C1-Assignment on Unit- I Phenomenology of Religion for the Course on PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

By Jaimon Thadathil

Course Moderator: Dr. Thomas Kalary

Unit I- Phenomenology of Religion

Introduction The term phenomenology of religion has come to be widely used in scholarly religious discussion only in the twentieth century. Phenomenology of religion as a discipline is still relatively new and the term phenomenology is used differently by different religious scholars. In the broadest sense phenomenology of religion refers to an attitude toward or the study of religious phenomena. Generally phenomenologists of all types are concerned with the believers' awareness of the manifestations of life, how they express that awareness, and how those expressions can be best understood. In a common usage, phenomenology of religion means the comparative study and the classification of different types of religious phenomena. It concerns the experiential aspect of religion, inquiring into what is central to an understanding of what is involved practically, cognitively and affectively in a religious way of life. What is Phenomenology of Religion? Phenomenology of religion is nothing but a description of what religion and its practices and its elements as it appears. This entry examines the relevance of phenomenological considerations for the concept of God (or the sacred otherwise characterized) and the question of what sort of rational sense is implied in the adoption of a religious point of view. The discussion distinguishes various perspectives on the subjective character of religious experience, and examines the relation between religious experience and experience of the material world. It also considers the interaction between experience, conceptual framework (including religious doctrine) and practice, and the contribution, if any, of emotional feelings to the epistemic significance of religious experience. In all of these ways, an appreciation of the 'phenomenology of religion' proves central to an understanding of what is involved practically, cognitively and affectively in a religious way of life. Distinctives of Phenomenology of Religion. There are several distinctives of the phenomenological of religion.
First, it is descriptively oriented. They seek accurate and appropriate descriptions and

interpretations of religious phenomena such as rituals, symbols, prayers, ceremonies, theology (written or oral), sacred persons, art, creeds, and other religious exercises, whether corporate or individual, public or private. In the phenomenological approach one attempts to describe as accurately as possible the phenomena under consideration, including not only the events that occur but also the motives behind the events.

 The phenomenological approach is not oriented towards problem solving, but towards empathetic description. It thus keeps the events themselves as central. The phenomenological approach is not oriented towards problem solving, but towards empathetic description. It thus keeps the events themselves as central. Principal Elements of the Phenomenology of Religion The development of insight into the essential structures and meanings of religious experience is the ultimate goal of phenomenology of religion. To arrive at such insights while demonstrating a rigorous methodology remains an unrealized hope for phenomenologists. This is in part because rigor and intuition are extremely difficult to combine in a field as laden with emotional content as religious studies. More importantly, however, once an "essence" is discovered, the question of ontology (or truth) can no longer be ignored. Religious experience as encounter with God William Alston says that we don't have a well-developed vocabulary for the description of the phenomenal qualia of mystical experience. William James would say that mystical experiences are ineffable. And therefore we cannot refine a vocabulary for the description of mystical experience by replication of relevant conditions and renewed attention to the phenomenology of the experiences that occur under those conditions. Tradition has commonly differentiated three varieties of experience of God: prayer of quiet, the prayer of union, and rapture, in order of increasing intimacy of acquaintance with God. Hick argues that religious experiences are structured according to tradition-specific sets of religious concepts as that of Christians encountering reality in Trinitarian mode, while Hindus as Brahman. these traditions are all valid in so far as all provide a vehicle for experience of ultimate religious reality or what Hick terms the Real. Identifying the intrinsic character of the Real is beyond the scope of any human enquiry. Instead, we have to make do with appearances of the Real, where these appearances vary with the culturally constituted ways of being religious that are made available in the various faiths. So philosophical treatments of the phenomenology of religious experience draw quite diverse conclusions: religious experience is said variously to have no phenomenological content or to have a content which at any rate cannot be communicated readily in verbal terms. Emotions and Religious Experience William Alston asks: if the phenomenological content of a religious experience were purely affective, would this be a reason to doubt that it was directed at anything? In this case, he notes, we might well suspect that the experience consists in a felt response to some believed presence rather than some presentation of God to the believer. If we allow that emotional feelings can have some intellectual content in their own right, then we have a powerful tool for understanding how the affective phenomenology of religious experience

