Transcendental foundations of the religious experience: Semyon Frank and Karl Rahner

Abstract

This article examines the philosophy of Semyon Frank and the theology of Karl Rahner in the light of transcendental themes. It demonstrates that the appeal to transcendental an­thropology and to anthropology in general is perceived by Franck and Rahner as a way of renewal of religious metaphysics, avoiding accusations of both «dogmatism» and re­moteness from living religious experience. Both thinkers, appealing to the Christian tradi­tion and Western philosophy, interpret the «non-thematic» and «non-conceptual» experience of being as a primordial existential state. In the author’s opinion, Frank and Rahner offer original approaches to the problem of the foundations of religious experience by de­veloping a philosophical theology «from below» with a fundamental focus on phenomeno­logical and transcendental consideration of subjectivity.