Question

This concerns a problem I myself have with Scheler, and am not sure where to go with it. Scheler argues in On the Eternal in Manthat one cannot dismiss religious experience (or as he calls it, revelatory experience) wholesale. That is, revelatory experiences aresui generis, and are to be judged on their own internal standards, and not to be dismissed on the standards we apply to sensory experiences. His argument is a classic phenomenological move, in treating different kinds of experiences as having their own sense or logic to them. The problem is, and this is probably a leftover empiricist bias on my part, are religious experiences reallythatdifferent from other experiences that we cannot judge religious experiences from a standpoint external to them? My concern is that Scheler is deeming religious experiences as unique and irreducible to any other kind of experience ona priorigrounds that may not be formulated clearly enough (at least it isn't crystal clear to me). However, Scheler has a point: if we dismiss religious experience wholesale, is this move not unlike the radical skeptic who dismisses sensory experiences? Is there another way between the dichotomy of Scheler's view that religious experiences have ana prioriintegrity to them, and a skepticism that rejects all such experiences? If so, how would one formulate this third way while recognizing the merits of both Scheler's position and the skeptic's? How do we balance the need to meet different experiences on their own terms while still wanting a synoptic view and comparison of them?

Answer 1

We can consider religious experiences as unique in their phenomenological nature as proposed by Scheler, yet open to appraisal by broader empirical or rational criteria—balancing phenomenology's focus on individual experience with broader frameworks of understanding. This middle ground acknowledges the distinctiveness of the religious experience while not entirely abandoning external standards of evaluation.

Step-by-step explanation:

The central issue here is whether religious experiences have a unique status that justifies treating them on their own terms, as Max Scheler suggests in his phenomenological approach. This debate concerns the phenomenological perspective, which posits that experiences, including religious ones, should be understood based on the nature of the experience itself, not through external validation. This stands in contrast to empiricism, which values sensory and measurable evidence. As revealed by thinkers like Heidegger and Ricoeur, phenomenology focuses on the lived experience and the impact it has on the individual, which in the case of religious experiences, may not be reducible to empirical evidence.

To seek a middle ground between Scheler's perspective and skepticism, we could consider the idea that while religious experiences may be fundamentally different from other types of experiences, they can still be subject to some form of external critique or evaluation. This does not necessarily diminish their potential validity or significance. Such an approach would not categorically dismiss religious experiences but would regard them with an openness to both their unique character and to the possibility of external corroboration or rational assessment.

Therefore, the third way would involve recognizing the distinctiveness of religious experiences as proposed by phenomenology, while also allowing for the evaluation of these experiences within a broader framework of understanding, which can include empirical, psychological, or philosophical perspectives.