Download or read book Sensible Ecstasy written by Amy Hollywood and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-01-15 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sensible Ecstasy investigates the attraction to excessive forms of mysticism among twentieth-century French intellectuals and demonstrates the work that the figure of the mystic does for these thinkers. With special attention to Georges Bataille, Simone de Beauvoir, Jacques Lacan, and Luce Irigaray, Amy Hollywood asks why resolutely secular, even anti-Christian intellectuals are drawn to affective, bodily, and widely denigrated forms of mysticism. What is particular to these thinkers, Hollywood reveals, is their attention to forms of mysticism associated with women. They regard mystics such as Angela of Foligno, Hadewijch, and Teresa of Avila not as emotionally excessive or escapist, but as unique in their ability to think outside of the restrictive oppositions that continue to afflict our understanding of subjectivity, the body, and sexual difference. Mystics such as these, like their twentieth-century descendants, bridge the gaps between action and contemplation, emotion and reason, and body and soul, offering new ways of thinking about language and the limits of representation.
Download or read book The Godman and the Sea written by Michael J. Thate and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-10-04 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If scholars no longer necessarily find the essence and origins of what came to be known as Christianity in the personality of a historical figure known as Jesus of Nazareth, it nevertheless remains the case that the study of early Christianity is dominated by an assumption of the force of Jesus's personality on divergent communities. In The Godman and the Sea, Michael J. Thate shifts the terms of this study by focusing on the Gospel of Mark, which ends when Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome discover a few days after the crucifixion that Jesus's tomb has been opened but the corpse is not there. Unlike the other gospels, Mark does not include the resurrection, portraying instead loss, puzzlement, and despair in the face of the empty tomb. Reading Mark's Gospel as an exemplary text, Thate examines what he considers to be retellings of other traumatic experiences—the stories of Jesus's exorcising demons out of a man and into a herd of swine, his stilling of the storm, and his walking on the water. Drawing widely on a diverse set of resources that include the canon of western fiction, classical literature, the psychological study of trauma, phenomenological philosophy, the new materialism, psychoanalytic theory, poststructural philosophy, and Hebrew Bible scholarship, as well as the expected catalog of New Testament tools of biblical criticism in general and Markan scholarship in particular, The Godman and the Sea is an experimental reading of the Gospel of Mark and the social force of the sea within its traumatized world. More fundamentally, however, it attempts to position this reading as a story of trauma, ecstasy, and what has become through the ruins of past pain.
Download or read book The Mystical Sources of Existentialist Thought written by George Pattison and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-11-21 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the time when existentialism was a dominant intellectual and cultural force, a number of commentators observed that some of the language of existential philosophy, not least its interpretation of human existence in terms of nothingness, evoked the language of so-called mystical writers. This book takes on this observation and explores the evidence for the influence of mysticism on the philosophy of existentialism. It begins by delving into definitions of mysticism and existentialism, and then traces the elements of mysticism present in German and French thought during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The book goes on to make original contributions to the study of figures including Kierkegaard, Buber, Heidegger, Beauvoir, Sartre, Marcel, Camus, Weil, Bataille, Berdyaev, and Tillich, linking their existentialist philosophy back to some of the key concerns of the mystical tradition. Providing a unique insight into how these two areas have overlapped and interacted, this study is vital reading for any academic with an interest in twentieth-century philosophy, theology and religious studies.
Download or read book Mysticism in the French Tradition written by Louise Nelstrop and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries secular French scholars started re-engaging with religious ideas, particularly mystical ones. Mysticism in the French Tradition introduces key philosophical undercurrents and trajectories in French thought that underpin and arise from this engagement, as well as considering earlier French contributions to the development of mysticism. Filling a gap in the literature, the book offers critical reflections on French scholarship in terms of its engagement with its mystical and apophatic dimensions. A multiplicity of factors converge to shape these encounters with mystical theology: feminist, devotional and philosophical treatments as well as literary, historical, and artistic approaches. The essays draw these into conversation. Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary range of contributions from both new and established scholars, this book provides access to the melting pot out of which the mystical tradition in France erupted in the twenty-first century, and from which it continues to challenge theology today.
