oa G. van der Leeuw en de groei van de godsdienstwetenschap

1Voordracht gehouden op 25 februari 1991 voor Teylers Stichting te Haarlem. De oorspronkelijke tekst is voor publicatie bijgewerkt.

This article places Van der Leeuw’s scholarly work within the context of the discipline in the first half of this century. It pays special attention to his aims of verstehen (understanding) and of developing an experiential ‘phenomenology’ of religion. For Van der Leeuw, as for Eliade, science of religion was part of the attempt to discover spiritual meaning in a situation of religious crisis. His contribution to the progress of science of religion has been largely indirect and symbolic.