This series aims to provide an interdisciplinary introduction to the study of literture and religion, concerned with the fundamentally important issues of the imagination, literary perceptions and the underlying religious implications in so much literature and literary criticism. This study provides one indication that as aesthetics begins to be reconcieved, which is starting to happen on many fronts, it can play a more significant role both in philosophy and in religious reflection.
Part 1 Introduction: the prospect of religious aesthetics; the aims and
premises of the current study; the strategy in brief. Part 2 Can aesthetics
be Christian?: aesthetics, theology and the example of ethics; rethinking
aesthetics; the easthetic and the religious - theory at an impasse; religious
aesthetica - or, farewell to the duck/rabbit; aesthetics in theology. Part 3
Art, religion and the aesthetic milieu: aesthetics, anti-aesthetics,
neo-aesthetics; in search of aesthetica; exemplary aesthetica and deficient
aesthetics; the aesthetic continuum; the aesthetic milieu in view of the
religious. Part 4 Artistic makings and religious meanings: art and impurity;
concepts and definitions of art; interlude - the "more" within art; the
makings of art; artistic imagination and religious meaning. Part 5 Varieties
of religious aesthetic experience: religion and its varieties; imagining
Christianity aesthetically; Christian aesthetics amd divine transcendence;
Christian aesthetics and human transformation. Part 6 Sin and bad taste:
aesthetic criteria in the realm of religion; antinomy; elements of taste;
taste in the realm of religion; against the antinomy; sinful taste. Part 7
Questioning the classics: norms and canons in religion and art; classics in
question; artworks as religious classics; the plurality of classics and the
conflict of norms; performing the tradition - the makings of religious
pluralism. Part 8 Conclusion: aesthetics from the standpoint of theology -
standpoints of aesthetic understanding; aesthetics from the present
standpoint; aesthetics - philosophical, religious, theological.
