There is no religion lest there are two religions. Therefore, it is only possible to examine the history of religions by taking the crucial situations of contact into account. Contact needs concepts. Not only scholars but also participants in situations of contact are forced to conceptualize themselves and the other. Taking its point of departure from the contact-based approach to the study of religion, the present volume examines and reassesses a selection of concepts and models (attraction, dynamics and stability, tradition, transcendence/immanence, senses, secret, space) used to come to terms with the phenomenon of contact as the dynamizing element of the history of religions.
Knut Martin Stünkel, Ph.D. (2002), University of Bielefeld, is Associate Professor of Literary Studies and Philosophy of Religion at Ruhr University Bochum. He has published monographs and many articles on intellectual history, including
Una sit religio. Religionsbegriffe und Begriffstopologien bei Llull, Cusanus und Maimonides (2013).
Series Editor’s Foreword Acknowledgments
Introduction 1 On Concepts and Contact
2 The Andy-Warhol-Syndrome (AWS) in Postcolonial Religious Studies
3 On Language
4 On Method
1
Attraction: Aura as Propensity Towards a Non-intentionalistic Description of Attraction in Religious Studies or: Why Religion Sucks
1 Introduction: Against the Intentionalistic Stance
2 Towards a Non-intentionalistic Description of Attraction
3 The Process of Attraction
4 Conclusion: Attraction Revisited
2
Dynamics and Stability: Potentiality, Bipolarity, Metastability Some Theoretical Perspectives on the Conceptualization of Dynamics and Stability in the Study of Religion
1 Introduction: Dynamics and the Dynamic Scholar
2 ‘Dynamics’ in the Study of Religion
3 Towards a General Notion of Dynamics
4 Aspects of Dynamics
5 Six Forms (modi) of the Dynamics-Stability Relation
6 Metastability: A General Notion of the Dynamics/Stability-Relationship
7 Conclusion: Bipolar Metastability in Contact
3
Tradition Tradition, Recursivity, and Not Identity
1 Tradition’s Recursivity
2 Tradition and Identity
3 Conclusion: toward Self-Referential Tradition
4
The Transcendence/Immanence Distinction Religion as Contrast
1 Introduction
2 Transcendence/Immanence in Comparison
3 The Basic Structure of the Transcendence/Immanence Distinction
4 Metaphors of Transcendence
5 The Three-Level Model of Transcendence
6 The Process of Transcending: Cases from Ancient China, the New World, and Medieval/Early Modern Europe
7 Transcending and Semiosis
8 TID and Contrast
9 Conclusion: Transcending, Contrast, and the Dynamics of Contact
5
Making Sense of the Senses Communicativeness, Reciprocity, Immediacy, and Scriptuality in Sensory Religious Experience
1 On the Possible Role of the Study of the Senses in Religious Studies
2 Object Language Examples of Ascribing Sense to the Senses
3 Conclusion: the Dynamics of Sense-Making
6
Secrets: Formally Indicating Blank Spaces in Situations of Religious Contact 1 Secrets in the Study of Religion
2 Secrets and Contact
3 Secrets as Blank Spaces
4 The Blank Spaces of Secrets in Contact: Translation Processes
5 Conclusion: Secrets and Formal Indication of Concepts
7
Space: “Quoniam, si nonnulla religio est, ut sepeliantur, non potest nulla esse, quando ubi sepeliantur adtenditur” The Dead Body as Contested Space: The Case of Augustine
1 The Dead Body and Its Proper Space in Philosophy and the Study of Religion
2 Some Remarks Concerning Augustine’s Phenomenology of the Corpse
3 Dealing with the Dead: De Vera Religione, De Civitate Dei, De Cura Pro Mortuis Gerenda
4 The Contested Dead Body and Its Directive Space—Confessiones, Book IV and IX
5 Conclusion: Aspects of Space in the Dynamics of Religions
8
Sleep: “Haec est somni et ratio naturalis et natura rationalis” Tertullian on Sleep as a Promotor of Contact
1 Tertullian and the Question of Religious Contact
2 Contact and Language
3 On Sleep as an Interface of Religion
4 On Sleep and Contact in Tertullian’s De Anima
Prospect: Contacting the Future 1 Typology of Contact
2 Evolutional Semiosis and Relationality
3 Explorative Conceptualizing
Bibliography 485 Index 502
This volume will appeal to scholars of religion, comparative religion, cultural studies, and the sociology and philosophy of religion.