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Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall
by Sir Thomas Browne Stephen Greenblatt Ramie TargoffSir Thomas Browne is one of the supreme stylists of the English language: a coiner of words and spinner of phrases to rival Shakespeare; the wielder of a weird and wonderful erudition; an inquiring spirit in the mold of Montaigne. Browne was an inspiration to the Romantics as well as to W.G. Sebald, and his work is quirky, sonorous, and enchanting. Here this baroque master's two most enduring and admired works, Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall, appear in a new edition that has been annotated and introduced by the distinguished scholars Ramie Targoff and Stephen Greenblatt (author of the best-selling Will in the World and the National Book Award-winning The Swerve). In Religio Medici Browne mulls over the relation between his medical profession and his profession of the Christian faith, pondering the respective claims of science and religion, questions that are still very much alive today. The discovery of an ancient burial site in an English field prompted Browne to write Urne-Buriall, which is both an early anthropological examination of different practices of interment and a profound meditation on mortality. Its grave and exquisite music has resounded for generations.
Religion And The Sciences Of Origins
by Kelly James ClarkThis concise introduction to science and religion focuses on Christianity and modern Western science (the epicenter of issues in science and religion in the West) with a concluding chapter on Muslim and Jewish Science and Religion. This book also invites the reader into the relevant literature with ample quotations from original texts.
Religion Around Walter Benjamin (Religion Around)
by Brian BrittThis book shows how institutional religion and the religiosity of political and cultural life provide a necessary dimension to Walter Benjamin, one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers. Lived religion surrounded Benjamin, whose upper-middle-class Jewish family celebrated Christmas and Hanukkah in Berlin as the turmoil of war, collapsing empires, and modern urban life gave rise to the Nazi regime that would destroy most of Europe’s Jews, including Benjamin himself. Documenting the vitality and diversity of religious life that surrounded Benjamin in Germany, France, and beyond, Brian Britt shows the extent to which religious communities and traditions, especially those of Christians, influenced his work. Britt surveys and analyzes the intellectual, cultural, and social contexts of religion in Benjamin’s world and broadens the religious frame around discussions of his work to include lived religion—the daily practices of ordinary people. Seeing religion around Benjamin requires looking at forms of life and institutions that he rarely discussed. As Britt shows, dramatic changes in religious practices, particularly in Berlin, reflected broader political and cultural currents that would soon transform the lives of all Europeans.An original perspective on the religious context of a thinker who habitually raised questions about the survival of religion in modernity, Religion Around Walter Benjamin contributes to wider discussions of religious tradition and secular modernity in religious and cultural studies. It provides a foundational overview and introduction to the context of Benjamin’s writing that will be appreciated by scholars and students alike.
Religion Extended: How Perception, Embodiment, and Practice Underlie Religion (Routledge Studies in Religion)
by Elena KalmykovaReligion Extended contributes to discussions of aspects of religion that go beyond the epistemology of belief, incorporating other states such as understanding, emotion, knowledge of persons, knowledge-how, as well as practice. The author looks to bridge the gap in the study of religion between research of religious beliefs, on the one hand, and research of religious practices, on the other. She reconsiders key methodological concepts that traditional philosophy of religion and neighbouring disciplines (e.g. cognitive science of religion, psychology of religion, and theology) take for granted, such as “religious belief” and “religious faith”. The book offers a compelling and provocative reframing of these notions by drawing on cutting-edge developments in cognitive science, as well as insights from an Orthodox Christian perspective, which shed light on religion in important ways that tend to be neglected. Presenting a challenge to the received conceptual framework, this innovative and thought-provoking volume will advance discussions and open new areas of research.
Religion For Reluctant Believers
by Leonard J. SwidlerThis is a volume written for persons who live in the mental world of modernity--that is, in a world that cherishes (1) freedom as the core of being human; (2) critical-thinking reason as the arbiter of what to affirm or not; (3) history, process, and dynamism at the heart of human life and society; and (4) dialogue with those who think differently yet who sense that there is somehow more to life, to reality, than meets the eye: that there is a depth or spiritual dimension not captured in our everyday experiences, which is customarily called religion. <P><P>Religion for Reluctant Believers explores the meaning of life: its joys, problems, and terrors, its pluses and minuses. In short, it asks the question, do you want to buy into Religion with a capital r, into a particular religion, or into no religion at all?
