This paper offers a critique of the special issue of Human Studies on “Alfred Schutz and Religion”. Following a line similar to that of Dominique Janicaud I call into question the very phenomenological status of the “phenomenology of religion” developed across the various contributions. Appealing to the Husserlian principle of freedom from presuppositions my critique focuses on the way these phenomenologies of religion talk about “religion”. At their core, the failure contained within these contributions is the failure to properly consider (...) a question which begins any undergraduate Religious Studies program—what is “religion”? I charge that because these contributions take it as “self-evident” what religion “is” they allow a metaphysical assertion into their phenomenology which breaches the “neutrality” demanded of the principle of freedom from presuppositions. Drawing on the work of the Critical Religion project in Religious Studies I further highlight how this metaphysical assertion predicates an unavoidable ideological assertion, one which serves colonial mechanics of exclusion. (shrink)

In Heidegger’s last seminar, which was in Zähringen in 1973, he introduces what he called a “phenomenology of the inconspicuous”. Despite scholars’ occasional references to this “approach” over the last 40 years, this approach of Heidegger’s has gone largely under investigated in secondary literature. This article introduces three different, although not necessarily conflicting ways in which these sparse references to inconspicuousness can be interpreted: The a priori of appearance can never be brought to manifestation, and the unscheinbar is interwoven with (...) the scheinbar as an active characteristic or form of “hiddenness”, therefore making inconspicuousness inherent within all phenomenology. Or, there is now a particular step or reduction within phenomenology that involves one’s being attuned to the various modes of potential hiddenness, of which “inconspicuousness” is a particular character trait. Or there are particular, unique, and specific phenomena that give themselves “inconspicuously,” and there is also thus a corresponding, particular phenomenology in which one must engage in order to gain some kind of access to these specific things’ phenomenal strata. This paper introduces Heidegger’s “phenomenology of the inconspicuous” most especially in his last seminar in Zähringen in 1973, engages related references to unscheinbar in his 1942/1943 Seminar on Parmenides, and then puts forward an interpretation of what these somewhat ambiguous references could mean when contextualized according to Heidegger’s overall interests. This essay brings these references to light, and puts forward a proposal as to what kind of phenomenology Heidegger was–somewhat inconspicuously–referring. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the possible impact of thinking phenomenologically about faith in a postmodern/post-secular age. Following Merold Westphal’s encouragement that philosophy of religion should be more ‘personal’, I offer a phenomenological reflection on my own experience of the difficulties and complexities that accompany being a postmodern phenomenologist and a Pentecostal Christian. Working through the possible conflicts that can arise when these two identities are brought together, I propose an account of Kierkegaardian postmodernism that resolves the conflict without, thereby, (...) eliminating the existential and theological difficulties that accompany religious existence in a postmodern/post-secular world. Ultimately, then, I show that personal engagement with religious existence is not excluded by postmodern phenomenology, but is in fact crucial for an appropriately postmodern/post-secular approach to phenomenological philosophy of religion itself. I conclude by proposing a possible account of God that reflects both phenomenological rigor and existential awareness. (shrink)

As an exercise in the ‘theology of disclosure’, the present essay proposes a kind of phenomenological analysis of the act of reading the Bible as Scripture with the goal of bringing to light the theoretical commitments which it implicitly demands. This sort of analysis can prove helpful for the continuing disputes among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox insofar as it is relevant for one of the principal points of controversy between them: namely, the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and Church as theological (...) authorities. It proceeds by analyzing both the objective and subjective ‘poles’ of the act, and it illuminates the presence of the Church and her Tradition on both sides. The Church—i.e., the community of God’s people—is both that which is immediately encountered in the text, as well as the factor which enables scriptural reading in the first place. The article terminates with an application of the insights of the preceding discussion to the controversy about icons. (shrink)

Clinical ethics consultation (CEC) has become all about right technique. When we encounter a case of conflict or confusion, clinical ethicists are expected to deploy a standardized, repeatable, and rationally defensible method for working toward a recommendation and/or consensus. While it has been noted previously that our techniques of CEC often foreclose on its internal goods, there remains an assumption that we must just find the _right_ efficient technique and the problem would be solved. In this paper, I question that (...) assumption, arguing that any standardized, identically repeatable model of CEC will pull us counterproductively away from ethical reflection, and toward the values of modern _techne_: primarily efficiency, efficacy, and repeatability. This is because standardized techniques of CEC pull the dynamism of being into what Catherine Pickstock calls “identical repetition,” a technologized ontology, which is fundamentally at odds with what being is. And, since ethics is a search for the good of being, avoiding the ontological heart of being severely restricts ethics. (shrink)