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In Under the Spell of Freedom, Hans Joas deconstructs the grand Hegelian narrative of human history as the self-realization of the idea of freedom, setting as a counterpart the sketches of a theory of the emergence of moral universalism. He takes the classical views of Hegel and his emphasis on the role of Protestant Christianity and the extremely negative views about Christianity in the work of the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to elaborate on this new understanding of religion and freedom, which encompasses a range of intellectual traditions and avoids Eurocentrism. Joas answers the empirical question of when, where, why, and how such a moral universalism emerged and developed.
In The Power of the Sacred, Hans Joas develops a new sociological theory of religion by reconstructing existing scientific theories of religion, from the eighteenth century to the present. Through a critical reading and reasssessment of key texts, Joas proposes an alternative to the narratives of disenchantment and secularization which have dominated debates on the topic. He further offers the most thorough reconstruction of the meaning of this concept, demonstrates how problematic it is for an appropriate understanding of religion in modernity, and presents the basic features of an alternative.
The first classics in human history—the early works of literature, philosophy, and theology to which we have returned throughout the ages—appeared in the middle centuries of the first millennium bce. The canonical texts of the Hebrew scriptures, the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle, the Analects of Confucius and the Daodejing, the Bhagavad Gita and the teachings of the Buddha—all of these works came down to us from the compressed period of history that Karl Jaspers memorably named the Axial Age. In The Axial Age and Its Consequences, Robert Bellah and Hans Joas make the bold claim that intellectual sophistication itself was born worldwide during this critical time. Across ...
"Choreographing Relations" undertakes the experiment of a conceptual site development of contemporary choreography by means of practical philosophy. Guided by the radically empiricist question "What Can Choreography Do?" the book investigates the performances of Antonia Baehr, Juan Dominguez, Xavier Le Roy, and Eszter Salamon, and the philosophical works of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It establishes a relation between these practitioners as an encounter in method, and develops method as a singular, material and experimental practice. In view of these singular methods and the participatory relations to which they give rise, Choreographing Relations offers a prolific inventory of arepresentational procedures that qualitatively transformed choreography and philosophy at the turn of the twentieth century.
This volume brings together key findings of the long-term research project ‘Religious Individualisation in Historical Perspective’ (Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt University). Combining a wide range of disciplinary approaches, methods and theories, the volume assembles over 50 contributions that explore and compare processes of religious individualisation in different religious environments and historical periods, in particular in Asia, the Mediterranean, and Europe from antiquity to the recent past. Contrary to standard theories of modernisation, which tend to regard religious individualisation as a specifically modern or early modern as well as an ess...
Provides a new orientation to philosophy of religion and a new theory of how religion ought to be defined. In this collection of essays, written over the past decade, Robert Cummings Neville addresses contemporary debates about the concept of religion and the importance of the comparative method in theology, while advancing and defending his own original definition of religion. Nevilles hypothesis is that religion is a cognitive, existential, and practical engagement of ultimate realitiesfive ultimate conditions of existence that need to be engaged by human beings. The essays, which range from formal articles to invited lectures, develop this hypothesis and explore its ramifications in religious experience, philosophical theology, religious studies, and the works of important thinkers in philosophy of religion. Defining Religion is an excellent introduction to Nevilles work, especially to the systematic philosophical theology presented in his magisterial three-volume set Philosophical Theology.
Harrington draws on neglected sources in early twentieth-century German social thought to address core questions in current social science.
He favors the use of a broad range of analytic tools drawn from multiple disciplines and approaches to the study of religion.) The five chapters of this book describe the central concepts and arguments now advancing the study of religious practice. Chapter 1, entitled "Theories", discusses the theoretical contributions associated with the aforementioned shift in religious studies to the investigation of religious practice. Chapter 2, "Situations", discusses how religious activities and experiences are shaped by the physical and temporal spaces in which social action occurs. Chapter 3, "Intentions", takes on an important topic that has proven difficult to study from a social science perspective. "Feelings" are the focus of Chapter 4, and the role of "Bodies" is addressed in Chapter 5. .
Engages in a self-critical examination of the pragmatist conception of truth integrating ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion.
Mysticism and Experience: Twenty-First-Century Approaches embarks on an investigation of the concept of mysticism from the standpoint of academic fields, including philosophy, anthropology, religious studies, mysticism studies, literary studies, art criticism, cognitive poetics, cognitive science, psychology, medical research, and even mathematics. Scholars across disciplines observe that, although it has experienced both cyclical approval and disapproval, mysticism seems to be implicated as a key foundation of religion, alon with the highest forms of social, cultural, intellectual, and artistic creations. This book is divided into four sections: The Exposure, The Symbolic, The Cognitive, and The Scientific, covering all fundamental aspects of the phenomenon known as mysticism. Contributors, taking advantage of recent advances in disciplinary approaches to understanding mystical phenomena, address questions of whether progress can be made to systemically enrich, expand, and advance our understanding of mysticism.