# Thoughts on Heidegger, Anyone?



## No Name #5 (Dec 20, 2010)

I've been studying Heidegger (Being and Time, more specifically) and have honestly been pretty awe-struck. I have an exceptionally critical mind, so it's well-nigh impossible to impress me, let alone _awe_ me like this. I know that reeks of self-importance (and that's not what it is, I know how terribly fallible I am), but really, his theses on phenomenology, Dasein, the intentionality of consciousness, ready-to-hand, and so forth, are decidedly revolutionary. He quite definitively destroyed a destructive mind-set of ours that goes back to Cartesianism at least, that left us imprisoned in something like Plato's cave until he arrived & rescued us from it in the 20th century.

I know I sound like a such raving, frenzied fangirl, so don't get me wrong: I have not drunk the Heideggerian Kool-Aid. Not anywhere near it, in fact. There are some undeniable problems with his philosophy. (One of them being when he attempts to clarify the conscience without God.) That would bring me to what YOUR thoughts on him are. I think talking about how abysmal his political views were is pretty superfluous, so let me say outright that I'm just interested in discussing his ontological investigation & analyses on the nature of "Being", & how that relates to your theological viewpoints - if at all.

Looking forward to it!


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## Philip (Dec 20, 2010)

Having just recovered from Heidegger, I have to say that I was impressed, but still saddened. Heidegger (and all phenomenologists) assume that when we talk about being, we are always talking about being _as experienced_. So, for example, Heidegger would see questions about the being and nature of God as irrelevant and/or meaningless because there we would be talking about something completely outside the self and, for that matter, other than the self as existent. He can't rescue us from Plato's cave because he has imprisoned himself in it and thrown away the key. For Heidegger, there is no word from the outside, no revelation, and no reason to think that such is possible.

I agree that some of his peripheral discussions are interesting and useful, but the bottom line is that Heidegger's philosophy is, in the end, irrelevant to almost anything outside itself (as Hannah Arendt pointed out). His discussion of being is utterly irrelevant to theology because it is about being _as experienced_ rather than being in itself. Heidegger is still bound by the Kantian notion that we can only know things as experienced (phenomenology) not things in themselves.


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## No Name #5 (Dec 30, 2010)

I don't know if the idea of starting from "being" is utterly irreconcilable to all of theology, actually. Recall, for example, Bonaventure's "Journey of the Mind to God" or Augustine's "Confessions", wherein they draw an ascension of the mind from things that are created, to reflection on the being of things that are created, to the foundation of their being, which is God.

After studying Heidegger more exhaustively, I think some of this is dependent on which texts of his you've actually studied. Have you read anything post-B&T? I think the alleged "shift" between B&T & the material subsequent to it might tackle your challenge fairly well. The main ambition of Heidegger's was, naturally, to answer the Seinsfrag - the issue of Being's meaning. B&T's mission was answering the Seinsfrage by scrutinizing that specific being which we are most familiar with and have the most personal contact with: human existence, otherwise known as Dasein. That's why the bulk of B&T is dedicated to Dasein's deconstruction. His thinking was that if we could pin down how Dasein is, we could determine something about how beings are as a whole.

By Being and Time's conclusion, he was incapable of resolving that concern, however. The treatise was incomplete. He recognized that the examination of Dasein was a blind alley, but one that guided him to the valid way of resolving the issue even still. What's left of his career is exhausted by posing an altogether different problem: "How can we even ask the Seinsfrage to begin with?" So as to to even address the topic, we have to possess some previous understanding, some previous relation to Being. And within this association, Being is the main provider. It somehow makes claim to us, making it so that we can raise the issue to start with. Later, Heidegger strives to clarify what this association to Being is and what we can credibly articulate about Being by investigating it further. Being comes to us in the heart of current metaphysics as nothing; it comes to us as a totally empty notion. Each time we attempt to look at it honestly, Being seems to draw away - it withdraws and we are magnetized to individual beings instead. The definitive issue for Heidegger becomes, accordingly, "What is happening to Being that makes it desert us, flee, and then retreat?"

The most straightforward response of his comes in the paper "Anaximander's Saying". It's very convoluted, but Heidegger's proposal is based in the true reality that the being of beings has conventionally been understood as "presence". He infers from this that if we can witness the way that beings relate to each other and amount to presence, what we see is really /presencing/ itself - more specifically, the Being's action that permits the being of beings.

Beings have their birth, in which they come into formation, they then subsist for a period, and ultimately they decay. (Compare genesis and decay as types of "motion" a la Aristotle.) Insofar as entities endure, they oppose decay and ruin. They stand "out of joint" as separate substances, over and against the fluctuation of genesis and decay. The opposite of endurance is "care": which is to stand out and undergo decay so that another can come into being. Care turns itself around so that the other can remain in its essence.

Heidegger speculates that care is what is most suitable to Being itself. Being draws away and seems to escape so as to create a space for beings. In conceding the being of beings, it recedes, but it does so in order that beings may come into their own. It's logic of sacrifice. Therefore, the supposed "desertion of Being" amounts to something like the hiddenness of God, & not nihilism. This is interesting from a theological angle since Heidegger's explanation of care is roughly the same as "caritas", or selfless love. Actually, he even talks about Augustine in expanding on his conclusion concerning Being. All of this is not arguing that Being can basically be likened to God, however - it's just that the similarities and hence the windows for conversation (& a thread like this) are captivating.

in my opinion, I suspect that Heidegger could provide us a way to discern the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob from the ontological "god of the philosophers" and, by disapproving of the metaphysical convention, to protect the former from the prevailing empiricism and scientific reductionism. Atheism, amusingly enough, necessitates a very precise model of God - one of which it immediately rejects. The atheist is considerably more convinced about his or her own individual conception of God than the thinking Christian is. The god of ontology, however - which is how present-day atheism has interpreted God - is an enormous straw man. I think Heidegger could possibly help us to see this.

Sorry about the novel, it just happens that subjects like this necessitate a lot of attention to detail & explication.


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## Philip (Dec 30, 2010)

No Name #5 said:


> in my opinion, I suspect that Heidegger could provide us a way to discern the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob from the ontological "god of the philosophers" and, by disapproving of the metaphysical convention, to protect the former from the prevailing empiricism and scientific reductionism.



On the contrary. Heidegger places much of the blame for where metaphysics has gone squarely upon what he calls the "onto-theological" approach to philosophy that values being over becoming, and is essential to all of Christian thought on the subject. A Heideggerian conception of God would not be the God of the scriptures, for He would be a changing being, along the lines of Hegelian pantheism (God according to Heraclitus, if you will), if indeed Heidegger thinks that theology as such is even possible.

You see, Heidegger rejects the other. He does not think it possible to transcend the self and the world-as-experienced. Thus, an encounter with God through revelation, which would be a word from the outside, would destroy his whole system.

Oh, and metaphysics is just fine as Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, and Occam left it, thank you (I speak, naturally, as a student of analytic philosophy).



No Name #5 said:


> The god of ontology, however - which is how present-day atheism has interpreted God - is an enormous straw man.



So you deny that God is the greatest of all possible beings? Remember also that atheism is not a worldview but a proposition: "I do not believe in a god."



No Name #5 said:


> I don't know if the idea of starting from "being" is utterly irreconcilable to all of theology, actually. Recall, for example, Bonaventure's "Journey of the Mind to God" or Augustine's "Confessions", wherein they draw an ascension of the mind from things that are created, to reflection on the being of things that are created, to the foundation of their being, which is God.



I don't think that phenomenological accounts of Christian life and spirituality are to be rejected. By all means, these are helpful works, and I would even add much of the work of Thomas A Kempis and Søren Kierkegaard to your list. However, I think that Edwards is right when he points out that our assurances of our own salvation and the truth of our faith are not merely subjective but objective.

