Wonderment and delight. An outline of the phenomenology of the miracle as an extraordinary event
Wonderment and delight. An outline of the phenomenology of the miracle as an extraordinary event

Summary/Abstract: The term ‘miracle’ is often used when we talk about events, the extraordinariness of which follows from the fact that they are inconsistent with our knowledge of the world and with regularities present in it. Most frequently the term ‘miracle’ is used in the religious sense of the word. It means that calling an event a miracle implies not only a declaration that it is an extraordinary–unexpected or extraordinary–improbable one, but also a result of a direct or indirect act of God. A more thorough analysis of the notion of extraordinariness leads us towards distinguishing two more features of the miracle, i.e. its supernaturality and scientific inexplicability. Considering the miracle an event caused by an act of God requires, in turn, the distinguishing of another element, which is the religious significance. A closer analysis of the two characteristics of the miracle understood as an ‘extraordinary event’ should include aspects of the phenomenology of the miracle. This seems still more useful, because the two elements: wonderment and delight are present in the non–religious and religious sense of the miracle, in which they refer to certain situations. We should note that wonderment and delight, understood as elements of the extraordinariness of a miraculous event, play a crucial role in the phenomenology of the miracle, which should be the first step on the way to defining precisely the characteristics of an extraordinary event. The direction of further analyses should be determined by making a distinction between two aspects of the philosophical problem concerning the miracle, namely, ontology and epistemology of the miracle.

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