“Temporality and Historicality” in Heidegger’s Being and Time as the Clue to the Origin of Christian Theology

• Main Author: Rajesh Sampath
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: The International Academic Forum 2015-10-01
• Series: IAFOR Journal of Ethics, Religion & Philosophy
• Subjects: temporality; historicality; Heidegger; Being and Time; Christianity
• Online Access: https://iafor.org/journal/iafor-journal-of-ethics-religion-and-philosophy/volume-2-issue-1/article-4/

I am not concerned with whether Heidegger’s philosophy is a "secularisation" of primitive Christianity buried beneath the excrescence of a dead medieval Scholasticism and the "ontotheological constitution of its metaphysics". Nor I am concerned with seeking out the theological roots of Heidegger’s philosophy even though he and others may claim that his philosophy is rabidly a-theistic. To repeat, this paper is not interested in intellectual history and or a genealogical reconstruction of Heidegger’s true intentions and the contradictions that are displayed in his published works and what that could mean for the relation between theology and the philosophy of religion. We have to tread a path, making it new, as opposed to discovering a new path that has yet to be taken. Creation is harder than discovery; the former is active and intentional, albeit obscure, and the latter is passive, even accidental, albeit something that can be more readily followed.