The Phenomenology of Religious Life

by Martin Heidegger, Matthias Fritsch (Translator), Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei (Translator)

The Phenomenology of Religious Life presents the text of Heidegger’s important 1920–21 lectures on religion. The volume consists of the famous lecture course Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion, a course on Augustine and Neoplatonism, and notes for a course on The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism that was never delivered. Heidegger’s engagements with Aristotle, St. Paul, Augustine, and Luther give readers a sense of what phenomenology would come to mean in the mature expression of his thought. Heidegger reveals an impressive display of theological knowledge, protecting Christian life experience from Greek philosophy and defending Paul against Nietzsche.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Nonfiction, 20th Century

283 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most readily associated with phenomenology and existentialism, although his thinking should be identified as part of such philosophical movements only with extreme care and qualification. His ideas have exerted a seminal influence on the development of contemporary European philosophy. They have also had an impact far beyond philosophy, for example in architectural theory (see e.g., Sharr 2007), literary criticism (see e.g., Ziarek 1989), theology (see e.g., Caputo 1993), psychotherapy (see e.g., Binswanger 1943/1964, Guignon 1993) and cognitive science (see e.g., Dreyfus 1992, 2008; Wheeler 2005; Kiverstein and Wheeler forthcoming).

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Born a Catholic and trained to become a Catholic theologian, Heidegger eventually broke up with Catholicism after WW1 and right before these lectures on religion. Later he will break completely with Christianity and with the Christian God; but never with the divine and the gods. In fact, books like “Being and Time” and “Contributions to Philosophy” are heavily indebted to Christian thinkers like St. Augustine and concerned with the disappearance and advent of the divine and of new gods.

“Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion” lecture starts with a lot of methodological considerations in order to prepare the ground; as for Heidegger any authentic philosophy – as well as any religion – arises only from a factical life experience. Any attempts to approach philosophy or religion within the ideal of science – that is with cognitive and rational comportment - simply obscure and derail them. Instead one needs to follow their historical foundations and use methods like formal indication; and more specifically in their original enactment. These methodological considerations end abruptly as Heidegger goes into a close reading of Paul's Letters to Galatians, plus the First and Second Paul's Letters to Thessalonians. These interpretations move around the notions of “having-become” of the primitive Christian community, on their expectation of Parousia, their distress and anguish, the urgency of everything, of distinguishing God's from Satan's works, of Paul's proclamations, and more fundamentally of the enactment of all of these in their concrete lives. For example, the issue of Parousia (i.e., the return of Christ) is not a matter of “when” but of “what” – that is it depends on how well the Galatians or Thessalonians enact all of these in their lives.

“Augustine and neo-Platonism” lecture is a close reading of Book X of “Confessions”; but mainly of the three forms of Christian temptations that will appear in “Being and Time” as forms of Dasein's fallenness. Quite amazing here are also the sections on: confessing before God and other people, memory, forgetfulness, searching and finding oneself, “beata vita”, molestia, love, and of “I have become a question to myself”. The sketches for never-delivered lectures “The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism” are just a series of brainstorming ideas without much coherence.

[Chungsoo Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being And Time 7 years before Being And Time

We see all the elements of Being and Time rehearsed in these lectures on Paul and Augustine. Kierkegaard importantly stands in the background, from whom Heidegger cites some key sentences from Fear and Trembling. Thus, Heidegger gives a very Protestant reading of Paul and Augustine, focusing on “enactment,” which anticipates Seinskönen of BT. God as that which exceeds all noema is entirely absent. Why? Dasein cannot confront the Other, whether the Absolute Holy or the neighbor.

[Paul H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The young Heidegger at his best. The world lost one of its great philosopher-theologians when Heidegger was bewitched (by his reading of Luther in 1921-22) into rejecting virtually everything having to do with ancient or medieval theology; we could have had another Przywara or von Balthasar, but instead ended up with a genius-level, but one-sided, philosopher.

[Cody Bivins-Starr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow reading largely because they’re lecture notes and the notes of those notes. The appendices are borderline unreadable.

That being said, it’s an important text in which many of Heidegger’s future ideas in Being and Time are here formulated in an early and experimental fashion. That he focuses on Paul adds the interesting layer.

For Heidegger, Christianity is a factical life experience which is oriented around enactment. Of course, Agamben, Badiou, et al. take these lectures and spin quite a bit from them. Likewise, you can see resonance with Barth here regarding the concrete appropriation of eschatological reality. This is a good example of the concerns happening in these circles in the 1920s.

All in all, a horribly boring read that I got about 5 highlights from. Helpful highlights, but few.

[Doctor Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think there are at least two good reasons to read this book. First is historical, to catch a view into the development of some central insights and concepts that Heidegger later developed in Being and Time. The second is to look specifically at Heidegger's understanding of religious experience, and the place it has in his own intellectual life.

The book is made up of notes from two lecture series, and one planned lecture series.

Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion (1920-21) -- composed of notes taken by attendees of the lectures. The appendix contains Heidegger's own notes (judged almost indecipherable by the editors). These lectures take the Letters of Paul as a focus.

