"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 situationsof 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"--
Taking its point of departure from the assumption that situations of contact play a crucial role in the origins, development, and internal differentiation of religious traditions, the volume examines and reassesses key concepts used on object language and metalanguage level to describe and analyze the dynamics in the history of religions.
Series Editors Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1On Concepts and Contact
2The Andy-Warhol-Syndrome (AWS) in Postcolonial Religious Studies
3On Language
4On Method
1 Attraction: Aura as Propensity
Towards a Non-intentionalistic Description of Attraction in Religious
Studies or: Why Religion Sucks
1Introduction: Against the Intentionalistic Stance
2Towards a Non-intentionalistic Description of Attraction
3The Process of Attraction
4Conclusion: Attraction Revisited
2 Dynamics and Stability: Potentiality, Bipolarity, Metastability
Some Theoretical Perspectives on the Conceptualization of Dynamics and
Stability in the Study of Religion
1Introduction: Dynamics and the Dynamic Scholar
2Dynamics in the Study of Religion
3Towards a General Notion of Dynamics
4Aspects of Dynamics
5Six Forms (modi) of the Dynamics-Stability Relation
6Metastability: A General Notion of the Dynamics/Stability-Relationship
7Conclusion: Bipolar Metastability in Contact
3 Tradition
Tradition, Recursivity, and Not Identity
1Traditions Recursivity
2Tradition and Identity
3Conclusion: toward Self-Referential Tradition
4 The Transcendence/Immanence Distinction
Religion as Contrast
1Introduction
2Transcendence/Immanence in Comparison
3The Basic Structure of the Transcendence/Immanence Distinction
4Metaphors of Transcendence
5The Three-Level Model of Transcendence
6The Process of Transcending: Cases from Ancient China, the New World, and
Medieval/Early Modern Europe
7Transcending and Semiosis
8TID and Contrast
9Conclusion: Transcending, Contrast, and the Dynamics of Contact
5 Making Sense of the Senses
Communicativeness, Reciprocity, Immediacy, and Scriptuality in Sensory
Religious Experience
1On the Possible Role of the Study of the Senses in Religious Studies
2Object Language Examples of Ascribing Sense to the Senses
3Conclusion: the Dynamics of Sense-Making
6 Secrets: Formally Indicating Blank Spaces in Situations of Religious
Contact
1Secrets in the Study of Religion
2Secrets and Contact
3Secrets as Blank Spaces
4The Blank Spaces of Secrets in Contact: Translation Processes
5Conclusion: 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
1The Dead Body and Its Proper Space in Philosophy and the Study
of Religion
2Some Remarks Concerning Augustines Phenomenology
of the Corpse
3Dealing with the Dead: De Vera Religione, De Civitate Dei, De Cura Pro
Mortuis Gerenda
4The Contested Dead Body and Its Directive SpaceConfessiones,
Book IV and IX
5Conclusion: 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
1Tertullian and the Question of Religious Contact
2Contact and Language
3On Sleep as an Interface of Religion
4On Sleep and Contact in Tertullians De Anima
Prospect: Contacting the Future
1Typology of Contact
2Evolutional Semiosis and Relationality
3Explorative Conceptualizing
Bibliography 485
Index 502
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).
