RaT-Newsletter

Latest Contributions

published online "in advance":

"La Virgen de Regla: a Material Approach to Lived Religious Transformation in Latin America" by Amy Whitehead

Link to the publication (full access).

"Umbanda: Hybridity, Tradition and Semantic Plurality" by Steven Engler

Link to the publication (full access).

These contributions have already been published in advance on the website of Brill. Both of them will later be integrated in the JRAT issue "From Syncretism to Hybridity", edited by Bettina Schmidt and Gerald Hödl.

Preview: Volume 2 "The Post-Secular City",

edited by Paolo Costa

The Post-Secular City examines the purported shift from a “secular” to a “post-secular” dispensation from the perspective of the ongoing de-construction of the secularization “theorem” (as Hans Blumenberg called it). Accordingly, the new secularization debate is described as being polarized between the “de-constructors” and the “maintainers” (or re-constructors) of the standard thesis of secularization. This is the assumption underlying an ambitious effort to map out the field, which consists of a long introduction where “secularization” is analysed as a deeply problematic concept-of-process and of eight chapters in which several protagonists of the recent (i.e. post-1960s) debate are selected and used as placeholders of crucial junctions in the space of reasons enveloping such multidisciplinary conversation. They are (in order of appearance): H. Blumenberg, D. Martin, C. Taylor, H. Joas, T. Asad, M. Gauchet, J. Habermas, G. Vattimo. The book’s conclusion is open-ended, to the effect that it is unclear whether the concept is still helpful for understanding what is going on around us and what is in store for us in the near future.

To be published by October.

Paolo Costa was a research fellow at RaT from May to July 2017 during which he gave two talks, respectively, on the new secularisation debate and the concept of “religious unmusicality”.

Heinrich-Ramharter, Esther (ed.): The Vienna Circle and Religion. Cham: Springer 2022.

This book is the first systematic and historical account of the Vienna Circle that deals with the relation of logical empiricists with religion as well as theology. Given the standard image of the Vienna Circle as a strong anti-metaphysical group and non-religious philosophical and intellectual movement, this book draws a surprising conclusion, namely, that several members of the famous Moritz Schlick-Circle - e.g., the left wing with Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, Philipp Frank, Edgar Zilsel, but also Schlick himself - dealt with the dualisms of faith/belief and knowledge, religion and science despite, or because of their non-cognitivist commitment to the values of Enlightenment. One remarkable exception was the philosopher and Rabbi Joseph Schächter, who wrote explicitly on religion and philosophy after the linguistic turn. The book also covers another puzzling figure: the famous logician Kurt Gödel, who wrote on theology and the ontological proof of God in his so far unpublished notebooks. The book opens up new perspectives on the Vienna Circle with its internal philosophical and political pluralism and is of value to philosophers, historians and anybody who is interested in the relation between science and religion.

Link to the publication.

Langer, Gerhard: Judentum für Dummies. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH 2022.

Are you also fascinated by the world of Judaism? This book offers you an insight into the self-image of the Jewish people, their religion and life practices as well as Jewish mysticism, the Kabbalah. Gerhard Langer guides you through three millennia of exciting history and does not exclude persecution and anti-Semitism. He explains the customs and festivals, the symbols, rites and commandments and their meaning. Discover why learning is so important for Jewish people, why the State of Israel has a special significance and get to know the typical Jewish humour.

Link to the publication.

Mattes, Astrid: Migration & Religion. Volume 2 of the series “Religion &”, edited by Rainer Bauböck and Wiebke Sievers. Vienna: ÖAW Verlag 2022.

How are migration and religion related? In the Austrian context, this question is mostly reduced to debates on whether Islam belongs to Austria and whether Muslims are integrated into society. The book “Migration and Religion” asks more fundamental questions. How are migration movements and changing religious landscapes connected? Which societal and institutional adaption processes are provoked by migration regarding the handling of religion? Why is religion such a dominant subject in migration discourses? Which party-political considerations concern the intersection of religion and migration? How is religion related to debates about shared values? And what are the roles of international actors when it comes to religion and migration? The author presents state-of-the-art results from the fields of research migration and religious studies in an easily understandable format. In each chapter the author discusses the issues at hand from different theoretical perspectives, to allow for a variety of angles. Readers are introduced to the perspectives of liberal theory, social constructivism, and multiculturalism, practically discussed through examples from Austria, such as the reform of the Islam Law, Christian Orthodoxy as a migrant religious community below the radar, and the ban of headscarves in schools. The book concludes by sketching future prospects for society, research, religious communities, and politics at the intersection of religion and migration.

