• Corpus ID: 198234356

The rhetoric of experience and the study of religion

@article{Sharf2000TheRO,
  title={The rhetoric of experience and the study of religion},
  author={Robert H. Sharf},
  journal={Journal of Consciousness Studies},
  year={2000},
  volume={7}
}

• R. Sharf
• Published 2000
• Philosophy
• Journal of Consciousness Studies

One might expect an essay on the term ‘experience’ to begin with a definition, but immediately we confront a problem. To define something entails situating it in the public sphere, assuming an objective or third-person perspective vis-à-vis the term or concept at issue. The problem with the term ‘experience’, particularly with respect to its use in the study of religion, is that it resists definition by design; as we will see, the term is often used rhetorically to thwart the authority of the ‘objective’ or the ‘empirical,’ and to valorize instead the subjective, the personal, the private. This is in part why the meaning of the term may appear self-evident at first, yet becomes increasingly elusive as one tries to get a fix on it. (Gadamer places experience ‘among the least clarified concepts which we have’, 1975, p. 310.) In spite of (or perhaps owing to) the obscurity of the term, experience as a concept has come to play a pivotal role in the study of religion. The meaning of many religious symbols, scriptures, practices, and institutions is believed to reside in the experiences they elicit in the minds of practitioners. Moreover, a particular mode (or modes) of experience, characterized as ‘religious’, ‘spiritual’, ‘visionary’ or ‘mystical’, is thought to constitute the very essence of religion, such that the origin of a given tradition is often traced to the founder’s initial transcendent encounter, moment of revelation, salvation, or enlightenment. This approach to religious phenomena is not confined to academic discourse alone; many lay adherents feel that the only authentic form of worship or scriptural study is one that leads to a personal experience of its ‘inner truth’. Consequently, scholarship that does not attend to the experiential dimension of religious practice is dismissed by many as reductionistic.