Interreligious Dialogue: A Challenge for Phenomenology
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Interreligious Dialogue as an Investigation Object throughout the History of Phenomenology
3. Phenomenological Resources for the Investigation of Interreligious Dialogue
3.1. Why Use the Phenomenological Method for Religious and Interreligious Studies?
3.2. A Phenomenological Description of Dialogue
Merleau-Ponty states in this fragment that we coexist though dialogue in a common world. However, this common world does not exist before the dialogue, but it establishes itself through dialogue. It is indeed through dialogue that I am freed from myself, that means, from the restrained sphere of my internal world, based on my own, inner thoughts and feelings, and that I can open myself to a common—i.e., shared—world. The common world is thus not already pre-given (vorgegeben as would say Husserl) but has to be constantly created and recreated through dialogue. It is precisely this common world, that Merleau-Ponty calls also common ground, which constitutes one essential feature of the experience of dialogue. It is constituted as the intertwinement into a single fabric of my thought and the thought of my interlocutor, which is made possible by the fact that these thoughts are “called forth by the state of the discussion” “into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator”. Dialogue, which manifests itself as discussion, i.e., as an exchange of words and acts of speeches, does not bring forth a mere fusion of the inner, psychic world of the interlocutors, since each interlocutor maintains her own thoughts and her own personality, due to which precisely the interlocutors coexist through dialogue, and do not lose their individual personal subjectivity into a new totalizing identity. Rather, dialogue creates a specific intersubjective dynamic that orients towards a common direction the thoughts and words of the interlocutors. This common direction is not created by any interlocutor taken in its individuality, but arises from the dynamic of the dialogue itself, and brings the interlocutors to transcend their own psychic world, while drawing from them thoughts they had no idea they possessed. Hence, we could say that it is not the thoughts of the interlocutors that fusion with each other, but their horizons. I refer here to Gadamer’s idea of a fusion of horizons, that, according to him, characterizes the conversation, “in which something is expressed that is not only mine or my author’s, but common” (Gadamer 2006, p. 390).In the experience of dialogue, a common ground is constituted between me and another; my thought and his form a single fabric (tissu), my words and those of my interlocutor are called forth by the state of the discussion and are inserted into a shared operation of which neither of us is the creator. Here there is a being-shared-by-two (être à deux), and the other person is no longer for me a simple behavior in my transcendental field, nor for that matter am I a simple behavior in his. We are, for each other, collaborators in perfect reciprocity: our perspectives slip (glissent) into each other, we coexist through a common world (à travers un même monde). I am freed from myself in the present dialogue, even though the other’s thoughts are certainly his own, since I do not form them, I nonetheless grasp them as soon as they are born or I even anticipate them. And even the objection raised by my interlocutor draws from me thoughts I did not know I possessed such that if I lend him thoughts, he makes me think in return(Merleau-Ponty 2012, pp. 370–71, emphasis added, modified translation)
Imagine that my friend Paul and I are currently gazing across a landscape. What is actually happening? Must we say that we both have private sensations, a matter of knowledge that is forever incommunicable? Or that, with regard to pure lived-experience, we are locked within distinct perspectives? Or finally, that the landscape is not, for the two of us, idem numero [numerically identical] and that it is merely a question of a specific identity? […] My friend Paul and I point to certain details of the landscape, and Paul’s finger, which is pointing out the steeple to me, is not a finger-for-me that I conceive as oriented toward a steeple-for-me […]. When I think of Paul, I do not think of a flow of private sensations in relation to my own sensations that are mediated through some interposed signs; rather, I think of someone who lives the same world as I (qui vit le même monde que moi), the same history as I, and with whom I communicate through this world and through this history(Merleau-Ponty 2012, pp. 427–28, modified translation)