Augustine and Neo-Platonism (1921) -- composed of Heidegger's own lecture notes, with additional notes by Heidegger in an appendix, and notes by an attendee (Oskar Becker), which pertain to discussions that went beyond Heidegger's own prepared notes. These lectures are focused on Augustine's Confessions, Book X.

The Philosophical Foundations of Medieval Mysticism (1918-19) -- composed of Heidegger's own notes, for a lecture course never actually delivered

Those dates place these lectures very early in Heidegger's career. It might be interesting to draw parallels between the place of these lectures in Heidegger's development and the place of Hegel's Early Theological Writings in his. Both show an early influence of religious concepts that later seemingly become extracted from their religious clothing and placed into a new more purely philosophical context.

It was surprising to me how many concepts that become central in Being and Time, and even in Heidegger's later philosophy, appear here: historicity, facticity, temporality, falling, authenticity, anxiety, and even Gelassenheit (translated in later writings as "releasement"). The letters of Paul provide especially good material for a discussion of significance or meaning as fundamentally historical -- Heidegger introduces the concept of "enactment", which I won't attempt to explain fully (I can't), but that has to do with a decisive event, that while happening in time, is determinant for all that comes after, and even re-focuses what has come before -- something from which you cannot go back to ordinary life in the same way as before. Heidegger also introduces authenticity here, with a discussion similar to later ones, where he distinguishes authenticity as a "how" of living life rather than a "what" -- authenticity does not remove you from the world, but the authentic person lives in the same world differently. What this difference is should always be a bit at the limit of articulation -- after all, it is, as Heidegger says here, lived rather than theorized.

As for Heidegger's own understanding of religious experience, his religiosity is deeper than I had imagined. In many ways, these lectures remind me of Kierkegaard. There are some common themes, especially in the rejection of what we might call "worldly religion" -- the church criticized by Kierkegaard in The Present Age. Organized, institutionalized religion is criticized by both Kierkegaard and Heidegger as religion stripped of true religious experience, with religious practices slotted in alongside and fundamentally no different from the other practices of life. In this, there is no individual, personal experience of religion, only a going along with cultural practices. Also, just as Kierkegaard came to focus on the "exception" and the recognition that each person is an "exception" whose life cannot simply be absorbed into the life of the public, Heidegger here focuses in on Augustine's "I have made a question of myself" -- a kind of existentialist manifesto arising in the middle ages.

This is a challenging book -- I've never found anything by Heidegger to be "easy". I certainly wouldn't recommend it in the place of any of the more core writings of Heidegger -- Being and Time, The Question Concerning Technology, Discourse on Thinking, or others. But it has much that's interesting to tell about both the evolution of Heidegger's thought and the place of the religious in his intellectual life.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Phenomenology of Religious Life consists of the transcriptions of two of Heidegger's early lectures (i.e. pre-Being and Time (1927)): one on St. Paul delivered in 1920 and one on St. Augustine delivered in 1921.

Along with his History of the Concept of Time (1925) and The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (1927), I find the lectures transcribed in The Phenomenology of Religious Life to be some of the more useful texts in shedding light on Being and Time. Heidegger's phenomenological "destruction" of Paul's Christian theology is essentially a reformulation of Pauline theology in accord with the conceptual system he lays out in Being and Time. For instance, Heidegger describes (1) how Pauline theology implicitly advocated for the primacy of a "Zuhandensein" over "Vorhandensein" conception of temporality, (2) how this primal "Zuhandensein" temporality is future-oriented, (3) how this primal temporality results in the primal "anxiety" of Dasein, (4) and how "resoluteness" must be practiced in the face of this primal anxiety, amongst other concepts found in Being and Time. To a certain degree, I found Heidegger's analysis of Paul's epistles to be something of an extended example of the formal concepts he introduces in Being and Time, hence it is an important text with which to refer back to while reading Being and Time.

It is also important to note that Heidegger began his philosophical career studying Catholic theology. This text, and its clear similarities to Being and Time, shows that Heidegger's theological influences run throughout the entirety of his work, especially Being and Time.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone but the Heidegger enthusiast. It was dull . . . and why not? Heidegger's own lectures on the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion haven't survived and so what we have here is a synthesis of student notes. As a result, the book reads much like a series of points and not at all like The Basic Problems of Phenomenology or even Ontology: The Hermeneutics of Facticity. Nevertheless, The Phenomenology of Religious Life does contain some interesting material, such as the early connection Heidegger makes between the suddenness of death and the Christian parousia. In each case, the end can come at any time and without warning. We must, then, remain awake (authentic?) and alert, always on the lookout for the anti-Christ.

I didn't find the lectures on Augustine and Neo-Platonism to be especially enlightening, though maybe I wasn't looking hard enough. Thoughout, Heidegger just reinterprets the tenth book of Augustine's Confessions though his own unique phenomenological lens. Central to the lectures is temptation: we are always being tempted to forget God and ourselves, to be drawn away into worldly oblivion . . . .

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like it. Heidegger undertakes something of a deconstruction of the phenomenology of religion, with specific regard to the Scholastic tradition. It's prototypical of what he does in Being and Time with the deconstruction of western metaphysics.

