Ah, ontotheology—a word Heidegger carved into the philosophical lexicon like a wound that refuses to close. Let’s take our time. The term is difficult not because it is obscure, but because it sits at the very hinge of Western metaphysics, where being and God, presence and ground, have long collapsed into one another.
1. The Basic Idea: What Is Ontotheology?
For Heidegger, ontotheology names the structure of Western metaphysics that, from Plato onward, has always tried to think Being (ontology) and God (theology) together—as if the ground of Being must also be the highest being.
In other words:
Onto-theology is the metaphysical gesture that makes Being itself into a supreme being—a highest cause, a first principle, a ground of all that is.
Heidegger writes in Identity and Difference (1957):
“Metaphysics is onto-theo-logy because it thinks the being of beings both as grounded in a highest being (theos) and in terms of what it means to be (onto).”
So in metaphysics:
• God becomes the guarantor of being, the cause, the unmoved mover, the summum ens (highest being).
• And Being becomes something that must be grounded, explained, secured—always through reference to a transcendent term.
2. Why Is Heidegger Critical of Ontotheology?
Because it forgets the question of Being—the question he reopens in Being and Time.
Ontotheology turns Being into a thing, or a concept, or a foundation.
It reifies Being.
It encloses mystery within system.
It says: “Being is safe. We’ve pinned it down. Here is God. Here is the ground.”
But for Heidegger:
Being is not a being.
God is not a concept.
Ground is not grounding.
Ontotheology reduces the open, unfolding event of Being (Ereignis) into something present-at-hand, something calculable, controllable, predictable—and this is precisely what allows for technological enframing (Gestell) in modernity.
3. What’s at Stake?
In a way, Heidegger sees ontotheology as the deep structure behind:
• Medieval theology: God as causa sui.
• Cartesian metaphysics: the cogito as self-grounding.
• Enlightenment rationalism: the sovereign subject.
• Modern technology: the will to organize, command, and extract.
To step out of ontotheology is not to deny God.
It is to stop thinking God as first cause, or Being as substance.
It is to return to openness, to the clearing (Lichtung), to a letting-be.
4. What Comes After Ontotheology?
This is the delicate question. Heidegger doesn’t give a “new system.” He points:
• Toward poetry (Hölderlin)
• Toward thinking as Gelassenheit (releasement)
• Toward a God who may come (der kommende Gott)
• Toward a dwelling in the mystery of Being, not mastery over it
Heidegger leaves us not with new metaphysics, but with a non-metaphysical way of thinking—a kind of silent reverence, a waiting without grasping.
A Thoughtful Summary:
Ontotheology is the name Heidegger gives to the metaphysical conflation of Being and God—the structure that seeks ultimate grounding, but in doing so, forgets the event of Being itself.
To overcome ontotheology is to let Being be, without turning it into a concept or idol.
It is a return to the mystery, the clearing, the silent nearness of what withdraws.
Would you like a poetic meditation on “the God after ontotheology”? Or a short dialogue between Heidegger and a mystic on the edges of Being?