I don't know if I should take Streetlight's hyperbole and caricatures seriously or not.

Why the need? Those regimes don't come to power in a vacuum.

He's not wrong though.

It's a coin toss. One side results in the deaths of potentially billions and the other thousands. Might as well refuse to even toss the coin.

\As fantastic as he was a philosopher, it always feels he aimed to ultimately 'submit' philosophy to some kind of other (higher?) calling, and it comes off as though weighing down - like a weight attached to the ankle, as it were - the real and clearly discernable drive of philosophical creativity and vibrancy that courses through all of Heidegger. Heidegger makes philosophy feel like it ought to serve another master, than to buoy in its own autonomous beatitude. I find it a disquieting and ugly feeling. — StreetlightX

Heidegger the closet theologian? It's something I've been thinking about recently. There seems to be some theological work happening in the background of B&T.

I'm not sure he considered philosophy as the handmaiden to theology, something of the reversal of the Scholastic elevation of philosophy to revealed theology. He did see both as mortal enemies.

Whatever "higher calling" he had in mind, certainly has a mystical element to it. I can certainly see why there would be hostility to this because there seems to be some religious trappings around the sort of "secular mysticsm" of Heidegger's philosophy.

Heidegger was the goth kid who got philosophical.

One of the more devastating charges against Heidegger's whole project was Levinas's, for whom "Dasein in Heidegger is never hungry" — StreetlightX

I'm not sure I understand Levinas' criticism here. Hunger would be an ontical affair, and not something ontological. I'm not sure why an ontology of Dasein would have to account for being hungry.

You might like the Tao Te Ching better. Or the traditional split: Daoism in the sheets, Confucianism in the streets. — StreetlightX

So you mean going as long as possible but withholding your spunk right?

I would argue that "willing" is fundamentally integral to human existence. If we are not willing something, then what are we doing? How one wills can be modified that allows for spontaneous free choices that transcend pure determination. However I think this modification is rare simply because we don't simply go about consciously choosing freely this or that. We are still mostly conditioned and determined, but that doesn't forbid a possibility to will otherwise. In any case I think there is something more fundamental than choice, which is where I see "free-will" as the necessary condition that opens up the space for example synergy with God, one that is freely reciprocal between both created and Creator. There has to be a state where one can either accept or reject God's calling, otherwise I'm not sure how freedom can work in most monotheisms. There must be a possibility to reject God totally, atheism might seem totally necessary.

Bataille tried this already. In any case no. The only properly atheist response to God is: 'what's that? Never heard of it; doesn't sound very interesting, got better things to do'. — StreetlightX

I guess we shouldn't waste another keystroke talking about God then. If we are talking about The Philosopher's God (i.e. Unmoved Mover) then yes I have to agree the proper response is total indifference. All the philosophical arguments for such are simply a non-starter for me. They are not convincing at all and all are in some manner a form of question begging.

However I find God, as understood variously by different religious traditions, to be of a wholly different character that might be worth engaging with. I'm not sure God, as understood here, warrants a wholesale removal to the dustbin.

We don't need secularized theological concepts. We need concepts utterly indifferent to theology and any of its concerns. — StreetlightX

Where do we begin then? How do we approach this? How do we conceive without any reference to theology?

This is precisely why I think some of the intellectual projects undertaken in the 20th century have failed because there is too much theology that is secularized. Maybe coin the major writings as "atheology".

Aren't we always "willing" something? We can make such willing explicit by determining an act by choice but I would say we are always in this condition to will something towards something. I'm not sure how humans would go about living their lives if this wasn't the case.

StreetlightX, for clarification, your objection of free-will in a Christian context is that it allows God off the hook when it comes to the problem of evil? Your problem is the apologetic used by Christians that the evil done to others is by man alone because of our free-will. For you this absolves God of any guilt in His creation, is that right?

I just wanted to put your criticisms in the appropriate context before I would like to discuss them.

I wonder if you would be hostile to the idea of a reconciliation between an atheistic Sartrean kind of existential freedom with Christianity.