ABSTRACT
What is called Religion? we ask in pastiche of Heidegger’s many works and essays calling upon us to think via the question “What is?”: What is called Thinking?, What is Metaphysics?, What is Philosophy?, he asks. In asking the question “What is?” Heidegger calls upon us to enter upon a path of thinking that will lead us to the essence or nature of whatever is under discussion such that “To think is to be underway”. Our question is “What is called Religion?” and specifically Heidegger’s relationship to such a question. The title of this work could equally, and with as much justification, be called “What is called Theology?” Both of these questions serve as reminders and monuments to that which calls us into a thinking experience with what remains seemingly un-thought in Heidegger’s work. Now the un-thought is in each case unique to a thinker and, as such, it is not a lack inherent in that thinking, so Heidegger informs us in Was Heisst Denken? The un-thought represents a rich untapped vein: the greater and more original the thinking, the richer the un-thought. These questions that we ask, above all, stand as signs and indicators to titles of works which Heidegger did not write-perhaps, could not write. This not in our expression “the works Heidegger did not write” represents here not negation and privation but something fundamentally different in character from either. That Heidegger did not subject either of these topics to his usual and rigorous thinking bespeaks of a relationship that was problematic, perhaps even aporetic.
