Postmodern theology and postmodern philosophy

1991 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 65-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. T. Nuyen
Author(s):  
Merold Westphal

The term ‘postmodernism’ is loosely used to designate a wide variety of cultural phenomena from architecture through literature and literary theory to philosophy. The immediate background of philosophical postmodernism is the French structuralism of Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan and Barthes. But like existentialism, it has roots that go back to the critique by Kierkegaard and Nietzsche of certain strong knowledge claims in the work of Plato, Descartes and Hegel. If the quest for absolute knowledge is the quest for meanings that are completely clear and for truths that are completely certain, and philosophy takes this quest as its essential goal, then postmodernism replaces Nietzsche’s announcement of the death of God with an announcement of the end of philosophy. This need not be construed as the death of God in a different vocabulary. The question of postmodern theology is the question of the nature of a discourse about deity that would not be tied to the metaphysical assumptions postmodern philosophy finds untenable. One candidate is the negative theology tradition of Pseudo-Dionysius and Meister Eckhart. It combines a vigorous denial of absolute knowledge with a theological import that goes beyond the critical negations of postmodern philosophy. A second possibility, the a/theology of Mark C. Taylor, seeks to find religious meaning beyond the simple opposition of theism and atheism, but without taking the mystical turn. Finally, Jean-Luc Marion seeks to free theological discourse from the horizon of all philosophical theories of being, including Heidegger’s own postmodern analysis of being.


Author(s):  
Kurt Feyaerts ◽  
Lieven Boeve

This chapter introduces an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religious discourse, inspired by the observation that the tradition of negative theology, rediscovered by postmodern philosophy and theology, shares major points of interest with the cognitive theory of language. Its primary goal is an attempt to compare two epistemological systems in a fruitful and promising way. There are three major parts. The first deals with aspects of apophatical (or negative) theology and presents its rediscovery by postmodern theology. The second describes central aspects of cognitive semantics, with special attention to the theory of conceptual metaphor. The third brings the two theories together in search of both similarities and differences. It will be shown that there are common points of interest and methodology, and that each approach can contribute to the other, offering possible benefits to theology.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 124-138
Author(s):  
Alexandra V. Shiller

The article analyzes the role of theories of embodied cognition for the development of emotion research. The role and position of emotions changed as philosophy developed. In classical and modern European philosophy, the idea of the “primacy of reason” prevailed over emotions and physicality, emotions and affective life were described as low-ranking phenomena regarding cognitive processes or were completely eliminated as an unknown quantity. In postmodern philosophy, attention focuses on physicality and sensuality, which are rated higher than rational principle, mind and intelligence. Within the framework of this approach, there is a recently emerged theory of embodied cognition, which allows to take a fresh look at the place of emotions in the architecture of mental processes – thinking, perception, memory, imagination, speech. The article describes and analyzes a number of empirical studies showing the impossibility of excluding emotional processes and the significance of their research for understanding the architecture of embodied cognition. However, the features of the architecture of embodied cognition remain unclear, and some of the discoveries of recent years (mirror neurons or neurons of simulation) rather raise new questions and require further research. The rigorously described and clear architecture of the embodied cognition can grow the theoretical basis that will allow to advance the studies of learning processes, language understanding, psychotherapy techniques, social attitudes and stereotypes, highlight the riddle of consciousness and create new theories of consciousness or even create an anthropomorphic artificial intelligence that is close to “strong artificial intelligence.”


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Wiesner

With a conscious attempt to contribute to contemporary discussions in mad/trans/queer/monster studies, the monograph approaches complex postmodern theories and contextualizes them from an autoethnographic methodological perspective. As the self-explanatory subtitle reads, the book introduces several topics as revelatory fields for the author’s self-exploration at the moment of an intense epistemological and ontological crisis. Reflexively written, it does not solely focus on a personal experience, as it also aims at bridging the gap between the individual and the collective in times of global uncertainty. There are no solid outcomes defined; nevertheless, the narrative points to a certain—more fluid—way out. Through introducing alternative ways of hermeneutics and meaning-making, the book offers a synthesis of postmodern philosophy and therapy, evolutionary astrology as a symbolic language, embodied inquiry, and Buddhist thought that together represent a critical attempt to challenge the pathologizing discursive practices of modern disciplines during the neoliberal capitalist era.


Sociologija ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-332
Author(s):  
Jelena Pesic

Research field of migration has been developing for a long time parallel to and outside mainstream institutional academic sociology and its theoretical foundation. In the last two decades, within the field of migration studies, one specific aspect of the phenomena came to the research focus: gender, as significant factor that influences on motivation for migration, shaping, at the same time, its characteristics and specific experiences. With decisive breakthrough of qualitative methods in social sciences and humanities, as well as with gradual development of postmodern philosophy and feminist theory, gender migration studies have been established as research sub-discipline, with its own theoretical and categorical scientific apparatus (as well as institutional-academic grounding), managing more or less successfully to explain and understand multidimensional character of migration processes. This text represents an attempt to make relatively concise overview of disciplines? historical, theoretical and research field development, as a first step in its broader affirmation within Serbian institutional sociology.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Ghozi Ghozi

<p>This article will briefly discuss the problems of postmodern theology in the context of the relationship between God and nature. In this case, the author brings the conception of theistic naturalism in the view of classical theology of Islam. Theological conception of postmodernism (theistic naturalism) can be useful contributions to the refreshment of Islamic theology, particularly in the case <em>a</em><em>f</em><em>‘</em><em>â</em><em>l</em><em> </em><em>al</em><em>-</em><em>‘</em><em>ibâd</em> and its derivation. The concept of direct influence and indirect influence may help explain the intervention of God toward human beings without denying the law of causality, as the law that becomes standard of modern science. Nevertheless there are some things that need to be considered in this concept: <em>Firstly</em>, God is only the spirit of the universe, God has entrusted His power to the nature, and all the events occurred due to the co-creativity of God and nature. <em>Secondly</em>, God has no a direct influence on the external dimension, rather He is merely a Spirit of things who has influence on inner dimension.</p>


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