world, the fourfold expresses the differentiated
unity of this world. While also a powerful environmental expression of our
ontological attachment to place, 57 the fourfold is Heidegger's attempt to
clarify the essential elements of the ontology of Dasein. As Dasein, we are
of the gathered unity of these four. What, though, are these? The earth is our
taken-for-grantedness, the ground of implicit reality within which we find
ourselves. It is also the principle of darkness or hiddenness - that from which
physis rises as itself. The sky is the brightness of revealed possibilities, 'in
which everything that emerges into unhiddenness shines forth as what it is'.58
We, in turn, are the mortals. As mortals who die, we find ourselves within
this self-grounding unity, as this unity. In grasping our finitude, we encounter
the contingent nature of our nature; the poetic potential for self-revealing
amidst the abyss of non-Being. 59 Finally, there is divinity. Within the earth's
hiddenness, the brightness of the sky, and our own finitude, we may also
catch sight of the unity we are. In the pouring of a libation from a jug, for
example, we see the earth and sky united in wine, and mortals gratefully
offering to the unity beyond them. 6~Divinity, then, is this self-revealing sight
that, through logos, reveals the ontological unity of Being. 61 This is a divine
self-grasping and self-differentiated ontological unity, without the Hegelian
emphasis on Thought. Consequently, divinity is not 'God', or sacred 'stuff',
but is instead an event, 62 as Calasso notes: our grateful openness to this unity
from within.
Moreover, we can see the manifestations of this unity in my curious
public transport agiophany. Physis is evoked by movement: breath or breeze,
particularly from darkness to light, or concealedness to unconcealedness. In
40 DAMON A. YOUNG

this way, the rising-in-itself of all things is recalled by the emergence of the
distant train's breeze from the dark tunnel. Being per se is evoked as both the
awesome primordiality upon which we depend, and the utterly foreign realm
to the everyday of beings. As such, Being qua awesome ground is revealed
by the ground-shaking and stomach-trembling force of the train, while Being
qua mysterium is evoked by the strange 'wholly other' of the tunnel's fecund
darkness. Moreover, this is all permeated with the uncanny; the sense of the
ontological 'wholly other' in opposition to the banality of the everyday.63
The everydayness of Dasein is thereby shown in its holy dwelling - the
sanctification of the mundane.
Furthermore, this Hr account accords with other - perhaps
more traditional - sites that engender feelings of the sacred in me: mountains
and the sea. The sea displays immediate affinities with physis: the rise and
fall in itself, the ceaseless undulations of waves, and - as we have seen - the
play of darkness and light, unconcealedness and concealedness in its depths.
In this sense, to be in the sea is to be inphysis. Similarly, mountains do rise up
in and of themselves - they are the earth itself emerging in its time, or may be
born of the ceaseless play of water and earth. Yet this geological 'great time'
is estranged from the everyday time of phenomenal experience, and so the
physical movement of mountains cannot so easily reveal physis.
However, a more compelling manifestation ofphysis lies in our immediate
experience of mountains, and three examples should suffice. First, picture the
small Yarra Valley town of Healesville in Melbourne, Australia. Here, blue
gum-tree mountains loom with their silent vastness, lurking behind vulgar
shopfront facades, or sheltering old logging roads. As massive supermarkets
and chain stores appear, and small shops fade away, mountains stay. Despite
their movement within geological longue dur~e, our encounters with these
beautiful behemoths are characterized by the presence of the irrefutably
massive. In encountering this, we confront ourselves in our smallness, haste
and transience. In this way, mountains reveal us as humble mortals. Second,
think of the experience of climbing a mountain. In doing so, we feel what
is metaphorically called transcendence: height, levity and so on. As Ricoeur
writes, drawing on Eliade, 'the figure of the sky supports the symbol of the
Most High and generally of divine transcendence. And to this sky cycle are
attached images of ascension of mountains. '64 These, in turn, are grounded
in the bodily metaphors we live by, 65 such as weight and lightness. These
engender exhilaration, which is integrated with the feeling ofphysis. Lastly,
think of the first few steps up onto a mountainous plateau - the moment
when the scrubby bush clears and the rocky promenade of the cliff opens
its vista. Like floating up from deep water to salty air, we here participate
in the movement from concealedness to unconcealedness. We feel, insofar
 BEING GRATEFUL FOR BEING 41

as we can, what it is to emerge into the self-grasping 'look' of the fourfold;

to be present. Taken as a whole, we feel in these experiences the aletheia
of mountains: the feeling of concealment and unconcealment, darkness and
light, suffused with the exhilarating levity of the ascent, and grounded by the
humbling steady vastness of the mountains beneath. Here, the hierophanies
of Heideggerian physis and Otto's numinous combine.
Consequently, the Heideggerian approach reveals a different form of
divinity to Otto or Hegel, while drawing on the insights of both. To feel
holiness is in fact to dwell in Being as Being. Being, in turn, is not 'stuff' or
a non-scientific 'force', but is physis. Physis, as self-revealing Being, is the
darkness and light within which holiness itself reveals itself to Being. Where
'is' must be understood creatively, rather than as bare identity,66 Being is
holy.

