Religion After Religion

by Wasserstrom, Steven M.

• ISBN13: 9780691005393
• ISBN10: 0691005397
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-11-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Steven M. Wasserstrom is the Moe and Izetta Tonkon Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments	ix
Author's Note	xi
Introduction	3	(18)
PART I: Religion after Religion	21	(62)
Eranos and the ``History of Religions''	23	(14)
Toward the Origins of History of Religions: Christian Kabbalah as Inspiration and as Initiation	37	(15)
Tautegorical Sublime: Gershom Scholem and Henry Corbin in Conversation	52	(15)
Coincidentia Oppositorum: An Essay	67	(16)
PART II: Poetics	83	(42)
On Symbols and Symbolizing	85	(15)
Aesthetic Solutions	100	(12)
A Rustling in the Woods: The Turn to Myth in Weimar Jewish Thought	112	(13)
PART III: Politics	125	(32)
Collective Renovatio	127	(18)
The Idea of Incognito: Authority and Its Occultation According to Henry Corbin	145	(12)
PART IV: History	157	(44)
Mystic Historicities	159	(13)
The Chiliastic Practice of Islamic Studies According to Henry Corbin	172	(11)
Psychoanalysis in Reverse	183	(18)
PART V: Ethics	201	(50)
Uses of the Androgyne in the History of Religions	203	(12)
Defeating Evil from Within: Comparative Perspectives on ``Redemption through Sin''	215	(10)
On the Suspension of the Ethical	225	(26)
Conclusion	237	(14)
Abbreviations Used in the Notes	251	(4)
Notes	255	(100)
Index	355