Phenomenology and the Holy is a contribution to the phenomenology of religious experience based on phenomenological philosophy. Its aim is to overcome the traditionally conceived opposition between the profane everyday and the total otherness of the holy. This is carried out by means of a re-reading of Rudolf Otto and, more significantly, of Edmund Husserl against the backdrop of recent debates in continental philosophy of religion. By offering an understanding of the everyday as heterogeneous, inhabited by traces of the holy, on the one hand, and weakening the otherness of the holy, on the other, the dissertation attempts to relocate the holy within the interstices between the alien and familiar. By mapping the topology of the holy, its historical mediation, its vulnerability to marginalisation, and its role in the interplay between ordinary and cultic life, Husserl's phenomenology still proves to be a fruitful resource in philosophy of religion.
Espen Dahl has worked with phenomenology and ordinary language philosophy and their relevance for religion. He has studied and taught at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo.