Silence and the Phenomenology of Religious Experience (original) (raw)
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Silence and the Phenomenology of Religions Experience
Pellauer's programmatic study neatly differentiates what he takes to he a proper phenomenology of religion from the works of W. Bede Kristensen, Cornelius Bleeker and Gerhard van der Leeuw. Following HusserVs lead, hut leaving aside HusserVs idealism, Pellauer suggests that Husserl provides a useful theoretical model of experience, one which is '%ypo-theticaUy applicable to all human experience/^ Pellauer then criticccUy explores HusserVs model. This exploration opens the way for Pelkmer to suggest important ways in which the phenomenon of silence should he examined, ways not developed in Dauenhauer's study. What follows is the slightly edited second half of PeUauer's contribution.
Hermeneutical Phenomenology of Silence
Investigaciones Fenomenologicas, 2024
Silence as a spiritual practice is not a negative phenomenon that cuts off speech, but enables a higher form of speech, i.e. that of ultimate reality. Hermeneutical phenomenology can illuminate this spiritual practice. Hermeneutical phenomenology does not accept the phenomena of consciousness as given, but views them in light of historical-social structures that make phenomenal objects of intentionality possible. Structures of intelligibility can either discover, or cover up phenomena, turning them into appearances that merely announce on the surface what is hidden in the depths. We need to interpret our average everyday understanding, in order to bring the Being of objects fully to disclosure. Without silence, we will perpetuate the average structures of intelligibility that make communication possible, which will function as implicit distortions. I examine silence through hermeneutic phenomenology, showing how silence can give us a more primordial sense of phenomena than mere idle talk.
The problem of Religious Experience: Case Studies in Phenomenology, 2019
This is an introduction to The Problem of Religious Experience: Case Studies in Phenomenology, with Reflections and Commentaries. The book presents an updated overview of the problem of religious experience in phenomenology, from the time of Husserl to French phenomenology's theological turn, which was followed by important publications such as Steinbock (2007), Depraz (2008), Alvis (2016 and 2018) and others. Significantly advancing understanding of religious experience, these studies nevertheless left open a question of what exactly makes religious experience what it is: that is, gives it a specific quality distinguishing it, for its subject, from all other experiences. In contemporary phenomenology, Dahl's (2010) theory of interruptions and Barber's (2017) theory of the appresentative mindset and the finite province of religious meaning comprise two most probable and mutually complementary answers to this question. Further, the Introduction covers the contents of the two volumes, entitled The Primeval Showing of Religious Experience and Doxastic Perspectives in the Phenomenology of Religious Experience. The case studies in Volume I proceed from the descriptive phenomenology of religious experience as it relates to subjectivity research (Part 1) to the relationship between religious experience, intersubjectivity, and alterity (Part 2). Part 2 also serves as a bridge to metaphysical, theological, and theistic approaches in Part 3 and Part 4. Along with the overview of the contents of the book, this Introduction presents Olga Louchakova-Schwartz's (as editor of the book) synthetic meta-reflection on the findings, so that the findings in the book are coherently represented in light of contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion.
Discontinuous Meditations on the Phenomenology of Religion
This paper argues the phenomenology of religion, which has come under attack from theorists of various persuasions within Religious Studies, remains a useful tool in the methodological repertoire of scholars researching religion. Particularly damning criticisms will be addressed with a view to demonstrating that phenomenology is a fluid, and far from simple theory, which has frequently been misrepresented by its critics, who themselves may have questionable motives for impugning or dismissing it. Specific criticisms addressed include: that phenomenology of religion privileges individual consciousness and denies intersubjectivity and language; that phenomenology of religion presumes that ‘religion’ has an essentialist, a-historical core, ignoring historical and social contextualization; and that the phenomenologyical approach results in a disguised ‘theologizing’ of Studies in Religion through its ‘sympathy’ with the believer’s perspective
PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE IV: RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND DESCRIPTION, EDITED BY OLGA LOUCHAKOVA-SCHWARTZ, 2020
In this Introduction to the topical issue of Open Theology, I sketch research-related themes in the topic of description of religious experience. According to phenomenology, clarifications in the expression of experience are necessary first steps towards both the theory of knowledge in its cognitive and transcendental "incarnations" and the consequent metaphysics. Description gives one an access to ideal apriori-s and the transcendental ego as they are lived in one's experience. As Husserl himself shows in the beginning of Logical Investigations, in its unity with meaning, description has to be approached by means of phenomenological analyses.