5. Mortal Awareness: Reverence, Logos and Things

For this reason we should speak of 'reverence' rather than 'holiness'.

'Reverence', unlike 'sacred', 'holy', and 'divine', does not stem from words
associated with marking off, other-worldly, and so forth.' Sacred', for example,
stems from the Indo-European sak, meaning to demarcate or set aside. 67 To
sanctify is thus to differentiate a given place or time from others. This, in
turn, distorts the more primordial unity of Being, by ontologically cleaving
the world. While we should acknowledge some beings as more faithfully
revealing physis as physis, this will only ever be an ontic phenomenon, rather
than a primordial ontological account of the good, the beautiful, the divine,
and so on. Similarly, 'holy' stems from the Indo-European khale, meaning
whole, inviolable, free from injury, and so forth.68 While this may seem to
do justice to the primordial unity of Being, it has since become distorted as
a category of beings rather than an ontological reality. The whole should not
be a single divine being whence stems all goodness, but a process-oriented
differentiating unity. 'Divinity', in turn, stems from the Indo-European rood
dei, meaning 'to shine'.69 Certainly, this recalls the shining of the sky, and the
darkness of the earth for mortals. It also accords with the self-withdrawing
luminescence of the Greek gods. 7~ However, when combined with the
Anglo-Saxon Christian 'God', it is integrated with the notion of an invoked
being. 71 God, then, is a divinity: a being that rises when invoked. In this sense,
'divine' will not enable us to move away from a straightforward theistic and
ontotheological account, as it focuses on a being rather than Being per se.
As such, it does not recognize the divinity of the differentiated whole within
which mortals gratefully find themselves.
42 DAMON A. YOUNG

To speak of this unity it makes more sense to draw on the notion of

'reverence'. Stemming from the Indo-European wer, 72reverence acknowledges
the role of mortals in opening themselves to Being, but does not reduce Being
to beings or a single primordial being. Similarly, reverence is broad enough
to describe an ontological openness rather than a sacral fragmentation,
where specific beings are filled with holy Being and treated as idols. Rather,
reverence means 'to be or become aware of'. 73 In this sense, reverence does
not presuppose a divine being, or demarcate a space or time for divinity, but
instead speaks of the awareness by mortals o f whatever is, and whatever 'is'
is. It is only later that this becomes awe, fear, respect, and so forth. This also
makes sense in light of 'gratitude'. From the Indo-European gwer, gratitude
means simply to praise, or to welcome. 74 Consequently, my agiophany is not
strictly a case o f divinity or holiness, but rather the reverential appearance
of Being, and my welcoming of this Being as physis. It gives existence its
rightful intensity. 75 This is why, as Steiner puts it, 'Martin Heidegger is the
great master of astonishment, the man whose amazement before the blank
fact that we are instead o f not being, has put a radiant obstacle in the path of
the obvious. '76 As we have seen, this astonished amazement is bound up with
the many feelings Otto describes.
How, though, can we foster this reverence? For Heidegger, this openness
can be engendered by 'logos' and 'things'9 While logos is usually translated
as Thought or Reason, Heidegger draws on pre-Socratic thinkers to refute
this. Rather, logos for the Greeks stemmed from the word legein, meaning
'gathering'. 77 Within the ontological unity o f Being, divinity is drawn into
logos; it is gathered into a unity, as this grateful self-unifying. Like the
fourfold, this articulation o f logos serves to highlight the activity of self-
unifying self-differentiation that is Being. Moreover, Heidegger extends this
account of gathering to include objects in the world: 'things'. Each thing,
insofar as it is a thing, is itselflogos. Things like the libation jug, for example,
gather together the fourfold in a single gesture: the grapes o f the earth, the
ripening sun o f the sky, the mortals who drink and gratefully share, and the
divinities who are this gratitude. Accordingly, the t h i n g - j u s t like the divinity
- is not an object, but is instead an event o f differentiating unification:

9 the thingly element of the thing is that it 'things'. To thing is to unify

heterogeneities. Each thing that blossoms forth when we build it reveals
the heterogeneous place, people, and things it has blossomed alongside.
It emerges from the earth, gathers these surroundings, and then recedes
back into the earth once again. TM

However, these things have no magical powers - they are themselves bound
up with our mode o f Being. As the metaphorical and metonymic expressions
 BEING GRATEFUL FOR BEING 43

of a pre-existing ontological mode, things cannot exist outside their own time
and place. The libation goblets of the Greeks, for example, can no longer
gather the Hellenic cosmos for twentieth-century moderns. Similarly, our
seemingly-benign Coca-Cola bottles do not play the same role in tribal Africa
as they do in the late modern West. 79 Only amidst Being can we be what we
are: be-thinged. 8~Consequently, things are only able to express an ontological
unity insofar as their creators are already open to this unity. Nonetheless, we
see here how things can allow for agiophany by revealing or perpetuating a
worldview characterized by a given revelation of Being.