Download or read book Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion and Vice Versa written by Thomas A. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Work in philosophy of religion is still strongly marked by an excessive focus on Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Judaism -- almost to the exclusion of other religious traditions. Moreover, in many cases it has been confined to a narrow set of intellectual problems, without embedding these in their larger social, historical, and practical contexts. Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion--and Vice Versa addresses this situation through a series of interventions intended to work against the gap that exists between much scholarship in philosophy of religion and important recent developments that speak to religious studies as a whole. This volume takes up what, in recent years, has often been seen as a fundamental reason for excluding religious ethics and philosophy of religion from religious studies: their explicit normativity. Against this presupposition, Thomas A. Lewis argues that normativity is pervasive--not unique to ethics and philosophy of religion--and therefore not a reason to exclude them from religious studies. Lewis bridges more philosophical and historical subfields by arguing for the importance of history to the philosophy of religion. He considers the future of religious ethics, explaining that the field as a whole should learn from the methodological developments associated with recent work in comparative religious ethics and "comparative religious ethics" should no longer be conceived as a distinct subfield. The concluding chapter engages broader, post-9/11 arguments about the importance of studying religion arguing, that prominent contemporary notions of "religious literacy" actually hinder our ability to grasp religion's significance and impact in the world today.
Download or read book Negative Ecstasies written by Jeremy Biles and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2015-08-03 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite Georges Bataille’s acknowledged influence on major poststructuralist thinkers—including Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Lacan, Baudrillard, and Barthes—and his prominence in literary, cultural, and social theory, rarely has he been taken up by scholars of religion, even as issues of the sacred were central to his thinking. Bringing together established scholars and emerging voices, Negative Ecstasies engages Bataille from the perspective of religious studies and theology, forging links with feminist and queer theory, economics, secularism, psychoanalysis, fat studies, and ethics. As these essays demonstrate, Bataille’s work bears significance to contemporary questions in the academy and vital issues in the world. We continue to ignore him at our peril.
Download or read book Tillich and the Abyss written by Sigridur Gudmarsdottir and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-09-07 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines Paul Tillich ́s theological concept of the abyss by locating it within the context of current postmodern antifoundalist discussions and debates surrounding feminism, gender, and language. Sigridur Gudmarsdottir develops these tropes into a constructive theology, arguing that Tillich’s idea of the abyss can serve as a necessary means of deconstructing the binaries between the theoretical and the practical in producing nihilistic relativism and the safe foundations of knowledge (divine as well as human). How does one search for a map and method through an abyss? In his writings, Tillich expressed the ambiguity and groundlessness of being, the depth structure of the human condition, and the reality of God as an abyss. The more we gaze into this abyss, the more we encounter the faults in our various foundations. This book outlines how Tillich’s concept of the abyss creates greater opportunities for complexity and liminality and opens up a space where life and death, destruction and construction, fecundity and horror, womb and tomb, can coincide.
Download or read book Wallace Stevens written by James Longenbach and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sacrality of the Secular written by Bradley B. Onishi and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-24 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a bold and historically rooted vision for the future of philosophy of religion, The Sacrality of the Secular maps new and compelling possibilities for a nonsecularist secularity. In recent decades, philosophers in the continental tradition have taken a notable interest in the return of religion, a departure from the supposed hegemony of the secular age that began with the Enlightenment. At the same time, anthropologists and sociologists have begun to reject the once-dominant secularization thesis, which both prescribed and described the demise of religion in modern societies. In The Sacrality of the Secular, Bradley B. Onishi reconsiders the role of religion at a time when secularity is more tenuous than it might seem. He demonstrates that philosophy’s entanglement with religion led, perhaps counterintuitively, to vibrant reconceptions of the secular well before the unraveling of the secularization thesis or the turn to religion. Through rich readings of Heidegger, Bataille, Weber, and others, Onishi rethinks what philosophy can contribute to our understanding of religion and the wider social and cultural world.
