Page 272 - Contribution To Phenomenology

Chapter 11

The Study of Religion
in Husserl^s Writings

James G. Hart
Indiana University

Abstract: In this paper I attempt to systematize HusserVs remarks
in the Nachlass on the study of religion. I will not be dealing
primarily with his own philosophical theology which he regards as
the culmination of his transcendental phenomenology, but rather
with what he thinks religion is and what is studied when people
study religion. I will first briefly discuss how religion is a developing
cultural phenomenon which comes to have a relationship to
philosophy and reason. This leads us to the consideration of a
variety of senses of theology.

I. Culture and Religion

Husserl thinks of culture properly as the intersubjective constitution of
idealities in sensible materials which have an abiding validity and which
shape a people.^ He claimed also that it is the way the active life of a
people objectifies itself. Objectification is not merely self-expression but
also an externalization in sensibihty and physical substrates of the spiritual
life of the people, the meaning of which is able to be experienced by
subsequent generations. Such an experiencing of culture may be an
occasion for ever renewable spiritual strength or a source of distractions
and burdens (Hua XXVII, 21-22).
We may note with Iso Kern that the phenomenological basis for
appreciating the HegeUan theme of "objective spirit" is Husserl's concept
of "indications" (Anzeichen). To be precise, objective spirit has to do with
the formations of sensibihty which indicate, a human achievement as well
as occasion, by their so indicating certain types of intentional acts, e.g..

^ I wish to thank Prof. Samuel Usseling, Director of the Husserl Archives in
Louvain, for permission to quote from the Nachlass.
265
M. Daniel and L. Embree (eds.), Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines, 265-296.
© 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.