6. Holy Ghost in the Machine: Things and Gestell

This brings us back to my Melbourne Central agiophany. If this train evoked

gratitude for Being, could it be that it was a reverential thing? Certainly,
it would be convenient to assume that the train was such a thing, and that
this public transport system gathered the world and properly sheltered the
differentiated unity of Being. Yet, as Heidegger writes, 'things are also
compliant and modest, compared with the countless objects everywhere
of equal value, compared with the measureless mass of men as living
beings'. 81 Here, Heidegger is drawing on his critique of the legacy of Western
metaphysics. Rather than dwelling in Being asphysis, we inhabit a scientistic-
technological universe of manipulation of control. Being becomes 'stuff'
- a standing reserve of 'bits' to be ordered, with humans just another mass
of these. 82 Instead of Being, we encounter only beings. For Heidegger, then,
most objects are not things that thing, but rather a mass of calculable objects,
implicated in the manipulation and control of industrialized modernity, and
grounded in the mechanistic, materialistic and atomistic metaphysics of
the post-Platonic West. Given Heidegger's pejorative comparison of public
transport with 'worn out and used up' language, 83 we would be forgiven for
dismissing trains outright as sources of reverence.
While there are strong prima facie reasons for accepting this dismissal,
it does not get to the heart of the Heideggerian critique of technology.
As Heidegger himself is at pains to point out, the essence of technology
is not technological objects. 84 Gestell, or technological enframing, is the
metaphysical character of the West. It is a way of revealing Being: the forcing
of being into unconcealment, and the ordering hold of Being as a mass of
calculable beings. This is still aletheia, or revealing-as-truth, but revealing as
a wilful challenging that forgets it has revealed. In this sense, what is essential
in technology is not technologies such as trains, but the metaphysics of wilful
presence associated with the kind of society that builds these. This accords
44 DAMON A. YOUNG

also with our articulation of things - their character is inextricably linked to

the ontological context within which they emerge. Consequently, our trains
are not necessarily problematic - our modern ontology is. Is it possible that
my 'holy train' was somehow avoiding the metaphysics of the West, and this
was what I felt on the platform that day?
The short answer is still 'no'. To begin, we cannot ascribe any agency
to the train itself- it is not trying to help us encounter Being. It would also
be foolhardy to assume that the intention of the train designers and builders
was to promote a agiophany grounded in an alternative ontology to that of
modernity. Similar arguments would apply to the bureaucratic administrators,
and the shopkeepers of the mall above. Generally speaking, it is not as if the
logic of Melbourne's current public transport system is contrary to capitalist
Gestell. While new technologies might be utilised to redevelop the kind of
communities Heidegger esteems, 85 this case seems a straightforward example
of a human standing-reserve. My train simply arrived, took on hundreds
of mobile-phone-wielding office workers, and distributed them efficiently
to the central business district and its centres of capitalist production and
consumption. All this was controlled by a calculated system of arrangement,
recently organized in accordance with neo-liberal principles. While better
than a clumsy privatized freeway with its single-occupant polluters, this is
hardly likely to reveal physis as physis. As neat as this would be for a blithe
use of Heidegger, the train was not a reverential thing.

7. I Am That I Am Not: Selfhood, Death and Reverential Resistance

Yet if the train, station and passengers did not reveal sacred Being together,
how can I explain my sense of the sacred? Was it just I? Was this a purely
personal affair, somehow estranged from the metaphysics of modernity?
Certainly, Otto would have some sympathy with this, arguing that some
people are more predisposed to agiophany than others. 86 According to Otto,
as an a priori capacity, the category of the numinous is not innate, but rather
awakened in specific individuals through education. In this sense, I could
see myself as part of an elite illuminati of Heideggerian thinkers or 'process'
philosophers, divining the sacred in the world of the profane.
Sadly, this seems to embrace the very Enlightenment hubris Heidegger
was abjuring. It ignores the existential and ontological in favour of the
most shallow manifestations of what Heidegger calls the 'existentiell'. 87 As
opposed to existential, which refers to the ontology of Dasein, existentiell
refers to actualized possibilities-to-be. Each Dasein, insofar as it is thrown
into a ready-made world, takes up existentiell possibles and lives them. The
 BEING GRATEFUL FOR BEING 45

