Image And Imagination In The Phenomenology Of Religious Experience

Image and Imagination in the Phenomenology of Religious Experience

"While human beings have probably always been fascinated by images, we live in an image-obsessed age in which images powerfully shape our lives. The writers in this volume are keenly attentive to the ways in which we all are both image bearers and image makers. Although their reflections often arise from and relate explicitly to religious imagery, their explorations have much wider implications. They delve deeply into such issues as the ways in which images both reveal and conceal, the ways in which images are interpreted, and the ways in which we use images to define ourselves and tell our stories. This is a powerful volume, full of thought-provoking analyses of the phenomenon of the image and its role in human being-in-the-world. Topics such as embodiment, mysticism, ritual, touch, creation, and suffering are explored with sensitivity, nuance, and insight. In short, the authors show us a great deal about how images embody whatever it is we take to be 'sacred'. Bruce Ellis Benson, University of Nottingham This volume presents new findings on religious images, in their relationship to appearance and phenomenality, to being, transcendence, liminality, reduction, original self-giving, evidence, and other topics of regressive and constitutive phenomenology. Drawing on Christian, Islamic, and cross-cultural folk testimony, the volume creates an incisive reference that opens new avenues for phenomenological research"--

Image and Imagination in the Phenomenology of Religious Experience

Philosophies of Liturgy

Mainstream philosophy of religion has primarily focused on the truth and justification of religious beliefs even though belief is only one small facet of religious life. This collection remedies this by taking practice and embodied action seriously as fundamental elements of any philosophy of religion. Emerging and established voices across different philosophical traditions come together to consider religious actions, including public worship, from perspectives such as trauma and social ontology, sound and silence, and knowledge and hope. Embodied religious practice is viewed through the lens of liturgy, intrinsically connecting religious rituals to human existence to show clearly that, no matter where one finds oneself in terms of the so-called 'analytic-continental' divide, philosophy of religion must be concerned with more than just beliefs if it is to adequately deal with the subject matter of 'religion.' The purpose of these studies is not to reject what has gone before but to expand the focus of philosophy of religion. This approach lays the groundwork for investigations into how beliefs are situated in our theological, moral, and social frameworks. For any philosophy of religion student or scholar interested in how thinking and living well are intimately related, this is a go-to resource. It takes seriously the importance of historical religious traditions and communities, opening the space for cross-cultural and interdisciplinary debates.