HeyJ LII (2011), pp. 1–12 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2265.2010.00667.x THE OLD AND THE NEW PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION BRIAN HARDING Department of Psychology and Philosophy Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas, USA The work of Michel Henry brashly introduces religious elements into phenomenology. Even if this was not apparent in The Essence of Manifestation, it becomes undeniable in the conflation of Christianity and phenomenology developed in I am the Truth.1 This in turn was criticized by Dominique Janicaud and the debate that ensued further cemented the connection between philosophy of religion and phenomenology.2 Likewise, there has been a renewed interest in early 20th century phenomenology and its antecedents, inspired in part by the debate about the theological turn.3 With these two points in mind I want to explore a largely forgotten approach to the relationship between phenomenology and religion, that of Gerardus van der Leeuw. He published two works on the phenomenology of religion, his Einfürhung in die Phänomenologie der Religion in 1925 and Phänomenologie der Religion in 1933. Both were translated into English in the 1930’s and while Phänomenologie der Religion is generally regarded as a classic work in the history of religion, it has received little attention from philosophers interested in the intersection of phenomenology and theology; it has been ignored in particular by proponents of the theological turn. First, I will briefly describe van der Leeuw’s old phenomenology of religion. Second, I will argue that van der Leeuw’s old phenomenology can serve as a useful corrective to some deleterious tendencies of the new phenomenology of religion, focusing particularly on his notion of ‘life’ in contrast with that of Michel Henry. I will argue that while there is much to recommend in the Henrican notion of life,4 in particular its focus on affectivity, it has various problems which van der Leeuw’s account can usefully correct. I. WHAT THE OLD PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION IS AND IS NOT Van der Leeuw describes his project for a phenomenology of religion in two ways. First, a positive way that begins with a description of phenomenology and follows with an explication of how phenomenology can be applied to religion. Second, a negative way that focuses on identifying certain things that his phenomenology of religion is not. I will discuss first his positive route and second his negative route. Van der Leeuw begins his positive characterization of phenomenology of religion with a short account of phenomenology. Accordingly, he begins with the uncontroversial claim that phenomenology is concerned with phenomena, i.e. that which appears. However, he will emphasize that this appearing must always be understood as an ‘appearing to. . .’ so that phenomenology will be concerned neither entirely with the subject, nor with the appearing object, but that middle ground, the ‘appearing to.’5 In short, his concern is with r 2011 The Author. The Heythrop Journal r 2011 Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. 2 BRIAN HARDING intentionality. This appearing to . . . in and of itself is merely experience [Erlebnis], and not yet phenomenology – phenomenology only arrives on the scene when that (a) experience is raised to the level of (b) understanding and finally (c) testimony. By understanding [Verstehen] he means a rational or intellectual comprehension of intentionality, particularly, in his case, as it bears on religious experience. This in turn is accomplished through a series of steps, beginning with a typology of the different kinds of religious experiences, wherein they are named and classified. Because this process risks missing the mark by treating the names as if they were the actual object of experience (wherein we end up analyzing the name, not the experience) the phenomenologist must allow for the ‘interpolatation’ [Einshaltung] of the experience into his or her life, seeking ‘intentionally and methodically’ [geflissentlich und methodisch] to sympathize with the experience of others as much as possible, in particular with their feelings and emotional or affective expereiences.6 It should go without saying, but will be said anyway, that the above is to be conducted under the auspices of the phenomenological epôché. In fact, van der Leeuw explicitly associates his project with Husserl’s bracketing of the existence of objects to focus solely on their essences.7 Nevertheless, it should be noted that van der Leeuw is not a strict Husserlian. In a footnote in his Einfürhurng van der Leeuw distinguishes his notion of ‘essence’ [Wesen] from that of Husserl.8 He opposes Wesen in the epistemological sense of Husserl to his concern with the ‘underlying phenomenon of experience.’ Although van der Leeuw sees himself as following Husserl insofar as he applies the epôche´, he does not want to focus exclusively on an eidetic insight [Wesenshau] into phenomenal objects as much as he wants to understand the essence of experience as an interaction of subject and object, including especially the affective elements of that experience.9 While Husserl is primarily concerned with the constitution of objects, van der Leeuw is more interested in the feeling that accompanies the experience of those objects. Whether or not van der Leeuw’s is a fair reading of Husserl is not particularly important here. What is more important is to note van der Leeuw’s concern to understand the how of religious experience rather than the objects of religious belief. The structures of experience that phenomenology undertakes to analyze are significant and meaningful in themselves however: the meaningful structure of experience is not something that the phenomenologist deduces, but rather something that ‘dawns upon me’ not as an isolated datum but as part of a larger structure of meaning. Understanding