The historicity of human transcendence in the transcendental Thomism of Richard Schaeffler

Abstract

In the 20^th century European culture found itself in a situation of mutual alienation of many areas of culture – science, religion, ethics, art, etc., what, in turn, raised a theme of the relationship between cognition and history in the transcendental theory of knowledge with new acuity. A significant role in that process belongs to philosophers: members of the Vienna Circle and, later, analytical philosophers, neo-Kantians of the Marburg and Baden schools, representatives of transcendental Thomism. Among the projects aimed at overcoming the crisis there is the project of Richard Scheffler, a German philosopher and theologian. Following after Kant, Schaeffler turns to the most different areas of philosophy: phenomenology, hermeneutics, neo-Kantianism of Cohen and Cassirer, analytical philosophy of language. In addition, the influence of the theology of Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Wilhelm Lotz can be traced in the writings of Schaeffler. The article considers the concept of religious experience by Richard Schaeffler, the underlying Schaeffler’s visions of the need of interpretation the regulating idea of God as a postulate of theoretical reason in the perspective of religious experience. It considers Schaeffler’s idea of the transcendental nature of the prayer speech and its performativity.