Download or read book Acute Religious Experiences written by Richard Saville-Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-09 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book engages the problem of how, in the 21st century, we are to speak about experiences of the extraordinary/anomalous/extreme which occur on a transhistorical and transcultural basis. Critical re-readings of seminal texts show how 20th-century theoreticians in the humanities sought to erase madness from their irrational subjects. This propensity to sanitize madness in the study of religions was mirrored by the instinct of psychiatrists to degrade religious experiences by reducing mad consciousness to psychosis or dissociation. Richard Saville-Smith introduces explanatory pluralism as a way of recognizing these disciplinary biases and mad studies as a way of negotiating this understanding. The disproportionate significance of madness in shaping the fabric of the human story can then be recovered from both erasure and dismissal to be given the recognition previously denied - as acute religious experiences. Acute Religious Experiences divides into three sections, beginning with re-readings of William James's pathological programme, Rudolf Otto's numinous, T. K. Oesterreich's possession, Mircea Eliade's shamanism, Walter Stace's mysticism, Walter Pahnke's psychedelic experience, and Abraham Maslow's peak experiences. These ideas are shown to constitute the beginnings of a fractured discourse on the irrational. In part two, contemporary psychiatry's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) and Foucault's History of Madness are re-read to reposition madness as not necessarily pathological. This opens the way for the identification of acute religious experiences as a new holistic and post-colonial approach through which religious data can be organized and addressed on a comparative basis. In part three, The Gospel of Mark is re-read as a case study to demonstrate the novel insights which flow from the identification of acute religious experiences. Richard Saville-Smith draws on his own experiences of madness and his PhD from the School of Divinity at The University of Edinburgh to elucidate his research.

Download or read book The Varieties of Religious Experience written by William James and published by The Floating Press. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 824 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature explores the nature of religion and, in James' observation, its divorce from science when studied academically. After publication in 1902 it quickly became a canonical text of philosophy and psychology, remaining in print through the entire century. "Scientific theories are organically conditioned just as much as religious emotions are; and if we only knew the facts intimately enough, we should doubtless see 'the liver' determining the dicta of the sturdy atheist as decisively as it does those of the Methodist under conviction anxious about his soul. When it alters in one way the blood that percolates it, we get the Methodist, when in another way, we get the atheist form of mind."

Download or read book William James and Phenomenology written by James M. Edie and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Phenomenology and Mysticism written by Anthony J. Steinbock and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-22 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rūzbihān Baqlī—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience.

Download or read book Varieties of Religion Today written by Charles Taylor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2003-11-30 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A hundred years after William James delivered the celebrated lectures that became The Varieties of Religious Experience, one of the foremost thinkers in the English-speaking world returns to the questions posed in James's masterpiece to clarify the circumstances and conditions of religion in our day. An elegant mix of the philosophy and sociology of religion, Charles Taylor's powerful book maintains a clear perspective on James's work in its historical and cultural contexts, while casting a new and revealing light upon the present. Lucid, readable, and dense with ideas that promise to transform current debates about religion and secularism, Varieties of Religion Today is much more than a revisiting of James's classic. Rather, it places James's analysis of religious experience and the dilemmas of doubt and belief in an unfamiliar but illuminating context, namely the social horizon in which questions of religion come to be presented to individuals in the first place. Taylor begins with questions about the way in which James conceives his subject, and shows how these questions arise out of different ways of understanding religion that confronted one another in James's time and continue to do so today. Evaluating James's treatment of the ethics of belief, he goes on to develop an innovative and provocative reading of the public and cultural conditions in which questions of belief or unbelief are perceived to be individual questions. What emerges is a remarkable and penetrating view of the relation between religion and social order and, ultimately, of what "religion" means.

Download or read book Acute Melancholia and Other Essays written by Amy Hollywood and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acute Melancholia and Other Essays deploys spirited and progressive approaches to the study of Christian mysticism and the philosophy of religion. Ideal for novices and experienced scholars alike, the volume makes a forceful case for thinking about religion as both belief and practice, in which traditions marked by change are passed down through generations, laying the groundwork for their own critique. Through a provocative integration of medieval sources and texts by Jacques Derrida, Judith Butler, Talal Asad, and Dipesh Chakrabarty, this book redefines what it means to engage critically with history and those embedded within it.

Download or read book The Religious Studies Skills Book written by Eugene V. Gallagher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-13 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studying religion in college or university? This book shows you how to perform well on your course tests and examinations, write successful papers, and participate meaningfully in class discussions. You'll learn new skills and also enhance existing ones, which you can put into practice with in-text exercises and assignments. Written by two award-winning instructors, this book identifies the close reading of texts, material culture, and religious actions as the fundamental skill for the study of religion at undergraduate level. It shows how critical analytical thinking about religious actions and ideas is founded on careful, patient, yet creative “reading” of religious stories, rituals, objects, and spaces. The book leads you through the description, analysis, and interpretation of examples from multiple historical periods, cultures, and religious traditions, including primary source material such as Matthew 6:9-13 (the Lord's Prayer), the gohonzon scroll of the Japanese new religion Soka Gakkai, and the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). It provides you with typical assignments you will encounter in your studies, showing you how you might approach tasks such as reflective, interpretive or summary essays. Further resources, found on the book's website, include bibliographies, and links to useful podcasts.

