Between gods and men: towards an interpretation of the problem of the divine and the holy in Martin Heidegger’s thought

Abstract

In contrast to interpretations that assign a religious or theological meaning to references to the gods, the holy or the “last god” in Martin Heidegger’s work, this study defends a strictly ontological reading of these references. In so doing, it refers to Heidegger’s dialogue with Hölderlin’s poetry and argues that the meaning given by the philosopher to Hölderlin’s invocation of the “fugitive gods” depends on the ontological character he attributes in another context to the nomination of the gods characteristic of Greek poetical saying. The same character may be inferred from Heidegger’s construction of the meaning of the appeal to “the holy” in Hölderlin’s poetry as the poetical name of the being as historically deployed. Finally, this interpretation extends to the figure of the “last god”, noting that in order to understand it, regard must be had to Heidegger’s exegesis of the question of the flight of the gods in Hölderlin’s poetic works.