The Phenomenology of Religious Life

Heidegger, Martin. The Phenomenology of Religious Life. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2010.

Part 1 Methodological Introduction

Chap.1

To the sciences, introduction means to present the domain of the subject matter, and the methodological treatment of that domain, and a historical overview of the various attempts at solutions.

Philosophy arises from factical life experience. What philosophy is can only be made clear in philosophizing itself. "The point of departure of the path to philosophy is factical life experience." (p.8)

Experience has a worldly character and emphasizes significance.

Chap.2

Troeltsch's goal is the working out of a scientifically valid, essential determination of religion. He has a fourfold concept of the essence of religion: psychological, epistemological, historical, metaphysical. (p.19)

Chap.3

The core phenomenon is the "historical". Historical means becoming, emergence, proceeding in time, a characterization that befits a reality. (p.22)

Chap.4

"Formal indication" as a method of phenomenology. Formalization is different from generalization. Generalization means generalizing according to genus, such as the generalizing transition from "red" to "color", and from "color" to "sensuous quality". But from "sensuous quality" to "essence" is a formalization. The formalization arises out of the relational meaning of the pure attitudinal relation itself. (p.40) The formal is something relational, and the indication should indicate beforehand the relation of the phenomenon. (pp.43-44)

Each experience can be taken in the phenomenon in three directions of senses: content (what), relation (how), enactment (how). Phenomenology is explication of this totality of sense. (p.43) 【现象学，其实即是发生学】

Part 2 Phenomenological Explication of the Letters of Paul

Chap.1 

The actual problem of "dogma", in the sense of religious explication, lies in primordial Christianity.

Chap.2

Phenomenology must keep its eye exactly on the problematic of the foreconception, in connection with history.

Heidegger focuses on How of the proclamation of Paul.

The steps of phenomenological explication: (1) to determine the complex of phenomena object-historically, pre-phenomenologically, as a historical situation. (2)to enact the historical situation, i.e. to characterize the diversity of what may be encountered, and the accentuating situation of the diversity, and the primary sense of the accentuating situation, and from there to arrive at the phenomenal complex and from this to posit the study of origin. (p.58) 【对历史处境的描述】

Chap.3

Paul's life hangs between God and vocation.

The changing meaning of παρουσία (presence). (p.71)

The center of Christianity is the eschatological problem. (p.73) The Christian life is not secure. 

Chap.4

Whether one is a true Christian is decided by that fact that one recognizes the Antichrist. (p.78)

Chap.5

The Christian life is broken up: all surrounding-world relations must pass through the complex of having-becoming. The Christian does not find in God a foothold. God is never a foothold. (p.86-87) 【此处表明基督徒的生活经验是处于流变和不安中的】