Heidegger on Christianity and divinity: a chronological compendium

Bret W. Davis

Heidegger’s relation to Christianity and his ideas about divinity are among the most difficult – and, for many, among the most thought-provoking-issues that his readers confront. In fact, these were among the most difficult issues Heidegger personally grappled with, calling “the struggle with the faith of my birth” one of “the two great thorns in my flesh” (the other being his political misadventure; see Ott 1993: 37). This struggle was an ongoing one: over the course of his life Heidegger’s thinking underwent significant developments and a number of shifts regarding Christianity, and the Gottesfrage (question of God) can be seen as a periodically resurfacing accompaniment to the Seinsfrage (question of being) along his entire path of thought.

In compiling this compendium my aim was to glean from the pages of Heidegger’s many texts a chronologically ordered selection of passages that exemplify the different phases in the development of Heidegger’s thinking about Christianity and divinity. In rough outline, those phases can be described as follows:

1. Up until around 1917 Heidegger exhibits a deep personal faith in Catholicism and a philosophical commitment to Aristotelian–Thomistic scholasticism, which he seeks to defend against “modernism” but also to develop in light of modern logic and medieval mysticism.

2. Between 1917 and 1919 Heidegger undergoes a religious–philosophical conversion from “the system of Catholicism” to a non-dogmatic Protestantism or “free Christianity”. Inspired by Paul, Augustine, Luther and Kierkegaard, in 1920–21 he seeks to employ phenomenology to recover an experiential understanding of “primal Christianity”.

3. Around 1922 Heidegger begins to strictly separate theology and philosophy (phenomenology), and to identify himself increasingly with the latter. By 1927 he comes to deride the idea of a “Christian philosophy” as a “square circle”.

4. Beginning rather abruptly in 1934 with his first lecture course on Hölderlin’s poetry, Heidegger’s thought undergoes a shift away from both Christianity and the purported “atheism of philosophy” toward a radical rethinking of the divine. Inspired by the notions of divinity he finds in early Greek thought and above all in Hölderlin’s poetic word, Heidegger tends to speak now of der Gott (the god) or die Götter (the gods) rather than the Creator named Gott (God, without an article) in the Abrahamic monotheistic traditions.¹ This final phase in Heidegger’s thinking of divinity continues to develop through the inherently enigmatic notion of “the last god” articulated in Contributions to Philosophy (1936–8) to his later discussions of “the holy” (das Heilige), “the godhead” or “godhood” (die Gottheit) and “the divinities” (die Göttlichen) of the fourfold (see Chapters 15 and 16). From the middle of the 1930s to the end of his life, these notions of divinity play a crucial – if not always readily apparent – role in Heidegger’s thought.

In addition to gathering a thematically focused series of texts, this compendium is also intended to allow readers to conclude their preliminary study (or review) of Heidegger’s key concepts with a chronologically comprehensive sampling of Heidegger’s own writings, covering a time period extending from his student years up to the final years of his life. (It may be helpful for readers to cross-reference this compendium with the Chronology of Heidegger’s Life that follows it.)

1911 Academic lectures on religion instill contemporary ideas: conceived with wide-ranging scope, presented in finely crafted speech, the basic truths of Christianity in their eternal greatness appear before the soul of the Catholic student, arouse his enthusiasm, remind him “what we have” – more precisely put, what the individual potentially has. The actual self-possession of this treasure of truths does indeed postulate an undaunting, incessant self-persistence, for which merely listening to lectures can never be a substitute. The young mind searches, driven by an inner, magical urge for truth, to secure for itself the basic outlines of the necessary pre-knowledge. One can then proceed to take up and think through on one’s own the “principal problems of worldviews.” One only possesses truth in a genuine sense when one has made it one’s own in this way.

(BH 15)

From one of Heidegger’s first publications as a university student, “On a Philosophical Orientation for Academics”, which appeared in the anti-modernist Catholic journal Der Akademiker just before Heidegger left the seminary and redirected the focus of his studies from theology to philosophy. Theodore Kisiel and Thomas Sheehan comment that the

young Heidegger’s strong commitment to Aristotelian-Thomistic scholasticism nevertheless does not lead him to regard it as a closed and complete textbook system of “doctrinal statements.” It is rather an ongoing “struggle after truth” open to advances in more recent philosophy, as in modern logic, which Heidegger will apply to his two still scholastic dissertations.

(BH 12)

1915 We moderns have in many ways lost sight of the simple, we are fascinated by the complicated, the questionable; thus this dreadful fear of principles, which as such are always the simplest; thus the total indisposition toward the grand simplicity and quiet greatness of the Christian worldview and Catholic belief. If we do not want to be conquered by the victory in the future, we must in principle extricate ourselves from the lack of principles in the most elementary questions of life.

(BH 50)

From a newspaper article, “The War-Triduum in Messkirch”, on the occasion of a three-day meditation on the meaning of the war called for by the German bishops.

1916 If we meditate [sich besinnen] on the deeper essence of philosophy in its connection with worldview, the conception of the Christian philosophy in the Middle Ages as a Scholasticism standing in opposition to the then-prevalent mysticism must be revealed as fundamentally deficient. For the medieval worldview, Scholasticism and mysticism belong essentially together. … Philosophy as a rationalistic structure, detached from life, is powerless; mysticism as irrational experience is aimless.

(BH 85; see also SUP 68)

From the Conclusion to the published version of Heidegger’s postdoctoral dissertation, The Doctrine of Categories and Meaning in Duns Scotus.

1917 And dogmatic and casuistic pseudo-philosophies, which pose as philosophies of a particular system of religion (for example, Catholicism) and presumably stand closest to religion and the religious, are the least capable of promoting the vitality of the problem. … [The] inherent worth of the religion, its palpable sphere of meaning, must first be experienced through a tangled, nonorganic, dogmatic hedgerow of propositions and proofs which are theoretically wholly unclarified, which as canonical statute with police power in the end serves to overpower and oppress the subject and to encumber it in darkness. In the end, the system totally excludes an original and genuine experience of religious value. … [S]cholasticism, within the totality of the medieval Christian lifeworld, severely jeopardized the immediacy of religious life and forgot religion for theology and dogmas. [In a situation like this,] an experience like that of mysticism is to be understood as an elementary countermovement.

From an unpublished note, quoted in Kisiel (1993: 73–4). Theodore Kisiel estimates that this note was written in early 1917, that is, during the period that he characterizes as “that obscure and virtually unknown Interregnum (1917–19) in Heidegger’s development from which he emerges as a ‘protestant apostate’” (ibid.: 70).

1917 The point is “to get down into the innermost holiness of life,” where the original relationship of feeling and intuition is to be found. “But I must refer you to yourselves, to the grasp of a living moment. You must understand, likewise, for your consciousness to, as it were, eavesdrop on, or at least to reconstitute, this state out of the living moment for yourselves.” … The point is to uncover an original region of life and performance of consciousness (or feeling), in which religion alone realizes itself as a certain form of experience. … Universe – fullness of reality – is uninterrupted flows and operations; all individuals as parts of the whole. Religion is the specifically religiously intentional, emotional reference of each content of experience to an infinite whole as fundamental meaning. Devotion: original streaming in of fullness, without restraint, letting oneself be excited. To lead back the respective experience into the inner unity of life. Religious life is the constant renewal of this procedure. …History in its most authentic sense is the highest object of religion, religion begins and ends in it. Humanity is to be seen as a living community of individuals in which isolated experience is to be lost. … Do all with religion and not from religion. Religion should accompany, like holy music, all the doings of life.

(PRL 243–4 = GA 60: 321–2; see also BH 86–91)

From notes for a talk, “On Schleiermacher’s Second Speech, ‘On the Essence of Religion’”. The quotations in Heidegger’s notes are from Schleiermacher’s text.

1918 My husband has lost his religious faith, and I have failed to find mine. His faith was undermined by doubts even when we got married [in 1917]. But I myself insisted on a Catholic wedding, and hoped with his help to find faith. We have spent a lot of time reading, talking, thinking and praying together, and the result is that we have both ended up thinking along Protestant lines, i.e. with no fixed dogmatic ties, believing in a personal God, praying to Him in the spirit of Christ, but outside any Protestant or Catholic orthodoxy.

(Attributed to Elfride Heidegger, quoted in Ott 1993: 109)

From the diary of Father Engelbert Krebs (a theologian friend who performed the Catholic ceremony of Heidegger’s wedding), recording the gist of what was said to him in a conversation with Heidegger’s wife, Elfride.

1918–19 Sharply divorce the problem of theology and that of religiosity. In theology one must take care to note its constant dependency on philosophy and on the situation of the respective theoretical consciousness in general. Theology has heretofore found no original theoretical basic posture that corresponds to the originality of its object…Protestant faith and Catholic faith are fundamentally different. Noetically and noematically separated experiences. In Luther an original form of religiosity – one that is also not found in the mystics – breaks out. … The “holding-to-be-true” of Catholic faith is founded entirely otherwise than the fiducia of the reformers…

…The immediacy of religious experience, the uncontained vivacity of devotion to the holy, godly, does not issue forth the form from out of itself and the contemplation of the genuine performance-character; rather, it emerges as the culmination of a particular historically determined epistemological doctrine and psychology … One must get clear about this connection in order to really understand Eckhart’s mysticism as such

… Not the not-yet-determinable and not-yet-determined – rather, that which is essentially without determination in general is the primordial object, the absolute. … Corresponding to the fundamental principle that the same is recognized only through the same – the same becomes object only for the same – the theory of the subject, the soul develops; here also the process of undoing the multiplicity, of the rejection of the individual forces in their individuality and determinate directionality, the return to their ground, origin, and their root. … Elimination of change, multiplicity, time. Absoluteness of object and subject in the sense of radical unity and as such unity both: I am it, and it is I. From this the namelessness of God and ground of the soul. … Eckhart’s “fundamental conception” – “you can only know what you are,” becomes conceivable only from out of specific concepts of cognition. Here cognition determines subject and object.

(PRL 235–6, 239, 240 = GA 60: 310, 315, 316)

From Heidegger’s notes for a planned – but not given – lecture course on The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism.

1919 Epistemological insights extending to a theory of historical knowledge have made the system of Catholicism problematic and unacceptable to me, but not Christianity and metaphysics – these, though, in a new sense. … My investigations in the phenomenology of religion, which will draw heavily on the Middle Ages, should show beyond a doubt that in transforming my basic philosophical position I have not been driven to replacing objective appreciative judgment of and deep respect for the life-world of Catholicism with the angry and coarse polemics of an apostate. …I believe that I have the inner calling to philosophy and, through my research and teaching, to do what stands in my power for the sake of the eternal vocation of the inner man, and to do it for this alone, and so justify my existence [Dasein] and work ultimately before God.

(SUP 69–70; see also BH 96)

From a letter to Father Engelbert Krebs.

1920–21 In the following, we do not intend to give a dogmatic or theological-exegetical i nterpretation, nor a historical study or a religious meditation, but only guidance for phenomeno-logical understanding. …The theological method falls out of the framework of our study. Only with phenomenological understanding, a new way for theology is opened up. The formal indication renounces the last understanding that can only be given in genuine religious experience; it intends only to open an access to the New Testament. …To begin with, it suffices to seek a general understanding of [Paul’s] letter to the Galatians in order to penetrate therewith into the grounding phenomena of primordial Christian life. …

… It is a decrease of authentic understanding if God is grasped primarily as an object of speculation. That can be realized only if one carries out the explication of the conceptual connections. This, however, has never been attempted, because Greek philosophy penetrated into Christianity. …The awaiting of the parousia of the Lord is decisive. …The experience is an absolute distress (thlipis) which belongs to the life of the Christian himself. The acceptance (dechesthai) is an entering-oneself-into anguish. …

… “Christian religiosity lives temporality.” It is a time without its own order and demarcations. One cannot encounter this temporality in some sort of objective concept of time. The when is in no way objectively graspable. …The present study takes up the center of Christianity: the eschatological problem. Already at the end of the first century the eschatological was covered up in Christianity. In later times one misjudged all original Christian concepts. In today’s philosophy, too, the Christian concept-formations are hidden behind a Greek view. … There is no security for Christian life; the constant insecurity is also characteristic for what is fundamentally significant in factical life. …

… [The] anamenein [waiting] is an obstinate waiting before God. The obstinate waiting does not wait for the significances of a future content, but for God. The meaning of temporality determines itself out of the fundamental relationship to God – however, in such a way that only those who live temporality in the manner of enactment understand eternity. The sense of the Being of God can be determined first only out of these complexes of enactment. To pass through them is the precondition. …

There remains a deep opposition between the Mystics and the Christians. The Mystic is, through manipulation, removed from the life-complex; in an enraptured state God and the universe are possessed. The Christian knows no such “enthusiasm,” rather he says: “let us be awake and sober.” Here is precisely shown to him the terrible difficulty of the Christian life. … Real philosophy of religion arises not from preconceived concepts of philosophy and religion. Rather, the possibility of its philosophical understanding arises out of a certain religiosity – for us, the Christian religiosity. Why exactly the Christian religiosity lies in the focus of our study, that is a difficult question; it is answerable only through the solution of the problem of the historical connections. The task is to gain a real and original relationship to history, which is to be explicated from out of our own historical situation and facticity.

