Religion and Nature in the Light of Rosa’s Resonance Theory

Science Of Religion

German sociologist Hartmut Rosa has developed an integral resonance theory, which is a theory of our relationship to the world. This theory has aroused much interest in recent years not only among sociologists but also among representatives of other humanities and social sciences, including representatives of the science of religion. Therefore, the author considers it worth discussing. The article deals with religion and nature in light of Rosa’s theory. Rosa understands religion and nature as two of the main axes and areas of man’s search for vertical resonance in modernity. In the section devoted to religion, the author presents Rosa’s view that the essence of religion is man’s need for a response. In light of resonance theory, the author examines phenomena such as prayer, worship, religious rites, certain holidays (Christmas), and sin. Schleiermacher, Buber, Gerhardt, Luther and Camus are singled out as particularly relevant thinkers and creators. On this basis, he discusses existential violence, which stems from the need for resonance and the rejection of alienation as its opposite. The section devoted to nature is mainly focused on the problems that hinder modern man in their quest to fulfil their longing for resonance with nature. The author explains Rosa’s thesis that the ecological crisis is, at its core and origin, an existential and cultural crisis and not a crisis of resources. The author draws conclusions concerning the importance of religion and modern man’s fear of the loss of resonance.

Rosa’s Theory of Resonance: Its Importance for (the Science of) Religion and Hope

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel12100797 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (10) ◽

pp. 797

Author(s):

Bojan Žalec

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Quality Of Life ◽

Resonance Theory ◽

Scientific Support ◽

German Sociologist ◽

Science Of Religion ◽

Sociological Aspect

This article deals with the resonance theory of the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, which has aroused a lot of interest among scholars in the humanities and social sciences, including researchers in the field of religion. The article focuses on its importance for religion, particularly the science of religion and hope. The author presents Rosa’s theory first from the anthropological and sociological aspect. He then turns to Rosa’s understanding of religion. On this basis, the author draws his conclusions, which are as follows: The main significance of the resonance theory for religion and the science of religion is in the rehabilitation of religion as an anthropological constant. It follows that Rosa’s theory of resonance is an important contribution to substantiating the importance of religion and supporting its cultivation. Secondly, Rosa’s theory is an important contribution and support to the flourishing of hope due to its scientific support for religion. Another contribution of Rosa’s theory to hope is that it helps us understand the connection between resonance, existential hope, and meaning, and thus contributes to our being more successful in developing existential hope and discovering the meaning of our lives and world. This is important for our quality of life.

Hyperobjects, Media, and Assemblages of Collective Living: Playing With Ontology as Environmental Education

Australian Journal of Environmental Education ◽

10.1017/aee.2019.20 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 35 (3) ◽

pp. 213-221

Author(s):

Jesse Bazzul

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Environmental Education ◽

Ecological Crisis ◽

Ecological Awareness ◽

Creative Thought ◽

The World ◽

The Future ◽

Environmental Educators

AbstractThis article emphasises the importance of creative thought for environmental education through a discussion of the ontologically rich work of Anna Tsing, Timothy Morton and John Peters. The recent turn toward ontology in the humanities and social sciences has consequently led to diverse theories about ‘how things are’, and some of these concepts might assist justice-oriented environmental educators in raising ecological awareness in a time of crisis. Using assemblages, media and hyperobjects as concepts to (re)imagine the the world(s) of the Anthropocene, this article promotes a practice of ontic-play, a constantly changing engagement with ontological thought. To think through ecological crisis means moving towards philosophy as creation or art. In other words, engaging thought from the future.

Responsibility before the World: Cinema, Perspectivism and a Nonhuman Ethics of Individuation

Deleuze and Guattari Studies ◽

10.3366/dlgs.2021.0447 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 15 (3) ◽

pp. 386-410

Author(s):