The trouble is, Liz, that if I take Heidegger seriously in theology, I end up as Paul Tillich, defining God as the "ground of being," a phrase which is so ambiguous as to have no meaning whatsoever. With Heidegger, there's no revelation, no word from the outside, no escaping Plato's cave. I can't even consider being _as_ being properly because I myself am a being. I can study the phenomena of being, but not the essence. In this model, theology becomes comparative religion. I'm sorry, but even Karl Barth knew how wrong this model is. At least Barth knew that there is a word from the outside in the person of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God who we meet in the Scriptures.


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## jwright82 (Jan 1, 2011)

I happen to like Heidegger a lot, so did Dooyeweerd. I always took him to be the point of departure for the destruction of the Greek view of metaphysics. He recognized that that way of conceiving being was incorrect. So he looked to everyday life to define what was the being of man. Daisen as I understand the term means simply being-there, not something like being itself. I don't know that he would have conceived of being-in-general at all, or that we can make the Scholastic distincion of existance verses essence (or Being). His Being and Time was an attempt to gain a new conception of being and beings but he couldn't seem to find a way out of greek conceptions to facilitate this change, he was trying to talk in a different way but kept falling back into the same old greek words. His later writings seem to be an attempt at this, I mean the more mystical ones. 

If you like him than you may like the Pragmatists James and Dewey, I have read many times that Heidegger and their views were very compatable.


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## Philip (Jan 1, 2011)

jwright82 said:


> I always took him to be the point of departure for the destruction of the Greek view of metaphysics.



The so-called "Greek view of metaphysics" also happens to be the one that Christian theology has traditionally taken for granted. Just read any overview of the early Councils of the Church and you will see how fundamental this kind of thing is.

The trouble is that Heidegger doesn't think that metaphysics (or theology) is even possible. Indeed, he wouldn't even say that ordinary language is any use here. Instead, his method is phenomenology which is really "however it seems to me. However I perceive _Dasein_, that's what _Dasein_ is."

As I said before, James, if there's a word from the outside, Heidegger falls apart at the seams. He has useful moments, but fundamentally He falls apart in the presence of revelation.


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## jwright82 (Jan 1, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> jwright82 said:
> 
> 
> > I always took him to be the point of departure for the destruction of the Greek view of metaphysics.
> ...


 
I don't know Philip, the whole greek connection to Christian theism is remarkably limited. Yes the councels borowed from greek ideas that is a fact but they didn't seem to compromise their own theology in the use of greek concepts. That is remarkably Van Tillian in nature, using pagan thought without compromise. Their primary emphasis was theological not philosophical. I don't doubt your criticism of him in regards to revealation, I should have made that clear, and you are right in your basic criticism of him. He was trying to find a way to talk about metaphysics differently than had previously been attempted, in that sense he did a very good job in letting us think of being in a different way. He is not the christians best friend to be sure, but he may have some value in certian areas (I didnt' mean to suggest that I had any sort of whole-hearted endorsment of him, in fact E-Liz should be careful in how much she agree with him).


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## CharlieJ (Jan 1, 2011)

jwright82 said:


> I don't know Philip, the whole greek connection to Christian theism is remarkably limited. Yes the councels borowed from greek ideas that is a fact but they didn't seem to compromise their own theology in the use of greek concepts.



I too am not sure of the Greek connection. I've been interested in Radical Orthodoxy, which is a mostly Anglo-Catholic attempt to undercut modernism by an adaptation of Augustinian Neo-Platonism and some postmodern concepts. (David Bentley Hart is similar here, and perhaps even more pronouncedly Platonist.) It's interesting, but I'm increasingly convinced that Protestant theology really does construe metaphysics - or at least the role of metaphysics in theology - quite differently than does Catholic or Orthodox (or Radical Orthodox). In the volume _Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition_, Michael Horton has a provocative essay entitled "Covenant and Participation." He makes a convincing case that covenant theology is a genuine alternative to the participatory ontology that underlies all Neo-Platonic thinking.


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## Philip (Jan 1, 2011)

jwright82 said:


> I don't know Philip, the whole greek connection to Christian theism is remarkably limited. Yes the councels borowed from greek ideas that is a fact but they didn't seem to compromise their own theology in the use of greek concepts.



And I'm not saying that they do. However, the whole "onto-theological" system that Heidegger is rebelling against specifically includes traditional Christian theology. 



jwright82 said:


> Their primary emphasis was theological not philosophical.



Agreed, but they are using these incredibly loaded metaphysical terms like "ousia," "hypostasis," and "prosopon" that are exactly the kind of thing that Heidegger wants us to get away from. The language of the creeds is not the language of _Dasein._



CharlieJ said:


> I'm increasingly convinced that Protestant theology really does construe metaphysics - or at least the role of metaphysics in theology - quite differently than does Catholic or Orthodox



I'm convinced that it doesn't. I see many in the reformed community trying to rewrite Church history, but frankly John Calvin and the reformers are just as much heirs of Thomas Aquinas and Anselm of Canterbury as they are of Augustine or Athanasius. If you want to see theological metaphysics at its finest, read Athanasius, Cyril, or Anselm.


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## jwright82 (Jan 3, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> And I'm not saying that they do. However, the whole "onto-theological" system that Heidegger is rebelling against specifically includes traditional Christian theology



You are quite right that he had the whole of Christian tradition in mind, when he said what he said. However what, at least Reformed, theology generaly means by these terms may not be what Heidegger thought they did, again I am speaking of primaraly Reformed thinking. One of the things that drives me here is Dooyeweerd's critique of the Confessions. I think that he is wrong in regecting them because they contain Greek metaphysical words. Just because the Confessions use these words doesn't mean that they whole heartedly agree with Greek metaphysics. But if he is right and they presuposse Greek metaphysics enough to undermine them than I would personally have to side with him and take exceptions to the Confessions, maybe regect them (I don't know). But I think he is totaly wrong on this but we should be mindful on how much we allow pagan meatphysics, Heidegger included, to be accomodated by the Christian faith.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Agreed, but they are using these incredibly loaded metaphysical terms like "ousia," "hypostasis," and "prosopon" that are exactly the kind of thing that Heidegger wants us to get away from. The language of the creeds is not the language of Dasein.



You raise an absolutly fascinating point here Philip. I wonder how much of the old lingo can we change out with newer ways of speaking about things without going into heresy? I mean I think we can adopt the whole being-in-the-world, thing as long as we stress that our "being" is a Christian or religous one. I tend to like continental philosophy over analytic philosophy, except latley I have been rediscovering the joy of analytic thinking (Rorty, Quine, Davidson, Searle, Wittgenstein, etc.., kind of the second wave of anaytical thought if I am not mistaken?). I must say that Hegel, Nietzche, Levanis, Heidegger, Foulcalt, and Derrida certiantly devestated the old greek metaphysics. So it is interesting to think about these things.



CharlieJ said:


> I too am not sure of the Greek connection. I've been interested in Radical Orthodoxy, which is a mostly Anglo-Catholic attempt to undercut modernism by an adaptation of Augustinian Neo-Platonism and some postmodern concepts. (David Bentley Hart is similar here, and perhaps even more pronouncedly Platonist.) It's interesting, but I'm increasingly convinced that Protestant theology really does construe metaphysics - or at least the role of metaphysics in theology - quite differently than does Catholic or Orthodox (or Radical Orthodox). In the volume Radical Orthodoxy and the Reformed Tradition, Michael Horton has a provocative essay entitled "Covenant and Participation." He makes a convincing case that covenant theology is a genuine alternative to the participatory ontology that underlies all Neo-Platonic thinking.



