This interaction with The New Phenomenology is largely an appreciative one. I find the book to be a good introduction to this set of thinkers and questions. Therefore, my thoughts here are not critical, but seek to engage in conversation on a key issue: the relationship between phenomenology and theology. This particular issue runs through the book and keeps coming to the surface. One of the primary theses for the book is that the new phenomenology can be taken as a legitimate heir to historical phenomenology when we take phenomenology to be a way of inquiry and not a strict, rigid set of doctrines or assumptions about how phenomena are allowed to appear (Simmons and Benson 2013, 7). In light of the charge that the new phenomenology has actually become theology in the guise of phenomenology, I will examine the book’s argument that the new phenomenologists are still doing phenomenology and ask some questions that arise from preserving the distinction.

Maintaining the Boundary

That a turn to religious issues or questions has taken place in these phenomenologists is clear. The charges that this turn constituted a “theological turn” in phenomenology famously came from Dominique Janicaud who asserted in the early 1990s that the practitioners of this new phenomenology have left behind the realm of immanent phenomenality in their openness to “the invisible, to the Other, to a pure givenness, or to an ‘archi-revelation’” (Janicaud 2000, 17). His primary concern was that these phenomenologists (Levinas, Marion, Chrétien, and Henry) have abandoned the method of a pure phenomenology. The primary goal of phenomenology, according to Janicaud, should be neutrality, but the new phenomenologists assume the existence of what transcends phenomenological method. Thus, they have the “philosophical genealogy” but not the “methodological legitimacy” of phenomenology (Janicaud 2000, 49). Phenomenology is reduced, he asserts, to an inspiration for their work or a springboard from which no longer to work on the level of phenomena but rather in search of divine transcendence (Janicaud 2000, 70).

Janicaud thinks that preserving the rigor of the phenomenological method is in the best interest of phenomenology and other forms of philosophy and theology. He insists that phenomenology and theology are two different disciplines such that they “make two” (Janicaud 2000, 103). Simmons and Benson agree with this fundamental point. Phenomenology and theology should be kept distinct. Yet, they insist that these newer thinkers continue to do phenomenology, albeit in a new register or with a new set of concerns which open up new avenues for phenomenological description of what does not present itself as an object. As Simmons and Benson state, “The new phenomenologists disagree on important points, but they all recognize the excessiveness of phenomenality in any particular phenomenon” (Simmons and Benson 2013, 71–72). New phenomenology, they suggest, is perhaps “heretical” for opening up, if not exploding, the “as such” structure of intentionality and intuition. The central notions of phenomenology—intention and intuition—are interrupted by phenomena that cannot be contained by my intention. We experience in our perception of objects and things a reality that we cannot comprehend—variously named “Life,” “the Other,” “saturated phenomena,” “excess,” or “the invisible.” This excessiveness puts into question the very notion of intention as the consciousness of an individual that controls the world experienced “as such.” The self-enclosed subject is also opened up in favor of an inter-subjectivity that constitutes but also challenges my own identity and understanding. The new phenomenology offers an intersubjective, communal understanding of intentionality.

In this openness to excessive phenomenality, phenomenology has not morphed into theology. It has, however, opened itself to such charges because these philosophers seek to offer phenomenological description of what seems to be beyond concrete sense perceptions. The new phenomenologists, thus, attempt to offer descriptions of the unapparent, life, givenness and phenomenality itself. These descriptions are not necessarily “religious,” but their openness to the excessive and the invisible could easily be understood as sliding into a theological register (Simmons and Benson 2013, 74). The new phenomenologists, Simmons and Benson admit, “draw on seemingly ‘religious’ expressions and conceptuality in the attempt to speak about that which ‘overflows,’ ‘saturates,’ and ‘ruptures’ expression” (Simmons and Benson 2013, 72). They have, in their different ways, been seeking “the ways in which non-intentional intuition might be possible such that there might be things given to consciousness that do not ‘appear’ in any straightforward way” (Simmons and Benson 2013, 74).

Simmons and Benson defend the status of this radical new phenomenology as phenomenology with three key points. First, the motivation and evidence allowed is still phenomenological. What the new phenomenologists describe is given to us, even if in indirect and negative ways, in experience. Insisting that they cannot phenomenologically describe what they seek to describe, due to a prima facie methodological framework, is too limiting. To reject new phenomenology’s attempts to investigate the excessiveness of the Other or Life, or paradox, say, would be to problematically restrict Husserl’s key principle of all principles without warrant. Husserl’s principle of all principles is to allow things that appear to be taken as they give themselves to us. As such, “religious” phenomena, for example, might appear and thus can be described in the indirect ways that seem so similar to negative theology (Simmons and Benson 2013, 132). Phenomenology needs to be open to possible phenomena that might force a change in the methods themselves (Simmons and Benson 2013, 134).

Second, the new phenomenologists do not utilize theological sources as special authorities. Theological and mystical sources do, nonetheless, permeate many of these texts by new phenomenologists. Yet, we are told, the new phenomenologists use theological sources as an archive of resources from which to draw, but that they are careful not to allow this archive to become an authority in their work in ways that might be appropriate to theology, but problematic for philosophy (Simmons and Benson 2013, 105). For example, Chrétien uses sources from Christian thought because the way of speaking he finds in theology “actually illuminates the phenomena” that he is considering (Simmons and Benson 2013, 67; see also 125).

In this way, theological and mystical sources are used because they are helpful in describing what the new phenomenology seeks to make available for philosophical description and analysis. The method of mystical theologians we call negative theology proves helpful to phenomenological analysis of things not readily apparent to us. The way that mystical and theological sources speak of God—viz., indirectly, by negation, by analogy—provided a method that phenomenology needed in order to speak about the phenomena that can only be understood by our understanding of other things. The method of apophatic theology and the kataphatic language of the divine names tradition provide a method for philosophical inquiry of what is unapparent. This tradition in Christian thought opens possibilities for phenomenology (Simmons and Benson 2013, 121).

Third, the new phenomenology limits itself to the rational possibilities of religious phenomena, such as revelation. Especially in the work of Marion, the description of givenness itself, and not simply a phenomenon given to experience and consciousness, opens the possibility of revelation. But, as Simmons and Benson contend, Marion stops at the limits of possibility (Simmons and Benson 2013, 111–13). He does not move to a phenomenological affirmation of the actuality of any given religious revelation or tradition (Simmons and Benson 2013, 134–35). As they explain: “As a new phenomenologist, Marion appreciates the need to stop short of affirming the actuality of the ‘truths that only faith can reach,’ but he rightly allows for phenomenological consideration of such truths as historical phenomena worth taking seriously” (Simmons and Benson 2013, 176). Seeking to demonstrate the possibility of revelation is the work of philosophy of religion. Theology’s work lies elsewhere.

Porous Boundaries

Thus, Simmons and Benson argue that the new phenomenology is a radical phenomenology, but remains phenomenology nonetheless. However, they do recognize that the boundary between phenomenology and theology is a porous one even while seeking to retain the distinction. The same thinker, even within the same work, they admit, seems to cross the border with little problem. Phenomenology and theology may still indeed make two, but the two may exist along a boundary that allows thinkers to pass through more easily than some would like.

