Les niveaux de la transcendance et la phénoménologie de la religion

Abstract

In the natural attitude, and in the ordinary language, religion is strictly bound to transcendence. In this paper I ask whether the concept of “transcendence” is legitimate in the phenomenological dimension, which is opened by the methodological operation of reduction to the immanence of transcendental consciousness. By examining how “transcendence” gains increasingly importance in Husserl’s thought, the necessity emerges to distinguish three levels of it: intentional (or horizontal) transcendence, intersubjective transcendence and transcendence as “superposition” (or trans-horizontal transcendence). Such distinction allows to rethink the sense, the possibilities and the limits of phenomenology of religion.