The god or gods are the ones who counter us, that is, who encounter us and compel us to be guardians of beyng (GA66:118). In the nearness of the gods, everything is revealed anew as we are called to a new attunement to the world.

Heidegger's relation to Christianity and his ideas about divinity are among the most difficult – and, for many, among the most thoughtprovoking – issues that his readers confront. In fact, these were among the most difficult issues Heidegger personally grappled with, calling “the struggle with the faith of my birth” one of “the two great thorns in my flesh” (the other being his political misadventure; see Ott 1993: 37). This struggle was an ongoing one: over the course of his life Heidegger's thinking underwent significant developments and a number of shifts regarding Christianity, and the Gottesfrage (question of God) can be seen as a periodically resurfacing accompaniment to the Seinsfrage (question of being) along his entire path of thought.

In compiling this compendium my aim was to glean from the pages of Heidegger's many texts a chronologically ordered selection of passages that exemplify the different phases in the development of Heidegger's thinking about Christianity and divinity. In rough outline, those phases can be described as follows:

1. Up until around 1917 Heidegger exhibits a deep personal faith in Catholicism and a philosophical commitment to Aristotelian-Thomistic scholasticism, which he seeks to defend against “modernism” but also to develop in light of modern logic and medieval mysticism.

2. Between 1917 and 1919 Heidegger undergoes a religious-philosophical conversion from “the system of Catholicism” to a non-dogmatic Protestantism or “free Christianity”. Inspired by Paul, Augustine, Luther and Kierkegaard, in 1920–21 he seeks to employ phenomenology to recover an experiential understanding of “primal Christianity”.…

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) is widely considered to be the most famous, influential and controversial philosopher of the twentieth century. His writings are also among the most formidable. The fundamental concepts of his thought are for many the source of both fascination and frustration. Yet any student of philosophy – or of contemporary thought in general – needs to become acquainted with Heidegger's main ideas. This book is designed to facilitate this process. Each chapter introduces and explains a key concept – or a cluster of closely related concepts – in Heidegger's thought. Together, the chapters cover the full range of his path of thought in its early, middle and later periods.

Introduction: Gelassenheit as authentic non-willing

Gelassenheit, generally translated as “releasement”, is a key word of Heidegger's later thought. Indeed, it names nothing less than the fundamental attunement (Grundstimmung) with which he says human beings are to authentically relate to other beings and to being itself. It contrasts with the fundamental attunement – or rather dis-attunement – of the will. In modern times, human being is essentially will-ful; the will, according to Heidegger, is the historical determination of the essence of modern humanity. In fact he claims that, in the epochs of modernity, the being of beings as such is revealed – albeit in the form of extreme self-concealment and even abandonment – as “will to power” and ultimately as the technological “will to will”.

By way of thoughtfully meditating on this historical determination of being and human being as will, Heidegger looks forward to, and attempts to prepare for, a turn in the history of being and a corresponding turn in the essence of humanity. It is crucial to bear in mind that this turn from will to Gelassenheit would not involve a mere reversal within what Heidegger calls “the domain of the will”, a turnabout, for instance, from will-ful assertion to passive submission. Rather, Heidegger's thought calls for a twisting free of this entire domain of the will and a leap into a region of non-willing letting-be that is otherwise than both will-ful activity and will-less passivity.