Abstract
Adolf Reinach (1883–1917) and Gerda Walther (1897–1977) were two figures of the early movement who gave phenomenological description to mystical and uncanny experiences; and, while the phenomenological approach each employs is slightly different, both commit to phenomenological description of the experiences of God and the uncanny, including the foreseeing of one’s death, in a manner that is open-minded and unprejudiced. In this chapter I will discuss the experiences of foreseeing and of God for both Reinach and Walther. I will rely on their first-hand accounts of such experiences, utilizing the battlefield notes of Reinach from WWI found in his Sämtliche Werke and the mystical experience Walther describes having in 1918 in her book Zum Anderen Ufer. In the end it will become clear that phenomenology is an approach for all kinds of experiences, even those that are most unconventional, and thus the potential for further and fresh research is great.
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Notes
- 1.
Adolf Reinach, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Karl Schuhmann and Barry Smith (Munich: Philosophia Verlag, 1989).
- 2.
Gerda Walther, Zum Anderen Ufer (Bonn: Otto Reichl Verlag, 1960).
- 3.
Reinhold Smid, “An Early Interpretation of Husserl’s Phenomenology: Johannes Daubert and the ‘Logical Investigations’,” in Husserl Studies 2: 267–290 (1985).
- 4.
Adolf Reinach, “Concerning Phenomenology.” In J. Crosby (ed.), The A Priori Foundations of Civil Law: Along with Lecture, “Concerning Phenomenology”, trans. by Dallas Willard (Heusenstamm: Ontos Verlag, 2010), 147.
- 5.
Eugen Fink, “The Problem of the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl,” in A priori and World: European Contributions to Husserlian Phenomenology (Boston: Kluwer, 1981), 48.
- 6.
Lucinda Ann Vandervort Brettler, “The phenomenology of Adolf Reinach: chapters in the theory of knowledge and legal philosophy.” Ph.D. dissertation, McGill University, 1973, 116.
- 7.
Herbert Spiegelberg, The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction, 3rd revised and enlarged edn. (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994), 175.
- 8.
Gerda Walther, Zum Anderen Ufer, 223.
- 9.
Gerda Walther, Zum Anderen Ufer, 224.
- 10.
Gerda Walther, Zum Anderen Ufer, 225.
- 11.
Gerda Walther, Zum Anderen Ufer, 225.
- 12.
Adolf Reinach, “A Phenomenology of Foreboding/Foreseeing” [“Zur Phänomenologie der Ahnungen”]. In Michael Kelly and Brian Harding (eds.), Early Phenomenology:Metaphysics, Ethics, and the Philosophy of Religion (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 27.
- 13.
Adolf Reinach, “A Phenomenology of Foreboding/Foreseeing,” 27 (italics added).
- 14.
Adolf Reinach, “A Phenomenology of Foreboding/Foreseeing,” 26–27.
- 15.
Adolf Reinach, “A Phenomenology of Foreboding/Foreseeing,” 28.
- 16.
John M. Oesterreicher, Walls are Crumbling: Seven Jewish Philosophers Discover Christ (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1952), 122.
- 17.
John M. Oesterreicher, Walls are Crumbling, 122.
- 18.
Alice von Hildebrand, The Soul of a Lion: Dietrich von Hildebrand (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 170. This book is based on a very long and detailed account Dietrich wrote to his wife, Alice, later in his life.
- 19.
John M. Oesterreicher, Walls are Crumbling, 122–123.
- 20.
Adolf Reinach, Fragment on Philosophy of Religion, §1, paragraph 2 (see Translation Appendix).
- 21.
Adolf Reinach, Fragment on Philosophy of Religion, §2, paragraph 4 (see Translation Appendix).
- 22.
Adolf Reinach, Loose Notes, paragraph 2 (see Translation Appendix).
- 23.
When speaking about his plan to investigate religious experience, referred to earlier, Reinach says, “Of course a presentation like this has nothing to offer him who lives in God’s sight. But it can steady the one who waivers, who lets the objections of science confuse him, and it can lead onward him who these objections have stayed from walking with God.” See John M. Oesterreicher, Walls are Crumbling, 123. AU: is “lead onward him who” correct?
- 24.
Adolf Reinach, Loose Notes, paragraph 2 (see Translation Appendix).
- 25.
Adolf Reinach, Fragment on Philosophy of Religion, §2, paragraph 2 (see Translation Appendix).
- 26.
Adolf Reinach, Fragment on Philosophy of Religion, §2, paragraph 3 (see Translation Appendix).
- 27.
The German word Erlebnis translated here into English as “experience,” must be understood to carry with it the idea that experience is something a person lives through or has lived.
- 28.
The German word Erkenntnis translated here into English as “knowledge,” must be understood to mean knowledge that is cognized (that is, it is acquired through cognition and/or perception). It is a knowing about.
- 29.
“Science” here needs to be understood as an academic study that includes natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.
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Baltzer-Jaray, K. (2018). Phenomenological Approaches to the Uncanny and the Divine: Adolf Reinach and Gerda Walther on Mystical Experience. In: Calcagno, A. (eds) Gerda Walther’s Phenomenology of Sociality, Psychology, and Religion. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97592-4_11
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