Abstract

In the presence of the continuing process of individualisation and secularisation of religion in late modern culture, and in view of natural explanations of religiosity, it is possible to enquire again about the conditions for possibility of religion. The answer to this question requires a reflection on the definitions of the terms “religiosity” and “religion”. In the following essay, there will first be a critique of two contemporary philosophical concepts which investigate the possibility for religion today: Jacques Derrida and Charles Taylor’s reflections on religion. In a second step, Wendel presents her own concept in discussion with Friedrich Schleiermacher’s definition of religiosity as “Gefühl schlechthinniger Abhängigkeit”: Religiosity is characterized as an immediate feeling that could be had, and as an existential from the individual. Religion is defined as expression and form, “symbolic form” of religiosity in the dimensions of language and body. Religion is always materially determined, but religiosity is a formal condition of possibility of the concrete arising from religions which develop in the self-consciousness. It is an immediate feeling of indebtedness to the absolute as a condition for the possibility of religion