Knowledge, Science, Religion

If science can be subjected to the same critique to which it subjected religion while emancipating philosophy from the threat of being reduced to a system of belief, then, illusion can be imputed to science and philosophy can claim for itself the capacity to counter, as knowledge, the deceptive influence of science. Characterizing philosophy as an alternative to metaphysics implies, in this guise, that neither religion nor science can take up the critical function of philosophy. For critique should refer to reality and contribute to designing different ways of linking human life to the quest for meaning. The reconstruction of Lasks and Simmels philosophies thus alerts us to the fact that the contemporary development of philosophy from Heidegger arises from an uncritical adoption of the traditional philosophical and scientific notion of the basic contradiction of man and world. In so doing, this work facilitates another way of understanding the present development of philosophy from Heideggers thought onward; an understanding that, in a world riddled by Heidegger, provides a basis for the possibility of looking into some central philosophical debates in a new light.