I too like Radical Orthodoxy, I have that book introducing it by James K. A. Smith. I would have to agree with both you and Philip on the whole metaphysics thing. If we mean metaphysics in a very general sense as giving a general theory of reality than yes Christian theism furnishes a metaphysics, esentially a continental view here. If taken in the more precise way that the analytical tradition would take it regarding specific questions than no it does produce a metaphysics. We get no theory of mind for instance from the bible. But why can't we develop our general theory into answering these questions, if we can? I don't see why not. One area of Van Til's thinking that is a little underdeveloped is in this area of say a Christian philosophy. He held that we get general presupossitions about everything from the bible that we take into the world to develop our Christian worldview. So it at least that we could start with these presupossitions and work out, utilizing pagan thought of course, answers to these questions. It seems to me that in theory we could do this, in practice may be a whole different can of worms.


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## Philip (Jan 3, 2011)

jwright82 said:


> However what, at least Reformed, theology generaly means by these terms may not be what Heidegger thought they did, again I am speaking of primaraly Reformed thinking.



I'm speaking of how the (non-Roman) Catholic Church used and uses these terms. It is precisely what Heidegger is attacking.



jwright82 said:


> we should be mindful on how much we allow pagan meatphysics, Heidegger included, to be accomodated by the Christian faith.



Heidegger isn't doing metaphysics: he's rejecting metaphysics. Greek metaphysics is the language of theology: deal with it. The incompatible parts of Greek metaphysics were dealt with when the Church dealt with gnosticism and neo-platonism.



jwright82 said:


> You raise an absolutly fascinating point here Philip. I wonder how much of the old lingo can we change out with newer ways of speaking about things without going into heresy?



We use English words: we use "substance" for _ousia_ and we usually conflate _hypostasis_ and _prosopon_ into "person" such that our Christology is more correct and our trinitarian theology less precise than it should be.



jwright82 said:


> I mean I think we can adopt the whole being-in-the-world, thing as long as we stress that our "being" is a Christian or religous one.



But Kierkegaard already said that.



jwright82 said:


> I must say that Hegel, Nietzche, Levanis, Heidegger, Foulcalt, and Derrida certiantly devestated the old greek metaphysics. So it is interesting to think about these things.



And all of them rest on Kant. If Kant's noumenal/phenomenal system is correct, then yes they do destroy Greek metaphysics. If, however, Reid and pre-modern direct realism is correct, then Kant is unnecessary at best, wrong at worst. If our faculties are God-given for the purpose of producing true beliefs, then the noumenal/phenomenal distinction is ripped apart at the seams, and most of Continental philosophy doesn't have a leg to stand on.



jwright82 said:


> If taken in the more precise way that the analytical tradition would take it regarding specific questions than no it does produce a metaphysics.



Actually, I think it does. For instance, with regard to the mind-body problem, if we believe in the intermediate state, as taught in Scripture, then we must be, in the end, dualists of some nature. And what of the question of free will? As Calvinists, we almost started the analytic method of looking at this one.



jwright82 said:


> So it at least that we could start with these presupossitions and work out, utilizing pagan thought of course, answers to these questions. It seems to me that in theory we could do this, in practice may be a whole different can of worms.



As I've said before, I'd suggest you read Plantinga's work on warrant and its role in Christian belief.


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## au5t1n (Jan 3, 2011)

My new year's resolution is to understand this thread by the end of the year.


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## jwright82 (Jan 3, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> I'm speaking of how the (non-Roman) Catholic Church used and uses these terms. It is precisely what Heidegger is attacking.



Van Til would agree with why Catholic theology is faulty at this point. The Reformed faith doesn't make the same mistakes.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Heidegger isn't doing metaphysics: he's rejecting metaphysics. Greek metaphysics is the language of theology: deal with it. The incompatible parts of Greek metaphysics were dealt with when the Church dealt with gnosticism and neo-platonism.



I must again disagree with wrether or not he was doing metaphysics or not since his work _Being and Time_ is regarded as *fundemental ontology*. You are correct in that he was regecting a particuler version if you will of ontology but not Ontology itself. He criticized the greek, scholastic, and modern ontologies. He regected only particuler views of metaphysics, remember these words are used differently in continental philosophy than in the analytic tradition, not Metaphysics. I agree with the rest of statements here.



P. F. Pugh said:


> We use English words: we use "substance" for ousia and we usually conflate hypostasis and prosopon into "person" such that our Christology is more correct and our trinitarian theology less precise than it should be.



Sure you are correct, I was just thinking out loud about how much of the newer metaphysical lingo could ever replace or suppliment the old lingo thats all?



P. F. Pugh said:


> But Kierkegaard already said that.



I didn't know that, I haven't studied him as much as you have.



P. F. Pugh said:


> And all of them rest on Kant. If Kant's noumenal/phenomenal system is correct, then yes they do destroy Greek metaphysics. If, however, Reid and pre-modern direct realism is correct, then Kant is unnecessary at best, wrong at worst. If our faculties are God-given for the purpose of producing true beliefs, then the noumenal/phenomenal distinction is ripped apart at the seams, and most of Continental philosophy doesn't have a leg to stand on.



Where may I ask do you get this idea that all of Continental philosophy beleives in this inseprable dinstinction? My studies have shown me that all of post-Kantian philosophy was in one sense seeking to overcome this distinction. I do think you are correct about like Schelling, Fichte, and Schopenhaur; but once Hegel came along things changed. I don't think that all of British and American Idealism can be summed as accepting that dinstinction, and they were more influenced by Hegel than anyone. All of post-Kantian Continental philosophy seems to me to be far more influenced by Hegel. For instance I wonder if Nietzche would have made his geneologies were it not for Hegel's emphasis on historical change and development. He is almost taken for granted by everyone. Sartre's work _Being and Nothingness_, subtitled an essay in ontology or something close to it, is basicaly a rehashing of words and concepts that Hegel used in his _Phenomonology of The Spirit_.

If you get rid of Kant you still have Hegel and his "tradition" alive and well. Reducing that dinstinction would rightly get rid of Kant but I just can't see how it affect anyone else? I'm not saying that that distinction played no part in future philosophy only not the part you seem to be suggesting, that all of it was done on the phenomonoul side and therefore could not be nomounal, or metaphysics or ontology (even though they used words like metaphysics and ontology to describe their work). There may be something I am missing here.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Actually, I think it does. For instance, with regard to the mind-body problem, if we believe in the intermediate state, as taught in Scripture, then we must be, in the end, dualists of some nature. And what of the question of free will? As Calvinists, we almost started the analytic method of looking at this one.



Well this delves into a very fundemental part of Vollenhoven and Dooyeweerd's thinking so I won't bring it up to explain there regection except that they regected all sharp dualisms, not duality but dualisms. As far as the mind body problem I would prefer a linguistic dualist if I had to label my view. Given the recent analytical criticism of both materialist and substnatial dualists, Descarte and the greeks, I believe that we can rethink this one and still preserve the biblical witness and confessional integrety, but that just me.



P. F. Pugh said:


> As I've said before, I'd suggest you read Plantinga's work on warrant and its role in Christian belief.



I ask this out of ignorance only, I haven't gotten a job yet so buying his books (which you have convinced me I should study, indirectly from our discussions) right now is out of the question but what would his work have to with the quote of mine you cited? I say because that essentially Van Tillian in nature, so would you and he disagree or agree with me there?


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## Philip (Jan 3, 2011)

jwright82 said:


> Van Til would agree with why Catholic theology is faulty at this point. The Reformed faith doesn't make the same mistakes.



