Words: Religious Language Matters (The Future of the Religious Past) - Hardcover

Hemel, Ernst Van Den; Szafraniec, Asja

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0823255557 ISBN 13: 9780823255559

Publisher: Fordham University Press, 2014

Synopsis

It is said that words are like people: One can encounter them daily yet never come to know their true selves. This volume examines what words are―how they exist―in religious phenomena. Going beyond the common idea that language merely describes states of mind, beliefs, and intentions, the book looks at words in their performative and material specificity.
The contributions in the volume develop the insight that our implicit assumptions about what language does guide the way we understand and experience religious phenomena. They also explore the possibility that insights about the particular status of religious utterances may in turn influence the way we think about words in our language.

About this title

About the Author

Ernst van den Hemel (Author)
Ernst van den Hemel is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for the Humanities of Universiteit Utrecht. He completed his PhD at the University of Amsterdam as part of the project titled the Future of the Religious Past. His current research focuses on the postsecular and national identity. He teaches at the department of Religious Studies, Utrecht University. Van den Hemel is the secretary of the Foresight Committee Theology of Religious Studies of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.
Asja Szafraniec (Author)
Asja Szafraniec teaches at Amsterdam University College. She is the author of Beckett, Derrida, and the Event of Literature (Stanford University Press, 2007), and of articles on the relation between continental and ordinary language philosophy, on the question of the specificity of the nature of philosophical discourse, and on the relation between philosophy and various forms of literary experiment. Her current research on the work of Stanley Cavell focuses on contemporary philosophy’s response to the questions of skepticism, faith, and religion.

Edition details

• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0823255557
• ISBN 13: 9780823255559
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 614