3.3. What Kind of Phenomenological Description of Interreligious Dialogue?
Can I consider as valid (gelten lassen) the mythical convictions of the other, which <determine> the sense of being of their world (of what they experience as being), their fetishes, their deities, their mythical causalities, etc.? If I keep my belief (they may see it as mere mythology) their belief is superstition, if I keep my world as it is, their world is not as it is
Religious symbols, dogmas, etc. are also part of the world, but direct access have to them those who dwell in the religion in question (der in der betreffenden Religion steht), all the others have an indirect access, insofar as, because they have an imperfect understanding as non-religious persons or as persons who belong to another religion, they understand them as something that the believer realizes in a certain way through real faith, similar to the way in which someone who is not an expert in a science has the indirect representation of an ‘expert’, for whom the misunderstood or half-understood propositions and justifications have full meaning and the power of real insight
4. Conclusions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
1 | We find references to Christian religion and to the figure of Jesus in Reinach’s notes (1916/1917), both in his “Fragment of a Religious-Philosophical Elaboration” (“Bruchstück einer religionsphilosophischen Ausführung”) and in his notes on loose leaves, which suggest that Christian religion serves as a background framework for Reinach’s phenomenological analysis of religious experience. Thus he writes: “And perhaps it is only possible for the Son of God himself to experience “Thy will be done” in its ultimate depth”—”The ‘authentic’ (eigentliche) human being, as he is fundamentally and worthy of love, is finite and ultimately dependent; just like Jesus Christ” (Reinach 1989, pp. 594, 609). |
2 | Although Scheler aims at grounding an essential phenomenology of religion, which would unveil the eidetic structures of religion as such, Christianity (more specifically in its Catholic and Protestant form) is clearly in the background of Scheler’s analyses and it seems even that he construes this specific religion as a point of reference for comprehending other religions, as this quote suggests: “To assume there may be germs of true revelation in other religions, outside the religious-historical framework of Judaeo-Christian evolution, contradicts no essential idea of Christian doctrine. In fact it only strengthens the true ‘catholicity’ of the Church to whose principles it belongs never to reject the true merely because it is either inadequately true, or only true in reference to objects relative in existence; or merely because the particular object of which the truth in question is true is not yet clearly known (such as when the institution of God known as the moral world-order is taken to be God himself–scil. the ‘heaven’ of the Chinese)” (Scheler 2010, p. 354). |
3 | This experience of surprise could be analyzed from a phenomenological point of view, drawing on current phenomenological investigations devoted to this question, particularly developed by Natalie Depraz (see for instance Depraz 2018; Depraz and Steinbock 2018). |
4 | “Each universal meditation, which cuts the philosopher off from his nation, friends, prejudices, and empirical being—in a word, from the world—and that seems to leave him absolutely alone, is in fact action (acte), or speech, and hence dialogue” (Merleau-Ponty 2012, p. 378). We can find an echo to this conception of language in the analyses of the linguist Herbert H. Clark who defines the use of language as a form of joint action (Clark 1996). |
5 | Husserl uses much more often in this volume the notion of Heimwelt than of fremde Welt (sometimes declinated as fremde Umwelt). Rather than being a technical concept, the notion of fremde Welt is an index for something that Husserl aims at thinking through multifarious concepts. |
6 | “[…] gegenüber diesem Wir ein fremdes Wir, gegenüber unserer Menschheit eine fremde Menschheit”: “opposite to this we a foreign me, opposite to our humanity a foreign humanity” (Husserl 1973, p. 215). The notion of gegenüber entails however also the nuance of a vis-à-vis, of a face-to-face situation. |
7 | Husserl uses both German terms of Menschheit and Menschentum in this text, which dates from 1930 or 1931. Thus he writes: “Es konstituiert sich also fremdes Menschentum, eine fremde Menschheit” (Husserl 1973, p. 214). |
References
- Allen, Douglas. 2005. Phenomenology of Religion. In The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion. Edited by John R. Hinnells. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]
- Basset, Jean-Claude. 1996. Le Dialogue Interreligieux. Histoire et Avenir. Paris: Cerf. [Google Scholar]
- Bousquet, François, and Henri de la Hougue, eds. 2009. Le Dialogue Interreligieux, Le Christianisme Face aux Autres Traditions. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. [Google Scholar]
- Capelle-Dumont, Philippe. 2018. La Médiation Anthropologique dans le Dialogue Interreligieux. Revue des Sciences Religieuses 92: 221–43. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Chrétien, Jean-Louis. 2019. Spacious Joy: An Essay in Phenomenology and Literature. Translated by Anne Davenport. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. [Google Scholar]
- Clark, Herbert H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Curanović, Alicja. 2012. The Religious Diplomacy of the Russian Federation. Paris and Brussels: Ifri/Russia NIS Center. [Google Scholar]
- Depraz, Natalie. 2008. Le Corps Glorieux. Phénoménologie Pratique de la Philocalie des Pères du Désert et des Pères de l’Église. Leuven, Paris and Dudley: Peeters. [Google Scholar]
- Depraz, Natalie. 2018. Le Sujet de la Surprise: Un Sujet Cardial. Bucharest: Zeta Books. [Google Scholar]
- Depraz, Natalie, and Anthony J. Steinbock. 2018. Surprise: An Emotion? Cham: Springer. [Google Scholar]
- Depraz, Natalie, and Thomas Desmidt. 2022. Cardiophenomenology: A Refinement of Neurophenomenology II—An Experiential-Empirical Inquiry of the Surprise Reaction in Depression with Preliminary Results. GMS Journal of Arts Therapies—Journal of Art-, Music-, Dance-, Drama- and Poetry Therapy 4: Doc11. [Google Scholar]