may turn out to be integral to its God-directedness. if we take emotional feelings to be intrinsically contentful, then we may wish to say that the phenomenological content of a religious experience could be purely affective without this posing any difficulty for the thought that the experience is directed at some mind-independent reality rather than being simply a sensation-like feeling which is caused by the thought that God is present. Religious Consciousness Like human consciousness in general, religious consciousness is first of all an experience. And like any other experience (ex: love), it can only be felt to be understood, words which try to describe it serve only to evoke it in the listener, to help him make the experience for himself. The formal object of the noetical experience is the true that of esthetical experience is the beautiful, that of moral experience is the good , that of love experience is the weal of the other, etc. now, many phenomenologists of religion, after Rudolf, characterize religious experience as the experience of the Sacred. The sacred is essentially, supra-notional and supra-conceptual. In itself, it is ineffable. Religious experience is absolutely specific and unique as Otto calls this an ' a prioiri category in the sense that is not evolved from any kind of sense perception. Keeping all this in mind, we can describe the sense of the sacred as that feeling ingrained in every man to be sincere and honest with one self, to be open and accept what he thinks to be true and to act in accordance with what he thinks to be right. Religion is this sense of the sacred or simply faith; religious tradition or religion is faith existentially expressed in belief, cult and morality. Stages of Religious Consciousness
The first stage is what we might call the common stage. Most of these are born in a

particular religious tradition. Their religious consciousness like human consciousness in general, is slowly aroused by their familiar, social, and educational milieu. Slowly their inherited religious belief and practice become, if at all, a personal conviction and intelligent habit. This is already a genuine religious experience in so far as every knowledge and feeling are in themselves genuine experiences. The second stage is what we might call the ascetical stage. Here personal conviction and intelligent habits begin to play a primary role of an ascetic. All the spheres of his life begin to be somehow or other affected by his religious convictions and more and more time is given to his religious practices.
The third stage is what most authors call the mystical stage. This is when religious reality

becomes for man a felt consciousness in his life on earth seems to pass into another mode of existence. It is here that concepts and words necessarily borrowed from other human experience are felt to be inadequate and even misleading when they are used to describe

this stage of religious experience. But all mystics speak of their sense of Oneness with the whole of reality of an intense and up to then never felt peace, joy and bliss and of an acquired mysterious light. Noteworthy too is their wonderful power of concentration in meditation and prayer which often results in ecstasy or Samadhi.

The emergence of religious consciousness in mankind. Anthropological theories: theory that maintains that at the very beginning there must have been a primitive revelation regarding a one and only God. This theory is principally based on anthropological studies of contemporary uncivilized people, with the assumption that they must have retained the originary belief of man regarding God. Psychological Theories: Structural and dynamic psychological studies attribute the origin of religious consciousness to some primordial sentiment in man. For example, primitive man, whose existence and survival was constantly beset by so many threats and consequently dominated by fear, was led to believe in supernatural agencies , the ones to whom he could have recourse. The prospect of death, has led man to believe in immortality and heavenly enjoyments. Historical Theories: Some historians of religion distinguish three stages in the historical development of religion: tribal religion, national religion and universal religion. All these theories are concerned, as we have said, particularly with the origin and growth of religious belief. Our approach then which permitted us to understand religious consciousness the way we did and to distinguish between it and belief remains immune to the conclusions which can be and in fact is admitted by people who profess no religious belief at all. General Critique No one is immune from the influences of culture, historical setting, and social situation. Each of these areas lays assumptive claims on our world view. To claim to be purely descriptive is recognized as impossible in light of human conditions and constraints. In the literature, phenomenologists regularly cross the boundary from description to evaluation. Indeed, crossing such boundaries is part of what it means to be culturally and historically placed human beings and to have religious identity. Thus, the claim of phenomenology to be a purely descriptive methodology has come under attack.