The Politics of Spirit

Phenomenology, Genealogy, Religion

Tim Murphy

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781438432892
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

A penetrating critique of the dominant approach to the study of religion, The Politics of Spirit explores the historical and philosophical scaffolding of the phenomenology of religion. Although this approach purports to give a value-free, neutral description of religious data, it actually imposes a set of metaphysical and evaluative concepts on that data. A very harmful ethnocentrism has resulted, which plagues the academic study of religion to this day. Analysis of the history, core texts, and discursive structure of phenomenology of religion reveals how this ethnocentrism is embedded within its assumptions. Of particular interest is the revelation of the extent to which Hegel's ideas—over those of Husserl—contributed to the tenets that became standard in the study of religion. Tim Murphy argues that the poststructuralist concept of genealogy, as derived from Nietzsche, can both describe religion better than the phenomenological approach and avoid the political pitfalls of ethnocentrism by replacing its core categories with the categories of difference, contingency, and otherness. Ultimately, Murphy argues that postmodern genealogy should replace phenomenology as the paradigm for understanding both religion and the study of religion.

Part I

Introduction, Background, Methodological Issues

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

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 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-Ponty has not received much attention among persons working religious studies. Husserl has been considerably more prominent.”⁸ Capps further notes that there is disagreement about the pedigree of the phenomenology of religion and that

[t]he reason for this lack of agreement is there are at least two strands of thought—two intellectual points of departure—which can produce a phenomenology of religion. The most obvious one is the one that stems directly from post-Kantian and post-Hegelian continental philosophy. Regardless of whatever else it includes, the strand always lists Edmund Husserl (1859–1961) as its primary inspirer, founding father, and intellectual catalyst.⁹

Finally, Hans Penner notes that the phenomenology of religion is as an “approach to religion is often located in the phenomenological movement which began with Husserl.”¹⁰ Penner cites Douglas Allen as a particularly ardent advocate of this view: “He [Allen] places Otto, van der Leeuw and Eliade, ‘the three most influential’ scholars of religion, directly in the phenomenological movement and states that they ‘have used a phenomenological method and have been influenced, at least partially, by [Husserlian] phenomenological philosophy.’ ”¹¹

Clearly, there is a tradition of claiming Husserl as the founder or “intellectual catalyst,” at least, of classical (if no other component) phenomenology of religion. Kristensen and van der Leeuw in particular are seen as having been influenced by Husserl's twin ideas of the epoché and the eidetic vision. In this tradition of origins these Husserlian ideas are not seen as mere icing but as fundamental concepts.

A closer reading of the texts of the phenomenologists of religion indicates that this emphasis on Husserl is simply not warranted. The argument of this study is that, rather than see Husserl as the primary source for classical phenomenology of religion, its primary inspiration is derived from Hegel. The main features of phenomenology's paradigm and its appropriation of Hegel are, in turn, drawn from the early history of Religionswissenschaft, especially from C. P. Tiele and P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye. It is the appropriation and transformation of the concepts of this historical trajectory that make up the intellectual, discursive content of the phenomenology of religion.

Arguing for Hegel more than Husserl puts this study in agreement with several other historians of the phenomenology of religion. While all the supporting texts cannot be cited here, a few will suffice. In contrast to reductive, noninterpretive approaches: “The phenomenological approach thus originated as an attempt to construct a coherent methodology for the study of religion” and that

[t]he philosophy of Hegel provided a basis on which to build. In his influential The Phenomenology of Spirit (1806), Hegel developed the thesis that essence (Wesen) is understood through the investigation appearances and [as] manifestations (Erscheinung). Hegel's intention was to show that this led to the understanding that all phenomena, in their diversity, were nevertheless grounded in an underlying essence or unity (Geist or Spirit). This play upon the relationship between essence and manifestation provided a basis for understanding how religion, in its diversity, could, in essence, be understood as a distinct entity.¹²

Erricker goes on to argue that “Hegel's influence is evident in the title of the first significant publication to outline a phenomenological approach to the study of religion in a coherent way, Gerardus van der Leeuw's Phänomenologie der Religion (1933).”¹³

Another scholar who sees Hegel's influence on the phenomenology of religion is Olof Pettersson who argues that, contrary to seeing van der Leeuw as the originator on the strength of the above named work of this approach:

However, the phenomenological method applied to the study of religion has its roots in the 18^th century. We may remember F. Hegel's Phänomenologie des Geistes, published in 1807, in which the author stated that essence can be approached through a study of appearances and manifestations. He wished to discern unity behind diversity, to reach an understanding of the one essence of religion behind its many manifestations.¹⁴

Pettersson goes on to note: “I do not hesitate to maintain that the comparative method used by the mentioned scholars [Tyler, Lang, Marrett], among others, was de facto the embryo of the method that was later named the phenomenology of religion.”¹⁵ As I, too, will argue, while evolutionary and phenomenological approaches are typically seen as polar opposites or enemy camps, it is clear that the latter appropriated the former via the Hegelian concepts Erricker cites above. The teleological schemes are turned into synchronic schemes, with much the same structures and valuations as the former—despite protestations to the contrary. Of Tiele he argues, as do others, that: “He may be regarded as the first conscious representative of the Dutch phenomenological school.”¹⁶

Finally, Walter Capps, again, gives us an excellent summary of the history of the phenomenology of religion. As noted above, he argues that there are two strands in this history (and perhaps more; I only argue that the Hegelian strand is the “thickest”). While the Husserlian legacy is one such strand, when phenomenologists of religion “trace their intellectual roots, the genealogy they offer tends to reach back not to Husserl … but to such relatively obscure figures as Cornelius Petrus Tiele … and Pierre Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye” both of whose work began in 1877.¹⁷ He argues that, as with Hegel's agenda described above: “Both Tiele and Chantepie engaged in phenomenology of religion while maintaining methodological interest in questions regarding religion's essence and origin.”¹⁸ From the earliest forms of Continental Religionswissenschaft to the peak of its development in Eliade, the phenomenology of religion retained its Hegelian structure, viewing history as the field of manifestation through which Geist/ Wesen expresses itself; a hermeneutical/phenomenological method (even when called “history of religions”) seeks to decipher these historical particulars as manifestations and relate them, diachronically or synchronically, to their essence. This is the way in which they answer those absolutely fundamental questions posed by Seiwert.

