| Summary: | <p>The aim of this thesis is to explore the ethical dimensions of both Barth’s and Heidegger’s works, and to present them as the unifying element of their diverse publications. This ethical dimension can be best described as their concern that human beings conceal ultimate reality by way of their existence, and thus as the imperative to exist in a way that allows reality to reveal itself, unhindered by the projections of human worldviews.</p>
<p>For Barth, the proper way of existence, through which we disclose our present situation under God’s Lordship, consists in prayer. Yet prayer involves, for Barth, both anticipation and remembrance of the history of the covenant. The exposition of the meaning of prayer therefore leads to a consideration of the history of the covenant, according to its biblical witnesses. The thesis therefore explores Barth’s exegetical interpretation of the two main perspectives of the history of the covenant in the New Testament, and reconstructs Barth’s understanding of the covenant-history as the hermeneutical framework of the disclosure of our present situation under the Lordship of God. Next follows the exposition of our concrete ethical obligations within the hermeneutical framework of the covenant-history. This exposition proceeds via a comparative study of Barth’s Minster ethics-lectures and his Church Dogmatics. Given that, for Barth, our concrete ethical obligations involve allowing ourselves to be challenged by a different perspective of reality, this thesis introduces Heidegger as a dialogue partner. The presented reading of Heidegger’s major works and lecture-circles focuses on his understanding of the interrelation between human existence and the self-manifestation of being as the final paradigm of meaning and horizon of this existence.</p>
<p>The thesis concludes with a dialogue between Barth and Heidegger, which aims to create the space for a new self manifestation of reality through the experience of a conflict between different perspectives of reality, and to translate Heidegger’s perspective of reality into Barth’s, in order to reconstruct Barth’s perspective in a process in which reality can reveal itself anew.</p>
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