Christian Cyclopedia

Philos. term used in various senses. I. Kant* called subjects and events as they are in experience “phenomena.” G. W. F. Hegel* regarded phenomenology as the science in which we come to know mind as it is itself through the ways in which it appears to us.

In the 19th c., phenomenology came to mean descriptive study. In E. Husserl's* philos. it is used for the assertion of the intentional structure of consciousness, the analysis of the ontological ground of that structure, and the classification of the types of intentionality.

M. Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, et al. (see Existentialism) used the term in descriptions of their own work.

The expression “phenomenology of religion” is used in various ways, including (1) that part of phenomenology developed by thinkers beginning with E. Husserl which is devoted to the study of religion; (2) hist. studies that use methods related in a gen. way to those of phenomenology in the study of religions; (3) gen. phenomenological methods applied to the study of the whole spectrum of religious ideas, activities, institutions, customs, and symbols. EL