Netherlands, 1930s: van der Leeuw's re-confessionalization
The various strands of typological and hermeneutical phenomenology, when adopted in the HoR, became the intellectual device by which the anti-scientific autonomy of the branch was finally sanctioned - or, in other words, the immunizing strategy by which it became possible to fool the establishment.
The adoption of such approaches brought within the new branch a more openly stated critical attitude towards modernity, industrialization, Darwinian and materialistic theories, and the Enlightenment (Leertouwer 1991: 204; Wiebe 1999: 174; Junginger 2008; Tuckett 2016a: 83-4). This reactionary bundle supplied the subtext, and the agenda, of Rudolf Otto's (1869-1937) works, the most important of which was the hugely influential The Idea of the Holy, originally published in 1917 (Otto 1923; see Tuckett 2016a: 83-4). In this work, the German Lutheran theologian elaborated on the idea of the autonomy of religion, placing at its core the idea of the perception of the ‘numinous', that is, the Latin term which defined the presence of a god in a certain place (numen). Religion was not primarily something moral, nor social, and not even rational: religion, according to Otto, was an experience, a particular and very specific experience, something detached from profane normal life, a ‘wholly Other' (das ganz Andere), a feeling of being in the presence of a ‘mysterium tremendum et fascinans, ‘a tremendously powerful yet magnetizing, fascinating mystery' which transcends everything else (Strenski 2015: 86-7). Interestingly, the label ‘phenomenology' never occurs in Otto's work, and while many scholars involved in the Dutch phenomenologies of the HoR took great pains to distinguish their own perspectives from Otto's, they nevertheless shared the very same family resemblances (cf. Tuckett 2016a: 84).Although lack of space prevents me from investigating other equally relevant approaches and phenomenological experimentations (see Molendijk 2005), it is fair to say that the most important project of this kind was that envisioned by Groningen University professor, Egyptologist, theologian, Reformed Dutch Church minister and Minister of Education of the Netherlands for the Labour Party in 1945-1946, Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890-1950).
With van der Leeuw's works, the HoR became the modern heir to natural theology via a subversive process of re-confessionalization of the institutional duplex ordo (Platvoet 1998a: 131-3; Wiebe 1999: 184). His Religion in Essence and Manifestation (1963), originally published in German in 1933, is considered a milestone in the incipient field of the HoR. In it, van der Leeuw states clearly that ‘the essence of religion is to be grasped only from above, beginning with God' (van der Leeuw 1963: 679). Characterized by an increasingly obscure methodological jargon and epistemological weakness (Wiebe 1999: 176; Tuckett 2016a; Tuckett 2016b), van der Leeuw's phenomenology of religion was aimed at justifying the role of the typological phenomenology in the HoR as ‘theological propaedeutics' (Sharpe 1986: 233; cf. Platvoet 1998a: 131, 133; see van der Leeuw 1954: 13). In the light of the disciplinary success of van der Leeuw's work, an account of his systematization as summarized by Jonathan Tuckett (2016a; 2016b) might be helpful.According to van der Leeuw, phenomena are self-evident demonstrations of what appears to be, the structure of which is revealed by a sort of meta-cognitive reflection informed by spiritual apperception. This interpretive mechanism reveals ‘structural connections' (van der Leeuw 1963: 673) between similar types of phenomena which are manifested to our phenomenological ability to classify while ‘standing aside and understanding what appears into view' (van der Leeuw 1963: 676). In order to accomplish this task, epoche must be assisted by the self-aware recognition of the scholar's own inner religiosity. According to van der Leeuw, even though the scholar might be agnostic, there is religion deep down inside every human being (van der Leeuw 1963: 645); consequently, everything is religious: ‘ultimately, all culture is religious [...] all religion is culture’, and ‘all significance sooner or later leads to ultimate [i.e. religious] significance' (van der Leeuw 1963: 679, 684; see Cox 2002: 122).
The dogmatic acceptance of the existence of God provides the basis for an anti-Darwinian but orthogenetic presence/permanence of the holy (cf. Leertouweer 1991: 200), within which the scholar's own set of religious beliefs retains the peculiar position of primus inter pares. The classification of religious typologies via historical examples is brought to the reader via the identification of the underlying models (‘prophet’, ‘priest’, ‘sacrament’, ‘saviour’, etc., or, in Weberian terms, ‘idealtypes'), based on the experiences of the believers themselves but filtered through van der Leeuw's own sensibility (Strenski 2015: 89; Spineto 2010: 1274). Otto's influence is crystal clear in the statement that man (i.e. singular masculine) is drawn to power, and religions are the receptacle of extraordinary potency which cannot be controlled and with which certain objects and human beings are endowed, thus becoming ‘sacred' (van der Leeuw 1963: 28). The limiting, horizontal power gained from modernity and science can be fallaciously, and religiously, worshipped (Tuckett 2016b), while limiting but vertical power from Otto's ganz Anderes, the ineffable and numinous ‘wholly Other' which cannot be subdued, is properly - and powerfully - religious (van der Leeuw 1963: 681).Van der Leeuw also formally coined the disciplinary idea of homo religiosus to indicate the inner, congenital thrust towards transcendence and religious meaningmaking by mastering all aspects of human life, contrasted with homo negligens, that is, the man incapable of feeling the awe of the sensus numinis, i.e. the feeling of a divine presence (van der Leeuw 1963: 680; cf. Cox 2002: 122). In tautological accordance with his view of religious and theological phagocytosis (Platvoet 1998a: 133), ‘homo religiosus is to be found nowhere else than where “homo” himself is found [...] Only he who is not yet human, not yet conscious, he is no “homo religiosus’” (van der Leeuw 1937: 160, 165; from Sullivan 1970: 262).
Finally, a theologically justified anti-modernism provides a framework for the adoption of Levy-Bruhl's initial theorization of the mentalitc primitive according to which, for instance, ‘primitive' yet spiritually purer art-like puppet-shows are reputedly superior to ‘modern' cinematography (Leertouwer 1991: 204, 210 n. 4; cf. van der Leeuw 1954: 11; see also Westerink 2010 for the role of such theory as an alternative to the evolutionary tenets of comparative religion).In the decades that followed, the relentless work of some scholars, in particular Fokke Sierskma (1917-1977) and Theo van Baaren (1912-1989), provided an astounding epistemological falsification and methodological deconstruction of van der Leeuw's biased approach, rejecting his homo religiosus phenomenology, repudiating the theological subversion of the duplex ordo, and adopting a scientific and ethological study of Homo sapiens based on comparative psychology which prefigured the most interesting contemporary research branches (see Leertouwer 1991; Platvoet 1998b; cf. Slingerland and Bulbulia 2012). However, the academically isolated role of Sierskma and the quite late change of heart of van Baaren might have contributed to an ongoing neglect; such efforts were in any case to be eventually dwarfed by the intuitive appeal and academically unflinching support enjoyed by van der Leeuw's approach in the Dutch academy (Westerink 2010).
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