Guillaume Faye explores Martin Heidegger’s interpretation of Christianity, metaphysics, and the nature of Being, particularly in relation to his engagement with Friedrich Schelling. Heidegger challenges the Christian worldview, which he sees as having rationalized and disenfranchised existence by subjecting it to divine law and mathematical reason. Through Schelling, he develops a vision where Being is not static but a process of ‘becoming,’ and where God is not an external creator but a projection of human thought striving to comprehend existence.
At the heart of this inquiry is Heidegger’s reevaluation of evil—not as a temporary obstacle to be eradicated but as an essential force that shapes history and human destiny. He contrasts the Christian notion of sin with a more profound ontological understanding of evil, framing it as both destructive and creative, a fundamental driver of human freedom and self-affirmation.
This leads to a radical shift in the meaning of human existence. Rather than awaiting salvation from a transcendent deity, Heidegger proposes that man saves himself—and in doing so, creates God—through the act of thinking Being. This transformation is not merely philosophical but historical and political, requiring a reconfiguration of the present by reclaiming a different past. The ultimate goal is the emergence of a post-Christian humanity, freed from theological constraints and actively engaged in the unfolding of existence.
By tracing these themes, Faye sheds light on Heidegger’s ontological theology, his critique of Western metaphysics, and his vision for an era beyond Christianity—one where human freedom, rather than divine law, stands at the center of Being.
Originally published in Nouvelle École no. 39, September 1982.
Translated by Alexander Raynor
In 1936, Martin Heidegger gave a lecture at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau on the work of Friedrich Schelling, focusing particularly on his treatise on freedom. The text of this lecture was published in Germany under the title Schellings Abhandlung über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809) (Niemeyer, Tübingen, 1971) and in France, where it was not translated until 1977, under the title Schelling. Le traité de 1809 sur l’essence de la liberté humaine (Gallimard).1 2
In Schelling’s work, Heidegger saw an approach akin to his own, as it constitutes a "historical questioning in search of being." According to Heidegger, Schelling does not seek to philosophize about free will, nor does he conceive of freedom as a property of man. Rather, he views man as a property of freedom, insofar as the latter reveals the essence of being.
However, while Heidegger adopts Schelling’s views, he goes beyond them by engaging in a distinctly ontological inquiry, thus addressing the position of Christianity in relation to paganism, their potential overcoming, and, by extension, the human condition in the world. It is these latter aspects that we will focus on in particular.
Toward a "Historical" Paganism
There is an idea in Martin Heidegger’s work that appears frequently and can be summarized as follows: Christianity, by carrying out a total rationalization of the European intellectual universe, has "made" the modern world. This world, today, must be surpassed rather than denied. Our time, which is marked by the "systematization of the world" through "mathematical reason," contains both a positive element—the reign and the still-impending assumption of humanity and its power—and a negative element—the disenchantment of the world, now transparent and devoid of mystery, centered on beings and wounded by the "forgetfulness of being."
To declare oneself anti-Christian is merely to reactivate Christian consciousness; to oppose it is still to identify with it. By contrast, to declare oneself post-Christian is to enter the foundational domain of the historial. Martin Heidegger writes: "The history of Europe is and remains determined by Christianity, even after the latter is supposed to have lost its power. And this is why a post-Christian era will be something radically different from a pre-Christian era" (p. 251).
In other words, overcoming Christianity can in no way mean a return to pre-Christian paganism, since we now know that the future of any "historical" paganism is Christianity. Heidegger continues: "If one insists on calling 'pagan' that which is non-Christian, then one must make a fundamental distinction between paganism and paganism—that is, if we must still speak of paganism at all. For paganism, too, is a Christian concept, just like sin" (ibid.).
There would therefore be two distinct forms of paganism, based on the genealogical principles that define them. The first is historical, as it seeks a simple return to the old paganism. The second, however, is no longer historical but historial, insofar as it regards the pre-Christian past as both a resource and a foundation, while also recognizing that this past—paradoxically—will be both integrated and rejected. By incorporating Christianity into its re-examination of the past, this form of paganism is the only one that is genuinely non-Christian. Heidegger further clarifies: "It is just as impossible in philosophy to return in a single leap to Greek philosophy as it is to abolish by decree the Christianity that has entered Western history (...). The only remaining possibility is to radically transform this history, that is, to effectively accomplish the secret necessity of history (...). To effectively achieve this metamorphosis is the work of what is creative" (ibid.).