Download or read book Beyond Phenomenology written by Gavin Flood and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1999-08-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that the understanding and explanation of religion is always historically contingent. Grounded in the work of Bakhtin and Ricoeur, Flood positions the academic study of religion within contemporary debates in the social sciences and humanities concerning modernity and postmodernity, particularly contested issues regarding truth and knowledge. It challenges the view that religions are privileged, epistemic objects, argues for the importance of metatheory, and presents an argument for the dialogical nature of inquiry. The study of religion should begin with language and culture, and this shift in emphasis to the philosophy of the sign in hermeneutics and away from the philosophy of consciousness in phenomenology has far-reaching implications. It means a new ethic of practice which is sensitive to the power relationship in any epistemology; it opens the door to feminist and postcolonial critique, and it provides a methodology which allows for the interface between religious studies, theology, and the social sciences.

Download or read book The Globalization of Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer written by Christopher D.L. Johnson and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-12-16 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploration of the global spread of Eastern Orthodox practices from local settings and the resulting divergence of interpretations as a struggle over larger issues.

Download or read book Literature and Religious Experience written by Matthew J. Smith and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-10 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges the status quo of studies in literature and religion by returning to “experience” as a bridge between theory and practice. Essays focus on keywords of religious experience and demonstrate their applications in drama, fiction, and poetry. Each chapter explores the broad significance of its keyword as a category of psychological and social behavior and tracks its unique articulation by individual authors, including Conrad, Beecher Stowe and Melville. Together, the chapters construct a critical foundation for studying literature not only from the perspectives of theology and historicism but from the ways that literary experience reflects, reinforces, and sometimes challenges religious experience.

Download or read book The Insider Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion written by Russell T. McCutcheon and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 1999-01-07 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thirty classic and contemporary readings - from such writers as Kant, Hume, Schleiermacher, and Otto, to Ninian Smart, Mircea Eliade, Karen McCarthy-Brown, and Wendy Doniger.

Download or read book Community and Worldview Among Paraiyars of South India written by Anderson H M Jeremiah and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-05-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demonstrates the inadequacy of the category 'religion' by focusing on the Paraiyars of South India, exploring the complexity of religious belief in marginalized indigenous communities.

Download or read book The Varieties of Religious Experience written by William James and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On t.p.: Being the Gifford lectures on natural religion delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902.

Download or read book The varieties of religious experience Gifford lects 1901 1902 written by William James and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Psychology of Religion Fourth Edition written by Ralph W. Hood, Jr. and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 2009-07-15 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scholarly and comprehensive yet accessible, this state-of-the-science work is widely regarded as the definitive graduate-level psychology of religion text. The authors synthesize classic and contemporary empirical research on numerous different religious groups. Coverage includes religious thought, belief, and behavior across the lifespan; links between religion and biology; the forms and meaning of religious experience; the social psychology of religious organizations; and connections to morality, coping, mental health, and psychopathology. Every chapter features thought-provoking quotations and examples that bring key concepts to life. New to This Edition *Revised and updated with the latest theories, methods, and empirical findings.*Many new research examples.*Restructured with fewer chapters for better “fit” with a typical semester.*More attention to the differences between religion and spirituality*Covers emerging topics: genetics and neurobiology, positive psychology, atheism, and more.

Download or read book Contemporary Western Ethnography and the Definition of Religion written by Martin D. Stringer and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-03-17 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Psychotic Continuum written by Andreas Marneros and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most important questions of our previous common volumes about affective, schizoaffective, and schizophrenic disorders was the question of what connects and what separates psychotic disorders (Marneros and Tsuang, Schizo affective Psychoses, Springer-Verlag, 1986; Marneros and Tsuang Affective and Schizoaffective Disorders, Springer-Verlag, 1990; Marneros, Andreasen, and Tsuang, Negative and Positive Schizophrenia, Springer-Verlag 1993). The boundaries between various psychotic disorders are not always clearly defined. Some groups of psychotic disorders, such as schizoaffective disorders and all the other "atypical" psychoses, occupy a position between "typical" mental disorders, such as schizophrenia, and affective disorders. The question is: Do psychotic disorders form a continuum, or are they, despite their unclear boundaries, distinct entities? On what basis should we assume there is a continuity of psychotic disorders? Solely symptomatology? Or perhaps also a continuity in genetic predispositions? Or in biological, pharmacological, and other dimensions? Is the old idea of "Einheitspsychose" (unitary psychosis) really always wrong? The contributions contained in this new volume cannot provide a definite answer to the above questions. But they try to describe some relevant aspects of the problem, and to give some partial answers. Halle-Wittenberg, Germany A. MARNEROS Brockton, USA M. T. TSUANG Iowa, USA N. C. ANDREASEN October 1994 Contents Part I Psychotic Continuum: An Introduction A. MARNEROS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Psychotic Continuum or Distinct Entities: Perspectives from Psychopathology CH. MUNDT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Psychotic Continuum Under Longitudinal Considerations A. MARNEROS, A. ROHDE, and A. DEISTER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Psychotic Continuum or Distinct Entities: Perspective from Psychopharmacology H. Y. MELTZER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .