Piety?

[odysseus]

Heidegger said that questioning is the piety of thought. I thought this could be interpreted in a number of ways, and that one need not be confined to whatever Heidegger had in mind. In my mind, somewhat paradoxically, it raises the notion of piety to a level of distinction in examining the world before us, while all intelligent thought seems bent on abandoning it altogether, yet it preserves what the term has achieved in religious history. Piety is not a vacuous term at all, and it should not be dismissed just because we find popular religions so naive and riddled with errors. It comes to us with a certain connotative value that survives religious critique. Heidegger invites us by using this term to discover, in this novel concatenation, something in the presence of the world: questioning as a disruption of our common affairs to move beyond. Questioning is the essence of freedom, I would argue, and freedom is always freedom from. I suggest philosophical questioning is a move of freedom to beyond language itself, or better, beyond the restrictions of language.

It is an extraordinary thought, what Heidegger put out there. It brings piety into thought, though it must be made clear, I am taking this idea and allowing it its independence of Heidegger or anyone else. Authorial intentions are not binding as long as we can question what something really means.

[Walker]

The proper question is half the answer.

Since the OP doesn’t specify, then in the spirit and intent of the OP, who gets questioned?

Oneself, or another?

[fooloso4]

I do not recall having read this statement in context so my response will be tentative.

I am reminded first of Socrates and the accusation of impiety that stems from his questioning.

If questioning is the piety of thought then we are led to ask what piety is. Since Heidegger typically looked at what language tells us, what is the etymology of the term? It is from the Latin pietatem:

… dutiful conduct, sense of duty; religiousness, piety; loyalty, patriotism; faithfulness to natural ties

This seems to point to obedience rather than questioning. Is to question in some way to be obedient to thought? Is it what thought demands? Or is it that thought is in some way obedient to questioning? Is it a matter of interrogating thoughts or is interrogating thought’s faithful way? Must it be one or the other? Inquiry both leads and follows. It looks ahead to what has not yet been thought and behind at what has already been thought. Hence Heidegger’s interest in time and history.

In Talmudic practice questioning is fundamental actions of Rabbinic piety. It challenges what is said, but is not thereby a rejection of what is said. It is the road to understanding.

Questioning can be a way opening up. In this sense it is the opposite of deciding, defining, or concluding. This seems to accord with Heidegger’s notion of clearing, of allowing to come to presence in thought.

[Veritas Aequitas]

• The piety of thinking:
  Essays (Studies in phenomenology and existential philosophy)
  -by Martin Heidegger
  https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Studies ... 0253344980

I gathered the main theme of Heidegger's philosophy is the tragic of the wrong path in the understanding of "What is Being" by the traditional philosophers. Thus Heidegger was advocating what is deem as philosophy-proper as the serious rigorous [piety] questioning of past philosophies of Being.
I agree Heidegger did put in an exceptional effort and piety in his questioning of the thoughts of past philosophers.

What counts is not the question and piety of thought, but whether what Heidegger has achieved with his questioning the past philosophy re Being.

On the side, note Russell on the Value of Philosophy;

Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy;
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves;

[odysseus]

fooloso4
This seems to point to obedience rather than questioning. Is to question in some way to be obedient to thought? Is it what thought demands? Or is it that thought is in some way obedient to questioning? Is it a matter of interrogating thoughts or is interrogating thought’s faithful way? Must it be one or the other? Inquiry both leads and follows. It looks ahead to what has not yet been thought and behind at what has already been thought. Hence Heidegger’s interest in time and history.

This is from A Question Concerning Technology, I think. I have this but I have to read it.
Since Heidegger does, as you say, look to the time structure of human dasein, I would say that questioning, inquiry, is where presence is realized, for the question interrupts thought; questioning is where possibilities, which I think Heidegger puts human freedom in the midst of, are made. Sartre would call questioning the presence of pour soi, the intrusion of our nothingness into the world. Heidegger cared little for Sartre I have read, but it does seem that if questioning were ontologically conceived, it would be a kind of nothingness, where true freedom begins, in the present there where desain is set. Questioning is a terminal at which dogmatic singularity ends and possibilities are first presented. I think Heidegger would say questioning is the means to authenticity, for what can stop the rush of recalled events(das man) making a claim on the future if not this moment where something is second guessed and not allowed passage and alternatives "present" themselves? Is this not what his devotion to truth as alethea, unconcealing, lies? For truth is realized out of possibilities that present themselves when one stops, then chooses. Thought seeks consummation, completion; it seeks its home. I wonder, putting Heidegger aside for a moment, if religious piety has a genuine place here, not the obedience of commandment, but the search achieved in freedom that manifests as questioning for the release from doubt.

Questioning can be a way opening up. In this sense it is the opposite of deciding, defining, or concluding. This seems to accord with Heidegger’s notion of clearing, of allowing to come to presence in thought.