Which Hegel?

This immediately raises the question: “Which Hegel?” Hegel has been read in numerous and conflicting ways. The traditional Marxist historiography¹⁹ reads nineteenth-century Hegelianism as having split early between the “Young” or “Left” Hegelians and the “Old” or “Right” Hegelians. The former group read Hegel as the “philosopher of contradiction,” and saw his Phenomenology of Spirit (Geist) as the key work from which to interpret the master. The latter group read Hegel as the “philosopher of identity” and saw his more complete and systematic, yet more conservative Enzyklopaedie der Wissenschaft as the key work from which to interpret the master.²⁰ In the twentieth century, following Kojeve, the “French” reading of Hegel radicalized the Left Hegelian reading and returned Hegel to the “philosopher of contradiction,” with a heavy emphasis on the “master/slave” dialectic and the problematic of “the Other.” This reading influenced such major thinkers as Sartre, de Beauvoir, and Lacan. The Hegel who influenced classical phenomenology of religion is clearly the so-called “philosopher of identity,” the more conservative Hegel who had been well established in the academy.²¹

Derrida tells us of Hegel that he “summed up the entire philosophy of the logos. He determined ontology as absolute logic; he assembled all the delimitations of philosophy as presence; he assigned to presence the eschatology of parousia, of the self-proximity of infinite subjectivity.”²² Logos, ontos, presence, subjectivity: the combination of these elements, played out differently in different scenes, form the skeletal structure of that specific concept-operation, or research paradigm, “the phenomenology of religion.” It argues that the concrete is a manifestation of the essential, that individual moments of religious consciousness are rooted in consciousness, or Spirit/Geist and can only be properly understood as such. Using the symbol of the “Cosmic Tree” as an example, Mircea Eliade argues: “Suffice it to say that it is impossible to understand the meaning [or essence] of the Cosmic Tree by considering one or some of its variants [manifestations]. It is only by the analysis of a considerable number of its examples [the many] that the structure [the one] can be completely deciphered.”²³ Or, as Joachim Wach will argue in his “search for universals in religion”: “A comparative study of the forms of the expressions of religious experience, the world over, shows an amazing similarity in structure.”²⁴ From the many, one. Essence, or unity trumps difference as a founding category.

I will argue that Hegel and these Hegelian motifs, more than Husserl, provided the philosophical foundations or research paradigm for the phenomenology of religion. The quote at the beginning of this chapter from Wach summarizes the main features of phenomenology's paradigm and its appropriation of Hegel: “the so-called philosophy of religion, out of which the history of religion grew,” the nineteenth-century philosophy of religion out of which Religionswissenschaft grew, was Hegelian philosophy of religion (something quite different than what goes by that name in Anglophonic contexts). And it was from this philosophy, or conceptual structure, that the history of religion (or phenomenology; see below on terminology) “took it upon itself to study the specific questions of the history of religion.” That is, the phenomenology of religion's theory of history was a Hegelian theory of history, to wit, history as the manifestation of objective Spirit.

These Hegelian motifs pass through, so to speak, the early history of Religionswissenschaft, especially from such figures as C. P. Tiele and P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, and are modified and appropriated by Otto, Wach, van der Leeuw, Kristensen, and Eliade. It is noteworthy that Chantepie de la Saussaye cites Hegel as the founder of Religionswissenschaft: “[W]e must see Hegel as its true founder, because he first carried out the vast idea of realizing, as a whole, the various modes for studying religion (metaphysical, psychological, and historical), and made us see the harmony between the idea and the realization of religion [zwischem dem Begriff und der Erscheinung der Religion zur Anschauung zu bringen].”²⁵

Hegel more than Husserl not rather than Husserl

Clearly, both are important sources for the phenomenology of religion, as are Kant, Schleiermacher, and Dilthey among others. If we follow Derrida's reading of them, as is done here, both must be located in the larger discourse of Western metaphysics, or ontotheology.²⁶ Both participate in the “subjective turn” in Modern Philosophy with its central emphasis on the category of “consciousness.” Clearly, they both have much in common as well: “Heidegger insists Hegelian philosophy and its extension in Husserl's phenomenology brings an ‘end to philosophy.’ ”²⁷ While the latter claim is obviously contestable, there is good evidence all around that there are important continuities between the two arch-phenomenologists. From the reading offered here, discussed in chapter 2, a discursive/textual reading rather than a strictly philosophical/conceptual reading, their differences vis-à-vis ontotheology, significant as they are, are reduced rather than expanded.

Hegel more than Husserl for two reasons. First, historically, of course, Hegel precedes Husserl, and there is a significant, if heavily qualified, appeal to Hegel throughout the literature of early Religionswissenschaft, as well as in classical phenomenology of religion. Though none of these figures could be considered “Hegelians” in any strict sense, nevertheless, certain important Hegelian motifs recur...

Table of contents

• Series Page
• PART I Introduction, Background, …
• PART II Readings in the Discourse …
• PART III Poststructuralist, Postcolonialist Analyses
• Notes
• Bibliography