The Religious Hermeneutics of Gerhard Oberhammer and the Investigation of the Philosophical Traditions of India

摘要

Gerhard Oberhammer (1929-), the Austrian Indologist and philosopher of religion, developed the transcendental hermeneutics of religion as an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon of religiosity. One of its themes is a religious experience in a comparative perspective. In order to conduct the phenomenological-existential analysis of what religious experience is and how it happens, Oberhammer develops a network of notions, which jointly create a coherent system of religious hermeneutics. The notion of the "encounter" (Begegnung), interpreted as a universally essential dimension of religious experience, explains the event of experiencing transcendence by the subject and is pivotal to the system. The introductory part of the article is meant to sketch the intellectual biography of Gerhard Oberhammer, with the aim to provide concise information about the profile of the thinker. In the second part the outline of the system of the transcendental hermeneutics of religion will be introduced, in a wider context of possible affinities to other thinkers. Lastly, the applicability of the hermeneutics to philosophical traditions of India will be considered.