(PRL 47, 67, 73, 83–4, 89 = GA 60: 67–8, 97–8, 104–5, 117, 124)

From a lecture course entitled Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion.

1921 Neo-Platonism and Augustine will not become an arbitrary case, but in the study their historicity [Historizität] is precisely to be raised into its own, as something in whose peculiar dimension of effect [Wirkungsdimension] we are standing today. History hits us, and we are history itself. …The boundaries between the theological and the philosophical are not to be blurred (no philosophical blurring of theology, no “intensification” of philosophy pretending to be religious). Rather, precisely going back behind both exemplary formations of factical life ought to (1) indicate in principle how and what lies “behind” both, and (2) how a genuine problematic results from this; all this not extra-temporally and for the construction of an approaching or not approaching culture, but itself in historical enactment. …

…The curare (Being Concerned) as the Basic Character of Factical Life: Chapters 28 and 29 [of Augustine’s Confessions/ … My life is “deformis” [deformed]. – Not in order to excuse himself, but indeed to push himself away from himself recklessly, and to gain himself from this severe distance, Augustine now makes it clear to himself, that “life” is no cakewalk [Spaziergang] and is precisely the most inopportune moment to assume an air of importance. … For “in multa defluximus” [we are scattered into the many], we are dissolving into the manifold and are absorbed in the dispersion. You demand counter-movement against the dispersion, against the falling apart of life. … “Per continentiam quippe colligimur et redigimur in unum [necessarium – Deum?].” [By continence we are gathered together and brought into the One (the necessary One – God?)]. … In this decisive hoping, the genuine effort at continentia is alive, an effort which does not reach its end. (Not “abstinence” which loses precisely the positive sense, but “containment,” pulling back from the defluxio [dispersion], standing against it full of mistrust.) … For life is really nothing but a constant temptation. … “Numquid non tentatio est vita humana super terram sine ullo interstitio?” [Is not human life on earth a trial without intermission?].…

… The problem of the universal theory of value is connected to Neo-Platonism and the doctrine of the summum bonum, in particular, to the conception of the way in which the summum bonum becomes accessible. … [One] cannot simply dismiss the Platonic in Augustine; and it is a misunderstanding to believe that in going back to Augustine, one can gain the authentically Christian.

(PRL 124–5, 151–2, 212 = GA 60: 173, 205–6, 281)

From a lecture course entitled Augustine and Neo-Platonism.

1921 I work concretely and factically out of my “I am” – out of my spiritual and thoroughly factic heritage, my milieu, my life contexts, and whatever is available to me from these, as the vital experience in which I live. … This facticity of mine includes – briefly put – the fact that I am a “Christian theo logian.” This implies a certain radical self-concern, a certain radical scientificity, a rigorous objectivity [Gegenständlichkeit] in this facticity; it includes the historical consciousness, the consciousness of the “history of spirit.” And I am all this in the life context of the university.

(BH 99–100)

From a letter to Karl Löwith.

1921–2 My comportment in philosophizing is not religious, even if as a philosopher I can also be a religious person. “The art resides precisely in that”: to philosophize and, in so doing, to be genuinely religious; i.e., to take up factically one’s worldly, historiological-historical task in philosophy, in action and in a concrete world of action, though not in religious ideology and fantasy. … Philosophy, in its radical, self-posing questionability, must be a-theistic as a matter of principle. Precisely on account of its basic intention, philosophy must not presume to possess or determine God. The more radical philosophy is, the more determinately is it on a path away from God; yet, precisely in the radical actualization of the “away,” it has its own difficult proximity to God.

(PIA 148 = GA 61: 197–8; see also BH 165, 479–80 n.24)

From a lecture course entitled Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle.

1922 By the beginning of my academic teaching [which, if taken literally, would mean the Winter Semester of 1915–16], it became clear to me that genuine scientific research free from all reservations and covert commitments is not possible along with active adherence to the Catholic faith and its standpoint. This standpoint became untenable for me through my unceasing preoccupation with early Christianity as it is developed by the modern school of the history of religion. My lecture course was forbidden to the theologians.

(BH 107)

From a vita composed in 1922 and sent to Georg Misch as part of an application for a position in philosophy at the University of Göttingen.

1924 The sense and essence of any particular theology can be read off from its view of man’s iustititia originalis [original righteousness]. For the more the radicality of sin is underrated, then the more redemption is disparaged and the more God becoming human in the Incarnation loses its necessity. We thus find in Luther’s thought the fundamental tendency that the corruptio of man’s being can never be grasped radically enough. And Luther asserted this particularly in opposition to Scholasticism, which always spoke of corruptio with qualification and in extenuation.

(BH 189–90; see also SUP 106)

From a student transcript of a lecture given by Heidegger in Rudolf Bultmann’s theological seminar at the University of Marburg.

1927–8 The popular understanding of the relationship between theology and philosophy is fond of opposing faith and knowledge, revelation and reason. … We, however, see the problem of the relationship differently from the very start. It is for us rather a question about the relationship of two sciences. … We offer only as a guide the following formal definition of science: science is the founding disclosure, for the sheer sake of disclosure, of a self-contained region of beings, or of being. … [T]here are two basic possibilities of science: sciences of beings, of whatever is, or ontic sciences; and the science of being, the ontological science, philosophy. … Ontic sciences in each case thematize a given being that in a certain manner is always already disclosed prior to scientific disclosure. We call the sciences of beings as given – of a positum – positive sciences. … Ontology, or the science of being, on the other hand, demands a fundamental shift of view: from beings to being. … Our thesis, then, is that theology is a positive science, and as such, therefore, is absolutely different from philosophy. …

