The paper offers an introduction to the project on which I am working at the Max Weber Centre, namely, the second part of a three-part work on a philosophy of Christian Life. This focusses on the question of language and, in particular, the phenomenon of calling. Whereas the first part of the philosophy of Christian Life (phenomenology of the devout life) looked at the attraction to devotion without specific regard to its linguistic character, the second part begins by reflecting specifically on 'the call' as occurring in language. Heidegger is used to clarify the dynamics of calling, although his own methodological atheism makes any idea of a divine calling impossible. Although both his analysis of the call of conscience (in Being and Time) or the poetic calling (in his writings on Hölderlin) hint at a religious pathos, this is clearly in a different sense from that of monotheistic revelation. Contemporary with Heidegger, a sequence of Russian philosophers, some also influenced by Husserl and all by German Idealism, developed a philosophy of language based on the primacy of the name. These thinkers also reflect a religious practice of invoking the divine name (hesychasm) strongly represented in Russian religious life at that time. Their work thus lends itself to an analysis of calling. Thus, the paper has three mani foci: (1) The transition from 'attraction' to calling, (2) the Heideggerian account of calling; and (3) the analysis of the name in the work of Pavel Florensky, the most explicitly theological of the Russian thinkers in question. As this is a report on work in progress, the further development of this theme through A. Losev, G. Shpet, and M. M. Bakhtin is postponed for later consideration.
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