Yes. A way, or THE way. It is a breach, not an obedience; but as you suggest, it is perhaps this very breach that truly is the way to God, and is therefore what true obedience is.

[fooloso4]

Odysseus:

This is from A Question Concerning Technology, I think.

Yes, you are right, it is the last line.

In order to attempt to get at what this means I am going to some extent ignore the question of technology except as it relates to techne and poiesis

.

In the opening paragraph he says:

Questioning builds a way … The way is a way of thinking.

Questioning is a way of thinking, apparently, there are others.

Techne belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis; it is something poietic … From earliest times until Plato the word techne is linked with the word episteme. Both words are names for knowing in the widest sense. They mean to be entirely at home in something, to understand and be expert in it. Such knowing provides an opening up. As an opening up it is a revealing … Techne is a mode of aletheuein. It reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie here before us, whatever can look and turn out now one way and now another.

Poiesis means to make. The poets are makers. Contrary to much of the history of philosophy Heidegger does not oppose philosophy to poetry. They are both ways to bring forth, to open, to reveal. They are both modes of alethea, truth.

… When man, in his way, from within unconcealment reveals that which presences, he merely responds to the call of unconcealment …

Again we ask: Does this revealing happen somewhere beyond all human doing? No. But; neither does it happen exclusively in man, or decisively through man.

The questioning that unconceals is not to be thought of as a wholely human activity.

History is neither simply the object of written chronicle nor simply the fulfillment of human activity. That activity first becomes history as something destined.

Always the unconcealment of that which is goes upon a way of revealing. Always the destining of revealing holds complete sway over man. But that destining is never a fate that compels. For man becomes truly free only insofar as he belongs to the realm of destining and so becomes one who listens and hears [Hörender], and not one who is simply constrained to obey [Höriger].

Heidegger makes use of religious language - destining, fate, call, listen and hear. One must listen to hear the call. One is free to hearken to the call, and enter the realm of destining.

“To save” is to fetch something home into its essence, in order to bring the essence for the first time into its genuine appearing.

The religious connotation of saving is unmistakable. In one sense it is to save the essence, to allow the 'what it is', the quidditas, to appear as it is. But as we saw above ‘home’ does not mean simply the place of something but our understanding of and dwelling in of what is brought home. To save is connected to being saved.

Every destining of revealing comes to pass from out of a granting and as such a granting. For it is granting that first conveys to man that share in revealing which the coming-to-pass of revealing needs. As the one so needed and used, man is given to belong to the coming-to-pass of truth. The granting that sends in one way or another into revealing is as such the saving power. For the saving power lets man see and enter into the highest dignity of his essence. This dignity lies in keeping watch over the unconcealment – and with it, from the first, the concealment – of all coming to presence on this earth.

The granting is what he calls ‘es gibt’, which means ‘there is’ but Heidegger points to the literal meaning - it gives. To grant is to give. But man plays an essential part in this. It is not simply what is given to man. It is what man brings to presence, into unconcealment, into truth.

The closer we come to the danger, the more brightly do the ways into the saving power begin to shine and the more questioning we become. For questioning is the piety of thought.

It is through questioning that we come to know what technology is, its essence. Saving power plays on different senses of saving and power. It is only when we are able to think our way through technology in the right way, that is, through questioning, that technology is saved it in the sense of revealing it as what it is that we can save ourselves.

[odysseus]

fooloso4
Questioning is a way of thinking, apparently, there are others.

But it is a way that opens rather than closes. Statements are closed, fixed. Questioning undoes this and expands truth so more is revealed or"unconcealed". This opening is an extraordinary event and I think it is why Heidegger uses quasi religious terminology in his exposition of the essence of technology: in the opening there is freedom and it is here that metaphysics is born. Kant warned of dialectical fallacies, but this misses the point, and the point is about the mystery of openess. He writes:
the more questioningly we ponder the essence of technology, the more mysterious the essence of art becomes
Art is what is missing from technology in the modern misapprehension of the word which is fixed on a simple means to end thinking. The mystery of questioning is in the openings, the "breaches" of fixed thought. And: to stand face to face with being in a state of inquiry is, one might say, the very essence of religious wonder. I think Heidegger has some respect for this, hence the choice of such terms.

Techne belongs to bringing-forth, to poiesis; it is something poietic … From earliest times until Plato the word techne is linked with the word episteme. Both words are names for knowing in the widest sense. They mean to be entirely at home in something, to understand and be expert in it. Such knowing provides an opening up. As an opening up it is a revealing … Techne is a mode of aletheuein. It reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does not yet lie here before us, whatever can look and turn out now one way and now another.
Poiesis means to make. The poets are makers. Contrary to much of the history of philosophy Heidegger does not oppose philosophy to poetry. They are both ways to bring forth, to open, to reveal. They are both modes of alethea, truth.

