The Phenomenology of Religious Life

Chapter One: The Formation of Philosophical Concepts and Factical Life Experience

PART ONE Methodological Introduction Philosophy, Factical Life Experience, and the Phenomenology of Religion Chapter One The Formation of Philosophical Concepts and Factical Life Experience The Peculiarity of Philosophical Concepts It is necessary to determine the meaning of words of the lecture’s announcement preliminarily. This necessity is grounded in the peculiarity of philosophical concepts. In the specific scientific disciplines, concepts are determined through their integration into a material complex; and the more familiar this context is, the more exactly its concepts can be fixed. Philosophical concepts , on the contrary, are vacillating, vague, manifold, and fluctuating, as is shown in the alteration of philosophical standpoints. This uncertainty of philosophical concepts is not, however, exclusively founded upon this alteration of standpoints. It belongs, rather, to the sense of philosophical concepts themselves that they always remain uncertain. The possibility of access to philosophical concepts is fundamentally different from the possibility of access to scientific concepts. Philosophy does not have at its disposal an objectively and thoroughly formed material context into which concepts can be integrated in order to receive their determination. There is thus a difference in principle between science and philosophy. This provisional thesis will prove itself in the course of these observations. (It is due to the necessity of linguistic formulation alone that this is a thesis, a proposition, at all.) We can, however, take a more efficient route in order to realize that a preliminary understanding of the title’s concepts is necessary. We speak of philosophical and scientific “concepts,” of “introductions” to the sciences and to phenomenology. This shows a certain commonality despite the difference in principle between them. From where stems that commonality? Philosophy, one might think, is just as much a rational, cognitive comportment as science is. This results in the idea of the “proposition in general,” of the “concept in general,” etc. But this conception is not free from the prejudice of philosophy 4 The Phenomenology Of Religious Life [4–5] as a science. The idea of scientific knowledge and concepts is not to be carried over into philosophy on the basis of an extension of the concept of the scienti fic proposition to the proposition in general, as if the rational contexts of science and philosophy were identical. Nonetheless, there is a “leveled-off” understanding of philosophical and scientific “concepts” and “propositions.” In “factical life,” these concepts and propositions encounter each other in the sphere of linguistic presentation and communication as “meanings” which are being “understood.” Initially, they are not at all marked off from one another. Since we have to realize that the comprehension of philosophical concepts is different from that of scientific concepts, we must find out how this leveledoff understanding of such concepts and propositions arises. Is this entire consideration not a perpetual treatment of preliminary questions ? Apparently, one hesitates evasively at the introductory stage; one makes necessity—the incapacity for positive creations—into a virtue. Philosophy can be reproached for turning perpetually upon preliminary questions only if one borrows the measure of its evaluation from the idea of the sciences, and if one expects from philosophy the solution of concrete problems and demands of it the construction of a world-view. I wish to increase and keep awake philosophy’s need to be ever turning upon preliminary questions, so much so that it will indeed become a virtue. About what is proper to philosophy itself, I have nothing to say to you. I will deliver nothing that is materially interesting or that moves the heart. Our task is much more limited.§ 2. On the Title of the Lecture Course The title of this lecture course reads: “Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion.” This title can be given a thrice-nuanced meaning, depending on the noun one emphasizes. We must reach a provisional understanding of the three concepts “introduction,” “phenomenology”—which for us will have the same meaning as “philosophy”—and “religion.” In the midst of these efforts, we will soon encounter a peculiar core phenomenon, the problem of the historical. This problem will lead to limitations upon our present aspiration. We will begin with the clarification of the meaning of words, but we will refer immediately to the connections among objects indicated in these meanings such that these connections will be put into question. 1. What does “introduction” mean? An “introduction” to a science is usually comprised of three aspects: a) the delimitation of the material domain [Sachgebiet]; b) the doctrine of...