Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells
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scholars, who do not consider themselves phenomenologists, adopt a phenomenological approach during early stages of their investigations because it has great value in allowing them to assemble data and do justice to the perspectives of religious persons.
At the same time, phenomenology of religion is sometimes described as being stagnant and in a state of crisis. There has been a recent renewal of interest in religion in French philosophical phenomenology and in phenomenological theology, but it is not clear how this relates to phenomenology of religion within religious studies. There are no contemporary phenomenologists of religion who enjoy the status and influence once enjoyed by a van der Leeuw or an Eliade. Some scholars are uncomfortable with the term since it carries so much baggage from Husserlian philosophical foundations and from Eliadean and other phenomenology of religion. In general, contemporary phenomenologists of religion attempt to be more contextually sensitive and more modest in their phenomenological claims.
Within philosophical and theological phenomenology
The emphasis in this chapter has been on phenomenology of religion as a discipline and method within religious studies and not on philosophical phenomenology with its limited focus on religion. Special mention may be made of two influential European philosophers. Emmanuel Levinas, a student of Husserl, became an influential continental philosopher in the late twentieth century. With his major focus on ethics, spirituality, and Jewish philosophy, Levinas emphasizes radical alterity and the primacy of the ‘other,’ thus reversing earlier phenomenological self–other emphasis on the privileged status of the constituting self or ego. Ricoeur, also with deep roots in Husserl, has made invaluable contributions to our understanding of religious phenomena with his analysis of philosophy as hermeneutical interpretation of meaning and with his focus on religious language, symbolism, and narrative.
Beginning in the late twentieth century, continental philosophy, especially French phenomenology, often takes a religious turn. Scholars such as Michel Henry and especially Jean-Luc Marion are often identified as part of ‘the new phenomenology’ and ‘theological phenomenology.’ However, it is not always clear whether to classify such developments under ‘the phenomenology of religion.’ Most of these scholars have been deeply influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology, but they often seem to transgress phenomenology’s boundaries and express ambiguous relations to phenomenology.
While significant developments in continental philosophy increasingly focus on religion, it is not yet clear whether such phenomenological and theological developments will have a significant influence on phenomenology of religion within religious studies.
Recent challenges
Most scholarly challenges to phenomenology of religion continue major criticisms previously described. Robert Segal and other scholars of religion, usually identified with social scientific and reductionist approaches, criticize phenomenology of religion for being unscientific, highly subjective, and lacking scholarly rigor. Scholars identifying with reductionistic cognitive science and neuroscience provide recent challenges.
There are also challenges to phenomenology of religion that offer opposite criticisms. Scholars criticize phenomenology of religion’s claim to uncover universal structures and essences as being too reductionistic in denying the diversity and plurality of religious
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phenomena. Included here are a variety of approaches often described as postmodernist, deconstructionist, post-structuralist, narrativist, pragmatist, feminist, and relativist.
Gavin Flood and other scholars identified with critical theory, postmodernism, and other recent approaches criticize essentialist phenomenology of religion for being nonhistorical and nontemporal; for ignoring the situated contextualism of all phenomena and all approaches; for presenting a false view of human consciousness, experience, and language; and for romanticizing and defending religious phenomena and religious faith while ignoring the exploitative and oppressive dimensions of religious phenomena reflecting ideologies and power relations of domination.
Several recent contributions
Finally, there are three, recent, interrelated contributions to phenomenology of religion that often contrast with earlier characteristics: focus on the ‘other,’ ‘givenness,’ and contextualization.
Philosophical phenomenology and phenomenology of religion emphasize the need to become aware of one’s presuppositions, suspend one’s value judgments, and accurately describe and interpret the meaning of phenomena as phenomena. Earlier approaches have been critiqued for ignoring or distorting intentional structures and meanings of religious phenomena of the ‘other.’ More recent phenomenologists recognize that earlier phenomenology, with its essentializing projects and universalizing claims, often did not pay sufficient attention to diverse experiences and meanings of others. One sometimes learns more about the scholar’s phenomenological theory of religion than about the particular religious phenomena of others. Recent phenomenology has been more sensitive to providing an approach for becoming attentive to the tremendous diversity of religious voices of others.
Related to this is the focus on givenness. There is the more ontological, theological, and controversial move by Marion and others to emphasize a phenomenological reduction of phenomena to a primary experience of givenness. In a more widespread and less controversial contribution, philosophical phenomenology and phenomenology of religion emphasize the need for an active openness and deeper kind of attentiveness to how religious phenomena appear or are given to us in experience. Over the decades, phenomenology of religion has become much broader, more self-critical, and more sophisticated in recognizing the complexity, ambiguity, and depth of our diverse modes of givenness. For example, in their very dynamic of givenness, religious phenomena both reveal and conceal structures and meanings; are multidimensional and given meaning through pre-understandings, the prereflective, the emotive, and the imaginative, as well as rational and conceptual analysis; are not disclosed as bare givens but as highly complex, inexhaustible, constituted, selftranscending givens; and are given in ways that affirm the open-ended perspectival nature of all knowledge and the nonclosure of descriptions, interpretations, and explanations.
Phenomenologists of religion are much more sensitive to the complex, mediated, interactive, contextual situatedness of their phenomenological tasks. Often criticized for claiming to uncover nonhistorical, nontemporal, noncontextualized, essential structures and meanings, phenomenologists of religion tend to be more sensitive to the perspectival and contextual constraints of their approach and more modest in their claims. There is value in uncovering religious essences and structures, but as embodied and contextualized, not as fixed, absolute, ahistorical, eternal truths and meanings.
