Wayne Proudfoot 
Religious Experience [PDF ebook] 

How is religious experience to be identified, described, analyzed and explained? Is it independent of concepts, beliefs, and practices? How can we account for its authority? Under what conditions might a person identify his or her experience as religious? Wayne Proudfoot shows that concepts, beliefs, and linguistic practices are presupposed by the rules governing this identification of an experience as religious. Some of these characteristics can be understood by attending to the conditions of experience, among which are beliefs about how experience is to be explained.

Cuprins

Preface


Introduction


1. EXPRESSION


The Priority of the Affective Mode: Schleiermacher’s
On Religion

The Feeling of Absolute Dependence:
The Christian Faith

Religious Language as Expression

Expression and Thought


2. INTERPRETATION


The Hermeneutic Tradition

The Pragmatic Tradition

Understanding and Explanation


3. EMOTION


Hume and the Traditional Theory

Aristotle on Emotion

A Philosophical Critique of the Traditional View

A Psychological Critique of the Traditional View

A Classic Conversion Experience

Attribution of Causes


4. MYSTICISM


The Search for a Mystical Core

Ineffability

Noetic Quality

Anomaly and Authority


5. EXPLICATION


The ‘Sense’ of James’s
Varieties

Sensible Authority

Religious Experience


6. EXPLANATION


The Problem

Descriptive and Explanatory Reduction

Protective Strategies

Force

Explaining Religious Experience


Conclusion


Notes


References

Despre autor

Wayne Proudfoot is Professor of Religion at Columbia University.