Contributions to a semiotics of religion: the semiosis from sign to meaning

This article approaches theoretically the religious experience in toto. Considering the semiotics applied to religion, contributions to understand and recognize the relevance of this discipline are proposed. Such approach to the semiotics of religion justifies the aim of the article: to understand the meaning structures of religious experiences. These experiences are diverse, intimate, subjective, but all have an idea of the “transcendent” as a referent and they are based on structures of meaning, expressions, and representations of the sacred, forms, uses and interpretations of religious signs, systems of collective thought and symbolic action. It is intended to advocate that: 1) the semiotics of religion is an interdisciplinary branch of social sciences and humanities and a sort of semiotics of culture; religion is a form of culture, as well communication and social meaning; 2) religion is a semiotic phenomenon; it is sustained by signs, representations, processes of signification and cultural construction of the world, without which there could be no religion. This is followed by a conceptual, theoretical strategy of critical discussion of the structures of meaning on which manifest culture is based through what we say or do, the way we behave and the attitude we have towards signs.

Religious Experience

This Element looks at religious experience and the role it has played in philosophy of religion. It critically explores the history of the intertwined discourses on mysticism and religious experience, before turning to a few specific discussions within contemporary philosophy of religion. One debate concerns the question of perennialism vs. constructivism and whether there is a 'common core' to all religious or mystical experience independent of interpretation or socio-historical background. Another central discussion concerns the epistemology of purportedly theophanic experience and whether a perceptual model of religious experience can provide evidence or justification for theistic belief. The Element concludes with a discussion of how philosophy of religion can productively widen its treatment of religious experience in the service of creating a more inclusive and welcoming discipline.

ON THE CHURCHNESS OF THE POPULATION OF THE KALININ REGION IN 1930-1950 (FROM MEMORIES OF «CHILDREN OF WAR»)

В статье представлены предварительные результаты исследования в рамках проекта: «Церковная жизнь в советском обществе в 1940-1950-гг.: религиозные практики населения в Калининской области в воспоминаниях «детей войны». Обыденная религиозность рассматривается сквозь призму восприятия представителей постреволюционного поколения, рожденных в СССР в 1928-1945 гг. и проживающих в настоящее время на территории Тверской области. Для анализа их религиозного опыта привлекались материалы анкетирования, которые содержат социокультурные характеристики респондентов, отражают их личные воспоминания, семейные предания. Показано, что в условиях упадка церковной жизни семья приобретает черты социального звена, которое имеет сакральное значение: в его пределах протекает религиозная жизнь, совершаются религиозные ритуалы. He article presents the preliminary results of the study accordingly the project: «Church life in the Soviet society in 1940-1950: the religious practices of the population of the Kalinin region in the memories of «children of war». Ordinary religiousness was examined through the prism of perceptions of the postrevolutionary generation, born in the USSR in 1928-1945 and lived on the territory of the Tver Region at present. In order to analyze their religious experience the materials of the questionnaires, which contain sociocultural characteristics of the respondents, reflect their personal memories and family traditions, were used. It is shown that in the conditions of the decline of parochial life a family acquires the features of a social link that has a sacral meaning: religious life and rituals take place within it.

The Ecology of Religious Knowledges

Different religious traditions, beliefs, and experiences claim to have epistemic contact with the ultimate source of reality. However, this epistemic claim has encountered one of its most significant obstacles in the initial incompatibility of its multiple accounts. I argue that from the ecology of knowledges, the idea that intentions, body, and physical and social environments are constitutive elements of our experience and knowledge, we can understand both the veridical, as embodied and extended, and pluralistic, as essentially limited, nature of religious experiences and knowledges. I characterize the mystical religious experience as a state of consciousness that (allegedly) allows direct epistemic contact with the supreme reality, articulating its essentially non-ordinary nature on the basis of the radical otherness of the sacred realm, namely, its character of being eternal, infinite, and with supreme ontological, ethical, and aesthetic value. According to this proposal, the different religious perspectives are understood as different epistemic approaches dealing with these numinous features in a gradual continuum from their most impersonal to their most personal specifications. I conclude that the cognitive relevance of any religious knowledge implies explanations and interventions that, although compatible with, go beyond those of both other religious knowledges and the knowledges of the non-sacred domains.