is achieved only when the essential structure of religious experience is acquired wherein ‘the chaotic and obstinate ‘‘reality’’ thus becomes a manifestation [Kundgebung], a revelation.’10 One might justly ask: a revelation of what? To be sure, van der Leeuw does not see phenomenology as culminating in the revelation of the unknown God, but rather what is revealed is the larger horizon of meaning that fully explains the appearance. Once this larger structure of meaning is understood, then the phenomenologist can speak to what she has discovered.11 Phenomenology now moves to its final stage, that of testimony. With testimony, the phenomenon is expressed by means of the logos, i.e. speaking about the structure of experience. Since phenomenology is about experience, the phenomenologist is prohibited from speaking of objects apart from subjects (i.e., objects that are not experienced) and subjects apart from objects (i.e., subjects that have no experience); van der Leeuw writes: ‘[phenomenology] consists in losing himself neither in the things nor in the ego, neither in hovering above objects like a god nor in dealing with them like an animal, but in doing what is given to neither god nor animal: standing aside and understanding what appears into view.’12 THE OLD AND THE NEW PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION 3 If van der Leeuw envisions his phenomenology in terms of an analysis of experience, we should pause to further explicate what precisely he means by the term ‘experience’ [Erleben]. First and foremost, he is concerned with lived experience. Because phenomenology cannot concern itself with subjects apart from objects, Erleben cannot be identified with ‘life’ [Leben] itself apart from or prior to its interaction with some object: ‘Experience is not pure life, since in the first place it is objectively conditioned, and secondly, it is inseparably connected with its interpretation as experience. Life itself is incomprehensible.’13 This is to say, phenomenology while admitting the conceivability of life independent of objects, can only address the interaction of subject and object in experience. On the basis of phenomenology we can then attempt to discern and understand the structures of those experiences. Van der Leeuw focuses on the structure of the relationship between subject and object both because of his understanding of the phenomenological method, and because his particular topic, religion, is always about that relationship. For example: the central experience in van der Leeuw’s work, the experience of power [Macht], is in fact defined in terms of what it is (an ‘other’) and how it effects the subject (‘extremely impressive’).14 Power designates not merely an object, but the emotional and cognitive effect that the object has on the subject, more generally, experience includes both the object of experience and the subject’s affective response to said object. This is something I will return to in next part of the paper. So much for his characterization of phenomenology; what about ‘religion’? Van der Leeuw begins by pointing out that religion can be approached in two ways: horizontally or vertically. The second way begins with God, and is not the way of phenomenology. In the first way, religion is approached as a phenomenon of human experience. Religion as human experience, says van der Leeuw, arises out of a response to the aforementioned ‘power’ – the mysterious force that primitive man recognizes at work in the natural world. This is not yet the numinous of Otto but the empirical otherness – stars, rocks, wind and so on – that one sees in the forces of nature.15 In Sacred and Profane Beauty van der Leeuw puts the matter this way: All action [for primitive man] not merely the wonderful and inexplicable, takes place through ‘power,’ even though it is only in unusual cases that it is worth while expressly to emphasize this power and to designate the acts as magical, holy. In practice, primitive man proceeds empirically. That ‘otherness’ which reveals itself in an act, he speaks of only when it intrudes upon him as something remarkable, when it places itself in his way. He does not generalize and he does not theorize.16 The religious man does not merely accept life as it is but moves deeper into it by relating to the power appearing to him, so that religion is not a flight from life, but into a ‘richer deeper wider life.’17 But how can religious experience deepen life? To understand this, we have to note that for van der Leeuw, experience is a modification of life, not a contrary to life. In deepening and widening life, one modifies it. The drive for a richer and deeper life is only a drive for experience. Because the power that one initially responds to is unknown, the religious significance of things is both inexhaustible and final: ‘the ultimate meaning is a secret that reveals itself repeatedly, only nevertheless remains eternally concealed.’18 In this way, van der Leeuw remains agnostic as to the origin of the religious call – he leaves undecided whether that power is in fact the gods or merely the clouds – to focus on humanity’s response to power; I will return to this agnosticism when I address what phenomenology of religion is not. In focusing on this response, van der Leeuw argues that the ‘goal which has been sought and found in the religion of all time’ is salvation.19 This is to say, religion ends where it begins: in a desire to go beyond life as given to something 4 BRIAN HARDING deeper and richer. The phenomenologist of religion, therefore, is a phenomenologists of desire. This desire, particularly in pre-modern periods, extends over the entirety of human life, such that the phenomenologist of religion is, or can be, a phenomenologist of human life as such, and not merely an hour a week on Sunday.20 With this characterization of his project, we can now turn towards the negative characterization of phenomenology of religion; van