I'm making no distinctions here between them. I'm referring to the Nicene-Chalcedonian Christology we share, as well as to the medieval metaphysics project to which Calvin's theology is heavily indebted.



jwright82 said:


> I must again disagree with wrether or not he was doing metaphysics or not since his work Being and Time is regarded as fundemental ontology.



It's existentialism. He's studying being-as-perceived, not being-in-itself.



jwright82 said:


> Where may I ask do you get this idea that all of Continental philosophy beleives in this inseprable dinstinction? My studies have shown me that all of post-Kantian philosophy was in one sense seeking to overcome this distinction. I do think you are correct about like Schelling, Fichte, and Schopenhaur; but once Hegel came along things changed.



Hegel is a possible exception in this vein, but twentieth century continental philosophy brought back Kant with a vengeance. Recall, for instance, that Husserl's project (which Heidegger is merely extending) is called _phenomenology_. It's not about things-in-themselves, but about things-as-perceived, and maybe trying to understand how we perceive them.



jwright82 said:


> For instance I wonder if Nietzche would have made his geneologies were it not for Hegel's emphasis on historical change and development.



Nietzsche is using a Hegelian-esque method to expose the ways that (he thinks) our views are distorted. It's an attempt to undermine foundations. It's a Hegelian method with a Kantian purpose. The purpose is to undermine the categorical imperative by exposing its "illegitimate" origin.

As for continental metaphysics, it ain't metaphysics at all. I think Heidegger is doing a study of what it feels like to exist, but that's not metaphysics. He defined metaphysics as a study of nothingness, but if this is so, then metaphysics is impossible if only for the simple reason that you can't think of nothing. Heidegger is attempting to redefine metaphysics such that only he and phenomenology are doing it. The trouble of course is that in doing so, he creates a system that is utterly irrelevant to anything else (if the utter opposition of his political beliefs to his philosophy is any indication).



jwright82 said:


> Given the recent analytical criticism of both materialist and substnatial dualists, Descarte and the greeks, I believe that we can rethink this one and still preserve the biblical witness and confessional integrety, but that just me.



I'd rather not, if only because the same kind of reasoning would also lead you (contrary to both Scripture and the confession) to reject compatibilism in the free will discussion.



jwright82 said:


> I ask this out of ignorance only, I haven't gotten a job yet so buying his books (which you have convinced me I should study, indirectly from our discussions) right now is out of the question but what would his work have to with the quote of mine you cited? I say because that essentially Van Tillian in nature, so would you and he disagree or agree with me there?



I'm recommending it because he's an analytic Christian voice, and a rather powerful one. Also, his critiques of Freud and Marx (and with them Nietzsche) are highly relevant.

Volume III (_Warranted Christian Belief_) is actually available online here.


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## jwright82 (Jan 4, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> I'm making no distinctions here between them. I'm referring to the Nicene-Chalcedonian Christology we share, as well as to the medieval metaphysics project to which Calvin's theology is heavily indebted.



I don't know about that one, I am not as versed in this sort of historical theology as I should be so I cannot comment on that. I would say that post-Reformation and contemporary Reformed theology doesn't hold to that sort of metaphysical theory, at least Muller and Horton I know argue that point. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> It's existentialism. He's studying being-as-perceived, not being-in-itself.



Well they simply collapsed the noumanal into the phenomonal and Heidegger used phenomonolgy to try to answer the question of being. You see I believe that by the time of Nietzsche the whole idea of the noumanal was regected, see his little part "How the Real world Disapeared" or something titled close to that in his book _Twilight of The Idols_, leaving only the phenomanal so to speak. That is why the title has "-" in them, being-in-the-world, to express that there is not some seperete thing that can be abstarcted out and studyed in purity called "being". Our "being" is exaustivly defined by how we exist. This may explain why they never took up traditional metaphysical problems that analytical philosophy would be more apt to explore, because they demolished the very narratives that gave rise to these problems. Now I agree with the analytical school here that the traditional problems, some of them, need answering. I also agree with Continental philosophy and Wittgenstien that some of these problems can be solved by only conceiving of things in a different way, which many contemporary analytical philosophers agree with as well. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> Hegel is a possible exception in this vein, but twentieth century continental philosophy brought back Kant with a vengeance. Recall, for instance, that Husserl's project (which Heidegger is merely extending) is called phenomenology. It's not about things-in-themselves, but about things-as-perceived, and maybe trying to understand how we perceive them.



You are absolutly correct about Hurssel. But Sartre and Heidegger didn't extend anything, they used phenomenology for their own ends (in their own words ontology). If the whole notion of a seperate substance or thing that we call being is regected than it stands to reason that a new way of defining it is in order, this was to take into account that by itself being is an empty idea. We only know of a sense of being by the existance of things around us. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> Nietzsche is using a Hegelian-esque method to expose the ways that (he thinks) our views are distorted. It's an attempt to undermine foundations. It's a Hegelian method with a Kantian purpose. The purpose is to undermine the categorical imperative by exposing its "illegitimate" origin.
> 
> As for continental metaphysics, it ain't metaphysics at all. I think Heidegger is doing a study of what it feels like to exist, but that's not metaphysics. He defined metaphysics as a study of nothingness, but if this is so, then metaphysics is impossible if only for the simple reason that you can't think of nothing. Heidegger is attempting to redefine metaphysics such that only he and phenomenology are doing it. The trouble of course is that in doing so, he creates a system that is utterly irrelevant to anything else (if the utter opposition of his political beliefs to his philosophy is any indication).



I agree about Nietzsche except that he really can't be called Kantian in my opinion. He seems to regect Kant's philosophy wholesale, I know you mean Kantian purpose to mean withen that stream of thought regardless of being critical of it. 

I think again that you are confusing what Analytical philosophers mean by metaphysics with what the Continental thinkers might have meant by it. I see no reason to believe that they were not doing metaphysics when they use words like ontology to describe their project. They did increasingly become more out there with what they were doing, Foulcalt and Derrida for instance. I will agree with you that they wern't just doing metaphysics, they seemed to view their project as philosophy. But that does not mean that they didn't have strong metaphysical elements withen their systems. Derrida's famous statment "there is nothing outside of the text", is either a very odd metaphysical theory that only books exist or (as one Derrida scholar put it) saying that the nature of our interaction with anything will always be semiological in nature, which in part seems metaphysical to me. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> I'd rather not, if only because the same kind of reasoning would also lead you (contrary to both Scripture and the confession) to reject compatibilism in the free will discussion.



I don't regect that at all, but fair enough. I will only say this, I feel in typical Wittgenstienian fashion that the whole "Free-will vs. Divine Sovierghnty" question to be ill founded to begin with. So I wouldn't see the need to really answer it in its common form, I see no incompatibility. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> I'm recommending it because he's an analytic Christian voice, and a rather powerful one. Also, his critiques of Freud and Marx (and with them Nietzsche) are highly relevant.
> 
> Volume III (Warranted Christian Belief) is actually available online here.



Thanks I'll check it out!

---------- Post added at 03:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:21 PM ----------

After reading the first part of that link about Kant, I can see where you may be coming from. Yes Kant regected metaphysics, even though as Plantinga pointed out he did metaphysics to do so. But we must remember what later Continental thinkers came to realize wa sthat what Kant regected was everything that could be called metaphysics up untill his time, sure he felt that this was Metaphysics but it was really only one version of metaphysics. New ways of looking at things could be explored once that old edifice was brought down, which later Continental thinkers did. Now Kant was a lasting influence but his influence had limits and Hegel and the like demonstrated this. Here is the section by Nietzsche it is entitled _How The 'Real World' At Last Became a Myth_, sorry I was way off. How the ‘Real World’ at last Became a Myth « The Floating Library.


