Graduate Faculty Philosophy J oumal Volume 19, Number 2-Volume 20, Number 1, 1997

Reiner Schurmann's Report of His Visit to Martin Heidegger

Translation, and foreword, by Pierre Adler

On January 16, 1966, Reiner Schilrmann wrote a letter to Martin Heidegger in which he submitted two questions for the philosopher's consideration, and requested a conversation with him. Schilrmann was a twenty-four year old friar at the Dominican Faculties of Philosophy and Theology of the Saulchoir, at Essonnes in France, where he had begun his studies in 1962 (he was to complete them in 1969 and be ordained to the priesthood in 1970, which he left in 1975). At the time, he was on a stay of study with Professor Bernhard Welte at the University of Freiburg. Heidegger responded on February 4, inviting the young man to his home in Freiburg. On March 11, the very day of the visit, Schilrmann related the content of his discw;sion with the philosopher to an anonymous correspondent. The three pieces of correspondence were found tucked away in one of the numerous Heidegger volumes of Schilrmann's library. The two letters are naturally written in German, whereas the report is in French. We here publish a translation of these documents.

January 16,1966

Fr. Reiner Schurmann OP Care of Mrs. Hofmann Lorettostrasse 42 78 Freiburg

Dear Mr. Heidegger,

Owing to Professor Welte's encouragement, I take the liberty of addressing a request for a conversation to you. I am a Dominican, belong to the order's French district, and am at this time interrupting my studies at the order's school, Le Saulchoir near Paris, in order to begin doctoral work on the "unknown God in the thought of Meister

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Eckhart" under Professor Welte's guidance. I am German. I shall be ordained as a priest in only three years.

There are two questions that I particularly wish to ask you. The first one concerns Eckhart's relevance to the situation in which thinking finds itself today: did he perhaps think being as self-sending, as only eventfully experience able? Meister Eckhart's 'sole thought' is aimed at the unification of the 'separated soul' with God. Insofar as the soul lets all things be, it breaks through to the ground where the Godhead con-tinually creates all things, and which in this breakthrough also becomes my ground. The unity is a unity of the "fabric" in which God operates and I become-become son, that is. Being is thus thought as course of experience, and not represented as ontic 'standing reserve'.' Closer to the soul than any created thing, the "unknown God" is experi-enced in the event of words,2 beyond this and that,3 and, for that rea-son, it always remains a 'nil of all things'. Might not Meister Eckhart's thinking help us along in a meditation directed at being which always withholds itself and, in this very withholding, addresses itself to us?

I request that you greet my second question with particular indul-gence: can the wondering silence in the face of the gift of being not re-collect certain words that were first brought forth in a stutter and later 'subIa ted' on account of their inadequacy? And can it not consent to the event thanks to an inkling remaining from them? I have in mind above all this one word, 'thou'. The mystery of the gift could be experienced as mystery of the 'thou', without thinking's having to fall into representa-tion (for example, the repetition of a source of being revealed to it), while it remains within the boundaries set to it as thinking. Even in the break through all of God's titles (such as 'the good' or 'truth'), there still subsists for Meister Eckhart the inkling of the 'thou'. Might not the proposition 'being is given' ('Es gibt sein') be expressed in the form 'thou gives being' ('Du gibst sein') without injury to the mystery?

[The carbon copy breaks off at this point.]

February 4, 1966

Martin Heidegger Rotebuck 47

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Freiburg im Breisgau - Zahringen

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Honored Brother Schurmann!

Please excuse the belated answer; I was travelling and shall again be away from Freiburg for a few days. As a result, I can only invite you to come to my house on the eleventh of March, in order that we may discuss the questions raised in your letter.

With my best regards and wishes,

M. Heidegger

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Freiburg, March 11 [1966]

The event that I awaited eagerly and with stage-fright has just taken place: I have just returned from Heidegger's house. It was a real late-afternoon reception about the mystery of being .... To begin with the folkloric aspect of the visit, I had my fill and more: a pious inscrip-tion above the door to the house ("God bless you ... "); a small man, who looked like a peasant, let me in and ushered me nearly without saying a word into a room that looked rather like a blockhouse; two glasses and a bottle on a small tray; and, especially, a two-hour long discussion which ended up, at least outwardly, in complete darkness. I knew that among things country he had a fondness for those that are traditional: his writings speak of the pitcher of cool water, of the peas-ant's rough hands, of mud-caked clogs, and such. I now know that he also likes discussions in the dark. However, the man is so shrewd, and, above all, he has such a listening ability (in this respect, I have never met anyone as heedful of what one says) that it felt like my meager schoolboy questions were received by warm and reassuring hands.

I should note first that Hans Urs von Balthasar, to whom I had writ-ten a short letter in order to introduce myself (I have resolutely taken on the role of the monk from the East who goes from father to father) and who responded very nicely, has, for all that, somewhat disheart-ened me, as regards this particular issue. In his view, Heidegger hides behind an anti-Christian polemic, and by means of his general episte-mology hammers down any mystical impulse, and cannot thus be of any help in finding answers to such questions as are raised by, say, Meister Eckhart. It is somewhat of a pity that he said that. I take it that his own passions lie elsewhere.

