Key Concepts in the Study of Religions in Contact

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).

Series Editor’s Foreword

Acknowledgments



Introduction

On Concepts and Contact

The Andy-Warhol-Syndrome (AWS) in Postcolonial Religious Studies

On Language

On Method



1. Attraction: Aura as Propensity. Towards a Non-Intentionalistic Description of Attraction in Religious Studies or: Why Religion Sucks

1.1. Introduction: Against the Intentionalistic Stance

1.2. Towards a Non-Intentionalistic Description of Attraction

1.3. The Process of Attraction

1.4. Conclusion: Attraction Revisited



2. Dynamics and Stability: Potentiality, Bipolarity, Metastability. Some Theoretical Perspectives on the Conceptualization of Dynamics and Stability in the Study of Religion

2.1. Introduction: Dynamics and the Dynamic Scholar

2.2. ‘Dynamics’ in the Study of Religion

2.3. Towards a General Notion of Dynamics

2.4. Aspects of Dynamics

2.5. Six Forms (modi) of the Dynamics-Stability Relation

2.6. Metastability: A General Notion of the Dynamics/Stability-Relationship

2.7. Conclusion: Bipolar Metastability in Contact



3. Tradition. Tradition, Recursivity, and not Identity

3.1. Tradition’s Recursivity

3.2. Tradition and Identity

3.3. Conclusion: Toward Self-Referential Tradition



4. The Transcendence/Immanence Distinction. Religion as Contrast

4.1. Introduction

4.2. Transcendence/Immanence in Comparison

4.3. The Basic Structure of the Transcendence/Immanence Distinction

4.4. Metaphors of Transcendence

4.5. The Three-Level Model of Transcendence

4.6. The Process of Transcending: Cases from Ancient China, the New World, and Medieval/Early Modern Europe

4.7. Transcending and Semiosis

4.8. TID and Contrast

4.9. Conclusion: Transcending, Contrast, and the Dynamics of Contact



5. Making Sense of the Senses. Communicativeness, Reciprocity, Immediacy, and Scriptuality in Sensory Religious Experience

5.1. On the Possible Role of the Study of the Senses in Religious Studies

5.2. Object Language Examples of Ascribing Sense to the Senses

5.3. Conclusion: The Dynamics of Sense-Making



6. Secrets: Formally Indicating Blank Spaces in Situations of Religious Contact

6.1. Secrets in the Study of Religion

6.2. Secrets and Contact

6.3. Secrets as Blank Spaces

6.4. The Blank Spaces of Secrets in Contact: Translation Processes

6.5. Conclusion: Secrets and Formal Indication of Concepts



7. Sleep: “Haec est somni et ratio naturalis et natura rationalis”. Tertullian on Sleep as a Promotor of Contact

7.1. Tertullian and the Question of Religious Contact

7.2. Contact and Language

7.3. On Sleep as an Interface of Religion

7.4. On Sleep and Contact in Tertullian’s De Anima



Prospect: Contacting the Future

Typology of Contact

Evolutional Semiosis and Relationality

Explorative Conceptualizing



Bibliography