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Phenomenology of Religion (Encyclopaedia Britannica)

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phenomenology of religion, methodological approach to the study of religion that

emphasizes the standpoint of the believer. Drawing insights from the philosophical
tradition of phenomenology, especially as exemplified by Edmund Husserl (1859–
1938), it seeks to uncover religion’s essence through investigations that are free from
the distorting influences of scholarly or traditional values and prejudices.

Methodology
Phenomenology of religion is distinct
from historical, sociological, anthropological, philosophical, and theological approaches
to the study of religion. Unlike them, it treats religion as a phenomenon that cannot be
explained in terms of any particular aspect of human society, culture, or thought—e.g.,
as the product of history, as a creation of intellectual elites, or as a set of truth claims
about reality or the ends of human life—though it interacts with all of these aspects. To
this end, phenomenology of religion draws insights from Husserl’s notion of epochē,
the “bracketing” or suspension of judgment. As Gerardus van der Leeuw wrote in his
classic text Phänomenologie der Religion (1933; Religion in Essence and
Manifestation: A Study in Phenomenology), phenomenologists of religion seek to
suspend their beliefs about religions in order to describe them in their own terms from a
standpoint that is “empathetic” with their respective adherents. Phenomenology of
religion is also comparative, seeking out aspects of religious life that are, its proponents
suggest, universal or essential rather than applicable only to particular traditions.

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study of religion: Neutrality in the study of religion

The sacred
Most approaches since the discipline’s founding have located the essence of religion in
the human experience of a purportedly universal and transcendent—though
indeterminate—aspect of reality. Recalling the French sociologist Émile Durkheim’s
classification of religious phenomena into the “sacred” and the “profane,” most
phenomenologists of religion call this aspect the sacred, and those who do not will at
least refer to it in terms that evoke the sense of an encounter with a sublime,
suprahuman other.

Otto, Rudolf
In his book Das Heilige (1917; The Idea of the Holy), the German theologian Rudolf
Otto wrote that all religions arise from the experience of the numinous, which he
characterized as the mysterium tremendum et fascinans, the transcendent mystery that
humans find both terrifying and compelling. This mystery, which Otto called the holy
rather than the sacred, is so profound—Otto wrote of a “clear overplus of meaning”—
that it compels not only respect but also reverence, which is the wellspring of religious
thought, behaviour, and culture.

Eliade, Mircea
Mircea Eliade, a Romanian-born scholar who fostered the study of the history of
religions at the University of Chicago, constructed another influential notion of the
sacred. In The Sacred and the Profane (1959), he identified it with the transcendent
reality that “breaks through” in some tangible form within mundane existence. Such
a manifestation of the sacred—a phenomenon that Eliade called a “hierophany”—
subsequently becomes an object of devotion in a religious tradition. In The Sacred and
the Profane and subsequent works, he demonstrated how hierophanies have influenced
the ways in which religious traditions distinguish between sacred and profane spaces
and interpret and measure the flow of time.
Both Otto and Eliade viewed the sacred as something not only existential and
experiential but also static and transhistorical, unaffected by historical change. The
20th-century British scholar of religion Ninian Smart developed a phenomenological
model that featured a more dynamic vision of the sacred that could explain
the diversity among religions, much of which it attributed to historical and cultural
differences. Smart proposed that the sacred manifests itself in human life in seven
dimensions: (1) the doctrinal or philosophical, (2) the mythical, (3) the ethical, (4) the
experiential, (5) the ritual, (6) the social, and (7) the material. In Smart’s conception,
each religious tradition, to a greater or lesser degree, has a system of core beliefs, a
narrative that explains and justifies them, a moral code that it expects its followers to
live by, an emotional investment that it wants them to make, a set of practices that help
them to do so, and both an institutional structure and a material culture that create the
arena within which they live their faith. However it may be conceived by adherents of a
particular religion, the sacred is present in, mediated by, and expressed through these
seven dimensions, according to Smart.
Criticism
The most prevalent and substantial criticism of phenomenology of religion concerns its
attempt to seek out and present universal or essential aspects of religious life. Critics
charge that in following Otto’s and Eliade’s lead and positing the sacred as religion’s
essence, phenomenologists unduly favour a Western, and especially Christian, concept
of religion. The holy or the sacred may fit certain aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or
even Islam but may be inappropriate to the study of some forms of Buddhism or of
some aspects of Chinese folk religions. Smart’s dimensions, however, constitute a
response to this objection; they provide a seemingly multicultural and cross-traditional
approach that nevertheless conceives of religion as having a discernible essence.
Matt Stefon
Joachim Wach
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Joachim Wach
German-American theologian
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Born:
 