… [W]e maintain that what is given for theology (its positum) is Christianness [Christlichkeit]. … We call faith Christian. The essence of faith can be formally sketched as a way of existence of human Dasein that … arises not from Dasein or spontaneously through Dasein, but rather from that which is revealed in and with this way of existence, from what is believed. For the “Christian” faith, that being which is primarily revealed to faith, and only to it, and which, as revelation, first gives rise to faith, is Christ, the crucified God. … [F]aith is an appropriation of revelation that co-constitutes the Christian occurrence, that is, the mode of existence that specifies a factical Dasein’s Christianness as a particular form of destiny. Faith is the believing-understanding mode of existing in the history revealed, i.e., occurring, with the Crucified. ….. The totality of this being that is disclosed by faith . constitutes the character of the positum that theology finds before it. … Theology … is the science of faith, not only insofar as it makes faith and that which is believed its object, but because it itself arises out of faith. It is the science that faith of itself motivates and justifies…

…If faith does not need philosophy, the science of faith as a positive science does. … Every ontic interpretation operates on the basis, at first and for the most part concealed, of an ontology. … All theological concepts necessarily contain that understanding of being that is constitutive of human Dasein as such, insofar as it exists at all. Thus, for example, sin is manifest only in faith, and only the believer can factically exist as a sinner. … But guilt is an original ontological determination of the existence of Dasein. …

…Philosophy is the possible, formally indicative ontological corrective of the ontic and, in particular, of the pre-Christian content of basic theological concepts. But philosophy can be what it is without functioning factically as this corrective. … This peculiar relationship does not exclude but rather includes the fact that faith, as a specific possibility of existence, is in its innermost core the mortal enemy of the form of existence that is an essential part of philosophy and that is factically everchanging. Faith is so absolutely the mortal enemy that philosophy does not even begin to want in any way to do battle with it. This existentiell opposition between faithfulness and the free appropriation of one’s whole Dasein is not first brought about by the sciences of theology and philosophy but is prior to them. Furthermore, it is precisely this opposition that must bear the possibility of a community of the sciences of theology and philosophy, if indeed they are to communicate in a genuine way, free from illusions and weak attempts at mediation. Accordingly, there is no such thing as a Christian philosophy; that is an absolute “square circle.” On the other hand, there is likewise no such thing as a neo-Kantian, or axiological, or phenomenological theology, just as there is no phenomenological mathematics.

(PM 40–41, 43–6, 50–51, 53 =GA 9: 47–9, 52–5, 61–4, 66)

From a lecture, “Phenomenology and Theology”. See also the following relevant notes in Being and Time: BTS 404 n.4, 405 n.7, 408 n.6, 410–11 n.2, 416 n.13 =SZ 190, 199, 249, 306, 427 (cf. BH 200ff.).

1929 The ontological interpretation of Dasein as being-in-the-world decides neither positively nor negatively concerning a possible being toward God. Presumably, however, the elucidation of transcendence first achieves an adequate concept of Dasein, and with respect to this being it can then be asked how things stand ontologically concerning the relation of Dasein to God.

(PM 371 n.62 = GA 9: 159)

From a footnote to “On the Essence of Ground”.

1934–5 One treats Hölderlin “historiologically” and misses what alone is essential, namely that his still timeless and place-less work has already overcome our historiological fuss and grounded the inception of another history, a history which commences with the struggle over the decision about the arrival or flight of the god.

(GA 39: 1)

From Heidegger’s preface to his first lecture course on Hölderlin’s poetry.

1935 [Anyone] for whom the Bible is divine revelation and truth already has an answer to the question “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” before it is even asked: beings, with the exception of God Himself, are created by Him. God himself “is” as the uncreated Creator. One who holds on to such a faith as a basis can, perhaps, emulate and participate in the asking of our question in a certain way, but he cannot authentically question without giving himself up as a believer, with all the consequences of this step. He can act only “as if” –. On the other hand, if such faith does not continually expose itself to the possibility of unfaith, it is not faith but a convenience. It becomes an agreement with oneself to adhere in the future to a doctrine as something that has somehow been handed down. This is neither having faith nor questioning, but indifference – which can then, perhaps even with keen interest, busy itself with everything, with faith as well as with questioning. … What is really asked in our question is, for faith, foolishness. … Philosophy consists in such foolishness. A “Christian philosophy” is a round square and a misunderstanding. To be sure, one can thoughtfully question and work through the world of Christian experience – that is, the world of faith. That is then theology. … Philosophy, for originally Christian faith, is foolishness. Philosophizing means asking: “Why are there beings at all instead of nothing?” Actually asking this means venturing to exhaust, to question thoroughly, the inexhaustible wealth of this question, by unveiling what it demands that we question. Whenever such a venture occurs, there is philosophy.

(IM 7–8 = EM 5–6)

From a lecture course later published as Introduction to Metaphysics.

1936 Schelling … wants to accomplish precisely this: to bring to a conceptual formulation how God comes to himself, how God – not as a concept thought, but as the life of life – comes to himself. Thus a becoming God! … God as existence, that is, the existing god is this god who is in himself historical. For Schelling, existence always means a being insofar as it is aware of itself (bei sich selbst). Only that, however, can be aware of itself which has gone out of itself and in a certain way is always outside of itself. Only what has gone outside of itself and what takes upon itself being outside of itself and is thus a being aware of itself has, so to speak, “absolved” the inner history of its Being and is accordingly “absolute.” God as the existing one is the absolute God, or God as he himself – in brief: God -himself. God considered as the ground of his existence “is” not yet God truly as he himself. But still, God “is” his ground. It is true that the ground is something distinguished from God, but not yet “outside of” God. The ground in God is that in God which God himself “is” not truly himself, but rather his ground for his selfhood. Schelling calls this ground “nature” in God. …

… God not as an old papa with a white beard who manufactures things, but as the becoming God to whose essence the ground belongs, uncreated nature which is not He Himself.

… In philosophy we can no more go back to Greek philosophy by means of a leap than we can eliminate the advent of Christianity into Western history and thus into philosophy by means of a command. The only possibility is to transform history, that is, truly to bring about the hidden necessity of history into which neither knowledge nor deed reach, and transformation truly brought about is the essence of the creative. …

… At the passage of the transition to the VI section [of Schelling’s treatise on freedom] there is the sentence: “In the divine understanding there is a system; God himself, however, is not a system but a life.” Here system is attributed to only one factor of the jointure of Being, to existence. At the same time, a higher unity is posited and designated as “life.” … But when the system is only in the understanding, the ground and the whole opposition of ground and understanding are excluded from system as its other and system is no longer system with regard to beings as a whole. … That is the difficulty which emerges more and more clearly in Schelling’s later efforts with the whole of philosophy, the difficulty which proves to be an impasse (Scheitern). And this impasse is evident since the factors of the jointure of being, ground and existence and their unity not only become less and less compatible, but are even driven so far apart that Schelling falls back into the rigidified tradition of Western thought without creatively transforming it. … Schelling does not see the necessity of an essential step. If being in truth cannot be predicated of the Absolute, that means that the essence of all being is finitude and only what exists finitely has the privilege and the pain of standing in being as such and experiencing what is true as beings.