Religion From the Essays of Arhur Schopenhauer
by Arthur SchopenhauerCollected here are five short essays, A Dialogue, A Few Words on Pantheism, On Books and Reading, Physiognomy, and, Psychological Observations, by the world renowned philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.
Religion Within Reason
by Steven CahnIn the views of most believers and critics, religion is essentially connected to the existence of a supernatural deity. If supernaturalism is not reasonable, the argument goes, religion cannot be reasonable—or if supernaturalism is reasonable, religion must be as well. Are faith and reason, religion and science, doomed to a constant struggle for the heart of humanity? Steven M. Cahn believes that they are not, that even if God exists, religion may not be justified and that even if religion is justified, belief in God may not be.In Religion Within Reason, Cahn argues that the common understanding of the relationship between religion and supernaturalism is flawed and that while supernaturalism is not reasonable, religious commitment may well be. Writing not as a theist but as one who finds much to admire in a religious life, he examines faith and reason, miracles, heaven and hell, religious diversity, and the problem of evil, using a variety of examples taken from religious thought, literature, and popular culture. Lucidly written in a nonpolemical spirit, Religion Within Reason offers an exciting new approach to the reconciliation of science and religion.
Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason
by Ian JacksonThe eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant is as daunting as he is influential: widely considered to be not only one of the most challenging thinkers of all time, but also one of the most important. His Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason takes on two of his central preoccupations – the reasoning powers of the human mind, and religion – and applies the full force of his reasoning abilities to consider the relationship between them. In critical thinking, reasoning is all about constructing arguments: arguments that are persuasive, systematic, comprehensive, and well-evidenced. And any examination of involves stripping reasoning back to its barest essentials and attempting to get at the nature of the world by asking what we can know about God and morality from the power of our minds alone. Beginning from the axiom that God is, by definition, unknowable, Kant reasons that it is humans who bear the responsibility of creating the Kingdom of God. This, he suggests, we can do by acting morally in the world we experience – with a morality that can be shaped by reason alone. Dense and challenging, but closely and persuasively reasoned, Kant’s case for human responsibility shows reasoning skills at their most impressive.
Religion after Science: The Cultural Consequences of Religious Immaturity (Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society)
by J. L. SchellenbergIn this provocative work, J. L. Schellenberg addresses those who, influenced by science, take a negative view of religion, thinking of it as outmoded if not decadent. He promotes the view that transcendently oriented religion is developmentally immature, showing the consilience of scientific thinking about deep time with his view. From this unique perspective, he responds to a number of influential cultural factors commonly thought to spell ill for religion, showing the changes - changes favorable to religion - that are now called for in how we understand them and their proper impact. Finally, he provides a defense for a new and attractive religious humanism that benefits from, rather than being hindered by, religious immaturity. In Schellenberg's view, religion can and should become a human project as monumental as science.
Religion and Aesthetic Experience in Joyce and Yeats
by Tudor BalinisteanuThis monograph is based on archival research and close readings of James Joyce's and W. B. Yeats's poetics and political aesthetics. Georges Sorel's theory of social myth is used as a starting point for exploring the ways in which the experience of art, like that of social myth, can be seen as a form of religious experience. The theorisation of the experience of art as a form of religious experience illuminates the role of art in engendering social attitudes in opposition to economic materialism and capitalism. Based on these analyses, the arguments explore the ways in which a theory that defines the experience of art as a form of religious experience can help us to answer three questions of pressing interest for the contemporary moment: How can we read cultural texts to imagine forms of social belonging through which to challenge the isolation of economic materialism? How can we imagine cultural texts to create the collective relations necessary for social change in global capitalism? How can we define an ethics of satisfaction that does not relate to this capital modernity?
Religion and Atheism: Beyond the Divide
by Richard Norman Anthony CarrollArguments between those who hold religious beliefs and those who do not have been at fever pitch. They have also reached an impasse, with equally entrenched views held by believer and atheist - and even agnostic - alike. This collection is one of the first books to move beyond this deadlock. Specially commissioned chapters address major areas that cut across the debate between the two sides: the origin of knowledge, objectivity and meaning; moral values and the nature of the human person and the good life; and the challenge of how to promote honest and fruitful dialogue in the light of the wide diversity of beliefs, religious and otherwise. Under these broad headings leading figures in the field examine and reflect upon: Secular and religious humanism The idea of the sacred The vexed issue of science in both religious and secular accounts of knowledge Spirituality for the godless Non-western perspectives on the atheism/theism debate. A key feature of the collection is a dialogue between Raymond Tallis and Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Religion and Atheism: Beyond the Divide will interest anyone who is concerned about the clash between the religious and the secular and how to move beyond it, as well as students of ethics, philosophy of religion and religious studies.
