Spirituality as Consummatory Experience: The Promises and Limitations of John Dewey’s Phenomenology of the Religious

The mission of this article is to unpack Dewey’s phenomenology of religious experience as it is found in both A Common Faith and Art as Experience, and to outline its promises and limitations. After first piecing together Dewey’s position on the nature and constitution of religious experiences, I explore the question of whether or not a Deweyan phenomenology can assimilate or account for some of the most forceful and intense sorts of spiritual intuition as described by several philosophers of religion. William James, Rudolf Otto, and Emmanuel Levinas are among the figures discussed.