Heidegger’s “A-theism” as a Confrontation with Theological Questions

The young Heidegger defined his philosophical position as “A-theism”. This is gen-erally considered to be the expression of his separation from his theological origin (Herkunft). Due to this generally accepted assumption, Sartre classified Heidegger as an atheistic existentialist. But Heidegger’s atheism is completely different from Sartre’s atheism, and making this difference clear is very important for understanding Heidegger’s thought. So my aim to focus upon Heidegger’s atheism is as follows: 1. If we analyze the process of the formation of his atheism in detail, we can provide a persuasive expla-nation of Heidegger’s relation to his theological origin as a sequence rather than as separation.2. On the one hand, the principle of atheism expresses Heidegger’s attitude towards theology. On the other hand, it provides an answer to Heidegger’s important question: How does God enter into philosophy? For what the modern death of God or the end of theological questions means is not that these old questions have become “meaningless, ” but that the way they were framed and answered has lost its plausibil-ity. Therefore, it is not that modern western philosophy is unburdened and unguided by theological questions, but that it should be a confrontation with the binding force of theological questions.