der Leeuw labors to distinguish it from (a) the poetics of religion, (b) the history of religion, (c) psychology of religion, (d) philosophy of religion and (e) theology. In what follows I will address each claim, beginning with some general remarks. Van der Leeuw notes at the outset that although (a) through (e) are important and serious projects in their own rights, each requires assistance, to a greater or less degree, from the other approaches. Phenomenology of religion, likewise, will require assistance from (a) through (e), but will attempt to teach (a) through (e) to ‘restrain themselves.’21 That is to say, according to van der Leeuw, each approach to religion, while admitting that it needs some assistance from the other approaches, tends to claim to be regina scientiarum having the final word on religion. If the phenomenology of religion aims to teach restraint to (a) through (e) it is not so as to have the final word, but rather to teach that religion is too big to be encompassed by one approach. Here we will find van der Leeuw in agreement with both Dominique Janicaud’s dictum that phenomenology is not all of philosophy and does not have to do everything and Monsignor Sokolowski’s presentation of phenomenology as clarifying the restraints present but unacknowledged in particular sciences.22 The meaning of the last sentence will be more apparent once his specific reasons for refusing to identify phenomenology of religion with (a) through (e) are clarified. Starting with (a) the poetry of religion, van der Leeuw’s rejection must be understood in accordance with the Aristotelian view of poetry. He references Aristotle’s comparison of poetry to history in The Poetics, wherein Aristotle argues that since the poet deals with what could possibly happen, while the historian is limited to what actually happens or happened, the poet comes closer to philosophy than the historian does. Poetry, insofar as it is not limited by the actual, comes closer to universal truths and teaches us more than history.23 The rejection of (a) does not mean, therefore, that van der Leeuw’s phenomenology of religion is indifferent to the poetry produced by religious people, but that it must limit its investigation to what religion actually is, not to what it could be: ‘in his own work, the phenomenologist is bound up with the object; he cannot proceed without repeatedly confronting the chaos of the given, and without submitting again and again to correction by the facts.’24 Indeed, due to this fact, the phenomenologist of religion, unlike the poet, must tarry with the particularities of religious experiences, texts and languages. In his Einfürhung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, Van der Leeuw notes that the phenomenological method cannot consider religion as an abstract phenomenon – for the straightforward reason that this is not how it is actually experienced – but only by looking at particular religions.25 In this way, the phenomenologist of religion appears almost indistinguishable from the historian of religion, and this almostindistinguishability goes in both directions: just as the phenomenologist of religion must deal with what religion actually is, the historian’s task is inescapably bound up in phenomenology, at least in the sense of hermeneutics.26 This does not however mean that van der Leeuw envisions phenomenology of religion as a sub-species of the history of religion. Although phenomenology of religion comes closer to history than to poetry in the Aristotelian sense, it is nevertheless not history. This is worth emphasizing, since, if we follow the Aristotelian model, proximity to history indicates distance from properly philosophical concerns. While both are concerned with understanding THE OLD AND THE NEW PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION 5 what religion is in actuality, the teloi of the two projects differ. The historian of religion is concerned only with cataloguing what actually happens or happened in religion. The phenomenologist of religion, on the other hand, must be concerned with understanding what was experienced; this includes, as we saw before, the affective elements in particular. In his Einfürhung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, van der Leeuw writes: We do not seek the chronological, but the intelligible [verstädnliche] order. We seek neither the religion of Adam nor the sacrifices of Cain and Abel. We strive instead for the phenomenon, and to make intelligible its mutual relationships with us. That we are unable to tear away from the limits of our understandings [Verstandes], our historical and experiential limits, is an important fact. Our investigation has the purpose of bridging the gap between history, which determines the facts, and psychology, which seeks to describe the religious experience, so it is our task to investigate the subject matter of religion, in order to uncover [aufzufinden] the religious experience which it is based on, or in other words, to point out the experiential content [Erfahrungsinhalt] of the phenomenon and to pick out the psychological core of the phenomenon.27 The goal of phenomenology of religion is not merely what happened, but to understand what happened in terms of the relationship between us and the phenomenon. In this way, the phenomenologist would seem to move back towards the poetic, insofar as the particularities of actual events are supposed to be transcended in the move towards understanding: ‘[the phenomenologist’s] path lies always between the unformed chaos of the historical world and its structural endowment with form.’28 Understanding religion phenomenologically, van der Leeuw continues, must be distinguished from both psychology of religion and philosophy of religion. It is not psychology of religion because, in the first case, it is not experimental. But to be sure, it would be an oversimplification to identify psychology with experimental psychology. However, van der Leeuw continues, psychology is concerned with the psychical or mental and as such, the psychology of religion can only be concerned with religion insofar as it is given to the psyche. Religion, however, involves much more than merely psychic phenomena ‘the whole man participates in it, is active within it, and is affected by it.’29 This is to say, while the phenomenology of religion will no doubt concern itself with psychic phenomena insofar as they involve religion, it will go far beyond them to include ‘the whole field of religious life.’ That is to say, as he puts it in his Einfürhung, the phenomenologist of religion seeks to determine [festzustellen] both the experiential contents of the phenomenon and the psychological kernel of the phenomenon.30 No doubt, a partisan of the psychology of religion could object that the entirety of religious life is available to it insofar as that life must be presented in some way to the mind. Van der Leeuw’s response to this objection is worth noting insofar as it develops his conception of religion and phenomenology. According to van der Leeuw, religion cannot be entirely contained in the psychic insofar as it is not merely a subjective mental state (which could be studied by psychology) but those subjective states emerge out of a response to power, i.e a ‘highly exceptional and extremely impressive Other.’31 This is not, van der Leeuw insists, to claim that any deity of any religion exists, but an observable fact about religious experience, i.e. that it is characterized by feelings of fear, amazement, love, awe, and so forth that arise in response to this power. Van der Leeuw’s distinction between phenomenology of religion and psychology of religion parallels Husserl’s broader distinction between phenomenological immanence and psychological immanence where transcendent objects, insofar as they are given to consciousness, are phenomenologically immanent.32 Nevertheless, phenomenology of religion is not about this very impressive power. That is the task of theology. The phenomenology of religion cannot claim to speak about God 6 BRIAN HARDING in himself, but only as experienced. Phenomenology of religion focuses neither on the psychologically immanent elements of religion (as psychology does) nor on the objects of religion per se (as theology does); instead it looks at the complex interaction of the two poles in phenomenological immanence. In short, the phenomenology of religion is about religious experience, not about God – this is why, as I noted before, van der Leeuw, qua phenomenologist, remains agnostic about the true nature of religion’s object. The analysis of this interaction, however, is not to be confused with the philosophy of religion, which van der Leeuw finds exemplified in the Hegelian philosophy of religion that seeks to move dialectically beyond religion in the onward march of Spirit. But this, van der Leeuw asserts ‘sins against’ the spirit of phenomenology of religion insofar as her goal is to understand religion, not to absorb it into a larger philosophical structure. According to van der Leeuw, any account of religion that interprets it in terms of (a) categories not explicitly derived from an analysis of religious phenomena, or (b) categories that would treat religion as a subset or instance of some broader phenomena, dynamic or reality – including being, alterity, life, giveness or whatever – ceases to be a phenomenology of religion and becomes a philosophy of religion. This is because the task of the phenomenology of religion is simply to understand and testify to religious experience as such, not to understand religion in terms of heteronymous categories, as in (a), or in terms of a broader phenomena or dynamic, as in (b). Both (a) and (b) fail to address religious experience per se by subordinating it to extra-religious categories. While van der Leeuw will not deny that (a) or (b) could produce interesting philosophical theses about religion, neither will offer a properly phenomenological analysis of religion. Having examined van der Leeuw’s positive and negative accounts of his project, we are in a position to distill and summarize his view. Accordingly, we may say that his old phenomenology of religion is: (i) About neither the subject nor the object of religion, but the relationship between the two as it is experienced in phenomenological immanence. (ii) Limited to what is experienced, and does not attempt to go below (to life itself) or beyond (to God himself) that experience. (iii) Based on an analysis of actual religious beliefs and practices. (iv) About religion as woven through the entire fabric of human life and practices, not as an isolated segment of life, or as a theory. (v) Limited to the experience of religion and may not interpret religious phenomena in terms of extra-religious categories. II. TWO CONCEPTS OF LIFE In what follows, I propose to focus on the relationship between life and phenomenology in van der Leeuw and Michel Henry. Having said something already about van der Leeuw, it might be best to begin by explaining Henry’s understanding of life. Along the way, I will point out certain problems with his account; in doing this I do not wish to reject life out of hand, but to show how van der Leuuw’s work offers certain insights that aide in reformulating this concept in a more phenomenological way. We should begin by briefly summarizing Henry’s account of life and phenomenology. Later we will enter into a more critical analysis. The easiest way into Henry’s account of life and phenomenology is found in his contrast with Husserl’s phenomenology and its THE OLD AND THE NEW PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION 7 focus on intentionality. Against Husserl’s thesis that things are given to consciousness simply by means of the intentional structure of consciousness, Henry claims that everything given is given twice: Everything that is