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    Comments on Religious Experience (1985) by Wayne Proudfoot
    Comments on Religious Experience (1985) by Wayne Proudfoot
    Comments on Religious Experience (1985) by Wayne Proudfoot
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Comments on Religious Experience (1985) by Wayne Proudfoot

    By Razie Mah

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    This work, and other reviews in this series, demonstrate the potential of the category-based nested form for sympathetic (as opposed to critical) analysis. Elements in Proudfoot’s arguments are associated to nested forms. Alternate storylines are proposed.
    Friedrich Schleiermacher, in the early 1800s, defined “religion” through the concept of “a religious experience”. The religious experience was not preconditioned by thoughts or concepts. It just happened. It was an emotional reaction to an encounter with a feeling that made no sense at all, such as the feeling of absolute dependence on a source outside of oneself.
    Schleiermacher’s lectures were addressed to a Berlin postreligionist (enlightenment) audience. Some accepted his thesis. Some thought that it was bunk. The former prevailed and Schleiermacher’s point of view inspired researchers, such as William James and Rudolph Otto, for the next 200 years.
    The Achilles heel of this research program, however, rested on the sophistication of those who accepted Schleiermacher’s thesis. These sophisticates could both admit that they were not religious (postreligionist) yet sense that there was something irreducible and central to religion. That ‘something’ was the religious experience. The less cultured critics demanded consistency: If a thinker was “not religious”, why on earth would ‘he’ entertain the preposterous claim that “the religious experience could not be reduced to cause and effect”.
    This was Proudfoot’s position through his book. Proudfoot proposed that the religious experience could be reduced to contingent and ascriptive causality. His work was given a ribbon by the Academy.
    Proudfoot was modern to the core. So, his work offers the opportunity to demonstrate a way of thinking more postmodern than postmodernism. The category-based nested form shows that Proudfoot was correct. Schleiermacher’s thesis evoked a religious experience. Yet, the thesis and the religious experience are irreducible. Proudfoot’s contingent and ascriptive causalities play within a working model composed of nested forms. “The ideas that the religious experience was supposed to reduce to” are simply selected elements of the working model

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRazie Mah
    Release dateMay 13, 2015
    ISBN9781942824077
    Comments on Religious Experience (1985) by Wayne Proudfoot
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    Razie Mah

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      Comments on Religious Experience (1985) by Wayne Proudfoot - Razie Mah

      Comments on Religious Experience (1985) by Wayne Proudfoot

      by Razie Mah

      Published on Smashwords.com

      7815 U0’

      Notes on Text

      In 1985, Wayne Proudfoot critiques Schleiermacher’s postreligionist claims about the nature of the religious experience. His stance is modern. These comments are a postmodern reading of Proudfoot’s argument. My stance is not analytical. It is synthetic. Elements of Proudfoot’s argument are associated to the category-based nested form. Then, implications are discussed.

      Preliminary Readings:

      Primer on the Nested Form

      Primer on Sensible and Social Construction

      Single quotes and italics are used to group words together.

      Table of Contents

      Introduction and A Particular History

      Title Pages and Method

      Expression

      Interpretation

      Emotion

      Mysticism

      Explication

      Explanation

      Conclusion

      A Short Review

      Questions about the Postreligious (Enlightenment) Religions

      Introduction and A Particular History

      0001 This electronic book comments on Religious Experience (1985) by Wayne Proudfoot (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press).

      0002 The relevance of Professor Proudfoot’s book can only be recognized through a truly postmodern, that is, a semiotic reading. This particular work presents a category-based model that transubstantiates Proudfoot’s arguments in revealing ways.

      0003 Two hundred years pass between the initiation of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s research program on religious experience and Proudfoot’s critique.

      Proudfoot insists that Schleiermacher is completely wrong. However, Proudfoot’s position is fragile, because it does not take into account the possibility that Schleiermacher’s numerous errors are like the covering of a seed, capable of resisting the wintry assaults of reductive inquiry. Schleiermacher's program aims to germinate in a crack in the foundation of modernism.

