The articles in The Modern Experience of the Religious, edited by Nassim Bravo and Jon Stewart, explore the many ways in which religion was impacted by the emergence of modernity, particularly after the Enlightenment, which underscored the centrality of human reason and thus called into question traditional forms of religiosity. Modernity raised several questions that are studied by the authors of this volume: What should be the role of religion in a secular or pluralistic society? How does the human being relate to God? Can instituted religion be compatible with modern values such as civil liberties, pluralism or environmentalism?
In The Mystery and the World, Maria Clara Bingemer explores how the place of religion in society has dramatically shifted since the Enlightenment. The modern era is characterised by a major change in humanity's fundamental desires that means that reason has taken the place of faith. Human beings, in their ongoing search for a scientific understanding of the world, have drifted away from seeking any essence of transcendence in their lives. Bingemer examines this transition and how, especially inthe postmodern era, it has led to technology and superficial happiness becoming all-important as opposed to the more sacred sense of contentment that governed us for centuries prior to the Enlightenment. In her discussion, however, Bingemer demonstrates that we as humans have not lost our innate desire to believe in a higher power and that, even in our world of instant satisfaction, we still need to fill the void left by religion. Through well-researched analysis of the modern era and discussion of some of the mystics of more recent times, she reveals to readers how our religious belief, whilst changed, is not dead and is still an important aspect of our existence.
This important new volume brings together Habermas' key writing on religion and religious belief. Habermas explores the relations between Christian and Jewish thought, on the one hand, and the Western philosophical tradition on the other. In so doing, he examines a range of important figures, including Benjamin, Heidegger, Johann Baptist Metz and Gershom Scholem. In a new introduction written especially for this volume, Eduardo Mendieta places Habermas' engagement with religion in the context of his work as a whole. Mendieta also discusses Habermas' writings in relation to Jewish Messianism and the Frankfurt School, showing how the essays in Religion and Rationality, one of which is translated into English for the first time, foreground an important, yet often neglected, dimension of critical theory. The volume concludes with an original extended interview, also in English for the first time, in which Habermas develops his current views on religion in modern society. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theology, religious studies and philosophy, as well as to all those already familiar with Habermas' work.
Global Fragments offers an innovative analysis of globalization that aims to circumvent the sterile dichotomies that either praise or demonize globalization. Eduardo Mendieta applies an interdisciplinary approach to one of the most fundamental experiences of globalization: the mega-urbanization of humanity. The claim that globalization unsettles our epistemic maps of the world is tested against a study of Latin America. Mendieta also recontextualizes the work of three major theorists of globalization—Enrique Dussel, Cornel West, and Jürgen Habermas—to show how their thinking reflects engagement with central problems of globalization and, conversely, how globalization itself is exemplified through the reception of their work. Beyond the epistemic hubris of social theories that seek to accept or reject a globalized world, Mendieta calls for a dialogic cosmopolitanism that departs from the mutuality of teaching and learning in a world that is global but not totalized.
El interés por la religión vuelve en este fin de siglo e inicio del milenio. Retorna en forma amenazadora a través de las versiones fundamentalistas o neotradicionales, pero vuelve también el interés por lo religioso en el pensamiento. La filosofía reconoce que para pensar a fondo la modernidad y sus insuficiencias y contradicciones tiene que pensar la religión. La religión es un elemento fundamental para pensar la racionalidad ilustrada.
De Rousseau se ha hecho, e incluso se hace, una lectura preeminentemente política, priorizando El Contrato social sobre el resto de su obra. Esta visión, auspiciada por los partidarios de la Contrarrevolución, posteriormente se ha hecho canónica al asentarse los principios proclamados por los revolucionarios franceses. Con la perspectiva de esta visión sesgada, los escritos referentes a la religión se ven como añadidos discordantes, explicándose por causas subjetivas los que se presentan como disarmonías. Frente a esta interpretación, la que el autor propone atiende a aspectos culturales, antes que a aspectos subjetivos. Rousseau es fruto de un momento de transición. Frente al XVIII como el siglo de la razón, el pueblo es eminentemente religioso. La opción de Rousseau por el sentimiento religioso es una opción epistemológica pero a su vez es una opción social, una opción por el pueblo llano, frente a la razón auspiciada por la élite. Rousseau propone una revolución moral presidida por esquemas religiosos, aunque esta religión tiene que adaptarse a los nuevos tiempos: la metafísica debe ceder ante lo terrenal, o la moral primar frente a lo teológico. La religión civil, como religión patriótica, es expresión de su deísmo en el ámbito político.
This book addresses contemporary discourses on a wide variety of topics related to the ideological and epistemological changes of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, and the ways in which they have shaped the Spanish language and cultural manifestations in both Spain and Hispanic America. The majority of the chapters are concerned with ‘otherness’ in its various dimensions; the alien Other – foreign, immigrant, ethnically different, disempowered, female or minor – as well as the Other of different sexual orientation and/or ideology. Following Octavio Paz, otherness is expressed as the attempt to find the lost object of desire, the frustrating endeavour of the androgynous Plato wishing to embrace the other half of Zeus, who in his wrath, tore off from him. Otherness compels human beings to search for the complement from which they were severed. Thus a male joins a female, his other half, the only half that not only fills him but which allows him to return to the unity and reconciliation which is restored in its own perfection, formerly altered by divine will. As a result of this transformation, one can annul the distance that keeps us away from that which, not being our own, turns into a source of anguish. The clashing diversity of all things requires the human predisposition to accept that which is different. Such a predisposition is an expression of epistemological, ethical and political aperture. The disposition to co-exist with the different is imagined in the de-anthropocentricization of the bonds with all living realms. And otherness is, in some way, the reflection of sameness (mismidad). The other is closely related to the self, because the vision of the other implies a reflection about the self; it implies, consciously or not, a relationship with the self. These topics are addressed in this book from an interdisciplinary perspective, encompassing arts, humanities and social sciences.
