The Politics of Spirit

Acknowledgments

PART I. Introduction, Background, Methodological Issues

1. The Phenomenology of Religion: Introduction and Background

Traditional Historiography of the Phenomenology of Religion: Hegel versus Husserl
Geist and the Geisteswissenschaften in Nineteenth-Century Continental Thought
"Explanation versus Interpretation": Previous Critiques of the Phenomenology of Religion
The Pedigree of Classical Phenomenology of Religion
Terminology: "Phenomenology" and "History of Religions"
Authorial Stance and Thesis

2. Discourse, Text, Philosophemes: Elements of a Postcolonial-Genealogical Reading

Overview: Method and Rezeptionsgeschitche
Language (Langue) and Discourse
Postcolonial Discourse Theory
The Politics of Geist

PART II. Readings in the Discourse of the Phenomenology of Religion

3. Geist, History, Religion: Hegel and the Structure of Phenomenology and Religionswissenschaft

The Nature of Historical Change: Hegel's Articulation of the Concept of Entwicklung ("Development")
Geist and the Unity and Stages of History
"In" History: Reason, Morality, and the State
Geist and the Stages of Religious Self-Consciousness
Spirit as Life and as Community

4. Religion in Essence and Development: C. P. Tiele, Early Religionswissenschaft, and the Phenomenology of Religion

The Concept of "Entwicklung" (Development)
Ontology, or the Essence of Religion
History of Religion/s

5. "Experience, Expression, Understanding": Wilhelm Dilthey on Geist and the Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaft

Experience (Erlebnis)
Expression (Ausdruck)
Understanding (Verstehen)
Dilthey and Hegel/Geist und Natur

6. Geist, Nature, and History: The Phenomenology of Rudolf Otto

Geist versus Natur: The Structure of the Religious A Priori
"The Defi cient Rationalization and Moralization of Experience":"Primitive" Religion
The (Feminine) Passivity of the East versus the (Masculine) Vitality of the Gothic West
The Stage of Monotheism: Judaism and Islam versus
Christianity
Conclusion

7. Phenomenology as Empathetic Taxonomy: The Phenomenological Approaches of Chantepie de la Saussaye and W. B. Kristensen Chantepie: Religionswissenschaft as a Tripart Science

Phenomenology as Taxonomic Operation
Ethnographic Part
History of Religions
W. Brede Kristensen
The Representation of Religion
The Tripart Science: Philosophy, History, and Phenomenology in Religionswissenschaft
Phenomenological Limit
Classifi cation of Religions

8. Experience, Expression, Empathy: Gerardus van der Leeuw's Phenomenological Program

Subject/Object; Experience/Expression; Inward/Outward
Structure, Meaning, and Phenomenological Reconstruction
Religion in History
Limits of Religionsphänomenologie

9. Overcoming the Foreign through Experience, Expression, Understanding: The Method/ology of Joachim Wach

Experience
Expression
Understanding
History of Religions, Society, and Culture

10. The Total Hermeneutics of the New Humanism: Mircea Eliade's Agenda for Religionswissenschaft

The Grounding of the Sacred as an "Irreducible Element"
Expression and Experience
Structure, History, Intelligibility
Religionswissenschaft, a Total Hermeneutic and the New Humanism

PART III. Poststructuralist, Postcolonialist Analyses

11. "The Center Does Not Hold": Decentering the "Centrisms" of the Discourse of the Phenomenology of Religion

Logocentrism
Eurocentrism
Christocentrism
Ethnocentrism
Phenomenology of Religion and/as Racism

12. The "End of Man" and the Phenomenology of Religion

"Man," Subject, Consciousness, Geist
The Sickness unto Death of "Man"
The Sicknesses of "Man"
Incipit: Post-"Man"
Notes
Bibliography
Index