Search Results (520)

This article will bring together and explore the relations between four aspects of Wittgenstein’s remarks on, and his relation to, religious language. The first is his sense of the special role that religious language can play in the lives of people. The focus is not on traditional issues in the philosophy of religion—not the Ontological Proof of the existence of God; not any of Aquinas’ Five Ways; not the argument from Design or the Cosmological Argument; and not any other philosophico-religious matter concerning arguments for the existence or non-existence of any deity. His interests lie elsewhere. Second, we see that what Wittgenstein is centrally concerned with is the life-structuring power that religious language can possess and exert; it concerns both the sense-making power of pattern-lives in religious narratives and the metaphorical content of religious ways of thinking and perceiving. The third aspect is the distinctive, and in its way transcendental, way of seeing the world and existence sub specie aeternitatis, that is, under the aspect of eternity. Or, I will suggest, under the aspect of timelessness, or of having the sense of being above and outside of time. Wittgenstein said that he was not a religious person, but that he could not help but to see every problem from a religious point of view. In this third theme of the article, I will attempt to explicate what that remark can mean—how it reveals what Wittgenstein elsewhere in his work calls “a way of seeing.” And then fourth, this article will connect these three aspects to the special, non-pragmatic (and often in the above sense, transcendental) way that we view works of art. In his Notebooks of 1914-16, Wittgenstein wrote, “The work of art is the object seen sub specie aeternitatis; and the good life is the world seen sub specie aeternitatis. This is the connection between art and ethics.” At the close, I suggest that the way we learn to see the world through and within religious language (again, apart from any theological claim concerning divine existence or not) is parallel to one important way of seeing art—where the parallel is one that casts light from each side to the other. Along with some other works, my most central example in art will be the paintings of Morandi: in conveying an unmistakable sense of timelessness, they both convey, and in viewing them invite us to enact, the special way of seeing objects sub specie aeternitatis. Full article

This study examines the phenomenon of “foolishness for Christ” as reflected in the contemporary Orthodox figure of Elder Gerontius of Tismana. Starting with a general review of the diverse phenomena of divine madness present in various world religions, we then move onto the Orthodox Christian tradition, where such apparent eccentric behavior is interpreted as an expression of deep asceticism and spiritual insight. Based primarily on memorial and testimonial sources (oral accounts, written recollections, and biographical notes), the research employs a hermeneutical and phenomenological approach to interpret how such figures are perceived within ecclesial life. Using Christos Yannaras’ theological criteria for discerning authentic “holy folly”, our paper argues that Elder Gerontius convincingly fits this ascetic paradigm. The study further suggests that the presence of such charismatic and unconventional figures may signal a form of spiritual renewal within contemporary Orthodoxy, revealing the dynamic interplay between prophetic charisma and institutional order in the life of the Church. Full article

The digitization of the Chinese Buddhist Canon represents a transformative shift in Buddhist textual scholarship, enabling unprecedented access to and analysis of one of East Asia’s most extensive scriptural collections. This review examines the evolution of digital platforms, with a focus on the Chinese Buddhist Electronic Text Association (CBETA) and the SAT Daizōkyō Text Database, which have become foundational resources in the field. It evaluates their respective methodological paradigms—CBETA’s critical edition model and SAT’s interoperable, ecosystem-based approach—while highlighting their shared reliance on the Taishō Tripiṭaka as a base text. The study identifies a persistent “Taishō bottleneck,” wherein the dominance of a single edition obscures the rich textual diversity inherent in the canon’s three major lineages: Central, Southern, and Northern. By surveying newly accessible image databases of key editions such as the Zhaocheng Jin Canon 趙城金藏, Sixi Canon 思溪藏, and Qidan Canon 契丹藏, the paper argues for a paradigm shift toward a multi-lineage collation framework. The integration of artificial intelligence—particularly in OCR, text–image alignment, and semantic analysis—is presented as essential for realizing a “Hybrid Digital Canon.” This model would harmonize genealogical, media, and methodological pluralism, fostering a more nuanced and historically grounded digital philology. Full article