Andrew Lapworth

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Human Subject ◽

Ethical Responsibility ◽

Experimental Film ◽

World Cinema ◽

The World ◽

The Subject ◽

Points Of View ◽

The recent ‘nonhuman turn’ in the theoretical humanities and social sciences has highlighted the need to develop more ontological modes of theorising the ethical ‘responsibility’ of the human in its relational encounters with nonhuman bodies and materialities. However, there is a lingering sense in this literature that such an ethics remains centred on a transcendent subject that would pre-exist the encounters on which it is called to respond. In this essay, I explore how Gilles Deleuze's philosophy offers potential opening for a more ontogenetic thinking of a ‘nonhuman ethics’. Specifically, I focus on how his theory of ‘individuation’ – conceived as a creative event of emergence in response to immanent ontological problems – informs his rethinking of ethics beyond the subject, opening thought to nonhuman forces and relations. I argue that if cinema becomes a focus of Deleuze's ethical discussions in his later work it is because the images and signs it produces are expressive of these nonhuman forces and processes of individuation, generating modes of perception and duration without ontological mooring in the human subject. Through a discussion of Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor's experimental film – Leviathan (2012) – I explore how the cinematic encounter dramatises different ethical worlds in which a multiplicity of nonhuman ‘points of view’ coexist without being reduced to a hierarchical or orienting centre that would unify and identify them. To conclude, I suggest that it is through the lens of an ethics of individuation that we can grasp the different sense of ‘responsibility’ alive in Deleuze's philosophy, one oriented not to the terms of the already-existing but rather to the nonhuman potential of what might yet come into being.

Sociology and Animal Studies: Human Responses to Animal Loss in Times of Disaster

Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities ◽

10.21659/rupkatha.v13n3.07 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Joseph Ching Velasco ◽

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Social Media ◽

Environmental Ethics ◽

Animal Studies ◽

Social World ◽

The Philippines ◽

Human Exceptionalism ◽

The World ◽

Species Boundary ◽

A number of attempts have been made to include animals in explorations in the humanities and social sciences. This is a response to the gap where animals are much-neglected entities in the said disciplines. There have been debates pertaining to the inclusion of animals in scholarly discourses in the field of sociology. Notably, human exceptionalism has been one of the key ideological drivers which prevent a more inclusive consideration of animals in the study of our social world. The anthropocentric view of the world and society has put the needs and status of humans above all other animals. This line of thinking has implications on how humanity relates and interacts with animals in a broader context. In times of crisis, humans relegate animals as conveniently expendable or an inconvenient afterthought, which easily leads to instances of animal abandonment and even abuse. However, there has been a collective shift in the way acts of animal abandonment are perceived on social media. This article examined the responses on social media pertaining to animal abandonment during the onslaught of typhoon Vamco in the Philippines in 2020. More specifically, two themes were analyzed: outrage against negligence and compassionate treatment of animals. While this article looks specifically at the abandonment of animals, the project invites further reflection on the notions of environmental ethics and the species boundary.

Understanding Languages of Modernization: A Southeast Asian View

Modern Asian Studies ◽

10.1017/s0026749x99003480 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 581-602 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Jonathan Rigg ◽

Anna Allott ◽

Rachel Harrison ◽

Ulrich Kratz

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Textual Analysis ◽

Southeast Asian ◽

The Self ◽

The World ◽

More than most of humanity, scholars are prone to sinking their feet into the quagmire of definition. Words are unpacked, nuances of meaning are debated, and discourses are interrogated. Post-developmentalists have been at the forefront of a re-examination of the languages of development and developmentalism. Arturo Escobar, for example, states that his desire is to analyze ‘regimes of discourse and representation’ (1995: 10). Jonathan Crush is similarly concerned with the so-styled discourse of development, and expresses the desire to make the ‘self-evident problematical’ (1995: 3). He highlights work in the humanities and social sciences which concerns itself with textual issues of writing and representation through which this discourse has been framed. Crush suggests that such textual analysis offers ‘new ways of understanding what development is and does, and why it seems so difficult to think beyond it’. He goes on to argue that ‘we need to not only understand why the language of development can be so evasive, even misleading, but also why so many people in so many parts of the world seem to need to believe it and have done so for so long’ (1995: 4).

Cosmopolitan Pluralism: Beyond the Cultural Turn

Cosmopolitan Civil Societies An Interdisciplinary Journal ◽

10.5130/ccs.v3i3.2288 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 27-46

Author(s):

Stephanie Lawson

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

International Relations ◽

Political Thought ◽

Know How ◽

Profound Influence ◽

Political Studies ◽

The World ◽

Political Communities ◽

Cultural Turn

The ‘cultural turn’ has had a profound influence across the humanities and social sciences in the last few decades. In calling into question the universalist basis on which conventional methodological and normative assumptions have been based, the cultural turn has focused on the extent to which specificity and particularity underpin what we can know, how we can know it, and how this affects our being-in-the world. This has opened the way to a range of insights, from issues of pluralism and difference, both within political communities and between them, to the instability if not impossibility of foundations for knowledge. Too few studies embracing this ‘cultural turn’, however, pay more than cursory attention to the culture concept itself. This article suggests that conceptions of culture derived mainly from the discipline of anthropology dominate in political studies, including international relations, while humanist conceptions have been largely ignored or rejected. It argues further that we would do well to reconsider what humanist ideas can contribute to how ‘culture’ is both conceptualized and deployed in political thought and action, especially in countering the overparticularization of social and political phenomena that marks contemporary culturalist approaches.

