An Approach to the Analysis of Religious Reality in the Social Phenomenology of Alfred Schütz

Abstract

The article deals with the social phenomenology of Alfred Schütz. Proceeding from the concept of multiple realities, the author describes religious reality, analyses its relationship with everyday, theoretical, and mythological realities, and identifies the areas where they overlap and their specifics. According to Schütz’s concept, reality is understood as something that has a meaning for a human being, and is also consistent and certain for those who are ‘inside’ of it. Realities are structurally similar to one another as they are similar to the reality that is most obvious for all human beings, i.e., the world of everyday life. Religious reality has one of the main signs of genuine reality, that of internal consistency. Religious reality has its own epoché (special ascetic practices) which has similarities with the epoché of the theoretical sphere since neither serve practical objectives, and imply freedom from the transitory issues of everyday life. Just as the theoretical sphere exists independently of the life of a scientist in the physical world and is needed to transfer results to other people, so the religious reality depends on ritual actions and material objects in its striving for the transcendent. Individual, and especially collective, religious practices are performed physically and are inextricably linked with the bodily ritual. The article notes that although Schütz’s phenomenological concept of multiple realities has repeatedly served as a starting point for the development of various social theories, its heuristic potential has not been exhausted. This allows for the further analyzing and development of topical issues such as national identity and its ties with religious tradition in the modern era, when religious reality loses credibility and has many competitors, one of which is the modern myth of the nation. Intersubjective ideas of the nation that are socially confirmed as the self-evident reality of everyday life cause complex emotions and fill human lives, thus displacing religious reality or forcing the latter to come into complex interactions with the national narrative.