danger is that, absorbed by the cares of das Man, Dasein will ignore the
existentiall capacity for revealing Being anew, and merely accept selves
from a sedimented facticity. In this sense, is not a personalized explanation
of agiophany the very existentiell subjectivism that forgets Being and, in so
doing, accepts Gestell and the modern world of 'on as ousia'? 88 Certainly,
we need to be mindful of words like 'I' and 'me', particularly in a political
context of neoliberalism, lest we slip into Cartesian or Kantian accounts, or
modern egotistical individuality. The locus of existentiell or ontic creativity
should not be shifted to any discrete subjectivity, just as the ontological 'will
to will' need not be replaced with a personal will to power.
Nonetheless, there is a sense in which any Heideggerian account can
still do justice to the uniqueness of individuals, and in doing so, recognize
the capacity of selves to become reverent. Zimmerman, for example, gives
a sympathetic account of Heidegger, but still exhorts us to be mindful of
the possibilities for personal resistance. 89 Rather than accepting a totalizing
vision of oppressive Gestell, we should at least allow for the possibility of
free personal opposition to the ontic, existentiell, political and social status
quo. Drawing on the late work of Foucault, Zimmerman argues that we must
pay as much heed to each person's capacity to engage in politics as we do
to Being, and this need not be the vulgar individualism of the bourgeoisie.
What Foucault has in common with Heidegger, and with Nietzsche also, is
an acknowledgment of the created and creative character of human existence,
and that this existence entails much that is ontologically and existentially
concealed, hidden, omitted?~ As Foucault put it, '[w]e k n o w . . , that we are
not free to just say anything, that we cannot simply speak of anything, when
we like or where we like; not just a n y o n e . . , may speak of just anything.'91
This is clearly a form of domination for Foucault, and should be resisted. To
do this, we must first reveal the proximal, subject-shaping nature of power, 92
and then we can concernfully shape our own selves contra totalizing truths. 93
For Foucault, as Bernstein succinctly puts it, 'there is no hidden depth
revealing what we truly are, there is only the task of producing or inventing
ourselves' .94 If the self is non-essential, that our essence is something to be
cultivated, even if the later Heidegger might see an instrumental humanism
in this concern to cultivate ourselves. 95
However, doubts rightfully remain regarding Foucault's ability to
theoretically differentiate between liberating and oppressive truths, 96 his
historiography marked by ambivalent 'positivism and nihilism in the
same intelligence',97 and his rejection of broader economic, political and
social theory and practice. 98 There is also the question of whether a self
can maintain itself if conceptualized in Foucauldian terms. 99 To his credit,
Foucault's care of the self should not be accepted or rejected solely within
46 DAMON A. YOUNG

the terms of the opposition between global or local politics, systematic or

unsystematic theory, subject or object, agency or structure, however fruitful
these dichotomous categories may be. ~~176 Perhaps we can instead distinguish
between reverence and irreverence; between the instrumental ingratitude
of Gestell that forcefully reveals Being as present-to-hand 'stuff', and non-
instrumental gratitude for self-creating Being. In this sense, Foucault could
be congratulated for promoting the conditions appropriate to reverence.
Nonetheless, it is clear that his outlook suffers from some serious shortfalls,
particularly those associated with the theoretical trends of postmodemism.
The work of Cornelius Castoriadis, a critic of the 'postmodern' as social
condition and theoretical trend, 1~ represents a more cogent attempt to
conceptualize non-essential selfhood, and the social conditions appropriate to
it. As it stands, many of Heidegger's insights are appreciated by Castoriadis.
Contra Kant and Sartre Castoriadis joins Heidegger by placing autonomous
selfhood in a world, 'thrown' as it were) ~ While critical of Heidegger's
seemingly apolitical hermeneutics, 1~ Castoriadis shares with Heidegger the
notion of a truth-revealing self, worlded by a truth-revealing society) ~ This
is why both thinkers see the polis is a space where truths are unveiled. 1~
Moreover, Castoriadis often speaks in terms reminiscent of Heidegger,
not only when he discusses the dominance of technological rationality, t~
but also when he emphasizes the 'abyss' beneath self and society. Lastly,
Castoriadis speaks with Heidegger ofphysis, Being as emergence, developing
Heidegger's more homogeneous and fatalistic Being into an open-ended,
self-differentiating heterogeneity. 1~ From these commonalities, Castoriadis
goes beyond Heidegger, and certainly beyond Foucault, with an insightful
account of autonomy and democracy. 1~ Put simply, Castoriadis argues that
autonomy is the creation of people and peoples in and of themselves. Rather
than anchoring their truths in some extra-temporal political, religious or
scientific reality, autonomous individuals and societies claim their capacity to
imagine themselves anew. This incorporates the critique ofreified ontological
'structures' by post-structuralists like Derfida, ~~ but adds to this a more
fruitful account of society and politics, and their relation to the history
of democracy. When all people of a society have the implicit and explicit
capacity to participate in the creation and development of a society, they have
democracy. Yet this capacity can never be essentialized in law, religion or
science, as it is grounded in the primal abyss of non-being beneath people and
peoples. In this account, selfhood is still characterized by the groundlessness
appropriate to self-creation in Foucault, but this is clearly placed within a
self-creating society.
I would like to suggest that this political turn to non-essentialist and
non-subjectivist selfhood has some important consequences for ontological
 BEING GRATEFUL FOR BEING 47

