Religious Experience [Paperback]

Wayne Proudfoot (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 14, 1987 | ISBN-10: 0520061284 | ISBN-13: 978-0520061286

How is religious experience to be identified, described, analyzed and explained? Is it independent of concepts, beliefs, and practices? How can we account for its authority? Under what conditions might a person identify his or her experience as religious? Wayne Proudfoot shows that concepts, beliefs, and linguistic practices are presupposed by the rules governing this identification of an experience as religious. Some of these characteristics can be understood by attending to the conditions of experience, among which are beliefs about how experience is to be explained.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Wayne Proudfoot is Professor of Religion at Columbia University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 290 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (September 14, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520061284
• ISBN-13: 978-0520061286
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #526,214 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Phenomenology of Religious Experience February 21, 2001

By E. M. Dale

Format:Paperback

Proudfoot's book quickly shot him into the pantheon of very important philosophers of religious experience, most notably Schleiermacher, James, and Otto. As a matter of fact, I think that if you were to teach a course on Western scholarly notions of religious experience, you could do so very well using only these four authors: Schleiermacher's Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers; James's Varieties of Religious Experience; Otto's The Idea of the Holy; and Proudfoot. That may seem like a lot to assert, but for historical as well as ideological reasons, these four books are largely representative of the discipline for the last several hundred years.

I had to read this book twice. Not because of the difficulty of the work: it's not difficult or technical at all. No, I misunderstood Proudfoot's argument early on, and therefore I came away hating the book and wondering why on earth I read it. My first impression was that Proudfoot was giving the old reductionistic viewpoint that all that is going on in any religious experience is projection. And he does say, very explicitly, that previous expectations determine the outcome of religious experiences. But he does not say that that is ALL that is happening; that was my erroneous reading of Proudfoot. Many others have also had that negative reaction to his book, so I was not completely alone in my initial rejection of his work.

What he really seems to be saying, and a second reading made this clear as day, is that there is no "pure" experience of God, no unmediated approach to the Holy, the Numinous, Being, or what have you, in direct contradiction of Schleiermacher. This view is just plain old Kant, of course, but in light of modern and postmodern hermeneutics, it is, of couse, exactly right.... It is not that that, for example, the charismatic Pentacostal does not legitimately experience "the Divine:" it is, however, that she does so within the framework already given to her from her tradition. Within that tradition, however, the experience may well be "pure," in terms of the tradition. Two classic examples are Teresa's "mystical marriage" to God and, on the other end of the spectrum, Dante's Beatific Vision of God as Other. These two examples are experiences of God, both radically different (one very personal, one very impersonal), both mediated through particular cultural Weltbildungen, and both "legitimate" by anyone's definition. The same holds true across the board, from Sufi dancing to zazen: there is an expected outcome towards which masters or teachers guide students and devotees, and successful "experiences" take place within these defined areas. This certainly does not lessen the experience at all. Quite the contrary, it may well heighten the experience, since it gives a sense of "attainment." To some this will sound like "you find what you expect to find"; Proudfoot himself likely would say this. But as a phenomenological stance, this is a respectful yet critical accout of human religiosity, and a wonderful book. Read more ›

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A cautionary tale August 14, 2006

By Jed Verity

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

If you approach Religious Experience intent on debunking authoritative perspectives on what religious experience consists of, you won't be disappointed by Proudfoot's deconstruction of Schleiermacher, James, and others. The vast majority of the book concerns itself with citing these other thinkers and explaining why none of their paradigms holds up to close scrutiny. Proudfoot's scalpel is sharp and polished, but the dominance of slicing over building results in a handful of scraps that would benefit from a better reintegration and innovation than Proudfoot is able to offer. Regardless, an illuminating and entertaining read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Religious experience re-enters the realm of understanding December 6, 2011

By B. T. Newberg

Format:Paperback

Wayne Proudfoot investigates the relatively brief and tumultuous development of the idea of "religious experience." He finds difficulties in the way it has been described, resulting from efforts to render religion invulnerable to critique. Many have tried to show that religious experience is a primary phenomenon, like feeling or sensation, completely prior to thoughts or beliefs. In other words, they have claimed that religious experience is in no way a product of our own intellectual processes, but comes to us much like sensation or feeling. But Proudfoot proves that religious experiences are in fact shaped by the beliefs we bring to them. They are not independent of our mental processes. A Catholic's experience of Mary, for example, is conditioned by what is expected of a religious experience of Mary. To a certain extent religious experiences are created by what we believe will be experienced.