Religion and Biology
by Ernest E. UnwinFirst published in 1922, this book represents an attempt to outline the biological approach to the questions of religious thought. The author posits the book as a contribution to religious thought in relation to the purpose of God in Nature, providing readers with an overview of the advances and changes in thought that had occurred in the years before the book was written. The examinations of the nature of man and of evolution in relation to religion make up the bulk of the book along with a look at the argument from beauty. The book will be of interest to students of religion, biology and philosophy.
Religion and Biopolitics
by Ulrich Willems Mirjam Weiberg-SalzmannGiven the profound moral-ethical controversies regarding the use of new biotechnologies in medical research and treatment, such as embryonic research and cloning, this book sheds new light on the role of religious organizations and actors in influencing the bio-political debates and decision-making processes. Further, it analyzes the ways in which religious traditions and actors formulate their bio-ethical positions and which rationales they use to validate their positions. The book offers a range of case studies on fourteen Western democracies, highlighting the bio-ethical and political debates over human stem cell research, therapeutic and reproductive cloning, and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis. The contributing authors illustrate the ways in which national political landscapes and actors from diverse and often fragmented moral communities with widely varying moral stances, premises and commitments formulate their bio-ethical positions and seek to influence political decisions.
Religion and Conflict in Northern Ireland: What Does Religion Do?
by Véronique AltglasNorthern Ireland presents a fundamental challenge for the sociology of religion – how do religious beliefs, attitudes and identities relate to practices, violence and conflict? In other words, what does religion do?These interrogations are at the core of this book. It is the first critical and comprehensive review of the ways in which the social sciences have interpreted religion’s significance in Northern Ireland. In particular, it examines the shortcomings of existing interpretations and, in turn, suggests alternative lines of thinking for more robust and compelling analyses of the role(s) religion might play in Northern Irish culture and politics.Through, and beyond, the case of Northern Ireland, the second objective of this book is to outline a critical agenda for the social study of religion, which has theoretical and methodological underpinnings. Finally, this work engages with epistemological issues which never have been addressed as such in the Northern Irish context: how do conflict settings affect the research undertaken on religion, when religion is an object of political and violent contentions? By analysing the scope for objective and critical thinking in such research context, this critical essay intends to contribute to a sociology of the sociology of religion.
Religion and Ecological Crisis: The “Lynn White Thesis” at Fifty (Routledge Studies in Religion)
by Todd LeVasseur Anna PetersonIn 1967, Lynn White, Jr.’s seminal article The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis was published, essentially establishing the academic study of religion and nature. White argues that religions—particularly Western Christianity—are a major cause of worldwide ecological crises. He then asserts that if we are to halt, let alone revert, anthropogenic damages to the environment, we need to radically transform religious cosmologies. White’s hugely influential thesis has been cited thousands of times in a variety of disciplines, including but not limited to religious studies, environmental ethics, history, ecological science, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology. In practical terms, the ecological crisis to which White was responding has only worsened in the decades since the article was published. This collection of original essays by leading scholars in a variety of interdisciplinary settings, including religion and nature, environmental ethics, animal studies, ecofeminism, restoration ecology, and ecotheology, considers the impact of White’s arguments, offering constructive criticism as well as reflections on the ongoing, ever-changing scholarly debate about the way religion and culture contribute to both environmental crises and to their possible solutions. Religion and Ecological Crisis addresses a wide range of topics related to White’s thesis, including its significance for environmental ethics and philosophy, the response from conservative Christians and evangelicals, its importance for Asian religious traditions, ecofeminist interpretations of the article, and which perspectives might have, ultimately, been left out of his analysis. This book is a timely reflection on the legacy and continuing challenge of White’s influential article.
