The question of whether Heidegger’s phenomenological contribution to the philosophy of being originates from his pre-philosophical attitude to theology or rather, it is the methodological question of phenomenology which influenced his thinking, is one of the most essential questions in Heidegger-research. Though, this has already been elaborated on in a broader sense, the publication of the Black Notes has opened new dimensions for discussion. It is not the aim of this paper to represent Heidegger’s concept of the history of being in the light of the new debates, but rather to confirm the thesis, that, in spite of the ‘turn’; in Heidegger’s thinking, his phenomenological hermeneutics was inspired, above all, by his reflection on Christianity. Moreover, the paper will question whether the linearity of Heidegger’s thinking about the historical being remains on the horizon of the religious phenomenon, as it is thematized in his early papers and lectures. While Heidegger’s early phenomenological approaches to religion and theology have been sufficiently elaborated on by several authors, and the phenomenological–hermeneutical relevance has been proven in his thinking, the linkage between the early philosophical approaches to the problem of religiosity and of historical being arising newly in Heidegger’s thinking from the 1930s is missing. The present paper will not just refer to the thesis that Heidegger’s theological background contributed to his questioning of being, and that it was influenced in different ways, but makes an attempt to reveal the internal dynamics of Heidegger’s early thinking prior to the publication of Being and Time and the time of composing the Contributions to Philosophy of those of Heidegger’s lectures which remain in the parallel analysis of religiosity and historicity.

Well known is the fact that Husserl’s Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and phenomenological Philosophy I, published in 1913, made a strong disappointment in the phenomenological circle around Husserl, and started a reinterpretation of the husserlian phenomenology. The problem of the constitution was a real dilemma for the studentship of Munich — Göttingen. More of Husserl’s students from his Göttingen years reflected in the 1930th on the transcendental idealism, which they originated from the Ideas and found fulfilled in Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations and Formal and transzendental Logic. The remarkable similarity between these papers is the questioning on being incorporated in the problematic of the method in the husserlian phenomenology. But this parallelism in the problem reveals the origin of the religious phenomenon in the husserlian phenomenology as well. Adolf Reinach’s religious terms as gratitude (Dankbarkeit), charity (Barmherzigkeit), etc. in his religious Notes, Heidegger’s notion of being as finiteness in Being and Time, Edith Stein’s concept about the finite and eternal being in Finite and Eternal Being are originating in the problem of constitution in the transcendental phenomenology on the one hand, but these phenomenon point at the constitution theologically. In my paper I would like to show the relationship between the critique on the husserlian transcendental idealism and the roots of the experience of religious life by the phenomenological problem of being especially at Edith Stein.

In his early Freiburg lectures on the phenomenology of religious life, published as his Phenomenology of Religious Life, Heidegger sought to interpret the Christian life in phenomenological terms, while also discussing the question of whether Christianity should be construed as historically defined. Heidegger thus connected the philosophical discussion of religion as a phenomenon with the character of the religious life taken in the context of factical life. According to Heidegger, every philosophical question originates from the latter, which determines such questions pre-theoretically, while the tradition of early Christianity can also only be understood historically in such terms. More specifically, he holds that the historical phenomenon of religious life as it relates to early Christianity, inasmuch as it undergirds our conception of the religious phenomenon per se, reveals the essential connection between factical life and religious life. In this way, the conception of religion that Heidegger establishes through his analyses of Paul’s Epistles takes on both theological and philosophical ramifications. Moreover, the historicity of factical life finds its fulfillment in our comprehension of the primordial form of Christianity as our very own historical a priori, determined by our own factical situation. Hence, historicity and factical life belong together within the situation that makes up the foundation of the religious life.

The significance of the present volume lies in the fact that it revisits Heidegger's reflection on God in the light of newly published literature, thereby presenting new approaches to already established thoughts.Heidegger's phenomenological thinking originates from Husserlian phenomenology. Heidegger seems to follow him in the sense of the Ideas I, where Husserl expresses the impossibility of a mundane God (See Husserl, Ideas I, §51) because of the absolute consciousness of God which cannot be taken as an object of human experience; Heidegger, in the so-called Natorp-Report, interprets philosophical analysis of God as the "raising of hands against God" 1 . Nevertheless, as is well known, the question of God accompanies in Heidegger's analysis of being-historical thinking, and there are many ways to approach this difficult topic. However, the first example of the conceptual analysis of God appears already in the 1920s in the appendix of HGA 60, where Heidegger, under the title of The Absolute, intensely analyzed Adolf Reinach's religious notes. His methodological inquiries are also revealed by the parallel interpretation of historicity as a phenomenological problem, and as the problem of religious experiences in Reinach's religious notes. Contrary to Heidegger, Reinach interpreted religious experience as a similar act to social acts, however, the religious act is directed at someone [at God], who is not present. The absence of God constitutes the paradox in Reinach's religious thinking, because, on the one hand, the experience of God is individual, but, on the other hand, this experience is undividable for those who have no faith.This way, it is not accidental that Heidegger's notes for the planned lectures on medieval mysticism in 1918 focused on the question of whether 1. Martin Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zu Ontologie und Logik, ed. Günther Neumann HGA 62 (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann 2005), 363n54.