Krzysztof Mech

This text begins a research project concerning those thinkers who associate the discussion about the possibility of thinking about God with the problem of difference. The main question of these considerations is this: How does God appear on the differentiated horizon, while torn by difference always conceived in a defined manner? If difference is inevitably inscribed in thought, then how is God inscribed in difference? These questions lead to another: How does difference rule in reflection on divinity? In other words: How far does the way that difference is conceived affect how we reflect upon the deity? When looking for answers to these questions, we take the first step towards Heidegger. Owing to the special status of ontological difference and the trace it leaves on thinking “on the horizon” of difference, it is with this that we begin movement toward differentiation as such. The question about God and the difference in Heidegger’s thought in this text takes the following form: How does God appear in a sphere divided by the difference between Being and beings? How does ontological difference mark the conception of God?

The author of the essay attempts to answer the question concerning the future of religion. Will religion survive in any form in the next millennium? The above question leads him to yet another query, this time concerning the very foundations of religion within man. Searching for the sources of human religiosity the author analyzes two literary figures which describe man’s condition – namely the metaphor of a cave, and the story of Job. On the basis of these two figures, he formulates a hypothesis concerning the connection between man’s religiosity and some negative experiences – such as the experience of a lack, the experience of evil etc. The non-removable character of these experiences is conducive to a hypothesis concerning the nonremovability of religion from man’s life. In the light of these analyses, the author formulates a hypothesis that in religion one is able to realize one’s striving after good which is the opposite of the experienced evil. Such an interpretation of religion, leads the author to the final conclusion that as long as man remains a being who is constantly under threat, and a being that experiences evil in a variety of its different forms, religion is not in danger of a sudden disappearance.