The Problem of Natural Law in the Works of Ivan Ilyin and Leo Strauss

This article provides a comparative analysis of two interpretations and methodological strategies of substantiating the idea of natural law, which belong to Ivan Ilyin and Leo Strauss. The comparative method was used in the research process, while the problem-topic method was applied to the analysis and presentation of the material. The two interpretations of natural law were compared on the basis of the following criteria: 1) interpretation of the principle of historicism and assessment of its prospects for substantiating natural legal thinking; 2) correlation between natural and positive law; 3) interpretation of the essence of philosophy, relationship between the general understanding of the nature of philosophical knowledge and the principles of natural legal thinking; 4) correlation between law and religion. Both Ilyin and Strauss saw in natural law an invariant basis of positive law. Criticism of the principle of historicism (understood as relativism) is a conceptual prerequisite for the reactualization of the idea of natural law in the works of both philosophers. However, Ilyin sees in historicism an annoying prejudice and a product of a “sick” legal consciousness, while Strauss views historicism as the main challenge facing the classical philosophical tradition. The differences in the substantiation of natural law by the two philosophers stem from the differences in their understanding of the nature of philosophical knowledge. For Ilyin, philosophy begins with studying the meaning of axioms, while for Strauss, philosophy as “knowledge of ignorance” begins with a critical formulation and comprehension of fundamental questions. The most significant differences in the philosophical and legal concepts of Ilyin and Strauss are associated with the problem of the relationship between law and religion. According to Strauss, the universal rationaltheoretical substantiation of the idea of natural law cannot refer to religious experience and be based on revelation. According to Ilyin, the reference of the philosophy of law to religious experience is necessary, because normal legal consciousness has an essentially religious nature.

Learning Morality, Inequalities, and Faith

Christian and Muslim schools have become important target points in families and pupils' quests for new study opportunities and securing a 'good life' in Tanzania. These schools combine secular education with the moral (self-)formation of young people, triggering new realignments of the fields of education with interreligious co-existence and class formation in the country's urban centres. Hansjörg Dilger explores the emerging entanglements of faith, morality, and the educational market in Dar es Salaam, thereby shedding light on processes of religious institutionalisation and their individual and collective embodiment. By contextualising these dynamics through analysis of the politics of Christian-Muslim relations in postcolonial Tanzania, this book shows how the field of education has shaped the positions of these highly diverse religious communities in diverging ways. In doing so, Dilger suggests that students and teachers' religious experience and practice in faith-oriented schools are shaped by the search for socio-moral belonging as well as by the power relations and inequalities of an interconnected world.

St James and the Good Shepherd: windows on the landscape

Two New Zealand churches completed in the 1930s, St James' Church at Franz Josef/Waiau (James Stuart Turnbull and Percy Watts Rule, 1931) and the Church of the Good Shepherd on the shores of Lake Tekapo (Richard Strachan De Renzy Harman, 1935), feature large plate glass windows behind the altar, affording expansive views of the natural landscape beyond. This represented a significant departure from prevailing ecclesiastical design ideas of the time, with the interior of the churches being intimately connected to the landscape outside, rather than the usual largely internalized atmosphere with any sense of the surroundings limited to light coming through strategically placed decorative or stained-glass windows. It is, however, a design aesthetic that has seldom been utilized in New Zealand since. This paper traverses the history and design of the two churches and their relationships with the landscapes in which they are situated, and concludes that St James' Church provides a heightened religious experience and is a more successful metaphor for the Christian journey.

Criação artística e metáforas bíblicas: uma relação de experiência | Artistic creation and biblical metaphors: a relationship of experience

Neste artigo, evidenciamos que, para que possamos pensar as metáforas como um campo de experiências para a criação artística e, com isso, possamos usá-las como possibilidade aberta de repensar o mundo em que vivemos, é necessário destacá-las como lugar de experiência; para que isso aconteça, nosso objetivo aqui é indicá-las como uma disposição da compreensão. Procuramos, com isso, convocar o potencial da disposição para que nunca deixemos de empreender uma intensa e inesperada experiência nova, pois, quando as palavras se abrem para novas possibilidades, ao acessá-las pela via da compreensão e experiência, podemos ressignificar o mundo em que vivemos e, sobretudo, a nós mesmos. Alijamos essa compreensão a partir de alguns autores, especialmente Paul Ricoeur, Aristóteles e Friedrich Nietzsche, pois a partir deles,somos capazes de realizar o diálogo com as metáforas bíblicas, como um tipo mais específico de experiência, aproximando a experiência religiosa e o pensamento, no que se refere à criação artística.Palavras-chave: Metáforas bíblicas. Experiência estética. Diálogo. Lugar. AbstractIn this article, we show that, so that we can think of metaphors as a field of experiences for artistic creation and, therefore, also as an open possibility of rethinking the world we live in, it is necessary to highlight them as a place of experience, and for this happen, our aim here is to indicate them as a disposition of understanding. With this, we seek to summon the potential of disposition so that we never stop undertaking an intense and unexpected new experience, because, when words open up to more possibilities, by accessing them through understanding and experience, we can reframe the world in which we live and, above all, ourselves. We jettisoned this understanding from some authors, especially Paul Ricoeur, Aristotle and Friedrich Nietzsche, because from them, we are able to carry out a dialogue with biblical metaphors, as a more specific type of experience, bringing together religious experience and thought in the which refers to artistic creation.Keywords: Biblical metaphors. Aesthetic experience. Dialogue. Place. ORCIDhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-1770-6021