This thesis is an investigation of Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of religion. The author argues that Heidegger’s thought opens the way for descriptive conceptual analysis of religious experience and its object without undue theoretical distortion or reduction. Heidegger dismantles uncritical distortions of religious life under “scientific” rationality and objectivity. While the self-understanding implicit in religious practice is certainly transformed through Heidegger’s own philosophical analysis, philosophy undergoes its own transformation through thinking encounter with religious life. Philosophy cannot produce an objectively neutral, universal analysis of religion, but must in its own way participate in the object of religious life. The wonder and awe at the manifestation of being which gives rise to philosophical questioning finds orientation in poetic and revelatory sources of inspiration whose content exceeds conceptual grasp. Philosophical questioning brings thought to the paradoxes at the limits of our understanding of language and human experience. Philosophy cannot conceive of the origin systematically. But religious attunement to the origin, aided by the prophetic utterances of the poet, then enables philosophical speculation as to the highest form of human flourishing. The author concludes by calling into question interpretations of Heidegger’s phenomenology of religion in the work of Jean-Luc Marion and John D. Caputo. These remains bound up in part with the philosophical project for transcendental analysis of universal religion. Drawing on the hermeneutic phenomenology of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the philosophical theology of John Milbank and William Desmond, the author sketches an alternative reading of Heidegger’s critique of the Western metaphysical tradition and philosophical retrieval of religion in light of the notion of incarnation, arguing that this alternative offers a better phenomenological account of religion as such.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:OGU.10214/7731 |
| Date | 02 January 2014 |
| Creators | Rogers, Brian |
| Contributors | Russon, John |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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