Between Finiteness and Infinity. Adolf Reinach's Concept of the Religious Act

Abstract

In 1914, the year World War I broke out, Adolf Reinach, one of Edmund Husserl’s most notable students, a teacher and mentor of the young generation of phenomenologists, abandoned his work at the university and enlisted in the army. At the front, as a result of various experiences, he went through a vehement turn to religion. He left traces of his conversion in the notes about the religious act he made most probably while in the trenches. In them, Reinach conducted a thorough analysis of the human encounter with the Absolute, discussing the conditions for the opening up of the finite being to infinity and the detailed structure of the religious act. The latter, according to the phenomenologist, is constituted in the feeling consisting in the sense of dependence and safety experienced in the presence of God and the response to it, the sense of gratitude and trust. The conclusion of the whole act is the moment of affirmation of the human being who “in” God finds peace and happiness, not desiring to aspire to or strive for anything else.