Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks Religion Secret Religion

2020

1. In The Idea of the Holy (1917), Rudolf Otto identifies the numen as the non-rational core of every religious phenomenon. According to him, there is a universal human yearning for transcendence/radical alterity, which is at least partially filled by the experience of the nu- minous – this experience can be found in every historical religion, from the ancient ones to the perfect Christian Revelation. Otto’s ‘Hegelian’ system could be taken as a theoretical response to religious diversity, alternative for instance to John Hick’s one. 2. Otto does not mention the process of secularization. Today, his main point is inadmissible in itself, if not transformed. Given the secularisation, one of the two: either it is not true that there is a universal human yearning for radical transcendence/otherness, or this yearning can be found not only in the pos- itive historical religions, but also in extra-‘religious’ phenomena. 3. Our proposal aims to prove the second hypothesis. Numenology is the philosophical research of sacred/numinous features within various social, political, economic, anthropological, cultural phenomena. This approach moves from a recalibration of Otto’s and Max Scheler’s stances, through the critique of the per se existence of the objective pole of the experience of the Holy. 4. In this sense, the problem of religious diversity itself is reformulated: the yarning for transcendence is universal and therefore potentially pluralistic, and ‘religion’ is the name of a historical/social way to rationalize it. Final- ly, the open epistemological question is whether there can be any criterion for determining the truth (or even the reasonableness) of a specific numinous phenomenon, or not.

Sophia, 1988

The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 2019

The essays presented in this issue focus on the phenomenological investigation of religious phenomena. Scholars belonging to different phenomenological traditions address the following groups of questions in order to describe the structure that makes a phenomenon religious. First, is it actually possible to talk about religious experience? In this issue we decided not to give a final answer but, rather, to refer to religious experience as the religious structure of phenomena. In fact, the main question that informs our current contributions is: Could there be a phenomenology of religious experience? Second, we would like to ponder what different forms of phenomenological investigations can add to the description of the religious structure of phenomena. In this case we refer to the philosophical and psychological reflections of Dewey, Husserl, Heidegger, Ricoeur, James, and so forth, in order to shed light on religious phenomena. Third, we would like to address the question that gives the title to this issue: Do these phenomena present themselves as religious, or is it their structure as it interacts with our sense of self, our beliefs, our sense of the sacred, and our transcendental attitude that attributes phenomena a religious color? Can a religious sentiment be grounded in a perceptual and experiential quality? Or does our way of relating to neutral matter color it with a theological and axiological quality?

The papers we presented in this volume focus on the phenomenological investigation of the religious phenomena. Scholars belonging to different phenomenological traditions addressed the following groups of questions in order to describe the structure that makes a phenomenon religious. First, is it actually possible to talk about religious experience? In this issue we decided not to give a final answer, but rather to refer to religious experience as the religious structure of the phenomena. In fact, the main question that informs our current literature is: could there be a phenomenology of religious experience? Secondly, we would like to ponder what different forms of phenomenological investigations can add to the description of the religious structure of the phenomena. In this case we referred to the philosophical and psychological reflection of Dewey's, Husserl's, Heidegger's, Ricoeur's, James' and so forth, in order to shed light on religious phenomena. Thirdly, we would like to address the question that gives the title to this issue: Do these phenomena present themselves as religious or is their structure as it interacts with our sense of self, our beliefs, our sense of the sacred and our transcendental attitude that attribute the phenomena a religious color? Can a religious sentiment be grounded in a perceptual and experiential quality? Or is our way of relating to neutral matter that colors them in a theological and axiological quality? Anna Varga-Jani approached religious experience through a twofold phenomenological investigation aimed at discovering, (1) how religious experiences reflected on reality, and (2) how the methodology of phenomenology lead to the wider ontology of theology. These two divergent approaches to religious experiences found their source in the phenomenological reflection on reality, and this reality, in view of the substantially non-real experience of religiosity, urged the creation of a new ontology in the donation of revelation. Ricoeur's phenomenological approach was used to inquiry into this layer of reality. Drawing on Husserl's egology, Marc Applebaum's contribution Remembrance: A Husserlian Phenomenology of Sufi Practice, discussed the traditional Sufi practice of " remembrance of God " (dhikr), which can be understood as " the primary meditative practice " within Islam (Elias 2013, 199). The aim was to describe dhikr as a religious phenomenon consisting in turning from a condition of heedlessness and duality to a unitive experience of remembering God and being remembered by God. Remembrance was framed not as a metaphysical doctrine but as a lived-experience situated in the practice of classical Sufism, traditionally understood as a lifelong, sapiential path.

