Religious Act in Max Scheler's Phenomenology of Religion
پژوهشنامه فلسفه دین March 6, 2024 Hamid Reza Erfanifar, Hassan Ghanbari
Max Scheler's philosophy of religion constitutes an essential phenomenology of religion centered on the concept of the "Religious Act," a form of givenness in which the divine or holy is presented. In this act, the person communicates with God in a unique and irreducible experience. The act is self-evident, but its self-evidence derives from phenomenological intuition rather than logic. Scheler describes three intrinsic features of the religious act, which the article reviews: intuitive understanding and the role of emotion, the act's characteristics, and an evaluation of Scheler's formulation. The article argues that the relationship between Scheler's religious act and the Divine is unclear, that speaking of "transcendence" implies an a priori "trans-world," and that Scheler's method conflicts with the task of phenomenology.