SILENCE AS A CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE AND PRACTICE
Studia Monastica, 2020
Silence often plays a significant role in Christian experience and practice. However, the varieties of silence and the effects of silence for good and. bad merit examination. It is important to distinguish between physical, auditory, and metaphorical silence, and between experiencing silence as "quiet" and experiencing silence as keeping quiet. Silence can be an instrumental good as weU as an expressive good, a concomitant good, or a constitutive good. Christian monks, tiieologians, and other thinkers som.etim.es identify experiences of silence, for example,. as light or dark, as spatially vast or enclosed, and as temporal or atemporal. Practices of silence can bring persons closer to God, though a kenotic spirituality; of silence and a stress on solitude create perils for some members of religious orders, such as Carthusians. The chief aim of this article is to show, with philosophical techniques, how silence .can be good in manifold ways and even, perhaps, .an ideal.
During the last decades, two major and interrelated themes have dominated the study of religion: (a) the theme claiming that the long taken-for-granted so-called secularization thesis was all wrong, and (b) the theme of the so-called " return " or " resurgence of religion ". This global revival of religion has been chronicled in a number of important books, referred to in this paper. Nowadays, comparative religion can, very broadly, be carried out from two types of data: texts or actual living human beings. In this paper I will argue that the best way to conduct comparative studies of lived religion is the method of a Husserlian based phenomenology of religion in the sense of a "de-theologized" interpretative approach to religious consciousness and experience, which make no claims concerning the sui generis or the essential nature of religion.
The Sound of a Small Whisper: Ordinary Religious Experience
Open Theology, 2017
An ordinary religious experience does not entail an overwhelming sense of the Divine; it is not a “numinous” experience. It is instead easily ignored. In a phenomenological psychological inquiry into such a religious experience, both the noema, the “what” experienced, and the noesis, the mode of givenness of the experience, manifested themselves in distinctive ways. The paper examines a simple experience of having been guided in making a decision. The guidance was recognized only at the moment of realization. The realization revealed the decision to have been part of a larger drama that transcended the immediate experience. The “world” of this moment of realization included sensing that the sky above-as an “elemental”-was a dome, with allusions to the Noah story. Even at the time, this perception was not experienced as literal, but as symbolic. The social, historical, and theological contexts for the possibility of this experience receive attention. Theological as well as psychologi...
Introduction: The Religious Structure of Phenomena—A Phenomenological Investigation
The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2019
The essays presented in this issue focus on the phenomenological investigation of religious phenomena. Scholars belonging to different phenomenological traditions address the following groups of questions in order to describe the structure that makes a phenomenon religious. First, is it actually possible to talk about religious experience? In this issue we decided not to give a final answer but, rather, to refer to religious experience as the religious structure of phenomena. In fact, the main question that informs our current contributions is: Could there be a phenomenology of religious experience? Second, we would like to ponder what different forms of phenomenological investigations can add to the description of the religious structure of phenomena. In this case we refer to the philosophical and psychological reflections of Dewey, Husserl, Heidegger, Ricoeur, James, and so forth, in order to shed light on religious phenomena. Third, we would like to address the question that gives the title to this issue: Do these phenomena present themselves as religious, or is it their structure as it interacts with our sense of self, our beliefs, our sense of the sacred, and our transcendental attitude that attributes phenomena a religious color? Can a religious sentiment be grounded in a perceptual and experiential quality? Or does our way of relating to neutral matter color it with a theological and axiological quality?
Phenomenology and the Possibility of Religious Experience
Open Theology, 2017
Work in what has been known as the theological turn in French phenomenology describes the way in which human beings are always, already open to a religious encounter. This paper will focus on Levinas as a proper transcendental phenomenologist as would be characterized by parts of Husserl and Husserl’s last assistant Eugen Fink. What Levinas does in his phenomenology of the face/other (which gets tied up in religious language) is to describe an absolute origin out of which the subject arises. This point of origin structures the self in such a way as to always, already be open to that which overflows experience and, thus, makes possible the very experience of an encounter with the numinous. Such an approach to religious experience for which I am arguing simply takes Levinas at his word when he declares “The idea of God is an idea that cannot clarify a human situation. It is the inverse that is true.” (“Transcendence and Height”) Understanding the structure of the subject as open to th...