Jarl CarlanderWhat is the most tenable theological response to Heideggers claim that ontotheology is fallacious?

IntroductionI) The ontotheological fallacy explainedIn order to give theistic beliefs rational tenability, or persuasiveness, philosophers and theologians have formulated arguments for the existence of a God. These arguments seek to make God a necessary posit of our best empirical or metaphysical theories, by pointing to certain explananda that lack explanans, for example, cosmological arguments say that God is overwhelmingly the best (or the only possible) explanation of the beginning of the universe. Heidegger finds fault with this approach. How does the deity enter into philosophy?...the deity can come into philosophy only insofar as philosophy, of its own accord and by its own nature, requires and determines that and how the deity enters into it.[footnoteRef:1] This appears to make God subservient to the confusing thicket of arguments of philosophy. For the philosopher, the existence of God is in a way contingent on a persuasive argument. It is difficult to settle any philosophical question, and there are always new difficulties for proponents of any view to contend with. It is then not possible to give theism firm philosophical support, because it is not clear where philosophy leads or what is metaphysically true. This is a very precarious position for a deity. Caputo explains this well [1: Martin Heidegger, The Onto-theo-logical constitution of Metaphysics in John D. Caputo, The Religious. (Oxford, Blackwell, 2002). pp. 67-75. p. 68. ]

Instead of beginning on our knees, we are all seated solemnly and with stern faces on the hard benches of the court ofReason as it is called into session. God is brought before the court, like a defendant with his hat in his hand, and required to give an account of himself, to show His ontological papers, if He expects to win the courts approval. In such a world, from Anselms point of view, God is already dead, even if you conclude that the proof is valid, because whatever you think you have proven or disproven is not the God he experiences in prayer and liturgy but a philosophical idol. Is there or is there not a sufficient reason for this being to be?, the court wants to knowWhat does the defendant have to say for himself?[footnoteRef:2] [2: John D. Caputo, On Religion, (London, Routledge, 2001), p. 46.]

Apart from this theological problem, there is a philosophical problem. Robbins writes

Theology gives thought to faith. However, thought full of faith is not faithful to thinking and the indeterminacy implied therein, but rather answers to a God who is the name of limit, a limit that encloses thought in a circle of the same by knowing from the start both its beginning and end.[footnoteRef:3] [3: Jeffrey W. Robbins, The Problem of Ontotheology: Complicating the Divide between Theology and Philosophy (New York, 2002), pp. 139151. p. 139-140.]

Robbins appears to be saying that in order to use philosophy to justify faith; one has to be wedded to ones faith in a non-philosophical way, leading to intellectual dishonesty and ideological conceit. If one simply presupposes that philosophy will lead to God, and that any difficulty is simply a spiritual test which the best people necessarily overcome, then the intellectual openness of philosophy has been corrupted. Simply put, using philosophy to justify what one already thinks, without considering the alternative, is not philosophy. The net result is a dilemma. How does one do philosophy honestly and theology religiously, at the same time? Practicing one appears to compromise the other.

The philosophical God is not only on shaky ground, but lacks a religious character. Man can neither pray nor sacrifice to this god. Before the causa sui [a self-causing entity] man can neither fall to his knees nor can he play music and dance before this god.[footnoteRef:4] Efforts to show that God is the necessary inference of some metaphysical problem, like the origin or the life-permitting nature of the universe, can be said to remove the mystery and wonder of religious belief. Ontotheology, in sum, is bad ontology and bad theology.[footnoteRef:5] From this and the above section, it is clear that theology and philosophy run the risk of corrupting each other. [4: Ibid, p. 74.] [5: Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Dionysius, Derrida, and the Critique of Ontotheology in Modern Theology, (24:4 October 2008), pp. 725-741. p. 730.]

The third criticism Heidegger makes is that the philosophical God is different from his creation only by degree and not by kind. If it is possible to infer that God exists simply by extending our ordinary concepts of causality and time until we arrive at the first-cause argument, then God is not entirely distinct his nature is qualitatively the same as that of human persons and the rest of creation.Onto-theology is a neologism of the words ontology and theology was invented by Kant to refer to attempts to prove the existence of God a priori.[footnoteRef:6] Heidegger uses ontotheology in a distinct way; he is referring to attempts to answer questions of metaphysics and divinity. The attempt to give any all-encompassing foundation of metaphysics is ontotheology, according to Heidegger. The word thus has implications for more than theology - although my essay will only consider the implications of the charge of an ontotheological fallacy for theology. [6: Ibid, p. 728.]