Download or read book Medjugorje and the Supernatural written by Daniel Maria Klimek and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In June 1981, six young Croatians in the village of Medjugorje, in the former Yugoslavia, reported that the Virgin Mary had appeared to them. The Medjugorje visionaries say that Mary has returned every day since then, bringing them important messages from heaven to convey to the world. Throughout history, people have reported encountering extraordinary religious experiences-apparitions of the Virgin Mary, visions of Jesus Christ, weeping statues and icons, the stigmata, physical healings and miracles, and experiences of the afterlife-and interpreted them as supernatural in origin. Scholars have often tried to reinterpret such experiences, including those described by the great mystics like Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, and Teresa of Avila, into natural or psychopathological categories, such as hysteria, hallucination, delusion, epileptic seizures, psychosis, the workings of the unconscious mind, or fraud. Are such reductionist explanations valid? Over the past three decades the Medjugorje visionaries have been subjected to extensive medical, psychological, and scientific examination, even while undergoing their visionary experiences. Daniel Klimek argues that the case of Medjugorje affords a rare opportunity to understand a deeper dimension of extraordinary religious phenomena. Presenting and analyzing the scientific studies on the visionaries in juxtaposition with the major scholars and debates surrounding religious experience, Klimek concludes that a multidisciplinary approach grants a more holistic and deeper understanding of such extraordinary religious experiences.
Download or read book Saints of the Impossible written by Alexander Irwin and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The transgressive writing of Georges Bataille (1897-1962) and the rigorous ethical philosophy of social activist and Christian mystic Simone Weil (1909-1943) seem to belong to different worlds. Yet in the political ferment of 1930s Paris, Bataille and Weil were intellectual adversaries who exerted a powerful fascination on each other. Saints of the Impossible provides the first in-depth comparison of Bataille's and Weil's thought, showing how an exploration of their relationship reveals new facets of the achievements of two of the twentieth century's leading intellectual figures and raises far-reaching questions about literary practice, politics, and religion. Book jacket.
Download or read book Encountering Transcendence written by Lieven Boeve and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume consists of several contributions to a refined understanding of religious experience in view of contemporary theological epistemology. Diverse sample studies taken from the extensive field of religion, theology and religious studies reveal that 'religious experience' is today clearly a pivotal issue. More specifically, this is made evident in modern theological hermeneutics and in the anti-modern and/or post-modern reactions thereto, the theology of world religions and inter-religious dialogue, the contemporary resurgence of religiosity in Western society and culture, and the so-called turn to religion in contemporary continental philosophy. It would appear from such studies that the category of 'religious experience' is frequently called upon to clarify or explain the phenomenon of religion and religiosity on the one hand and to support and legitimise religious positions or the critique thereof on the other. Because of the loss of plausibility of tradition-bound religiosity and of foundational, so-called onto-theological schemes, 'religious experience' has come to constitute, for many, the last (or latest) point of departure and anchor for religion and religious thinking. This is certainly the case with respect to tendencies within contemporary Christian traditions and theological reflection. In a multitude of ways and from a variety of different perspectives, 'religious experience' and 'experience of transcendence' or 'of the divine' have gained a prominent place in philosophical and fundamental-theological conceptual schemes. In reaction to this, other authors have denied the very primacy given to religious experience in reflecting upon faith, pointing to the constitutive role of tradition and narrative without which there is no religious experience. From all this follows that the category of religious experience is in great need of reconceptualisation, not least from a theological point of view. On the one hand, religious experience is all too easily called upon to legitimise religious claims (often against 'tradition') and on the other hand, the category has become misleading in so far as it is tainted by the modern scientific understanding of experience - in reaction to which 'tradition' is then easily invoked to protect the core of religion. Both young scholars at the preceding junior conference and senior scholars during the conference's paper sessions presented from diverse perspectives new ways to conceive of religious experience in view of today's challenges of secularisation, religious plurality, the aestheticisation of religion, etc. The selected contributions have been arranged in four thematically oriented parts: 'Approaching Religious Experience in a Postmodern Age', 'Modern (re)Thinking of Religious Experience', 'Liberating Religious Experience', and 'Challenges for Spirituality'.
