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20 February 2017

Be holy

Be holy!
The theme of the readings of Sunday (wk 7, year A).

I have been grappling Heidegger and his notion of the human person in his whole discourse on technology for the past one week.

Everytime I reach a point of pinning down his understanding, I feel myself inadequately prepared because Heidegger is speaking of a larger context of 'being' while I'm trying to figure out 'human being' within that - that too without grasping to any minimal degree the former.

At one moment I thought I got a glimpse of the meaning of what Heidegger meant by the following text.  A while later it was gone!
Only from the truth of Being can the essence of the holy be thought. Only from the essence of the holy is the essence of divinity be thought. Only in the light of the essence of divinity can it be thought or said what the word "God" is to signify.  ... How can man at the present stage of world history ask at all seriously and rigorously whether the god nears or withdraws, when he has above all neglected to think into the dimension in which alone that question can be asked? But this is the dimension of the holy, which indeed remains closed as a dimension if the open region of Being is not cleared and in its clearing is near man. (pp. 253-254)
[Heidegger, M. (1992) ‘Letter on humanism’, in Krell, D.F. (ed.) Martin Heidegger: Basic writings. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, pp. 213–266.]

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