Fall 2026 Course and Lecture Series: Does Religion Need Philosophy?

Heidegger and the Phenomenology of Religious Life

Philosophy – for Heidegger – is not a taking note of facts of consciousness such as concepts, judgments, or values but a placing oneself into the “crisis” announced in the “facticity of life.” He states this insight as early as his 1920/21 lectures on the “phenomenology of religious life,” lectures that center on the explication of three letters of St. Paul (Galatians, 1st and 2nd Thessalonians). The Fall 2026 lectures of the Institute for Philosophy & Religion (IPR) aim to bring us into that very conversation on the task of philosophy that Heidegger develops in a critical conversation with contemporary philosophical, historical, and phenomenological approaches to religion (from the religious apriorism of Ernst Troeltsch to the emphasis on the “irrational” as the proprium of religion in R. Otto). The lectures and the concurrent seminar aim to introduce us to the vibrant early-20th-century debates on religion, to Heidegger’s early radical critique of philosophy (culminating in Sein und Zeit, 1927), and to the phenomenological method as an approach to the study of “religion.”

The lectures provide background to the thinkers Heidegger critically engaged with (incl. Wilhelm Dilthey and Edmund Husserl) when he developed his own philosophical program. They show resonances between the early Heidegger and the 1927 book Being and Time, and they explore Heidegger’s reception in recent philosophical thought.

Lecture Schedule

Wednesdays, from 6:30PM to ~8:00PM. Location: GSU Terrace Lounge (GSU 239) (except Nov. 4, which is 6:30PM to 8:30PM in HAR 406)

Sept 23 – Ben Austin on Husserl and Phenomenology

October 7 – Benjamin Crowe on Dilthey and the Crisis of Historicism

October 21 – Colin Bossen on Political Theology of American Populism

November 4 – Dan Dahlstrom on Sein und Zeit (6:45 to 8:30 in HAR 406)

November 18 – Zhivei “Gavin” Min on Heidegger and Pauline Eschatology

December 2 – Sarah Hammerschlag on Susan Taubes und Echoes of Heidegger