ABSTRACT

This chapter suggests an answer to that question as part of a larger interpretation of the way Martin Heidegger thought aligned with modernist projects of fragmentation and unification. Heidegger was a Catholic to age twenty-seven, a Protestant from twenty-seven to thirty-two, and an atheist thereafter, at least with respect to a Christian God. Heidegger's philosophy in Being and Time pursues the nature of Being itself, an elusive subject that presumably unifies everything because Being grounds all that is. Catholicism impacted his education, especially after 1903 when he was dependent on Catholic educational institutions to cover his expenses. The conspicuous absence of sexuality and love from his existential analytic suggests that Catholic elevation of the spiritual soul over the lowly body and its desires remained in play. Being and Time suggests ambivalence about Christianity by what it does and does not consider relevant to his philosophy of existence.