Proudfoot's insight bears directly on comparative religion, an activity in which nearly all modern pagans take part to some degree. His opponents, such as Schleiermacher and Otto, who claimed religious experience was prior to beliefs, deplored "reductionism" in comparative religion. In other words, they railed against attempts to "reduce" religious experience to psychology, social forces, evolutionary imperatives, or anything else other than religion itself. Since religious experience is entirely sui generis, or unable to fit into any other category, it can only be explained in its own terms. In this way, they attempted to fend off critics of religion. According to them, comparative activity could only be conducted within the framework of specific religions and their theologies. However, Proudfoot attacks this position.... He says that an ambiguity has been exploited as a protective strategy. "Reductionism" is not all of one kind. Rather, there are two types: descriptive and explanatory.

Descriptive reductionism means describing a subject's experience in terms other than those that may be plausibly ascribed to that subject. A Buddhist's experience can only be described in Buddhist terms, not in Hindu terms, Born Again Christian terms, Secular Humanist terms, or any other besides Buddhist terms. Any attempt otherwise will end up describing something other than the experience. For this reason, such description is unacceptable. Schleiermacher, Otto, and the others were quite right to deplore this tactic. Descriptive reductionism is to be avoided.

However, explanatory reductionism is different. This type of reductionism does not aim to describe the experience, but rather to explain how it came to be identified by the subject as a religious experience. It explains why the experience had significance for the subject, and why it was seen as religious. A Celtic druid might encounter a great oak in the Rockies, feel an overwhelming presence, and take this as a communication from a Gaelic god. Why did this druid identify the experience as a divine presence, rather than a moving but secular appreciation of nature? Why did the druid feel it was a Gaelic god, rather than a North American Indian spirit, or some other power? These sorts of questions ask how it comes about that a religious experience is identified as such. The druid may explain it by saying that the Gaelic god wanted to send a message. But an analyst reviewing the subject's experience is under no obligation to agree. The analyst may point to the druid's religiosity, and explain that it was therefore more likely that the experience would be interpreted religiously than if the subject were an atheist. Likewise, the analyst may point to the druid's Celtic path, and explain that the experience was more likely to be viewed through a Celtic lens than any other. Thus, the druid's beliefs shaped the experience. Such an analyst reduces the explanation to terms other than the subject's own, yet does not do an injustice to the experience itself. The analyst offers a contrasting point of view, but does not thereby misrepresent or destroy the subject's point of view. Thus, this type of reductionism is permissible. Schleiermacher, Otto, and the others correctly assessed the faults of descriptive reductionism, but extended this attack to all reductionism whatsoever. This, according to Proudfoot, was a grave error. Their mistake still influences comparative religion today.

Through this type of reasoning Proudfoot topples traditional arguments against reductionism, by revealing them to be over-extended and in service of a protective strategy that silences all criticism. The understandings of religious experience offered by the likes of Schleiermacher and Otto go with it. In their place, he suggests how we ought to explicate "religious experience":

the distinguishing mark of religious experience is the subject's belief that the experience can only be accounted for in religious terms. It is this belief, and the subject's identification of his or her experience under a particular description, which makes it religious. (p. 223)

In other words, we do not need to look for some fabled sui generis experience, irreducible to any other explanation. Rather, we should look at the subject's beliefs about the experience. In particular, we should take note of the subject's belief that the only way to fully account for it is by recourse to religious terms. If we go back to the example of the druid's experience in the Rockies, we can identify it as a religious experience because the druid did not find it sufficient to explain it as a deeply moved appreciation of nature. It was not enough, from the druid's point of view, to explain it in any other way than as a divine communication. The analyst need not agree with the druid, but need only attend to the druid's beliefs. That is enough to identify it as a religious experience.