Simmons has elsewhere described a problematic “separatism,” according to which phenomenology and theology are completely separated as disciplines, and a similarly problematic strategy of “reconstruction,” which attempts to reconceive of religious language in philosophical categories (Simmons 2010; see also 2011, ch. 7). Janicaud’s separatism limits phenomenology to a worldless neutrality. Yet, a reconstructive approach that doesn’t admit of any actual religious tradition, but only a philosophically palatable version of one is no better. In contrast to these bad options, Simmons offers a “reconstructive separatism” that recognizes the inherent biases and authorities of both phenomenology and theology. Such an approach pays much greater attention to the historical and communal situatedness of those in both disciplines. Theology can use phenomenological method and phenomenology can utilize insights from religious traditions. “The point is . . . that keeping these distinct is not to keep them separate,” Simmons suggests, “but merely to keep open a conversation between different perspectives” (Simmons 2010, 29).

In a similar fashion, Bradley Onishi, one of the other contributors to this symposium, finds in Emmanuel Falque a new generation of the new phenomenology. In Falque we see a tendency not to blur theology and philosophy but to keep them distinct so that they may encounter one another. Falque seeks an encounter between the two that would not convert one or the other, but that could prove mutually enriching. The goal is “a transformative encounter between theology and philosophy that can reorient and enliven both disciplines” (Onishi 2017, 101). For Falque, and Onishi, keeping the distinction between philosophy and theology is important precisely so that a true encounter between the two is possible. Each can expand the view of the other, and ultimately “critique and transform one another” (Onishi, 2017, 104).

As a theologian, I am in general agreement with these interpretations of the relation between philosophy and theology. The difference between the two cannot be that theology is confessionally biased and philosophy remains neutral. The difference cannot be that only theology appeals to authorities while philosophy stays free of such appeals.

As a way of inviting critical conversation then, I will ask a few questions regarding a phenomenological approach to the distinction between phenomenology and theology:

1. Are there limits to a radical/new phenomenology?

If the phenomenological description of the unapparent, givenness, and the rest are radical phenomenology, what ceases to be phenomenology? If Husserl’s rigorous methodology can be expanded to include these transcendent questions, what cannot be included? Janicaud thinks that preserving the rigor of phenomenological method is in the best interest of phenomenology and other forms of philosophy or theology. In the new phenomenology, when does one exceed possibility? Perhaps Janicaud had a helpful point when he said that “Levinas was clearer and more convincing when he spoke frankly of ‘overflowing’ phenomenology’” (Janicaud 2000, 48).

2. Is the new phenomenology, in a sense, inevitable or unavoidable?

The questions of the new phenomenology are the radical extension of the questions of human perception and consciousness. Does phenomenology’s return to the things themselves inevitably push in this direction? I would assert that phenomenology, naturally lends itself to, and perhaps, requires the excessiveness and overflow found in these thinkers. The world itself raises the questions and takes us in this direction. The drive to participate in what is deeper and excessive is the outcome of a deeper look at the things themselves. But, the only way to arrive at what exceeds or grounds the normal phenomena is through the finite and physical themselves.

Janicaud traced the origin of this new approach to phenomenology back to the late Heidegger’s phenomenology of the unapparent. Heidegger began the phenomenological description of what is not seen (Janicaud 2000, 31; see also Simmons and Benson 2013, 27–32). In Janicaud’s negative assessment, Heidegger led the way in a phenomenology that abandoned phenomena. However, the impetus toward seeking what is deeper than the things themselves goes back to Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology—not just after the “turn” but in his early work. Early in Being and Time Heidegger made the programmatic statement—“only as phenomenology is ontology possible” (Heidegger 1962, 60). According to Heidegger, then, ontology can only be done as phenomenology. We cannot speak of Being apart from its appearance in beings. It seems that Heidegger already appropriated for philosophical language and purposes the long theological tradition which contends that, though the essence of God’s very nature is beyond being and therefore beyond understanding, God can only be known through God’s effects. In this respect, Heidegger and the new phenomenologists may have morphed theology into phenomenology.

The unique discourses of negation, excess, and indirect affirmation that we find in Heidegger and more fully developed in the new phenomenology are the heart of the Dionysian tradition. The most profoundly negative theologians have all insisted that God is absolute mystery unavailable to human language and thought because God is beyond being and not a being that can be discussed and thought. Yet every one of these thinkers have also said that God can be named. But, God can only be named through what we do know as finite, physical, historical beings. Dionysius insisted that God is beyond being and thus beyond knowledge. If we are to speak of the goodness that underlies all things we cannot do so directly without reducing God to a being. We “must turn to all of creation” (Dionysius, Divine Names 1.5). Theologians praise the source of what is by every name—and as the Nameless One (DN 1.6). He says further: “As Cause of all and as transcending all, he is rightly nameless and yet has the names of everything that is” (DN 1.7; see also DN 7.3). Seeking to name the excessiveness of God, Dionysius will say: “Since it is the Cause of all beings, we should posit and ascribe to it all the affirmations we make in regard to beings, and more appropriately, we should negate all these affirmations, since it surpasses all being” (Mystical Theology 1.2). This key dual idea is also found throughout the Dionysian tradition, including Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, and Thomas Aquinas.

I am not trying to argue that Heidegger was a theologian, but to ask whether the excess and extension of the new phenomenology are inevitable in the method itself. In the examination of the things themselves—do the things point to a radical excess and transcendence which are unavoidable? Something about the method of examining the phenomena that appear to us leads us to ask the next questions of excess, givenness, or depth. When phenomenology opens itself to these questions the things themselves become signs of a larger horizon.

3. Is question #2 a philosophical or a theological question?

What makes Tillich and Rahner theologians and what makes Marion and Chrétien philosophers? Rahner’s fundamental anthropology is as deeply Heideggerian as the new phenomenology. Is it the other works they do that makes them theologians? Are the questions of the possibility of revelation and excess truly philosophical questions? What about John Macquarrie or Robert Sokolowski? Why is one a theologian and the other a phenomenologist? For that matter what was Thomas Aquinas—which department would he teach in today? Should Justin Martyr have continued to wear his philosopher’s robe? The boundaries between philosophy and theology are often so porous that one can pass between them—even in the same works. At some point porous boundaries may no longer provide boundaries at all—maybe that’s okay.

Jean-Yves Lacoste has asserted that the strong distinction between philosophy and theology as distinct disciplines did not exist until the university when the divisions of disciplines required the distinctions. Lacoste wants to move to something akin to Heidegger’s thinking that can include theology and philosophy working toward a greater cause (Lacoste 2014). Without being able to develop this, I want to ask—does it help to think of philosophy and theology as tasks rather than as distinct disciplines? The definitions of theology and philosophy are based on social location and purposes as much as content. The same people can do both tasks (even in the same books). The task done in philosophy and the task of theology can be distinguished, but often are done by the same thinkers. It seems clear to me that Marion steps beyond the phenomenological in some works like God Without Being. He asserts an understanding of God as Love which he thinks overcomes the onto-theological tradition. Jean-Louis Chrétien clearly does approach the Bible as sacred authority sometimes. (See the essays in Chrétien 2015.) Andrew Prevot has argued that Chrétien’s work is better understood as theology (Prevot 2015). But, when they do phenomenology, it does seem that they are doing a different task and adhering to the limits as explained above.

