Kockelmans: Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion (GA60)

In the fall of 1920 [1] we see a “new” element appear in Heidegger’s reflections, namely in his course, Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion, which to some degree was inspired by Otto’s book on the holy. [2] The course consisted clearly of two parts, one devoted to an introduction to the phenomenon of factical life-experience (8 lectures), and the other concerned with a phenomenological interpretation of original Christianity in St. Paul’s Epistles to the Galatians and Thessalonians. In this second part Heidegger first explained in what sense original Christianity constitutes a factical life-experience, in order then to show that Christianity, as a factical life-experience, is primordial temporality. Thus the first part of the course contains a phenomenological analysis of a very important phenomenon often forgotten in our Western tradition; in Heidegger’s view this phenomenon was understood very well, although unthematically, by the early Christians, namely life in its here-and-now facticity, the factical experience of life. In Being and Time   we shall encounter this same phenomenon under the title Dasein, Being-in-the-world, ek-sistence.

Sheehan   has pointed to the parallels that exist between Heidegger’s approach to early Christianity and his approach to Greek philosophy. In both instances Heidegger discovered a level of experience that was lived in an unthematized way, but which in later [14] ages was covered up; this level of experience can be rediscovered only by a de-construction of the tradition, which often appears “violent.” It is important to note that in both cases this experience was pre-theoretical and that it was an experience of self-exceeding, one of being drawn out beyond one’s ordinary self-understanding. However different the two cases may be, what they have in common is a movement taken as a dynamic interplay of presence and absence. The difference between the two experiences consists in this that in early Christianity this movement was understood in terms of temporality, whereas the early Greeks interpreted this movement in terms of disclosure or truth. [3] (1990, p. 13-14)