After God by Gustav Menshing

Abstract

The article evaluates the conceptualization of the divine in the phenomenological perspective of Gustav Mensching (1901-1978). The German thinker focuses on the unfolding of the divine within the framework of religious experience and after God as a being other (numinous). As established in the article, Menshing avoids the intentional act, which is traditional for phenomenology and proposed by Husserl as a key experimental register, but tends to transcend. The concept after God is considered as a different entity and religious (post)experience. The content of such a concept is determined both by the possibilities of experiencing being by the subject, and by the primordial meanings of the divine as a given. Thus, the divine is meaning-in-itself, transcendental, experiential, a symbolization of reality, etc. Evaluating these characteristics, Menshing proceeds from an understanding of the essence of religious experience. The philosopher managed to present his position as a new turn in the phenomenology of religion