The Congo Basin peatlands, the world’s largest tropical peatland complex, are critical for global carbon storage yet remain poorly understood from a human dimension’s perspective. This study explores the perceptions, lifestyles, and knowledge systems of Indigenous Peoples and local communities around Lake Tumba, Democratic Republic of Congo, to identify practices supporting peatland conservation. Using a mixed-methods approach—household surveys (n = 320), focus groups, and statistical analyses including chi-square tests and Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA)—the study reveals a predominantly Indigenous agrarian society with limited formal education and strong reliance on peatlands for food (93.7%), construction materials (79.0%), and medicines (75.9%). While regulating services such as carbon storage were seldom recognized, traditional ecological knowledge was evident in sacred species protection, ritual plant and animal uses, and intergenerational knowledge transfer, mainly father-to-son. However, 95.3% of respondents cited religion as the main barrier to this transmission. MCA confirmed that livelihoods, village status, and ritual practices form an integrated socio-cultural system aligned with conservation. These findings stress the role of endogenous governance in sustaining peatland-compatible lifestyles. Conservation efforts should move beyond carbon-centered or top-down approaches to reinforce land tenure, traditional governance, and knowledge transmission, thereby protecting both peatlands and the cultural identities sustaining them. Full article

For more than four decades, the emphasis in the academic study of world religions has been on differences over similarities, and comparative analyses allowing for commonalities have become increasingly rare. This article argues that similarities nonetheless exist and should be studied. After disclaiming the judgment of other scholars that Aldous Huxley attempted to describe the “core” or “essence” of mystical experience, the article continues with a description of Huxley’s unitive mystical experience as simply a thread running across the traditions, evidenced by the fact that it is often found in both the primary and secondary literature of mysticism. The essay then goes on to cite descriptions of unitive experiences in research studies with psychedelics. Given that these experiences regularly occur with psilocybin and other drugs, as studies show, the article argues that the use of psychedelics is currently providing a rich source of experiential reports from which scholars of mysticism may glean insights. Furthermore, based on the views of Huxley, and supported by the reports of Roland Griffiths, Jussi Jylkka, David Yaden, William Richards, Julie Holland and others, the article speculates about the possible benefits of unitive mystical experiences triggered by psychedelics for both the individual and society. Full article

The history of women’s education in Portugal predates the implementation of an official system, which was only consistently addressed after 1836 with Passos Manuel’s reform of primary instruction. Long before that, particularly from the Early Modern period onwards, women religious played a key role in providing education. Convents and Third Order houses—alongside families, charities, and religion-inspired foundations—offered instruction considered appropriate to women’s gender and social status. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) extended strict enclosure to all female convents, leading to the “monasticisation” of education—an arrangement that neither promoted the visibility of female learners nor encouraged the development of the pedagogical models that shaped their instruction. The later emergence of teaching orders, despite their adherence to enclosure, began to challenge the traditional monastic model. Drawing on largely unpublished or scarcely explored archival sources, this article seeks to shed light on the historical reasons behind the prominent and precedent-setting role of monasticism in the field of female education, and to address the enduring invisibility that still shrouds the cloistered world. Full article

Engaged spiritualities face a central challenge: how to transform moments of transcendence into enduring forms of shared life under modern conditions of pluralism, critique, and expressive individualism. This article asks what enables certain forms of spiritual life to last while others fade. It offers an emergentist, systems-theoretical account of how sacred life endures by viewing religion as a self-organizing symbolic system in which meaning and communal practice continually reinforce one another. In plain terms, it examines how myth, ritual, and transformative experience interact to turn inspiration into a lasting sacred world. The study identifies this interaction as the metaperformative loop, a feedback process linking a named yet inexhaustible mystery, inherited ritual authority, and formative submission. The loop functions as the minimal ecological unit through which sacred systems engage and rebuild the symbolic environments that sustain them. At the micro scale, a comparative vignette of the Grateful Dead’s Deadhead community and its cultic offshoot, the Spinners, shows how episodic ecstasy can crystallize into a durable sacred world. At the meso scale, the paper examines contemporary “spiritual-but-not-religious” life as a test case in symbolic ecology and outlines four adaptive strategies (enclosure, membrane, micro-habitats, and drift) that explain why some spiritualities reproduce themselves across generations while others dissipate. Full article

