Abstract

The paper addresses two related questions: 1. the much debated issue concerning philosophy's proper way of engaging with religion, and 2. the extent to which religious concerns belong to our existence. If philosophy is understood as the hermeneutics of existence, that is, as the self-interpretation of existence, as the early Heidegger proposes, then the way the second question is answered bears on the approach to the first issue. While endorsing Heidegger's claim in the 1920s that philosophy should be autonomous and neutral in relation to religious concerns, I reject his view that this can be achieved through a silencing attitude characteristic of a “fundamentally atheistic” philosophy. I link Heidegger's failure to offer a convincing response to the first question to the way in which he addresses the second question as to whether religious concerns essentially belong to our existence. In contrast with his views on the second question, which often seem to propose a negative answer to it (but which, I claim, are not as not as clear as it is sometimes assumed), I argue that spiritual comportment is an essential aspect of our life. How can then philosophy ‘transcend’ it and be religiously neutral without becoming silent about it? I argue that philosophy can be religiously neutral and, at the same time, speak about spirituality as an open question within a shared space