- Di Censo, James. 1990. Hermeneutics and the Disclosure of Truth: A Study in the Work of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. [Google Scholar]
- Elberfeld, Rolf. 2017. Philosophieren in Einer Globalisierten Welt. Wege zu Einer Transformativen Phänomenologie. Freiburg and Munich: Karl Alber. [Google Scholar]
- Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2006. Truth and Method. Translated and Revised by John Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. London and New York: Continuum. [Google Scholar]
- Griera, Mar. 2019. Interreligious Events in the Public Space: Performing Togetherness in Times of Religious Pluralism. In Interreligious Relations and the Negotiation of Ritual Boundaries. Explorations in Interrituality. Edited by Marianne Moyaert. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 35, p. 55. [Google Scholar]
- Gschwandtner, Christina M. 2019. Welcoming Finitude. Toward a Phenomenology of Orthodox Liturgy. New York: Fordham University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Halafoff, Anna. 2013. The Multifaith Movement: Global Risks and Cosmopolitan Solutions. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York and London: Springer. [Google Scholar]
- Hart, Kevin. 2014. Kingdoms of God. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Heidegger, Martin. 2011. Phänomenologie des Religiösen Lebens, Gesamtausgabe, Band 60. Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann. [Google Scholar]
- Heidegger, Martin. 2012. Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event). Translated by Richard Rojcewicz, and Daniela Vallega-Neu. Bloomingtom and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Henry, Michel. 2002. I am the Truth: Toward a Philosophy of Christianity. Translated by Susan Emanuel. Stanford: Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Hering, Jean. 1925. Phénoménologie et Philosophie Religieuse. Etude sur la Théorie de la Connaissance Religieuse. Strasbourg: Imprimerie Alsacienne. [Google Scholar]
- Hintersteiner, Norbert. 2005. Globalization and the Dialogue of Religions. In Philosophie, Gesellschaft und Bildung in Zeiten der Globalisierung (Studies in Intercultural Philosophy 15). Edited by Hermann-Josef Scheidgen, Norbert Hintersteiner and Yoshiro Nakamura. Amsterdam: Rodopi. [Google Scholar]
- Høffding, Simon, and Kristian Martiny. 2016. Framing a Phenomenological Interview: What, Why and How. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 15: 539–64. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Hoffman, Louis, and Matt Thelen. 2014. Interfaith Dialog. In Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Edited by David A. Leeming. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 880–81. [Google Scholar]
- Husserl, Edmund. 1964. The Idea of Phenomenology. Translated by William P. Alston, and George Nakhnikian. Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. [Google Scholar]
- Husserl, Edmund. 1970. Logical Investigations, Volume II. Translated by John N. Findlay. London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]
- Husserl, Edmund. 1973. Zur Phänomenologie der Intersubjektivität. Texte aus dem Nachlass. Dritter Teil: 1929–1935. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. [Google Scholar]
- Husserl, Edmund. 1983. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. Translated by Fred Kersten. The Hague, Boston and Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. [Google Scholar]
- Husserl, Edmund. 1988. Vorlesungen über Ethik und Wertlehre 1908–1914. Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. [Google Scholar]
- Husserl, Edmund. 1989. Aufsätze und Vorträge (1922–1937). Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. [Google Scholar]
- Husserl, Edmund. 2013. Grenzprobleme der Phänomenologie. Analysen des Unbewusstseins und der Instinkte. Metaphysik. Späte Ethik. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1908–1937). Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York and London: Springer. [Google Scholar]
- Janicaud, Dominique. 2001. Le Tournant Théologique de la Phénoménologie Française. Paris: L’Éclat. [Google Scholar]
- Kearney, Richard. 2001. The God who May Be: A Hermeneutics of Religion. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Kearney, Richard, and Melissa Fitzpatrick. 2021. Radical Hospitality. From Thought to Action. New York: Fordham University Press. [Google Scholar]
- King, Sallie B. 2010. Interreligious Dialogue. In The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity. Edited by Chad Meister. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Körs, Anna, Wolfram Weisse, and Jean-Paul Willaime. 2020. Religious Diversity and Interreligious Dialogue. Cham: Springer. [Google Scholar]
- Lacoste, Jean-Yves. 2015. L’Intuition Sacramentielle et Autres Essais. Paris: Ad Solem. [Google Scholar]
- Lehmann, Karsten. 2020. Interreligious Dialogue in Context. Towards a Systematic Comparison of IRD-Activities in Europe. Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society 6: 237–54. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Lehmann, Karsten, ed. 2021. Talking Dialogue. Eleven Episodes in the History of the Modern Interreligious Dialogue Movement. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. [Google Scholar]
- Leirvik, Oddbjørn. 2011. Philosophies of Interreligious Dialogue: Practice in Search of Theory. Approaching Religion 1: 16–24. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Levinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Levinas, Emmanuel. 1994. L’Intrigue de l’Infini. Paris: Flammarion. [Google Scholar]
- Marion, Jean-Luc. 2002. Being Given. Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford: Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by Donald A. Landes. London and New York: Routledge. [Google Scholar]
- Mosher, Lucinda, ed. 2022. The Georgetown Companion to Interreligious Studies. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. [Google Scholar]
- Mougin, Gaëlle, and Jean Vion-Dury. 2017. L’entretien Phénoménologique Expérientiel de Premier et de Deuxième Ordre: Vers la Découverte des “Métamorphoses Expérientielles”. hal-01591788. Available online: https://hal.science/hal-01591788/document (accessed on 20 November 2022).
