The Hermeneutics of Experience: Schleiermacher and Nishitani on the Essence of Religion

This essay explores a possible comparison between Nishitani Keiji and Friedrich Schleiermacher on the essence of religion. Both thinkers respond to the cultured despisers of their age with an experience: the intuition or feeling of the universe and of a dimension in the depths of one's being, a realm proclaimed in the mystical accounts of all times and in the Buddhist standpoint of emptiness.