- ホーム
- > 洋書
- > 英文書
- > Religion / Ethics
Full Description
By the end of World War II, religion appeared to be on the decline throughout the United States and Europe. Recent world events had cast doubt on the relevance of religious belief, and modernizing trends made religious rituals look out of place. It was in this atmosphere that the careers of Scholem, Eliade, and Corbin--the twentieth century's legendary scholars in the respective fields of Judaism, History of Religions, and Islam--converged and ultimately revolutionized how people thought about religion. Between 1949 and 1978, all three lectured to Carl Jung's famous Eranos circle in Ascona, Switzerland, where each in his own way came to identify the symbolism of mystical experience as a central element of his monotheistic tradition. In this, the first book ever to compare the paths taken by these thinkers, Steven Wasserstrom explores how they overturned traditional approaches to studying religion by de-emphasizing law, ritual, and social history and by extolling the role of myth and mysticism. The most controversial aspect of their theory of religion, Wasserstrom argues, is that it minimized the binding character of moral law associated with monotheism.
The author focuses on the lectures delivered by Scholem, Eliade, and Corbin to the Eranos participants, but also shows how these scholars generated broader interest in their ideas through radio talks, poetry, novels, short stories, autobiographies, and interviews. He analyzes their conception of religion from a broadly integrated, comparative perspective, sets their distinctive thinking into historical and intellectual context, and interprets the striking success of their approaches.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments ix Author's Note xi Introduction 3 PART 1: Religion after Religion 21 Chapter 1. Eranos and the "History of Religions" 23 Chapter 2. Toward the Origins of History of Religions: Christian Kabbalah as Inspiration and as Initiation 37 Chapter 3. Tautegorical Sublime: Gershom Scholem and Henry Corbin in Conversation 52 Chapter 4. Coincidentia Oppositorum: An Essay 67 PART II: Poetics 83 Chapter 5. On Symbols and Symbolizing 85 Chapter 6. Aesthetic Solutions 100 Chapter 7. A Rustling in the Woods: The Turn to Myth in Weimar Jewish Thought 112 PART III: Politics 125 Chapter 8. Collective Renovatio 127 Chapter 9. The Idea of Incognito: Authority and Its Occultation According to Henry Corbin 145 PART IV.- History 157 Chapter 10. Mystic Historicities 159 Chapter 11. The Chiliastic Practice of Islamic Studies According to Henry Corbin 172 Chapter 12. Psychoanalysis in Reverse 183 PART V: Ethics 201 Chapter 13. Uses of the Androgyne in the History of Religions 203 Chapter 14. Defeating Evil from Within: Comparative Perspectives on "Redemption through Sin" 215 Chapter 15. On the Suspension of the Ethical 225 Conclusion 237 Abbreviations Used in the Notes 251 Notes 255 Index 355