- Moyaert, Marianne. 2011. Fragile Identities. Towards a Theology of Interreligious Hospitality. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. [Google Scholar]
- Moyaert, Marianne. 2014. In Response to the Religious Other. Ricœur and the Fragility of Interreligious Encounters. Lanham, Boulder, New York and London: Lexington Books. [Google Scholar]
- Moyaert, Marianne. 2019. Interreligious Learning, Ricœur, and the Problem of Testimonial Injustice. Religious Education 114: 609–23. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Oppy, Graham, and Nick N. Trakakis. 2017. Interreligious Philosophical Dialogues. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]
- Panikkar, Raimundo. 1999. The Intrareligious Dialogue. New York: Paulist Press. [Google Scholar]
- Patalon, Miroslaw. 2009. The Philosophical Basis for Inter-Religious Dialogue: The Process Perspective. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. [Google Scholar]
- Ravn, Susanne. 2021. Integrating Qualitative Research Methodologies and Phenomenology Using Dancers’ and Athletes’ Experiences for Phenomenological Analysis. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 22: 107–27. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Reinach, Adolf. 1989. Sämmtliche Werke. Volume 1: Die Werke. Munich: Philosophia. [Google Scholar]
- Scheler, Max. 2010. On the Eternal in Man. Translated by Bernard Noble. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. [Google Scholar]
- Schutz, Alfred. 1964. Collected Papers. II. Studies in Social Theory. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. [Google Scholar]
- Sepp, Hans Rainer. 2014. Über die Grenze. Prolegomena zu einer Philosophie des Transkulturellen. Nordhausen: Traugott Bautz. [Google Scholar]
- Sholokhova, Svetlana, Valeria Bizzari, and Thomas Fuchs. 2022. Exploring Phenomenological Interviews: Questions, Lessons Learned and Perspectives. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 21: 1–7. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Smart, Ninian. 1973. The Phenomenon of Religion. London: Macmillan Palgrave. [Google Scholar]
- Stein, Edith. 2014. Husserls Phänomenologie und die Philosophie des hl. Thomas von Aquino. In “Freiheit und Gnade” und weitere Beiträge zu Phänomenologie und Ontologie (1917 bis 1937). Gesamtausgabe 9. Freiburg: Herder, pp. 119–42. [Google Scholar]
- Stenger, Georg. 2006. Philosophie der Interkulturalität. Erfahrung und Welten. Eine Phänomenologische Studie. Freiburg/Munich: Karl Alber. [Google Scholar]
- Tosolini, Tiziano. 2001. H.-G. Gadamer and E. Levinas. Two Philosophical Approaches to the Concept of Dialogue. Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 12: 37–62. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef]
- Vermersch, Pierre. 1994. L’Entretien d’Explicitation en Formation Continue et Initiale. Paris: ESF. [Google Scholar]
- Warren, David H. 2021. Interfaith Dialogue in the United Arab Emirates: Where International Relations Meets State-Branding. Berkley Forum. Available online: https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/posts/interfaith-dialogue-in-the-united-arab-emirates-where-international-relations-meets-state-branding (accessed on 15 November 2022).
- Weidtmann, Niels. 2016. Interkulturelle Philosophie: Aufgaben-Dimensionen-Wege. Stuttgart: UTB. [Google Scholar]
- Wolff, Ernst. 2021. Lire Ricœur depuis la Périphérie. Décolonisation, Modernité, Herméneutique. Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles. [Google Scholar]
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Share and Cite
Cibotaru, V. Interreligious Dialogue: A Challenge for Phenomenology. Religions 2023, 14, 302. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030302
Cibotaru V. Interreligious Dialogue: A Challenge for Phenomenology. Religions. 2023; 14(3):302. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030302
Chicago/Turabian StyleCibotaru, Veronica. 2023. "Interreligious Dialogue: A Challenge for Phenomenology" Religions 14, no. 3: 302. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030302