Claas Jouco Bleeker

Claas Jouco Bleeker (1898–1983) was a Dutch scholar of religion. Born in Beneden Knijpe, Netherlands, Bleeker received his doctorate from the University of Leiden in 1929 and was Professor of the History of Religions and the Phenomenology of Religion at the University of Amsterdam from 1946 until his retirement in 1969.

Bleeker specialised in the history of Ancient Egyptian religion and was also a leading figure in phenomenology of religion. His approach to religious studies was non-reductive, comparative and historical. Influenced by the approach of Gerard van der Leeuw, Bleeker introduced the concept of entelechy to phenomenology of religion, arguing that the essence of religion is realised as it unfolds through history.

Biography Bleeker was born in Beneden Knijpe (now De Knipe), Netherlands, and went to school in Leeuwarden before attending the University of Leiden to study Theology. While at Leiden, Bleeker specialised in Egyptology and the history of religions and was influenced by his tutor, William Brede Kristensen. From Leiden, he went to study at the University of Berlin, before receiving his ThD from the University of Leiden in 1929, writing his doctoral thesis on the Egyptian goddess Maat. Bleeker was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church from 1925 to 1946. In 1946, Bleeker was appointed Professor of the History of Religions and the Phenomenology of Religion at the University of Amsterdam, where he remained until retiring in 1969. Between 1950 and 1970, Bleeker was secretary-general of the International Association for the History of Religions.

Work

Specialising in the religion of Ancient Egypt, Bleeker produced a number of studies of individual Egyptian deities—including the goddess Maat and the god Min—along with work on Egyptian religious life. Following the thought of Gerard van der Leeuw, Bleeker held that there are three key concepts for phenomenology of religion: the epoché, the eidetic vision, and intuitive insight—although he maintained that the epoché and the eidetic vision were related to the original Husserlian concepts only figuratively. The epoché is the scholar's suspension of judgement concerning the truth of religious claims, the eidetic vision is the search for the essence of religion, and intuition is the means by which the scholar recognises religion's essence in its empirical manifestations. Using these methods, Bleeker concluded that "the divine" is the key word of religion: the structure of all religion involves a relation of the human to God or the Holy, which produces specific religious rituals or practices.