jonna bornemark & hans ruin
It should be made clear that the purpose of the present collection is
not to enhance or contribute to something that could perhaps merit
the title of a theological turn in phenomenology, nor to abandon the
specific ethos of a critical rationality in favor of a confessional identity.
But it is to deepen the self-awareness and reflexive capacity of con-
temporary phenomenological and post-phenomenological thinking in
a non-dogmatic spirit through a learning dialogue with and articulation
of the religious experience. This means making less certain the limits
between rationality and irrationality, as well as the secular and the
non-secular and the religious and the non-religious, in the ultimate
concern for a non-constrained and free thinking and the creation of
new conceptual configurations.
In the first contribution, Laszlo Tengelyi provides a starting-point in
giving a short background to the so-called “Theological turn” in
French phenomenology, and the criticism formulated by Dominique
Janicaud. Tengelyi claims that phenomenology, especially in the
French tradition, was led to examine its own limits, as well as the limits
of phenomena. The interest in theology and theological problems he
interprets as following from these investigations, not from the
presupposition of a God. On the contrary, the turn to religion can be
seen as part of a revolt against a metaphysical and transcendent God,
and as an argument for a radicalized sense of immanence. Both Jean-
Luc Marion and Michel Henry have contributed to liberate theology
from the impact of its metaphysical tradition. Yet Tengelyi prefers in
the end to leave it as an open question if they have managed to
transgress the limit between phenomenology and theology.
The relationship between phenomenology and religion is not lim-
ited to Christian theology, but has bearings on religious experience
from many different traditions. Jad Hatem shows that a phenomenol-
ogist like Henry can be used in the reading of the philosopher, mystic,
and Sufi, Suhrawardî, who thus can be understood as a proto-phenom-
enologist. Hatem’s analysis is centered on the phenomena of Ipseity:
the self that can never be seen, and can never be experienced “from
the outside”, but only through the life of the body and its immediate
self-revelation. Both in Suhrawardî and Henry this ipseity is under-