Material Spirituality

A new account of religion based in a transcendental phenomenological understanding of spirituality.

Challenging monotheistic and cognitive assumptions in philosophy of religion, Neal DeRoo sets out a novel theory grounded in a transcendental phenomenological understanding of spirituality. DeRoo applies transcendental phenomenology to questions and methods in the empirical study of religion and considers the way religion shapes our experience and interaction with the world.

Accounting for this transcendental dimension enables us to clarify how religion – as both a concept and as various material practices – is generated out of Husserl’s notion of ‘material spiritual’ conditions. Shedding light on the four-fold distinction between transcendental and empirical levels, emphasizing the transcendental dimension of religion via an account of spiritual expression reveals that rigorous analysis of religion requires us to distinguish between spirituality, religiosity and religious phenomena.

Investigating current methodological approaches to religion, spirituality, and the religious, DeRoo provides an essential toolbox for the cross-cultural study of religion, drawing on key concepts such as materiality, flesh, spirituality and phenomena.