Die Kritik zur «Phrase» und die «monumentale» Theologie

The Critique of the «Phrase» and the «Monumental» Theology · One hundred years ago, Martin Heidegger wrote a text known as Natorp-Bericht in a few weeks, in which the intent to interpret Aristotle phenomenologically was preceded by an extremely interesting method- ological premise. The intent was, as the epigraph reveals, to ‘save’ life from the obviousness that philosophy, including philosophy that criticises such obviousness, runs into. Saving life also means paying due attention to those expressions of life in order to arrive at an adequate under- standing of the human being. For example, the proper meaning of the music and the architec- ture of the Middle Ages is accessible only through a profound interpretation of the ontological constitution of the human being. Starting from these assertions, the essay attempts to show in the second part how, in Bernhard Casper’s latest work, this hermeneutics of factical life is transformed into monumental theology, in an attempt to clarify the religious message present in works of art such as the glass paintings in Freiburg cathedral on the basis of a hermeneutics of factical life.