      That blade of grass grows in these electronic pages.

      The Western European Scene in 1800AD

      0004 Wayne Proudfoot’s (1985) book Religious Experience assesses two historic predecessors: Friedrich Schleiermacher (circa 1800) and William James (circa 1900).

      The American Academy of Religion publicly recognized the work in 1986, a year when American Progressives felt frustrated in their strivings to consolidate institutional power in diverse sovereign institutions, including the legislative and executive branches of the so-called federal government. This is the derisively labeled the Reagan Era.

      0005 In contrast, Schleiermacher spoke to the educated elite of Berlin in the 1790s. His audience was not frustrated, but they were concerned. They heard the rumors about the ongoing French Revolution. Sloganeers, shouting liberty, equality and fraternity, overthrew a weak and accommodating king. How exhilarating. The streets of Paris were wet with blood. Um, on second thought…

      Schleiermacher’s title speaks volumes: On Religion: Speeches to the Cultured among its Despisers. Unlike today, when religion contrasts with the word secular, religion differed from the word despisers. Some people were religious. Some despised the religious. Among the despisers, there were two types, cultured and not.

      0006 Who were these despisers and why did they reject - what they called - religion?

      The despisers rejected Christianity, with its diverse and constantly warring factions.

      From all appearances, religions (Christian factions) fueled the violent conflicts that brought wealthier, tolerant kingdoms out of the poverty and regulations of feudalism. A break from a usury-free past entailed a break from old-fashioned Christendom.

      Protestant religions displayed all the hallmarks of mass movements. Power-seeking factions cloaked their organizational goals within mantles of righteousness. The Bible was declared inerrant (instead of the Catholic Church). But, who should interpret the Bible? How about the king, the seat of sovereign power? Or maybe, one of his clerical minions? Or maybe, each individual should interpret with the guidance of a catechism?

      All factions of Christianity - religion - fell into ill repute. A contrast appeared between religion and not religion. I will label the latter postreligionist or postreligious, instead of what we call then today, followers of the Enlightenment.

      0007 Schleiermacher addressed the postreligious of Berlin, saying (more or less), The difference between your postreligionism and religion is not the difference between the enlightened and the superstitious. Even if you tried to dissolve 'religion' in the acid of your enlightened criticism, a residue would remain. ‘Religion’ is irreducible because contains an emotional experience that is not subject to scrutiny.

      With this proclamation, religion joins terms like private, convictions, judgment, opinion and experience in contrast to public, policies, law, fact, and knowledge. This benefitted the (enlightenment) postreligious because it cleared the field of any challenges to their pursuit of sovereign power. Oh, except for the king and, of course, one another.

      Why one another?

      Note Schleiermacher’s title. It addresses the cultured among the despisers. Clearly, the cultured would be more accommodating to the Christians. The uncultured would not.

      0008 What were those romantics and critics in Berlin thinking in the 1790s?

      From the rumors, the French Revolution is a disaster. But, it carries hope. It carries change.

      Why the discrepancy between intentions and results?

      Perhaps, the problem is the French. They never settled those debilitating religious issues. Plus, their kings are so extravagant. Germans are not so crazy. Their royalty would never be so impractical.

      0009 The German Revolution lay 130 years in the future.

      The American Scene in 1800AD

      0010 Across the ocean, a foundational irony intimates a later irony.

      The British colonies in America were settled by religious folk escaping royal persecution. Would they have left if their factions had gained sovereign power?

      Oh, they did. They executed the king. Cromwell ruled. Everyone feared for life and property. Then Cromwell died and the British said, Enough of this.

      In the shadow of this rejection, John Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Other Puritans sailed off to the colonies to join those who left earlier. They carried the same concept of religion as the postreligious of Europe. They knew that religion and sovereignty made a potent brew. Unlike the French postreligionists, they did not blame religion. They blamed the sovereign.

      0011 The Former Colonists amended their Constitution to read, The sovereign shall not establish a religion.

      0012 In effect, America’s constitutionalists proposed an alternate solution to postreligious

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