BEING TOWARD EARTH

…a turning with mortals in their essence – Martin Heidegger

In his later work Heidegger calls for a new way of thinking about the divine. Metaphysical thinking has failed. Its God is pronounced dead. Materialism is dead also, its “matter” has left the building.

Okay, what’s to be done? Do we remain impervious and atheistic? Do we continue in the dark, as nihilists and/or decadents? Do we seek a haven in mechanistic science and technology, or in transhumanism?

Did we experience the death of God, and pass-through valleys of darkness in order to rebuild ourselves from the ground up?

In Being and Time, Heidegger’s concern was Dasein’s questioning of Being, the act that makes Dasein Dasein. Of course, the questioning of Being is really a requestioning that changes direction over time. It must also morph with personal experience, maturation, and historical events.

Given that Dasein’s questioning of Being is itself constantly advancing, at some point no handrails will be required. Dasein will proceed without religion, metaphysics and traditional paradigms set by science, technology and “common sense.” What he finds is a new kind of thinking and new objects of that thinking. As such, he must recast himself as an Aesthetic being.