(ST 109–10, 135, 145–6, 160–62 = SA 131–2, 163, 175, 193–5)

From a lecture course later published as Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom.

1936 [By] providing anew the essence of poetry, Hölderlin first determines a new time. It is the time of the gods who have fled and of the god who is coming. It is the time of need because it stands in a double lack and a double not: in the no-longer of the gods who have fled and in the not-yet of the god who is coming.

(EHP 64 = EHD 47)

From “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry”.

1936–8 THE LAST god … The totally other over against gods who have been, especially over against the Christian God. …

… But the last god, is that not a degradation, nay the greatest blasphemy? Yet what if the last god has to be so named because in the end the decision about the gods leads under and among them and so raises to the highest the essential occurrence [Wesen] of the uniqueness of the divine essence [Gottwesen]? … If we think calculatively here and take this “last” merely as ceasing and end, instead of as the utmost and briefest decision about what is highest, then of course all knowing awareness of the last god is impossible. …

… The last god is not the event of appropriation [Ereignis] itself; rather, it needs the event of appropriation as that to which the founder of the t/here [Dagründer] belongs. …

… The last god has its most unique uniqueness and stands outside those calculating determinations meant by titles such as “mono-theism,” “pan-theism,” and “a-theism.” “Monotheism” and all types of “theism” exist only since Judaeo-Christian “apologetics,” which has metaphysics as its intellectual presupposition. With the death of this god, all theisms collapse.

… The last god is the inception of the longest history on its shortest track. Long preparation is needed for the great moment of the passing of the last god. And for this preparation, peoples and states are too small, i.e., already too much torn from all growth and still delivered over to machination. … Only great and concealed individuals will create the stillness for the passing of the l ast god, along with the reticent accord among those who are prepared. …

… [The] god requires beyng, and the human as being-there [Da-sein] needs to have grounded the belongingness to beyng. Then, for this moment, beyng as the innermost “between” is like the nothing; the god overpowers the human and the human surpasses the god – in immediacy, as it were, and yet both only in the event of appropriation, which is what the truth of beyng itself is. …

… All heretofore “cults” and “churches” and such things cannot at all become the essential preparation for the colliding of god and human in the midpoint of beyng. For, the truth of beyng itself must at first be grounded, and for this assignment all creating must take on another inception. … How few know that god awaits the grounding of the truth of beyng and thus awaits the leap of the human into being-there. Instead it seems as if humans would, and would have to, await the god. …

… [The] talk of “gods” here does not indicate a decided assertion on the extantness of a plurality over against a singular, but is rather meant as an allusion to the undecidedness of the being of the gods, whether of one single god or of many gods. This undecidedness holds within itself what is question-worthy, namely whether something like “being” [Sein] may at all be attributed to the gods without destroying all that is godly. The undecidedness concerning which god and whether a god can, in the most extreme need, once again arise, and [if so] in what way and to what manner of human being – this is what is named with the name “gods.” … Not attributing being to “the gods” initially means only that being does not stand “over” the gods and that the gods do not stand “over” being. But “the gods” are in need of beyng, and in the saying of “the gods” the essential occurrence “of” beyng is already thought. “The gods” are not in need of beyng as their property, wherein they themselves find a standing. “The gods” nevertheless need beyng, which does not belong to them, in order to belong to themselves. … [The] “gods” are in need of beyng-historical thinking, i.e., of philosophy. “The gods” are in need of philosophy, not as if they themselves would have to philosophize for the sake of their godding; but rather philosophy must be if “the gods” are again to come into decision and if history is to attain its essential ground. …

… Beyng essentially occurs [west] as the between [das Zwischen] for god and human, but in such a way that this between-space first makes room for the essential possibility of god and human … Beyng essentially occurs as the apropriating [Er-eignung] of the gods and the humans to their en-countering [Ent-gegnung].

(CP 283, 286, 288, 289, 291, 292, 293, 308–9, 335–6 = GA 65: 403, 406–7, 409, 411, 414, 415, 416–17, 437–9, 476–7, trans. mod.)

From Contributions to Philosophy.

1937–8 And who would want to ignore the fact that a confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] with Christianity silently accompanied me on my entire path hitherto – a confrontation that was and is not a “problem” that was taken up to address, but rather at once a preservation of and a painful separation from the provenance that is most my own: the house of my parents, my homeland and my youth. Only someone who was likewise rooted in such an actually lived Catholic world may be able to have an inkling of the necessities which, like subterranean earthquakes, have been at work in the pathway of my inquiry hitherto. Moreover, the Marburg period offered an intimate experience of a Protestant Christianity – all of which as what had to be overcome from the ground up, but not destroyed. … It is not proper to speak of these most inward confrontations, since they do not revolve around issues that concern the dogma of Christianity and articles of faith, but rather only around the sole question: whether or not the god is fleeing from us and whether we ourselves are still truly – and that means as those who create – experiencing this. … And this has nothing to do with a mere “religious” background of philosophy, but rather with the sole inquiry into the truth of being, which alone decides on the “time” and “place” that is historically preserved for us within the history of the Occident and its gods.

(M 368 = GA 66: 415–16, trans. mod.)

From “My Pathway Hitherto”, an appendix to Mindfulness.

1938–9 The gods do not create humans; neither do humans invent the gods. The truth of beyng decides “on” both, not by ruling over them, but rather by appropriatively occurring between them such that they themselves first come into an en-counter.

(M 208 = GA 66: 235, trans. mod.)

From Mindfulness.

1940 Hölderlin names nature the holy because she is “older than the ages and above the gods.” Thus holiness is in no way a property borrowed from a determinate god. The holy is not holy because it is divine; rather the divine is divine because in its way it is “holy” …

… In its coming, the holy, “older than the ages” and “above the gods,” grounds another beginning of another history. The holy primordially decides in advance concerning humans and gods, whether they are, and who they are, and how they are, and when they are.

(EHP 82, 97–8 = EHD 59, 76)

From Heidegger’s essay on Hölderlin’s poem “As When On a Holiday.”

