Schutzian resources for a comprehensive phenomenology of the holy

Michael Barber

pp. 125-141

in: Olga Louchakova-Schwartz (ed), The problem of religious experience, Berlin, Springer, 2019

Abstract

Espen Dahl argues that Alfred Schutz succumbs to the logic of separation that isolates the holy from everyday life insofar as he presents a self-enclosed life-world that is stable, relatively unchanging, and easily integrated and that cannot allow anything alien to enter its confines. However, Schutz's views on imposed relevances, revisable typifications, and temporality portray a world that is ever in flux and unpredictable, and his theory of multiple realities and symbolism enables him to argue for a transcendent that is appresented throughout everyday life while preserving its transcendence by belonging to a separable religious reality and yet actively intervening in everyday life. Schutz affords abundant comprehensive resources for Dahl's insightful analyses of the relationship of phenomenology to the holy through Schutz's account of the tension of consciousness, the form of self-experience, the distinction between the religious and theoretic provinces of meaning, the epoché that discloses the sacred in the profane, a form of spontaneity that supports bodily engagement in worship, the inescapability of natural language, and social relationships and time.

Cited authors

Schütz Alfred

Dahl Espen