Confessions and considerations

Heidegger's early black notebooks and his lecture on Augustine's theory of time

Marius Timmann Mjaaland

pp. 257-275

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

Abstract

In Heidegger's lecture on Augustine (1930), the question of time is emphasised as precondition for his philosophical and religious confessions. Augustine identifies the distention of the self as the origin of time consciousness, 'stretching out" towards the past and the future. Following this line of reasoning, Heidegger identifies the human self as narrating its own existence and thus imagining itself as being there (Dasein represented as Da-Bild in the constitution of time). The article argues that such philosophical confessions dominate the early Black Notebooks. The topos of God is thereby referred to as the most question-able, but completely unknowable place of thought after the "death of God". However, Heidegger's mystical confession to the future God (И) falls prey to political phantasms of contemporary apocalyptic ideology.

Cited authors

Heidegger Martin

Augustinus Aurelius