Heidegger’s Figure of the Last God and Path to Being Itself
Abstract
In the present article I explain the role of the figure of “the last god” in Heidegger’s thought after the so-called Heideggerian “turn.” Drawing on Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), it is argued that the figure of “the last god” demonstrates Heidegger’s path to “being itself,” which I distinguish from the path to being presented by him in his earlier thought, mainly laid out in Being and Time. The figure of the last god is not to be understood as a god in a religious framework, but rather as an explication of metaphysical radical thinking, rendered as Heidegger’s view of “divinity of the other beginning.” The notion of the last god is presented against the background of several of Heidegger’s ideas (as specifications) discussed in Contributions namely: disclosure of being itself, the renewal of metaphysics, the understanding of nothing/nothingness in relation to being, the problem of the “sign” (Wink) or the ontic and ontological differences. In a metaphorical form, Heidegger leads us – by means of the specifications given – towards the
experience of the “last god,” whose “passage” is for Dasein the experience of being itself, is the event of being. In the text presented here, I will “lead” the reader along such “path.” At the same time, I will engage Heidegger’s language without neglecting its semantic “depth,” showing how Heidegger extracts hidden meanings from words.
Keywords
being; entity; the last god; sign; nothingness; onto-theo-logy; enowning; essential swaying
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Jesuit University in Kraków Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7959-243X
Jacek Surzyn – Doctor of Letters of philosophy, Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, Jesuit University Ignatianum in Kraków. Academic interests: medieval philosophy, Jewish philosophy, ontological and epistemological status of existence, issues related to proofs of existence of God, problem of language of faith, fundamental ontology and the theme of Being in the philosophy of Martin Heidegger.
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