The analyst may then go on to describe the experience. For this task, the terms used must be plausibly ascribable to the druid. It cannot be described using terms or beliefs that the druid does not likely possess. To do so would be to describe something other than the experience.

Finally, after a satisfactory description has been achieved, the analyst may offer an explanation for the experience. Again, at this point is permissible to use terms other than those of the subject. The task of explanation is as follows:

What must be explained is why they understood what happened to them or what they witnessed in religious terms. This requires a mapping of the concepts and beliefs that were available to them, the commitments they brought to the experience, and the contextual conditions that might have supported their identification of their experiences in religious terms. (p. 226)

As pointed out before, the druid in the Rockies might explain the experience as caused by the will of the Gaelic god, but the analyst might just as well put forward that the experience was at it was because the druid was likely to view the experience in religious and specifically Celtic terms. To do so, the analyst would have to show that these beliefs were available to the druid, identify the druid's explanatory commitments, and bring to bear the conditions that supported the druid's conclusion about the experience. This is what the analyst ought to do in order to explain religious experiences, according to Proudfoot.

This is the central message of Proudfoot's book. In order to demonstrate his points, he roves over a range of disciplines, including comparative religion, hermeneutics, psychology of emotion, and philosophy of mind. His style is hard-nosed, un-romantic, and at times difficult, but it is also rewarding. Through this strict, multi-disciplinary approach, Proudfoot sheds light on areas that have long been (often deliberately) shrouded in darkness. With this book, religious experience re-enters the realm of understanding. Read more ›

4.0 out of 5 stars A modern classic in the philosophy of religion December 10, 2011

By John in Orlando

Format:Paperback

Proudfoot's study of religious experience remains the modern locus classicus for investigation of this topic in philosophical perspective. The author surveys the history of investigation into religious experience from Jonathan Edwards and Friedrich Schleirmacher, to Rudolf Otto and William James, to modern philosophers of religion such as D.Z. Phillips. According to Proudfoot, the tendency of many who have investigated religious experience--particularly Schleiermacher, Otto, and James--has been to see it as (1)prelinguistic and preconceptual, and (2)a human universal that transcends the particulars of religious tradtions (in other words, the same "something" is being experienced by Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, etc.). Through careful argument, Proudfoot demonstrates both of these perspectives to be false, and shows that they have been used as what he calls a "protective strategy" to shield religious experience from analytical criticism in the light of science, psycholgy, or sociology. The authors he cites have defined the religious experience in such a way as to guarantee that, tautologically, only experiences of something "real" that is religious can be seen as religious experiences.

Following Wittgenstein, Proudfoot argues that religious experiences, far from being preconceptual or prelinguistic in the manner of direct sensations, are formulated in and through an existing conceptual and linguistic grammar. The Catholic has a mystical vision of the Virgin Mary because of the cultural conditioning that he has received through his tradition. If religious experiences are so conditioned, they do not represent some kind of pure sensation immune to examination through the lenses of philosophy and the sciences....

Proudfoot takes on the very common contention that reductionism in the study of religion is always problematic and to be avoided. He distinguishes between two different types of reductionism. Descriptive reductionism, he notes, is methodologically incorrect--it involves attempting to ignore the subject's own interpretation of her experiences in endeavoring to craft a scholarly description of those experiences. Any legitimate description of an experience must be situated in the context of the subject's own descriptive framework. Explanatory reductionism, however--that is, the practice of investigating the actual causal mechanisms behind an experience, which may or may not coincide with the subject's interpretation--is, according to Proudfoot, not only permissible, but is a necessary part of all scholarly investigation.

A very important work for philosophers of religion and scholars in religious studies. Read more ›