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2. BETWEEN DEATH AND HOLINESS -- THE NATURE OF THE PHENOMENON IN THEINTERPRETATION OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND MAX SCHELERJaromir Brejdak“Der Tod birgt als der Schrein des Nichts das Wesende des Seins in sich.” 1I. IntroductionThis article is a reflection on the connection between death and holiness. According toHeidegger, holiness awaits in the being, as the being awaits in the nothingness -- my aim isto discover a connection between death, which is the hiding place of the nothingness, andholiness. At the same time it is a polemic within current opinions about the nihilistic silenceof Heidegger, who clearly stated:Denn das Verschwiegene ist das eigentlich Bewahrte. Und als das Bewahrteste dasNächste und Wirklichste. ... Was für den gemeinen Verstand wie ‘Atheismus’ aussiehtund so aussehen muss, ist im Grunde das Gegenteil. Und ebenso: dort, wo vom Nichtsgehandelt wird und vom Tod, ist das Sein, und nur dieses, am tiefsten gedacht,während jenem die angeblich allein in sich mit dem ‘Wirklichen’ befassen, sich imNichtigen herumtreiben. 2In this article I first discuss the radical forms of the phenomenological reduction (whichis necessary in order to see the phenomenon in its full dimension); then I try to show thatthere is a connection between a form of radical reduction on the one hand -- which istermed “death” -- and existence as such on the other hand -- which is defined as “presence.”All this, on the basis of the seventh paragraph of Sein und Zeit, where the phenomenologicaldifference (between that which appears and the appearance itself) was identifiedwith the ontological difference (the difference between Being (Sein) and entity (Seiendes)).I see the experience of presence -- preceded by death in the phenomenological meaning --as a fundamental religious experience, an experience of presence as a formal aspect of theexistence of things. It is accompanied by an act of worship, by the sacred. An act ofworship is therefore a fundamental act of religious experience. Holiness comes from theexperience of presence. This notion (briefly sketched out here) develops Heidegger’s andScheler’s thoughts, to a certain extent; it is also a clear reference to the work of MartinBuber, whose 1922 Frankfurt lectures were originally entitled Religion as the Presence(and later on I and Thou). 31Martin Heidegger, Vorträge und Aufsätze, 6th ed. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1990), 171.2Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, 6th ed. (Klett-Cotta: Stuttgart, 1998), 471.3Rivka Horwitz, Buber’s Way to “I and Thou”: The Development of Martin Buber’s Thought andHis “Religion as Presence” Lectures (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1988). I found this hintin Gerd Haeffner, In der Gegenwart leben. Auf der Spur eines Urphänomens (Berlin/Köln/Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,1996), 251-269.203