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Religious experience and desire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2018

FIONA ELLIS
FIONA ELLIS*
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities, University of Roehampton, Roehampton Lane, London SW15 5PU
*
e-mail: fiona.ellis@roehampton.ac.uk
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Abstract

I offer a new approach to the old question of the epistemic value of religious experience. According to this approach, religious experience is a species of desire, desire in this context involving a kind of experience which is cognitive and unmediated. The account is inspired by Levinas and Heidegger, and it involves a conception of experience which is shared by a disjunctivist account of perception. Perceptual disjunctivism is my starting point, and it provides the ground for the ensuing discussion of desire. In the final section of the article I argue that the parallel between perceptual disjunctivism and a Levinasian conception of desire points to a further strength in the account of desire here presented, namely, by suggesting the possibility of a disjunctive style response to scepticism about religious experience.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 55 , Special Issue 3: Religious Experience and Desire , September 2019 , pp. 355 - 373
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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