Page 284 - Contribution To Phenomenology

THE STUDY OF RELIGION IN HUSSERL 277

Faith here is basically a mode of presencing borne by a profound
intuition of values. Seemingly this intuition of values itself is not achieved
through faith but through a kind of experience. Further this is not (at
least not typically?) the experience of the absolute ought. The absolute
ought places one on the way to the infinite godly ideal; this experience
uncovers that one is already unified with the divine.
In the case of the followers of Jesus or of the type instanced by Jesus
there is no question of merely empty intentions or an external appropria-
tion of reports, information, propositions, etc. Rather, the follower must
empathically experience the experiences of Jesus or whomever posterity
will call the founder of the rehgion. Again, it seems we must say that for
the original experiences, i.e., the experience of those who come to be
called the founders, there is not an experience of the absolute ought; but
the experience of the founder's experiencing and his message occasion for
the followers the experience of the absolute ought, the unum necessarium.
This, as we shall see, is what Husserl calls "faith-experience." The stories
of the life of Christ, his parables, his own testimonies, provide the
occasion for the believer to reproduce the original power of the intuitive
values and their motivations. Again, for the follower these are ex-
perienced in a mediate, not immediate relation to God.
A hermeneutical remark seems in order here. If Husserl's theory has
some validity, then the student of religion also must be actively involved
in acts of empathic understanding of the followers and disciples' efforts
to empathically understand the experiences of the founders. Gadamer's
critique of Schleiermacher's placing of empathy in the center of the
textual interpretation of the Other would probably exclude what is
essential for Husserl. For Husserl such acts of empathy are not merely
possible but necessary for texts within one's own culture (see our
discussions below); what kind of preparatory experience will make them
possible in regard to other cultures would have to be spelled out.
At this juncture I wish to turn to Husserl's rather autobiographical
account of the effect of reading the Gospels which is given as Beilage IV
to the Kaizo lectures. This appendix would seem at least implictly to
want to illustrate, by way of an example, the just-rehearsed theory of
religious experience of someone who becomes a follower of Jesus—more
so than the experiences of Jesus himself. What is at stake of course is
how there is in both cases an original experience of the core-values. This
text is of interest also because it relates religious experience to his key