The paper highlights the key perspectives on mysticism typical for Soviet and Post-Soviet religious studies. Recognizing the vagueness of the ”mystical’, Soviet scholars interpreted it as a belief in ”communication’ with ”supernatural powers’. Furthermore, ”mysticism’ was thought of as a multicomponent entity composed of mystical experiences, mystical beliefs, and ”mysticism’ as a ”false ideology’. Such an understanding resulted from their epistemological settings, i.e. the reflection theory of dialectical materialism. In this light, mystical experiences and beliefs were distorted ”reflections’ of objective (...) reality in the human mind caused by factors both of an individual and a social nature. This understanding still defines the academic interpretations of the ”mystical’ in Russia today. (shrink)

This examination considers the influence of the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist Cudworth upon the thought of the late eighteenth century German thinker Herder. It focuses upon Herder's use of Cudworth's philosophy to create a revised version of Spinoza's metaphysics. Both Cudworth and Herder were concerned with the problem of determinism. Cudworth outlined a number of difficulties relating to this problem in the thought of Spinoza and proposed amendments, particularly the introduction of the middle principle of plastik, which would mediate between (...) the Ideas of transcendent reason and mechanical materialism. We find these amendments to Spinoza's philosophy also employed in Herder's contribution to the Pantheism Controversy, in which he too offers a revised Spinozism and introduces his own middle principle of Kraft. This demonstrates an important but under-explored English contribution to a key development in German intellectual history. The Pantheism Controversy was an epoch-making event, helping to bring an end to the German Enlightenment and to inaugurate the Romantic movement. Herder's version of Spinoza's thought revived the philosopher's fortunes, and Herder's notion of Kraft became central to Romantic aesthetics. Finally, Herder's use of Cudworth demonstrates the important but overlooked source of Platonic realism in German Romantic thought. (shrink)

German early Romanticism was an intellectual movement that originated in the era between the great French Revolution of 1789 and the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803. Usually, it is defined in contrast to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is presented as the age of reason, criticism and scientific naturalism, while the Romantics are portrayed as its reactionary enemies. According to a still customary prejudice, Romanticism was the age of exaggerated emotions, authoritarian dogmatism and mystical superstition. However, our notion of (...) the Enlightenment has undergone changes in recent decades. Because the traditional antagonism between Aufklärung and Frühromantik has become questionable, the Romantic revival of religion needs reconsideration. In this paper, Nivala proposes an argument why the Romantics did not fall into reactionary irrationalism. His discussion focuses on one person, Friedrich Schlegel. Nivala presents how two vital presuppositions of the Enlightenment, naturalism and criticism, were reinterpreted by Schlegel as pantheism and mysticism. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Durch Aufklärung und Französische Revolution angestoßen, suchte der Umbruch in die Moderne des 19. Jahrhunderts nach einem neuen Verständnis von Sakralität und überlieferten Religionen. Kunstreligion und Nationalreligion sind Formen. Sie können als Widerspruch zu Religion dienen, aber häufiger werden sie integriert. Am Fall der Vollendung des Kölner Doms als Akteur einer material religion in der Nachbarschaft mit anderen nicht-sakralen Gebäuden (hier der Bahnhof und die Brücke) nimmt der Aufsatz Konzepte des spatial turn auf. Für eine vollständige Analyse der Konfiguration (...) ist aber die Wahrnehmung (Aisthesis/synästhetik, hier in der Bewegung der Eisenbahnfahrt und des Übergangs am Bahnhof) und Deutungshoheit der Akteure in einer kolonialen Konfiguration unabdingbar: die Religionsästhetik als verknüpfende Methode (A. Grieser). (shrink)

This article reviews Kuitert’s most recent book. Kuitert is a Reformed Dutch theologian, who has written a series of controversial books on faith, Christian doctrine and Jesus Christ. His last book is on religion. This article is interested in the image of God in Kuitert’s book. Who is Kuitert’s God? In the first place, Kuitert spends much time analysing the indispensable and inexhaustible capacity of human religious imagination. He distinguishes between the merely human image of God: God as an enlarged (...) human being, and God as religious projection on the one hand and, on the other hand, the image of God which has its roots in “the other side” and which has priority over human imagination. In the second part of his book, Kuitert presents God as the power that can make and break. By this, he means God as the all invading creative power and God as fate. Apart from this image of God as Creator, Kuitert stresses the fact that God makes himself felt by his Word. This Word by which God appeals to the faithful is, according to Kuitert, not to be understood in a Barthian sense, nor in the sense which liberation theology understands, although God speaks his word and makes his appeal to the faithful through the needy people who cross their paths. The particularity of Kuitert’s image of God is, finally, illustrated by the investigation of his doctrine of reconciliation. Human responsibility and guilt and the appeal by the needy corresponds to a God of forgiveness and reconciliation. The article concludes with some general remarks by which the author makes it clear that to him, notwithstanding his critical demythologisation, Kuitert remains true to his protestant heritage. (shrink)

(1982). J. S. DREY EN F. SCHLEIERMACHER AAN HET BEGIN VAN DE FUNDAMENTELE THEOLOGIE OORSPRONGEN EN ONTWIKKELINGEN. Bijdragen: Vol. 43, No. 3, pp. 251-288.