Thus, ultimately I am convinced that Simmons and Benson are correct, but I still have a puzzling sense that maintaining the distinction that they desire is quite difficult. This difficulty comes from the porosity of boundaries and from something in the nature of the things themselves. When doing theology, I would assert that the world described in the new phenomenology is “sacramental,” but would that be assuming a theological conclusion if I were attempting to do phenomenological description.

Works Cited

Chrétien, Jean-Louis. 2015. Under the Gaze of the Bible. New York: Fordham University Press.

Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper and Row.

Janicaud, Dominique. 2000. “The Theological Turn in French Phenomenology.” In Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate, translated by Bernard G. Prusak. New York: Fordham University Press.: 16-103.

Onishi, Bradley B. 2017. “Philosophy and Theology: Emmanuel Falque and the New Theological Turn.” In Evil, Fallenness, and Finitude, edited by Bruce Ellis Benson and B. Keith Putt. Palgrave Macmillan.: 97-113.

Prevot, Andrew. 2015. “Responsorial Thought: Jean-Louis Chretien’s Distinctive Approach to Theology and Phenomenology.” Heythrop Journal 56: 975–87.

Pseudo-Dionysius. 1987. Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. Translated by Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem. New York: Paulist.

Simmons, J. Aaron. 2010. “Continuing to Look for God in France: On the Relationship between Phenomenology and Theology.” In Words of Life: New Theological Turns in French Phenomenology, edited by Bruce Ellis Benson and Norman Wirzba. New York: Fordham University Press.: 15-29.

———. 2011. God and the Other: Ethics and Politics After the Theological Turn. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Simmons, J. Aaron, and Bruce Ellis Benson. 2013. The New Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

I appreciate J. Aaron Simmons and Bruce Ellis Benson’s (2013) effort to make recent French phenomenology accessible to a wider audience,1 and I respect their effort to defend ways in which figures covered (such as Jean-Luc Marion and Emmanuel Levinas) are indeed doing phenomenology. This defense seems motivated in the face of accusations or even dismissals of such figures as merely religious thinkers (see Janicaud 2000). In what follows, I will develop two constructive considerations about, and one critical challenge to, Simmons and Benson’s project in this book. The first consideration involves imagining an undergraduate introduction to phenomenology course, and seeing to what extent these phenomenologies are “heretical.” The second consideration concerns the criteria for belonging to the new phenomenology trajectory, where I raise other figures who might fit (or not) in it. I close by getting into my critical challenge that the new phenomenologists seem to put phenomenology in the service of their theology or religion rather than use religious archives to deepen their phenomenological impulse (as Simmons and Benson contend). That does not mean, though, that we cannot use them to deeper our phenomenological impulse. Even if these thinkers pan out to be what Robert Wuthnow calls religious “resistors” (2007, ch. 6) or even religious “exclusivists” (Sweetman 2007, ch. 8), future new phenomenologists concerned with philosophy of religion in particular might learn from their shortcomings as well as their strengths.

I. An Introduction to Phenomenology Syllabus

In this section, I want to think through how new or how heretical the new phenomenologists are by exploring options for the development of an undergraduate course in phenomenology. Perhaps some might wonder whether we even should introduce undergraduates to phenomenology. Are such students sufficiently prepared to read Edmund Husserl or Martin Heidegger or Simone de Beauvoir? I agree with Simmons and Benson that we should, because by aiming above their heads we give students something to live up to. What might we see as crucial to include in our imagined course? Which authors or topics would be absolutely necessary (orthodox?), and which would be on the fringe (heretical?), if we could have time to fit them in at all?

Dan Zahavi, in an interview about his recent book on Husserl’s legacy, tries to highlight a core of phenomenology. He thinks that through the rejection of objectivism or scientism, we can focus on our underlying lifeworld as it is composed of elements like intentionality, sociality, embodiment, and temporality (Zahavi 2018). I take talk about a “core” as an acceptable alternative to “essence,” especially since there appears to be a core to new phenomenology (see Simmons and Benson 2013, 52). Let us use Zahavi’s overview as part of our course description or learning objectives. We want students to walk away being able to bracket out our natural or naive attitude, and able to isolate existential structures like sociality and embodiment.

If we are inclined away from having students engage original texts due to inordinate difficulty for readers, I imagine we could consider one of these as our textbook: Dermot Moran’s Introduction to Phenomenology (2004) or David Cerbone’s Understanding Phenomenology (2006). I choose these two in particular because although they both focus on those philosophers that Simmons and Benson call “orthodox” figures, they also include Levinas and Jacques Derrida. That is, there is significant overlap between texts setting out to introduce apparently “orthodox” phenomenology and Simmons and Benson’s text setting out to distinguish “heretical” from “orthodox” phenomenology. I do not want to overemphasize this, though. Derrida and Levinas are only two of the five figures covered by Simmons and Benson. Moreover, Simmons and Benson note that, however phenomenologically heretical any particular thinker may be, they all are indebted to Husserl and Heidegger (Simmons and Benson 2013, chs. 1–2) and that the categories of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” are themselves malleable (Simmons and Benson 2013, 83). My broad point here is that there is significant overlap between Simmons and Benson’s text with the texts of Moran and Cerbone—both in terms of target audience (being introduced to phenomenologists) and in terms of content (the phenomenologists selected to be discussed). The advance Simmons and Benson make seems to be primarily in concentrated focus on phenomenologists’ approaches to religion(s?).

Given Zahavi’s objectives and our textbooks as our core, though, what else might we include? Or, put otherwise, what other interests might we serve in teaching students phenomenology besides exposure to and learning skills shaping the core of phenomenology? As a course designer, a number of considerations occur to me here. I think about the American Philosophical Association’s and Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy’s professional advocacy for diversity, especially gender and ethnic diversity in challenging “the canon.” How can I make my course inclusive or even a critique of sedimented norms? I also think about my own strengths in philosophy of religion or my interests in diversifying philosophy of religion. What religious issues could I include, perhaps as a unit near the end of the semester? I also think about the popularity of business or nursing programs. Could we make some aspects of phenomenology particularly relevant for business or nursing majors?

There are a number of works available, like Simmons and Benson’s text, that show ways phenomenology can productively go. These seem to be more than mere applications of “orthodox” phenomenologies. What about examining Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology (2006) to get at aspects of lived orientations? Or Don Idhe’s Listening and Voice (2007) to look into applied or experimental phenomenology of acoustics? Or Emily Lee’s Living Alterities (2014) to reflect on the intersections of postcolonial and critical race theory with phenomenology? Or Lisa Guenther’s Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives (2013) to examine prisons’ effects on perception? I personally would consider using Sumner Twiss and Walter Conser’s Experience of the Sacred (1992) to look at ways phenomenology is used in the study of comparative religions. Are there any phenomenology of business or nursing articles or books? Given all this, how might we prioritize interests and needs in developing a course and making selections of material to cover and use to engage students? Perhaps we could even use any one of these seemingly “secondary” or “applied” texts as forming the main works students will study for the course, and use “orthodox” content only in supplementary ways (such as excerpts from Husserl). I can imagine having a great course using Simmons and Benson, Ahmed, and Lee’s books as the main materials.

