Sacrality of the Secular (eBook)

As philosophers in the continental tradition have taken an interest in the return of religion, anthropologists and sociologists have rejected the once-dominant secularization thesis. Bradley B. Onishi connects these lines of thought to reveal how philosophy's religious investigations have enabled critical reflections on the category of the secular.

OnishiBradley B.: Bradley B. Onishi (PhD, Philosophy of Religions, UC Santa Barbara) is Assistant Professor of Religion at Skidmore College. He is the author of The Sacrality of the Secular: Postmodern Philosophy of Redligion (Coliumbia, 2018), the co-author (with Louise Nelstrop and Kevin McGill) of Christian Mysticism: An Introduction to Contemporary Theoretical Approaches (Ashgate, 2009) the editor of Mysticism in the French Tradition: Eruptions from France (Ashgate, 2015), and the translator of Falque: The Battle of Lovers (Virginia, 2017). His work focuses on mystical traditions and contemporary philosophy and on philosophy of religion and secularity.Bradley B. Onishi is assistant professor of religion at Skidmore College. He is a coauthor of Christian Mysticism: An Introduction to Theoretical Approaches (2009) and coeditor of Mysticism in the French Tradition: Eruptions from France (2015).

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Through a bold and historically rooted vision for the future of philosophy of religion, The Sacrality of the Secular maps new and compelling possibilities for a nonsecularist secularity. In recent decades, philosophers in the continental tradition have taken a notable interest in the return of religion, a departure from the supposed hegemony of the secular age that began with the Enlightenment. At the same time, anthropologists and sociologists have begun to reject the once-dominant secularization thesis, which both prescribed and described the demise of religion in modern societies.In The Sacrality of the Secular, Bradley B. Onishi reconsiders the role of religion at a time when secularity is more tenuous than it might seem. He demonstrates that philosophy's entanglement with religion led, perhaps counterintuitively, to vibrant reconceptions of the secular well before the unraveling of the secularization thesis or the turn to religion. Through rich readings of Heidegger, Bataille, Weber, and others, Onishi rethinks what philosophy can contribute to our understanding of religion and the wider social and cultural world.