1942–3 The Greeks neither humanized the gods nor divinized humans; quite to the contrary, they experienced the gods and humans in their distinct essence, and in their reciprocal relation, on the basis of the essence of being in the sense of self-disclosing emergence, i.e., in the sense of looking and pointing. … The fundamental essence of Greek divinities, in distinction to all others, even the Christian God, consists in their origination out of the “presence” of “present” being. And that is also the reason why the strife between the “new,” i.e., the Olympian, gods and the “old” ones is the battle, occurring in the essence of being, that determines the upsurge of being itself into the emergence of its essence. This essential nexus is the reason the Greek gods, just like humans, are powerless before destiny and against it. Moira holds sway over the gods and humans, whereas in Christian thought, e.g., all destiny is the work of the divine “providence” of the creator and redeemer, who as creator also dominates and calculates all beings as the created. And so Leibniz can still say: cum Deus calculat, fit mundus – “because and while God calculates, the world arises.” The Greek gods are not “personalities” or “persons” that dominate being; they are being itself looking into beings. But because being always and everywhere infinitely exceeds all beings and juts forth in beings, therefore where the essence of being has come originarily into the unconcealed, as is the case with the Greeks, the gods are more “excessive” or, spoken in the Christian and modern way, more “ethereal” and more “spiritual,” despite their “human qualities.” … Whereas the low-German word “Got” signifies, according to its Indo-European root, a being humans invoke and hence is the invoked one, the Greek names for what we call “God” [Gott] express something essentially different: theos-theaon and daimon-daion mean the self-emergent looking one and being as entering into beings. Here God and the gods, already by the very name, are not seen from the standpoint of humans, as invoked by humans. … Yet the name and the designation of the divinity (theion) as the looking one and the one who shines into (theaon) is not a mere vocal expression. The name as the first word lets what is designated appear in its primordial presence. The essence of humans, as experienced by the Greeks, is determined on the basis of their relation to self-emergent being, so that humans are the ones who have the word. And the word is in essence the letting appear of being by naming. … And it is therefore that humans in the Greek experience, and only they, are in their essence and according to the essence of aletheia the god-sayers. … But what if precisely this essence of alëtheia, and with it the primordial self-manifesting essence of being, are distorted by transformations and because of such distortion are ultimately prey to concealment in the sense of oblivion? . If the originary divinity emerges on the basis of the essence of being, should the oblivion of being not be the ground for the fact that the origin of the truth of being has withdrawn itself into concealedness ever since, and no god could then appear emerging out of being itself? . “A-theism” correctly understood as the absence of the gods, has been, since the decline of the Greek world, the oblivion of being that has overpowered the history of the West as the basic feature of this history itself. … Only when being and the essence of truth come into recollection out of oblivion will Western humanity secure the most preliminary precondition for what is the most preliminary of all that is preliminary: that is, an experience of the essence of being as the domain in which a decision about the gods or the absence of the gods can first be prepared. …

… If Parmenides names the goddess Alëtheia at the very outset of his utterance, that is not, as philologists maintain, a kind of poetically fashionable introduction to his so-called “didactic poem,” but instead it is the naming of the essential place, where the thinker as thinker dwells. The place is daimonios topos.

(PRM 110–13, 127 =GA 54: 163–7, 188, trans. mod.)

From a lecture course entitled Parmenides and Heraclitus (published in the Gesamtausgabe as Parmenides).

1943 So long as we understand the word “God is Dead” [in Nietzsche’s Gay Science, §125] only as a formula of unbelief, we are thinking it theologically in the manner of apologetics, and we are renouncing all claims to what matters to Nietzsche, i.e., to the reflection that ponders what has already happened regarding the truth of the suprasensory world and regarding its relation to the human essence. … Hence, also, nihilism in Nietzsche’s sense in no way coincides with the situation conceived merely negatively, that the Christian God of biblical revelation can no longer be believed in, just as Nietzsche does not consider the Christian life that existed once for a short time before the writing down of the Gospels and before the missionary propaganda of Paul to belong to Christendom. Christendom for Nietzsche is the historical, world-political phenomenon of the Church and its claim to power within the shaping of Western humanity and its modern culture. Christendom [Christentum] in this sense and the Christianity [Christlichkeit] of the New Testament faith are not the same. Even a non-Christian life can affirm Christendom and use it as a means of power, just as, conversely, a Christian life does not necessarily require Christendom. Therefore, a confrontation with Christendom is absolutely not in any way an attack against what is Christian, any more than a critique of theology is necessarily a critique of faith, whose interpretation theology is said to be. … In the word “God is dead” the name “God,” thought essentially, stands for the suprasensory world of those ideals which contain the goal that exists beyond earthly life for that life and that, accordingly, determines life from above, and also in a certain way, from without. … The realm for the essence and the coming-to-pass of nihilism is metaphysics itself …. Metaphysics is history’s open space wherein it becomes a destining that the suprasensory world, the Ideas, God, the moral law, the authority of reason, progress, the happiness of the greatest number, culture, civilization, suffer the loss of constructive force and become void. … Unbelief in the sense of a falling away from the Christian doctrine of faith is, therefore, never the essence of and the ground, but always only a consequence, of nihilism; for it could be that Christendom itself represents one consequence and bodying-forth of nihilism. …

… The ultimate blow against God and against the supra-sensory world consists in the fact that God, the first of beings [das Seiende des Seienden], is degraded to the highest value. The heaviest blow against God is not that God is held to be unknowable, not that God’s existence is demonstrated to be unprovable, but rather that the god held to be real is elevated to the highest value. For this blow comes precisely not from those who are standing about, who do not believe in God, but from the believers and their theologians who discourse on the being that is of all beings most in being [vom Seiendsten alles Seienden], without ever letting it occur to them to think on being [Sein] itself, in order thereby to become aware that, seen from out of faith, their thinking and their talking is sheer blasphemy if it meddles in the theology of faith. … The pronouncement [“God is dead”] does not mean – as though it were spoken out of denial and common hatred – there is no god. The pronouncement means something worse: God has been killed. …

… The uprising of human being into subjectivity transforms that which is into object. But that which is objective is that which is brought to a stand through representing. The doing away with that which is in itself, i.e., the killing of God, is accomplished in the making secure of the constant reserve by means of which humans make secure for themselves material, bodily, psychic, and spiritual resources, and this for the sake of their own security, which wills dominion over whatever is – as the potentially objective – in order to correspond to the being of whatever is, to the will to power. …

… Perhaps we will no longer pass by so quickly without hearing what is said at the beginning of the passage [from Nietzsche’s Gay Science] that has been elucidated: that the madman “cried incessantly: I seek God! I seek God!” . And the ear of our thinking, does it still not hear the cry?