The overcoming of Christianity and the establishment of what we can only call, for lack of a better term, paganism—by which we mean that which is hidden, active, and ready for unveiling in the authentic depths of European consciousness—cannot take place solely on the terrain of philosophy or even theology. It must also, and above all, manifest in historical and political action.
Heidegger writes: "Relating to the future changes nothing if that future is merely the continuation, the prolongation of the present—this present itself, which has been solidified" (p. 290). (Here, Heidegger is evidently referring to Christianity, which "solidifies" the present and can only invest in the future through the lens of its dead ideals, turned into an egalitarian social morality.)
Therefore, for us to regain the possibility of constructing history anew, a rupture must occur within the present—one that will expel Christian consciousness through the reappropriation of another past. Only under this singular condition will the future be a continuation not of the "current" present but of an "inactual" present, one that already exists. The post-Christian consciousness is already conceivable, alive, and aligned with the oldest European memory—though not yet unveiled and thus not yet active. Heidegger expresses this as follows: "What is at issue for us is not the historical explanation that remains closest to the present of a bygone past, but a different (Auseinandersetzung) historial engagement with what was, and which, for this very reason, unfolds its presence" (p. 290).
The Concept of Becoming and the Problem of Evil
Christian theology, by making the world and becoming transparent through their subjugation to divine rationality, has disenchanted the universe and allowed it to be subjected to mathematical reason. Heidegger writes:
"The domain of beings as a whole, as it was experienced in a Christian manner, is now transposed and radically transformed according to the legality of a thought that determines all being in the form of cohesion and interconnection, which is that of the mathematical foundation relationship" (p. 65).
Indeed, the law from which Christianity proceeds ("legality of a thought"), corresponding to Yahweh’s legal order, has been secularized into a worldview—one that, now more than ever, perceives the world in a rational, mathematical, and causal way, thereby tending toward its homogenization. Heidegger laments this state of affairs, yet he does not seek to reverse history. He both connects and contrasts this detrimental rationalization of the world with the emergence of a new human "freedom" ("man abandoned to his freedom amidst beings"), a freedom that, through a historial process, is called to re-enchant the world.
Just as technology must, through its own assumption, surpass and invert the deadly rationalization of beings for which it is responsible, and just as the rational must serve as a weapon against reason, so too will the emergence of a post-Christian age be made possible by the completion of disenchantment and Christianity’s rendering of the world transparent. Heidegger expresses this idea as follows:
"It is not because the Church’s teachings lose their power and cease to be the primary and authentic source of truth that the various domains of beings as a whole—imprinted by Christianity—disappear from the horizon. On the contrary, the ordering of beings in their entirety—God, the Creator, the created world, man as part of the world and destined for God—the totality of represented being now demands a new appropriation, based on and mediated by the foundational knowledge of oneself" (p. 62).
Does this suggest a call for a post-Christian theology, a kind of pagan "onto-theology"?
What, then, of God?
For Schelling, God’s essence is interpreted as an immutable "being." Yet, Schelling also writes:
"We recognize that the concept of becoming is the only one adequate to the nature of things."
Since things have their foundation and their becoming in God, and since God, according to Schelling, is immutable because He is uncreated, there must therefore be two principles within God. Things (what Heidegger calls beings), insofar as they are dominated by becoming, are distinct from God. However, at the same time, nothing can be truly distinct from God (since beings are grounded in Being). This contradiction must be resolved.
Schelling attempts to do so by proposing that "things have their foundation in that which, within God himself, is not himself" (LVIII). Thus, things would not proceed from God himself but from a principle within God—one that is the "eternal desire of the One to give birth to itself" (I.VIII). This desire, for Schelling, is not conscious. It is pure will; it in some sense "precedes" understanding—so much so that the desiring part of God precedes His superior, immutable, and conscious part.
