On the Meaning of Human Being By Richard Oxenberg

On the Meaning of Human Being

By Richard Oxenberg

Political Animal Press

Toronto

www.politicalanimalpress.com

ISBN: 978-1-895131-30-7

248 Pages

Review by Dennis Daly

Not since Saint Thomas Aquinas channeled Aristotle by way of Boethius in Summa Theologica has philosophy and theology met in such an unexpected and enlightened way. Richard Oxenberg in his new book, On the Meaning of Human Being, Heidegger and the Bible in Dialogue, uses a framework employed by the estimable (and somewhat infamous) Martin Heidegger to get at the ethical basis of humanity and the relevance of religion in the twenty-first century.

The first half of the Oxenberg book sets up his secular and foundational approach as well as developing a tool box of helpful terms and delving philosophic concepts. His choice of Heidegger seems at first rather odd (more on that later) and then… and then… not so much. Being and Time, Heidegger’s breakthrough work of phenomenological investigations, is clearly up to the task. Oxenberg manipulates Heidegger’s perceptions masterfully, architecturally structuring his own original arguments from them with deftness and certainty.

Human Being, as defined by Heidegger/ Oxenberg, exists as more than an entity. It is rather a subject connected to objects which are influenced by pretty spooky forces. Oxenberg explores this complex world with verbs that signify value such as “care” and “matter” as in “we care about things” or “things matter to us.” Each object is an object because of a subject’s concern. According to Oxenberg this concern is basic to Being. In his dialectic Being exists not only in a space-time dimension, but also in a qualitative or axiological dimension. The values intrinsic to this dimension are inseparable from Being itself. Humans derive meaning from mattering. Goodness mattered to Plato and Aristotle and also matters to Judao-Christianity and the basis of these sets of beliefs match up in uncanny ways.

Oxenberg deals with the estrangement of theology and philosophy forthwith and without hesitation. Rene Descartes is quickly fingered as the evil genius and historical bad guy and his philosophical dualism, although spectacularly successful in mechanistic living, entices questioning seekers down the wrong rabbit hole in mankind’s search for meaning and truth. According to Oxenberg/ Heidegger Cartesian facts are nothing more than abstractions of our “caring about things.” When humans set their sights on an object (a desk, a chair, a friend, themselves) they do so for the sake of something. Subjects project that value onto their object and this defines meaning. The subject cannot be separated from the object, and thus this is not a subjective process. Nor can this be considered objective. It is a process of projection that extends into the future and back to the past, and it must be understood as a whole.

Heidegger calls his re-envisioned human being Dasein or Being-in-the-World. Each Dasein can be described as Being-towards-Death, that is, authentic being, or Das Man, that is, inauthentic being. Later on Oxenberg describes yet another mode of existence he terms Being-towards-Life offered by Judeo-Christianity. Soren Kierkegaard points out man’s alienation when confronting death in his arguably authentic life. Anxiety causes this Being, a being lost to existential despair, to seek eternal life to fulfill himself. Eternal, by the way, is not necessarily defined in temporal terms. Oxenberg goes to great lengths to describe its qualitative fabric.

Curiously, early in the book Oxenberg states that modern scientific thought deliberately “seeks to discount the subjective concerns of the observer in an effort to provide a strictly “objective” account of reality.” He argues that this viewpoint results in a distorted understanding of Being. Oxenberg is right on both counts, of course, if he is referring to Newtonian science and mathematics and I think he is. But he would not be right if he were referring to the bane of Einstein’s original and elegant theoretical inclinations (God does not play dice with the world)—quantum physics. In fact it is impossible to read Oxenberg’s description of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology without one’s mind wandering into the realm of quantum mechanics (think Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principal and the Double Slit Experiment). In this quantum world the observer by his very observing alters his object. Also in this world exotic particles demonstrate invisible connections over space and time. This spookiness, begging for theological answers, finds its equivalent in Heidegger’s concepts and buttresses, in an architectural sense, Oxenberg’s theological explorations.

Heidigger, who in his life purported to seek authenticity with the same zeal that Aristotle sought goodness, joined the German Nazi Party before World War II. His supporters argue that he did so for career purposes and never became an active party member. Maybe. Oxenberg does rehash those sorry facts in a brief and unsatisfying attempt to understand Heidegger’s disastrous move. In fairness, Oxenberg had no choice, his use of Heidegger’s analytic necessitates some kind of explanatory comment. Ignominy can’t be ignored in the midst of righteous exploration.

In the second half of the book Oxenberg creates a rapprochement of sorts between philosophy and religion. He aims to accomplish this by explicating the Old and New Testaments with the use of Heidegger’s already developed hermeneutical tools. Heidegger would not have approved. That said, Oxenberg’s approach I think succeeds, and succeeds startling well at that. His understanding of language raises up Jewish and Christian traditions to a connective level of philosophical symbolism. His coverage includes the iconic stories within Genesis, as well as the biblical Jesus Christ. His analysis of the Christ as messiah and the appellations of the Son of Man used by Christ himself and the Son of God used by the Christian faithful hit the mark. The human spirit seems to transfigure into the Spirit of God, a oneness more often acknowledged by mystics, traditional Buddhism, and other eastern religions.

Oxenberg makes no claim for Christian exclusivism, but he does argue for the “existential disposition” of Christ’s revealed teachings. The Spirit of Christ becomes for Oxenberg a mode of Being-in–the–World that gives the slip to the proponents of existentialism (Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus, et al) and seeks the goodness of love and community. Religious beliefs for Oxenberg seem to merge in a rarified metaphorical and transcendent, but no less real philosophic, realm. Paul Tillich, Thomas Merton and others have followed similar lines of reasoned mysticism. Keep in mind that Aristotle identified contemplation as the highest form of happiness. In any case, Oxenberg is in good company.