Gert-Jan van der HeidenCorresponding authorORCID id

The Christian Experience of Life and the Task of Phenomenology
Heidegger on Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, and Descartes

Article
26/2 – Fall 2021, pages 207-226
Date of online publication: 30 décembre 2021
Date of publication: 30 décembre 2021

Abstract

It is well-known that the early Heidegger offers important reflec- tions on the Christian experience of life in his accounts of Saint Paul and Saint Augustine. Yet, what is the systematic meaning of Heidegger’s phenomenology of religion? This essay aims to discuss this question by connecting themes from Die Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens to Heidegger’s attempt to provide his own version of phenomenology in Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung. Heidegger’s position with respect to Husserl’s phenomenology becomes clearer, I argue, when his problematization of the onto-theological structures he discerns at the heart of the philosophers he discusses, such as Descartes and Augustine, is taken into account and when it is shown how the phenomenology of religion exceeds the boundaries of a phenomenology that studies consciousness alone. In fact, the explication of the (purified) Christian experience of life and the concep- tion of God at stake in this experience allows Heidegger to articulate a form of phenomenology purified from onto-theological tendencies.

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Cite this article

van der Heiden, Gert-Jan. “The Christian Experience of Life and the Task of Phenomenology: Heidegger on Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, and Descartes.” Forum Philosophicum 26, no. 2 (2021): 207–26. doi:10.35765/forphil.2021.2602.03.

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License