In this way, Schelling reintroduces into the classical definition of the monotheistic God, distinct from the world, a principle he describes as the "essence of desire considered in itself and for itself" or as a "will in which there is no understanding" (I.VIII), which stands as co-eternal with conscious being. In doing so, he mirrors the approach of the Ancients, whose deities were the expression of different "principles" within a unified conception of the divine.
Distinguishing between a "conscious" divine principle and an unconscious principle that has the "original" characteristic of constituting the "ground of existence" of the divine, Schelling necessarily rejects the Christian tradition’s dualism, which radically differentiates God from the world. For Schelling, the only possible dualism is one that exists within divinity itself:
"This is the only dualism that is justified, namely the one that simultaneously admits a unity."
He continues:
"There is no risk of confusing this relationship with that other dualism, where the subordinate principle is always essentially evil and, for that reason, remains utterly inconceivable in its divine origin" (LVII, note).
Schelling therefore acknowledges the "divine origin" of the "things" of this world, which are subject to becoming and governed by the irresistible "desire" to give birth to themselves (what Nietzsche would later call the will). In doing so, Schelling distances himself from the philosophical tradition of his time, which was steeped in Christianity’s devaluation of the world of beings.
These ideas capture Heidegger’s attention, and he comments on them. Heidegger, too, rejects the dualistic model of an "essential" and immutable God who created, outside of Himself, a world that is (temporarily) in flux. Instead, Being and Becoming are inseparable and uncreated. He writes:
"The essence of divine being is becoming. By tracing this becoming back to its foundation, one seeks to glimpse what is in God, in the sense that He is co-originally determined by both ground and existence (…). It is because the essence of divine being is such a becoming that the being (Sein) of things can only be conceived as becoming as well, since nothing that exists can be thought purely and simply outside of God" (p. 212).
This means that both the world and God are uncreated and intertwined in becoming. Heidegger continues:
"Creation is not the fabrication of nature, but rather the inflection of its eternal essence into time" (p. 215).
Under these conditions, beings are grounded in God without being caused by God (p. 215).
For Heidegger, there is no separation between the human and the divine. Man is the ground of God. And when Heidegger assigns to modern times the goal of "constructing the essence of man within the totality of beings" (p. 291), he clarifies:
"In this construction, man must reveal himself as the being who, in an eminent sense, is God: man is God" (p. 291).
He then adds that man is "the place through which God reclaims nature into Himself (…) and 'is' nature itself."
More than achieving material mastery over the world, man is called to spiritually become the one who stands at the center of beings. Heidegger expresses this overhumanism in these terms:
"Man’s will 'is' in itself nothing other than the contained impulse of the God who still remains in the depths (...). Man rises above the light of understanding" (p. 245).
Thus, man partakes both in the unconscious depths of God and in the "spirit," which is the divine becoming of a conscious nature. These two aspects of the human—unified yet distinct—are described by Heidegger as follows:
"In man (...), the two principles form a unique unity: the deepest ground of the foundation (...) and the will that penetrates being unite within him. In man lies the deepest abyss and the highest heaven" (p. 244).
Man, then, can become the creator of God, insofar as—unlike pantheism—he is separated from God yet wills that which constitutes the foundation and essence of the divine, namely the ground:
"He wills the most secret will of the ground."
Thus,
"Man transcends everything that is natural and created (...). As his own will, he is indeed free to move in relation to the universal will" (p. 245).
This universal will, of a divine nature, is blind and unconscious. Human will, by contrast, is conscious; within it resides the spirit, which does not dwell in the divine. For man alone, within the realm of being-becoming, is capable of decision.
Heidegger clarifies:
"The bond between the principles—the particular will and the universal will—is, in man, a free bond; it is not, as in God, a necessary bond. Man’s particular will, as a spiritual will, has risen above nature and no longer merely serves the universal will" (pp. 245-246).
Building on Schelling, Heidegger develops an entire philosophical interpretation of anthropology that combines elements of a new pagan theology with an ethological discourse on hominization. He observes:
"The animal can never be ‘evil’ (...). Evil, after all, belongs to the spirit. The animal can never step outside the unity proper to its determined level within nature" (p. 249).