given is given to us, so to speak, two times. The first givenness, the Empfindung, is mysterious. It is the type of givenness and given in which the mode of giveness is itself the given. Affectivity is both the impression’s mode of giveness and its impressional content. It is the transcendental in a radical and autonomous sense. And this, this first given, which is already given and presupposed, is given a second time in and through intentionality, as a transcendent and irreal thing, as its vis-à-vis.33 According to Henry, the first kind of giveness, the mysterious kind wherein something (i.e., life) gives itself qua auto-affectivity, is the more fundamental kind of giveness that (to his mind) phenomenology ought to focus upon. Since the content and mode of giveness is the same – affectivity – phenomenology ought not to focus on objects, nor even on intentionality, but simply on the subject’s affectivity. Life to be sure is not Bios, not a thing but ‘the principle of everything’ insofar as it ‘defines the pure essence of phenomenality.’34 Elsewhere, in The Essence of Manifestation, he claims that this auto-affectivity ‘designates’ the essence of manifestation.35 As such life is the true object of phenomenology.36 Traditional phenomenology that seeks ‘a faithful description of the ‘‘phenomena’’ freed from every interpretation and transcendent construction’ must be replaced by an account of phenomenality or givenness as such, which is to say, life.37 A central requirement for this new phenomenology is that one eschews the appearances given to intuition to investigate the more primordial givenness of affectivity.38 Life, for both Henry and van der Leeuw, is an inchoate condition that precedes the sort of experience with which the traditional phenomenologist is concerned. But while this means that life is of interest to phenomenology, it also means that life is a slippery fish insofar as it is not an object like others (indeed, it is the principle of phenomenality, not a phenomenon) and cannot be subjected to phenomenological analysis: as soon as one turns one’s gaze towards it and objectifies it, life slips away. As Henry constantly emphasizes, one cannot analyze life, but only live it. Although his terminology differs, van der Leeuw’s position is in agreement with Henry on this point. This can be seen in van der Leeuw’s contrast of life and experience: ‘By ‘‘experience’’ is implied an actually subsisting life which, with respect to its meaning, constitutes a unity. Experience, therefore, is not pure ‘‘life’’ since in the first place it is objectively conditioned and, secondly, it is inseparably connected with its interpretation as experience.’39 While life precedes experience as an inchoate and ‘incomprehensible’40 reality, experience itself is characterized by a two-fold structure – first, it arises out of the confrontation of life with some phenomenal object and second, this confrontation is inseparable from an interpretation of that confrontation. Therefore, experience is two steps removed from life – first because it is (at least) dyadic in structure rather than the monadic auto-affectivity of life, and second because the structure produced is always layered over with interpretation. Because of this life itself, in its purity, is quite far from us – van der Leeuw notes that his life (as opposed to experience) is further from him than he is from China: What appear to us as the greatest difference, and the most extreme contrast possible – the difference, namely, between ourselves and the ‘other’, our neighbor, whether close by or in distant China, of yesterday or of four thousand years – all that is merely a triviality when measured against the colossal aporia, the insoluble dilemma, in which we find ourselves as soon as we wish to approach life itself41 8 BRIAN HARDING Van der Leeuw’s ‘insoluable dilemma’, although the terminology differs, can be found in Henry as well: van der Leeuw, like Henry, places life as prior to experience both logically and causally, such that any complete account of experience will require something to be said about life, yet at the same time, it is precisely the priority of life that bars the door to any inquiry This brings us to a crucial and fundamentally important difference: for van der Leeuw, while phenomenology can acknowledge the reality of life, it can never offer a phenomenology of life, and life is certainly not the object of phenomenology. If phenomenology, as van der Leeuw claims, is limited to the ‘appearing to’ of objects to a subject, it cannot study the subject itself in its auto-affectivity as Henry proposes – indeed to do so would be an exercise in what van der Leeuw calls psychology. In other words, if Henry wishes to analyze the autoaffectivity of life, that is fine, but it is not phenomenology insofar as phenomenology is concerned with the appearance of an object to a subject. Of course, one could object on Henry’s behalf that van der Leeuw remains in hock to precisely the sort of ontological monism (the thesis that all awareness is object awareness) that Henry argues against in The Essence of Manifestation and rejects as the truth of the world (as opposed to the truth of Christianity) in I am the Truth.42 But this misses the point of the objection: van der Leeuw is not assuming that all awareness is object awareness (in fact, he makes no general claims about awareness), but only that the kind of awareness phenomenology is interested in is object awareness. Even if one were to grant Henry’s point that object-awareness does not exhaust all forms of awareness, it would not follow that the analysis of auto-affectivity is phenomenological. This debate, however, merely rehearses the argument regarding the meaning of ‘phenomenology’ associated with Dominique Janicaud’s critique of the theological turn. Unless one wished to get into a broader argument about the meaning of phenomenology, an argument which goes beyond the scope