beyond? horizon, immanence, and transcendencehumans, but in doing so it deals with this world (even when it calls for
some sort of denial of this world). Religion can be about changing the
world, but in changing how humans relate to the world, placing this
change under the command: begin with thyself! Transforming the
world not only must, but should, begin somewhere, with oneself
seeing the world. Of course this does not exclude that religion can be
turned into some sort of instrument to make others change and to
leave oneself unaffected. As a human concern, religion is human, all
too human.
When we talk about self-transformation it is easy to imagine a scene
where we stage ourselves. Religion can of course be used as means to
self-transformation, but it also offers possibilities of reflecting on the
implications and problems implied in self-transformation. If self-
transformation is something we ourselves perform, on a stage as it
were, we are not really ourselves transformed. Self-transformation is
not simply about transforming oneself, but about becoming oneself
transformed: in one’s ways of doing, seeing, and understanding. This
passivity of selfhood is in a sense what religion is “about,” although
not in the sense that it conceptualizes this. Rather it articulates human
experiences and ways of seeing that can bring forms of passivity of the
self into our focus. This might challenge us to be sceptical about what
we are doing when we promote ideas of self-transformation.
Conceptualizing
In concluding, let us consider the question implied in what I have said:
what happens when we move from religion speaking of beyond to
philosophy speaking about transcendence? It seems to go without
saying that in making this move we capture what religion is (about).
But what happens, then, is that we conceptualize religion in such a way
that we take ourselves to be saying what religion is: it is talk about
transcendence. This influences how we deal with religion. It is placed
in a sphere of its own (although religion is about “all”). Even when we
seek to modify this picture in speaking of some sort of religious
immanence, we still think in terms of a schematic and manageable
difference between transcendence and immanence.
Yet, what is the meaning of conceptualizing philosophically? What