Overview

Challenging monotheistic and cognitive assumptions in philosophy of religion, Neal DeRoo sets out a novel theory grounded in a transcendental phenomenological understanding of spirituality. DeRoo applies transcendental phenomenology to questions and methods in the empirical study of religion and considers the way religion shapes our experience and interaction with the world. Accounting for this transcendental dimension enables us to clarify how religion – as both a concept and as various material practices – is generated out of Husserl’s notion of ‘material spiritual’ conditions. Shedding light on the four-fold distinction between transcendental and empirical levels, emphasizing the transcendental dimension of religion via an account of spiritual expression reveals that rigorous analysis of religion requires us to distinguish between spirituality, religiosity and religious phenomena. Investigating current methodological approaches to religion, spirituality, and the religious, DeRoo provides an essential toolbox for the cross-cultural study of religion, drawing on key concepts such as materiality, flesh, spirituality and phenomena.

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9781350418073

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Reviews

DeRoo’s book makes a genuinely novel contribution to the phenomenological discussion of religious experience. It breaks new ground on multiple levels and will serve as a key text, giving rise to further research and novel ways of engaging the question of religious experience, fundamentally shifting the ground on which discussion about religion is conducted in several disciplines. * C.M. Gschwandtner, Fordham University *

DeRoo’s book makes a genuinely novel contribution to the phenomenological discussion of religious experience. It breaks new ground on multiple levels and will serve as a key text, giving rise to further research and novel ways of engaging the question of religious experience, fundamentally shifting the ground on which discussion about religion is conducted in several disciplines. * Christina M. Gschwandtner; Fordham University *

DeRoo’s book makes a genuinely novel contribution to the phenomenological discussion of religious experience. It breaks new ground on multiple levels and will serve as a key text, giving rise to further research and novel ways of engaging the question of religious experience, fundamentally shifting the ground on which discussion about religion is conducted in several disciplines. * Christina M. Gschwandtner; Fordham University * Neal Deroo challenges the ruinous dichotomy between spirit and matter that has bedevilled Western monotheism for centuries. In this timely, robust and scholarly argument, he deploys cutting edge phenomenology in proposing a new understanding of material spirituality. Deroo shows how religion can, at its best, be highly intelligent, engaged and inter-cultural all at once' * Richard Kearney, Charles Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College, USA *

Author Information

Neal DeRoo is Senior Member and Professor of Philosophy at The Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, Canada. He is the author or editor of 10 books at the intersection of phenomenology, philosophy of religion, and critical phenomenology, including Futurity in Phenomenology (Fordham UP 2013), The Political Logic of Experience (Fordham UP 2022), and the Oxford Handbook in Phenomenology and Religion (Oxford UP, forthcoming).

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