reverence. This is because this hermeneutic selfhood requires mindful

engagement with the very mortal finitude necessary for recognition o f Being
qua fourfold. In the work o f 'early' Heidegger, for example, our 'ownmost'
individuality is developed in the face of death. ~l~ Heidegger maintains that
our capacity to take up and develop existentiell potentialities is possible only
by allowing our mortality to reveal itself. While we are 'stretched' over place
and time, and those people and objects Being-with and Being-alongside
us, 111 we are also characterized by our radical contingency before non-Being.
By confronting death, the only existential possibility we cannot outstrip,
our 'stretchedness' in time and place is revealed, along with the specific
existentiell and ontic character o f this. Foucault, not coincidentally, also
acknowledges this. l lZ In the face of death, our lack o f absolute ground, and
our 'being-there' in a field o f possibles, are opened up to us. We are therefore
given the opportunity to realize our potential for 'otherness', and authentically
grasp alternative existentiell possibilities. ~3 In this sense, recognition of
mortality is essential for radical ethical and political struggles, 114 including
those proposed by Foucault and Castoriadis.
Furthermore, this less subjectivist account can be fruitfully integrated
in the anti-humanist terms o f the later Heidegger. This, in turn, allows us to
integrate mortal ethical self-concern with reverence. First, we see in mortality
the essence o f concealment, darkness or non-Being; the principle of nihilation
whence Being emerges as itself. In this sense, we have the earth of the
fourfold, the unseen ground that supports and nourishes that which rises up. 115
Second, in grasping our existentiell possibles and the earth, we also encounter
the sky: the array of potential existences and existents revealed in our world.
As mortals, we are earth-bound and grounded in the taken-for-granted only
insofar as we are also contingent and open to alternative modes of Being.
Put simply, we can emerge from the dark only insofar as we have light. I t6
Lastly, in the face of radical existential contingency, and the physis of dark
and light, we can realise our own fragility. Rather than seeing the world as a
taken-for-granted standing-reserve o f beings to control, 1i7 we see in this unity
the humble position of our own finitude. This, in turn, engenders reverence: a
grateful awareness o f the creative 'lightning flash' 118 of our lives as mortals,
and the abyss of Castoriadis that darkens this flash. These, of course, were
the characteristics o f Heideggerian reverence we explored earlier. In this way,
it is only through a turn to our mortal selfhood - albeit a selfhood radically
reconceptualized contra Cartesian subjectivity - that we can attune our
specific existentiell to the ontological 'structure' of Being. 119 In short, it is
only through the selfhood o f death that we can be gratefully aware of our self,
and its place in the cosmos.
Moreover, if ethical and political self-concern as characterized by
48 DAMON A. YOUNG

Castoriadis lead to a grateful openness to Being, this gratitude can also lead
to reverential ethics and politics in return. If Being per se were treated as a
self-differentiating and self-gathering unity worthy of gratitude, then beings
would not be treated as present-to-hand things to be ordered. Instead of an
ontic concern for the acquisition of'stuff', be this power or property, the words
and deeds of reverential politics should be characterized by an avoidance
of Gestell. For example, we could abjure the delegation of mechanistic
parliamentary authority to atomistic egoistic politicians, and the confusion
of democracy with calculation. We would also reject the contemporary
conflation of freedom with commodity production and consumption, 12~
instead conceptualizing it with'Heidegger as 'self-determination in terms of
one's own essential law'.121 Indeed, with Heidegger's student Hannah Arendt,
we could reinterpret power accordingly, as a 'space of appearance' wherein
the truths of individuals and societies are created. 122In this way, politics could
be rearticulated with thinkers like Castoriadis away from various competing
and colluding essentialisms, and towards the autonomous self-creation of a
people: the democratic creation of truth by people and peoples. 123 Of course,
we must also steer away from seemingly rootless articulations of freedom,
detached from considerations of natural and cultural facticity. We cannot
'radically break' with tradition, for example, without first recognizing our
situatedness in it. lz4 Castoriadis is quite clear on this. 125 Nonetheless, we
must overcome the domination of ethics and politics by irreverent Gestell.
In an age where politics is oiten calculative numbers-games, egoistic self-
promotion and the gratification of rich lobby-groups, an ethos characterized
by a basic non-instrumental gratitude for existence - for Being and beings
- is certainly a good place to begin.

