The Ambiguity of the Sacred - Phenomenological Approaches to the Constitution of Community in Religion, Politics and Aesthetics

Papers and commentaries from this symposium is under the process to become a volume in Södertörn Philosophical Studies.

 

Program

Wednesday 10/2
16.00-17.30 Bettina Bergo, Minimalist Faith, Worlds, and the Body, commentator Jonna Bornemark

Thursday 11/2
09.00-10.30 Jakob Rogozinski, 'You shall kill the one you love': Abraham and the ambiguity of God, kommentator Elena Namli
10.45-12.15 Muniz Sodré, Sacredness as a Social Strategy, commentator Mattias Martinsson
13.30-15.00 Fredrika Spindler, Religion, Politics, Passion in Hobbes and Spinoza, commentator Karolina Enquist Källgren
15.15-16.45 Päivi Mehtonen, Atheistic Mysticism. The Early avant-garde and Radical Spirituality, commentator Jon Wittrock

Friday 12/2 
09.00-10.30 Ward Blanton, Apocalyptic Nothings: Of Paul and the Ground of Philosophical Critique, commentator Hans Ruin
10.45-12.15 Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, Appearing in Fragility, the Fragility of Appearing

The Symposium took place at Södertörn University College, Feb 10-12th, 2010.

 

Presentation of the theme

An important aspect of modernity and its ethos has been the  separation of politics and religion, of church and state. Ideally, religion should become a private matter that should not influence the  democratic political sphere, where a sober and rational construction  of the community and the state should take place. Today a burning  issue in world politics is again the relation between religion and  politics, and the legitimate foundations of community. This  phenomenon is discussed from many different perspectives, historical,  sociological, and economical. But often the most elusive aspect of  this phenomenon seems to evade thematization, namely the very meaning  of the distinction between a secular and a non-secular space, and  thus the meaning of the secular and the sacred as such. The common  does not seem to grow simply out of a secular rationality, but also  out of a common sensibility, with an irreducible aesthetic dimension.  How can we explore the formation of the sacred and of sacred spaces  in relation to aesthetics and a shared sensibility? To investigate  this space is to some extent to return to the great theme in German  romantic idealism, in its attempt to overcome the metaphysical  dichotomy between rationality and sensibility, logos and aesthesis,  in favor of a "rational mythology", "aesthetic philosophy" and also a  "sensous religion."

           In order to thematize this phenomenon we need to address  again the phenomena of the sacred and of the holy, not just as the  individual experience of the numinous and transcendent, but as the  constitution of a shared space of meaning and experience. This space  has a fundamental sensuous, aesthetic dimension, which brings  together consciousness, body and community. Developing an analysis of  the constitution of this space and its experience is both a much  needed task in understanding the very problem of secularization, but  could also open up the possibility of inventing a vocabulary that can  engage thinking across the perennial divide of faith and reason. Thus  it can also engage much of the work in contemporary political  philosophy that seeks new paths for integrating affectivity and  sensibility in political rationality and for exploring "feelings" at  the basis of a social order and of political community.

 

Several questions emerge here:

* How can we find new conceptual and phenomenological means of  thematizing the dichotomy of secular and the sacred?
* What are the relevant point of contact between the  constitution of religious, political, and aesthetic communities? What  lessons could we draw from the comparative analyses of the  constitution of the spaces of theatre, rite, and public manifestation?
* Can the phenomenon of catharsis, as the liberating cleansing  of affects, help us understand the constitution and enactment of the  sacred?
* What is the meaning and force of the phenomenon of non-being,  as a space of the utopian and the messianic, as a movement toward and  beyond the limit of the present?
* How can we give phenomenological meaning to the distinction  between a genuine community and a shared space, as opposed to the uni- dimensional formation of sects, fanatic groups and gangs, and thus to  the distinction between enthusiasm and fanaticism?

 

The conference is part of a three year research project supported by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Jonsson Foundation on various aspects of phenomenology and religion. An initial conference was organized in May 2008, around this theme and will result in an anthology which is in the process of being published.