Conference 2023: Religious Experience and the Phenomenology of Nature

Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience

The Theme of the Conference

Faced as we are with climate change, mass extinctions of species, global pandemics, there is probably no more pressing theme today than that of nature. It is, however, not at all clear what we mean by ‘nature’, and whether discourse about nature is even meaningful today. Many speak of the ‘death of nature’ while at another extreme we find the exhortation toward a ‘re-enchantment’ of [by] nature. What the conference aims to explore is the place of religious experience within this our current situation.

Nature philosophy, including environmental ethics, but also the revival in Schellingian themes and the rediscovery within Phenomenology of the question of nature (Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, Husserl), questions any unidirectional subject/object relation to nature. Nature is that in which we find ourselves as human beings and despite our molding of our environments, according to such a view, the human engagement with the world itself embodies nature. The emphasis on embodiment shows not alone the limits of dualisms, but also the commonality of the human with the natural world in which we are and breathe. The inter-subjective experience of such being in nature and the inter-corporeal being with animals and plants around us is reflected in the sacramentality of religious observance from totemic rituals to the Christian Eucharist.

Inspired by the overcoming of dualisms of body and mind and nature and freedom deriving from the Phenomenology and Schelling, we can re-examine the religious sense of nature as containing sacredness. This religious sense can be understood metaphysically as an intuition of reality appearing as unapproachable. Phenomenologically, the question as to the source of this sense of the inapproachable and sacred can be understood in terms of feelings of awe (e.g., Otto). Not alone can nature be a source or locus of religious experience, but it may also be the case that religious affectivity gives us access to nature beyond the objectifying and instrumentalizing tendencies of Modernity. In this respect, we can think of the phenomenologies of life (Bergson, Tymieniecka, Henry), which explore modes of appearance of nature beyond the dualities of mechanism and vitalism. These accounts draw on – explicitly or implicitly – religious motifs such Christian notion of life as Christ, Vedantic life as Sat (Truth of Being, identical with self-consciousness and fullness), or Islamic God as truth or reality (al-Haqq), as well as other concepts across many traditions which are connecting life and nature. These motifs can be understood as compatible with the growing movement of panpsychism in the philosophy of mind (Strawson, Goff, Chalmers, Nagel) and the philosophy of life in biology (Varela, Maturana, Wilson).

Living through a pandemic it is important to hear [here?] attend to the core meaning of the word – pan demos, concerning all the people. Just as nature is everywhere, so any discourse about dwelling in nature (eco-logy) must be seen to concern the totality of human experience, in the sense of the full richness of its diversity. One manner in which such diverse experience can be understood is the way in which nature is experienced as a temporal phenomenon. This is clear already in the experience of the cyclicality of the seasons. It is also manifest in the current sense of ecological crisis which draws on a religious sensibility that has remained present in different guises through Modernity, namely the eschatological. In attempting to think nature with respect to religious experience, we are thinking within the intersection of temporal strands: mortal time, conscious time, cyclical, indefinite time, eternal, creative ‘time’. Understood eschatologically or messianically this relation is one in which ending is woven into the fabric of time: time as ending, transforming of past in the present and the opening up of a new future, time of forgiveness, repentance, grace and judgement (kairos)."

Details continued ...

Attending online, presentation to follow and suffice to say I'm out of my comfort zone - which is good.

I inquired at first whether introducing Hodges' model might be of interest, as ever, related to the conference's themes. To help establish my context, for the event organisers I attached the paper: "Exploring Serres’ Atlas: Hodges’ Knowledge Domains and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons". 

There was delay in my hearing more and acceptance being confirmed. I wish I could attend in-person, but am grateful for the opportunity - both to participate and be green. The paper's title is listed in the programme under: Anthropology and Informatics on the first day. Although the paper isn't the session, it fits well as a starting point. More to follow ...