Abstract
Professor Fehér here argues for the strict connection between philosophy and theology in Heidegger’s thought, and more specifically, that it was with an eye to, and drawing upon, his previous understanding of religion and religious life, as well as of the relation between faith and theology, that Heidegger was to conceive of philosophy and its relation to human existence in Being and Time. Heidegger re-examined thereby the whole Western tradition of both philosophy and theology, subjecting their world-view and conceptuality to a severe and thorough-going criticism. Heidegger’s early work, then, elaborated the standards for ‘the destruction’ of both ‘Christian theology and Western philosophy.’ Heidegger’s thinking can therefore be characterized both as philosophy and theology in spite of, or following from, his devastating criticisms of both. Just as Heidegger asks everyone interested in philosophy to turn to the genuine subject matter of thought—namely, Being—so he invites all theologians at last to turn to the genuine subject matter of theology, faith. Professor Fehér makes this case by appealing both to salient biographical details (Heidegger’s early study of theology and existential investment in religious matters) as well as to Heidegger’s claims about Christian theology throughout his corpus.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Surely, theology was the discipline’, wrote Otto Pöggeler in the 1980s, ‘in which the impulses coming from Heidegger proved to have the most decisive effects.’ Otto Pöggeler, Heidegger und die hermeneutische Philosophie (Freiburg/München: Alber, 1983), p. 414.
- 2.
See Richard Schaeffler, Frömmigkeit des Denkens? Martin Heidegger und die katholische Theologie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978), p. x; Alfred Jäger, Gott. Nochmals Martin Heidegger (Tübingen: Mohr, 1978), p. 84. See also John D. Caputo, Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), p. 95: ‘Rahner, Lotz, and Coreth have all attempted to develop a transcendental Thomism which goes back not only to Kant but specifically to Being and Time … They have tried to root St Thomas’ notion of esse in an inherent dynamism of the intellect.’ Caputo called to mind that ‘[i]n a brief but quite illuminating study of Heidegger’s “existential philosophy”, written in 1940, Karl Rahner argues, in keeping with Heidegger, for the importance of taking up the question of Being from a transcendental standpoint’, the reason being that ‘an access to Being through the human subject must first be established.’ See further Caputo, ‘Heidegger and Theology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Charles Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 274, 279, 284.
- 3.
Unterwegs zur Sprache, 7th ed. (Pfullingen: Neske, 1982), p. 96. (Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe will be cited as GA followed by volume and page numbers, other works will be cited with full bibliographical data at their first occurrence. If there are references to both the original German text and the corresponding English translation, the German pagination and the English pagination are separated by a slash. For example, in ‘GA 24, 31/23’, the number before the slash indicates the German edition, the one after the slash the English edition. Other abbreviations: WS = Wintersemester; SS = Sommersemester.)
- 4.
See ‘Drei Briefe Martin Heideggers an Karl Löwith’, ed. Hartmut Tietjen, in Zur philosophischen Aktualität Heideggers, Dietrich Papenfuss and Otto Pöggeler, eds., vol. 2: Im Gespräch der Zeit (Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann, 1990), p. 29.
- 5.
As it turns out, Heidegger was registered as a participant in a course of Gottfried Hoberg’s on ‘Hermeneutik mit Geschichte der Exegese’ during the summer semester of 1910; see Heidegger-Jahrbuch, vol. 1: Heidegger und die Anfänge seines Denkens, eds. Alfred Denker, Hans-Helmuth Gander, Holger Zaborowski (Freiburg/München: Alber, 2004), p. 14.
- 6.
Joseph J. Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on Theology’, in Thinking About Being: Aspects of Heidegger’s Thought, eds. R. W. Shahan and J.N. Mohanty (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), pp. 85–108; here, p. 106.
- 7.
GA 60, p. 135: ‘... Destruktion der christlichen Theologie und der abendländischen Philosophie.’
- 8.
Ibid. Heidegger came to know Hegel and Schelling through Braig (see Zur Sache des Denkens, 2. unveränd. Aufl. [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1976], p. 82; GA 1, p. 57). On the importance of Braig and the Tübingen school of speculative theology for Heidegger, see Franco Volpi, ‘Alle origini della concezione heideggeriana dell’esssere. Il trattato Vom Sein di Carl Braig’, Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia 34, no. 2 (1980): pp. 183–194, esp. p. 188; as well as John D. Caputo, Heidegger and Aquinas: An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), pp. 45. Caputo in particular shows several important anticipations of subsequent Heideggerian positions—such as, e.g., the ontological difference—in Braig’s work. On the Catholic Tübingen School, see Thomas F. O’Meara O. P., Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism: Schelling and the Theologians (London and Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), esp. p. 138. For more secondary literature on Braig and the Tübingen School, see Caputo, Heidegger and Aquinas, pp. 58.
- 9.
H.-G. Gadamer, ‘Die Marburger Theologie’, in Gadamer, Neuere Philosophie. I. Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, vol. 3 of Gesammelte Werke (Tübingen: Mohr, 1987), pp. 197, 199.
