Introduction
Religion is popular metaphysics that is an expression in sensu allegoric of what philosophy or metaphysics proper expresses in sensu strict et proprio for the benefit of that great majority of people who are not capable of thinking but only believing and are susceptible not to arguments but only to authority. I think that in today’s world and living in a Living Phenomenology which is very much existential and hermeneutical in its Methodology. I would explore My Phenomenology of Religion in this way approaching the hermeneutical-existential Phenomenology.
Nietzsche, It is the positive thinking that counts as genuinely religious thinking. It is man’s need that constitutes the essence of religion.
Schopenhauer, An attempt made at knowledge of that which is beyond nature on the given phenomenal appearance of things, the thing in itself, the study of the supra-natural. Death is first, and the most essential function of any authentic religion.
Socrates, The authentic philosophy is a preparation for death. The essential is that of a guiding star of, integrity and virtue. It is a mystery, beyond comprehensive of masses and an awe before the unknown.
Tertullian, It is thoroughly credible because it is absurd, It is certain because it is impossible.
Derrida, learning to live means learning to die.
Santiago Zabala, speaks of rebirth of religion, by death of God, and the secularization of the sacred, by deconstruction of metaphysics.
Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo, speak of the weak thought and the deconstruction of ontology. It is a relationship of reciprocity that is different, a gentler relationship, with innovation. It is an existential self-creation. It is the unending formation of oneself – bildung. The secularization submits to the weak thought, man finally learns to live together with himself. The man, who withdraws his attention from the world and concentrates on this world and this time, exerts himself to realize – emptying out of itself.
John Hick, Given such first hand awareness of the divine, the appropriate philosophical apologetic is a defense of the rationality of trusting and living on the basis of compelling experience of this kind. Religion is the human person’s response to the mystery of existence and quests for meaning in the midst of confusion.
Ninian Smart, Humanity is the measure of all things and devotion to human interests is the first duty of all the main purpose of religion. Metaphysics loses sight of existential problems. Meaningfulness of life is the primary end of religion. The task of phenomenology is not only solely concerned with matters of truth but also of value, feeling and needs to take into account the evocative factors.
Various Other Definitions
Mircea Eliade, The revelation of the sacred space possesses existential value for religious man, for nothing can begin and nothing can be done acquiring a fixed point. If the world is to be lived in, it must be founded. For religious man, nature always expresses something that transcends it. His survey with the sky, claims that our experience of it is necessarily religious because when we contemplate, the sky appears to us a wholly other.
Geradus Van Der Leevuw, Man’s search for Divine Power. It is the extension of life to uttermost limit. The Levels of Phenomenology implies – Experience, Understanding, and Testimony. Phenomenology knows nothing of heaven and hell. It is at home on earth, although it is at the same time sustained by love of the beyond.
Louis Dupré, The religious Attitude is always object-oriented. The religious person does not create religions but is revealed to him in a disposition to perceive a deeper reality under the appearance of objects and events. Thus, the religious attitude is always directed beyond the self. The religion is dialectical, constantly moving in a dynamic relation between mind and reality.
Religious Experience
John Smith, Experience is basically a record of human beings encounter, feeling, suffering and discoveries in one’s transaction with the world. The root of religion can be found in experience when experiencer feels experience as encounter with an objective world in the dual sense that the encounter is something objective and that what is encountered at the same time transcends the subjectivity of the individual and of any finite collection of the individuals.
William Andrew, speaks of, a human work in which the sensuous is somehow meaningful. There is a movement of actualization and revelation. The more intuitive the symbol, the more its meaning is set in the mystery of total human experience.
William James, In his major work on religion, The Varieties of Religious Experience, James attempted to account for the value of religion. The question of how it came to be what it is, is a matter of classifying religious feelings and religious tendencies with other kinds of human experience which are found to be similar to them. The emphasis, here, is on spontaneous religious emotions rather than theological interpretations. In his view, religion considers three questions: the nature and authenticity of belief, the effect of belief and the existence and nature of the object of belief.
What constitutes Religious Experience?
An experience may be occasioned by reflection on the natural world. Here one becomes aware of the unity of all things, and may even sense a spirit of nature. There can be varieties of religious experiences. Swinburne offers the following categories:
1. Experiences which the subject describes in terms of God or the supernatural, based on perception of an ordinary non-religious object. For example, A beautiful sunset / sunrise.
2. Experiences which are ‘out of the ordinary’, and public. For example, Resurrection and appearance of Jesus to the disciples.
3. Experiences which involve sensations private to the individual. For example, A dream – “Joseph’s dream – the angel spoke”
4. Experiences in which it is impossible to describe in words, yet feel that there is something to be described if only they had the words to do the describing. For example, Mystic
5. Experiences independently of perceived sensations in which one may feel that God is directly telling one what to do.
John Macquarie, Religion is the self-manifestation of Being as this is received and appropriated in the life of faith. It is a careful analytic description or to express the same idea in another way, it letting us see that which shows itself by removing that which prevents us from seeing the phenomenon as it actually gives itself.
Mariasusai Dhavamony, The inner meaning of religious phenomenon as it is lived and experienced by a religious person.
Levinas, speaks of face to face encounter, an abstract signification which cannot be comprehended.
Rudolf Otto, It is the deepest and fundamental element in all strong and sincerely felt religious emotion. It is to be found in strong, sudden ebullitions of personal piety, in the fixed and ordered solemnities of rites and liturgies, and again in the atmosphere that clings to old religious monuments and buildings, to temples and to churches. It may be peaceful and come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship or faster moving thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its profane, non-religious mood of everyday experience even violent, erupting from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions and leading to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy.
In a nutshell, Otto has reached the heart of the matter. He pins down this sort of experience for dissection in terms of a Latin phrase mysterium tremendum. He presents the tremendum component of the numinous that is being experienced as comprising three elements: Awefulness (inspiring awe, a sort of profound unease), Overpoweringness (that which, among other things, inspires a feeling of humility), and Energy (creating an impression of immense vigour). On the other hand he presents the Mysterium component in its turn has two elements, which he discusses at considerable length. Firstly, the numinous is experienced as, Wholly Other. It is something truly amazing, as being totally outside our normal experience. Secondly, here is the element of Fascination, which causes the subject of the experience of the numinous to be caught up in it, to be enraptured.
Conclusion
I have made a possible attempt in understanding the, ‘Phenomenology of Religion’ a board overview, by engaging myself (thought) in reading various phenomenologist and finally coming to a synthesis of my own phenomenology.
The approach which I have given slant to is simply but naturally bringing out my phenomenology of religion – The calling of subjective authenticity(I) with an objective outlook(the other, the world, the view) and sharing a genuine relationship, to the deeper meaning of the object(God), of this subject(religion).
Reflection
Jesus, the resurrected
Paul, the apostle
Laity, the faith
Romero, the witness
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