E-SUPPLEMENT TO THE JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS THEORY
Massumi, Brian. Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Hardcover, Paperback, E-book, ix + 320 pages. A veritable articulation of power after (and operating alongside) Foucault’s biopower, Ontopower: War, Powers, and the State of Perception offers a framework and conceptual tools for navigating the post-9/11 reality of the “war […]
Stimilli, Elettra. The Debt of the Living: Ascesis and Capitalism. Translated by Arianna Bove. Albany: SUNY Press, 2017. ISBN 9781438464152. Hardcover, xvi + 199 pages. Max Weber, as is well known, traced the origins of capitalism to an inner drive to renunciation and sacrifice. In The Debt of the Living, Stimilli, in contrast, traces capitalism’s […]
The following is the second installment of a two-part series. The first installment can be found here. Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism is believed to be an outgrowth of an Indo-Iranian religious tradition that dates to the 2nd millennium BCE. However, we do not see it mentioned in Greek writings until about the middle of the 5th century […]
Daniel Whistler, Schelling’s Theory of Symbolic Language: Forming the System of Identity (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 261 ppgs + xi Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) was a German philosopher who is situated between the two predominant thinkers of his time: his mentor, Johann Gottlieb Fichte; and his contemporary and in many ways, rival, […]
The following is the first installment of a two-part series. I. Introduction The question of whether there is life after death, and what that life might be like, is probably one of religion’s oldest questions. Indeed, some conception or another has been in play since the beginning of recorded history, and probably before. Our modern […]
Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Zizek. Edited by Philip Goodchild and Hollis Phelps. New York: Routledge, 2017. ISBN 10: 1138188530. Hardcover, Paperback, E-Book. 512 pages. Philosophy of religion, as a sub-discipline within the field of religious studies proper, has been the subject of much contention for some time now. Often accused […]
The following is a talk presented at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and is the second installment of a two-part series. The first installment can be found here. II. Epistemological Musings So much for “the deductions from the obvious” that I promised to explore with you. I also promised you some “epistemological […]
The following is a talk presented at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and is the first installment of a two-part series. When I was invited to give this talk, my first reaction was “why me”? As a rather obscure and not very orthodox sociologist of religion from a second-tier West Coast teaching […]
Fitzgerald, Francis. The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America. New York City, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017. ISBN-10: 1439131333. Hardcover. 637 pages. In her book The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Francis Fitzgerald provides a comprehensive history of white evangelical movements in America for the express purpose of […]
The title “religious scholar,” it must be remembered, is a very ambiguous categorization. It could either mean those who are engaged in academic work in the religious department of a university or it could also include those involved in subjective religious study, like in a seminary. From a critical post-modern perspective, it could also include […]