Phenomenology of Religious Experience

Society for Phenomenology of Religious Experience (SoPheRE) is a member-supported, non-university, independent 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit research organization incorporated in California. SoPheRE con­ducts interdisciplinary phenomenological research in key areas of philosophy and related humanities in dialogue with natural sciences. It subscribes to the principles of open science, non-discriminatory policies, and good practices of knowledge in line with international standards. Our approach follows Husserl, Heidegger, Herring, Henry, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty, Wahl, Weyl, Stein, Scheler, Schutz, and other early phenomenologists and contemporary philosophers with phenomenological orientation.

SoPheRE is an active member of the international philosophical community and an affiliated group of the American Philosophical Association. SoPheRE closely cooperates with universities and other research Institutions in the United States and abroad. The Society publishes topical issues with high-ranked, peer-reviewed online journals. It also houses its own new book series with Lexington Press, now Bloomsbury. Up to now, SoPheRE output concentrated primarily on contemporary contributions to the continental tradition.

SoPheRe supports publications, educational and research projects, seminars, and conferences that address historical, theological, sociological, philosophical, psychological, and other aspects of religious and spiritual experience. SoPheRe does not present the views of any particular theological school or religion but draws upon the broad spectrum of world traditions. Researchers affiliated with the Society aim to clarify religious and spiritual forms of experience in order to understand its essence and significance for individuals, groups, and societies, and to explore its humanistic, epistemological, ontological, and metaphysical implications. We welcome projects that connect the phenomenology of religious experience with medicine, public health, quantum physics, or neuroscience, i.e., any area of human knowledge or praxis in which expanded intuition impacts cognition, health, human emancipation, or community. SoPheRE invites intellectual contributions by researchers regardless of their religious, agnostic, or atheistic views. We disseminate research findings in order to provide scholars and the public with the fruits of these studies.