Phenomenology and Systematic Theology

Dear Colleagues,

For more than a century, phenomenology has been open to religious and theological topics in a way that seems unique in philosophy generally. One might wonder why phenomenology has been so well equipped to engage with theology, given that its founder, Edmund Husserl, took no particular interest in the topic and even deemed that God must be bracketed in the proper phenomenological reduction. Yet, theological topics became decisive among his assistants and pupils, such as Edith Stein and Martin Heidegger. In his early phase, Heidegger took profound interest in Paul, Augustine, Luther, and Kierkegaard, while at the same time he struggled to find a line of division between theology and philosophy. In France, Levinas pursued a more radical way to incorporate religious dimensions. By analyzing the sense of the holy in terms of one’s ethical relation to the Other and thereby one’s relationship to God, Levinas opened a different way of doing phenomenology—no longer in terms of Husserlian intentionality or Heideggerian ontology, but as an articulate response to a revelation addressing us from beyond being. In so doing, however, one can ask whether Levinas transgressed the legitimate boundaries of phenomenology or perhaps transformed its basic conception.

When Dominique Janicaud wrote his essay on the theological turn in France many years later, it was precisely the legitimacy of this transformation that he addressed. If phenomenology wants to explore phenomena that overflow the intentional horizon, Janicaud believed that it must do so with reference to the intuitive evidence given within an immanent framework, which is what secures its position as a rigorous science. The attempt made by Levinas and others to posit a revelation coming from beyond the horizon of immanence is, for Janicaud, to go beyond what phenomenology can legitimately claim. But, must phenomenology stick to Janicaud’s rigorous principles? Or must those principles, faced with revelations, givenness, otherness or verticality, not rather be broadened, precisely to remain true to “the things themselves”? In various versions, such questions have been discussed by the proponents of the “theological turn,” such as Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Jean-Luc Marion.

Given this context, we invite contributions that explore the possibilities, limitations, and distinctions operative in the relations between phenomenology and theology, both early and late. Some central topics are:

• What is it about in particular phenomenology that makes it open toward religion and theology?
• Conversely, what is it about Christian or Jewish theology that makes it speak to phenomenology?
• Must a certain demarcating line be observed between phenomenology and theology?
• What are the differences and similarities with regards to how phenomenology and theology approach the question of God?
• How did the early phenomenologists’ approach to theology differ from the thinkers associated with the theology turn in French phenomenology and the contemporary debate?
• To what extent can phenomenology be a fruitful companion to Islamic, Hindu, or Buddhist theology?

Prof. Dr. Espen Dahl
Dr. Theodor Rolfsen
Guest Editors

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• theology
• phenomenology
• God
• transcendence
• immanence
• the other
• revelation