Interpreting and Explaining Transcendence : : Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Beyond / / ed. by Jenny Ponzo, Robert A. Yelle.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Ebook Package English 2021
• MitwirkendeR: Abrutyn, Seth,; Benavides, Gustavo,; Krech, Volkhard,; Lehnert, Martin,; Leone, Massimo,; Ponzo, Jenny,; Volli, Ugo,; Wilkens, Katharina,; Yelle, Robert A.,
• HerausgeberIn: Ponzo, Jenny,; Yelle, Robert A.,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Series: Religion and Reason : Theory in the Study of Religion , 61
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (IX, 321 p.)

In this volume, an interdisciplinary group of scholars uses history, sociology, anthropology, and semiotics to approach Transcendence as a human phenomenon, and shows the unavoidability of thinking with and through the Beyond. Religious experience has often been defined as an encounter with a transcendent God. Yet humans arguably have always tried to get outside or beyond themselves and society. The drive to exceed some limit or condition of finitude is an eduring aspect of culture, even in a "disenchanted" society that may have cut off most paths of access to the Beyond. The contributors to this volume demonstrate the humanity of Transcendence in various ways: as an effort to get beyond our crass physical materiality; as spiritual entrepreneurship; as the ecstasy of rituals of possession; and as a literary, aesthetic, and semiotic event. These efforts build from a shared conviction that Transcendene is thoroughly human, and accordingly avoid purely confessional and parochial approches while taking seriously the various claims and behavioral expressions of traditions in which Transcendence has been understood in theological terms.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Acknowledgments -- Table of Contents -- Figures -- Introduction: How to talk about transcendence -- On the physiology of transcendence -- Reconceptualizing the Axial Age as the re-emergence of transcendence: Why religio-cultural entrepreneurship matters -- Talking (and arguing) with transcendence -- Transcendence without difference? Reflections on the Vajracchedikā-prajñāpāramitā -- Transcendence and imagination: Some thoughts on two related concepts in the context of spirit possession -- Beyond meaning: Prospections of Suprematist semiotics -- The immanence/transcendence distinction at work: The case of the Apostles’ Creed -- Adveniat regnum tuum: Revolutionary paths toward religious transcendence in Italian contemporary narrative -- Contributors -- Index