A subsection on Heidegger, Saint Augustine and the Manichean Gnosis

Abstract

Why did a philosophical genius of the stature of Heidegger ignore Augustine's Manichean bias and, nevertheless, penetrate better than anyone into the vital meaning of his texts and was able to rescue his experiences of the human condition to incorporate them into his analysis of Dasein? Isn't the development of Christianity a historical phenomenon? Or is it that Heidegger despises the Manichaeism of Saint Augustine as a spurious interference that hinders the understanding of factual Christian life in its originality? Is it enough to split cosmic eschatology from individual eschatology to overcome the Manichean Gnostic myth? The question is of the greatest interest for several reasons that affect our professional position where the voice of philosophy is neither, nor can it be silenced: existence itself as the place where the question about what each one is strikes. Seen from this Gnostic perspective, it is necessary to review Heidegger's reading of Saint Augustine, but taking into account the collusion of arguments that his «thinking» provokes in the next generation: Hans Jonas, Karl Löwith, Blumenberg, Voegelin, etc.