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Existence of God (The Concept of Existence in Modern Times)
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Paul Jang
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2008-03-04 15:19:50, hit : 2,860 |
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The Concept of Existence in Modern Times
The concepts of existence of most contemporary philosophers have shown a tendency to the existentialism. This tendency may have been influenced by the thought of existential philosophy. Contemporary existentialism has had an effect on most fields of modern sciences: philosophy, literature, theology, and so on, especially the existentialism. It has had much effect on the philosophy of existence and the theology of existence.
Heidegger had many kind of concepts of existence: the existence of things, the existence of instruments, and the existence of humanbeings. He had suggested the existential concept of existence in the beginning of his great work (Wahl, 1948, 41).
Paul Tillich explained the "existence" as a synonym of "being," saying it has the possibility, and they are the Forces (Ground) of Being (Tillich, ed. Mackenzie D. Brown, trans. Lee, 1971, 66).
J.A.T. Robinson, in accordance with Tillich, said that God can be named to "the ground of this infinite history" (Robinson, trans. Hyun, 1968, 58).
David Hume had united faith and existence. He explained that all faith is a faith in an existence and the content of a faith (Whal, 1948, 39). He insisted that the concept of existence can be inferred by analogy. According to him, the Deity can be known to us only by his productions, by which is the same reasonings from the works of nature. He explained as follows:
the case is not the same with our reasonings from the works of nature. The Deity is known to us only by his productions, and is a single being in the universe, not comprehended under any species or genus, from whose experienced attributes or qualities, we can, by analogy, infer any attribute or quality in him (Hume, in the Great Books, 1971, 502).
Gabriel Marcel Bradley, in particular, insisted that the existence of humanbeing was a sensory existence (Wahl, 1948, 46).
Jaspers insisted that "existence" is "election" in accordance with the existentialistic philosophers, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche (Wahl, 1948, 46).
Sartre explained an abstract conception of existence by giving a difference between "the existence in him" and "the existence to him" (Wahl, 1948, 53).
Robert P. Scharlemann said "God appears just between being and nonbeing, and the name "God" signifies one that belongs nowhere in the metaphysical alternative because it is the excluded third possibility, the tertium of the tertium non datur (Scharlemann, 1981, 60).
For Nietzsche, God was only an emblem, the highest symbol for human alienation, who was created by man in order to be punished, rewarded, ordered, patronized, humiliated, suppressed, and, finally, redeemed by his own creation (Staguhn, 1990, 32). He substituted God for man through the sentence of death of God (Tillich, trans. Song, 1980, 247).
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Introduction
Theology 