The Politics of Spirit: Phenomenology, Genealogy, Religion

1. The Phenomenology of Religion: Introduction and Background

3 1 The Phenomenology of Religion Introduction and Background It is extremely interesting to trace philosophy’s relationship to the rising history of religion [Religionswissenschaft] . . . I shall only mention that throughout the nineteenth century and up to the present the so-called philosophy of religion, out of which the history of religion grew, took it upon itself to study the specific questions of the history of religion. Only very recently have empirical research and philosophical speculation been separated. —Joachim Wach, 19241 In his article, “What Constitutes the Identity of a Religion?,” Hubert Seiwert poses two questions: “What constitutes a historical reality?” and, “What is a religion?”2 Using “Buddhism” as an example, he asks how it is that there can be an identity between specific acts, practices, beliefs, etc., in different times and in different places, all of which are identified as “Buddhist” and none of which have any direct contact with each other? In an analysis of the meaning of such an identity, he concludes: Obviously one cannot maintain that there is no difference whatsoever between Buddhism in China of the 8th century and Buddhism in Ceylon of the 20th century. This implies that we cannot speak of an identity between these two phenomena. We can generalize the issue: Every observable phenomenon, i.e., every empirical fact, has as one of its attributes a spatiotemporal specificity. No empirical phenomenon can, therefore, be identical with any other than itself. From this it follows that either there is no identity of Buddhism or that Buddhism is not an empirical phenomenon.3 4 THE POLITICS OF SPIRIT Given that each empirical phenomenon is perfectly discreet, how is it that we form unities out of these multiplicities? How, in other words, how do we form categories such as “religion,” “tradition,” “faith,” “Buddhism,” “Christianity,” etc.? The very idea of a systematic study of religion is predicated on some kind of answer to this question. The ongoing attempt to define “religion” is indicative of the field’s continuing struggle with precisely this issue. In the history of the study of religion there have been a variety of responses to this issue. One school, however, has had a profound impact on the development of Religious Studies4 as an autonomous endeavor, namely, the phenomenology of religion, also known as classical phenomenology of religion.5 Scholars such as Rudolf Otto, W. B. Kristensen, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Joachim Wach, and Mircea Eliade reformulated nineteenth-century Religionswissenschaft into a distinct enterprise, one which has had a constitutive influence on the development of Religious Studies in Europe, North America, and elsewhere in the world. What is characteristic of this research tradition is its answer to the question just posed. Although each figure mentioned above differed in many respects from the others, they all adamantly agreed that religion must be studied as a sui generis phenomenon of the human spirit. As shall be discussed at the end of this study, they did this by reformulating the Hegelian concept of Geist, or Spirit, into the less metaphysically aggressive concepts of “Man”6 or “consciousness.” They answer the question posed by Seiwert by arguing that underlying the multiplicity of historical and geographically dispersed religions was an ultimately metaphysical, transhistorical substratum, variously called Geist, “Man,” “human nature,” “mind,” or “consciousness.” This transhistorical substratum is an expressive agent with a uniform, essential nature. As such, by reading the data of the history of religions as “expressions,” it is possible to understand them sympathetically by tapping into one’s own human subjectivity. Geist—spirit, human spirit, human nature, and/or “Man”—then, is the basis for a philosophy of religion, a philosophy of history, and a hermeneutical theory. Traditional Historiography of the Phenomenology of Religion: Hegel versus Husserl Hegel versus Husserl Much of this is well known, of course. However, the historical origins of this approach and the issues that arise from it have been, in my 5 THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION view, seriously misunderstood. Most historians of the phenomenology of religion argue that the phenomenological approach of Edmund Husserl was the main methodological and philosophical source for that movement. Willard Oxtoby represents the standard view on this issue: “Understood strictly, the phenomenology of religion is supposed to be a precise application to religion of insights from the European philosophical movement known as phenomenology, launched by Edmund Husserl.”7 Walter Capps concurs that it was Husserlian phenomenology that influenced Religious Studies: “Merleau...