8. C o n c l u s i o n

By drawing on a Heideggerian account of 'divinity', I have attempted to

articulate an account of spirituality that overcomes Otto's Kantian subjectivism,
Hegelian logical absolutism and, implicitly at least, commodified New
Age mysticism. By becoming more aware of our humble finitude, we can
recognize our self-creating selves within a plenitudinous self-creating, self-
differentiating and self-unifying universe. Indeed, our sense of divinity stems
from our very openness to this universe. When reconceptualized alongside
the non-essentialist self-concern necessary to recognize existential finitude,
reverence qua gratitude also facilitates ethics and politics. Rather than
seeking essentialisms or foundations to authorize our ethical and political
struggles, or clumsy tools with which to force these upon others, we should
 BEING GRATEFULFOR BEING 49

begin with the humble gratitude that grounds any and all such struggles. This
done, we might live as humble, self-creating mortals, even amidst the banal
nihilism of Melbourne Central mall.

Endnotes

1. Kazantzakis, Nikos, The Odyssey: A Modem Sequel (London: Simon and

Schuster, 1958), p.500.
2. Ritsos, Yannis, 'Accented Colours', in Yannis Ritsos: Selected Poems 1938-
1988, eds. Kimon Friar and Kostas Myrsiades (Brockport: BOA Editions, 1989),
p.144.
3. Genesis, 1:2.
4. I am grateful to Paul Ashton, Terry Eyssens, Pete Moore and Ruth Quibell for
their thoughts on this experience.
5. Otto, Rudolph, The Idea of the Holy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958).
6. Ibid., pp.68-71.
7. Ibid., pp.29-30.
8. Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel.
9. Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, Brothers Karamazov, Volumes I and 2 (Ringwood:
Penguin Books, 1958).
10. Otto, op. cit., pp.175-178 andpassim.
11. Ibid.,p.29.
12. Ibid., p.114.
13. Ibid., pp.112-116.
14. Reck, A.J., Speculative Philosophy (Alburquerque: University of New Mexico
Press, 1972), p.159.
15. Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. J.M.D. Meiklejohn (London:
J.M. Dent and Sons, 1959), p.52 andpassim.
16. Ibid., p.108.
17. Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich, Encyclopaedia of the PhilosophicalSciences,
Part 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p.66.
18. Otto, op. cit., pp.145-150.
19. Kant, op. cit., pp.41-47.
20. Otto, op. cit., p.29.
21. Young, Damon A., 'Quantum Karma: Semantic Superficiality in New Age
Religions', Democracy and Nature 4 2/3 (1999): 95-112.; Young, Damon A.,
'Stealing the Voice of Orpheus', Concrescence 3 1 (2002): 1-12.
22. Hegel, George Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures in the Philosophy of Religion: The
1827 Lectures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
23. Ibid., p.178.
24. Ibid.,p.90.
25. Ibid., pp. 134-135.
26. Otto, op. cit., pp.13-30.
27. Hegel, Lectures in the Philosophy of Religion, pp. 157-159.
28. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, pp.25-46.
29. Hegel, Lectures in the Philosophy of Religion, p.90.
30. Ibid., p.173.
50 DAMONA. YOUNG

31. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, pp.60--94 and passim.

