Phenomenology of religion

The phenomenology of religion concerns the experiential aspect of religion.

Pierre Daniël Chantepie de la Saussaye

The first explicit use of the phrase "phenomenology of religion" occurs in the Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte (Handbook of the History of Religions), written by Pierre Daniël Chantepie de la Saussaye in 1887, wherein he articulates the task of the science of religion and gives an "Outline of the phenomenology of religion" (Van der Leeuw 1963: 694; cf. James: 42–45). Employing the terminology of Hegel, Chantepie divides his science of religion into two areas of investigation, essence and manifestations, which are approached through investigations in philosophy and history respectively. However, Chantepie’s phenomenology "belongs neither to the history nor the philosophy of religion as Hegel envisioned them" (45). For Chantepie, it is the task of phenomenology to prepare historical data for philosophical analysis through "a collection, a grouping, an arrangement, and a classifying of the principal groups of religious conceptions" (43). This sense of phenomenology as a grouping of manifestations is similar to the conception of phenomenology articulated by Robison and the British; however, insofar as Chantepie conceives of phenomenology as a preparation for the philosophical elucidation of essences, his phenomenology is not completely opposed to that of Hegel.

William Brede Kristensen

Chantepie’s Lehrbuch was highly influential, and many researchers began similar efforts after its publication and its subsequent translation into English and French (141). One such researcher was William Brede Kristensen. In 1901, Kristensen was appointed the first professorship relating to the phenomenology of religion at the University of Leiden (ibid). Some of the material from Kristensen’s lectures on the phenomenology of religion was edited posthumously, and the English translation was published in 1960 as The Meaning of Religion (Kristensen: xiii). James notes that Kristensen’s phenomenology "adopts many of the features of Chantepie’s grouping of religious phenomena," and penetrates further into the intricacies of Chantepie’s phenomenological approach (James: 141–43).

For Chantepie, phenomenology is affected by the philosophy and history of religions, but for Kristensen, it is also the medium whereby the philosophy and history of religion interact with and affect one another (Kristensen: 9). In this sense, Kristensen’s account of the relationship between historical manifestations and philosophy is more similar to that of Hegel than it is to Chantepie. In defining the religious essence of which he explores historical manifestations, Kristensen appropriates Rudolf Otto’s conception of das Heilige ("the holy" or "the sacred"). Otto describes das Heilige with the expression "mysterium tremendum"—a numinous power revealed in a moment of "awe" that admits of both the horrible shuddering of "religious dread" (tremendum) and fascinating wonder (fascinans) with the overpowering majesty (majestas) of the ineffable, "wholly other" mystery (mysterium) (Kristensen: 15–18; Otto: 5–32).

Like Chantepie, Kristensen argues that phenomenology seeks the “meaning” of religious phenomena. Kristensen clarifies this supposition by defining the meaning that his phenomenology is seeking as “the meaning that the religious phenomena have for the believers themselves” (James: 144). Furthermore, Kristensen argues that phenomenology is not complete in grouping or classifying the phenomena according to their meaning, but in the act of understanding. “Phenomenology has as its objects to come as far as possible into contact with and to understand the extremely varied and divergent religious data” (Kristensen: 11).

Gerardus van der Leeuw

The phenomenological approach to religion developed in Gerardus van der Leeuw’s Phänomenologie der Religion (1933) follows Kristensen in many respects, while also appropriating the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger and the hermeneutics of Wilhelm Dilthey.

For van der Leeuw, understanding is the subjective aspect of phenomena, which is inherently intertwined with the objectivity of that which is manifest. Van der Leeuw articulates the relation of understanding to understood phenomena according to the schema outlined in Dilthey’s definition of the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) as sciences that are “based on the relations between experience, expression and understanding” (“Verhältnis von Erlebnis, Ausdruck, und Verstehen”) (Van der Leeuw 1956: 776; 1963a: 676). Van der Leeuw correlates subjective experience, expression, and understanding with three objective levels of appearing—relative concealment (Verborgenheit), relative transparency (Durchsichtigkeit), and gradually becoming manifest or revealed (Offenbarwerden)—wherein the understanding of what is becoming revealed is the primordial level of appearing from which the experienced concealment and expressed transparency of appearing are derived (1956: 769; 1963a: 671).

Because van der Leeuw, like Kristensen, appropriates Otto’s concept of das Heilige in defining the essential category of religion, the transcendence becoming revealed in all human understanding can be further described as sacred—an overpowering “wholly other,” which becomes revealed in astonishing moments of dreadful awe (Scheu) and wonderful fascination (Van der Leeuw 1963: 23, 681; Otto: 14–32). Van der Leeuw argues that this concept of religious dread is also present in Kierkegaard’s work on Angst and in Heidegger’s statement that “what arouses dread is ‘being in the world’ itself” (Van der Leeuw 1963: 463; cf. Kierkegaard; Heidegger 1962; 230). Moreover, van der Leeuw recognizes that, although dreadful, Being-in-the-world is fundamentally characterized as care (Sorge), the existential structure whereby Dasein is concerned with meaningful relationships in the world alongside other beings (Van der Leeuw 1963: 339, 543; cf. Heidegger 1962: 364–70).

Because all experiences disclose concealed (wholly other) transcendence to the understanding, all experiences of Being-in-the-world are ultimately religious experiences of the sacred, whether explicitly recognized as such or not. Human being as such is homo religiosus, the opposite of homo negligens (Van der Leeuw 1963: 50, 680).

It is the task of the phenomenology of religion to interpret the various ways in which the sacred appears to human beings in the world, the ways in which humans understand and care for that which is revealed to them, for that which is ultimately wholly other mystery.

Bibliography

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