Revelation in Phenomenology

Abstract

Abstract This chapter investigates the notion of revelation in the work of the main representatives of the phenomenological movement. This movement has a crucial importance in understanding the philosophical landscape today. Emerging from Austrian and German sources, phenomenology became the leading philosophical school in Europe by the mid-twentieth century. Later developments led to the emergence of French phenomenology, which has defined Continental thought in more than one way. The persistent focus of the phenomenological movement has been the nature and content of religious experience or the religious phenomenon. And while some of the phenomenologists, like Jean-Paul Sartre, proposed a different course for this kind of thinking, the problem of religion has become central to most of the phenomenological authors. This explains the fact that the phenomenological notion of divine disclosure or revelation has always been in the centre of this movement. One can even say that the philosophical problem of revelation is the central subject matter in the history of phenomenology beginning with Franz Brentano through Max Scheler, Paul Ricœur, Emmanuel Lévinas, and Jean-Luc Marion. The work of these and other authors has exerted a tremendous influence on contemporary philosophy. However, the problem of revelation per se is the crucial problem of philosophy, as is demonstrated by the history and problematic of the phenomenological movement. This chapter offers an overview of this history and also an outline of the problem of revelation from the point of view of what can be termed ‘apocalyptic phenomenology’.