----------



## Philip (Jan 4, 2011)

jwright82 said:


> I don't know about that one, I am not as versed in this sort of historical theology as I should be so I cannot comment on that. I would say that post-Reformation and contemporary Reformed theology doesn't hold to that sort of metaphysical theory



Again, it's that which is the language of the creeds. If Horton et al are rejecting pre-reformation metaphysics, they're rejecting the reformation. Calvin and Luther are as medieval as anyone in regard to metaphysics. The whole of the reformation project is shaped by things like Anselm's concept of atonement and Thomas Aquinas's epistemology, or even the medieval debate over free will and determinism (interestingly, the reformers took the Thomist side on this, while Rome eventually abandoned its historic position).



jwright82 said:


> Our "being" is exaustivly defined by how we exist. This may explain why they never took up traditional metaphysical problems that analytical philosophy would be more apt to explore, because they demolished the very narratives that gave rise to these problems.



Exactly, there's no absolute truth to be discovered, only experience. Pre-modern metaphysics is meaningless because it's outside the realm of the phenomenal. On this point Heidegger and the early Wittgenstein are in agreement. 



jwright82 said:


> If the whole notion of a seperate substance or thing that we call being is regected



The concept of "substance" is what is rejected. The questions of theology in this regard are meaningless---the creeds are meaningless.



jwright82 said:


> this was to take into account that by itself being is an empty idea. We only know of a sense of being by the existance of things around us.



But to Sartre/Heidegger, they only exist _in relation to_ me. Thus, again, God can only be known (in the words of Tillich) as the "ground of being." It's vague, mystical, and it turns the Westminster Confession on its head.



jwright82 said:


> I see no reason to believe that they were not doing metaphysics when they use words like ontology to describe their project. They did increasingly become more out there with what they were doing, Foulcalt and Derrida for instance.



Foucault and Derrida are doing nothing of the kind. They are trying to destroy all foundation for anything in order to give us "freedom" of the kind that would paralyze any sane person. Foucault ends up saying that all communication is an attempt to gain power, while Derrida isn't sure that language can communicate anything at all.



jwright82 said:


> "there is nothing outside of the text"



This simply means that there is nothing to be known: all is interpretation. The text itself has no fixed meaning, it's just there.



jwright82 said:


> I will only say this, I feel in typical Wittgenstienian fashion that the whole "Free-will vs. Divine Sovierghnty" question to be ill founded to begin with. So I wouldn't see the need to really answer it in its common form, I see no incompatibility.



Which makes you a compatibilist, in good Calvinist-Edwardsian-Anselmian form.



jwright82 said:


> New ways of looking at things could be explored once that old edifice was brought down, which later Continental thinkers did.



The new ways of looking at things are mere demonstrations of how all is subjective. However, I think that Van Til and Schaeffer are right that if God has spoken, if there is general/special revelation, then there's no need for the continental project (and actually, I think Kierkegaard would agree here). I think in the end that analytic philosophy (in its Moorean/ordinary language manifestations) does more "borrowing" from Christianity than continental philosophy, which is why historically, more Christians have been analytic than Continental (Ricoeur, Gadamer, Ellul, and Dooyeweerd are the only ones I can think of right now, unless you count Van Til, which I don't).


----------



## jwright82 (Jan 4, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> Again, it's that which is the language of the creeds. If Horton et al are rejecting pre-reformation metaphysics, they're rejecting the reformation. Calvin and Luther are as medieval as anyone in regard to metaphysics. The whole of the reformation project is shaped by things like Anselm's concept of atonement and Thomas Aquinas's epistemology, or even the medieval debate over free will and determinism (interestingly, the reformers took the Thomist side on this, while Rome eventually abandoned its historic position).



But just because they use the same words doesn't mean they mean the exact same thing. Thomas is an interesting example but regardles contemporary Reformed theology regects greek metaphysics. This doesn't mean they regect the Creeds only that they regect the metaphysics.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Exactly, there's no absolute truth to be discovered, only experience. Pre-modern metaphysics is meaningless because it's outside the realm of the phenomenal. On this point Heidegger and the early Wittgenstein are in agreement.



I don't know that that is how they would put it. It seems to me that they regect the notion of an abstracted notion of a seperate thing called being because the term is absolutly meaningless by itself. They regected one view and explored another, not abandoned the whole project. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> The concept of "substance" is what is rejected. The questions of theology in this regard are meaningless---the creeds are meaningless.



Your making a false dichotomy here, either we accept the Creeds and greek metaphysics or we regect them both. I think that there is a third way, the Reformed way, that Christianity simply redeemed these terms and ideas for the service of Christ. The real accomodationalists in history (like Origian and Justin Martyr) were regarded as heretics. So it seems to me that until the middle ages there was a very antithetical love/hate relationship regarding theology and the wisdom of this world. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> But to Sartre/Heidegger, they only exist in relation to me. Thus, again, God can only be known (in the words of Tillich) as the "ground of being." It's vague, mystical, and it turns the Westminster Confession on its head.



Agreed. I never said that they were completly good for theology. I never said that they were are friends. I regard them as I would anyother pagan thinker as either useful to the Gospel or not. Whatever is good I keep, whatever is bad I discard. But if No Name #5 wants to study them than I would advise her to do so in a good Christian envioroment. She strikes as me as a very intelligent and capable girl when it comes to philosophy, she came here to get advice on him. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> Foucault and Derrida are doing nothing of the kind. They are trying to destroy all foundation for anything in order to give us "freedom" of the kind that would paralyze any sane person. Foucault ends up saying that all communication is an attempt to gain power, while Derrida isn't sure that language can communicate anything at all.



I would recomend the book _Writing and Difference_ by Jacques Derrida, the section entitled 'Violance and Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas', it goes on and on about the relation of ethics to metaphysics and ontology. I have a hard time accepting that they do not do any metaphysics when they talk so positivly about sometimes, and use the language. I do see your point I really do but you have this idea it seems that classic greek metaphysics is Metaphysics, so anything else is not. I don't think they would agree with you, if that is what you think. Also more than enough Analytical thinkers could be called upon to substantiate the regection of greek metaphysics accross the board. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> This simply means that there is nothing to be known: all is interpretation. The text itself has no fixed meaning, it's just there.



I don't know, I only know what one Derrida scholar said he it meant, James K. A. Smith. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> Which makes you a compatibilist, in good Calvinist-Edwardsian-Anselmian form.



I would like to think so.



P. F. Pugh said:


> The new ways of looking at things are mere demonstrations of how all is subjective. However, I think that Van Til and Schaeffer are right that if God has spoken, if there is general/special revelation, then there's no need for the continental project (and actually, I think Kierkegaard would agree here). I think in the end that analytic philosophy (in its Moorean/ordinary language manifestations) does more "borrowing" from Christianity than continental philosophy, which is why historically, more Christians have been analytic than Continental (Ricoeur, Gadamer, Ellul, and Dooyeweerd are the only ones I can think of right now, unless you count Van Til, which I don't).



Well that is a whole loaded and different discussion. I would say that Van Til is more Continental than may be realized. But I would ultimatly classify him and Dooyeweerd as Reformed, the third way. They removed themselves from the whole tradition, much as the Continental thinkers did only to fall back into the whole rationalist/irrationalist tension in autonomous thinking. In fact Dooyeweerd commenting on Kant's antinomies that arise, suppossedly from pure reason, in thinking said that they are just a by product of autonomous thought.


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## Philip (Jan 4, 2011)

jwright82 said:


> But just because they use the same words doesn't mean they mean the exact same thing.