For art is part of the essence of technology, it is a making, but is generally thought of in a "sheer aesthetic-mindedness" with a failure to acknowledge the technological aspect. I think Heidegger is saying that art IS technology, and tehcnology IS art, that is, both are such that they cannot be conceived in their essences without the other. Heidegger writes this extraordinary account:
In Greece, at the outset of the destining of the West, the arts soared to the
supreme height of the revealing granted them. They brought the presence,
[Gegenwart] of the gods, brought the dialogue of divine and human destinings, to
radiance. And art was simply called techne ¯. It was a single, manifold revealing. It
was pious, promos, i.e., yielding to the holding-sway and the safekeeping of truth.
The arts were not derived from the artistic. Art works were not enjoyed aesthetically. Art was not a sector of cultural activity.

The Greeks did not, it seems, draw the distinction that abides today and it is a failing of modern culture not to see they are essentially bound to one another. He uses Aristotle's fourfold causality to show how purpose, material and form (note how form is by many standards today, by Kant's Schelling's--form-in-reason, the essence of art, not technology) must be considered along with causa efficiens.

Heidegger makes use of religious language - destining, fate, call, listen and hear. One must listen to hear the call. One is free to hearken to the call, and enter the realm of destining.

Such a surprise at first. But I suspect Heidegger, while not a disciple of popular religion by any means, is not insensitive to the "truth" of human religious terms. These are revelations of disclosure, too; or, these are "presence" in our history of disclosure and are not to be ignored. "Destining" is an intersting example. he writes that the "unconcealment of that which is goes upon a way of revealing. Always the destining of revealing holds complete sway over man." Truth presents a trajectory of possibilities. As you say, our job is to "listen". In this, there is a kind of fate to technology. One way to put what he is doing is to say that he enriches technology as a concept by humanizing it, or, to borrow a term from B & T, regionalizes it. Terms have their meanings in regions of contexts that are brought to proximity of conscious awareness when situations arise. Heidegger obviously wants to liberate the term 'technology' from modern limitations that divest it of its full regional possibilities; I mean, when we think iof technology, we think of much more than Kantian apodicticity of cause and effect. It is really a broader, fuller meaning, and qualifiedly religious, as least in the way religious meaning is embedded in certain language.

Every destining of revealing comes to pass from out of a granting and as such a granting. For it is granting that first conveys to man that share in revealing which the coming-to-pass of revealing needs. As the one so needed and used, man is given to belong to the coming-to-pass of truth. The granting that sends in one way or another into revealing is as such the saving power. For the saving power lets man see and enter into the highest dignity of his essence. This dignity lies in keeping watch over the unconcealment – and with it, from the first, the concealment – of all coming to presence on this earth.
The granting is what he calls ‘es gibt’, which means ‘there is’ but Heidegger points to the literal meaning - it gives. To grant is to give. But man plays an essential part in this. It is not simply what is given to man. It is what man brings to presence, into unconcealment, into truth.

But why does Heidegger choose this language, this giving/granting/saving power, and the rest? Clearly, he thinks that such terms belong to the truth of technology's essence, and this essence is not a simple matter. Meanings for Heidegger are equiprimordial; there is no singular essence for terms. This is Heidegger's tribute to religion, for though not a religious man in theory, he does see that our dasein is mysteriously "religious". This is intrinsic to Time and our becoming.

[Nick_A]

Ody

Heidegger said that questioning is the piety of thought. I thought this could be interpreted in a number of ways, and that one need not be confined to whatever Heidegger had in mind.

You've introduced many deep thoughts in this thread I hope to respond to later when I have more time. But for now, do you sense that Simone Weil's appreciation for atheism corresponds with the "piety of thought?"

Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 417

That is why St. John of the Cross calls faith a night. With those who have received a Christian education, the lower parts of the soul become attached to these mysteries when they have no right at all to do so. That is why such people need a purification of which St. John of the Cross describes the stages. Atheism and incredulity constitute an equivalent of such a purification.
- Simone Weil, Faiths of Meditation; Contemplation of the divine
the Simone Weil Reader, edited by George A. Panichas (David McKay Co. NY 1977) p 418

The last sentence she wrote in the notebook found after her death was: "The most important part of education--to teach the meaning of to know."
The whole of Simone Weil is contained in these few words.
- Biographical Note, Simone Weil, Waiting for God (GP Putnam's Sons 1951, Harper 1975) p xi

Simone Weil has observed: "There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God."
- William Robert Miller (ed.), The New Christianity (New York: Delacorte Press 1967) p 267; in Paul Schilling,
God in an age of atheism (Abingdon: Nashville 1969) p 17

Would you agree that questions can be either an expression of justifying blind denial or the need for truth beyond the limitations of the dialectic and self deception?