II) Implications of Heideggers critique and possible responsesMost obviously, Heideggers critique of ontotheology casts doubt upon the discipline of natural theology. It also undermines talk of God. It appears to make a great deal of philosophical and theological work both unjustified and misdirected. There are broadly two kinds of responses to Heideggers critique.i) Deny Heideggers claims in an effort to preserve theological discourse in its traditional state. ii) Accept the force of Heideggers critique and seek to do theology in a fundamentally different way.The first option is likely to be taken by religious apologists and philosophers of a more analytic bent. These responses will consider Heideggers claims and seek to answer them directly. The second strain of responses is more postmodern in nature.

Straightforward responsesI) Lack of argumentationHeideggers critique at times seems to proceed a little too quickly. Heideggers claim that it is impossible to worship the God of the philosophers is strictly speaking, false. There have been philosophers for whom the ontotheological God was the source of much struggle and soul-searching. Anselms Proslogion is not simply a set of premises and a conclusion, but is also a religious text. Caputo argues that it is not Anselm who is given over to an unfriendly deistic abstraction, but later philosophers and commentators. After detailing the nature of Anselms spiritual struggle, Caputo writes (concerning Anselms ontological argument, which attempts to prove the existence of God through the pure conceptual means.

Whether Anselms argument is defended or rebutted in modernity, the choreography is ignored, all the candles are blown out, and the animating religious spirit has been drained out of it. The prayers and tears of St. Anselm are replaced by dry-eyed, bare bones logicThe argument is labeled by Kant the ontological argument, by which Kant means an argument that proceeds not from empirical or experimental data but from pure a priori ideas. But that is the last thing it is for Anselm, for whom it was washed ashore from an ocean of religious experience, from his inner Augustinian experience of Gods bountiful goodness and excess which he seeks to clarify and glorify.[footnoteRef:7] [7: John D. Caputo, On Religion, p. 42.]

The point of this is that Heidegger has been proven wrong by counterexample. There exist some cases where someone is not only doing ontotheology, but is using it to have transformative religious experiences. A defender of Heidegger might want to respond that it is important not to take the critique too literally. But then what exactly is Heidegger saying? It seems that he is committed to invalidating (at least somewhat) the experiences of Anselm and philosophers like him. Peperzak argues that this is a rather risky strategy. By condemning, for example, 2,600 years of metaphysics and ontotheology, we waste a heritage that could have been promising, if we had not been insensitive to its wealth.[footnoteRef:8] It could be considered as unduly monopolizing to say that religiosity needs to be manifested as hymn-singing and sacrifices. The lack of in-depth argumentation has also continued since Heidegger. Onto-theology is another [postmodern] shibboleth. Like metanarrative, it often functions as a one-word refutation of views too metaphysical for postmodern preferences, and all too often it does so without careful analysis.[footnoteRef:9] [8: Adriaan Peperzak, Religion after onto-theology? pp. 104-122, in Mark A. Wrathall, Religion After Metaphysics, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 105.] [9: Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology, Towards a Postmodern Christian Faith, (New York, Fordham University Press, 2001), p. xvi. ]

It is hard to condemn Heidegger and his defenders too much. Although it is important for religious people not to seek to invalidate each others experiences, it is also important not to get so bogged down in details that one forgets to say something revolutionary which Heidegger did. Perhaps, a defender of Heidegger might say, one must run the risk of overgeneralizing or overstating ones case if one wishes to draw attention to a trend which clearly exists. However, there is irony in the fact that Heidegger has failed to argue for the fact that ontotheology is historically fallacious and over-argumentative.

It is nonetheless difficult to maintain Heideggers critique that ontotheology does not invite worship, because it is a subjective statement of preference, and unfalsifiable, (because one has to explain away Anselm and his ontological argument) there is something to it. Pascal was correct to point out that the philosophical God is not the same as the biblical God. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not the God of the philosophers and the wise men.[footnoteRef:10] The biblical God has a full-blooded (and morally questionable) personality he gets angry, causes a genocidal flood, forgives, and barters with humans. The omniperfect philosophical God created the spacetime continuum some 13.7 billion years ago, and tuned the universes constants to make life possible. One is an object of holy awe and the other is a calculating, flawless mind. It strains the credulity to hear religious apologists try to show how this philosophical God really needed to wipe out the Canaanites surely the wiser option is to call depictions of events like this approximations cases of a struggle to understand the mysterious nature of the divine. The point is the indeterminate, mysterious object of reverence is nothing like the omniscient abstract entity who designed the universe to unfold like falling dominoes. Why would the omniscient deity even bother with this, when he knows the outcome? Heidegger has a point about ontotheology. Even if the biblical and philosophical Gods could be reconciled in principle, could it be done by theologians? The human desire to know, to fill in the mystery with the best logically consistent explanation one can find, is detrimental to philosophy and to religion. [10: Blaise Pascal, cited in Georg Picht, The God of the Philosophers in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, XLVIII/ 1, pp. 61-79. p. 62 ]