Where might Simmons and Benson’s book fit in with these other options or in an ideal course? Given the other options, part of me thinks it may be better for a philosophy of religion course or a Christian theology course rather than an intro to phenomenology course. In our phenomenology course, it could work as a textbook or as an extension of phenomenology into philosophy of religion. This would be, though, to choose religious themes over, or rather than, an explicit confrontation with sexism and racism. Why ought we choose religious themes, the specific religious themes developed in Simmons and Benson’s text, rather than these? Of course, ideally we would not have to choose. We will be limited in time, though, and thus it seems we will need to prioritize. Perhaps, alternatively, this text may work more fittingly in a philosophy of religion course, especially one that poses challenges to analytic philosophy of religion. Or, perhaps the best fit is in a contemporary theology course. I get cognitive dissonance here because Simmons and Benson’s title suggests this is the new phenomenology, as if those other works are not properly new? Is there a particular necessity to religious themes being the next step in evolutions of phenomenology? I would like to hear how Simmons and Benson envision their text in an intro to phenomenology course or their model of an ideal intro to phenomenology course.

II. Criteria for Belonging in the New Phenomenology Trajectory

I want to raise questions about the criteria for belonging within or contributing to the new phenomenology trajectory. I want to point to a few figures that seem to fit but who are not mentioned in the text. The five main topics over which new phenomenologists pose challenges to classical or orthodox phenomenology are: intentionality, horizonality, the epoche, the phenomenological reduction, and (inter)subjectivity (Simmons and Benson 2013, 13). New phenomenologists seem to give up “the as such” and the “horizon,” though still maintain they are doing phenomenology (Simmons and Benson 2013, 44). These initial features of new phenomenologies seem broad enough to include things like Luce Irigaray’s approach to respect for gendered cultural difference (2007), Ahmed’s approach to sexual and lived orientations (2006), de Beauvoir’s approach to the ambiguity of ethics (2015), or Lee’s work on white supremacy and racism (2014). If these can be included among new phenomenologists (and there is a part of me that thinks they should be, at least with Irigaray, Ahmed, and Lee), then why are they not included already?

What seems particularly distinct about the core of new phenomenology—as Simmons and Benson develop it—is a welcomed engagement with religion in some fashion, an engagement that maintains a difference between phenomenology and theology (Simmons and Benson 2013, 84; 99). In other words, “phenomenology and theology make two” (Simmons and Benson 2013, 105). This seems to explain the absence of works like Lee’s and Ahmed’s, though Irigaray does engage religion regularly. As Simmons and Benson isolate, there are a few criteria for “the new phenomenological philosophy of religion”: (a) a notion of evidence true to the givenness of the given, (b) a refusal to allow religious authorities count as evidence or grounding though religious archives can be drawn on for interpretation, and (c) a limitation where one only affirms the possibility of but not actuality of religious phenomena (Simmons and Benson 2013, 134). What Simmons and Benson see as a distinguishing factor between orthodox and heretical phenomenologies is a more sustained and rigorous engagement with religious possibilities.

It seems to me that works of Pamela Sue Anderson (1998), Paul Tillich (1973, 2009), and Rudolph Bultmann (1989) fit within this framework. I select these three because they do not usually get grouped with Levinas, Marion, Michel Henry, and the others. Allow me to point out a few of these for both Tillich and Anderson. As Simmons and Benson seem to urge, phenomenology raises questions, but religions try to provide answers (Simmons and Benson 2013, 94). One problem new phenomenologists (and others) have with “theology” is that it seems to start with answers, particularly “the” answers (Simmons and Benson 2013, 94). A motive for turning to religion that Jean-Louis Chrétien expresses is that, as he thinks, “philosophy poses questions to which it cannot respond in an ultimate fashion” (cited in Simmons and Benson 2013, 107). That is, philosophy poses ultimate questions, but apparently does not have the resources to provide ultimate answers.

Tillich’s theological method of correlation, for example, maps onto this recurrent theme in new phenomenology that philosophy poses questions whereas religions provide answers. But for Tillich, this art of translating religious symbols into fitting responses to philosophically conceptualized questions precisely is theology. Religious symbols, for Tillich, give rise to thought—insofar as symbols are interpreted fittingly in light of philosophical questions.2 (While Tillich primarily worked in Christian theology, I find it somewhat relieving that some of his works engage multiple religions and culture more broadly.) Can/may Tillich be understood as a new phenomenologist? Or, perhaps inversely, can Tillich’s conception of theology help us see that new phenomenologists are doing theology, at least in this Tillichian version of it? I would like to hear why or why not.

Anderson, too, works on a rigorous formulation of what it takes to interpret religious symbols, taking care to resist misogynistic constructions of rationality (see Dickman 2018). How can one be true to the givenness of the given without critical self-consciousness about internalized effects of patriarchy, on both women and men? Anderson uses a Kantian model in particular to resist all positing of actual religious metaphysical entities, instead explaining ways religious symbols concretize regulative ideals of practical reason or possibilities for being in the world. In these ways and more, Anderson seems to fit squarely within new phenomenology’s trajectory. Are there nonarbitrary principles for her having been excluded? I would like to hear why or why not to include Anderson. Perhaps instead this can show us directions for new projects, where we might learn something new about Anderson by interpreting her work in light of other new phenomenologists.

III. “The New Phenomenology” Seems to Subordinate Phenomenology to Religious Symbols

In this last section, I want to develop a critical challenge to what strikes me as a peculiar narrowness affecting the new phenomenology trajectory as Simmons and Benson advance it so far. I am not convinced (yet) that the select new phenomenologists merely use religion (and theology) to illuminate or deepen their phenomenological impulse in the direction of philosophy of religion (see Simmons and Benson 2013, 74; see also 66 and 103–4). As Peter Jonkers writes, the point of contention is that “[the new phenomenologists’] use of religious ideas and concepts is not so much for the sake of religion as such, but is primarily motivated by their philosophical interest” (cited in Simmons and Benson 2013, 103). Levinas is particularly adamant about separating religion and philosophy, where he says to practice religion is not to be a thinker but that religious material (such as scriptural verses) can and must be examined and justified phenomenologically (Simmons and Benson 2013, 106).3 As Simmons and Benson emphasize, religion has a lot to offer philosophy, but phenomenology cannot appeal to religious sources as philosophically authoritative (Simmons and Benson 2013, 106). Of course, no one should be surprised that biblical matters have a place among “traditions of thought” that new phenomenologists study and critically examine in a phenomenological perspective (Simmons and Benson 2013, 110). We have all inherited a world where various religious myths have arisen within and shaped cultures. It only makes sense that some of us would study it explicitly (academically?4). As Simmons and Benson point out, Levinas and Chrétien in particular both affirm approaching religious traditions and theological archives as objects of phenomenological inquiry and possible inspirations for phenomenology itself (Simmons and Benson 2013, 110). (All of this seems like fitting descriptions of the selected new phenomenologists to me, and I emphasize it to bring out the echo of Tillich’s method of correlation.)