January 25, 1898 Chemnitz Germany
Died:
 
August 27, 1955 (aged 57) Switzerland
Subjects Of Study:
 
comparative religion phenomenology of religion religion sociology
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Joachim Wach, (born Jan. 25, 1898, Chemnitz, Ger.—died Aug. 27, 1955, Orselina,
Switz.), Protestant theologian and one of the foremost scholars in the modern study of
religion.
As a professor of the history of religion at the University of Leipzig (1929–35) and
the University of Chicago (1945–55), Wach contributed significantly to the field of
study that became known as the sociology of religion. He is credited with introducing
into American scholarship the phenomenological method of analyzing religious beliefs
and practices. He established the discipline known as the comparative study of religion
(Religionswissenschaft) at the University of Chicago and is considered the founder of
the so-called Chicago School, from which emerged such influential scholars as Mircea
Eliade.
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Philosophy 101

Wach conceived Religionswissenschaft as a comparative, phenomenological, and

psychological approach to religion, including the theoretical (or mental; i.e., religious
ideas), the practical (or behavioral), and the institutional (social) aspects of religion.
Because of his concern with the study of religious experience, he was also interested in
the sociology of religion, attempting to indicate how religious values shaped the
institutions that expressed them. Among Wach’s writings in English are Sociology of
Religion (1944), Types of Religious Experience—Christian and Non-Christian (1951),
and The Comparative Study of Religions (1958).
phenomenological psychology
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phenomenological psychology, in phenomenology, a discipline forming a bridge
between psychology and philosophy. It is one of the regional ontologies, or studies of
the kinds of fundamental being, that is concerned with what it means to experience a
certain thing (e.g., to experience fear) and with what the a priori, or essential and
universally applicable, structures of such an experience are.
It is the ontology that has been most thoroughly dealt with by phenomenologists.
Although it is built upon the findings of phenomenological analyses of the structure
of consciousness and of the world in general, it is not concerned with the whole or the
transcendental, and thus is not philosophy. On the other hand, being based on
philosophical phenomenology, it is not concerned with forming theories, and thus is not
psychology.
The analyses and descriptions of phenomenological psychology are based on
phenomena as they appear, apart from any scientific theories and without the
phenomenological reduction. They take into account the intentionality of consciousness
—i.e., its directedness toward an object (the description must include, for example, the
object of fear when dealing with what it means to be afraid). Phenomenology has
influenced many psychologists to develop descriptions and even therapeutic techniques.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Brian Duignan.
life-world
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philosophy
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Also known as: Lebenswelt
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life-world, German Lebenswelt, in Phenomenology, the world as immediately or
directly experienced in the subjectivity of everyday life, as sharply distinguished from
the objective “worlds” of the sciences, which employ the methods of the mathematical
sciences of nature; although these sciences originate in the life-world, they are not those
of everyday life. The life-world includes individual, social, perceptual, and practical
experiences. The objectivism of science obscures both its origin in the subjective
perceptions of the life-world and the life-world itself. In analyzing and describing the
life-world, Phenomenology attempts to show how the world of theory and science
originates from the life-world, strives to discover the mundane phenomena of the life-
world itself, and attempts to show how the experience of the life-world is possible by
analyzing time, space, body, and the very givenness or presentation of experience.