II) Interpretive mistakes

On this point at least, Heidegger is on shaky but tenable ground. However, there are other problems. Heidegger ignores or hides the stubborn resistance of most thinkers from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages to the theological use of the expression causa sui. No great philosopher has ever maintained that God is the cause or ground of his own being, and even Spinoza and Descartes did not and could not think that, because it is unthinkable, a pure contradiction.[footnoteRef:11] [11: Peperzak, Religion after onto-theology? pp. 107-8.]

Although Heideggers critique of onto-theology can proceed without the critique of the concept of the causa sui, it detracts from the cogency of the critique that Heideggers reading of the great philosophers is so starkly untenable, which it appears to be. Failing this, it is scarcely possible to speak of post-ontotheological religion when fundamental exegetical issues are yet undecided.

III) An apologist responseSince Heidegger was what is now referred to as a continental philosopher, analytic apologists have not (to my knowledge) engaged his critique of ontotheology. However, there is a family of responses which an analytic Christian apologist might make, which seem prima facie plausible. One could make a distinction between belief that God exists, and belief in God. Belief that God exists is an empirical or metaphysical fact. Belief in God consists of trusting Gods plan, trying to cultivate a relationship with him, being a spiritual person, and so on. Moreover, one can have belief in and belief that, separately. One may be a deist, for example, or one could believe in God without believing that he exists. One could, in an existentialist way, cry out to a God, not knowing if there is a God there. This gap between what one believes and what one loves is why ontotheology is not fallacious, but why it is beneficial to believers. Ontotheology ought not derive religiosity, or love of the deity. These things are innate; the function of ontotheology is to prove they have a referent. This is not to say that the proofs are required; apologist and theologian William Lane Craig even refers to them as very much optional.[footnoteRef:12] What it says is that lay believers are not required to study the ontological argument[footnoteRef:13] and religious people who find natural theology interesting can do it. This is a pluralistic view, but one does not need to be postmodern to hold it. But the point is that Kierkegaardian existentialism may be valid, it is not for everyone. Some people may want to make a leap of faith; others prefer a rational basis for their belief. Caputo describes a sinful, self-questioning, passionate, prayerful, weepy being, of restless heart and divided will.[footnoteRef:14] Not all religious people have such intense personalities. [12: William Lane Craig, The End of Apologetics? (Part 1): Craig Responds to Penner, (Reasonable Faith, Youtube, May 2014).] [13: It would be rather strange if ones salvation depended on whether or not one believed existence is a predicate. ] [14: John D. Caputo, On Religion, p. 42.]

One could expand this hypothetical response by saying that ontotheology does not motivate the love of God, but rather is motivated by it. This has some precedent, i.e. fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). The response could further be responded by pointing out that both fideism and theological rationalism are prevalent among religious people. God made these religious people. Therefore, God is not offended at either practice. In addition, God could very well appreciate the intellectual honesty of a philosopher who examines the arguments of natural theology. Perhaps Heidegger is guilty of some hubris when he says that it is incorrect to submit God to a critical examination.To conclude discussion of this section, this pluralistic approach eschews a priori shortcuts about what is and is not an acceptable basis of religious belief. It is not relativistic, but rather doxastically generous. There may be several distinct means of belief in God. Additionally, this approach also allows dialogue with non-believers. What does an atheist say to a fideist? To a non-believer, it is more interesting what the evidence is for the existence of a deity. A non-believer also quite plausibly doesnt care if ontotheology is spiritless, or faithless; since they have yet to be persuaded that spirits exist, and that faith in anything is merited. The dilemma mentioned in the introduction, between being a good theologian and a good philosopher, is not easily solved. However, religious belief which is founded without any kind of justification is also vulnerable to criticism. It is not hard to argue for of the moral indefensibility of a book like Fear and Trembling. The argument should be about whether or not arguments are successful, or in the case of lay believers who are fidests, or hold some position like it, it may be worthwhile to discuss the spiritual benefits of this mode of belief. Analytically, ontotheology is a valid area of inquiry. Before looking at postmodern discussions of ontotheology, it is worth noting that the celebration of diversity, and the rejection of totalization the notion that there is only one true way, is a product of postmodern thinking.