FALSAFEH, The Iranian Journal of Philosophy, 2009

What follows is an attempt to see Otto the phenomenologist within wider developments in the field, and to take account of some recent criticisms. Everything that is said falls under the general headingof 'introduction to the study of religion'(or 'meta-religionswissenschaft') Within this wide field, we shall be specifically concerned with the possibility of a systematic phenomenology of religion, and with that phenomenology of religion which takes its starting point from Otto's awareness of the numinous in its non-rational and rational forms and manifestations. In addition to this central insight of Otto's and deriving to a large extent from it, are the morphological categories which can be traced back further than Otto to Chantepie de la Saussaye (1869-1937). These categories form part of classical phenomenology of religion down to Friedrich Heiler (1892-1967). We shall come back to these categories after looking at Otto's numinous as the starting point for a global phenomenology.

Three Pines Press, 2019

A collection of essays that explores the many dimensions of the mystical, including personal, theoretical, and historical. Kohav, a professor of philosophy at the Metropolitan State College of Denver and the editor of this collection, provocatively asks why mysticism is such an "objectionable" topic and considered intellectually disreputable. Borrowing from Jacques Derrida's distinction between aporia (or unsolvable confusion) and a solvable problem, the author suggests mystical phenomena are better understood through the lens of mysterium, that which is beyond the categories of reason and can only be captured by dint of intuition and personal experience. In fact, the contributors to this intellectually kaleidoscopic volume present several autobiographical accounts of precisely such an encounter with the mystically inscrutable. For example, in one essay, Gregory M. Nixon relates "the shattering moment in my life when I awoke from the dream of self to find being as part of the living world and not in my head." The religious dimensions of mystical experience are also explored: Buddhist, Christian, and Judaic texts, including the Bible, are examined to explicate and compare their divergent interpretations. Contributor Jacob Rump argues that the ineffable is central to Wittgenstein's worldview, and Ori Z. Soltes contends that philosophers like Socrates and Spinoza, famous for their valorization of reason, are incomprehensible without also considering the limits they impose on reason and the value they assign to ineffable experience. The collection is precisely as multidisciplinary as billed. It includes a wealth of varying perspectives, both personal and scholarly. Furthermore, the book examines the application of these ideas to contemporary debates. Richard H. Jones, for instance, challenges that mysticism and science ultimately converge into a single explanatory whole. The prose can be prohibitively dense--much of it is written in a jargon-laden academic parlance--and the book is not intended for a popular audience. Within a remarkably technical discussion of the proper interpretive approach to sacred texts, contributor Brian Lancaster declares: "For these reasons I propose incorporating a hermeneutic component to extend the integration of neuroscientific and phenomenological data that defines neurophenomenology." However, Kohav's anthology is still a stimulating tour of the subject, philosophically enthralling and wide reaching. An engrossing, diverse collection of takes on mystical phenomena. - Kirkus Reviews The volume investigates the question of meaning of mystical phenomena and, conversely, queries the concept of “meaning” itself, via insights afforded by mystical experiences. The collection brings together researchers from such disparate fields as philosophy, psychology, history of religion, cognitive poetics, and semiotics, in an effort to ascertain the question of mysticism’s meaning through pertinent, up-to-date multidisciplinarity. The discussion commences with Editor’s Introduction that probes persistent questions of complexity as well as perplexity of mysticism and the reasons why problematizing mysticism leads to even greater enigmas. One thread within the volume provides the contextual framework for continuing fascination of mysticism that includes a consideration of several historical traditions as well as personal accounts of mystical experiences: Two contributions showcase ancient Egyptian and ancient Israelite involvements with mystical alterations of consciousness and Christianity’s origins being steeped in mystical praxis; and four essays highlight mysticism’s formative presence in Chinese traditions and Tibetan Buddhism as well as medieval Judaism and Kabbalah mysticism. A second, more overarching strand within the volume is concerned with multidisciplinary investigations of the phenomenon of mysticism, including philosophical, psychological, cognitive, and semiotic analyses. To this effect, the volume explores the question of philosophy’s relation to mysticism and vice versa, together with a Wittgensteinian nexus between mysticism, facticity, and truth; language mysticism and “supernormal meaning” engendered by certain mystical states; and a semiotic scrutiny of some mystical experiences and their ineffability. Finally, the volume includes an assessment of the so-called New Age authors’ contention of the convergence of scientific and mystical claims about reality. The above two tracks are appended with personal, contemporary accounts of mystical experiences, in the Prologue; and a futuristic envisioning, as a fictitious chronicle from the time-to-come, of life without things mystical, in the Postscript. The volume contains thirteen chapters; its international contributors are based in Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States.