What is Phenomenology of Religion? (Part II): The Phenomenology of Religious Experience

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. e12567
Author(s):  
Christina M. Gschwandtner
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion

William James on How to Study Experience: Integrating Phenomenology of Religion and Radical Empiricism

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 423-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason N. Blum
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
William James ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Radical Empiricism ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
Study Experience

William James stands at the nexus of two intellectual traditions important to religious studies: phenomenology of religion and radical empiricism. Focusing on James’s work, I identify three essential points of contact between radical empiricism and phenomenology of religion: epoché, the affective character of consciousness, and the inevitably open-ended nature of experience. I argue that these resonances allow them to be integrated, thereby furnishing a more robust and defensible understanding of the category of “experience.” This integrated approach responds to recent criticisms of phenomenology of religion, and describes a complimentary relationship between it and other, explanatory approaches to the study of religion and religious experience.

scholarly journals Debates on Religious Studies In the Phenomenology Perspective and Its Contribution to Interfaith Tolerance

ULUMUNA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Akhiyat Akhiyat
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Phenomenological Approach ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Role ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
Political Realities

The phenomenological approach in religious studies has played an essential role in uncovering the mysteries of religious experience. With the epoché concept, which refers to the meaning of "delaying all judgments", or it can be said as meaning with the intention of suspending an understanding, that is interpreted as "confinement" (bracketing), the researcher must temporarily let go of all his judgments or understanding of the phenomenon under study to obtain universal knowledge that is transcendental to the phenomenon of religion and experience the essence that they obtain. However, critics from experts for this phenomenological approach to religion still exist, in this case, summarized in three points: first, about the continuity of the phenomenology of religion as a philosophical tradition. Second, hidden theological assumptions or motives behind the phenomenological approach of religion. Third, what is the involvement of religious scientists in the public role as social scientists face current social and political realities or the challenges of religious scientists whether they accept the public role or do not face the reality of various problems faced by society.

Phenomenology as Apologetics

1974 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 402-407
Author(s):  
Peter Donovan
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Empirical Approach ◽  
Religious Believer ◽  
Constructive Theology ◽  
Religious Consciousness ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
Phenomenological Point

Some classics of pre-war British theology appeared in Nisbet's Library of Constructive Theology. The aim of writers in that series was, in the words of editors W. R. Matthews and H. Wheeler Robinson, ‘to lay stress on the value and validity of religious experience and to develop their theology on the basis of the religious consciousness’. Such an empirical approach ensures for the theological product a high content of the kind of material fundamental to modern Phenomenology of Religion; that is, the description and interpretation of experiences, behaviour, and other phenomena of life taken by the religious believer as manifestations of divine reality and activity. A re-reading from a phenomenological point of view, then, can discover new significance in those writings which, though less than a generation old, are all too easily felt to be obsolescent in the light of more recent theological fashions.

Empathy and Inter-religious Imagination

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Cornille
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Religious Imagination ◽  
Religious Worldview ◽  
Religious Dialogue ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion

AbstractEven though empathy plays a central role in inter-religious imagination, the notion of empathy has become all but anathema in the study of religions, associated as it is with Romantic hermeneutics and with the early phenomenology of religion. This article revisits some of the early phenomenological approaches to the problem of empathy in order to explore their continuing import for the question of the possibility of entering imaginatively into the religious worldview and experience of another tradition and understanding it from within. Even though the religious experience of the other always remains beyond the purview of someone not belonging to that tradition, the notion of empathy continues to emphasize the epistemic priority of that experience in the process of inter-religious dialogue, thus stretching the imagination to resonate with new and possibly enriching forms of religious life.

scholarly journals Limits of Phenomenology of Religion

PhaenEx ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-116
Author(s):  
Šimon Grimmich
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
Phenomenological Point

The author investigates whether Anthony J. Steinbock, in his book Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience, succeeds in overcoming the difficulties and objections which the phenomenology of religion traditionally comes up against. Among these are, most importantly, the problem of going beyond immanence and the question of whether the investigation of religion from a phenomenological point of view is in fact possible.

scholarly journals Joachim Wach and the Phenomenological Tradition in the Religious Studies

2021 ◽  
pp. 317-332
Author(s):  
Татьяна Сергеевна Самарина
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Sociological Research ◽  
Phenomenological Tradition ◽  
Religious System ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
Conceptual Foundations ◽  
Religious Elements