Then what do they mean? I'm curious as to how "substance" in theology differs from "substance" in Greek metaphysics. 



jwright82 said:


> This doesn't mean they regect the Creeds only that they regect the metaphysics.



The metaphysics of the creeds is Greek. The Church Fathers were Greeks trained in Greek metaphysics using Greek categories.



jwright82 said:


> It seems to me that they regect the notion of an abstracted notion of a seperate thing called being because the term is absolutly meaningless by itself.



Sure it has meaning. It's just an indefinable.



jwright82 said:


> Your making a false dichotomy here, either we accept the Creeds and greek metaphysics or we regect them both. I think that there is a third way, the Reformed way, that Christianity simply redeemed these terms and ideas for the service of Christ. The real accomodationalists in history (like Origian and Justin Martyr) were regarded as heretics.



But in this case we would be admitting that the Church Fathers were indeed making use of Greek categories and concepts. Thus, if we reject these, we reject the Church Fathers. This is what we do: we deplore what is evil in a philosophy, while applauding and using what is good. This is what the Reformers did, this is what Thomas and Anselm did.



jwright82 said:


> Also more than enough Analytical thinkers could be called upon to substantiate the regection of greek metaphysics accross the board.



Agreed. And they're wrong too.



jwright82 said:


> but you have this idea it seems that classic greek metaphysics is Metaphysics, so anything else is not.



Greek metaphysics is the basis for metaphysical thought since that time. When you reject the categories of Greek thought, you've rejected the terms of the discourse of metaphysics, thus you've rejected metaphysics.



jwright82 said:


> I would say that Van Til is more Continental than may be realized.



Van Til just doesn't comfortably fit into Continental thought. He's Continental in approach, but given his idea of revelation, he would probably agree that most of what Continental thought has done since Kant is unnecessary given the existence of general and special revelation.



jwright82 said:


> But I would ultimatly classify him and Dooyeweerd as Reformed, the third way.



Reformed is not its own category here. Reformed certainly describes a number of particular positions on metaphysical issues, but Dooyeweerd is clearly a continental thinker, just as Edwards is a post-Lockean, and Calvin's epistemology is highly influenced by Thomas Aquinas. These figures have all made useful contributions to reformed thought, but let's remember that each one was shaped by other influences and that on many issues, they are all over the map. The historic reformed position, if there is one, would be that of common sense, given our doctrine of the goodness of creation (even with the fall in play). But let's not rewrite the history and say that reformed theology is written in anything other than common sense with regards to its historic methodology in epistemology and metaphysics. Remember that the creeds, the confessions, even the _Institutes_ were written to be understood by the common man and thus are written in ordinary language. When we say "substance" we mean merely "stuff." Just because we can't define the term doesn't mean it isn't valid, it may just mean we've reached the limit of language.

The trouble is that Heidegger, while he may be useful as a phenomenology of what it feels like to be an existing being, cannot give us the whole story because he's purely concerned with the phenomenal. He cannot say what being is, only what it feels like. He wants to return us to a state where being and becoming are viewed as of equal value, except that Christianity has already done this with our doctrine of redemption. Heidegger can't give us the whole story because he refuses to pull back the phenomenological curtain and acknowledge true truth. If this is metaphysics, then it's a metaphysics that would only be reasonable if God were silent.


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## jwright82 (Jan 5, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> Then what do they mean? I'm curious as to how "substance" in theology differs from "substance" in Greek metaphysics.



So words can never be used in different ways than the original context? So then if the Father and the son are "one substance" and this presuposes greek metaphysics, than what are the accidents of God's nature? what does God posses that is irrelivant to His nature, since substance metaphysics (with a lower case m) clearly distinguished between a substance having both these things? So if we accept greek metaphysics as the basis for christian theism and argue that He is pure substance and therefore has no accidents, than how is that different from Tllich's philosophy? Since being or substance must be a greater concept that God since He now must "possess" by virtue of His existance "pure substance" it is therefore greater than Him. If you say that no He is pure substance than that is not much more than Spinoza could say. Also if He is a substance than all the criticism leveled at substance metaphysics now applies to Him as well. You rightly intergect the doctrine of revealation here but it doesn't save "substance" metaphysics at all. Now no one could level these charges at Christian theism because even though they used the same words as them that doesn't mean that they or we must presuppose all of greek metaphysics. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> The metaphysics of the creeds is Greek. The Church Fathers were Greeks trained in Greek metaphysics using Greek categories.



That doesn't mean that a Christian is now a heretic because they regect greek metaphysics. My regection of greek metaphysics does nothing to change what the creeds mean at all. We still have concepts analogical to the greeks but not the exact same ideas. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> But in this case we would be admitting that the Church Fathers were indeed making use of Greek categories and concepts. Thus, if we reject these, we reject the Church Fathers. This is what we do: we deplore what is evil in a philosophy, while applauding and using what is good. This is what the Reformers did, this is what Thomas and Anselm did.



Sure and regecting all that is deplorable in greek in my opinion includes substance metaphysics. I think Bishop Berkley was on to something when he said something similer to this: "If matter (basically substance) cannot be percieved, or rationaly discovered, and makes no practical difference in our lives at all we should abandon the idea". I do not doubt that the Fathers self consciencly used greek ideas to express the mystery of the Trinity , but the didn't do so to the point of a whole sale approval of greek metaphysics. We can chide them for an over use in certian areas but one of the remarkable things about it is this I f I regect greek metaphysics that does nothing to change the creeds. Regecting greek metaphysics doesn't regect creational concepts as oneness and threeness. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> Agreed. And they're wrong too.



Agreed but I thnk they are right.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Greek metaphysics is the basis for metaphysical thought since that time. When you reject the categories of Greek thought, you've rejected the terms of the discourse of metaphysics, thus you've rejected metaphysics.



Right and wrong. Rememeber we are not talking about Metaphysics but a particuler metaphysics. The questions of Metaphysics are creational and trans-cultural, greek metaphysics was one set of answers to these questions that proved to be wrong, in my opinion, so new answers should be sought with new conceptual schemes. So if I regect greek metaphysics than all I have done is regected greek metaphysics.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Van Til just doesn't comfortably fit into Continental thought. He's Continental in approach, but given his idea of revelation, he would probably agree that most of what Continental thought has done since Kant is unnecessary given the existence of general and special revelation.



Oh he is not fully Continental at all, but that is the envioroment that he framed his thinking in. My point would also work in epistomology, I regect foundationalism, that doesn't mean I regect Epistomology but one theory of epistomology.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Reformed is not its own category here. Reformed certainly describes a number of particular positions on metaphysical issues, but Dooyeweerd is clearly a continental thinker, just as Edwards is a post-Lockean, and Calvin's epistemology is highly influenced by Thomas Aquinas. These figures have all made useful contributions to reformed thought, but let's remember that each one was shaped by other influences and that on many issues, they are all over the map. The historic reformed position, if there is one, would be that of common sense, given our doctrine of the goodness of creation (even with the fall in play). But let's not rewrite the history and say that reformed theology is written in anything other than common sense with regards to its historic methodology in epistemology and metaphysics. Remember that the creeds, the confessions, even the Institutes were written to be understood by the common man and thus are written in ordinary language. When we say "substance" we mean merely "stuff." Just because we can't define the term doesn't mean it isn't valid, it may just mean we've reached the limit of language.
> 
> The trouble is that Heidegger, while he may be useful as a phenomenology of what it feels like to be an existing being, cannot give us the whole story because he's purely concerned with the phenomenal. He cannot say what being is, only what it feels like. He wants to return us to a state where being and becoming are viewed as of equal value, except that Christianity has already done this with our doctrine of redemption. Heidegger can't give us the whole story because he refuses to pull back the phenomenological curtain and acknowledge true truth. If this is metaphysics, then it's a metaphysics that would only be reasonable if God were silent.



