Gott - Mensch - Zeit
- Autor(en)
- Kurt Appel
- Abstrakt
In his essay, the author wants to develop a notion of the human that ought to precede every approach to humanism and that is linked to a certain understanding of the holy, of the concept of time and of history. To arrive at this notion, three texts are brought into dialogue: the Bible, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Musil's Man Without Qualities. The author shows that these texts are intertwined through the category of “Übergang” (Shift or Transition). The section on the Bible shows that the seventh day of the creation account transcends chronological time and thereby hinders time to become a totality under the grasp of human control. In Hegel's Phenomenology, the religious stage is one in which the subject experiences the loss of a world that serves as its mirror as it comes to realize that its relationship to being is fundamentally negative and implies a fracture. The author argues that the crucifixion of Christ at the stage of “revealed religion” does not designate God as the objectified otherworldly other, through which the human being accredits itself with invulnerability. Instead, Hegel locates God in a sphere of absolute tangibility and vulnerability. Finally, Musil’s Man Without Qualities is shown to reveal characteristics of a post-apocalyptic world that defies a chronological presentation. For Christians, death as well as the goal of history, the resurrection of Christ, are events that lie within the past as well as the future. Christians find themselves at the threshold of times that constantly shift into each other. Christianity is thus neither a utopian prospective project nor a retrospective one, as it is anachronistic to the core. Thus, a contribution of Christianity to a new humanism is related to breaking away from abstract images and grand but empty words (produced by theology, the church, politics and the sciences) and accepting a culture of tangibility and vulnerability of being.
- Organisation(en)
- Institut für Systematische Theologie und Ethik
- Band
- 271
- Seiten
- 19-60
- Anzahl der Seiten
- 42
- Publikationsdatum
- 06-2015
- Peer-reviewed
- Ja
- ÖFOS 2012
- 603206 Fundamentaltheologie, 603118 Religionsphilosophie, 603116 Politische Philosophie
- Schlagwörter
- ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
- Arts and Humanities(all)
- Link zum Portal
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/gott--mensch--zeit(94cd2dbf-9621-4166-a2eb-fcac349c8d64).html