Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The “Wonder to Behold”: Reflections on Phenomenological Research of Alienic Spirituality

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Indigenous Psychology of Spirituality

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychology ((PASIP))

Abstract

This paper suggests the adaptation of the phenomenological research method for the study of indigenous spirituality. As a method by which one clarifies obscure forms of experience, phenomenology developed in Western academia. For such a context, indigenous spirituality is understood as spirituality of an alien, in need of discovery and to be differentiated from the psychological sphere of meaning. Six principles of the method include historical reduction, intentional cultivation of wonder, attention to the embodied, attentive, enfleshed and affective unique “what it’s like” of experience, letting imagination run wild towards seemingly impossible options, experimenting with the transcendental and other forms of reduction, and aiming at a discovery.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 119.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 159.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Al-Attas, M. N. (2014). Prolegomena to the metaphysics of Islam: An exposition of the fundamental elements of the worldview of Islam. Johor Bahru and Johor Darul Ta’zim: Penerbit UTM Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen, J. (1982). What is Husserl’s first philosophy? Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 42(4), 610–620.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ales Bello, A. (2009). “Brute being” and hyletic phenomenology: The philosophical legacy of Merleau-Ponty’s The visible and the invisible. In A.-T. Tymieniecka (Ed.), Phenomenology and existentialism in the twentieth century: Analecta Husserliana. The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research (Vol. 104). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barber, M. (2017a). Religion and humor as emancipating provinces of meaning. Contributions to Phenomenology. New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barber, M. (2017b). Religion and the appresentative mindset. Open Theology, 3(1), 397–407. Retrieved 26 December 2018, from https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2017-0031.

  • Barber, M. (2019). Schutzian resources for a comprehensive phenomenology of the holy. In O. Louchakova-Schwartz (Ed.), The problem of religious experience: Case studies in phenomenology (Vol. 1, pp. 123–139), ed. Contributions to Phenomenology. New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brady, J. (2017, December 20). What is Dasein? Epoché. Retrieved from https://epochemagazine.org/what-is-dasein-e11c4232771.

  • Candea, M. (2017). We have never been pluralist: On lateral and frontal comparisons in the ontological turn. In P. Charbonnier, G. Salmon, & P. Skafish (Eds.), Comparative metaphysics (pp. 95–106). London: Rowman and Littlefield.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caston, V. (2018). Intentionality in ancient philosophy. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/intentionality-ancient/.

  • Chittick, W. C. (1998). The self-disclosure of God: Principles of Ibn al-ʻArabī’s cosmology. Albany: State University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cole, M. (1996). Cultural psychology: A once and future discipline. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Corbin, H. (1998). Alone with the alone: Creative imagination in the Sūfism of Ibn ʻArabi. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cross, S. E., Hardin, E. F., & Swing, B. G. (2011). The what, how, why, and where of self-construal. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15, 142–179.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dahl, E. (2010). Phenomenology and the holy: Religious experience after Husserl. Veritas. London: SCM Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dahl, E. (2019). Preserving wonder through the reduction: Husserl, Marion, and Merleau-Ponty. In O. Louchakova-Schwartz (Ed.), The problem of religious experience: Case studies in phenomenology (pp. 57–76). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Dallmayr, F. (1989). On Bernhard Waldenfels. Social Research, 56(3), 681–712. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970561.

  • DeRoo, N. (2018). What counts as a ‘religious experience?’: Phenomenology, spirituality, and the question of religion. Open Theology, 4(1), 292–307. Retrieved 7 January 2019, from https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2018-0022.

  • Dodd, J. (2005). Crisis and reflection. New York, NY: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fitzgerald, T. (2000). The ideology of religious studies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flood, G. (2013). The truth within: A history of inwardness in Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fodor, J. (2013). Hermeneutics. In N. Adams, G. Pattison, & G. Ward (Eds.), The Oxford book of theology and modern European thought (pp. 500–524). Oxford Handbooks Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199601998.013.0025. Accessed 24 December 2018.

  • Frankfurt, H. (1988). The importance of what we care about: Philosophical essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gellman, J. (2018). Mysticism. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/mysticism/.

  • Guenther, H. (1992). Meditation differently. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henry, M. (1973). The essence of manifestation. The Hague: Nijhoff.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Henry, M. (1975). Philosophy and phenomenology of the body. The Hague: Nijhoff.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henry, M. (2008). Material phenomenology. New York, NY: Fordham.