Целью статьи является определение места Иоахима Ваха (1898-1955 гг.) в феноменологической религиоведческой традиции. Для этого проводятся реконструкция концептуальных основ его религиоведческой системы и философский анализ его теории религиозного опыта, анализируются социологические и религиоведческие элементы, наследие Ваха сопоставляется с трудами классиков немецкой феноменологии религии Р. Отто, Ф. Хайлером. В результате исследования доказывается, что теория Иоахима Ваха близка к идее концентрической схемы Ф. Хайлера, но система Хайлера была препарирована и использована им в угоду модной тенденции социологических исследований. Отмечается, что важный момент в учении И. Ваха составляет его представление об отношениях мастера и ученика. Анализируя эту концепцию, можно заключить, что для социологии Ваха важно не то, что общество воздействует на религию, а то, что религия создаёт общество. Описывая центр религии, И. Вах полностью полагался на концепцию нуминозного Р. Отто. Вах убежден, что в самой сути человека заложено нуминозное чувство, которое активизируется при встрече с тем, что он именовал предельной реальностью, Святым или нуминозным. Диалогические отношения человека и предельной реальности - фундамент религиоведческого метода Ваха. В то же время сам процесс религиозного опыта, его характеристики, значение для жизни индивида больше напоминают не Ahndung Я. Фриза, воспринятый Р. Отто, а чувство, описанное У. Джеймсом. The purpose of the article is to determine the place of Joachim Wach (1898-1955) in the tradition of phenomenology of religion. For this purpose, the reconstruction of the conceptual foundations of his religious system and the philosophical analysis of his theory of religious experience are carried out, the sociological and religious elements are analyzed, the legacy of Wach is compared with the works of the classics of the German phenomenology of religion, R. Otto and F. Heiler. The article shows the proximity of this theory to the concentric model, proposed by F. Heiler, but Heiler’s system was dissected and used by Wach in favor of the fashionable trend of sociological research. In his description of the center of religion J. Wach completely relied on the concept of numinous by R. Otto. Wach is convinced that there is a numinous feeling inherent in the very essence of man, which is activated when man faced with Ultimate reality, Holy or Numinous. The dialogical relations of man and Ultimate reality are the foundation of the Wach’s method of religious studies. At the same time, the process of religious experience itself more closely resembles with religious experience in the terms of W. James.

Why Dance? Towards a Theory of Religion as Practice and Performance

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimerer LaMothe
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
Theory Of Religion ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
American Modern Dance ◽  
And Performance

AbstractThis article engages the dancing and writing of the American modern dance pioneer, Isadora Duncan (1877-1927), and the phenomenology of religion and dance authored by the Dutch phenomenologist, theologian, and historian of religion, Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950), in order to argue that "dance" is a valuable resource for developing theories and methods in the study of religion that move beyond belief-centered, text-driven approaches. By setting the work of Duncan and van der Leeuw in the context of the emergence of the field of religious studies, this article not only offers conceptual tools for appreciating dance as a medium of religious experience and expression, it also plots a trajectory for the development of a theory of religion as practice and performance. Such a theory will benefit scholars eager to attend more closely to the role of bodily being in the life of "religion."

Phenomenology and Ritual Practice

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-70
Author(s):  
Christina M. Gschwandtner
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Phenomenological Analysis ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Ritual Practice ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
Michel Henry ◽  
Continental Philosophy Of Religion

Abstract This paper highlights several problems in the contemporary phenomenological analysis of religious experience in Continental philosophy of religion, especially in its French iteration, as manifested in such thinkers as Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Emmanuel Falque, and others. After laying out the main issues, the paper proposes a fuller investigation of religious practices, such as liturgy or ritual, as a fruitful way to address some of the identified limitations. The final section of the paper assesses what questions remain and how one might draw on existing resources in these thinkers to push a phenomenological analysis of religious practices further in ways that broaden phenomenology of religion beyond its current somewhat narrow strictures and commitments.

Christianisme et modernité avancée chez Berger

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 613-623
Author(s):  
Isaac Nizigama
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Late Modernity ◽  
Phenomenology Of Religion ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Evangelical Theology

This article analyzes the question of the relationship between Christianity and late modernity. It begins with Peter L. Berger’s analyses, especially in his recent works, to then question his religious pluralism / religious uncertainty dialectic and his idea of the oscillation of the contemporary followers of religions between relativism and fundamentalism. By showing that Berger’s analyses, based on his approach in the sociology of knowledge, leave aside the aspect considered by himself as central to the religious phenomenon, this article tries to characterize this aspect, which is the mystical type of religious experience, by exploiting elements from Rudolf Otto's phenomenology of religion and John Wesley's evangelical theology.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document