Page 91 - Eclipse of God

64 Chapter 5

he came remarkably close to the essential reality to which I
have just pointed. Hölderlin says of us humans,
Since we exist as talk
And can hear from one another.

29
Heidegger explains this thus, “The gods can only enter the
Word if they themselves address us and place their demand
upon us. The Word that names the gods is always an answer
to this demand.” That is a testimony to that which I call the
dialogical principle, to the dialogical relation between a divine
and a human spontaneity.
But since then we have not heard the like from Heidegger.
In fact, if we set next to each other all of his later statements
about the divine, it appears to us as if pregnant seeds have been
destroyed by a force which has passed over them. Heidegger no
longer shows himself as concerned with that which there is in
common between the great God- impressions of mankind and
the “Coming One.” Rather he summons all of the power of his
thoughts and words in order to distinguish him, the “Coming
One,” from all that has been. To one who observes the way in
which Heidegger now speaks of the historical, there can be
no doubt that it is current history which has pulled up those
seeds and planted in their place a belief in the entirely new.
How this has gradually come about can be clearly seen if one
compares with one another the occasional utterances of dif-
ferent stages, e.g., the Rectoral address of May, 1933, with a
manifesto to the students of November 3 of the same year.
30
In the first, Heidegger praises in general terms “the glory
and the greatness” of the successful “insurrection” (“Aufbruch”).
31
In the second, the sinister leading personality of the then
current history is proclaimed as “the present and future Ger-
man reality and its law.” Here history no longer stands, as in all