Chad and Chew

In last week’s seminar, I mentioned the difficulty in discerning theory and method in some of the works of religious studies that we’ve read over the semester.  For example, I asked if a method could somehow lead back to a theory, as in the account of Geertz’ Balinese Cockfight.  This is not to oversimplify the issues of constructing theory and developing method, but rather to illustrate how the application of theory into method is often more opaque than I would like.  Through a reading of Wayne Proudfoot’s Religious Experience, however, one can see clearly how the theories on piety and religion of German theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, expounded in his book On Religion led to a hermeneutical method of studying religion and piety.

Firstly, one must consider Schleiermacher’s definition of religion, which lays the groundwork for his further theory and method.  To do this, however, requires a brief look into the purpose for his definition.  Schleiermacher sought, Proudfoot argues, “to show the artists and critics with whom he associated that what they despised was not religion but the dogmas and institutions that result from mistaking external forms for the inner life of the spirit, and that real piety is identical with the spiritual integrity and sense of harmony with the universe which they sought in the aesthetic and cultural life” (2).  Therefore, to show that religion was not a doctrine or an institution, Schleiermacher had to define religion in such a way as to separate it from its external forms; within such a system, he had to define it internally in a way that he hoped would avoid reductionism.  For Schleiermacher, then, religion was to be defined as “…a sense, a taste, a matter of feeling and intuition…It is an autonomous moment in human experience and is, in principle, invulnerable to rational and moral criticism” (2).  It is a “sense and taste for the infinite” (9). 

This definition enables Schleiermacher to construct what Proudfoot construes as an apology for religion.   For one, religion under Schleiermacher’s definition becomes perfectly sui generis.  Rudolf Otto drew on this in his own work by claiming that piety can only be known through direct acquaintance (8).  It could not be defined.  It could be evoked in another, but it could not be conceptualized.  Yet, Proudfoot takes umbrage with this.  Throughout his chapter entitled “Expression,” he argues that Schleiermacher’s intention of religion (his notion of absolute dependence) is a conceptualization in that the notion of dependence on something begs the question of what or whom the subject is dependent upon. Theoretically, he argues, Schleiermacher’s system breaks down (3). 

For me, this is where the theory becomes more interesting.  I agree with Proudfoot in that it seems that Schleiermacher has backed himself into a hole.  If feeling is piety, and exists autonomously from thoughts and actions, how can one describe it?  Humans are creatures of communication, whether verbal or nonverbal.  I may feel something, and John may feel something, but how do we communicate this to each other?  Or how are we to understand if each other “feels” the same thing?  Language would seem to be the medium in which to communicate these feelings, whether verbally through avowals such as “I feel”, or nonverbally, because that is a convention that appears to be the most pervasive in our own society.

Schleiermacher sees language in a different way.  It is not that language does not have utility in his system, but rather the opposite.  Schleiermacher argues that religious language results from the initial pre-linguistic feeling or intuition, or the whence of mutual dependence, rather than language leading to the artificial construction of a feeling that could plausibly occur within a religious institution rife with dogma and ritual.  To use terminology from William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience the feeling is the “root” for the “fruits” of doctrine and theology.  In this system, developed more in his work The Christian Faith, Schleiermacher pushes this further, and one begins to see how language grows out of and along with religious feeling.  Schleiermacher argues, “Christian doctrines are accounts of the religious affections set forth in speech” (CF 15, Proudfoot 16).

Religious language, therefore, is the expression of religious feeling.  It serves to express piety and is not conditioned by any antecedent concepts.  Piety expresses itself in facial expressions and other bodily movements, which then leads to the use of the voice, which then leads to mental self-reflection as persons and cultures develop (25).    This use of language (poetic, rhetoric, and didactic) is borne of the original religious feeling or affection of Schleiermacher’s argument. Ultimately, these uses of language expressed outwardly in speech lead to the formulation of doctrine.

These doctrines can take the form of sacred scripture, myths, stories, or legal documents bequeathed to them by previous generations, and some, if not all of them, are found in all religious communities (42).  How does one interpret these works?  If all of these works are expressions of a religious feeling, then it must follow that these expressions must require an interpretive model that takes into account the nature of religious language and religious feeling with respect to the culture and language in which they were written.  Here is where one finds a method that grows out of a theory: Schleiermacher’s hermeneutic method.  One recalls earlier that Schleiermacher and Otto argued that feelings can only be known through direct acquaintance.  Within Schleiermacher’s system, an interpretative method to studying religious experience employs the same rules. 

To understand or interpret the text, one must understand not only the individual or individuals who composed the text, but also the grammatical and psychological world in which they lived.  Both grammatical and psychological interpretations must be employed.  The grammatical interpretation refers to “the study of the history of a language, of the relation of the language to its culture, and of the general historical and social context of the discourse to be interpreted” (49).  The psychological interpretation can be seen as empathic, or a “walk in the author’s shoes.”  Schleiermacher terms this the “divinatory method,” which is “…that by which one, by turning himself, as it were, into the other, seeks to grasp immediately the individual in him” (Schleiermacher, 1959: 109, Proudfoot 49).  Hence, like his notion of piety, this grasping of the author’s intentions are immediate and intuitive. 

The work of Schleiermacher has continued to influence scholars since it first appeared in the early nineteenth century.  Scholars like William James and Rudolf Otto drew on his arguments to formulate their own, albeit with somewhat different conclusions, and scholars like Proudfoot use recent studies in psychology, especially those of Stanley Schachter, to show how feelings or emotions cannot always be separated away from conceptualizations (Proudfoot, 75-118).  Yet, what makes Schleiermacher’s work so interesting is that he implicitly argues that this notion of piety, or “feeling,” works cross-culturally among varied traditions.  James develops this further in his The Varieties of Religious Experience. 

Scholar David J. Hufford, in his work The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions works with this idea in regards to folk belief.  In one such study dealing with Mara experiences (experience of finding oneself awake and paralyzed in the presence of a frightening being), he “…was able to show that what Newfoundlanders called the Old Hag comprises a cross-culturally stable experiential pattern underlying many belief traditions in widely separated places” (Hufford, 12).  What this means for Hufford is that “a host of traditional beliefs actually seem to be produced by a particular kind of experience, the details of which are independent of prior belief or knowledge” (14).  This kind of interpretation is roughly in the same vein as the work of Schleiermacher, though with respect to folk belief rather than piety.  The resulting conclusion, however, appears the same: something exists, whether a “feeling” or belief that is autonomous to thought or knowledge.

Granted, both the work of Hufford and Schleiermacher is not without criticism, as witnessed by Proudfoot’s critical work Religious Experience, which also gives a more critical look into the theories of William James and discusses pragmatic methods of interpretation.  What Proudfoot does, however, is illuminate the theories of Schleiermacher that would later be instrumental in Schleiermacher’s methods developed for studying religion.