Religion and Ecology
by Whitney A. BaumanMoving beyond identity politics while continuing to respect diverse entities and concerns, Whitney A. Bauman builds a planetary politics that better responds to the realities of a pluralistic world. Calling attention to the historical, political, and ecological influences shaping our understanding of nature, religion, humanity, and identity, Bauman collapses the boundaries separating male from female, biology from machine, human from more than human, and religion from science, encouraging readers to embrace hybridity and the inherent fluctuations of an open, evolving global community. As he outlines his planetary ethic, Bauman concurrently develops an environmental ethic of movement that relies not on place but on the daily connections we make across the planet. He shows how both identity politics and environmental ethics fail to realize planetary politics and action, limited as they are by foundational modes of thought that create entire worlds out of their own logic. Introducing a postfoundational vision not rooted in the formal principles of "nature" or "God" and not based in the idea of human exceptionalism, Bauman draws on cutting-edge insights from queer, poststructural, and deconstructive theory and makes a major contribution to the study of religion, science, politics, and ecology.
Religion and Ecology: Developing a Planetary Ethic
by Whitney BaumanMoving beyond identity politics while continuing to respect diverse entities and concerns, Whitney A. Bauman builds a planetary politics that better responds to the realities of a pluralistic world. Calling attention to the historical, political, and ecological influences shaping our understanding of nature, religion, humanity, and identity, Bauman collapses the boundaries separating male from female, biology from machine, human from more than human, and religion from science, encouraging readers to embrace hybridity and the inherent fluctuations of an open, evolving global community.As he outlines his planetary ethic, Bauman concurrently develops an environmental ethic of movement that relies not on place but on the daily connections we make across the planet. He shows how both identity politics and environmental ethics fail to realize planetary politics and action, limited as they are by foundational modes of thought that create entire worlds out of their own logic. Introducing a postfoundational vision not rooted in the formal principles of "nature" or "God" and not based in the idea of human exceptionalism, Bauman draws on cutting-edge insights from queer, poststructural, and deconstructive theory and makes a major contribution to the study of religion, science, politics, and ecology.
Religion and Identity in Porphyry of Tyre
by Aaron P. JohnsonPorphyry, a native of Phoenicia educated in Athens and Rome during the third century AD, was one of the most important Platonic philosophers of his age. In this book, Professor Johnson rejects the prevailing modern approach to his thought, which has posited an early stage dominated by 'Oriental' superstition and irrationality followed by a second rationalizing or Hellenizing phase consequent upon his move west and exposure to Neoplatonism. Based on a careful treatment of all the relevant remains of Porphyry's originally vast corpus (much of which now survives only in fragments), he argues for a complex unity of thought in terms of philosophical translation. The book explores this philosopher's critical engagement with the processes of Hellenism in late antiquity. It provides the first comprehensive examination of all the strands of Porphyry's thought that lie at the intersection of religion, theology, ethnicity and culture.
Religion and Knowledge: Sociological Perspectives (Theology and Religion in Interdisciplinary Perspective Series in Association with the BSA Sociology of Religion Study Group)
by Mathew GuestReligions have always been associated with particular forms of knowledge, often knowledge accorded special significance and sometimes knowledge at odds with prevailing understandings of truth and authority in wider society. New religious movements emerge on the basis of reformulated, often controversial, understandings of how the world works and where ultimate meaning can be found. Governments have risen and fallen on the basis of such differences and global conflict has raged around competing claims about the origins and content of religious truth. Such concerns give rise to recurrent questions, faced by academics, governments and the general public. How do we treat statements made by religious groups and on what basis are they made? What authorities lie behind religious claims to truth? How can competing claims about knowledge be resolved? Are there instances when it is appropriate to police religious knowledge claims or restrict their public expression? This book addresses the relationship between religion and knowledge from a sociological perspective, taking both religion and knowledge as phenomena located within ever changing social contexts. It builds on historical foundations, but offers a distinctive focus on the changing status of religious phenomena at the turn of the twenty-first century. Including critical engagement with live debates about intelligent design and the ’new atheism’, this collection of essays brings recent research on religious movements into conversation with debates about socialisation, reflexivity and the changing capacity of social institutions to shape human identities. Contributors examine religion as an institutional context for the production of knowledge, as a form of knowledge to be transmitted or conveyed and as a social field in which controversies about knowledge emerge.
Religion and Politics in Jammu and Kashmir
by Mohita Bhatia Reeta Chowdhari TremblayThis book examines the shifting, non-linear relationship between religion, nationalism and politics in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, India. In the wake of the revocation of Article 370, the state’s plural and relatively harmonious society has come under multiple strains, with religion often informing day-to-day politics. The chapters in this volume: Trace the formation of the political entity of Jammu and Kashmir and the seemingly secular politics of its three regions Discuss the rise of militancy and resistance movements in the Kashmir Valley Highlight the intersection between everyday life, nationalism and resistance through a study of the literary traditions of Kashmir, contemporary resistance photography and everyday communalism located in the changing food practices of Hindu and Muslim communities Religion and Politics in Jammu and Kashmir will be an indispensable read for students and researchers of religion and politics, democratization and democracy, secularism, sociology, cultural studies and South Asian studies.
