Recovering the Vertical

Confronting Religious Violence in a Phenomenological Key

Authors

  • Michael Staudigl Dep. of Philosophy, University of Vienna

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22329/p.v13i2.6213

Abstract



This paper examines the relationship between religion and violence from a phenomenological point of view. In the context of the so-called "return of the religious" and the crisis of contemporary social imaginaries, it deals with the supposedly disruptive and liberating potentials of religion in general, and religious violence in particular. The discussion revolves around the concept of "verticality" as developed by A. Steinbock and offers a generative interpretation of verticality's liberating and transformative potentials. The paper proceeds to demonstrate how religion and violence are interrelated on a variety of levels. In conclusion the author argues that we need to understand the relationship between religion and violence in terms of its contingent actualization and display but must avoid pitting it down as an essential feqture of religious systems of knowledge and practice.

Author Biography

Michael Staudigl, Dep. of Philosophy, University of Vienna

SHORT BIO-BIBLIO

Michael Staudigl (*1971), Docent, Dr. habil., teaches philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Austria. Granted a variety of research fellowships, he worked in Freiburg, Prague, Louvain-la-Neuve and New York. From 2000-2002 he was as a scientific assistant at the psycho-traumatological ambulance ESRA, Vienna; from 2003-2010 a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna; from 2003-2006 he held an APART-fellowship of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. From 2007 onwards he directed several research grants funded by the FWF (Austrian Science Funds), most recently the bilateral project "The Return of Religion as a Challenge for Thought" (with Branko Klun, Slovenia) and the stand-alone project "Secularism and its Discontents: Toward a Phenomenology Religious Violence."

Selected recent Publications: Phänomenologie der Gewalt (Springer: 2015, English transl. forthcoming at Northwestern Univ. Press); Ed., Co-Ed., Konturen europäischer Gastlichkeit (Velbrück 2016); Gesichter der Gewalt (Fink 2014); Co-Ed., Figuren der Transzendenz (Königshausen & Neumann 2013); Ed., Phenomenologies of Violence (Brill 2013); Co-Ed., Bedingungslos? Zum Gewaltpotential unbedingter Ansprüche im Kontext politischer Theorie (Velbrück 2014); Ed., Alfred Schutz and Religion (Special Issue Human Studies, 40/4: 2017); Co-Ed., Beyond Myth and Enlightenment: Reconsidering Religion (Special Issue Journal for Cultural and Religious theory 17/2: 2018); Ed., Phenomenologies of Religious Violence (Special Issue Continental Philosophy Review, forthcoming 53/2: 2020.

Research Areas: continental philosophy, contemporary French philosophy, phenomenology (classical and contemporary), interdisciplinary violence studies, social philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of religion and religious violence, philosophy of the social sciences.

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Published

2020-04-02

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 2 (2020): Verticality, Emotions, and Religious Experience: Essays on Anthony J. Steinbock

Section

Special Issue Articles

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