Current school safety frameworks in South Korea concentrate on physical and infrastructure-related risks (e.g., natural disasters, traffic accidents, and facility management), overlooking safety challenges that emerge from the gradual multicultural transition of Korean society. This work attempts to address this critical gap in school safety frameworks. To do so, we first examine how issues related to increasing religious diversity in South Korea create safety challenges. Through our examination of specific cases in university settings, we demonstrate not only that these issues manifest as sociocultural challenges extending beyond the physical risks that current frameworks prioritize, but also that higher education institutions lack adequate institutional responses. Based on this analysis, we develop a curriculum framework for teaching about world religions in general education as an institutional approach to these challenges. By engaging with the concept of religion alongside various religious traditions and discourses, this curriculum aims to develop students’ religious literacy—a competency for better understanding and navigating complex religious and cultural dynamics in daily life. With this curriculum, we suggest an effective way to enhance current school safety frameworks through religious education that is essential for addressing the challenges entwined deeply with the sociocultural transition in South Korea. In doing so, we also highlight that religion continues to maintain significant influence in contemporary Korean society, contrary to widespread assumptions that undermine its ongoing roles and impact. Full article

Exploring different religions allows us to identify not only differences, but also similarities between them. The search for these similarities and differences regarding such fundamental matters in human life as marriage and family justifies the creation of this article. This comparison of positions considers world religions that have existed for centuries and have a significant number of followers, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Based on holy books, documents of religious communities, and scientific publications, the authors have undertaken to answer the following questions: what are marriage and family, and how are they treated in each specific religion? How are marriages formed? What are the responsibilities of spouses/parents, and what functions do families serve? What moral norms protecting marital and family life do specific religions indicate? The value of human beings and interpersonal relationships, the succession of generations and educational needs, the responsibility of the older for the younger, and also the not uncommon permissive and corrupting trends in the world, oblige us to transmit normative content approved by individual religions that is essential for the life and development of individuals and societies. Full article

This article proposes to analyze how different concepts of the sociology of religion operate in today’s youth. Specifically, it starts from the concepts of “enterprise of the self” and “performance/enjoyment device”, proposed by Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot in The New Way of the World, to try to identify the reconfiguration of sacredness and sacrifice in the younger generation, in a context that is identified as precarious. The analysis delves into a precariousness that goes beyond the system of modeling subjectivities and the device for controlling action proposed by Laval and Dardot. This does not imply the ineffectiveness of these concepts, but rather their intensification and rearticulation in accordance with the different realities of youth. Full article

This paper forwards the claim that our early human ancestors had protosacred experiences long before they had languages, architecture, or religions. A mountain may create feelings of awe while a grove in the forest may create feelings of serenity. In some circumstances (and very much dependent on the mental set of the individual), such protosacred experiences may create a sense of ultimacy that may be interpreted by the faithful as a religious experience in terms of their own beliefs. We chart an evolutionary account of the path of human ancestors from experiences of the protosacred to the diversity of religions, with a focus on the emergence of culturally varied architected sacred spaces designed to offer a religious group a sense of shared community and the sacred in the experience of their religion. We argue that the cultural evolution of languages was necessary for this transition. It made our species both Homo quaerens (the humans who ask questions) and Homo narrans (the humans who tell stories), able to ask existential questions and to offer answers that a group could accept. The answers took the form of narratives and scripts for ritual behaviors that could harmonize the community with the world around and beyond it. We suggest that both affordances and atmospheres relate to the aesthetics of space, stressing the atmospheric flow as the performance of various rituals proceeds. This paper offers examples from diverse religions or cosmologies and closes with suggestions for a range of empirical and experimental investigations to address the hypotheses raised herein. Full article

In contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, the evil God challenge has been developed by several authors as a parody argument. Proponents of this challenge contend that, given the goods in our world, the hypothesis of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnimalevolent God or the Evil God is absurd. Similarly, they argue, we should conclude that the hypothesis of a good God is also absurd due to the evils present in our world. This paper argues that, with the aid of this challenge and other contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion, one can make the case that a reintroduction of Manichaeism into philosophy of religion is worthwhile. This argument will propose that, considering our total evidence, the Good-God and the Evil-God demonstrate a similar level of support. Additionally, under a reconstructed Manichaean hypothesis, good and evil are seen as mutually explanatory. Furthermore, the natural order can be understood within this framework. Therefore, the Manichaean hypothesis could serve as a viable alternative to monotheistic theism; it can account for the co-existence of good and evil and is compatible with the observed order in nature. Full article

