PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION: a general overview

Abstract

The text we present is the first chapter of the book The meaning of religion: lectures in the phenomenology of religion, by William Brede Kristensen (1867-1953). This work, originally published in 1960 by the Dutch publisher Martinus Nijhoff, is a translation from Dutch into English of part of the lectures given by Kristensen when he worked as professor of Study of Religion at the University of Leiden (1901-1937), in the Netherlands, being the successor to the professorship previously occupied by Cornelis Petrus Tiele (1830-1902). In his book, Kristensen makes an important contribution to the theoretical-methodological discussion of the Study of Religion by presenting a non-essentialist phenomenological approach, offering a counterpoint to the dominant phenomenological approaches of his time – in addition to elaborating his own organization of the work fronts of the Study of Religion and its competencies within this discipline. The initial chapter of this work was called General Introduction, and was divided into three sections: a) Phenomenology of Religion; b) The Holy; c) The two types of religious orientation. In this translation, we believe it is more coherent to present it with the title of Phenomenology of Religion, followed by a general introduction, maintaining its subdivision into three sections.