Religion in Essence and Manifestation. A study in Phenomenology (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 297 problema di linguaggio che si manifesta nello sviluppo delle earle arti e della loro tradizione. Pertanto non esistono le superiorit~ o inferiorits astratte, intorno a cui s'~ in_ cominciato a disputare sin dai tempi di Leonardo, bensl concreti problemi di gerarchia tra le personalith artistiche che si plasmano e dominano i mezzi espressivi connoturati all'ispirazionea loro congeniale. La necessitk di non dilungarci induce a sorvolare sull'acuto esame del Brutto e su quello dei rapporti tra contenuto e Forma, ma non si pub far a meno di recordare ehe particolarmente felice riesce ranalisi, con richiami al Momigliano ed al Fubini, della relazione tra arte e critica. La seconda implica, pur ~lvando rautonomia fantastica della rievocazione, un giudizio Iogico, fondato cio~ su di una categoria. In questo punto ritorna ad affiorare la preoccupazione profonda del Petruzzellis che non accetta stiracchiate contaminazioni eclettiche, ma contro quella estetizzante e quella aridamente filosofistica o moralistica, vuole una critica che faccia ragione tutt'insieme all'immediatezza della fantasia ed alia profondit ~ riflessiva del concerto. Cib gli riesce possibile perch~ egli sa cogliere il nesso d'autonomiae d'implicazione che intercorre ira le attivit~ dello spirito, il che, a sua volta, gli ~ facilitato dalla profonda moralits del suo pensiero. Petruzzellis non solo lo si studia e lo si ammira, ma lo si ama per quell'esigenza di interiore chiarezza ch'~ espressione d'un'intima onesth, d'una saldezza di sentimento, d'uno stile di vita lineare ed esemplare. Percib in lui l'uomo ~ idealmente un maestro, il maestro un modello di vita morale. EDMONDOCIoI~. University o] Naples Religion in Essence and Mani]estation. A study in Phenomenology. By G. van der Leeuw. Translated by J. E. Turner. With the additions of the second German edition by Hans H. Penner. Two vols. (New York, Harper Torchbooks TB 100, 101; 1963; XXXVI -t- 714 pp. Each $1.95.) The magnum opus of the late Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950) was published in German in 1933, and immediately became a standard work on the then-new science of "Phenomenology of Religion." An English edition appeared in 1938. Innovating as it was at the time, its particular originality has definitely been proven after the publication, on the one hand, of the majority of the writings of Edmund Husserl (and of Herbert Spiegelberg's The Phenomenological Movement, 1960) and, on the other hand, of the lectures in phenomenology by the author's teacher, W. Brede Kristensen (The Meaning o] Religion, 1960, trans. J. B. Carman). Both from the point of view of phenomenological research and that of Religionswissenscha#, Van der Leeuw gave a study sui generis. Assimilating various trends of thought of the early thirties (Dilthey, Scheler, Spranger, Jaspers, l=Ieidegger), the author showed himself to be a synthetic thinker able to present a maximum of knowledge and culture in what after all may be called a "personal" book of a unique Dutchman of the period between the two world wars. Until now, only two important studies on him have appeared, both in German. ~ To someone of three generations later, one of the great merits of Van der Leeuw appears to have been and still is the description of religious phenomena within the framework of interaction between deity and man, "subject" and "object" of religion. By leaving open the definition of religion, he avoided the reduction of it to a totality of subjective representations and ideas, to a series of religious facts in an objective time, or to sociological and psychological laws. He achieved, in the field of religion, what semanticis(s may in the field of language: to search for the expressed meanings and to re-express the meanings which one Eva Hirschmann's Phiinomenologie der Religion (1940) and Jan Hermelink's Verstehen und Bezeugen (1960).About Van der Leeuw himself, there is nothing better than his own Conlession Scientifique (Numen I, 1954, pp. 9-15). 298 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY has been able to read. The result here is a presentation which is inspired and meaningful itself, astonishing its contemporaries and impressing its deseendants. Now, thirty years later, anthropology and psychology have passed beyond L~vy-Bruhl and Spranger. The moderate idealist interpretation of religion...