Contemporary interpretations of psychedelic spirituality are dominated by the “mystical experience model,” which emphasizes that psychedelics can lead to well-being through bringing about ego dissolution and a unitive mystical experience. Rooted in perennialist and dualist assumptions—often derived from Christian mysticism, Vedanta, and Plotinian Neoplatonism—this framework has shaped both scientific discourse and popular understanding of psychedelic states. However, the mystical experience model is controversial: (1) secular critics consider it as too religious; (2) it is a form of mystical exceptionalism, narrowly focusing on only certain extraordinary experiences; (3) its ontological assumptions include a Cartesian separation between internal experience and external reality and a perennialist focus on ultimate reality; (4) it neglects psychedelic learning processes; (5) in the ritual and ceremonial use of psychedelics, shared intentionality and practices of sacred participation are more important than the induction of individual mystical experiences. This article proposes an alternative and complementary model grounded in theurgy, based on the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus and the participatory ontological pluralism of Bruno Latour. Unlike the mystical experience model, which privileges individual unitary experiences, theurgy affirms ritual mediation, ritual competence, and both individual and collective transformation. Theurgic ritual practice makes room for the encounter with autonomous entities (framed by Latour as “beings of religion”) that are often reported by participants in psychedelic ceremonies. By examining how the theurgic framework can expand our understanding of psychedelic spirituality in a way that is truer to psychedelic phenomenology, especially the presence of autonomous entities, imaginal realms, and the centrality of intention and ritual, this article argues that theurgy offers a nuanced and experientially congruent framework that complements the mystical experience model. Framing psychedelic spirituality through theurgic lenses opens space for a vision of the sacred that is not about escaping the world into undifferentiated unity, but about individual and collective transformation in communion with a living, differentiated cosmos. Full article

Museum collections around the world contain millions of objects related to religion that can be considered classic sources for religious studies. To date, however, there is no method in religious studies for systematically critiquing such objects from museum collections as sources. Religious studies must therefore expand their methods in order to be able to systematically use such objects as sources for their own research. Various examples show that museum objects can only be made accessible for religious studies research with the help of provenance research. The main focus of the selected examples is on dolls with a religious background—or, rather, on museum objects that have been classified as dolls in collections. Using such objects as examples, this article provides insight into the problems of provenance and the resulting consequences. The aim is to use the examples to show how objects find their way into museum collections, what intentions may lie behind the acquisition of such objects, and how and in what context such objects may be presented to the public. The background to such a scientific approach lies in the analysis of the changing perspective on such objects, since the meaning and attribution of an object are never static. Rather, these objects are subject to a permanent change in perspective due to changing social processes. Or they are presented as something they never really were. And all this can be revealed by systematic provenance research. The article is therefore intended as a plea for the expansion of religious studies methods to include provenance research. Full article

Drury reports Wittgenstein telling him, “I am not a religious man but I can’t help seeing every problem from a religious point of view, I would like my work to be understood in this way”. My paper attempts to make sense of this strange claim. I first consider the meaning Wittgenstein gives to ‘religious’ in speaking of questions he explicitly designates as such, and then explain how that (sort of) meaning could also apply to the (other) characterisations he provides of his philosophical work. I also consider the subsidiary question, and suggest two very different reasons as to why Wittgenstein nonetheless did not consider himself ‘a religious man’. While I find much confusion in what Wittgenstein says about religion, his crucial insight is that both religious and philosophical thinking are characterised by the same kind of difficulty. Both spring from our moral–existential confusion and despair over finding, or accepting the sense we find, in our life with others. In the later parts of this paper, I show how the metaphysical I–world perspective of the Tractatus (the first specific form taken by Wittgenstein’s own ‘religious point of view’) exemplifies this very rootedness of philosophical/religious thinking in despair, and how in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, including in some of his later explicitly religious remarks, an I–You perspective starts to emerge, one where our difficulties in sense-making are seen as the other side of our difficulties in opening ourselves to each other in love. I also suggest, however, that an unresolved tension nonetheless remains in Wittgenstein’s late thinking between an I–You orientation and a focus on collective normativity. Finally, I suggest that foregrounding love tends to dissolve the very idea of specifically ‘religious’ problems quite generally, and so leaves us with a double question about how to understand religion as such, and about whether, or how, we can give coherent sense to Wittgenstein’s idea that his point of view is specifically ‘religious’. Full article