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I am nonetheless going to give you a bit of a run-down of what has just been said. In my letter, written nearly two months ago (he was away), I had attempted to formulate two questions, one concerning Meister Eckhart's conception of being, the other concerning the possi-bility of saying 'thou' to what in some of his texts Heidegger calls 'gift of being', a phrase formed after the expression 'es gibt Sein' [literally, in English, 'it gives being'] , 'there is being'. In fact, my secret hope was that I would manage to make him speak about God. (How difficult it is to relate a conversation ofthis sort! But I shall try.)

His starting-point still remains strictly that of a phenomenological ontology, that is to say, of an inquiry into phenomena with a view to [laying bare] what is already known, being. That is the well-known hermeneutic circle. The phenomenological gaze sees that that-which-is is, that beings are owing to being, which gives itself in them (goodness, it sounds awfully like a dissertation. The letter really flattens things out!). Heidegger has been wondering about this gift of being for some years. He has often been asked (happily, I did not do so) whether the 'es' in the proposition 'es gibt Sein' refers to God. He denies that it does. At this point, I introduced my questions about 'thou': is there not, in this experience of the gift, of being that is granted (de l'etre avenant), an experience of saying 'thou'? Would it not be the case that, prior to all prayer, the saying of 'thou' is part and parcel of the being of Dasein, just as having to correspond to the ineffable gift, by the response that is required, is part and parcel of the being of Dasein? I shall not dwell on this, except to say that the outcome of this part of the conversation, the longest and most interesting (and of which he himself said that in it we touched on something profound), was quite remarkable. One could sum it up as follows: the gift of being opens up within Dasein the possibility of receiving and of saying 'thou'. This 'thou' is identical with neither being nor 'es'. There is something like a series of containers (although he rejects this word): the beings are not being; rather, through beings one experiences that being gives itself; being is not itself that which gives being; it is rather the 'es' - the mystery - which gives it; when the possibility of saying 'thou' to more and to something other than a human being is realized, it is not this 'es' that is addressed by the 'thou', but rather something beyond it. However, for that, a special experience is required which man can never obtain by his own doing, but which only this 'thou' can grant. The experience is no longer one of thought alone, but of all of oneself (those are still his own words). In this sense, philosophy does not speak about that experience. It does, however, open the paths on which such an experience may become real. In Heidegger's view, HOlderlin certainly had that experience. It is thus not a matter of the experience of faith, although what is usually desig-

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nated by 'experience of faith' naturally touches upon it very closely. Incidentally, he let out a beautiful sigh: "Who can say what faith is!"

In a world that is dominated by science and technology, and which treats art as a commodity, Heidegger understands his entire philosophy as a preparation for this experience of Something Else of which philoso-phy itself can no longer speak. From Sein und Zeit to the present, the whole of his thought has solely been considering the possibilities that are to be disclosed in order for this ineffable experience to happen: "And when it is granted to one, one will no longer need philosophy." It should be specified, however, that his philosophy does not speak of a supreme being which would give itself in such a fashion: ''What I am attempting to think is both smaller than traditional philosophy (which constantly speaks about God) and larger (because it opens the way to an overcom-ing, by way of an experience, of philosophy)."

He dreads dogmatism. For that reason he was unable to accept what I was propounding, namely, that philosophy succeed, as philosophy, in giving a verdict about a 'thou' from which Dasein would 'always already' originate. To him, it would properly amount to theology to say that man can only say 'thou' to what in a granting (dans une grace) gives itself in the 'es', because he also harbors his origin within himself. For, according to Heidegger's argumentation, to consider man as always in relation to a 'thou' would, to put it coarsely, make prayer an obligation for everyone. Indeed, if every man always already had a per-sonal relation to this 'thou' which lies in mystery, one would be able to reproach those not respecting this 'thou', with living in contradiction to their being. That is precisely what dogmatism does. One may thus say no more about the matter than this: philosophy's role is to open the way by which an unutterable experience may be given, but such an experience would no longer be answerable to philosophy; it would be the prerogative of the one to whom it was granted.

What he said very simply and with enormous respect for the matters under discussion, my letter makes sound awfully complicated and con-structed. No doubt I am reporting it very poorly, but I believe that I have not added anything of my own. I am not going to tell you what he said about Meister Eckhart and about scholasticism, for it would take too long. I should also mention a series of remarks about the 'sacred' and about 'language' (the latter being also only the possibilizing ground that Some Thing be addressed to us, but not that which allows to infer it ... ). Heidegger is unquestionably a 'religious' thinker, and it is because I knew that he had spent some time at the Jesuit noviciate (I have never been able to determine whether it was ten days or ten months) that I dared to start him on this traiL He invited me to come back.

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Welte was extremely happy about the day he spent at the Saulchoir. He told me: "If I were your age, that would be my monastery of choice." His maid is even worried that he is going to become Dominican. "They have a very candid, free, and open way about them; I was presented with intelligent questions which the theology students from here would never raise; one senses that this place has caliber." Congratulations: you seduced him.

Reiner

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES

1. 'Reserve' is to be taken in the sense of 'supply' or 'stock'. It translates 'Bestand'.

2. 'Words' renders 'Zuspruch'. This translation is in all likelihood inadequate, as 'Zuspruch' may mean speaking, encouragement, consolation, or exhor-tation, all of which are probably meant here.

3. 'Beyond this and that' translates jenseits von aHem Dies und Das'. A less literal translation would be 'beyond all concerns and things'.

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