Phenomenology and Religious Experience Course Description

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Phenomenology and Religious Experience Course Description TENTATIVE AND PRELIMINARY COURSE DESCRIPTION & SCHEDULE PHIL 7145: Phenomenology and Religious Experience Spring 2018; Thursdays, 2:30-4:30 PM C.M. Gschwandtner Course Description: This course will undertake philosophical investigations into major traditional and contemporary forms of religious life and experience, such as ritual/liturgy, asceticism, monasticism, mysticism, spirituality, and fundamentalism. The course will examine these forms as practices and lifestyles, drawing on phenomenology as the primary methodology for analyzing their manifestations in various cultures and traditions. The course will treat and explore religion as fundamental human experience (i.e. it does not constitute an investigation into the divine). Although the primary focus will be on concrete phenomenological investigation of the practices and forms of life under consideration, the course will also expose students to some of the significant ways in which such phenomena have been approached by contemporary philosophers (such as Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Richard Kearney, Julia Kristeva, Anthony Steinbock, Emmanuel Falque, and others). The course will generally spend a session on primary sources in which religious phenomena are manifested or described, followed by a session evaluating contemporary secondary sources reflecting on the phenomena under investigation. Note #1: The goal of the course is to do phenomenology, not merely to read about it... Tentative Course Schedule (with potential texts/figures to be considered, usually in excerpts): Session #1: Introduction: What is phenomenology of religious life/experience? Session #2: Ritual Practices/Liturgy: liturgical texts/practices from a variety of religious traditions Session #3: Ritual Practices/Liturgy: Lacoste, Marion Session #4: Asceticism: Apophthegmata of the Desert Ascetics, Evagrius of Pontus, Way of the Pilgrim Session #5: Asceticism: Hadot, Foucault Session #6: Mysticism: Julian of Norwich, Teresa of Avila, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Gertrude of Helfta Session #7: Mysticism: Steinbock, Kristeva, Critchley Session #8: Methodological Interlude Session #9: Monasticism: Basil of Caesarea, John Climacus, Benedict of Nursia, Diadochus of Photike Session #10: Monasticism: Agamben, Falque Session #11: Fundamentalism: various contemporary documents Session #12: Fundamentalism: Ricoeur, Staudigl Session #13: Spirituality: Thomas Merton, Simone Weil, Dorothy Day, Jean Vanier Session #14: Spirituality: Chrétien, Kearney Session #15: Conclusion: How is religion productively examined philosophically? Note #2: Although the primary focus will still be Christianity—the only area in which I have any sort of expertise—we will try to bring in expressions of religious life in other traditions as much as possible (such as Jain asceticism, Hasidic and Sufi mysticism, Buddhist monasticism, various forms of ritual behavior, expressions of spirituality & fundamentalism across several religious traditions). Note #3: If you plan on taking the course and have strong interest in a particular topic or text that you would like included, please let me know (the list above is tentative). I’m happy to chat about the course in advance with anyone who would like to do so. .
Recommended publications
  • Mysticism in Indian Philosophy
    The Indian Institute of World Culture Basavangudi, Bangalore-4 Transaction No.36 MYSTICISM IN INDIAN PHILOSOPHY BY K. GOPALAKRISHNA RAO Editor, “Jeevana”, Bangalore 1968 Re. 1.00 PREFACE This Transaction is a resume of a lecture delivered at the Indian Institute of World Culture by Sri K. Gopala- Krishna Rao, Poet and Editor, Jeevana, Bangalore. MYSTICISM IN INDIAN PHILOSOPHY Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism arc different pathways to God. Philosophy literally means love of wisdom for intellectuals. It seeks to ascertain the nature of Reality through sense of perception. Religion has a social value more than that of a spiritual value. In its conventional forms it fosters plenty but fails to express the divinity in man. In this sense it is less than a direct encounter with reality. Mysticism denotes that attitude of mind which involves a direct immediate intuitive apprehension of God. It signifies the highest attitude of which man is capable, viz., a beatific contemplation of God and its dissemination in society and world. It is a fruition of man’s highest aspiration as an integral personality satisfying the eternal values of life like truth, goodness, beauty and love. A man who aspires after the mystical life must have an unfaltering and penetrating intellect; he must also have a powerful philosophic imagination. Accurate intellectual thought is a sure accompaniment of mystical experience. Not all mystics need be philosophers, not all mystics need be poets, not all mystics need be Activists, not all mystics lead a life of emotion; but wherever true mysticism is, one of these faculties must predominate. A true life of mysticism teaches a full-fledged morality in the individual and a life of general good in the world.
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  • Mysticism and Mystical Experiences
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  • Mysticism As an Ethical Form of Life: a Wittgensteinian
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  • Mysticism and Cognitive Neuroscience: We Stand at the Threshold of a New Era in Modern Science … with the Coming of the Neuroscience Revolution
    248 discipline within a network of diverse approaches to humanistic issues. Taylor writes that, Mysticism and cognitive neuroscience: We stand at the threshold of a new era in modern science … with the coming of the neuroscience revolution. Before, pure science was able a partnership in the quest for consciousness to brush the philosophical questions aside and, indeed, banished all but the most positivist rhetoric from the discussion of what constituted * Brian Les Lancaster scientific reality. Now, the neuroscience revolution, with its inter- disciplinary communication between the basic sciences, its cross- -fertilization of methods, and its focus for the first time on the biology of Resumo consciousness, appears to have important humanistic implications far beyond the dictates of the reductionistic approach that spawned it. Neste artigo são integrados os conhecimentos neurofisiológicos com (p. 468) um modelo de processos perceptuais e de memória, baseado no misticismo da linguagem Sufi e judaica, e com a análise do pensamento An indicator of the importance of neuroscience may be observed in fundado em textos do Budista Abhidhamma. Os estados místicos pro- the various hybrid disciplines that have been spawned over recent years, movidos nestas tradições parecem envolver consciência, sugerindo-se each of which includes the prefix ‘neuro-’ as an emblem of authority, as it que são estes estados de pré-consciência que produzem a consciência were. Illustrative of this trend are neurophenomenology (Varela, 1996, 1999), de algo mais que William James, Rudolph Otto e outros classicamente neuro-psychoanalysis (Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2000; Solms, 2000), and the associaram no sentido do espiritual, em particular a asserção principal, topic of my paper, neurotheology (Ashbrook, 1984; d’Aquili & Newberg, dos textos místicos Judeus de que o impulso de baixo activa o de cima é comparável com a neurociência da consciência.
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  • Mystical Experience, Religious Doctrine and Philosophical Analysis
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  • Mystical Experiences, Neuroscience, and the Nature of Real…
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  • Platonic Mysticism
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  • Rhythmic Chanting and Mystical States Across Traditions
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  • A “Feminine” Heartbeat in Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism
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