(Fledgling) Thesis Proposal

            Heidegger on Religion Experience

            The absence of Heidegger in both recent and historical scholarship surrounding religious experience is somewhat puzzling. Given the volume of debates between perennialism and constructivism over the past century—that is, between phenomenological and reductionistic models for explaining religious experience—one might have anticipated Heideggerian interest piquing, at the very least, on the phenomenological side. Nevertheless, scholarship is scant, and the debates which do occur, occur under a Husserlian canopy.   
            Over the last decade or so these debates have reached something of an impasse, with scholars tweaking stock arguments to fit new research data or theory. In 2000 the perennialist Robert Forman called for, “a truce in the twenty years,” saying (in the summarizing words of Ann Taves) that the debate, “had reached a dead end.” Admittedly, the conversation grew cyclical, with both sides doing more and more couched (or open) defenses of their worldview and less ground-breaking scholarship. Both sides accused the other of defensive strategies; both sides exposed the weaknesses of the other. And though the debate has never grown violent, it has probably gone as far as it can.
            At issue is whether intense religious experiences are, on the one hand, sui generis:  transcendently caused and unaffiliated with naturalistic explanations (as espoused by Otto, Wach, Eliade, Smart, Forman, Baranard, etc.), or, on the other hand, reducible to cultural, linguistic, or biological causes (as espoused by Weber, Durkheim, Freud, Katz, Proudfoot, Taves, etc).  At best, the phenomenological scholars have succeeded in locating the requisite phenomenological conditions necessary to produce sui generis experience— if there is such a thing. Id est, the religious phenomenologists have perhaps shown that sui generis religious experience is not logically impossible. At best on the other side, the reductionistic school has located a number of requisite cultural, linguistic, and biological conditions without which religious experience would be impossible. They have not, however, succeeded in reducing more sophisticated, hybrid experiences. For example, physiological condition “A” may be said to be necessary to a religious experience but not sufficient, especially—say the perennialists—where transcendent intervention is a necessary condition.
            When William James first distinguished individual religion from institutional religion in The Varieties of Religious Experience, he centered the discussion of religious experience around Husserl’s account of phenomenological experience, viz. the possibility of intentionality. By bracketing institutional influence on individual experience James allocated authority to the incorrigibility of phenomenological experiences. This was James’ primary contribution to the religious theory debate: an argument from authority based in intentionality. For James, mystical experiences, “usually are, and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.”  Religious phenomenologists thereafter have employed more or less the same strategy.
            Rudolf Otto, for example, constructs his own argument from authority by grounding his mysterium tremendum—a trans-religious experience— on the incorrigibility of multiple phenomenological experiences. Like James, Otto thinks that since no one can tell John Smith that his experience did not appear to him the way it did, John is the authority on the matter, and we are at the mercy of his memory and communication skills. What Otto adds to the discussion is the fact that many Johns across time and space say exactly the same thing: that the experience is inexplicable and can only   be ‘known’ by direct contact with it. Otto infers from the ubiquity and similarity of these testimonies that something transcendent does, indeed, interact with people. This, again, is an argument from authority. But instead of being merely authoritative to the individual, like we find in James, Otto thinks that the similarity between cross-religious experience grants authoritative reliability to them, leaving even those who have not experienced the mysterium tremendum with good reason to believe in its legitimacy. If all the best authorities are saying that something transcendent interacts with them, who are those on the outside to disagree?
            Such were the beginnings of religious phenomenology. Of course, religious reductionists supplied their own counter-arguments, ranging from deconstructions of thinkers like Otto to upshot theory making. Not least among the reductionists is Wayne Proudfoot, who, to put it roughly, argues that religious language paradigms cultivate religio-centric experiences. Christians do not undergo nirvana, specifically, because Christian language, doctrine, and practice does not foster the disillusionment of self. Buddhism, however, does, which is why Buddhist monks undergo nirvana. Furthermore, and by implication, the ostensible similarities between the experiences of competing religious traditions is nullified. The mysterium tremendum is not universal because religious experiences burgeon out of their particular socio-lingual traditions.
            Once these reductions are admitted, biological reductionists like Ann Taves step in to fill the remaining gaps. After positioning herself under attribution theory—arguing that religious people attribute sacredness or ‘specialness’ to ‘things’ (objects, events, or relationships), using the religious system with which they are most familiar—she assigns these ‘things’ biological causes. Most engaging among her examples is how she explains felt presences (ghosts or otherwise) during sleep paralysis. At the risk of oversimplification, she argues that the threat activation system (TAVS), an alert system intended to warn against predators, activates during sleep paralysis. In cases where religious people are involved, attributions of transcendent agency are given to would be predators. Religious people , she says, tend to attribute agency in ideal, anomalous, or ambiguous situations.
            So much for the reductionistic school. The question to ask is to what degree Husserl has influenced the overall debate. As representatives of the phenomenological school, James and Otto show clear signs of Husserlian influence. Both build arguments from authority off of an account of intentionality. And obviously, if they depend on an account of intentionality, they depend on Husserl. After all, it was Husserl who first exposed philosophy to the rigors of the phenomenological reduction. If, for example, we turn to Husserl’s The Idea of Phenomenology we find him concerned almost exclusively with a bracketing methodology. Ignore everything but ‘that which is appearing,’ he says, especially ontological questions and categories. Only once ‘that which is appearing’ is our object of study can we begin an empirical analysis of what conditions of consciousness must be necessary for intentionality to occur at all.
            On the other side, the story of the reductionists consists in large part of reactions to the phenomenological school. As such, their theoretical apparatus (its questions and categories) developed out of the phenomenological school itself. Specifically, beyond the deconstructions of phenomenological theorists, the positive theory making of reductionists offers naturalistic instead of supernatural explanations for instances of religious experience. In short, the phenomenologists turned to ‘being’ and the reductionists followed. Proudfoot turns to language and culture; Taves turns to language and biology. What Husserlian impulses lead the phenomenologists to their work lead the reductionists to theirs.
            The debate rages on, but now that it has reached a ‘dead end’ of sorts, it would seem advantageous to the tradition to approach religious experience from a new angle. For this reason, I trust that Heidegger can offer an approach both close enough to be related and far enough away to generate new discussion. That is, he is still doing phenomenology of a type, not to mention a religiously minded individual. But he is not Husserl in that Being and Dasein take precedent over intentionality.
            So a myriad a questions confront us: does Heidegger give an account of phenomenology that has import on religious experience? If so, does it in any way deal directly with the historical/current debate between perennialists and constructivists? If it does not deal directly, is there a way in which his account may shift the perspective on religious experience to new grounds, creating a self-sustaining theoretical environment primed for new scholarship? Or, to put it positively, in the way that Husserl’s phenomenology has import on religious experience can Heidegger’s have import on religious experience?
            There are also more specific questions: can the deconstruction of history tell us anything about the evolution of the religious mindset, and therefore religious experience? Does the hermeneutic turn toward Being have any relationship with religious experiences? In what way do Dasein’s being in the world and religious experience ‘line up’? How does Sorge (or ‘care’) relate to the ethos of various religious institutions, and perhaps through a filtration process, religious experience?