“the last god” in Heidegger’s contributions to philosophy
Authors: Angeles Moses Aaron 
Published: October 2022

In the years after 1919, Heidegger began to call for a “deconstruction” (Abbau) or “destruction” (Destruktion) of Western intellectual traditions in an attempt to “save culture.”  He proposed that the “deconstruction” and “destruction” of intellectual traditions should proceed from a re-examination of the original Greek interpretation of Being, which had been misunderstood completely and utterly trivialized.  From hereon, he began to articulate Being within the sphere of the world; Being as unveiled and revealed in Dasein.  But the investigation of Being did not stop in Being and Time.  The meaning of Being lies in occurrence, that is, that the gods are not extant characters, but rather figures of remembrance and expectation.  Only in dasein’s moment of existential longing can god be really empty of any claim and intention.  This opens us to the “Last God” of the Contributions.

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