Neither Philosophy nor Theology: The Origin in Heidegger’s Earliest Thought

Abstract

Abstract “The Origin,” one of Martin Heidegger’s most important notions after 1934, is tightly related to being-historical thinking, and to the peculiar kind of divinity that being-historical thinking indicates. However, the notion of the Origin appears already in Heidegger’s early Freiburg lectures (given between 1919 and 1923), thus placing it among the fundamentals of his early thought. This article argues that Heidegger’s project of fundamental ontology emerges from that early notion of the Origin, preparing the way for its flourishing in his later thinking. Attending to Heidegger’s early notion of the Origin, I suggest, reveals a unique feature of Heidegger’s thinking; namely, an element of genuine religiosity ungraspable in terms of both philosophy and theology. Thus, rather than interpreting fundamental ontology as a transcendental project encompassing a de-theologized version of early Christianity, it should be taken as an attempt to think the truth of the Origin, thus preparing the way for the genuine religiosity of Heidegger’s later thought. In this light, a unique sense of divinity underlies Heidegger’s lectures between 1919 and 1925; a sense which can only be comprehended through Heidegger’s triple sense schema (enactment–relation–content).