Heidegger on theology

Posted on 25 Oct 2016.
Sein und Zeit first edition
Martin Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit, translated as Being and Time


In Being and Time Heidegger enumerates how a range of disciplines – sciences and humanist enquiry – have had their fields reconfigured as a result of deep-searching alterations in how their most basic objects have been grasped. The theory of relativity, the relation between tradition and historicity, and so on, have had such strong impacts on their respective fields of operation their their most fundamental beliefs have been altered. What is perhaps even more striking still today is Heidegger’s brief glimpse into the theological debate of his time.

Heidegger was thoroughly versed in contemporary theology: prior to writing Being and Time he had written papers on Luther, Calvin and others, and in the late 1910s he broke with his Catholic boyhood faith. It is in this light we should read his comments on the upheaval in theology, which, in Heidegger’s view, had been brought about by a renewed attention to Luther’s critique of a purely formal approach to belief. Heidegger comments that the crux of Luther’s argument was that the foundation of dogma at Luther’s time had not been consistent with attention to faith, and in certain respects would distort and falsify a relation to divinity that is faith based.

They key here is that to Heidegger the central concern of theology should be faith – how is man configured in his belief in divinity. Man and God, mortal and groundless ground, wesen and Being: these key concepts retain their sense in the context of faith and faith alone. Questions of dogma, tradition and denomination are secondary.

Where does such reflections place us in the most up-heaving debate concerning theology in our time: the claim that the core component of a world view – any world view – is faith? Theology today should embrace a notion of power that brings to the table precisely the question of belief: power is praised, upheld, cared for in so far as it is a power that is faithfully adhered to. And it is a view that has ample support in Scripture: in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we read that

that which is sown in dishonour is raised in glory. That which is sown in weakness, is raised in power. That which is sown in a body of nature is raised in a body of spirit. [1 Corinthians 15: 43-44]

Glory, power, spirit: these are words that properly belong in the domain of theology, they are complex and challenging, and yet they provide us with key terms for investigations that truly situate us in the centre of what should inform our most critical debates today.

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Ginsberg on Miłosz on Ginsberg

Posted on 18 Oct 2016.
Czesław Miłosz
Czesław Miłosz Image by Wikipedia Commons.


America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid, I’m not sorry. Allen Ginsberg, America
Did I fulfill what I had to do, here, on earth? Czesław Miłosz, One more contradiction

There’s a wonderful moment in Czesław Miłosz’ well-known tribute To Allen Ginsberg when the reader is given to wonder if all Miłosz retained from his engagement with Ginsberg’s poetry was a figure prone to psychiatry, illicit substances and rebel posturing.

It is not so.

What abscones Ginsberg is his refusal of the ironic gesture so prevalent in today’s conversation. It is the “demure smiles of ironists [that] are preserved in the museums, not as everlasting art.” We understand that Miłosz exempted Ginsberg from this fault: his was an art of belief.

Did Ginsberg comment on Miłosz? Read closely his most cherished poem America. In it you will find portrayals of events and movements that shaped the world of Miłosz, albeit from – as it were – the opposite direction. When Ginsberg gives voice to his sentimentality about members of the Industrial Workers of the World – the “Wobblies” – these were types that governed the land Miłosz had renounced.

Their perspective can be nothing but divergent: when Ginsberg find freedom in Carl Solomon’s Howl, Miłosz cannot but be reminded of the way psychiatry was a tool for political oppression in Eastern Europe. Where Miłosz longs for institutions that can buttress a tradition beyond the grasp of immediate political gains, Ginsberg seeks anarchy and spontaneity.

Where Miłosz’ conservatism becomes a call for civilization, Ginsberg prophesizes a freedom that can bear nothing old, nothing lasting.

There is nevertheless one thing they agree on: there is truth, and there is truth in art.

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Foucault on descent – and, by way of implicature, the advantages of speaking a language secondarily

Posted on 29 Oct 2014.
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault Image by Verso Books.


Descent attaches itself to the body. It inscribes itself in the nervous system, in temperament, in the digestive apparatus; it appears in faulty respiration, in improper diets, in the debilitated and prostrate bodies of those whose ancestors committed errors. Fathers have only to mistake effects for causes, believe in the reality of an “afterlife,” or maintain the value of eternal truths, and the bodies of their children will suffer. Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in Truth and Method, p82.

Is it no so, then, than speaking one’s first language entails, to Foucault, a certain relation to the nervous system, temper, digestion, etc., and when we acquire a second language these relations are altered? Should we ask how the mistakes of fathers are reproduced in second language acquisition (“you can’t say that!” or “that’s an improper subject-verb constellation!”, etc) – and the manner in which the element of grammer in our teachings serves to maintain a metaphysical relation to language (pace Nietzsche in Twilight of the Idols, “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar”)?

is part of our task – finally – to reduce suffering?

