[Asec] Rescheduled: Religious Experience and the Crisis of Secular Reason

[Olga Louchakova-Schwartz]

Dear Colleagues and Friends,

I very much hope this note finds all of you well.

The  Congress of the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience,
planned for  September 16-18, 2020 in Vienna,  is postponed  till September
2021. The precise dates will be fixed soon. The amended CFP is below.

In the meantime, we will organize a supplemental research webinar
<<(Ir)rationality and Religiosity During Pandemics: Phenomenologizing the
Connections>> for September 16-18, 2020, the dates the congress was
originally scheduled for. More information coming soon.


On behalf of the organizers

Olga Louchakova-Schwartz


Religious Experience and the Crisis of Secular Reason
Congress of the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience
September 2021, dates TBAUniversity of Vienna, Department of Philosophy,
Vienna, Austria


In recent years we have witnessed the loss of hope for neutral, secular
‘reason’ as the backbone for social and political engagement and
transformation. In the wake of globalization, ‘ideological secularism’ and
its propagation of a disengaged brand of reason rather has created its own
set of discontents and crises. Related social trends in both Europe and
North America demonstrate that people are increasingly divided and
sectarian, pulled into their respective echo chambers and left unsure how
to even talk with those trapped on ‘the other side.’ The traditional idea
of using neutral ‘reason’ to cross this divide clearly has been swept aside
by the power of social criticism. In its attempt at unveiling the bias,
structural oppression, and political correctness that seems to be part and
parcel of our self-righteous conceptions of reason (be it discursive,
communicative or procedural), the domain of reason is no longer seen as
value free. Rather its aspirations have been exposed to parade as purported
neutrality, and hence it is increasingly viewed as a weapon wielded in
ideological warfare, rather than a means of creating social cohesion.

Introducing religion into these conversations is not usually seen as the
best way to reconcile people from opposite ends of the spectrum. Many in
fact rather blame religion for the erosion, breakdown, and crisis of
secular reason we are witnessing today. However, there is also reason to
think and believe otherwise. Recent advances in the study of religion have
shifted our understanding of religion away from cognitive beliefs and
doctrines and toward more material and affective engagements. Could such a
focus on embodiment, practice, and experience (rather than reason or mere
belief assertion) provide a model for social and political engagement that
also might contribute to restoring our unfulfilled hopes in secular reason?
Or would such a model rather lead us toward a different, ‘experiential
reason’ irreducible to perspectivism and individualism, or away from a
social or communal reason as the basis of human interaction? And what role
might distinctly religious experience play in helping us understand and
clarify social and epistemological interaction? Or, in terms of a general
proviso, may we really understand the ‘return of religion’ as the missing
catalyst that will help us to overcome the “disarray of the current crisis”
(Husserl) in order to finally restitute its “primal institution”
(Urstiftung)? And, if the last cohort, “generation Z,” claims to be the
least religious generation in (at least Western) history, what does “return
of religion” mean in the zeitgeist—a quest for personal meaning, a
spiritual society, or an experiential metaphysics?

In light of these more general considerations, this conference invites
phenomenological explorations of the vexed relationships between reason and
the various forms of religious intuition and experience. Does religious
experience invite irrationality, or on the contrary, does it contribute a
missing piece which can heal contemporary irrationality in all spheres of
life? Do the semantics and pragmatic potentials of religious experience
simply testify to an outdated model of social order that is by definition
prone to violence and intolerance? Or do they rather offer a counterweight
to a modernity disconcertingly spinning out of control? Are there ways to
conceive of religion in light of the apparent crisis of secular reason
beyond the old yet still functional dichotomy of myth and Enlightenment,
given that the latter has itself resulted in a series of neo-myths that
work hard to stigmatize religion as its very other? What are the
relationships between religious experience and knowledge, and does religion
enhance or stifle the possibilities of arriving at a “fuller consciousness”
of our present? Can the failures of secularized reason in axiomatic,
pragmatic, and evaluative spheres be amended by the restitution of some
‘spiritual intelligence’ whose loss is often lamented yet also explained
away as necessary step in the coming post-history of humankind? Against the
bankruptcy of value-free, neutral reason, can experiences of transcendence,
hope, compassion, justice, love, unitive experiences, experiences of
ultimacy and unconditionality, and other spiritual and religious
experiences resolve to fractures of a late modernity that has still not
arrived past the last post? And can experience animate religion per se,
e.g., with indigenous forms of spiritual intelligence bringing Abrahamic
religions out of their nascent metaphysical, cognitive, and ethical cul de
sac? Bearing these questions and ambiguities in mind, this conference seeks
to examine both the promise and peril that engagements with religious
experience can bear upon engaging, clarifying, and supplementing the
‘crisis of secular reason’. To do so, we invite reference to the whole
phenomenological movement, including post-phenomenology, hermeneutics, and
deconstruction; historical and contemporary research with the engagement of
phenomenology, experienced based comparative studies like cultural
anthropology of experience, qualitatively based sociology of religion, as
well as theological and psychological perspectives that utilize
phenomenological research methods.

Please submit papers of no more than 600 words, formatted for anonymous
review, to congressvienna2020 at sophere.org [please copy and paste the link
into your email address line] before May 30, 2021. You can also enclose a
full paper; submissions with ready papers will be given a priority. Enclose
you biographic information in the body of email. Notifications of
acceptance will be emailed by June 15, 2021.

The format of presentation: 45 minutes including question and answer
period, i.e. a paper of approximately 4000-4500 words.

*Selected papers will be considered for publication in special guest-edited
issues of well-known journals in philosophy and religion.*

Contact:

Jason Alvis J.WESLEY.ALVIS at gmail.com  <J.WESLEY.ALVIS at gmail.com>
Michael Staudigl michael.staudigl at univie.ac.at



Olga Louchakova-Schwartz
Professor of Philosophy of Religion, Spirituality, and Human Development,
HIBS
Clinical Professor, UC Davis, School of Medicine
https://ucdavis.academia.edu/OlgaLouchakova

Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience
Founding President, www.sophere.org

The Problem of Religious Experience
<https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783030215743>:
Case Studies in Phenomenology, with Reflection and Commentaries,
V.1 and 2 (Springer, 2019)
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