Author(s):
von Brück, Michael
|
Sparn, Walter
|
Stock, Konrad
[German Version]
I. Religious Studies Experience is a process occurring directly in the conscious mind, whereby the perceiving subject and internal as well as external objects of the conscious mind link up to form an experience, representing a separate category, which is connected episodically with the moment in which a particular perception occurs. (Religious) experience (Ger.
Erlebnis) is the subjective perception of
an experience (Ger.
Erfahrung). An experience is participation in an event; the accumulation of experiences generates knowledge. An event is classified as religious by means of metaphorically structured interpretation patterns that are defined by a specific tradition (in language, gestures, cult forms, etc.). The religious experience is thus seen in relation to an interpretive framework that is intersubjectively predetermined by the interpretive articulation of a social group (hermeneutical community). In this process, the horizon of the religious experience may be determined more by the question of meaning (of the whole, of life, of the contents of consciousness), by the foundation of ethical relationships, by aesthetic qualities, or by cult praxis, which means that religious experience is dependent on the motives and contextual situation of the subject of this experience. The religious experience is made to cohere with other qualities of experience, which means that what is to be deemed “religious” is determined by an intersubjective communication process that remains oriented to diachronic (tradition) and diatopic (integrative identity) parameters. Religious experience is characterized by the same range of emotions as non-religious experience and is specified by the cognitive elements that are inherent to it. This means that there is no objectifiable domain (e.g. “the numinous,” R. Otto) that might be identical with itself, since there is religious experience that is not numinous, and also because not every numinous experience is cognitively interpreted as religious. The comparative study of religion thus cannot identify an absolute/objective area of religious experience. This can be determined, if at all, only by faith, which the discipline of religious studies must describe and classify historically as a part and/or interpretive frame of religious experience, alongside the expectations (of the individual and of the community) that emerge more or less consciously in the context of the cult and through cognitive training. The religious experience may be communicated by the individual’s own description or by another (Smart), the interpretive imagery being of less general natu…