Abstract

Commentators are at a loss to explain what Heidegger means by various cryptic references to the return of the gods. I believe, however, that there is a clear thread of an argument from Heidegger's premise in Being and Time that there are such things as items of equipment to the necessary possibility of the divine. Along the way to this end, I try to show how the human being became alienated from the possibility of the divine, with the necessary consequence of the twin disciplines of science and technology. In this way, I am proposing a new reading of Heidegger which comprehends him not as a nihilist or fascist, but which rather understands him as someone trying to open a way for a return of the divine to human existence. But because to show the necessity of this argument is also to open a way for the divine to come into the world, my hope is that this essay is an instance of what it also professes to be about