Conspicuous fabrications

Narrative Inquiry ◽

10.1075/ni.19016.kra ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 29 (2) ◽

pp. 418-433

Author(s):

Elise Kraatila

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Thought Experiments ◽

Social Reality ◽

Human Experience ◽

Fantasy Fiction ◽

The World ◽

Meaningful Communication

Abstract It has become an increasingly common suggestion that we are currently living in a ‘post-truth’ world, where compelling storytelling has usurped the place of empirical facts in determining our shared social reality. The impression of reality becoming endlessly mutable by storytelling is bolstered by the idea of narratives as mediators of human experience, developed across humanities and social sciences, becoming part of a popularized post-truth discourse. In this discourse, stories are viewed as tools for constructing the world, and attributed power to create their own truths. I argue that the challenge for meaningful communication posed by this sentiment can be uniquely and effectively confronted in speculative storytelling, and especially currently enormously popular fantasy fiction. By creating thought experiments in conspicuously fabricated settings, fantasy stories highlight storytelling as a means for coming to terms with different realities – and provide their audiences with tools for critically examining and challenging the post-truth discourse.

Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 162, 2008 Lectures

10.5871/bacad/9780197264584.001.0001 ◽

2009 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Social Integration ◽

The World ◽

The Relationship ◽

King Alfred

This volume contains ten lectures in the humanities and social sciences delivered at the British Academy in 2008. The lectures cover topics ranging from an exploration of the relationship between reason and identity, to an examination of social integration as the world becomes a more diverse place, to a consideration of the works of four great literary figures: King Alfred, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and W. H. Auden.

Relationality and Its Chinese Characteristics

The China Quarterly ◽

10.1017/s0305741016000606 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 226 ◽

pp. 551-559 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Emilian Kavalski

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

International Relations ◽

World Politics ◽

Full Spectrum ◽

Cottage Industry ◽

Shared Interest ◽

Chinese Characteristics ◽

External Relations ◽

The World ◽

China's expanding outreach and diversifying roles have provided a novel context for the ongoing reconsiderations of world politics. As a result, inquiries into how China thinks and in what way its history and traditions inform the idiosyncrasies of China's international outlook have grown into a cottage industry both in International Relations (IR) and across the full spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. In this setting, Beijing's external relations draw attention both because of their agency and due to the specificities of China's individual engagements. What has remained overlooked, however, is that such preoccupation with China has been paralleled by the emergence of a relational turn in IR. One could argue that this is not a mere coincidence. Relationality in IR has become prominent not least because of its simultaneous appropriation by both the so-called Western and non-Western (especially, Chinese) perspectives on world affairs. In this respect, the three books under review seem to have a shared interest in interpreting China's growing significance on the world stage through such relational lenses. Together the three books under review illustrate vividly that the complex patterns of global life resonate with relationality and dynamism, rather than the static and spatial arrangements implicit in the fetishized currency of self-other/centre-periphery/hegemon-challenger models underpinning the binary metanarratives of IR.

Axiomatic Design and Design Thinking in Humanities and Social Sciences in the 21st Century

MATEC Web of Conferences ◽

10.1051/matecconf/201822301025 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 223 ◽

pp. 01025

Author(s):

Nam Pyo Suh

Keyword(s):

Social Sciences ◽

Industrial Revolution ◽

Design Thinking ◽

Science And Technology ◽

Primary Source ◽

Axiomatic Design ◽

Economic Transformation ◽

Power Sources ◽

The World ◽

Since the Industrial Revolution (IR), science and technology have advanced at an ever-accelerating rate. In a mere 250 years since IR, advances in science and technology have changed nearly all aspects of humanity. Before IR, people and animals were used as the primary source of power and energy. After IR, steam engines and other power sources replaced human and animal power, which ultimately changed the economic and political structure of many nations and the world. Now, the world is undergoing socio-economic transformation due to information technology and will soon enter the age of biological revolution. These and other advances in science and technology are likely to accelerate, creating both opportunities and some unanticipated risks to humanity. To ascertain that the technological changes result in positive outcomes for humanity and society, more research in humanities and social sciences is needed so as to complement the advances being made in natural sciences and technology. The question raised in this paper is: “Can Axiomatic Design and design thinking be applied in the fields of humanities and social sciences so as to create imaginative societal solutions in the technology era?” Design examples are given that show how AD can be applied in non-technical fields.