(QCT 63–5, 105, 107, 111–12 = GA 5: 219–21, 259–60, 262, 266–7, trans. mod.)

From “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God is Dead’”.

1943 By using the word “gods” sparingly, and hesitating to say the name, the poet has brought to light the proper element of the gods. …

… The holy does indeed appear. But the god remains distant. … However, since the find is near, although in a reserved manner, the absent god extends his greeting in the nearing of the heavenly ones. Thereby the “god’s absence” is also not a deficiency. Therefore, the countrymen, too, may not try to make themselves a god by cunning, and thus eliminate by force the presumed deficiency. But they must also not comfort themselves by merely calling on an accustomed god. True, on such paths the presence of the absence would go unnoticed. But if the nearness were not determined by the absence, and thus were not a reserving nearness, the precious find could not be near in the way in which it is near. Thus for the poet’s care there is only one possibility: without fear of appearing godless, he must remain near to the god’s absence, and wait long enough in this prepared nearness to the absence till out of the nearness to the absent god there is granted an originative word to name the high one.

(EHP 39, 46–7 = EHD 20, 27–8)

From Heidegger’s essay on Hölderlin’s poem, “Homecoming/To Kindred Ones”.

1944–5 SCIENTIST: The transition out of the will into releasement [Gelassenheit] is what seems to me to be the genuine difficulty. … GUIDE: And all the more so, when for us the essence of releasement is still concealed. … SCHOLAR: And this above all as a result of the fact that even releasement can be thought of still within the domain of the will, as happens with old masters of thought such as Meister Eckhart. … GUIDE: From whom, all the same, many good things can be learned. … SCHOLAR: Certainly; but what we are calling releasement evidently does not mean the casting off of sinful selfishness and the letting go of self-will in favor of the divine will.

(GA 77: 109; see also DT 61–2 = G 33–4)

From Country Path Conversations.

1947 “Being” – that is not God and not a cosmic ground. Being is essentially farther than all beings and is yet nearer to the human being than every being, be it a rock, a beast, a work of art, a machine, be it an angel or God. …

… [The] holy, which alone is the essential sphere of divinity, which in turn alone affords a dimension for the gods and for the god, comes to radiate only when being itself beforehand and after extensive preparation has been cleared and is experienced in its truth. …

… The statement that the essence of human being consists in being-in-the-world likewise contains no decision about whether the human being in a theologico-metaphysical sense is merely a this-worldly or an other-worldly creature. … With the existential determination of the essence of the human being, therefore, nothing is decided about the “existence of God” or his “non-being,” no more than about the possibility or impossibility of gods. … Only from the truth of being can the essence of the holy be thought. Only from the essence of the holy is the essence of divinity to be thought. Only in the light of the essence of divinity can it be thought or said what the word “God” is to signify. … Perhaps what is distinctive about this world-epoch consists in the closure of the dimension of the hale [des Heilen]. Perhaps this is the sole malignancy [Unheil]. … But with this reference thinking that points toward the t ruth of being as what is to be thought has in no way decided in favor of theism. It can be theistic just as little as atheistic. Not, however, because of an indifferent attitude, but out of respect for the boundaries that have been set for thinking as such, indeed set by what gives itself to thinking as what is to be thought, by the truth of being.

(PM 252, 258, 266–7 = GA 9: 331, 338–9, 350–52)

From “Letter on Humanism”.

1950 The default of God and the divinities is absence. But absence is not nothing; rather it is precisely the presence, which must first be appropriated, of the hidden fullness and wealth of what has been and what, thus gathered, is presencing, of the divine in the world of the Greeks, in prophetic Judaism, in the preaching of Jesus. This no-longer is in itself a not-yet of the veiled arrival of its inexhaustible nature.

(PLT 182 = VA 177)

From “The Thing”.

1953 I [Hermann Noack] remarked that [certain] statements [from the “Introduction” to “What is Metaphysics?” and from the “Letter on Humanism”] encourage the i nterpretation that Heidegger’s thinking moves in a dimension which alone makes room for doing genuine theological “thinking” once again – inasmuch as theology at a very early stage fell under the spell of “metaphysics,” which is inappropriate for speaking about the truth of revelation. Heidegger did not contest this, but he literally said: “Within thinking nothing can be achieved which would be a preparation or a confirmation for that which occurs in faith and in grace. Were I so addressed by faith I would have to close up my shop. – Within faithfulness one still thinks, of course; but thinking as such no longer has a task.” “Philosophy engages in a kind of thinking of which man is capable on his own. This stops when he is addressed by revelation.” “Today thinking has taken the most tentative form imaginable.” … Theologians, Heidegger continued, have simply too little trust in their own standpoint and have too much to do with philosophy. The impetus from the side of thinking can only be an indirect one. Theologians should abide in the exclusiveness of revelation. For Luther . there was no question of the “claim” (of philosophy). For him Paul’s Epistle to the Romans was a revelation from the start; there he heard the word of God. When a thinker listens to a poet like Hölderlin there is something completely different – a listening in another region of “manifestness,” the founding of which, in contrast to the already decided revelation of the word of God, the poet himself essentially participates in. The thinker speaks of the “manifestness of being”; but “being” is an untheological word. … The Christian experience is so completely different that it has no need to enter into competition with philosophy. When theology holds fast to the view that philosophy is foolishness, the mystery-character of revelation will be much better preserved. Therefore, in the face of a final decision, the ways part. … With respect to the text referred to from the “Letter on Humanism,” what is being discussed there is the god of the poet, not the revealed God. …

… Thinking knows nothing of a “revealed God” and cannot recognize in the Christian proclamation any “historical destining disclosure of being” because the content of revelation consists in statements about “a being” (God as creator and lord of the world). Therefore the “foolishness” of which Paul speaks may be said to be reciprocal for faith and thinking.

(PT 64–5,68)

From “Conversation with Martin Heidegger, Recorded by Hermann Noack”. The conversation took place at the Protestant Academy of Hofgeismar.