However, my basic question is why are there no thinkers from other religions or, really, why do none of these thinkers make use of the vast multitude of religious symbols across the globe if their impulse is foremost to deepen their phenomenological impulse? This may sound like a lament, but I intend it more as an accusation to indicate a narrowness in their vision. It strikes me as misleading to say that the new phenomenologists are “strikingly unified” on the relation(s) between phenomenology and religion “given that new phenomenology includes a diverse set of Christians (Marion, Chrétien, and Henry), an explicitly religious Jew (Levinas), and a Jew who ‘rightly passes as an atheist’ (Derrida)” (Simmons and Benson 2013, 102, my emphasis). This list does not strike me as that diverse. Or, put another way, I suspect a Neo-Confucian might not be able to tell them apart—not due to incompetence but due to the differences being minimal in a broader context. Indeed, this is one of Levinas’s expressed fears about an imminent global melting pot. He states:

Surely the rise of the countless masses of Asiatic and underdeveloped peoples threatens this new-found authenticity [of Jewish universalism]? On to the world stage come peoples and civilizations who no longer refer to our Sacred History, for whom Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob no longer mean anything. . . . Under the greedy eyes of these countless hordes . . . the Jews and Christians are pushed to the margins of history, and soon no one will bother any more to differentiate between [them] (1997, 165).

What? Or consider this other statement he makes: “I often say, though it’s a dangerous thing to say publicly, that humanity consists of the Bible and the Greeks. All the rest can be translated: all the rest—all the exotic—is dance” (Mortley 1991, 18). Presumably, this includes figures from the great Islamic philosopher Seyyed Hossein Nasr to the classical Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna to all the Yoruba practices and narratives concerning Olodumare. These statements from Levinas give expression to what seems to me to be implicit in the new phenomenology trajectory as it is developed and practiced so far—an intrinsic resisting of religious diversity where they put blinders on, and an unwarranted exclusivism about their own religion where they see their own religion as so right that others are not even worth considering. Perhaps this might seem unfair to them.

My point here is twofold. First, a part of hermeneutically self-aware phenomenology is to realize that the other breaks open one’s ego-centeredness (see Simmons and Benson 2013, 69), yet—at least on the surface—only one’s own purported religious tradition is considered relevant in seeking to deepen one’s phenomenological impulse here. Are new phenomenologists seeking out engagement with religious others? It does not appear so. Thich Nhat Hanh, as one of the most approachable representatives of Buddhism, was only a drive away for some of these thinkers. Is he just dancing? Despite seeming to be champions of otherness, or even of decentering stability, these thinkers do not seem particularly engaged with religious others. It is not as if we live in hermetically sealed religious communities and traditions. There is so much cultural exchange, one seems to have deliberately to restrict or close oneself off to others to not think with religious others and allow some elements to take influence in one’s religious experience and philosophical reflection. At the very least, the Christian and Jewish phenomenologists ought to be sufficiently familiar with Islamic thought since it formed a crucial moment in their own traditions—such as with Ibn Rushd’s influence on Aquinas and Spinoza.

This raises my second and perhaps more critically suspicious point: because they are not making use of conveniently available resources to deepen their phenomenological impulse, it then seems that their phenomenological impulse is merely in the service of their religion. I am particularly concerned about this with my investment in and commitment to the field of religious studies. As Max Muller said in his Introduction to the Science of Religion, “He who knows only one religion, knows none” (1873, 16).5 Part of the issue here is that if this is so, then to the degree that new phenomenologists do not engage with religions other than their own, then I am inclined to say they do not really know their own religion as a religion. That is, they cannot see their religious traditions and theological resources merely as archives for phenomenological imagination—even if they say that is what they are doing. They are said to follow their beloved wherever it may lead (Simmons and Benson 2013, 101). Presumably phenomenology is supposed to be their beloved, but it seems more so that their particular religion is their beloved. Why does it seem that their beloved never leads into, say, chanting Namo Amituofo to call out Amitabha’s name to be reborn in his pure land? How do they know ahead of time that the depth of their phenomenological impulse cannot be most fittingly expressed through symbols from Scientology or Shia Islam? Perhaps one really cannot serve two masters.

What this indicates to me is a lack of imagination—in the specific sense of a lack of imaginative variations to get at the depth or heart or “essence” of their subject matters. In this way, I want to critically challenge whether the new phenomenology is “phenomenology” (orthodox?). The point is that they seem deficient in imaginative variations needed for eidetic reductions. If our imaginative sets only include Christian (and maybe Jewish) symbols, then have we sufficiently varied things to be doing phenomenology at all? I realize they are working from within their embodied religious communities and traditions, but this seems to misrecognize both diversity within every community as well as exposure to multiple religious traditions in our everyday lifeworld. It seems to misrecognize that the very discourse of “traditions” is not essentialist, that traditions are composed of dynamics of both sedimentation and innovation (Dickman 2018). And in this way they continuously graft with, suture together, contrast with, and dissolve in light of alternative religious phenomena. It also comes off as a disingenuous use of embodiment as an excuse rather than as an opening and opportunity to seek out others.

I hope these considerations and the challenge open up to a next step in broadening our conception of where all phenomenology can still go.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. 2006. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Anderson, Pamela Sue. 1998. Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell.

Beauvoir, Simone de. 2015. Ethics of Ambiguity. New York: Philosophical Library / Open Road.

Bultmann, Rudolph. 1989. New Testament & Mythology: And Other Basic Writings. Edited and translated by S. Ogden. Grand Rapids: Fortress.

Cerbone, David R. 2006. Understanding Phenomenology. Durham, UK: Acumen.

Dickman, Nathan. 2018. “Feminisms and Challenges to Institutionalized Philosophy of Religion.” Religions 9.4: 113. http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/9/4/113.

Guenther, Lisa. 2013. Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Idhe, Don. 2007. Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound. 2nd ed. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Irigaray, Luce. 2007. Je, Tu, Nous: Toward a Culture of Difference. Translated by A. Martin. Routledge Classics.

Janicaud, Dominique. 2000. “The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology.” In Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate, by Dominique Janicaud et al. New York: Fordham University Press.

Lee, Emily, ed. 2014. Living Alterities: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and Race. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Levinas, Emmanuel. 1997. “Jewish Thought Today.” In Difficult Freedom: Essays in Judaism, translated by Sean Hand. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Moran, Dermot. 2004. Introduction to Phenomenology. New York: Routledge.

Mortley, Raoul. 1991. French Philosophers in Conversation. New York: Routledge.

Müller, Max. 1873. Introduction to the Science of Religion. London: Longman, Green.

Ricoeur, Paul. 1998. Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. New York: Columbia University Press.

———. 2010. “Religious Belief.” In A Passion for the Possible, edited by B. Treanor and H. Venema. New York: Fordham University Press.

Simmons, J. Aaron, and Bruce Ellis Benson. 2013. The New Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction. New York: Bloomsbury.

Sweetman, Brendan. 2007. Religion: Key Concepts in Philosophy. New York: Continuum.

Tillich, Paul. 2009. Dynamics of Faith. New York: HaperOne.

———. 1973. Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Twiss, Sumner B., and Walter H. Conser Jr. 1992. Experience of the Sacred: Readings in the Phenomenology of Religion. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.