[Andrew Noselli · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think reading Heidegger's "The Basic Problems of Phenomenology" was a critical need before reading this text, which segued nicely with reading St. Augustine's treatise on "The Sermon on the Mount" directly afterward. Three stars, I mostly skimmed the latter section consisting of appendices.

[Lucas Sipe · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Phenomenology of Religious Life" is a bit is a misnomer here. What the text is a collection of four notes for lecture courses and accompanying notes. Heidegger covers phenomenology of religious life as such (as historical), St. Paul's letters as a primordial call to Christian life, St. Augustine's confessions, and the relationship between St. Augustine and Neo-Platonism. As such, there are many different directions Heidegger takes. With St. Paul, Heidegger situates the call to Christian life as existential living; with St. Augustine, Heidegger explores the relationship between temptation and Christian life and the connection to Neo-Platonism as an original Greek way of thinking. Essentially, St. Paul articulates that Christian religiosity stems from facitcal life experience of heeding the call of Christ. Dogma and tradition comes after not before. Heidegger is clearly undeveloped philosophically but his later accounts of fallenness, thrownness, facticity, and authentic living are here if not fully explicated as such. The editors make note that falleness, articulated through temptation in St. Augustine, is particularly noteworthy and I agee. Authentic living, in "Being & Time", is also very important here.

Heidegger is always responding to the tradition and clearly using Husserl here. Even more of an influence, however, is Kierkegaard. Unlike "Being & Time" and even his other earlier texts, Kirkegaard is an overarching influence here and Heidegger himself even points to "Fear & Trembling." Factial life, understood phenomenologically and existentially, has much in common with Kirkegaard's leap of faith. By using St. Augustine in such a manner, Heidegger beautifully weaves together an account of Christian life.

Of course, he is also highly critical of contemporary Christian life. Like Kirkegaard, he is unkind to institutional Christianity. Factical life, experience, and so on take precedence over empty formalism. While I think he's incorrect there, there is an element wherein the form and ritual can overtake life. What Heidegger and Kirkegaard get wrong, in my view, is that the empty formalism stems from modernity and not religion (say Catholicism) as such. Much can be said here but Heidegger's casual dismissal of Catholicism/ formal Christianity makes more sense when we consider the milieu he's writing in. Neo-Scholasticism is rather vapid and that's the dominant strain of Christian/ Catholic thinking he's familiar with and I think when we keep that in mind, his critiques aren't as general as they otherwise could be. He's more sympathetic (in the sense of taking seriously), to an extent, to the thinking of scholasticism in "Being & Time" and "Basic Problems of Phenomenology" so I think he developed his thought on this topic in the period between the 1920's.

Negatively speaking, this text is only roughly speaking Heidegger's. Most of Heidegger's corpus is carefully curated lecture notes by Heidegger prepared for publication. This text, however, lacks such notes and is cobbled together with notes from his students and supplemented by marginal notes from Heidegger. As such, we're only loosely connected to the writing of the man. Of course we still get Heidegger but filtered. The four sections of the work, therefore, are sparse and rather choppy compared to other volumes in the series. As a result, and despite the insights of the text, this is one of the worse (due to no fault of the translators or Heidegger) entries in the series.

[Braden Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to give this five stars. I feel that it is unfair to Heidegger to judge this book based on its accessibility (which is shrouded in jargon) because it was not written by Heidegger in publishable form. It was a series of notes and appendices from lectures he did in the early 1920’s prior to BT. As far as content goes, Heidegger tries to take a phenomenological look at the epistles to the Galatians and Thessalonians as well the tenth chapter of Augustine’s “Confessions.” Avoiding an object-oriented understanding of God and history, Heidegger interprets Paul and Augustine as both following in a primordial Christian experience of anxiety which is precipitated by eschatology and the farcical experience of temptation and fallenness. One can see how the way in which eschatology functions as a intensification or anxiety, one which discloses possibilities for the Christian, becomes in “Being and Time” the way being-toward-death eschatologically demands a resolute decision to live authentically. I would recommend this book even if just for Heidegger’s phenomenological reading of Augustine on the “lusts of the flesh” which have far more to do with the “How” in which Dasein has access to phenomena (that is, with its attitude toward its material complex as either a highest good or as a subordinate good), than the “What” of the content with which the senses engage.

[Enrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s an introduction to phenomenological method with an excellent example using Paul letters. The facticity is the central point, is like the new ingredient that Heidegger brings to philosophy and let him see with fresh air the origins, he made a new philosophy of the origin, the original as factical experience. Good read.

[Javier Gómez · Rating 5 out of 5]

La lectura fenomenológica de las epístolas que realiza el joven Heidegger propone entender la fe como experiencia vital. El alemán entiende la fe como un modo de habitar en el mundo, atravesado por la espera y la transformación existencial. El camino para pensar desde la finitud y la temporalidad es la fenomenología: ella es la que muestra a la religión como la praxis que transforma al sujeto.

[Vittirivizzik]

Underrated

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Phenomenology of the Religious Life makes me want to read what I didn’t finish of Augustine. Makes me think Augustine was the beginning of Christianity not figuring itself out on a socioemotional learning level. Not quite the refusal yet.