Religion and Rational Theology
by Immanuel Kant Allen W. Wood George Di GiovanniThis volume collects for the first time in a single volume all of Kant's writings on religion and rational theology. These works were written during a period of conflict between Kant and the Prussian authorities over his religious teachings. His final statement of religion was made after the death of King Frederick William II in 1797. The historical context and progression of this conflict are charted in the general introduction to the volume and in the translators' introductions to particular texts. All the translations are new with the exception of The Conflict of the Faculties, where the translation has been revised and re-edited to conform to the guidelines of the Cambridge Edition. As is standard with all the volumes in this edition, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes, and a glossary of key terms.
Religion and Reality: A Study in the Philosophy of Mysticism (Routledge Library Editions: Philosophy of Religion)
by James Henry TuckwellThis discussion of the search for religious truth addresses a universal view of religion that can be termed ‘philosophical mysticism’ from a rational basis of experience. Originally published in 1915, this is a classic of theological thinking that investigates the fundamental nature of religion and ‘perfect’ experience.
Religion and Science: The Emergence Of Spirit In The Natural World. Frankfurt Templeton Lectures 2006 (The Basics #13)
by Philip ClaytonReligion and science are arguably the two most powerful social forces in the world today. But where religion and science were once held to be compatible, many people now perceive them to be in conflict. This unique book provides the best available introduction to the burning debates in this controversial field. Examining the defining questions and controversies, renowned expert Philip Clayton presents the arguments from both sides, asking readers to decide for themselves where they stand: • science or religion, or science and religion? • history and philosophy of science • the role of scientific and religious ethics – modifying genes, extending life, and experimenting with human subjects • religion and the environmental crisis • the future of science vs. the future of religion. Thoroughly updated throughout, this second edition explores religious traditions from around the world and provides insights from across the sciences, making this book essential reading for all those wishing to come to their own understanding of some of the most important debates of our day.
Religion and Secular Modernity in Russian Christianity, Judaism, and Atheism (NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)
by Edited by Ana SiljakReligion and Secular Modernity in Russian Christianity, Judaism, and Atheism is a multifaceted account of the engagement between religion and the secular in Russia's Christian, Jewish, and atheist traditions. Ana Siljak brings together an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars to present unique perspectives on the secularization dynamic in Russia and the Soviet Union, telling stories about theologians, sects, churches, poets, and artists. From the Jewish Christian priest Alexander Men, to the cross-dressing poet Zinaida Gippius, to the Soviet promoter of Yiddish theater Solomon Mikhoels, Religion and Secular Modernity in Russian Christianity, Judaism, and Atheism gives a voice to a variety of actors who have grappled with the possibilities of faith and unbelief in an industrialized, modern, and seemingly secular world. Now more than ever, as one narrative of Russia's religious history dominates official Russian accounts, alternative perspectives of the relationship between Russian religion and secularism should be highlighted and emphasized.
Religion and Secularism in France Today
by Jean-Paul Willaime Philippe PortierThis volume explores the dynamic life of religion and politics in France. The separation of church and state and the autonomy of school education from religion are the two fundamental pillars of France as a secular republic. The historical construction of French secularism (laïcité) was particularly marked by the strong opposition between the state and the Catholic church. However, the religious disaffiliation of a significant proportion of the French strengthened state secularism, which gradually became more consensual – despite some persisting tensions in the school context. Yet, in the last decades, several factors have revived public debate on laicity: the quarrel over ‘sects’ and new religious movements; controversies over Islam, today the second-largest religion in France; and, more recently, dispute over bioethics. Faced with these challenges, laicity as well as the religious groups involved have been changing. The authors of this book, ranking amongst the best French experts in the study of religion and secularism, introduce the reader to a living and lived laicity influenced by the social and religious dynamics of contemporary France. They demonstrate that the configurations of French secularism are both more flexible and complex than they appear to be. The volume investigates the extent to which the French idea of secularization has been pushed to be more thorough and radical in its interaction with its other European counterparts. A key work on French political thought, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of international politics, political philosophy, political sociology, and religion and politics.