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Wittgenstein on the “foreign” experience

Posted on 28 Jul 2014.


What a statement seems to imply to me, it doesn’t to you. If you should ever live amongst foreign people for any length of time and be dependent on them you will understand my difficulty. Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Making do with structure

Posted on 27 Mar 2014.
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Lacan


...or how to cope with the precedence of language

When psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan noted that it is not so much a matter of there being language to cover all the objetcs in the world as it is a question of a language that suffices to satisfy our needs .. did he not foreshadow an approach to language learning that emphasises skills acquisition organised around specific contexts of practice – so that when we learn how to speak in situations related to travel, we acquire language oriented towards coping with such situations– ?

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The Future of the (Online) University

Posted on 13 Feb 2014.


The Economist writes about the innovative Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and how they challenge the traditional higher education strucure of learning. The point here is that, while traditional courses come with high marginal costs – adding additional students entail large investments in teaching staff and physical structure –, MOOCs come with “rock bottom marginal cost” per student. After developing the course and getting started, adding new students is “virtually free,” according Economist.

The story, published in the paper edition on Feb 8, 2014, surmises that

  • “until recently” students were required to be present “in a lecture hall to hear the professor” or “around a table with fellow students” – implicating that teachers are distant to learners in traditional university settings, and that collaborative face-to-face learning is undesirable, or, in the least, not superior to online alternatives.
  • students crave more intimate contact with teachers. The story claims that “interaction with professors is limited to keep costs down.” Nevertheless, interaction with skilled teachers is costly, and online contact is not of the same quality as physical proximity offered in traditional university settings.

Two interesting and relevant corollaries are offered by way of quotations from Stanford professor Caroline Hoxby:

First, “less than selective (read: cheap) institutions are close substitutes for MOOCs. ... Most are at serious risk of displacement.”

Second, “elite institutions face very different circumstances.” They offer “labour-intensive education to highly qualified students” aiming to “cultivate a sense of belonging ... in order to recoup their investment decades later in the form of donations.” However, when such institutions offer MOOCs, “the personal link between students and the university” is broken, making elite graduates feel less like “the chosen few. For top schools, the best bet may simply be to preserve their exclusivity.” Writes The Economist. On page 64. Of the Feb 8, 2014, edition.

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Å brette læringssubjektet

Posted on 8 Nov 2013.


Om Deleuze. :

På en måte er Gilles Deleuzes’ forståelse av bretten en kritikk av dem som forstår subjektivitet som en enkel innside og utside (fasade og essens eller overflate og dybde), for bretten hevder at innsida ikke er noe mer eller noe annet enn en innbretting av utsida.
Michel Foucault illustrerer denne relasjonen slik: Renessanseepokens gale, den som settes ut i en båt og der blir passasjer eller “fange” i det eksternes interiør, dvs i havets innbretting, blir for Deleuze en stadig mer kompleks skildring av mangfoldet av innbrettingsmodaliteter: Fra innbretting av våre materielle selv, våre kropper, til tidsinnbrettinger, altså minnene våre.
Subjektivitet i seg sjøl kan forstås som en innbrettingas topologi. Bretten er slik også navnet på en relasjon vi har til oss sjøl (til følelsene vi har for – og som dermed virker på – oss sjøl). I antikkens Hellas oppdaget og iverksatte man denne bretteteknikken. Det er dette vi kjenner som sjølmestring.Simon O’ Sullivan, “Definition: Fold”
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Everything can ...

Posted on 23 May 2013.


Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms-to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
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A Krashen course in SLA

Posted on 10 May 2013.


Stephen Krashen’s classic Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning, online from his own weg-site. It’s a bit longish, and dates back to the glorious eighties (1981 to be precise). But it made waves. And still does. 

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About Torgeir Fjeld
Writer, publisher, and educational administrator, holding PhDs in Philosophy (EGS, 2017) and Cultural Theory (Roehampton, 2012). Latest publications include Introducing Ereignis: Philosophy, Technology, Way of Life (2022) and Rock Philosophy (2019) and articles in Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, International Journal of Žižek Studies, and others. Presently serving as Head of Ereignis Center for Philosophy and the Arts, Publisher at Tankebanen forlag, and Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Inscriptions. Fjeld has taught at universities across North America, Europe, and Africa. Here is section dedicated to poetry in translation. This page has a cookie policy.
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