CALL FOR PAPERS
for a topical issue of Open Theology
Phenomenology of Religious Experience IV: Religious Experience and Description
Edited by:
Olga Louchakova-Schwartz (UC Davis and Jesuit School of Theology)
James Nelson (University of Valparaiso)
Aaron Preston (University of Valparaiso)
DESCRIPTION
“Open Theology” (http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/opth) invites submissions for the topical issue “Phenomenology of Religious Experience IV: Religious Experience and Description”, prepared in collaboration with the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience (www.sophere.org).
This topical issue will illumine possibilities and difficulties arising in the description of religious experience. Does religious experience harbor concealed empirical and phenomenological complexity, and how do we address complexity in a focused description which aims at revealing the essence of experience? We invite an interplay between pragmatics of describing religious experience, philosophical and theological issues involved in creation of description, and theoretical models of how religious and spiritual experience may be described. We will accept papers dedicated to description of perception, imagination, body-awareness, recollection, social cognition, self-experience, temporality etc. in the context of religious experience. How does phenomenological description of religious experience translate into ecology, history, or natural science? What are cultural influences in the description of religious experience? The papers should provide not just the description of experience per se, but an analysis of the process or outcome of description and reflection on what description of religious experience per se entails. Such reflections must employ phenomenological philosophy, such as e.g. in the work of Anthony Steinbock or Jean-Luc Marion, but can also draw on contemporary dialogues between phenomenological philosophy and other philosophical and theological traditions, such as we see in the work of researchers like Espen Dahl, Matthew Ratcliffe, Dan Zahavi, Stanley Cavell, or Evan Thompson, to name a few.
Tentative themes:
I. Creating Descriptions of Religious Experience
• How does one actually describe religious experience? What difficulties and delights are in this process? How do we clarify such descriptions?
• How does the process/outcome of describing religious experience differ from of ordinary experience?
• How does one approach the negative (absences) and the positive (presences) in these descriptions?
• How does description capture embodied, affective, and metaphysical aspects of experience?
• What are the relationships between the description and the essence of religious experience. What determines experience as religious, or spiritual, and gives it a unique character, intelligible to others?
• How do the questions of otherness or strangeness play out in description and understanding a description of religious and spiritual experience?
• Who can understand a description of religious experience? Academic researchers? Religious practitioners or authorities? Informed consumers? Contemporaries or successors?
• Can religious and spiritual experience be described by means of natural language, or does it require some kind of special language?Do neologisms clarify or do they obfuscate religious experiences?
• What are the functions of language in description of religious or spiritual experience?
• How does historicity impact a description of religious experience?
• What are the communicological virtues in description of religious experience?
• What are the relationships between the description and the phenomena “in excess”?
• What are the purposes of description of religious experience, and how intentions in communication already presuppose the structure of description of religious experience we find in texts?
II. Models for Descriptions of Religious and Spiritual Experience
• How do phenomenological theories and frameworks influence description of religious experience? For example, would a description intended to serve as a ground of phenomenological analyses along the lines of Husserl’s phenomenology be identical with a description of experience in the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion or non-intentional phenomenology of Michel Henry? Or can such a description reflect a “view from nowhere”?
• What role do religious beliefs play in religious experience, and can phenomenology provide a clarification of religious presuppositions?
• How, and to what extent, can disciplines other than phenomenology (e.g. psychology, psychiatry, neurology, anthropology, theology) provide person-level descriptions of phenomenological relevance?
• How can the phenomenological description of religious experience change existing models and theoretical assumptions in other fields of knowledge or in phenomenology itself? For instance, can empirical findings in religious experiencing refine and improve classical phenomenological analyses?
• Can religious experience be subjected to constitutive phenomenological analysis, and can a phenomenological account of any given aspect of religiosity provide an accurate or adequate description of religious phenomena? How do claims to presuppositionlessness affect such accounts?
• How does the question of authority play out in first person description and the analysis of second person description in texts? What ethical limitations exist in descriptions or discussions of religious experience from either a first or second-person standpoint?
• Can common-sense metaphysics support the demands in description of religious experiencing?
III. Description of religious experience, and ecology, environmental studies, health sciences, natural sciences, history, business studies, etc.
Authors publishing their articles in the topical issue will benefit from:
– transparent, comprehensive and fast peer review,
– efficient route to fast-track publication and full advantage of De Gruyter Open’s e-technology,
– free language assistance for authors from non-English speaking regions,
– complementary membership in the Society for Phenomenology of Religious Experience.
As a rule, publication costs should be covered by so called Article Publishing Charges (APC), paid by authors, their affiliated institutions, funders or sponsors. To view funding opportunities to cover APC please visit https://www.degruyter.com/page/1097
Authors without access to publishing funds are encouraged to discuss potential discounts or waivers with Managing Editor of the journal Dr. Katarzyna Tempczyk (katarzyna.tempczyk@degruyter.com) before submitting their manuscript.
HOW TO SUBMIT
Submissions will be collected from August 1 to September 30, 2019, via the on-line submission system at http://www.editorialmanager.com/openth/
Choose as article type: “Topical Issue Article: Phenomenology of Religious Experience IV”.
Before submission the authors should carefully read over the Instruction for Authors, available at: http://www.degruyter.com/view/supplement/s23006579_Instruction_for_Authors.pdf
All contributions will undergo critical peer-review before being accepted for publication.
Further questions about this thematic issue can be addressed to Olga Louchakova-Schwartz at olouchakova@gmail.com. In case of technical or financial questions, please contact journal Managing Editor Katarzyna Tempczyk at katarzyna.tempczyk@degruyter.com.