    Google Scholar 

  • Henry, M. (2016). Ontological destruction of the Kantian critique of the paralogism of rational psychology. Analecta Hermeneutica, 8, 7–40. http://journals.library.mun.ca/ojs/index.php/analecta/article/view/1708.

  • Husserl, E. (1965). Cartesian meditations. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.

    Google Scholar 

  • Husserl, E. (1970). The crisis of European sciences and transcendental phenomenology. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Husserl, E. (1991). On the phenomenology of the consciousness of internal time (B. Brough, Trans.). Dordtrecht: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Husserl, E. (2001). Analyses concerning passive and active synthesis (A. J. Steinbock, Trans.). Dordrecht: Kluwer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ibn al-ʻArabī. (1978). The Tarjumán al-Ashwáq: A collection of mystical odes (R. A. Nicholson, Trans.). London: Theosophical Publishing House.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, W. (2007). Varieties of religious experience. Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar.

    Google Scholar 

  • James, W. (2015). The energies of men. Vancouver, BC: Read Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jung, C. G. (1996). The psychology of Kundalini yoga: Notes of the seminar given in 1932 by C.G. Jung. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press and Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Katz, S. T. (1983). Mysticism and religious traditions. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Käufer, S., & Chemero, A. (2015). Phenomenology: An introduction. Cambridge and New York: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Konopka, A. (2009). The role of Umwelt in Husserl’s Aufbau and Abbau of the Natur/Geist distinction. Human Studies, 32(3), 313–333. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/25652826.

  • Laude, P. (2019). The silence of sound: Crystallizing nondual metaphysics through the invocation of a Divine Name or mantra. In O. Louchakova-Schwartz (Ed.), The problem of religious experience: Case studies in phenomenology (pp. 39–57). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Louchakova, O.* (2005). Ontopoiesis and union in the prayer of the heart: Contributions to psychotherapy and learning. In A.-T. Tymieniecka (Ed.), Analecta Husserliana: Logos of phenomenology and phenomenology of the logos. Book four: The Logos of Scientific Interrogation. Participating in Nature–Life–Sharing in Life (Vol. 91, pp. 289–311). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Note *Louchakova and Louchakova-Schwartz is the same author.

    Google Scholar 

  • Louchakova-Schwartz, O. (2015). A phenomenological approach to illuminationist philosophy: Suhrawardī’s nūr mujarrad and Husserl’s reduction. Philosophy East and West, 64(2), 1052–1081.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Louchakova-Schwartz, O. (2016). Theophanis the monk and Monoimus the Arab in a phenomenological-cognitive perspective. Cognitive Science of Religion Open Access: Open Theology, 2(1). Accessed online February 2016, from https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2016-0005.

  • Louchakova-Schwartz, O. (2017). Qualia of God: Phenomenological materiality in introspection, with a reference to Advaita Vedanta. Open Theology, 3(1), 257–273. Retrieved 2 January 2019, from https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2017-0021.

  • Louchakova-Schwartz, O. (2018). Intersubjectivity and multiple realities in Zarathushtra’s Gathas. Open Theology, 4(1), 471–488. Retrieved 31 December 2018, from https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2018-0036.

  • Louchakova-Schwartz, O. (2019a). The primeval showing of religious experience. In O. Louchakova-Schwartz (Ed.), The problem of religious experience: Case studies in phenomenology (pp. 27–110). Contributions to Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Louchakova-Schwartz, O. (2019b). The way into transcendental philosophy from the argument in Suhrawardī’s philosophy of illumination. Open Theology, 5(1), 278–298. Retrieved 2 October 2019, from https://doi.org/10.1515/opth-2019-0022.

  • Louchakova-Schwartz, O. (Ed.). (2019c). The problem of religious experience: Case studies in phenomenology. Contributions to Phenomenology. Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luhrmann, T. (2018). The faith frame: Or, belief is easy, faith is hard. Contemporary Pragmatism, 15(3), 302–318. https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-01503003.

  • Luhrmann, T. M., Nusbaum, H., & Thisted, R. (2010). The absorption hypothesis: Learning to hear God in evangelical Christianity. American Anthropologist, 112, 66–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01197.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mickey, S. (2019). Living the epoché: A phenomenological realism of religious experience. In O. Louchakova-Schwartz (Ed.), The problem of religious experience: Case studies in phenomenology (pp. 111–122). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran, D. (2000). Introduction to phenomenology. London and New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morris, H. (n.d.). On the soul. Philosophy, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0031819118000517.

