The Politics of Spirit: Phenomenology, Genealogy, Religion

8. Experience, Expression, Empathy: Gerardus van der Leeuw’s Phenomenological Program

207 8 Experience, Expression, Empathy Gerardus van der Leeuw’s Phenomenological Program Gerardus van der Leeuw’s magnum opus, Phänomenologie der Religion was published in 1933. This work is widely regarded as the seminal statement of classical phenomenology of religion. Attached to the work was an “Epilogomena,” which dealt primarily with methodological questions and with issues concerning the place of phenomenology within Religionswissenschaft. As these latter issues are the primary concern here, the bulk of this exposition will focus on the Epilogomena, although some issues entail looking at the body of the text and its structure as a whole. Subject/Object; Experience/Expression; Inward/Outward Like most phenomenologists, van der Leeuw saw the conceptual structure of phenomenology both as a philosophy and as a method for the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften), as grounded in what he claims are three “natural,” or given, correlations: subject as correlated with an object; experience as correlated with an expression; and the “inward” as correlated with the “outward.” These correlations, all of which are integrally related, form the conceptual foundation for phenomenology of religion as van der Leeuw understands and practices it. Phenomenon, Subject, Object The phenomenon is something that “appears” and appears to someone: “Phenomenology seeks the phenomenon, as such; the phenomenon, again, is what ‘appears’ [was sich zeigt].”1 Unlike explanatory sciences, phenomenology does not try to explain why something appears, it 208 THE POLITICS OF SPIRIT merely starts from the given, from what “is there,” from the “absolute givenness of the phenomenon itself,” as Husserl’s famous motto puts it. This assumption is the opening gesture for, and the conditions for the possibility of, specifically phenomenological research. Immediately implied in the notion of “appearance” is the correlative relationship of an object, a something that appears, and a subject, that to which the object appears. As such, the “phenomenon” is “neither pure object . . . [nor] something purely subjective,” but, rather must be understood as “an object related to a subject, and a subject related to an object.”2 The “phenomenon,” then, exists within the structure of a relationship, a relationship defined by two givens: the subject and the object. Avoiding, he believes, both reductionism and subjectivism, van der Leeuw repeatedly insists that the phenomenon “is not produced by the subject, and still less substantiated or demonstrated by it; its entire essence is given in its appearance, and its appearance to ‘someone .’ ”3 As the phenomenon is a correlative of the subject and object, it cannot be either a passive “impression” as empiricist psychology holds, nor a purely subjective projection or construction. The key for van der Leeuw to maintaining the middle ground of phenomenology is to insist on the givenness to consciousness of the “phenomenon itself.” Van der Leeuw claims that this makes phenomenology different than other approaches to religion in that it has no theoretical orientation which it imposes on religious data, but is a pure description of that data: I have tried to avoid, above all else, any imperiously dominating theory, and in this Volume there will be found neither evolutionary, nor so-called anti-evolutionary, nor indeed any other theories. . . . What I myself consider may be opposed to theories, as the phenomenological comprehension of History [als phänomenologisches Verständnis der Geschichte], should be clear from the Epilogomena.4 Clearly, van der Leeuw regards phenomenology as a purely descriptive approach that is, as such, pre- or a-theoretical in nature. This, again, is based upon the sense of the absolute givenness of the phenomenon, as well as the naturalness of the correlations described above. This also entails, as shall be discussed below, that, at the level of what he calls Urerlebnis, that is, at the primal or original level of experience, the phenomenon is outside of any form of mediation, and therefore, outside of any form or system of representation. The phenomenon 209 EXPERIENCE, EXPRESSION, EMPATHY is that which is immediately given to a subject. This is the basis for the problematic of phenomenological reconstruction. It also places consciousness front and center as the given area, so to speak, within which objects appear (Daniel Dennett referred to it as the “Cartesian theater of consciousness”). Van der Leeuw so far gives all that is essential to his project: the appearance of a “something” that necessarily implies both the subject and the object of such an appearance. The structure of Religion in Essence and Manifestation corresponds to this essential structure: part...