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Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion: Key Figures, Formative Influences and Subsequent Debates

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James Cox (professor at the Univ. of Edinburgh) offers a solid overview of how the movement called "phenomenology of religion" -- loosely understood -- has developed and come to be understood in departments of religious studies in the Dutch and English-speaking worlds. It should be noted that the author describes himself as a religious studies specialist, not a philosopher. This is significant because "phenomenology" is principally a philosophical movement. However, Cox's concerns -- as far as phenomenology goes -- are not principally philosophical, but methodological. He devotes one chapter to the philosopher Edmund Husserl, the father of phenomenology, but his concerns are formal, not material. He is concerned more with methodological questions than with questions about how the phenomena of religion are experienced and understood phenomenologically. Conspicuous by its omission is the work of Husserl's contemporary, Max Scheler, whose phenomenological study of religion, "Von Ewigen in Menschen" ("On the Eternal in Man") (1921), is of seminal significance philosophically. Instead, Cox traces a Ritschlian thread from Kant, Schleiermacher, and Hegel through Herrmann, Rudolf Otto, and A. G. Hogg. He sketches out the contributions of Troeltsch, Weber, and Jung; the Dutch contributions of C. P. Tiele, Chantepie de la Saussaye, W. Brede Kristensen, Gerardus van der Leeuw, and C. Jouco Bleeker; the African influence on British studies of Edwin W. Smith, E. Geoffrey Parrinder, and Andrew Walls, as well as the Dutch-influenced Ninian Smart; the North American contributions of Joachim Wach, Mircea Eliade, Jonathan Z. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell Smith; and ensuing contemporary debates. In other words, what "phenomenology of religion" means in Cox is something far broader and looser than what it means in its original philosophical context in intellectual history. Having said that, his contribution is clearly a competent and significant one and is commended for anyone interested in what "phenomenology of religion" means in the wide sweep of intellectual history, especially as understood in European (particularly Dutch) and English-speaking departments of religion. Cox writes accessibly for those at the college level and above, although his work undoubtedly will be of unique interest to specialists.