The human-divine relation in the context of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Judaic thought
Abstract
The purpose of the present study is to reclaim for ourselves a religious self-understanding. The guiding premise of this dissertation is that to understand oneself is to understand oneself in a relation with God. By God I mean He through whom each being is as it is, He who bestows Being itself, while remaining radically transcendent to every being. I must welcome this relationship with God, the Wholly Other, into my own self-identity and understand myself only through this relation with God. Influenced by Martin Heidegger, we find the nature of ourselves in an openness to Being, but we understand this openness through our prior assumption that the human being stands in a relation to God. We seek to transform Heidegger's philosophy in terms of our own prior commitments. Being itself is at issue only in terms of God who bestows Being. Our openness to Being is understood as an openness to the presence of God. Continuing with our transformation of Heidegger's philosophy, this nearness to God's presence is understood as bestowed by God Himself for the sake of His presence. Only through the beings which we ourselves are may the presence of God shine forth as it is in truth, and it is for this that we are. We gain an understanding of ourselves in a relationship to God when we understand ourselves as the vehicle for the exaltation of the presence of God and we become ourselves when we expend the whole of ourselves into this exaltation.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Schrag, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Philosophy|Religion|Philosophy
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