Wuthnow, Robert. 2007. America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Zahavi, Dan. 2018. “Phenomenology: Husserl’s Legacy.” Interview by Richard Marshall. 3:AM Magazine, January 27, 2018. http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/phenomenology-husserls-legacy/.

In The New Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction, the authors J. Aaron Simmons and Bruce Ellis Benson attempt to give a shape to “a living philosophy,” a philosophy that “continues to develop” (Simmons and Benson 2013, 1). They compare the work they are doing in defining phenomenology to the work that Robert Talisse and Scott Aikin have done to give a shape to a similarly ever-changing contemporary philosophy: pragmatism. Simmons and Benson call the discipline that they are shaping “new phenomenology” (1). The New Phenomenology, as a text, is very precisely meant to be widening a reader’s understanding of what counts as phenomenology, which is, I would posit, a worthwhile goal for any specific academic discipline. I have never been particularly impressed with the narrow division of disciplines that seem to define, and sometimes give credence to, so much of academia and academic inquiry. Yet, in pursuing this goal, the text raises a question that any text which is attempting to make a discipline more inclusive will raise: what should be excluded from the broadened category? In this case we could wonder: What is not phenomenology? I propose that this question might become more difficult to find a conclusive response to when the style of the text being perused for an answer is one that is itself a study in inclusivity and generosity. Indeed, these qualities, which I claim are not necessarily common to philosophical texts, could give us the feeling that we may squeeze almost any philosophical problem under the heading of “new phenomenology.” Thus, in order to stay clear throughout my own response to the text, and precisely because I want to honor Simmons and Benson’s achievement of both widening the bounds of the discipline while also saying something substantive about what can be counted as phenomenology, I will shape my response to their work by looking at the three main theses for which they argue.

The first of these theses is that “new phenomenology can be legitimately considered an heir to historical phenomenology when understood as a general path of inquiry into phenomenality, rather than a rigid perspective that holds a set of stable doctrines regarding phenomenality and the modes in which particular phenomena appear” (7). When reading this I immediately tried to imagine a phenomenology that would somehow be separate, or be working to actively distance itself, from its historical background. At first blush, it seems to me that any particular study of the phenomenal world would be influenced by those concepts written into history through the pen of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Indeed, my own knowledge of the bounds of what could and should be considered phenomenology, before reading this book, relied heavily on the principles of that more standard historical definition of phenomenon. Simmons and Benson spell out the principles that shape Husserl’s approach to phenomenology in the first chapter of the book. Specifically, they list (1) intentionality, (2) horizontality, (3) the epoche, (4) the phenomenological reduction, and (5) subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Using these tools of study, we get a phenomenology that “is the attempt to make sense—by way of description and analysis—of experiences as they are actually experienced” (15). Simmons and Benson explain further that Husserl’s goal was “to get beyond all assumptions, presuppositions, theoretical frameworks, and metaphysical commitments such that we move ‘back to the things themselves!’” (16). Husserl’s phenomenological methodology looks as though it might set very clear limits on what we should be able to consider as objects of study. Thus, in order to expand what objects are possible for study using the lens of phenomenology, and have a clear way of thinking about the limits for this expansion, the authors mark what ends up being a very important distinction between phenomenon and phenomenality (mentioned in the first thesis).

At first glance the introduction of phenomenality as a way to locate objects of study for the phenomenologist seems like a fairly stark departure from the traditional discipline. By phenomenality Simmons and Benson mean “the conditions of presentation, giveness, appearance, and intuition that would then get concretized in a particular phenomenon” (7). In other words, adding and distinguishing phenomenality from phenomenon allows for the study of those phenomena that would standardly be included in anyone’s understanding of the category (for example, a pencil or a cup). But phenomenality as a distinct category makes room for those more “exceptionally complicated” phenomena, such as “the phenomenal possibilities presented in the encounter with others, God, the invisible, the impossible, and such abstract notions as life, difference, and even giveness itself” (7). Simmons and Benson use the concept of phenomenality to connect the phenomenological method of Husserl and Heidegger, who are considered phenomenologists by almost anyone interested in the field, with the more recent and contentiously considered phenomenologists such as Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, among others. The authors show the ways that phenomenality itself has played a central role in each thinker’s philosophical perspective.

Phenomenality has a role to play in both secular and religious forms of phenomenology, and the authors are interested in making the connection between the concept itself and what can be called the “theological turn” in phenomenology. Despite this desire, Simmons and Benson are also clearly keen to argue against those scholars who would try to reduce a “new phenomenology” to such a “turn.” Yet, as a reader who has less of a background in the specific historical context of the theological turn phenomenology has been said to take, I found it helpful to read in the text both what this turn did to the field and what we might think the implications of this turn for phenomenology are more broadly.

The limited work that I have done in philosophy of religion and/or theology has centered on the mystics. My interest in the mystics and those texts that spring from mystical experiences was first sparked when I was looking at the courses that I could take to fulfill a graduate requirement. I was disappointed at the lack of female representation in the course offerings, so I designed my own course that would focus on female medieval mystics with the help of Christina Gschwandtner and a fellow graduate student. I found the texts themselves beautiful to read, but as a philosopher I also immediately felt skeptical of any attempt at interrogation, or perhaps more generously, interpretation, of mystical texts using the philosophical lens. The intuition that there was something violent about viewing the mystics through the philosophical lens lead me to argue that mystical texts, and particularly those based on visions, should be understood as the recorded manifestation of a physical or embodied experience and not the sort of thing that can open up new phenomenological (or existential for that matter) possibilities for their readers. I claim that those texts which are more clearly self-reflective are more open to philosophical interpretation, but most should not be looked at through such a lens. To illustrate my point here, it is helpful to look at two books from St. Teresa: The Book of Her Life and The Interior Castle. I believe that The Book of Her Life, which is a text that reads as a kind of autobiography, is more open to philosophical interpretation than The Interior Castle. The material in The Book of Her Life is recorded as an explication mediated by the author herself after some time has passed, and does not have an explicitly revelatory goal. In contrast, the content of The Interior Castle is explicitly the experiencing mystic’s own vision from and of God. In The Interior Castle Teresa attempts to stay as true to what is an embodied and relational experience as possible, but acknowledges that this can never be as precise as she or we might wish. Thus, if a reader tries to make the kind of interpretive claims about the text that a philosopher is likely to make he or she also makes a claim about the veracity of the mystical experience itself, whether or not this is the intention. But Simmons and Benson’s decision to underscore phenomenality in the attempt to define a new phenomenology gives me pause on these previously drawn conclusions. Perhaps by studying the texts that are meant to be recordings of lived experiences as objects with phenomenality there is something philosophical to gain (though I will admit that I still feel unsure of what the philosophical gain will be).

The second thesis that the authors attempt to prove throughout the book is that “new phenomenology should be weighed and considered in light of a variety of contemporary philosophical problems” (7). In general, Simmons and Benson focus on those problems that are raised by philosophy of religion and postmodern theology. The concept of phenomenality allows for new answers to questions that philosophy of religion has historically responded to more dogmatically. Yet, in line with their work to show that phenomenality is not just helpful for studying religious or theological content, Simmons and Benson contend that phenomenology is a discipline which can open up and help us explore many kinds of questions that philosophers spend their lives unpacking.