of this paper, we should move on, having noted only that van der Leeuw would not recognize life as a proper object of phenomenology but rather of psychology. Henry’s insistence that life is the true object of phenomenology, but also that life qua auto-affectivity escapes object-awareness and as such, the theoretical gaze of the transcendental phenomenologist,43 impales him on the horns of van der Leeuw’s dilemma. This will become more apparent after Henry’s position is developed a bit more. According to Henry, the affectivity of life that the objectifying gaze of traditional phenomenology is unsuited for is a passive suffering, pathos, existing primarily as receptivity; it is not an appearance but receptivity to appearances.44 In an essay entitled ‘Material Phenomenology and Language’ Henry gives a fuller definition of pathos: Pathos designates the mode of phenomenalization according to which life phenomenalizes in its originary self-revelation; it designates the phenomenological material out of which this selfdonation is made, its flesh: a transcendental and pure affectivity in which everything experiencing itself finds its concrete phenomenological actualization45 According to this definition the pathetic is understood as a potential for self-donation, it is the matter (as opposed to form) that makes possible the self-donation of affectivity. Whatever else this might mean, this means that insofar as life is not an appearing object but only a potential receptivity, it cannot appear to traditional phenomenology. This passivity, Henry emphasizes, is non-intentional: affectivity does not intend objects but only double-backs on itself as auto-affectivity; in other words, life is only affected by life. Life does not allow itself to be seen in the way other objects are seen46 and life can be seen if and only if it sets aside its own reality to adopt a visible form.47 Life per se is the unphenomenal condition for the possibility of phenomenalization48 – this is both why THE OLD AND THE NEW PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION 9 phenomenology must concern itself with life and why it cannot approach life as such. Henry’s account of life develops into a phenomenologically untenable position wherein life is both unintelligible and the proper object of phenomenology. It is not the unintelligibility of life that I object to, but the location of this unintelligibility at the center of phenomenology. Let us now restate Henry’s dilemma: life is unavailable to the gaze of the phenomenologists, but also the proper object of phenomenology. Whence, either phenomenology must do the impossible by giving a phenomenological account of that which is explicitly not a phenomenon, or it must remain superficial in its account of phenomenalization by not speaking about life at all. Although Henry thinks he can overcome it by rethinking phenomenology so that manifestation is understood as a function of immanence as opposed to representation,49 I believe that van der Leeuw was correct to label this dilemma as ‘insoluble’ and Janicaud correct to complain that it represents ‘a conversion or leap towards an experience more secret than that of any phenomenology.’50 In my view, the trick is not to find a way out of it, but to cut the Gordian knot by finding a way to include Henry’s insights about the importance of life and affectivity in phenomenology without committing oneself to an Henrican phenomenology of life. And it is here that I believe Gerardus van der Leeuw can be of some help. It is true that not only do I see, I feel myself seeing, as Henry rightly emphasizes; however, with van der Leeuw we should say that this feeling is experienced rather than lived and bound up with the object being experienced. Van der Leeuw points out that the peculiar forms of affectivity we experience are inextricably tied to object or events: I feel awe when seeing a king, or fear when a taboo is violated.51 Likewise, joy is inseparable from the experience of some object as joyful. Husserl’s analysis of joy confirms and develops van der Leeuw’s approach to affectivity: For instance, we receive some joyful tiding and live in the joy. It is a theoretical act when we perform the act of thought in which the tiding itself is constituted for us; but this act serves as the foundation for the act of feeling in which, by preference, we are living. Within the joy, we are ‘‘Intentionally’’ (with the feeling intentions) turning towards the joy-Object as such in a mode of affective interest. Here the act of turning to the joy has the higher dignity; it is the principle act, but the reverse is possible.52 For both Husserl and van der Leeuw, joy is founded upon the experience of some object as joyful. Affectivity can never be pure auto-affectivity but instead arises from the interaction of subject and object in experience. This analysis has a number of advantages over that of Henry. First, it enables a more careful and systematic account of affectivity by allowing the phenomenologist to correlate different affects with different events or objects, thereby providing the potential for a fairly fine-grained phenomenology of affectivity. Against this, Henry can only offer impressions of a capitalized Joy or Suffering as such, considered in isolation from events and objects. Second, it allows for a more careful account of how affectivity influences intentionality; we can ask, for example, if the joyful person constitutes objects differently than the suffering one, and if so how. Henry, by divorcing joy and suffering from objects, is unable to raise these questions. This in turn brings us to the final advantage of the old phenomenology: while agreeing with Henrican phenomenology as to the priority of life over experience and the phenomenological inaccessibility of life that follows from that claim, it wisely avoids the inaccessible to focus on experience. In short, while Henry is correct to turn the attention of phenomenologists towards affectivity as form of awareness, he is incorrect when he identifies affectivity as 10 BRIAN HARDING such with the auto-affectivity of life. This error is compounded when he places life both beyond experience and at the center of his phenomenology. In sum, Henry is surely correct to remind phenomenologists of the importance of affectivity for phenomenology. In fact, by placing affectivity at the center of phenomenology he has brought into focus an important, but understudied, component of human experience. It is a shame that he immediately loses this insight by divorcing affectivity from experience. This is compounded by his attempt to displace phenomenology’s proper concern with phenomena themselves to focus on affectivity qua autoaffectivity and radical immanence via a phenomenology of life, a phenomenology that on his own terms is impossible.53 Van der Leeuw is a useful corrective insofar as he shares Henry commitment to (a) the primacy of life over experience, and (b) the importance of affectivity for phenomenology. Henry’s error is an admirable one insofar as he tries to adapt his order of inquiry to the order of things; he is nothing if not serious in his search for truth. Nevertheless, the order of things is not always the best way to order our investigations: what is first in itself is not always what is first for us. This, I believe, is realized by van der Leeuw and guides his understanding of the phenomenology of religion, in particular his distinction between it and both theology and the philosophy of religion respectively. Phenomenology, for van der Leeuw, is limited to experience and pure life is never experienced; in other words while phenomenology can admit that there is life, there cannot be a phenomenology of life, although we cannot rule out a philosophy of life. This does not mean however that phenomenology is incapable of addressing affectivity or what Henry terms pathos, but that it can only do this insofar as that pathos is experienced. The puthos for the pathos that characterizes Henry’s phenomenology must be renounced in favor of a more disciplined investigation of the forms of affectivity that arise in experience. If Henry is right to insist that phenomenology must emphasize the role of affectivity or pathos, he is wrong to conclude that this desideratum requires that phenomenology burrow beneath conscious or intentional experience in search of pure life.54 Notes 1 To ward off a possible objection that the title is misleading insofar as the title promises a discussion of the phenomenology of religion yet the paper focuses a great deal of its attention on Henry’s concept of life, it should be noted that Henry’s philosophy of religion, as developed in I am the Truth is inseparable from his phenomenology of life. Indeed, Christianity is special in his view precisely because of its articulation of the truth of life. See Michel Henry, I am the Truth: Towards a Philosophy of Christianity, trans. S. Emmanuel (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2003), pp. 21–32. 2 Dominique Janicaud, ‘The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology,’ in Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: The French Debate, trans. B. Prusak (Bronx NY: Fordham UP), pp. 16–103. 3 For examples see Michael R. Kelly (ed.), Bergson and Phenomenology (London: Palgrave, 2010) and Jeffrey Hanson (ed.), Kierkegaard as Phenomenologist:An Experiment (Evanston: Northwestern UP, 2010). 4 Although Henry insists on capitalizing ‘life’ I will not follow his practice, except when grammar demands it. 5 G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, trans. J.E. Turner (Princeton, Princeton UP, 1986) p. 671. For the German text, I reference Phänomenologie der Religion (4th ed., J.C.B. Mohr: Tübingen, 1977). The section numbering in the English translation does not exactly conform to the numbering in the fourth edition insofar as the translation was based on the first edition. As such, I will give page numbers rather than section numbers, the German pagination will follow the English in brackets. 6 van der Leeuw Religion in Essence and Manifestation, 674–675 [773]; see too his Einfürhung in die Phänomenologie der Religion (Munich: Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, 1925), pp. 7–11. 7 van der Leeuw Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 676 [774]. Despite this, Hans Penner, in Impass and Resolution (New York: Peter Lang, 1989) has argued that the only connection between van der Leeuw’s project and that of philosophical phenomenology is that they both use the same word. As evidence for this claim he points out that the term epôché does not appear in the original German edition of the work and was only added to subsequent editions. He also claims that van der Leeuw’s view that phenomenology can only concern itself with phenomena or appearances THE OLD AND THE NEW PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION 11 rather than the thing in itself behind the appearances runs contrary to Husserl’s view. However, the absence of the term epôché cannot bear the weight Penner wants it to – as the saying goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; likewise the fact that van der Leeuw added the word epôché in subsequent volumes suggests that he was particularly concerned to make his connection with Husserlian phenomenology explicit. Moreover, Penner dramatically misreads Husserl: van der Leeuw’s position conforms precisely to Husserl’s view as set out in his principle of all principles in Ideas I, y24. There Husserl states as the principle of all principles of phenomenology that everything offered to intuition should be accepted ‘as what it is presented as being, but also within the limits in which it is presented there,’ i.e. that phenomenology cannot attempt to go beyond or behind what is given to experience in intuition. See Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy: First Book, trans. F. Kersten, (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1983), p. 44. 