Blog #10, Phenomenology of Prayer: Prospect of a Phenomenology of Prayer

Courtney Botkin

Sacred Blog #10

11-21-16

Phenomenology of Prayer

Prospect of a Phenomenology of Prayer

            The phrase phenomenology of prayer means many different things to various people and organizations. Heidegger interprets and describes this term phenomenology as hermeneutical phenomenology in his writing. In this sense, he writes about it having two basic claims:

11. Life, even at the most intermediate level, is always already meaningful.

22. History is to be understood not primarily as a record of “facts” but as rich depository of meaningful expressions of life.

As heard previously in many of his lectures before, Heidegger feels very strongly about the two of these claims. He takes the first claim farther to say, “Life is not a chaotic confusion of dark torrents, rather it is what it is only as a concrete meaningful shape.” He believes that objects have practical significance for life. He defended his second claim in his 1919 lecture saying, “The authentic organ of the understanding of life is history, not as historical science or as a collection of curiosities, but rather as life that has been lived, history as it accompanies actual living. When analyzing Heidegger’s work, it is clear that religion did not play a part in the way he or Dilthey established this idea of hermeneutical phenomenology. This made it problematic when trying to apply this idea to the study of prayer. However, they both acknowledge that religion is an essential element when determining the “meaningfulness of life” and when that begins.

          These two claims are interesting topics to wrap one’s head around. I personally have only encountered the first claim when dealing with my religious studies and practices. The second claim seems interesting to me, but also dramatically different from the first and a little bit off center from religion and this focus. These two claims, nonetheless, are good topics to think about while trying to incorporate these topics in personal religious studies.