As dimensões do sagrado em Roderick Ninian Smart: contribuições no tratamento do fenômeno religioso na escola

Abstract

This thesis is the result of controversies arising from the encounter between Religion and Education. Controversies in the field of Science of Religion, because there is no consensus among scholars in the area that phenomenology is the alternative for the treatment of the religious phenomenon at school. And, controversies in the field of Education, due to thefragile understanding of secularism in Brazil. With the objective of offering theoretical keys to the understanding of what the phenomenology of religion is and whether it can contributeto the presentation of the theme in public schools, I seek in this theoretical research to present the thinking of an author few known in Brazil, but influential and of considerable importance legacy outside Brazil. Ninian Smart (1927-2001) dedicated himself to the elaboration of a dimensional approach to the religious phenomenon and, metaphorically, presented the religious phenomenon in society as a landscape that would have over and under exposed elements. According to Smart, the religious phenomenon can be understood based on seven objective and subjective dimensions, which would be: doctrinal/philosophical, ritual, mythical/narrative, experiential/emotional, ethical, social and material. For this research, an analytical reading of part of its collection was carried out, in order to answer the following question: How can the dimensional approach of the religious phenomenon contribute to the treatment of the religious phenomenon at school? From the question mentioned and based on the selected works, important concepts were focused: parahistoricity, bracketing, intra and extra religious explanations, structured empathy and sympathetic effort. Such concepts allow the delineation of parahistorical phenomenology, structural phenomenology, transculturalphenomenology, and dialectical phenomenology. The theoretical framework allowed me to glimpse a possible appropriation of its contours in Brazil. In this way, I propose to apply Smartian's theoretical elaborations to the study of the religious phenomenon in public schools,with a view to a type of religious literacy built within the framework of a pedagogical phenomenology.