Monotheism as a metapolitical problem

Heidegger's war against Jewish Christian monotheism

Christoph Schmidt

pp. 131-157

in: Mårten Björk, Jayne Svenungsson (eds), Heidegger's Black notebooks and the future of theology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This essay presents Heidegger's thought as a unique form of political theology which is defined by a radical antithesis. Heidegger's theopoetics of the Greek gods is constructed against Judeo-Christian monotheism as the ultimate form of a metaphysics of ground, power and violence culminating in the modern totalitarian state. This tendency unfolds first as a radical anti-Catholicism and reveals later its relation to a radical anti-Judaism. Astonishing enough, Heidegger develops this "metapolitics' in light of the encounter between the Goddess Aletheia and the Kyrios Christos as two different phenomenologies of the face which remind the reader of Levinas's ethics.

Cited authors

Heidegger Martin

Levinas Emmanuel