An animal’s behavior is automatic, corresponding to what ethology describes as innate and pre-programmed behavioral patterns. Hominization, by contrast, is characterized by a biological grounding even deeper than animal instinct, yet also by the capacity to channel that instinct and thereby transcend biological nature and the constraints of species.
"The tension of the ground," Heidegger states, "never reaches (in the animal) the clarity of self-knowledge, because in the animal, the ground neither attains the innermost depth of desire nor the supreme breadth of the spirit" (p. 249).
Man, however, accomplishes this leap—both Dionysian, close to the ground, and Apollonian, the most cultural, the most spiritual.
Heidegger, in a manner reminiscent of Konrad Lorenz or Arnold Gehlen, thus writes:
"It is man who has the dubious privilege of being able to fall lower than the animal, whereas the animal is incapable of this perversion of principles" (ibid.).
One cannot help but be struck by the continuity and mutual connection established here between the biological and the spiritual within being-becoming. Nor can one avoid thinking about the possibilities opened by science in modifying our own nature.
It seems that Heidegger, too, was aware of this implication, as he asserts:
"Man is that being who can overturn the very elements that compose his essence, who can overturn the ontological articulation of his Dasein" (ibid.).
This rejection of an immutable and definitively created human nature leads Heidegger to approach the problem of evil—an age-old philosophical and theological debate—from a perspective radically removed from Judeo-Christian thought.
Evil, according to Heidegger, is related to the ground. It "resides in the manifestation of the primordial will of the first ground" (p. 249); it is "the most positive aspect of nature itself" (ibid.). Here, evil is not seen as a temporary principle destined to be eliminated in an eschatological battle where the final outcome—the triumph of Good—is predetermined, as monotheistic theology posits. In every dualistic vision of becoming, evil is disenchanted and stripped of spirit, whereas Heidegger understands it as a negative force—present as negation, yet secretly fertilizing history.
The manifestation of evil in reality and among beings takes the form of "self-love" and "egoism", which are not defects but rather ontological and biological characteristics through which man sustains his existence, immersed as he is in the enigma of his destiny. Heidegger notes:
"Evil belongs to the domain where spirit and history reign" (p. 250).
Heidegger therefore criticizes Schelling’s assimilation of evil with sin—a Christian concept that lacks depth and has stripped the metaphysical notion of evil of its truth and its positive negativity.
"The secularization of the theological concept of sin and the Christianization of the metaphysical concept of evil go hand in hand," Heidegger asserts.
This confusion, characteristic not only of Schelling and Hegel but of all German idealism—and indeed of Western philosophy as a whole—led to the adoption of a damaging dualism (evil/sin vs. good/grace), of which contemporary nihilism is one of the consequences. The task, then, is to restore the ontological depth of the idea of evil and to legitimize it once again within a philosophy of becoming.
Evil, Heidegger explains, is a "perversion" of the human spirit. This means it can take two forms: a destructive egoism but also a self-affirmation of the ‘proper will’—conquering and constructive. This idea is echoed in Heidegger’s writings on modern technology, which he sees as both dissolving and homogenizing, yet also potentially positive and redemptive.
Evil is intrinsically linked to the "conscious will" of the human spirit, through which man dominates nature. Paradoxically, thinkers such as Erich Fromm and Ernst Bloch, associated with the Frankfurt School, agreed with this analysis. However, taking a different value stance, they condemned humanity’s technical mastery over the world, as well as its claim to spiritually elevate itself to the status of God, due to this very link between evil and the human will to power.
Heidegger, however, restores evil not as something simply bad, but as something overhuman—driving man to subject everything to his grasp and to transform everything. Evil can thus lead to both ruin and ascension. It is, therefore, a principle that is both creative and risky. It corresponds precisely to Heidegger’s often-repeated definition of the human being: the one who is "the most unsettling."
Hence this overhumanist definition of the very concept of evil:
"Evil (…) is the domination of the proper will asserting mastery over the universal will" (p. 257).
