Religious Experience in the First-Person Perspective

The Lived Body and Perception of Reality

Bibliographic Data

ID4771658
AuthorsOlga Louchakova-Schwartz (0000-0001-6657-1605, Santa Clara University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume13
Issue8
Pages704
Publication date2022-07-31
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel13080704
OpenAlexW4289203921
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited19

The first-person perspective, developed by Husserl for the scientific study of consciousness, consists of formal categories which can be used both for the analyses of consciousness as such and its concrete forms. Evidence (Evidenz), the central category in this approach, characterizes consciousness as knowledge. This paper presents the phenomenology of changes in perception and embodiment which lead to evidence for religious/spiritual experience (RE). Such change develops over time via contemplative practice, but also can be a part of spontaneous RE. Because of the presence of evidence, RE containing the change of perception are presentational (as distinct from appresentative). This temporally extended evidence concerns reality's giving of itself, granted that the main distinction between religious and non-religious experience is in the kind of reality to which they refer: physical in the case of non-religious, and 'ultimate' in the case of religious experience. Involving flesh and the reversibility of the body, the change in such complex RE also entails the transmutation of emotion from negative to positive. I compare these findings with Husserl's analysis of religious experience in HUA XVII, and argue that grounding religious experience in the preconceived idea of God, as Husserl does, limits RE to regressive forms which do not constitute knowledge. Such experiences remain teleologically directed at the world-horizon. By contrast, REs grounded in change of perception have a different teleology and do constitute knowledge

Consciousness · Contemplation · Epistemology · Perception · Religious experience · Teleology · Karl Barth and Christian Theology · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion, Theology, and Education · Social Psychology

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