12.6.11 Object Lesson

Never did I think that I'd make a connection between Heidegger's fourfold discussed in "The Thing" and a lesson from my time in Catholic grade school, but here it goes. With the exception of the number involved, I found that the fourfold seems very similar to the idea of the Holy Trinity. Often explained as a mystery, the Trinity is the idea that God is made up of three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Despite being three persons, God is not three different gods but one God. Try wrapping your mind around that in 2nd grade! A description of the Trinity from a Catholic perspective is at this link: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm. If, however, you'd prefer something more secular Wikipedia's description of the Trinity is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity. Three Gods in one seemed to mirror Heidegger's idea of how earth, sky, mortals, and divinities create a single fourfold. Each is "In the gift of the outpouring earth and sky, divinities and mortals dwell together all at once. These four, at one because of what they themselves are, belong together. Preceding everything that is present, they are enfolded into a single fourfold" (171).

Earth, sky, divinities, and mortals are all individual entities; however, Heidegger continually notes that the gathering of the four components is necessary to constitute a thing. In "New Media and the Fourfold" Bay and Rickert use Heidegger's example of a bridge to demonstrates this. "It is a thing 'as the gathering of the fourfold,' which is to say, 'the bridge gathers to itself in its own way earth and sky, divinities and mortals'" (218). Take one of the fourfold's components away and you won't have a thing. In the same way, if you take away a third of the Trinity, you lose the conception of the Trinity that is promoted by Christian faiths. "The thing stays--gathers and unites--the fourfold. The thing things world. Each thing stays the fourfold into a happening of the simple onehood of the world" (178).

To further compare Heidegger's fourfold to the Trinity, I want to look at one specific part of "The Thing." Heidegger notes:

Earth and sky, divinities and mortals--being at one with one another of their own accord--belong together by way of the simpleness of the united fourfold. Each of the four mirrors in its own way the presence of the others. Each therewith reflects itself in its own way into its own, within the simpleness of the four. This mirroring does not portray a likeness. The mirroring, lightening each of the four, appropriates their own presencing into simple belonging to one another. Mirroring int his appropriate-lightening way, each of the four plays to each of the others. The appropriative mirroring sets each of the four free into its own, but it binds these free ones into the simplicity of their essential being toward one another (177).

If God the Father has the attribute of x, God the Spirit mirrors God the Father in demonstrating this same component. They're one in the same God and thus mirror the attributes of the other. The presence of God the Son is reliant upon the presence of the other two thirds of the Trinity. This creates the belonging among the Father, Son, and Spirit. In the same way, each part of the fourfold mirrors the other parts. They belong together much as the Father, Son, and Spirit do in Christian faith.

Then again, the Trinity is considered to be a mystery of the Christian religion. Faith is one of the necessary aspects of grasping three beings in one. So for me I guess this also begs the question, can this idea of faith be carried over to Heidegger's fourfold? How would Heidegger respond to this comparison?