1954 The divinities are the beckoning messengers of the godhead. Out of the holy sway of the godhead, the god appears in his presence or withdraws into his concealment. When we speak of the divinities, we are already thinking of the other three [members of the fourfold, i.e., earth, sky, and mortals] along with them, but we give no thought to the simple oneness of the four. … Mortals dwell in that they await the divinities as divinities. In hope they hold up to the divinities what is unhoped for. They wait for intimations of their coming and do not mistake the signs of their absence. They do not make their gods for themselves and do not worship idols. In the very depth of misfortune they wait for the weal that has been withdrawn.

(PLT 147–8 = VA 144–5)

From “Building Dwelling Thinking”.

1955–6 [The] most extreme sharpness and depth of thought belong to genuine and great mysticism. … Meister Eckhart gives proof of this.

(PR 36–7 = SG 71, trans. mod.)

From a lecture course published as The Principle of Reason.

1957 Humans can neither pray nor sacrifice to this god [of philosophy]. Before the causa sui, humans can neither fall to their knees in awe nor can they play music and dance before this god. … The god-less thinking which must abandon the god of philosophy, the god as causa sui, is thus perhaps closer to the divine god. Here this means only: god-less thinking is more open to him [freier für ihn] than onto-theo-logic would like to admit.

(IDS 72 = ID 140–41, trans. mod.)

From “The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics”.

1959 Without this theological background I should never have come on the path of thinking. But origin always comes to meet us from the future.

(OWL 10 = GA 12: 91.)

From “A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer”.

1963 With an almost passionate determination, Heidegger then wants to know what the monk [Bikkhu Maha Mani] takes religion to be. Dogmas and doctrines? Or what constitutes their origin? Then he turns to me [H. W. Petzet] and says, “Now you must really try to make clear the difference between Christianity and being Christian (Christlichkeit)” – which turns out to be a difficult matter. But a further explanation is not necessary because the monk says quite simply that by religion he understands the teachings of the founders (“sayings of the founders”). … Excited and very determined, Heidegger responds by turning to me and saying, “Tell him that I consider one thing alone to be crucial – namely, to follow the words of the founder. This alone – neither systems nor doctrines and dogmas are important. Religion means following.” …

… [The monk asks,] Why does Heidegger never go to the people? . Heidegger is noticeably affected. He tries to explain that it has primarily to do with the development of thinking, which was addressed earlier in various ways – namely, with how the predisposition of thinking he described makes people lose their openness to simple hearing (and listening). For instance, if he spoke to Catholics, Catholicism as such would stand in the way (though there are always individuals who, exceptionally, could suddenly be affected). Even the best theologians, Catholic as well as Protestant, take from what he says only what fits their own views. Even they refuse to see the whole of his thinking, of what he says.

(Petzet 1993: 176–7, 179; see GA 16: 589–93)

From Heinrich Wiegand Petzet’s notes on a conversation held with a Buddhist monk from Thailand.

1963 1964 For in truth this would necessitate that theology once and for all get clear about the requisite of its major task not to borrow the categories of its thinking and the form of its speech from philosophy or the sciences, but to think and speak out of faith for faith with fidelity to its subject matter. …

… [The] task is for theology to place in discussion, within its own realm of the Christian faith and out of the proper nature of that faith, what theology has to think and how it has to speak. This task includes the question whether theology can still be a science – because presumably it should not be a science at all.

(PM 55, 61 = GA 9: 69, 77)

From “The Theological Discussion of ‘The Problem of a Nonobjectifying Thinking and Speaking in Today’s Theology’ – Some Pointers to Its Major Aspects”.

1966 [P]hilosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poetizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering [Untergang]; for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder. … [The interviewer then asks: “Is there a connection between your thinking and the emergence of this god? Is there in your view a causal connection? Do you think that we can think the god into being here with us?” Heidegger responds: ] We cannot think him into being here; we can at most awaken the readiness of expectation. [The interviewer asks: “But are we able to help?“ Heidegger responds: ] The preparation of a readiness may be the first step. The world cannot be what it is or the way that it is through humans, but neither can it be without humans. According to my view, this is connected with the fact that what I name with the word being . requires humans for its revelation, preservation, and formation.

(OG 107 = GA 16: 671–2, trans. mod.)

Statements Heidegger made in his interview with the magazine Der Spiegel.

1968 [The] poet belongs to the task for which he is needed. For the poet’s saying is needed – showing, veiling-unveiling – to allow the appearance of the advent of the gods, who need the poet’s words for their appearance, because only in their appearing are they themselves. …The poem, Hölderlin’s poem, gathers poesis under a holy compulsion: naming the present gods, gathering them into a saying which is needed by the heavenly ones and ordained by them.

(EHP 218–19 = EHD 191–2)

From “The Poem”.

At the conclusion of his intellectual biography, Rüdiger Safranski writes:

Did Heidegger return to the bosom of the Church? Max Müller reports that, on hikes, whenever they came to a church or a chapel, Heidegger always dipped his finger in the stoup and genuflected. On one occasion he asked him if this was not inconsistent, since he had distanced himself from the dogma of the Church. Heidegger’s answer had been: “One must think historically. And where there has been so much praying, there the divine is present in a very special way”.

(Safranski 1998: 432–3)

Shortly before he passed away in 1976, Heidegger requested that he be given a Catholic funeral ceremony in Freiburg, that his theologian friend Bernhard Welte speak at his interment in Messkirch, and that passages he had selected from Hölderlin’s poetry also be read at his graveside (see Heidegger & Welte 2003: 124–36). It was also apparently Heidegger’s wish that his gravestone be marked with a star, rather than a cross.

Note

1. The reader should bear in mind that all nouns, and not just proper nouns, are capitalized in German. Hence das Sein can be translated as “Being”, although it is most often today translated as “being” in order to avoid connotations of a metaphysical entity. Translators tend to render der Gott as “the god”, but generally use the capital when the term Gott (God) is used as a proper noun without an article, as it is in the monotheistic traditions. In several instances, the use of capitals in the texts reproduced here has been silently modified for the sake of consistency.

References

Heidegger, M. & B. Welte 2003. Briefe und Begegnungen, A. Denker & H. Zaborowski (eds). Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

Kisiel, T. 1993. The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Ott, H. 1993.Martin Heidegger: A Political Life, A. Blunden (trans.). New York: Basic Books.

Petzet, H. W. 1993. Encounters and Dialogues with Martin Heidegger: 1929–1976, P. Emad & K. Maly (trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Safranski, R. 1998.Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil, E. Osers. (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Heidegger on Christianity and divinity: a chronological compendium

Note

References

Further reading

Primary sources

Secondary sources