As I was reading I thought about my own frustrations with classical phenomenology. Yes, there might be something appealing, ideally and institutionally, about being able to talk about a thing itself, removed from the existential baggage that imbues our world and daily interactions with meaning. Yet, I remain unconvinced that it is ever really possible to study an object or experience in this way. And, even if it is possible, I still have serious questions about why any one person would wish to engage in such a practice. If we as subjects are always taking in information through a particular existential lens, then it is unclear what the benefits are of knowing about something free from that lens. Indeed, attempting to study things as if in a vacuum (which is one uncharitable way I think we might describe what phenomenology asks us to do) is what I would consider to be a practice for the imagination. By this I mean that those tools from Husserl listed above, are best for engaging in a kind of thought experiment, and are not useful in our interactions with reality. Yet, by the end of the book, I was starting to be convinced that it might be possible, and even useful, to view the existential lens itself as something with phenomenality. In other words, I began to believe that we might be able to isolate aspects of our existential lens using the tools of phenomenology, and this would help us make sense of how any object strikes us. In a paper for the APA Eastern Division meeting (2018), titled “Thinning the Veil: Rawls, Mills, and Identity,” I argued that identity itself is something that can only be discussed as enmeshed in a life with a variety of identity feature strands, yet in reading The New Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction I began to see possibilities for tools to help us parse the features as distinct particulate.

In thinking through the problematic relationship between the phenomenal gaze and our thrown existential experiences, I find it helpful to turn to the last chapter of the book, in which Simmons and Benson explore how ethics and normativity can fit into and even arise from the phenomenological method. Heidegger is a prime example of a thinker who sees the phenomenality in intersubjective relations. This phenomenality can sometimes be extrapolated into a normative or ethical framework, but it does not have to be. In my own thinking and work, I have often used Heidegger’s distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity as a mental tool for dividing between what we might want to achieve, and the average experience of being-in-the-world. Yet, if one is reading Heidegger carefully enough it should be clear that authenticity does not “signal how Dasein ought to be” (204). Instead “authenticity/inauthenticity is a pairing that names the phenomenal distinctiveness of Dasein’s ontological status” (204). This is a clear example of how we might use phenomenology to look at two existential positions, which do not in themselves give us normativity or ethics. In order to find in Heidegger resources for normative judgment, Benson and Simmons direct us to Heidegger’s discussion of “taking care.” In his analysis of what we do when we “take care” Heidegger distinguishes between “leaping-in” and “leaping-ahead.” According to Simmons and Benson, “leaping-in for the other takes away the other’s freedom and decision by taking care of the issue and handing it over as finished and completed” (206). In contrast, leaping-ahead is when we help someone else see possibilities for action, allowing the helped subject to find a solution for him or herself. These are at first blush observations of a kind of phenomenality which exists in different intersubjective relations. But the distinction also gives rise to some kind of normative claims about the best way to relate to those who need our help.

There is one final point about how the existential relates to the phenomenal, which stands out as important in thinking about a new phenomenology. I contend that one reason to be critical of a phenomenology that studies, and therefore allows for, religious content is the existential baggage it potentially carries. Someone who is interested in examining such phenomena is likely coming from a precise existential position—that of one who believes. Indeed, to view certain phenomena or entities with phenomenality as being present, as possible objects of study, requires a specific perspective that is already influenced by belief. But, through the historical lens that the authors used, I began to get a sense that a new phenomenology could, and perhaps should, be more aware of the ways in which the approach itself and the data that springs from it is inevitably from a perspective, which is perhaps more honest than any attempt to have a view from nowhere.

The third thesis that the authors try to prove is that “new phenomenology can be productively put into conversation with other contemporary philosophical perspectives regardless of whether those perspectives are traditionally associated with ‘continental’ philosophy” (8). This third thesis may indeed be the most contentious of the set. Although it is only specifically argued for in the latter chapters, I see the authors’ goal throughout to be one of inclusivity. As mentioned at the beginning of this response, new phenomenology is meant to cut across the fabricated disciplines of philosophical inquiry. The phenomenological method can be applied to both religious and irreligious phenomena. The authors also discuss some very specific ways that phenomenology might be used as a bridge between continental philosophy of religion and analytic philosophy of religion. In order to illustrate how best to combine ideas from the two schools of religious thought Simmons and Benson use an analogy centered on “mashup” music, comparing a good blend of styles in music to that which could occur between the two styles of religious philosophy. They explain that in order to be successful, or aesthetically pleasing, a “mashup” must have two clear and distinct musical themes running through it. It will not be counted as successful if one musical theme overtakes the other. The same will be true of analytic and continental philosophies of religion. Like Simmons and Benson, I am not a fan of the divide between continental and analytic philosophy, believing that dividing the discipline in this way does more damage to philosophical, analytic, and creative possibilities than just about anything else. I feel hopeful that their analysis of the ways new phenomenology might be able to help bridge these two schools of religious philosophy could be applied to the more general analytic/continental debate. This final thesis, and the work done to prove it, is a perfect example of the generosity and inclusivity present in the text itself.

Works Cited

Simmons, J. Aaron, and Bruce Ellis Benson. 2013. The New Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction. London: Bloomsbury.

Aaron Simmons’s work has pushed the boundaries of philosophy and religion, while finding ways to bring them into unexpected conversation, in unanticipated ways. Having the opportunity to engage his work is especially meaningful to me because it was at the 2015 SECSOR meeting in Nasvhille where I first met Aaron in person. After our panel, we went to a café with a few others and spoke for three or four hours about the state of philosophy of religion, its relationship to theology, and to the academic study of religion. During the first leg of what has become an ongoing, and seemingly unending, conversation about philosophy of religion, Aaron told me that despite our disagreements on the nature and parameters of the discipline, I had helped add a fourth term to what I’ll call in this paper his “mashup model.” In ways manifest in his introduction to the special journal issue on mashup philosophy (Simmons 2015) and in the article “On Shared Hopes” in response to Nick Trakakis (Simmons 2014), he had already zeroed in on three constitutive components for his approach to philosophy of religion: continental philosophy, analytic philosophy, and theology. During that first conversation in Nashville he mentioned that there would be a time when it would become necessary to think how religious studies fits into that framework. While The New Phenomenology is an important and challenging work, I want to take this opportunity to make Aaron make good on his promise by reflecting on how religious studies might come to play in the mashup model. After all, the phenomenological approach he traces and advocates for in The New Phenomenology is an important building block for mashup philosophy.

In addition to the four components (analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, theology, religious studies) named above, I want to bring in a fifth conversation partner, or collaborator: literature. More specifically, I want to use the nonfiction genre of the braided essay to think about the limits and scope of Simmons’s methodology.

Let me begin by sketching what I take to be the elements and goals of the mashup model.

Elements of Simmons’s Mashup Model

1. The refusal to recognize the rigidity of genres. (Simmons 2014, 691)
2. A reconstructive separatism. (Simmons 2014, 692). Simmons argues for the separation of philosophy and theology based on authority structure, rather than content. That is, the philosopher may appeal to religious phenomena such as scripture, but the appeal will stem from a different authority structure than it would in a church community. More importantly, the goal of the philosopher, it seems, is not to defend, legitimate, or develop a religious community through theology, but to draw on certain religious phenomena to develop a philosophical position on themes such as revelation, transcendence, and evil. This position recognizes that no intellectual departure point is objective: “This is not to assume that there is a neutral starting point for philosophical reflection, but simply to recognize that there are many different non-neutral starting points—all of which bring with them both some baggage and also some important possibilities” (Simmons 2014, 700).