Link to the publication (full access).

Michalski, Krzysztof: Die Flamme der Ewigkeit. Eine existentielle Interpretation Nietzsches, translated by Thomas Weiler, edited by Ludger Hagedorn/Piotr Kubasiak/Klaus Nellen. Verlag Karl Alber: Baden-Baden 2022.

This book is an attempt to read Nietzsche anew with regard to the old question of the conditio humana. The reader will not find one answer, but many, and the paths to them often long and winding. The author takes as guiding clues key concepts and metaphors of Nietzsche's thought that can be traced back to antiquity and still remain influential today. He places Nietzsche in dialogue with the multitude of voices that bear witness to the pursuit of the mystery of human existence – from Greek philosophy to the New Testament and the Church Fathers to classical thinkers and writers of the modern age.

Link to the publication.

Thanks to Thomas Weiler, Ludger Hagedorn, Piotr Kubasiak and Klaus Nellen, one of the main works by Michalski was translated for the first time into German.

The editor Piotr Kubasiak was a research fellow at RaT and wrote his dissertation on Michalski at the Department of Fundamental Theology.

Costa, Paolo: “Democracy Is Always Going to Be Hard”: An Interview with Charles Taylor, in: The Review of Politics 84 (2/2022), pp. 238-251.

This interview with the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor was designed and realized to celebrate his ninetieth birthday in November 2021. The interview touches on all the main themes of Taylor's oeuvre, from his view of philosophy to the inherent link between human intelligence and strong evaluations, from the Immanent Frame to postsecularity, from today's democratic crisis to the 1980s debate between liberals and communitarians, from Xi Jinping's China to the global health emergency, from spirituality to Philosophical Romanticism. It is both a hindsight analysis by a first-class thinker and a glance into the future by an incurable optimist.

Link to the publication (full access).

Haselbacher, Miriam / Limacher, Katharina / Mattes, Astrid / Novak, Christoph: Religious “Bubbles” in a Superdiverse Digital Landscape? Research with Religious Youth on Instagram, in: Religions 13 (3/2022).

Religious activities are no longer confined to local religious communities, but are increasingly taking place online. In that regard, social media is of particular importance for young believers that connect with their peers via platforms such as Instagram. There are conflicting views on the functioning of social media platforms: they are either conceptualized as superdiverse spaces, in which social boundaries can be overcome, or as resulting in separate bubbles that foster exclusive exchanges between like-minded people sharing certain characteristics, including religious affiliation. This article assesses online religious activities based on qualitative research involving 41 young, urban, religious Instagram users of different faiths. We demonstrate how young believers’ interactions on social media produce thematically bound content bubbles that are considerably homogeneous when it comes to religion, but superdiverse in other areas.

Link to the publication (full access).

HAVE A NICE STAY, KURT APPEL!

Kurt Appel holds a visiting professorship in modern philosophy at the University of Perugia in the summer semester of 2022. He is teaching four courses which will focus on Leibniz's Monadology, Hegel's Early Writings, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit and Schelling's Late Philosophy.

CONGRATULATIONS, ALISHA SAIKIA!

Dissertation supervised by Lukas Pokorny

Alisha Saikia is a doctoral student in the Religious Studies Department at the Vienna Doctoral School of Theology and Research on Religion (VDTR), University of Vienna. She holds a B.A. in Sociology (2010), an M.A. in East Asian Studies (2012), and an M.Phil. in Japanese Studies (2014), all from the University of Delhi, India. She also holds an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of Tsukuba, Japan where she was a Monbukagakushō Fellow.

CONGRATULATIONS, MARTIN ELEVEN!

Dissertation supervised by Kurt Appel, Esther Ramharter, Jan-Heiner Tück

Martin Eleven studied Philosophy and Advanced Theological Studies in Vienna. From 2018 to 2022, he worked at the research centre "Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society", where he was responsible for the administration of personnel and financial matters as well as editorial tasks for the RAT book series. Of particular research interest for him are religious-philosophical questions in the light of postmodern theories and current psychoanalysis. As a young scientist, it is particularly important to him to make a contribution to scientific discourse at the interface of religion and society.