The mystery of conscience and the turn to language

pp. 53-78

in: Frank Schalow, Heidegger and the quest for the sacred, Berlin, Springer, 2001

Abstract

Why Schelling, why should he enter into the forefront of Heidegger's creative exchange with the philosophical tradition? It is incumbent for us to ask this question in the course of the present chapter. On the surface, the easiest response is that Heidegger acknowledges Schelling as an important counter thrust to the tradition through his emphasis on being over thinking.¹ Indeed, Schelling describes the opposite tendency to "give priority to thought over being" as the "general affliction" of modern philosophy.² There are two elements of Schelling's philosophy which typify this critical orientation: 1) his appeal to nature as including a nascent tendency toward order, as we have already noted and 2) his emphasis on myth as an adjacent matrix of concern and meaning which lends further depth to philosophical inquiry. As Otto Pöggeler indicates, Schelling is the philosopher of myth par excellence.³ For Heidegger, myth will prove significant by offering the space into which thought can enter in order to be struck by what otherwise withdraws from the philosophical tradition, the grandeur of being's mystery. If we imagine that diverse ways are hidden within the tradition, then these can unfold only by taking a detour around the rough edges of our concepts, a detour supplied by myth. As the counter pole to the logos, myth preserves the trace of heterogeneity, the differentiation of patterns, which interjects novelty into the genesis of new meaning(s).