Dooyeweerd did represent a third way that was free from the antinomies of autonomous thinking. And I will go and read _Being and Time_ because I believe that Heidegger himself says he is using Phenomenology to answer the question of being. The real metaphysical question that he claims was forgotten by western metaphysics, with a lower-case m.


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## Philip (Jan 5, 2011)

jwright82 said:


> So then if the Father and the son are "one substance" and this presuposes greek metaphysics, than what are the accidents of God's nature?



That's the trouble: all of God's attributes (except for those of God-as-man in the incarnation) are essential to His being.



jwright82 said:


> Since being or substance must be a greater concept that God since He now must "possess" by virtue of His existance "pure substance" it is therefore greater than Him.



On the contrary. We might instead say that being is a property had by God: it is His nature to be. As He Himself said to Moses "I am that I am."



jwright82 said:


> That doesn't mean that a Christian is now a heretic because they regect greek metaphysics. My regection of greek metaphysics does nothing to change what the creeds mean at all. We still have concepts analogical to the greeks but not the exact same ideas.



So how exactly does the Greek conception of "substance" or "stuff" differ from the Christian one? To put it another way, can you please explain the trinity without Greek concepts like "substance" or "person"?



jwright82 said:


> Sure and regecting all that is deplorable in greek in my opinion includes substance metaphysics.



Again, the language of substance metaphysics is the language of the creeds and the confessions.



jwright82 said:


> I think Bishop Berkley was on to something when he said something similer to this: "If matter (basically substance) cannot be percieved, or rationaly discovered, and makes no practical difference in our lives at all we should abandon the idea".



Sure I perceive matter. I am perceiving it now. Just because I can't define it doesn't mean I don't know it when I see it.



jwright82 said:


> So if I regect greek metaphysics than all I have done is regected greek metaphysics.



No, you've rejected metaphysics. Just because you can call the study of rocks "theology" don't make it so. Metaphysics is the study of the way things actually are.



jwright82 said:


> Dooyeweerd did represent a third way that was free from the antinomies of autonomous thinking.



He seems to be the only one who advocated it, then. Why do you continue to neglect the rest of Reformed tholaught here? Why ignore Reid, Edwards, Calvin, or Hodge? All these folks did classical metaphysics and are considered orthodox reformed thinkers. Again, even the confessions speak in the language of classical metaphysics (such that Gordon Clark eventually dismissed orthodox Christology as nonsense).



jwright82 said:


> I believe that Heidegger himself says he is using Phenomenology to answer the question of being. The real metaphysical question that he claims was forgotten by western metaphysics, with a lower-case m.



He's reading himself into the history of philosophy here. I still can't figure out what he thinks the question is (of course, as my theology professor once remarked, "If you think you understand what Heidegger is saying, you don't").


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## jwright82 (Jan 5, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> That's the trouble: all of God's attributes (except for those of God-as-man in the incarnation) are essential to His being.



You see you are confusing greek metaphysics with Metaphysics. So that no metaphysics can be Metaphysics unless its greek. I hate to say it but that is a very modernist attitude, either western society has been right all along, including greek metaphysics (which all metaphysics were a play off of until Hegel), or all is lost. That is why I prefer Van Til and Dooyeweerd, they used western thinking while not putting all their philosophical eggs in one western basket. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> On the contrary. We might instead say that being is a property had by God: it is His nature to be. As He Himself said to Moses "I am that I am."



Western philosophy exausted its ability to define being with any satisfaction, enter Heidegger. So to ascribe being toGod in the same way you ascribe being to anything else is to make being more fundemental than God, hence superior (that is why Van Til and Vollenhaven regected that as being-in-general). 



P. F. Pugh said:


> So how exactly does the Greek conception of "substance" or "stuff" differ from the Christian one? To put it another way, can you please explain the trinity without Greek concepts like "substance" or "person"?



Why does using the words implicate a whole sale acceptance of greek metaphysics. They are one in one respect (essence, substance, being) and three in another respect (personhood), I don't see how I am now commited to a greek metaphysical scheme and therefore must defend the dead idea of substance metaphysics? Just because two things have one thing in common, using the same words or ideas in a limited sense, means that they have all things in common.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Again, the language of substance metaphysics is the language of the creeds and the confessions.



Not the way that it developed in later philosophy culminating in Kant. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> Sure I perceive matter. I am perceiving it now. Just because I can't define it doesn't mean I don't know it when I see it.



He meant substance metaphysics as it was understood by his time.



P. F. Pugh said:


> No, you've rejected metaphysics. Just because you can call the study of rocks "theology" don't make it so. Metaphysics is the study of the way things actually are.



Your confusing one manifestation of metaphysics with Metaphysics, do you realize how impossible it would be to prove that no other metaphysical narrative other than the greek narrative is valid?



P. F. Pugh said:


> He seems to be the only one who advocated it, then. Why do you continue to neglect the rest of Reformed tholaught here? Why ignore Reid, Edwards, Calvin, or Hodge? All these folks did classical metaphysics and are considered orthodox reformed thinkers. Again, even the confessions speak in the language of classical metaphysics (such that Gordon Clark eventually dismissed orthodox Christology as nonsense).



He and Van Til, Michel Horton, Richard Muller (an according to them and others all of post-reformation thinkers generaly named reformed scholasticism). 



P. F. Pugh said:


> He's reading himself into the history of philosophy here. I still can't figure out what he thinks the question is (of course, as my theology professor once remarked, "If you think you understand what Heidegger is saying, you don't").



At this point Philip we can agree to disagree. I am no scholar by any stretch of the imagination but I consulted every book I own on Heidegger and post-Kantian philosophy and they are where I get my ideas from. In fact if you have access to Sartre's book _Being and Nothingness_, he says in the first 2-3 pages that "modern thought has regected" the idea of the noumanal, just like I said. You are absolutly right that they rduced evrything down to appearance but they regected the notion of a way-things-are beyond the veil of apearrence, they then sought to answer the metapnysical questions with phenomenon alone.


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## Philip (Jan 5, 2011)

jwright82 said:


> That is why I prefer Van Til and Dooyeweerd, they used western thinking while not putting all their philosophical eggs in one western basket.



Sure they did, unless you are suggesting that they are somehow influenced by eastern or Native American ways of thinking.



jwright82 said:


> So to ascribe being toGod in the same way you ascribe being to anything else is to make being more fundemental than God



So if I ascribe omniscience to God, am I making omniscience more fundamental than God? You're right, God is in a way that no other entity is, but that doesn't change what the definition of is is.



jwright82 said:


> Why does using the words implicate a whole sale acceptance of greek metaphysics.



Because the terminology defines the discussion (Foucault).



jwright82 said:


> I don't see how I am now commited to a greek metaphysical scheme and therefore must defend the dead idea of substance metaphysics?



a) It's not dead. It's the language of the creeds.

b) You are because you're using the terms.



jwright82 said:


> Not the way that it developed in later philosophy culminating in Kant.



Hence why we reject much of enlightenment metaphysics. Remember, I'm thinking in pre-enlightenment terms, such as Calvin (and Reid) uses.



jwright82 said:


> Your confusing one manifestation of metaphysics with Metaphysics, do you realize how impossible it would be to prove that no other metaphysical narrative other than the greek narrative is valid?



Ok, so why not go with the Eastern critique and be purely subjective (like Heidegger and the atheistic existentialists)? Again, it may be perfectly valid, but it isn't metaphysics.



jwright82 said:


> He and Van Til, Michel Horton, Richard Muller (an according to them and others all of post-reformation thinkers generaly named reformed scholasticism).