- 10.
See GA 56–57, p. 59. For more on this point and on Heidegger’s philosophical development after World War I, see I. M. Fehér, ‘Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Lebensphilosophie: Heidegger’s Confrontation with Husserl, Dilthey, and Jaspers’, Reading Heidegger from the Start. Essays in His Earliest Thought, Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren, eds. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 73–89; Fehér, ‘Heidegger’s Postwar Turn: The Emergence of the Hermeneutic Viewpoint of His Philosophy and the Idea of “Destruktion” on the Way to Being and Time’, in Phenomenology and Beyond, Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, vol. 21, eds. John D. Caputo, L. Langsdorf, Philosophy Today 40, no. 1, Spring (1996): pp. 9–35.
- 11.
See GA 59, p. 91.
- 12.
See Adolf von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3 vols, 4th ed. [1909/10] (Reprographischer Nachdruck. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983), vol. 1, p. 20: ‘Das Dogma ist in seiner Conception und in seinem Ausbau ein Werk des griechischen Geistes auf dem Boden des Evangeliums.’ Heidegger refers to Harnack in GA 60, p. 72, claiming it is precisely the seemingly secondary problem of ‘expression’, of ‘religious explication’, that is of decisive importance, for the ‘explication’ goes hand in hand with the religious experience. This is much in line with Gadamer’s interpretation that theology has, for Heidegger, primarily to do with finding the adequate ‘word’, i.e., conceptuality, to express faith. Heidegger’s own subsequent formulation of what dogma is shows Harnack’s obvious influence. See GA 60, p. 112: ‘Das Dogma als abgelöster Lehrgehalt in objektiv-erkenntnismäßiger Abhebung kann niemals leitend für die christliche Religiosität gewesen sein, sondern umgekehrt, die Genesis des Dogmas ist nur verständlich aus dem Vollzug der christlichen Lebenserfahrung.’ See also Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, p. 258 (‘So war die Entwicklung dieses Gehaltes im Dogma zugleich seine Veräußerlichung’), p. 274 (‘… hat sich die Entwicklung der Formeln, welche die religiöse Erfahrung in einer Verknüpfung von Vorstellungen abgrenzen und gegen andere Formeln innerhalb derselben Religion wie gegen andere Religionen rechtfertigen sollten, nicht folgerecht aus der im Christentum gegebenen Selbstgewißheit innerer Erfahrung vollzogen.’) The thesis of the unhappy connection of Christianity with Greek philosophy was far from being unknown to the previous generation of liberal theology, e.g., to Ritschl; on this point, see Wolfhart Pannenberg, Problemgeschichte der neueren evangelischen Theologie in Deutschland. Von Schleiermacher bis zu Barth und Tillich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1997), p. 123. As to Overbeck, Heidegger refers to him in the Preface to his Phenomenology and Theology.
- 13.
See GA 59, p. 91.
- 14.
GA 60, p. 310: ‘Scharf zu trennen: das Problem der Theologie und das der Religiosität.’ And he adds significantly: ‘Die Theologie hat bis jetzt keine originäre theoretische Grundhaltung der Ursprünglichkeit des Gegenstandes entsprechend gefunden.’
- 15.
GA 9, p. 55. The following numbers in parentheses in the body of the text refer to this edition (GA 9, pp. 45–77). For a detailed reconstruction of this lecture, see Kockelmans, ‘Heidegger on Theology’, in Thinking About Being: Aspects of Heidegger’s Thought, pp. 85–108.
- 16.
See also Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie im Denken Martin Heideggers (Freiburg—München: Alber, 1974), p. 36: ‘… religion requires a way of treatment adequate to its logos.’
- 17.
Heidegger, ‘Phenomenology and Theology’, trans. James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo, in Heidegger, Pathways, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
- 18.
See GA 60, p. 336: ‘Die Analyse, d. h. die Hermeneutik, arbeitet im historischen Ich.’ ‘... in allem ist die spezifische Sinnbestimmtheit herauszuhören.’
- 19.
GA 60, p. 15 (italics added); see GA 8, p. 124.
- 20.
Martin Heidegger, Identity and Difference, trans. with an introduction by Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 72.
- 21.
John D. Caputo, ‘Heidegger and Theology’, p. 278.
- 22.