Download or read book On Becoming God Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self written by Ben Morgan and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we have to conceive of ourselves as isolated individuals, inevitably distanced from other people and from whatever we might mean when we use the word God? On Becoming God offers an innovative approach to the history of the modern Western self by looking at human identity as something people do together rather than on their own. Ben Morgan argues that the shared practices of human identity can be understood as ways of managing and keeping at bay the impulses and experiences associated with the word God. The "self" is a way of doing things, or of not doing things, with "God." The book draws on phenomenology (Heidegger), gender studies (Beauvoir, Butler) and contemporary neuroscience to present a new approach to the history of modern identity. It surveys existing approaches to modern selfhood (Foucault, Charles Taylor) and proposes an alternative account by investigating late medieval mysticism, in particular texts written in Germany by Meister Eckhart and others in the same milieu. Reactions to the condemnation of Meister Eckhart's teaching for heresy in 1329 offer a microcosm of the circumstances in which something like the modern self arises as people change their behavior toward others, toward themselves, and toward what they call "God." The book makes Meister Eckhart and his contemporaries appear as our contemporaries by changing the assumptions with which we approach our own identity. To make this change requires a revision of current vocabularies for approaching ourselves, and in particular the vocabulary and habits inherited from psychoanalysis. The book finishes by exploring the parallel between late medieval confessors and their spiritual charges, and late-nineteenth-century psychoanalysts and their patients. The result is a renewed vision of the Freud's project of finding a vocabulary for acknowledging and nurturing our everyday commitments to others and to our spiritual longings.
Download or read book Philosophy of Religion for a New Century written by Jeremiah Hackett and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2004-04-30 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy of Religion for a New Century represents the work of nineteen scholars presented at a conference in honor of Eugene T. Long at the University of South Carolina, April 5-6, 2002. This volume is a good example of philosophy in dialogue; there is both respect and genuine disagreement. First, an account of our present situation in the Philosophy of Religion is given, leading to a discussion of the very idea of a 'Christian Philosophy' and the coherence of the traditional concept of God. The implications of science and a concern for the environment in our concepts of God are carefully examined. A discussion follows on the possibility of speech about God and silence about God. Since much of modern European philosophy is concerned with the `Death of God' theme, the positions of Nietzsche and some of his twentieth-century interpreters are presented. There are presentations on Feminist Approaches to Philosophy of Religion, and Comparative Religion is examined in relation to cultures and the demands of rationality. The volume concludes with a critical dialogue on the relation of Religious Discourse to the Public Sphere. Developing global awareness has led to significant change in the Philosophy of Religion. One-dimensional approaches have given way to honest dialogue. The traditional boundaries between the secular and the religious have shifted, and new approaches to traditional problems are required. This volume presents examples of these new approaches.
Download or read book Mystics written by Michael Kessler and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-12-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mystics presents a collection of previously unpublished essays by prominent scholars that consider both the idea of mystics and mysticism. The contributors offer detailed discussions of a variety of mystics from history, and on mysticism in the twenty-first century.
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 Imagination Meditation and Cognition in the Middle Ages written by Michelle Karnes and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-12-20 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, Michelle Karnes revises the history of medieval imagination with a detailed analysis of its role in the period’s meditations and theories of cognition. Karnes here understands imagination in its technical, philosophical sense, taking her cue from Bonaventure, the thirteenth-century scholastic theologian and philosopher who provided the first sustained account of how the philosophical imagination could be transformed into a devotional one. Karnes examines Bonaventure’s meditational works, the Meditationes vitae Christi, the Stimulis amoris, Piers Plowman, and Nicholas Love’s Myrrour, among others, and argues that the cognitive importance that imagination enjoyed in scholastic philosophy informed its importance in medieval meditations on the life of Christ. Emphasizing the cognitive significance of both imagination and the meditations that relied on it, she revises a long-standing association of imagination with the Middle Ages. In her account, imagination was not simply an object of suspicion but also a crucial intellectual, spiritual, and literary resource that exercised considerable authority.