32. Dreyfus, Hubert, Being-in-the-World (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1995),
p.162.
33. Ricoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, Volume 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988), p.206.
34. Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).
35. Ibid., pp.50-55.
36. Heidegger, Martin, The Phenomenology of Religious Life, trans. Matthias Fritsch
and Jennifer Anna Gosetti (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2004), p.252.
37. Heidegger, Being and Time, p.60.
38. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, p.25.
39. Heidegger, Martin, An Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987), pp.14-16. "
40. Young,Damon A., 'Not Easy Being Green', Ethics, Place and Environment 5 3
(2002): 190.
41. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, p. 124.
42. Ibid., p.125.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., p.40.
46. Ibid., pp.244ff.
47. Hegel, Lectures in the Philosophy of Religion, p. 173.
48. Stewart, John, 'Hegel and the Myth of Reason', in The Hegel Myths and
Legends, ed. John Stewart (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1996),
pp.306--318.
49. Heidegger, Martin, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1988), p.149.
50. Ibid.
51. Heidegger, Martin, 'The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking', in Martin
tleidegger." Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (London: Routledge, 1996),
p.446.
52. Snow, David E., Schelling and the End of Idealism (Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1996), pp. 454; Gare, Arran, Nihilism Inc. (Como: Eco-Logical
Press, 1996), pp.218-219.
53. Clayton, John P., 'Questioning, Answering, andTillich's Concept of Correlation',
in Kairos and Logos, ed. John J. Carey ([sine loco]: Mercer University Press,
1984), pp.138-139.
54. Heidegger, Martin, cited in Martin Heidegger and National Socialism, eds. N.
Giinther and E. Kettering (New York: Paragon House, 1990), p.57.
55. Heidegger, The Phenomenology of Religious Life.
56. Heidegger, Martin, Poetry, Language, Thought (London: Harper and Row,
1975), pp.165-182.
57. Ibid, pp. 149-151.
58. Mehta, J.L., The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger (London: Harper and Row,
1971), p.218.
59. Young, Damon A., 'The Mortal Blessings of Narrative', Philosophy Today 45
3/4 (2001): 275-285.
60. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, pp.172-174.
61. Ibid., pp.103-110.
 BEING GRATEFULFOR BEING 51

62. Calasso, Roberto, Literature and the Gods (London: Vintage, 2001), p.8.
Hereat~er LG.
63. Heidegger, Martin, Parmenides (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992),
pp.103-104.
64. Ricoeur, Paul, 'Manifestation and Proclamation', in Figuring the Sacred, ed.
M.I. Wallace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), p.52.
65. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1981), p.40 and passim.
66. Heidegger, Martin, Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom
(Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985), p.81.
67. Klein, E., A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language
(London: Elsevier Publishing Company, 1971), p.650.
68. Ibid., p.350, p.827.
69. Ibid., p.198.
70. Calasso, op. cit., p.8 andpassim.
71. Klein, op. cit., p.317.
72. Ibid., p.635.
73. Ibid., p.365.
74. Ibid., p.319.
75. Calasso, op. cit., p.39.
76. Steiner, George, Heidegger (London: Fontana, 1982), p. 150.
77. Heidegger, Martin, An Introduction to Metaphysics (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987), pp. 125-132, p. 186.
78. Young, 'Stealing the Voice of Orpheus', p. 1.
79. This was the premise of the 1981 film, The Gods Must Be Crazy. See Uys, Jamie,
The Gods Must Be Crazy (Marina Del Rey: Trimark, 1981).
80. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, p.181.
81. Ibid., p.182.
82. Heidegger, Martin, 'The Question Concerning Technology', in Martin
Heidegger: Basic Writings, pp.311-341.
83. Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics, p.51.
84. Heidegger, 'The Question Conceming Technology', pp.311-341.
85. Urry, John, 'Mobility and Proximity', Sociology 26 2 (2002): 255-275.
86. Otto, op. cit., pp.43~,4, pp.116-124.
87. Heidegger, Being and Time, p.33 and passim.
88. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, p.202.
89. Zimmerman, Michael E., Heidegger's Confrontation With Modernity
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp.260ff.
90. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, pp. 189-191.
91. Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge and The Discourse on
Language, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Panthon Books, 1973),
p.216.
92. Foucault, Michel, 'Disciplinary Power and Subjection', in Power, ed. Steven
Lukes (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), pp.229-242.
93. Foucault, Michel, 'Ethics of the Concern for the Self as a Practice of Freedom',
trans. P. Aranov and D. McGrawth, in Ethics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-
1984, ed. Paul Rabinow (Ringwood: Penguin Books, 2000), pp.281-301.
94. Berstein, Richard J., Foucault, 'Critique as a Philosophical Ethos, in The New
Constellation: The Ethico-Political ttorizons of Modernity/Postmodernity
52 DAMON A. YOUNG

(Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1992), p. 146.

95. Heidegger, Parmenides, p.70.
96. Gare, Arran, Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (London: Routledge,
1995), pp.97-98.
97. Descombes, Vincent, Modern French Philosophy, trans. L. Scott-Fox and J.M.
Harding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 117.
98. Frankel, Boris, From Prophets Deserts Come (Melbourne: Boris Frankel and
Arena Publishing, 1992), pp.214-216, pp.323-325, and passim. It is difficult
to assess whether or not Frankel is attacking Foucault himself, or his Anglo-
Saxon disciples. In some cases (pp.323-324), the charges do not fit with many
of Foucault's writings, though the latter's unsystematic style makes it difficult
to defend a central position. In either case, Frankel rightly suggests that the
Foucauldian focus on micro-hnalytics and micro-resistance in the social domain
has undermined Left scholarship andpraxis. It has deprived them of the capacity
to think systematically about the destruction of Australian society at the hands of
globalizing neoliberalism, and the dissolution of radical economic, political and
social alternatives to this neoliberalism,
99. Maclntyre, Alasdair, Three Rival Version of Moral lnquiry (Indiana: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp.49-55, pp.206-210, pp.212-213.
100. On the unity of local and global, see: Hayles, N. Katherine, 'The Politics of
Chaos: Local Knowledge Versus Global Theory', in Chaos Bound (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1990), pp.202-235. On the ambivalence of non-
s_ystematicity in Foucault, see: Berstein, 'Foucault: Critique as a Philosophical
Ethos, pp.142-171. On the creative mutuality between agency and structure,
see Clegg, Stewart R., Frameworks of Power (London: Sage, 1989), pp.l-20,
pp.149-186.
101. Castoriadis, Cornelius, 'The Retreat From Autonomy: Post-Modernism as
Generalized Conformism', Democracy andNature 7 1 (2001): 17-26.
102. Castoriadis, Cornelius, 'Institution and Autonomy', in A Critical Sense:
Interviews with Intellectuals, ed. Peter Osborne (London: Routledge, 1996),
p.12; Castoriadis, Cornelius, 'Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as
Regime', trans. David Ames Curtis, Constellations 4 1 (1997): 2-3. Here
Castoriadis positions himself against Heidegger, emphasizing the distinctness
and complexity of each word, rather than the ontological structure of the world
per se. However, it is difficult to see how the two are incompatible, considering
that the development of each particular world can be well-characterized by the
articulation of 'world' in Heidegger. On the various meanings of 'world' in
Heidegger's works, see Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, pp.89-91. On the world as
the specific history of a people, see Heidegger, Martin, 'The Origin of the Work
of Art', in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, p. 174. .
103. Castoriadis, 'Institution and Autonomy', p.9.
104. This is summarized in Castoriadis, Cornelius, The Imaginary Constitution of
Society, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), pp.369-373.
105. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp.95-96; Castoriadis, Cornelius, 'The Greek Polis and
the Creation of Democracy', in The Castoriadis Reader, ed. David Ames Curtis
(Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997), pp.267-289. Castoriadis takes issue with
the idea, implied in Heideggerian terminology, that disclosure entails something
pre-existing the act itself; that there is a concrete possibility prior to its unveiling.
See Castoriadis, The Imaginary Constitution of Society, pp. 198-199.
 BEING GRATEFULFOR BEING 53

106. Castoriadis, 'The Retreat From Autonomy: Post-Modernism as Generalized

Conformism', pp.21-24.
107. Adams, Suzi, 'Castoriadis' Shill Towards Physis, Thesis Eleven 74 (2003):
105-112. If Adams' interpretation of Castoriadis is correct, Castoriadis not
only recognized the relevance ofphysis to process-oriented philosophy, but also
appreciated developments in the fields of complex processes research, hierarchy
theory and biosemiotics. On the relationships between these and society, see
Gare, Arran, 'Human Ecology and Public Policy: Overcoming the Hegemony of
Economics', Democracy and Nature 8 1 (2002): 131-141.
108. This is most concisely expressed in Castoriadis, 'The Greek Polis and the
Creation of Democracy'.
109. Derrida, Jacques, 'Structure, Sign and Play', in Writing and Difference, trans.
Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 2001 ), pp.351-370.
110. Heidegger, Being and Time, pp.279ff.
111. Young, 'Not Easy Being Green', pp. 189-204.
112. Foucault, 'Ethics of the Concern for the Self as a Practice of Freedom', pp.288-
289. Of course, Foucault does not phrase this in Heideggerian terms.
113. Heidegger, Being and Time, pp.296-299ff, p.308ff, p.344, p.394.
114. Young, 'The Mortal Blessings of Narrative'.
115. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, p. 178.
116. Ibid., pp.149-151, pp.178-179.
117. Ibid., p.150, p.178.
118. Kazantzakis, op. cit., p.550.
119. I am using 'structure' tentatively, as the word lends the fourfold's mirroring play
more solidity than it warrants. Without drawing on the kind of poetic language
Heidegger adores, it is difficult to find a word for Being that does justice to it.
120. Rosa, Hartmut, 'On defining the Good Life: Liberal Freedom and Capitalist
Necessity', Constellations 5 2 (1998): 201-214.
121. Heidegger, Martin, Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom
(Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985), p.88.
122. Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1958),
pp.178-186.
123. Castoriadis, 'The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy', pp. 273-275.
124. Young, Damon A., 'The Democratic Chorus: Culture, Dialogue and Polyphonic
Paideia', Democracy andNature 9 2 (2003): 221-235.
125. Castoriadis, 'Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime', pp.l-5.