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Suggests that a full acceptance of the finitude of existence can lead to the affirmation of God.
Ludwig Heyde's award winning examination of the weight of finitude and its relation to God is translated here for the first time in English. Though philosophers may question if there still is room for God in philosophy after Nietzsche's pronouncement that "God is dead," Heyde suggests that a full acceptance of the finitude of existence can lead to the affirmation of God. He criticizes conceptions that have unconsciously dominated our thinking since the Enlightenment. In relation to the philosophical tradition-Thomas Aquinas, Anselm, Descartes, Kant, and primarily Hegel, among others-certain "experiences" are developed which thought can undergo when it goes to its limits and asks after the ground of all that is. At the same time, Heyde investigates how well the affirmation of God stands up against various intellectual and existential challenges such as Kant's critique, the experience of evil and suffering, and the thought of Heidegger and Nietzsche.
"It is a boon to have this work now available in English, and not only for Hegel scholars or philosophers interested in classical and contemporary responses to God, but for mindful human beings still wondering if we have wings." — from the Foreword by William Desmond
Foreword
By William Desmond Preface
Introduction
1
The Absence of the Essential
1.1 An Essenceless World
The Reversal of Positions1.2 The Protest of Faith
The Dominion of Wealth
Comedy and Cynicism
Faith as Flight1.3 The "Retrieval" of the Essential. The Struggle of the Enlightenment
The Essencelessness of Faith
God's Disappearance1.4 A One-Dimensional World and a Distant God
The Unsatisfied Enlightenment
2
Ways of Thinking toward God
2.1 Faith and Thought
Faith2.2 Enigmatic Contingency
The Experience of Thought
Why Something at All... ?2.3 The Actuality of Thought
An Informational Intermezzo: Concerning Proofs of God
An Example: Thomas Aquinas
A Necessary Ground for All That Is
The Decisive Presupposition
Intermezzo2.4 The Experience of Limits and Openness
Anselm. Thought and Being
Descartes. Subjectivity and Infinitude
God as Ground and Measure
3
An Abyss for Thought
3.1 The Limits of Thought
The Decisive Point: Thought and Being3.2 The Scope of the Critique
Contingency
The Well-Ordered Cosmos
It Concerns the Entirety of Philosophy3.3 Kant's Way: The Absoluteness of the Ought
The Ideal of Pure Reason
The Positive Turn
The Indisputable Moral "Fact"3.4 The Limits of the Limits
The Postulate of God's Existence
Critique of the Critique4
The Metaphysical Élan
Auschwitz: The End of an Illusion?
4.1 The Mystery of Evil
Beyond Any Concept?4.2 The Mystery of Freedom
The Sting of Moral Evil
The Refusal of Adorno4.3 The Rose and the Cross
Kant: Evil and Freedom
God and Evil5
Evil Is Not Absolute
Human Finitude and the Presence of God
5.1 Finitude as Boundary
Heidegger: The Desacralisation of the World5.2 The Mystery of God's Presence
The Metaphysics of Subjectivity
Thinking Does Not Merely "Happen" to Us
The Death of GodNotes
Nietzsche as Child of His Time
Hegel: The Absolute Is Present
Finite Transcendence?
Philosophy's Claim to Truth
Cited Literature
About the Author
Index