  • Otto, R. (1950). The idea of the holy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Paić, Z. (2018). What does it mean to be an alien? Bernhard Waldenfels and politics of responsive interculturalism. Philosophy and Society, 29(3), 317–474. https://doi.org/10.2298/FID1803355.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Porete, M. (1993). The mirror of simple souls (p. 191). Paulist Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ratcliffe, M. (2012). Phenomenology as a form of empathy. Inquiry, 55(5), 473–495.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richardson, R. D. (2006). William James: In the maelstrom of American modernism: A biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roof, W. C. (1999). Spiritual marketplace: Baby boomers and the remaking of American religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roof, W. C. (2000). Contemporary American religion. New York: Macmillan Reference USA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Roof, W. C., & Silk, M. (2005). Religion and public life in the Pacific region: Fluid identities. Lanham, MD: Altamira Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Searle, J. R. (1997). The mystery of consciousness. New York: New York Review of Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shweder, R., & Bourne, E. J. (1984). Does the concept of the person vary cross-culturally? In R. A. Schweder & R. A. LeVine (Eds.), Culture theory: Essays on mind, self and emotion (pp. 159–199). New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sokolowski, R. (2000). Introduction to phenomenology. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stein, E. (1964). On the problem of empathy. The Hague: Nijhoff.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Steinbock, A. J. (2007). Phenomenology and mysticism: The verticality of religious experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suhrawardi, Y. (1999). The philosophy of illumination = Ḥikmat al-Ishraq: a new critical edition of the text of Hikmat al-Ishraq. Islamic Translation Series (J. Walbridge & H. Ziai, Trans.). Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, E. (1999). Shadow culture: Psychology and spirituality in America from the great awakening to the new age. Washington, DC: Counterpoint.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, M. L. (2011). The theological and the political: On the weight of the world. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, M. L. (2013). Philosophical note: On Jean-Luc Nancy’s “transimmanence”. Retrieved from http://marklewistaylor.net/blog/philosophical-note-on-jean-luc-nancys-transimmanence/.

  • Tymieniecka, A.-T. (1987). Logos and life. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tymieniecka, A.-T. (1991). The human condition within the unity-of-everything-there-is-alive—A challenge to philosophical anthropologies. In A.-T. Tymieniecka (Ed.), Husserlian phenomenology in a new key: Analecta Husserliana (The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research) (Vol. 35). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tymieniecka, A.-T. (2012). The transnatural destiny of the soul. In The fullness of the logos in the key of life: Analecta Husserliana (The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research), (Vol. 111, pp. 153–196). Dordrecht: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Waldenfels, B. (2012, December 13). Responsive ethics. In The Oxford handbook of contemporary phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Retrieved 13 January 2019, from http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199594900.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199594900-e-21.

  • Waldenfels, B., & Steinbock, A. (1990). Experience of the alien in Husserl’s phenomenology. Research in Phenomenology, 20, 19–33. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24654451.

  • Zahavi, D. (2002). Anonymity and first-personal givenness: An attempt at reconciliation. In D. Carr & C. Lotz (Eds.), Subjektivität - Verantwortung – Wahrheit (pp. 75–89). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi, D. (2003). Husserl’s phenomenology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi, D. (2017). Husserl’s legacy: Phenomenology, metaphysics, and transcendental philosophy. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zahavi, D. (2018a). Consciousness, self-consciousness, selfhood: A reply to some critics. The Review of Philosophy and Psychology, published online 8 June 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-018-0403-6.

  • Zahavi, D. (2018b). Getting it quite wrong: Van Manen and Smith on phenomenology. Qualitative Health Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732318817547.

  • Zahavi, D. (2019). Phenomenology: The basics (Original edition). London and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Olga Louchakova-Schwartz

Authors
  1. Olga Louchakova-Schwartz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Olga Louchakova-Schwartz .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Alvin Dueck

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Louchakova-Schwartz, O. (2021). The “Wonder to Behold”: Reflections on Phenomenological Research of Alienic Spirituality. In: Dueck, A. (eds) Indigenous Psychology of Spirituality. Palgrave Studies in Indigenous Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50869-2_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50869-2_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-50868-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-50869-2

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation