Phenomenology of religion and sense of the infinite

The article discusses the role of F. Schleiermacher in the design of the project of the religion phenomenology. Schleiermacher’s philosophical theory is a complex fusion of Lutheran theology, modern philosophy and the movement of romanticism. His thinking reflected the borderline situation in the intellectual life of the XVIII- XIX centuries. It resultedin creation of a new image of religion, responded to the spirit of the times. Schleiermacher opposes the deistic teachings, showing that religion is an integral part of human life; it is not rooted in the rational conception of God the creator, but in the inner feeling. Even before the development of phenomenologists, he pointed out that inner feeling is at the heart of religion: by eliminating any moral and rational aspects of religion, Schleiermacher laid the foundation for the well-known numinous R. Otto equation. Schleiermacher’s attitude to both the dogmatic and the ritual side of religion was extremely negative, since personal religiosity does not need an external church, in fact a person who has infinitely grasped stands outside the church rituals, because he is the legislator of his own inner religion of feeling. Schleiermacher is one of the first theorists of religious pluralism who formed the most important position of the future science of religion: the comparison of religions is possible, since the religion of feeling common for all mankind made it permissible to search for a single basis of religion and build a large system of religious phenomena united bycommon principles and implied or actuallyexisting center. According to Schleiermacher, religious experience can also be described in the language of art, since religious experience and aesthetic experience are similar in their basis. Only an experience of the feeling of the infinite can give a person a taste of the religious, and this idea is likely to have the key thought of empathy to the religion phenomenology. Separately, some clauses of Schleiermacher’s theory, which were not developed in the writings of religion phenomenologists, are examined in the article.