Again, I don't think Van Til is in this vein, given his disagreements with Dooyeweerd. As for Reformed scholasticism, that's a revision of the history. Van Til, Dooyeweerd, etc pretty much ignore the Puritan-Scottish tradition except for old Princeton (which Van Til doesn't understand, because he's not familiar with Reid, as far as I can tell). In addition, I find Van Til's reading of Calvin to be rather wishful, finding in Calvin's epistemology and metaphysics (which are more assumed than stated anyway) Cornelius Van Til.



jwright82 said:


> You are absolutly right that they rduced evrything down to appearance but they regected the notion of a way-things-are beyond the veil of apearrence, they then sought to answer the metapnysical questions with phenomenon alone.



And there's the problem. For Heidegger/Sartre, the question of existence is merely subjective/phenomenological. There's no word from the outside, no direct access to reality. The Greek approach isn't invalid, it's meaningless because it claims to describe the noumena. On the other hand, historic Christianity has used the Greek approach as its method of theology and philosophy, particularly in the west (Christianity outside the west also uses this terminology, albeit translated into Syriac). If you reject the Greek/western approach, you're rejecting the approach of the historic church.

You're right, James, that apart from revelation, Greek metaphysics is meaningless and empty, but in the presence of revelation, it becomes a useful tool for explaining doctrines like the trinity and the incarnation, as the creeds use it. We cannot pretend that the creeds and confessions were reinventing the terminology, instead they were refining terminology using the common-sense meanings. But frankly, the "substance" of the creeds means the same thing ("stuff") that Aristotle means when he uses the term. When we go inventing new meanings for words, we leave reality behind, and the church fathers understood this.


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## jwright82 (Jan 6, 2011)

P. F. Pugh said:


> Sure they did, unless you are suggesting that they are somehow influenced by eastern or Native American ways of thinking.



The error here is assuming either, a false dichotomy, that they rested their presupositions on some basis other than the one they claimed to have based it on and are therefore lying or they thought they were basing it on something other than they actually did but for whatever reason (ignorance, insanity, slothfullness?) they based it on pagan thought. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> So if I ascribe omniscience to God, am I making omniscience more fundamental than God? You're right, God is in a way that no other entity is, but that doesn't change what the definition of is is.



No but being exists nowhere at all. We use the word to refer to actual existing things but there is no such substance or thing or essence out there that we could concretly disect from any actual thing and call that piece of the thing "being", that by the way was the Continental thinkers point. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> Because the terminology defines the discussion (Foucault).



True but that is irrelevant here because simply using those words doesn't imply what you are trying to imply. It would be calling Van Til an idealist because he used their termenology. But after studying the movement and Van Til no one can claim that without serious ignorance of both or one.



P. F. Pugh said:


> a) It's not dead. It's the language of the creeds.
> 
> b) You are because you're using the terms.



I Think the Van Til/Idealist example applys here as well. Plus your whole argument seems to rest on violating the law of the undistributed middle: just because two things have one in common, use the same words, doesn't mean that they have all things in common. Plus the creeds are anthropomorphic in nature. If greek metaphysical concepts helped us pragmatically wrap our heads around these mysteries than fine, but we are describing God as He has revealed Himself to us and the use of greek categories works better than modern categories. But modern categories can expand our understanding of things which Van Til, Vollenhovan, and Dooyeweerd all did. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> Hence why we reject much of enlightenment metaphysics. Remember, I'm thinking in pre-enlightenment terms, such as Calvin (and Reid) uses.



That is fine and I would say that you may be actually representing another option like me but I still feel that modernism is just greece all grown up. But if you put your roots in greece than it is very hard to ignore modernism.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Ok, so why not go with the Eastern critique and be purely subjective (like Heidegger and the atheistic existentialists)? Again, it may be perfectly valid, but it isn't metaphysics.



So eastern philosophy makes absolutly no assertions about the nature of things (the definition of Metaphysics)? Plus I went through Heidegger yesterday I recomend you reread him, I saw nothing about what you are refering to. I made it as far as page 2 in Sartre's _Being and Nothingness_ before he declared, exactly what I said, that modern thought had elimenated the whole notion of the noumanal. You see if I get you right your argument is that they assume a noumanl but claim that it is unknowlable, but they (following Nietzsche) abandoned the idea of the noumanal and reduced everything to phenomenal (not in the sense perception sense or idealist sense) the totality of a thing is how it experienced, but your argument rests upon them regecting a part of the thing, the noumanal, and only describing the phenomenal which would be a scientific analysis according to Kant. 

They determined that the noumanal was nonsesne and any answer to the traditional questions and problems of Metaphysics had to be answered by the phenomenal alone. Your reading through a modern or premodern lens rather than through their own understanding of themselves, however wrong their philosophy ends up being.



P. F. Pugh said:


> Again, I don't think Van Til is in this vein, given his disagreements with Dooyeweerd. As for Reformed scholasticism, that's a revision of the history. Van Til, Dooyeweerd, etc pretty much ignore the Puritan-Scottish tradition except for old Princeton (which Van Til doesn't understand, because he's not familiar with Reid, as far as I can tell). In addition, I find Van Til's reading of Calvin to be rather wishful, finding in Calvin's epistemology and metaphysics (which are more assumed than stated anyway) Cornelius Van Til.



I tend to side with them on this one. Van Til did misunderstand post-Reformation theology. Muller has helped us understand why. 



P. F. Pugh said:


> And there's the problem. For Heidegger/Sartre, the question of existence is merely subjective/phenomenological. There's no word from the outside, no direct access to reality.



That assumes that they assumed the existance of the noumanal, which they regect.



P. F. Pugh said:


> The Greek approach isn't invalid, it's meaningless because it claims to describe the noumena.



If your sggesting that this is their criticism of greece than you are mistaken because they regected them because they beleived in the noumanal, as the greek understood it not in the Kantian sense.



P. F. Pugh said:


> On the other hand, historic Christianity has used the Greek approach as its method of theology and philosophy, particularly in the west (Christianity outside the west also uses this terminology, albeit translated into Syriac). If you reject the Greek/western approach, you're rejecting the approach of the historic church.



I don't see why, for all the above reasons. Look I'm not saying that we change the creeds or anything only that the church's obsession with greek ideas, and your right many today are even enchanted by it, is unfounded. They are trying to defend the wrong ship. This is why I prefer Horton, Van Til, Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoven, James K. A. Smith, and the like for saying wait why do we defend western ancient ideas to defend the faith? If Christianity is so dependent on greek ideas that it cannot survive without than it is not revealation it is "the wisdom of this world". This goes for the various christian calls for defending some form of foundationalis in epistomology, it is not christianity that is being defended but the enlightment ideals. You see when Christians become to accomodationalist to any particuler philosophy they end up having to fight their same battles as well. Rather than doing as you suggested, and I agree with, take what is useful into the light of revealation and discard the rest.

I mean it is like refusing to hold to any particuler theory of truth. Most people see that and assume I am denying that truth exists, but I did no such thing. But in many sectors of christianity the strict correspondence theory of truth is christianity and to lose that is to lose it all. Even though they cannot provide a sastisfactory answer to the criticism of the theory, it must be held onto in some kind of blind faith because we have tied the fate of christianity to it. Now sure there is somekind of correspondence to what we are talking about but I will only commit to saying that the correspondence is that we all must think about and talk about the same stuff. That to me is all that is needed for a correspondence theory of truth. My point is that the church has so straped herself to certian philosophical notions as if the whole thing depended on it and I am saying that that is not the healthest way for the church to exist. We have own third way to defend and rely upon.


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