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In clear distantiation from his own “methodological atheism” of the 1920s, 65 theHeidegger of the 1930s gradually tries to develop a philosophical notion of God withouthaving recourse to the traditional concepts and schemata of natural theology. His readingof Hölderlin’s poetry suggests to him the idea of a “flight (or “fleeing”) of the gods”(Flucht der Götter) 66 and the possible manifestation of the “ultimate God” whose return,however, can at best be prepared for, but not brought about, by thought and poetry. 67 Onthe one hand, the conception of this “ultimate God” reveals a strongly eschatologicalcharacter; on the other hand, the dimension of certainty -- or even that of a more or lessgreat probability -- for this manifestation to take place, is completely ruled out byconceiving the coming of this God as a sudden and unforeseeable “event.” Despite theneed for the “future ones” (die Zukünftigen) 68 -- in the present historical situation of“distress” (Not) 69 and “poverty” (Armut) 70 of thought, the possible form of the divineis not a future ideal human reason, or even the thought of Being as “event” -- couldgradually come nearer. Even though, during the 1950s, Heidegger explicitly reintegrateshis notion of the divine into the context of the “world” as the finite yet all-encompassingframe for the life of mortals on earth, the temporality of the ‘ultimate God’s coming’remains detached from concrete historical time. The more Heidegger develops his notionof the divine, the more it seems to constitute a sui generis form of the “event,” withoutany necessary relation to the future history of thought and the empirical development ofmankind. Even by conceiving of Being itself in terms of “withdrawal” and “refusal,” the“thought of the other beginning” 71 cannot in itself pre-trace the historical place for the‘ultimate God’s appearance.’ Preparing for this possible ‘coming’ is mainly entrusted tothe poets, whose poems call the world and assign the mortals to their abode on earth. 72The future form of thought is part of a world whose foundation is in itself not a matterof constitutive thought but of poetry. Within the frame of this poetic foundation of theworld, philosophy is not only separate from the ideal of asymptotic infinity, but proceedsunder the sign of a double finitude: being dependent on the poetic foundation of language-- as far as its possibility of articulation is concerned -- it is committed to thinking ofhuman beings in terms of being essentially mortal and bound to the earthly dimension.In comparison with this radically kairological approach to the question of the divine,Husserl’s theo-teleological conception of occidental history is clearly more optimistic withregard to the possibilities of reason. There is no need for a rupture with respect to themetaphysical tradition of the past. On the contrary, what is at stake is the definitivecoming-to-light of the transcendental principle whose dynamic already underlies the pretranscendentalforms of European philosophy. Husserl’s view is profoundly marked by theidea of an asymptotic infinity, the essential mortality of animal monads 73 -- being nomore than the necessary stimulus to join the non-empirical, immortal life of transcendental65See Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Einführung in diephänomenologische Forschung, GA61, 2d ed. (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1994), 197; 199, and idem,Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, GA25, 3d ed. (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1994), 109-110.66See Martin Heidegger, Holzwege, 7th ed. (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1994), 269-272.67Ibid., 274-275.68See GA65, 395-401.69See ibid., 125.70See Martin Heidegger, “Brief über den ‘Humanismus’,” in GA9, 364.71See GA65, 171. Heidegger’s expression is spefifically “das Denken des anderen Anfangs.”72See Martin Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), 28-30; 204-208.73See Husserl, Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlaß, Dritter Teil(1929-1935), 172; 406, and idem, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentalePhänomenologie, Ergänzungsband. Texte aus dem Nachlaß, 338.234