Evil thus appears as the conscious transposition of a fundamental principle present in nature—the tendency toward self-overcoming and competition among all forms of life for the greater 'good' of the whole of existence. Once made conscious, this principle manifests in man as the "spirit of dissension" (Entzweiung) (p. 258), which is indispensable to historical development.
For this reason, Heidegger challenges those who advocate a metaphysical struggle against evil, as their ultimate goal is the homogenization of history—in other words, its end. He directs this critique, above all, at Hegel, writing:
"Hegel’s universal history projects have something disconcerting about them" (p. 259).
In contrast, Heidegger upholds "the essence of historical mobility, within which the spirit of evil announces itself" (ibid.).
This evil, present in life and posing for the Christian the insoluble problem of why a God of love allows the principle of evil to act—this same evil that also drives the Christian to flee life, whose essence is anxiety—leads Heidegger to radically invert the Christian problematic concerning the very meaning of human existence.
Lived evil, the anxiety of existence, is no longer a temporary trial fundamentally different from the "true life" (whether that be the one promised in the heavenly Jerusalem or the social paradises of secular ideologies). Rather, it constitutes the central knot of life itself.
Misfortune is no longer anxiety but, on the contrary, the possibility of its absence. Anxiety is fertile; it drives the struggle for life—which is to say, it leads to the most authentic form of joy (as opposed to mere "happiness").
Heidegger writes:
"Vital anxiety is a metaphysical necessity and has nothing to do with the petty miseries of the fearful and fainthearted individual. Vital anxiety is a prerequisite for human greatness; since this greatness is not absolute, it requires prerequisites. What would a hero be if he never allowed the deepest vital anxiety to develop within him? A mere performer, a braggart, or a blind brute. The anxiety of Dasein (…) bears witness to the fact that man is exposed to the effectiveness of evil, and this in an essential way" (p. 262).
This interpretation of how Heidegger perceives God and deduces from it the existential situation of man follows a perspective in which the ground represents the being-becoming of the world, while God is the projection of the human spirit attempting to think it. The return of God would no longer consider Him as a value, but rather as the endeavor of the human spirit to think Being—and, through this act, to create God.
This is a complete reversal of the Christian perspective, for it is no longer God who, by willing and thinking man, saves him. Instead, man saves himself—and saves God—by thinking Being.
God thus refers to an act of human will and spirit, to the assault of this will and spirit in their striving to think Being. This assault has no finality, as it does not seek to generate value (and thus does not aim for a specific outcome), but rather obeys Being itself—that is, the ground, which is identified with becoming.
Such an ontological theology appears entirely monistic: being-becoming gives rise to consciousness and compels human will and spirit to think it. God represents the process, the force field of this interrelation. He is the spark that unites the human spirit with Being.
This overcoming—putting an end to the forgetfulness of Being—will not find its fulfillment in a purely intellectual or mystical formulation, but in a historial realization. This overcoming will be accomplished through historical acts, whose purpose will be to transform the present by granting it a different past. And the instrument of this transformation will be man's recognition that he is possessed by freedom—the freedom whose essence Schelling grasped, and which alone allows man to recognize himself in the essence of beings, that is, to recognize himself as the one whose self-affirmation must never be hindered.
The Christian man remains subject to a God whose role is to dictate Law. The man Heidegger envisions in his reading of Schelling, however, by consciously participating in the Being of all things, constructs himself as the Liberated One.
This liberation, which is an assault, may well be called God.
The English translation of the text by Schelling is Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom, translated in 2007 by Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt.
Throughout this essay, page numbers are referenced (presumably the French translation of the lecture). Faye is referencing Heidegger’s lecture on Schelling. The English translation of Heidegger’s lecture is available as Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom: On the Essence of Human Freedom (Volume 8, Series in Continental Thought), translated by Joan Stambaugh, published in 1985.
This was truly fascinating, thank you. I think it needs a few re-reads to understand the full scope. Coincidentally, I'm reading the book 'Schelling - Understanding German Idealism'' by Michael Tsarion at the moment, which I would def recommend for those interested in these concepts.