Being at Stake

Identity and transcendence in Klaus Hemmerle’s “Theses for a Trinitarian ontology”

Abstract

In 1976 Klaus Hemmerle published “Theses for a Trinitarian ontology“ as a kind of manifesto for thought drawing on Christian faith. In this work various elements of the thinkers who had accompanied the author’s formation are given a first systematization. This paper intends to read a key moment of the Theses (§§ 22-23) in which the structure of games is presented as a structure of being, in order to highlight, firstly, the legacy of his master B. Welte, from which Hemmerle inherits the notion of ‘interest’, and secondly the consequences of a philosophy that starts with the verb, consequences that are only mentioned in the Theses and which call for further development. In this sense, the work will be read as a moment of arrival but also of passage towards Hemmerle’s more mature thought.