See, e.g., GA 61, p. 245: ‘Gegenbewegung gegen die Verfallstendenz des Lebens’. See further GA 61, p. 108; SZ, §27, p. 128: ‘Tendenz zum Leichtnehmen und Leichtmachen’; GA 62, p. 349: ‘Das faktische Leben hat den Seinscharakter, daß es an sich selbst schwer trägt. Die untrüglichste Bekundung davon ist die Tendenz des faktischen Lebens zum Sichsleichtmachen. In diesem an sich selbst schwer Tragen ist das Leben dem Grundsinne seines Seins nach, nicht im Sinne einer zufälligen Eigenschaft, schwierig. Wenn es eigentlich ist, was es ist, in diesem Schwer- und Schwierigsein, dann wird die genuin angemessene Zugangsweise zu ihm und die Verwahrungsweise seiner nur in einem Schwermachen bestehen können.’ See also GA 3, p. 291; Einführung in die Metaphysik (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1966), p. 9: ‘Die Philosophie macht ihrem Wesen nach die Dinge nie leichter, sondern nur schwerer … Erschwerung des geschichtlichen Daseins … ist … der echte Leistungssinn der Philosophie. Erschwerung gibt den Dingen, dem Seienden, das Gewicht zurück (das Sein).’ With regard to theology, see GA 60, pp. 107, 121.
Bibliography
Texts of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann) are referenced in the above essay according to the volume number. Listed below are the respective titles, editors, and dates of publication for each referenced volume number.
GA 1: Frühe Schriften. Edited by F.-W. von Herrmann. 1978.
GA 3: Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. Edited by F.-W. von Herrmann. 5th ed. 1991.
GA 9: Wegmarken. Edited by F.-W. von Herrmann. 2004.
GA 20: Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs. SS 1925. Edited by Petra Jaeger. 1979. /History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Translated by Theodore Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1985.
GA 56/57: Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie. Kriegsnotsemester 1919 und SS 1919. Edited by Bernd Heimbüchel. 1999.
GA 59: Phänomenologie der Anschauung und des Ausdrucks. Theorie der philosophischen Begriffsbildung. SS 1920. Edited by Claudius Strube. 2007.
GA 60: Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens. Edited by Matthias Jung, Thomas Regehly, and Claudius Strube. 1995.
GA 61: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung. WS 1921/22. Edited by W. Bröcker and K. Bröcker-Oltmanns. 1985.
GA 62: Phänomenologische Interpretation ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zu Ontologie und Logik. Edited by Günther Neumann. 2005.
Other Abbreviations
SZ = Sein und Zeit. 15th ed. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1979. /BT = Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962).
Further Works
Caputo, John D. 1982. Heidegger and Aquinas. An Essay on Overcoming Metaphysics. New York: Fordham University Press.
Denker, Alfred, Hans-Helmuth Gander, and Holger Zaborowski, eds. 2004. Heidegger-Jahrbuch, vol. 1: Heidegger und die Anfänge seines Denkens. Freiburg/München: Alber.
Fehér, István M. 1996. ‘Heidegger’s Postwar Turn: The Emergence of the Hermeneutic Viewpoint of His Philosophy and the Idea of “Destruktion” on the Way to Being and Time.’ In Phenomenology and Beyond, ed. John D and Lenore Langsdorf. Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, vol. 21, 9–35. Appeared as Philosophy Today 40(1), Spring.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1987. Neuere Philosophie I. Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger. Vol. 3 of Gesammelte Werke. Tübingen: Mohr.
Gethmann-Siefert, Annemarie. 1974. Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie im Denken Martin Heideggers. Freiburg/München: Alber.
Guignon, Charles, ed. 1993. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 1969. Identity and Difference. Trans. and with an Introduction by Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper & Row.
———. 1976. Zur Sache des Denkens. 2. unveränderte Auflage. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
———. 1982. Unterwegs zur Sprache. 7th ed. Pfullingen: Neske.
———. 1998. Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jäger, Alfred. 1978. Gott. Nochmals Martin Heidegger. Tübingen: Mohr.
Kisiel, Theodore, and John van Buren, eds. 1994. Reading Heidegger from the Start. Essays in His Earliest Thought. Albany/New York: State University of New York Press.
O’Meara, Thomas F.O.P. 1982. Romantic Idealism and Roman Catholicism. Schelling and the Theologians. London/Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Pannenberg, Wolfhart. 1997. Problemgeschichte der neueren evangelischen Theologie in Deutschland. Von Schleiermacher bis zu Barth und Tillich. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Papenfuss, Dietrich, and Otto Pöggeler, eds. 1990. Zur philosophischen Aktualität Heideggers. vol. 2: Im Gespräch der Zeit. Frankfurt—Main: Klostermann.
Pöggeler, Otto. 1983. Heidegger und die hermeneutische Philosophie. Freiburg/München: Alber.
Schaeffler, Richard. 1978. Frömmigkeit des Denkens? Martin Heidegger und die katholische Theologie. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Shahan, R.W., and J.N. Mohanty, eds. 1984. Thinking About Being: Aspects of Heidegger’s Thought. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Volpi, Franco. 1980. Alle origini della concezione heideggeriana dell’esssere. Il trattato Vom Sein di Carl Braig. Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia 34 (2): 183–194.
von Harnack, Adolf. 1983. Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3 vols, 4th ed. [1909/10]. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
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Fehér, I.M. (2019). Religion, Theology, and Philosophy in Heidegger’s Thought. In: Mezei, B., Vale, M. (eds) Philosophies of Christianity. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22632-9_6
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