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These three contributions in phenomenology of religion of greater focus on the other, givenness, and contextualization can be related to a significant development in ‘the late Husserl.’ In his Crisis of European Science (1936), Husserl revisions his phenomenological project, especially by introducing the concept of the Lebenswelt or Lifeworld. He turns away from his earlier pure absolute idealism in which all judgments about phenomena are bracketed so that intentional phenomena are reduced to the consciousness of the constituting transcendental ego. Husserl now begins to rethink the pre-epistemological ground of his phenomenology in terms of the shared, intersubjective givenness of the lifeworld of lived experience. In such an intersubjective universe of what is given in lived experience, the dynamic horizon within which phenomena appear, consciousness is already embedded in the lifeworld of meanings and pre-judgments that are contextually, historically, socially, and culturally situated and constituted. Although Husserl did not develop this concept adequately, later philosophical phenomenology and some recent contributions in phenomenology of religion can be seen as ways of broadening and deepening this Husserlian orientation.
By now, it may be clear that phenomenology of religion has had a profound impact on religious studies, sometimes overtly and sometimes almost imperceptibly. Many scholars within religious studies, who would never call themselves phenomenologists, have had their teaching and research shaped by the contributions of phenomenology of religion. Their concerns about uncritical presuppositions and reductionism, empathy and essential structures, as well as their focus on such topics as sacred space and time, myth and ritual, have been influenced by their exposure to phenomenology of religion.
Within its specific discipline and approach, a more self-critical and modest phenomenology of religion has much to contribute to the study of religion. In providing descriptions and interpretations of phenomena, it will include awareness of its presuppositions, its historical and contextualized situatedness, and its limited perspectival knowledge claims. But it will not completely abandon concerns about essential structures, commonality and unity of human beings, as well as differences. Such a phenomenology of religion will attempt to formulate essential structures and meanings through rigorous phenomenological methods, while also attempting to formulate new, dynamic, open-ended, contextually sensitive projects involving creative encounter, contradiction, and synthesis.
Bibliography
Allen, D. (1978) Structure and Creativity in Religion, The Hague: Mouton. Bleeker, C. J. (1963) The Sacred Bridge, Leiden: Brill.
Eliade, M. (1963) Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. R. Sheed, New York: World. —— (1969) The Quest, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Flood, G. (1999) Beyond Phenomenology, London: Cassell.
Husserl, E. (1970) The Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology, trans. D. Carr, Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Idinopulos, T. A. and E. A. Yonan, eds. (1994) Religion and Reductionism, Leiden: Brill. Kristensen, W. B. (1960) The Meaning of Religion, trans. J. B. Carman, The Hague: Nijhoff.
Leeuw, G. van der (1963) Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 2 vols., trans. J. E. Turner, New York: Harper & Row.
Otto, R. (1950) The Idea of the Holy, trans. J. W. Harvey, New York and London: Oxford University Press.
Scheler, M. (1960) On the Eternal in Man, trans. B. Noble, London: SCM. New York: Harper. Sharpe, E. J. (1986) Comparative Religion, La Salle, IL: Open Court.
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Smart, N. (1973) The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Suggested reading
Eliade, M. (1963) Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. R. Sheed, New York: World.
Morphological work illustrating Eliade’s phenomenological framework for interpreting religious meaning.
—— (1969) The Quest, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Essays on Eliade’s phenomenological method and discipline.
Leeuw, G. van der (1963) Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 2 vols., trans. J. E. Turner, New York: Harper & Row.
Classic work in phenomenology of religion.
Otto, R. (1950) The Idea of the Holy, trans. J. W. Harvey, New York and London: Oxford University Press.
Influential phenomenological account of religious experience.
Chapter 13
Comparative religion
William E. Paden
Comparative‘ religion originated as an academic movement in the late nineteenth century. It signified then, as today, the cross-cultural study of all forms and traditions of religious life, as distinguished from the study or exposition of just one. As such, it entails the disciplined, historically informed consideration of any commonalities and differences that appear among religions.
Seeing similarities and differences is a basic activity of the human mind. The perception of relationships and patterns is the way individuals and cultures organize their experience of the world. It is a process without which there would be undifferentiated chaos, or at best only isolated facts. Likewise, specialized knowledge in any field advances by finding or constructing concepts and categories that give order and intelligibility to otherwise unrelated data. Comparison, among other things, is the process by which generalizations and classifications are produced, and is the basis of scientific and interpretive enterprises of every kind. The very concept ‘religion,’ as an academic definition of a certain area of culture, is such a cross-cultural, comparative category.
There can be no systematic study of religion as a subject matter without cross-cultural perspective. Lacking this, studies of religion would amount either to separate collections of unrelated historical data, or to speculative generalizations based only on the perspective of one culture. Modern generations of scholars have therefore tried to build an objective, or at least transcultural, vocabulary for describing a subject matter that is found in very different times, places and languages. For one cannot generalize about religion on the basis of the language and norms of just a single case, just as geologists do not construct a geology on the basis of the rocks that merely happen to be in one’s neighborhood. The neighborhood rocks, analogues to one’s own local religion, are themselves instances of certain common, universal properties of geological formations, chemical structures, and evolutionary development. Accordingly, without knowing these ‘comparative’ elements, one cannot know what is common and what is different about any particular religious phenomenon. Without them, one might not be able to see certain transcultural structures and functions in a given religious system.
Comparative analysis, then, both builds and applies the perspectives, reference points, and materials for any cumulative, interpretive study of religion. Moreover, these resources must necessarily be the collective, synthetic result of the contributions of many specialists, as no single person will have first-hand and technical knowledge of all of the world’s religious cultures. While comparison is a tool that can be applied locally or among restricted historical and regional data, this essay focuses mostly on its cross-cultural, generalizing functions.