IV) Postmodern assessment of ontotheologyIs there a real distinction between the God of the philosophers and the biblical God? The biblical God after all created the world in six (not necessarily literal) days. Is this God not also an ontotheological construct? He is metaphysically foundational, and ontologically prior to everything else. Perhaps the biblical Gods details have not been completely sketched in, but at bottom, he is still the same. Westphal disputes this. mysticism, of which there is plenty in Augustine, may well be a version of the metaphysics of presence, but it is not the onto-theological version. Mysticism, so far from being the demand that the whole of reality be intelligible to representational, calculative thinking is the conscious, even insistent, realization that it cannot be.[footnoteRef:15] [15: Merold Westphal, Overcoming Onto-Theology, p. 281. ]

It is plausible to interpret the critique of ontotheology as a statement of postmodernitys beliefs about human reason. It is reducible to the attack on modernitys belief in the primacy of human reason and the belief in progress. The issue is not belief in God as such, but rather the extravagant attempts to justify theistic belief with metaphysical arguments.

Perhaps then, Heideggers critique is a little overblown. The entire section about finding a foundational metaphysical principle is simply false if the Book of Genesis is taken as describing (even metaphorically) some event. If this God exists, then he is ontologically supreme. Moreover, God is always subservient to something. Either, he is subservient to the whims of philosophy, and philosophers, or he is subservient to Heideggers demand that God be the way he pleases. Without this aspect of the critique, Heideggers claims are reduced to not liking the arguments of natural theology, and these arguments have been eviscerated already.

V) Conclusion

The way to solve the dilemma between philosophy and theology posed in the introduction is to accept the first horn. Namely, that it is not necessarily true that it is an affront to the deity to attempt to use the cognitive faculties he endowed us with, and to consider critically Gods existence. This is preferable to the a priori corner-cutting involved hand-waving away an ancient discipline of philosophy. Analytic and continental philosophy converge in their conclusions here. Despite the way that ontotheology is used as a pejorative buzzword[footnoteRef:16] in postmodern circles, the best insights of postmodern thought align with the conclusions of an analytic theist like Craig that theological investigation is optional but not required. This is better than pretending to speak on Gods behalf, about what is and is not acceptable. [16: Marilyn McCord Adams "What's Wrong with the Ontotheological Fallacy?" (Center for Philosophy of Religion, Youtube, November 24, 2013). Accessed 30/05/2014. ]

In actual fact, if there is a God, why should we think he is or could be subservient to anything? Heideggers God sounds highly sensitive he appears to be insulting God by making him sound so thin-skinned. This is not to say that Heideggers critique of ontotheology is worthless. It most likely encourages fallibilism and wariness of speculative excessiveness, but it is not in the same league as Hume or Kants demolitions of natural theology.

Bibliography

Adams, Marilyn M.,, "What's Wrong with the Ontotheological Fallacy?" Center for Philosophy of ReligionYoutube November 24, 2013. Accessed 30/05/2014. Url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTvoWOjgKXY

Caputo, John D. On Religion, (London, Routledge, 2001).

Craig, William L., The End of Apologetics? (Part 1): Craig Responds to Penner, (Reasonable Faith, Youtube, May 2014). Accessed 2/6/2014. Url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5wpV0-GNTAHeidegger, Martin, The Onto-theo-logical constitution of Metaphysics in John D. Caputo, The Religious. (Oxford, Blackwell, 2002). pp. 67-75.Picht, Georg The God of the Philosophers in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, XLVIII/ 1, pp. 61-79.Robbins, Jeffrey W. The Problem of Ontotheology: Complicating the Divide between Theology and Philosophy (New York, 2002), pp. 139151.Rubenstein, Mary-Jane, Dionysius, Derrida, and the Critique of Ontotheology in Modern Theology, (24:4 October 2008), pp. 725-741. Westphal, Merold, Overcoming Onto-Theology, Towards a Postmodern Christian Faith, (New York, Fordham University Press, 2001).Mark A. Wrathall, Religion After Metaphysics, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003).Adriaan Peperzak, Religion after onto-theology? pp. 104-122.