I read a little bit of Being and Time years ago. I'd like to understand better about what Heidegger actually believed himself. Was he religious himself?
What I read is that his atheism was methodological, it had to do with his approach to philosophy. When it comes to philosophy he brackets the question of God. He seems to want to keep philosophy and theology separate.
What do people think about this?jkl
I’ve only read Heidegger before his turn (Being and Time’s first division and the Metaphysics lecture–not much on temporality either), so I can’t tell you about his later thought. But I’m pretty sure that when he was questioned about the existence of God—both in his earlier and later thought—he seemed to resist giving a straight answer. I don’t think Heidegger phenomenologically “bracketed it aside” in the way that Husserl would bracket aside what Descartes would doubt. I can see why Heidegger would bracket it aside, as it’s not a central tenet in his system of thought, but Heidegger’s phenomenology isn’t so reductionist to bracket aside everything that’s not important.
The answer to why the existence of God isn’t important to Heidegger, as you recognize, has to do with his approach to philosophy—phenomenology. Phenomenology was pioneered by a guy called Edmund Husserl, a logician and philosopher, in the early 20th century. Phenomenology is often paired with French existentialism because existentialism evolved and borrowed heavily from phenomenology and phenomenologists (philosophers in the phenomenological tradition).
When you hear “phenomenon,” think “experience.” Don’t think of past experiences or memories, but what you currently experience. (There’s a lot more to this, and there are a few different types of experience that phenomenologists have identified.) And this is fundamentally connected to consciousness: the most common adage of phenomenology is “consciousness is always consciousness of something.” It’s a radical rejection of the Cartesian theater and any sort of “passive consciousness” where all you do is think about representations of things in your mind. So, your experience and phenomenon are fundamentally tied to the world you inhabit.
However–this is the bracketing aside part–strict phenomenologists (like Husserl) would say that you can’t actually say anything about the objective existence or qualities of a thing. Indeed, in order to be a pure phenomenologist, you have to “bracket aside” all those thoughts about objectivity (where “objective” means independent of mind). For Husserl, it’s impossible to actually talk about the objectivity of things, because you’re still a subject. All you can talk about is your own phenomenon, which can be shared by others. Objects appear distinct from each other in Husserl’s thought.
Heidegger was actually a student of Husserl, but he thought Husserl wasn’t “contextual” enough. “Worldhood” plays a pretty significant role in Heidegger’s thought, and when talking about Heidegger you’ll always hear about Dasein. Dasein is weird, and Heidegger dedicated hundreds of pages to it. So, just think of Dasein as the “existing” you, the most fundamental part of you, that which is of you. It’s not your personality or psychology, but literally you. Anyways, Dasein always lives in a world before it evaluates anything, so things initially appear as useful. This is one of the modes of being that Heidegger identifies—ready-to-hand, or “handiness.” For example, you approach a hammer as something to be used for hammering, not as something to be evaluated. And only when the handiness stops working–the hammer breaks–do you take a step back and approach reality as something to be evaluated–seeing if you can repair the hammer. That is a second mode Heidegger identifies—present-to-hand. Fundamentally and primordially, Heidegger says we encounter reality as handy, not present. Translating this line of thought a bit, Heidegger centers everything on individual experience and utility. He thus has very little care for objectivity. And indeed all styles of phenomenology center knowledge on the individual human and their perspective; to the phenomenologist, objectivity makes no appearance because objectivity is simply impossible. (This is one of the points that existentialists borrowed a lot.)
Because of that, to a phenomenologist it appears bizarre to care about the objective existence of God, let alone getting others to care about it. Phenomenologists don’t say there isn’t an objective reality; they just say we, as limited people, can’t access it. So, phenomenologists can say two seemingly contradictory things at the same time: (1) God may exist, and I might go to hell; and (2) the existence of God has no meaning to me, because that’s something I’ve yet to experience or care about. Thus, Heidegger’s “atheism” was most likely agnosticism or apatheism.
Now to what other people think about it.
Here's a good reddit discussion about it in r/askphilosophy. Phenomenology as a general approach to philosophy isn’t popular anymore, but its influence is still widespread in many different fields. The most common criticism (I think) is (1) “phenomenology doesn’t allow for objectivity” accompanied with (2) a philosophical system that does allow for objectivity. A second common criticism has to do with another part of phenomenological thought–the phenomenological reduction–which I only covered in part with the “bracketing aside.” I don’t know many theological critiques of phenomenology, as you need to reject phenomenology on its own terms due to the fundamental nature of its claims, but I don’t see why it’s impossible to develop a theological critique.
