Metaphysicians want something more than poetic raids on the unspeakable. They want something more solid. Forget the frustrating obfuscations of the mysterious: they want some sort of science of God, a way of measuring and predicting the contours of the divine. All this leads to what Heidegger calls a “forgetfulness” of the primordial, reverential, or poetic approach to things.

Fair enough: it is too much to blame Plato for all that came after him. Yet what Heidegger warns us of is a world without reverence, where all is simply physics and technology. Its name is nihilism.

¶ 11:32 AM