The Missing God of Heidegger and Karl Jaspers: Too late for God; too Early for the Gods—with a vignette from Indian Philosophy

Abstract

The essay explores how God is conceived—if only just—in the works of two existentialist philosophers: Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, one considers the mutual convergence and disarming divergence of their respective positions. In 1919, Martin Heidegger announced his distancing of himself from the Catholic faith, apparently liberating himself to pursue philosophical research unfettered by theological allegiances. Thereafter, the last of the Western metaphysicians (in the classical genre) takes his hammer to the ‘destruktion of onto-theology’—the piety of Greek philosophy and of Hellenized Judaeo-Christianity. The essay argues that Heidegger provided both the platform and challenges reins for his long-time friend Karl Jaspers’ thinking on the question of the absconditus—‘absconded into hiding; hence lost, or better, the missing condition’—of the transcendent. One might avail one's critical perspective by considering ideas from Indian philosophy (and mildly postcolonial doubt) to balance the respective positions of the two humanist-Germanic protagonists. We proceed so with a view to reconfiguring the predominant monotheistically conceived conception of the deity, the place and limits of belief and philosophical faith, and the future of postdivinism in the global axis.