8 van der Leeuw, Einfürhung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, p. 7n1. 9 There is a helpful discussion of these issues in Arvind Schama, To the Things Themselves: Essays on the Discourse and Practices of Phenomenology of Religion (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), pp. 67–88. 10 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation p. 676 [775]. 11 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 678 [777]. 12 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 676 [775]; in this he is in agreement with Husserl; see Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2003) p. 76. 13 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 671 [769]. 14 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 23 [3]. 15 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, pp. 23–24 [8–9]. 16 van der Leeuw, Sacred and Profane Beauty: The Holy in Art, trans. David Green (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), p. 11. 17 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 679 [778]. 18 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 680 [779]. Translation slightly modified. 19 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 681 [780–781]. 20 van der Leeuw, Einfürhung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, p. 80. 21 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 685 [785]. 22 Janicaud, ‘The Theological Turn’ p. 34; Robert Sokolowski, Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000), pp. 208–209. 23 Aristotle, Poetics, 1451b1-10. 24 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 685 [784]; this in agreement with Husserl’s understanding of objectivity as well: objectivity in a Husserlian context means that the appearance of the object, not our expectations or theories about the object, has the last word. The object can and should correct us, not the other way around. 25 van der Leeuw, Einfürhung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, p. 9. 26 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 686 [785]. 27 van der Leeuw, Einfürhung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, p. 6 (my trans); in Sacred and Profane Beauty, van der Leeuw gives a brief statement: ‘Where history asks ‘how did it happen?,’ phenomenology asks, ‘How do I understand it?’ . . . . we do not intend to pursue causal relationships, but rather to search for comprehensible associations’ (pp. 5–6). 28 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 686 [784]. 29 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 687 [785]. 30 van der Leeuw, Einfürhung in die Phänomenologie der Religion, p. 7. 31 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 23 [3]. 32 See the discussion in John Brough, ‘Consciousness Is Not a Bag: Immanence, Transcendence, and Constitution in The Idea of Phenomenology’, Husserl Studies 24 (2008), pp. 177–191. 33 Michel Henry Material Phenomenology, trans. Scott Davidson (Bronx: Fordham UP, 2008), p. 17. 34 Henry, Material Phenomenology, p. 3, and Michel Henry ‘Phenomenology of Life’ trans. Nick Hanlon, Angelaki 8.2 (2003), pp. 102–103. There is a good discussion of this topic in Ricardo Oscar Dı́ez, ‘Michel Henry: fundador de la fenomenologîa de la vida’, Acta fenomenológica latinoamericana 3 (2009), pp. 240–243. 35 Michel Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, trans. G. Etzkorn (The Hauge: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), p. 236. Henry’s first work and purported magnum opus is a baggy beast – verbose, poorly structured, and frustratingly obtuse in its references to other phenomenologists – vastly inferior to his mature works, in particular Material Phenomenology. As such, I will focus most of my discussion on Material Phenomenology. 36 Henry, Material Phenomenology, p. 99. 37 Henry, Material Phenomenology, pp. 15–16. 38 Henry, Material Phenomenology, pp. 17. 39 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 671 [769]. 40 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 671 [769]. 41 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 672 [770]. 42 Henry, The Essence of Manifestation, pp. 74–78 and I am the Truth, pp. 12–20. 43 Henry, Essence of Manifestation, p. 29. 44 Henry, Essence of Manifestation, pp. 473–475. 45 Henry, ‘Material Phenomenology and Language’ p. 353. 12 BRIAN HARDING 46 Henry, Material Phenomenology, p. 90; Essence of Manifestation, p. 464. 47 Henry, Material Phenomenology, p. 93. 48 Henry, Material Phenomenology, p. 81. 49 Henry, Material Phenomenology, pp. 93–95. 50 Janicaud, ‘The Theological Turn’ p. 81. 51 van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation, p. 48 [33]. 52 Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy II: Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution, trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1993), p. 14. 53 This is only one criticism among many. Dan Zahavi provides a useful summary of others in ‘Michel Henry and the Phenomenology of the Invisible’ Continental Philosophy Review 32.3 (1999) pp. 232–233: ‘Henry operates with the notion of an absolutely self-sufficient, non-ecstatic, irrelational self-manifestation, but he never presents us with a convincing explanation of how a subjectivity essentially characterized by such a complete self-presence can simultaneously be in possession of an inner temporal articulation; how it can simultaneously be directed intentionally toward something different from itself; how it can be capable of recognizing other subjects (being acquainted with subjectivity as it is through a completely unique self-presence); how it can be in possession of a bodily exteriority; and finally how it can give rise to the self-division found in reflection.’ 54 I am indebted to Michael R. Kelly of Boston College for comments and conversation pertaining to the topics addressed in this paper.