Goals of Simmons’s Mashup Model (see Simmons 2015, 204–7):

1. To make something new (while remaining old).
2. To develop a gateway to alterity by combining the logical with the poetic, which means drawing on different genres.
3. To avoid the reinforcement of hegemonic styles, methods, and histories through philosophical diversity.
4. To work within the discursive standards of a community in order to open the community to new discursive possibilities.

I am a philosopher of religion whose primary location is in religious studies. As such, I was hired to teach religion. My office is next to religion scholars. My degree says “religious studies.” In order to understand how my work fits into that context, I’ve thought quite a bit about what philosophy of religion contributes to the academic study of religion. In terms of Simmons’s mashup model, my primary interest is in how the types of encounter Simmons stages between the analytic and continental traditions might look between philosophy and religious studies.

In my recent book, The Sacrality of the Secular (2018), I employ what Tyler Roberts calls a model of “encounter,” wherein the scholar of religion remakes and recreates his or her account of the human, world, or cosmos, through the religious phenomena he or she studies. In his 2013 monograph, Encountering Religion, Roberts outlines a humanistic approach to the study of religion wherein “the researcher exposes his or her world, and therefore his or her questions, expectations, ideals, and analytical maps and models, to the world of the religious subject, with the idea that this encounter might transform the perspective of the researcher” (Roberts 2013, 107). For Roberts, the humanities are more than the study of human beings for the sake of knowledge; they constitute a set of scholarly practices aimed at knowledge of life:

This constructive activity is also studied by social scientists, but in the humanities one studies it in terms of what Geoffrey Harpham describes as the “distinctively human capacity to imagine, to interpret, and to represent human experience,” that is, in terms of reflective human grappling, intentionally, with what matters. (Roberts 2013, 89–90)

Following Roberts, I want to suggest that one side of the relationship between continental philosophy and religion, wherein secular thinkers engaging religious texts, figures, and events, can be read as a response to unsatisfying and inaccurate visions of secularity by way of engagement with religious phenomena. In this sense, philosophy’s “turn” to religion is not a return to religion. Secular thought does not capitulate to religion in order to have the meaning of life restored. Rather, in the cases of thinkers such as Roberts religious phenomena reshape, enlarge, or deconstruct secular understandings of, as Bataille would say, “all which is.” As a result of these encounters, philosophers can develop both compelling interpretations of religious phenomena and generous and vibrant accounts of the secular. The goal is neither to arrive at the substance of religion (a trap many religion scholars have fallen into), nor to protect religion by positing an irreducible realm of the sacred (as in the phenomenological tradition cultivated by Mircea Eliade et al.). Rather, the goal is to philosophize with religion as a means for inheriting, creating, and mediating visions of the human, world, and cosmos.

Since completing The Sacrality of the Secular, I’ve come to see Roberts’s model of encounter as a methodological cousin to Simmons’s mashup model. I see both as bearing resemblances to what is known in the literary world as the “braided essay.” In recent decades the genre of memoir has come to the fore in the literary world. In a culture hungry for authenticity and connection, memoir seems to provide a unique window into the lived experiences of other human beings. Sometimes memoir is compelling because it relays an extraordinary tale—the harrowing survival of a POW or the long journey of a refugee. Often, however, it zeroes in on the often missed significances and meanings of ordinary moments—that is, it attends to the dazzlingly quotidian bits that form human life.

Part of the memoir craze has been the development of the braided essay, in which an author braids together two or more themes and narratives. One might, for example, read about a coming-of-age story braided with reflection on the extinction of bees, or reflections on natality braided together with reflection on the history of wolves. The goal, as Sarah Minor says, is to provide a richer nonfiction account than is possible in linear storytelling or mere reporting:

But the real beauty of a successful braid is how the “threads” combine thematically to form a more complete and pliable piece of nonfiction. A literary braid also makes the quiet argument that all stories are perhaps bound this way, in handfuls that don’t abide by chronological time. For me, the braided form is also dropping hints that some stories can only be written this way. (Minor 2017)

In my mind, Simmons’s mashup model and Roberts’s model of encounter push this statement even further: they make the argument that all truth is bound up this way, in braided forms, various traditions, and seemingly disparate sources. Philosophy is not about weeding out those elements in order to arrive at the Truth, capital T. It aims, as any good mashup does, at accounting for the truth in the most creative, and if necessary, unexpected of ways.

To take this a step further, Nicole Walker (2016) envisions the braided essay as “a chalkboard onto which we scrape our ontological questions,” so as to shape and reshape our conceptions of self and world. She makes the braided essay almost sound like phenomenology, which makes me wonder about how we might arrive at the truth that mashup philosophy of religion promises.

With this thought in mind, it seems to me that the goals of Simmons’s mashup model and my own approach are similar. Like Simmons, my goal is to avoid the rigidity of genres, recognize the distinction of philosophy and religion while creating avenues for mutually fecund encounters, to open new discursive possibilities in philosophy and religion, and to combine the logical and the poetic. Moreover, it seems that the example of the braided essay suggests that the mashup model may be a door to even wider forms of encounter than perhaps Simmons first envisioned.

This leaves me with two related questions.

1. What are the rules for religious phenomena in the mashup model? Reconstructive separatism provides a carefully constructed framework for philosophers to reference scripture, revelation, etc. What if the philosopher wants to reference Hindu myth, Buddhist cosmology, or witchcraft? What are the criteria for philosophy’s collaborations with religion?
2. Is it possible to create a mashup with genres other than philosophy and religion? The examples of mashups Simmons provides are constructed from what can be broadly called rock music and the hip-hop tradition writ large—two genres often looked down upon by classicists as noise rather than music. Will philosophy take the same stance if, for instance, one suggests that a mashup between philosophy and literature may result in new discursive possibilities, the avoidance of hegemony, and a pathway to alterity? After all, what is more emblematic of combining the poetic with the logical than combining the poetic, or literary, with the logical, or philosophical?

Works Cited

Minor, Sarah. 2017. “What Quilting and Embroidery Can Teach Us about Narrative Form.” LitHub, September 22. https://lithub.com/what-quilting-and-embroidery-can-teach-us-about-narrative-form/.

Onishi, Bradley B. 2018. The Sacrality of the Secular: Postmodern Philosophy of Religion. New York: Columbia University Press.

Simmons, J. Aaron. 2014. “On Shared Hopes for (Mashup) Philosophy of Religion: A Reply to Trakakis.” Heythrop Journal 55.4 (2014) 691–710. Published with responses from Nick Trakakis and Merold Westphal.

———. 2015. “Introduction: The Dialogical Promise of Mashups.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, special issue on Mashup Philosophy of Religion, edited by J. Aaron Simmons, 14.2 (2015) 204–10.

Walker, Nicole. 2016. “The Braided Essay as Social Justice Action.” Creative Nonfiction 64. https://www.creativenonfiction.org/online-reading/braided-essay-social-justice-action.