Religija ir kultūra
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura
<p>Founded in 2004. Publishes articles on the phenomenon of religion and the relationship between religion and culture by integrating religious studies with religious philosophy and other relevant disciplines of the field. </p>Vilniaus universiteto leidykla / Vilnius University PressenReligija ir kultūra1822-4539<p>Please read the Copyright Notice in <a href="http://www.zurnalai.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/journalpolicy">Journal Policy</a>. </p>Paradoxes of an Image: A Pictorial or Postsecular Turn?
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/29846
<p>The article discusses the interaction between religion and art, focusing on contemporary visual theories, especially on the concept of vitality of image, formulated by such authors as David Freedberg, Thomas William Mitchell and Horst Bredekamp. The article states that the aspect of immediate fate (in the sense of pathos), which is emphasized in the concept of vitality of image, opens up the possibility to discuss the postsecular approach of the pictorial turn (Mitchell). The article recalls a recent situation in one of the Vilnius (Lithuania) churches, when the original sculpture of St. Virgin Mary, created by Lithuanian artist Ksenija Jaroševaitė, was replaced by the copy of widely circulated sculpture of St. Mary of Lourdes, originally created in 1864 by French sculptor Joseph-Hugues Fabisch, at the request of the churchgoers. In the article the latter situation also serves as a representative model, revealing the paradoxicality of an image, when the aesthetic judgement is changed by the unreflected recognition of the power of the image. The article discusses the problem of the ontological status of an image, admitting that the condition of emancipation of the image implicated in the concept of its vitality leads to the condition of the uncanny and questions related to such fundamental controversies as distinctions between creator and image or vitality and artefact.</p>
Articlesimagevitality of imageuncannypictorial turnpostsecularityVaiva Daraškevičiūtė
Copyright (c) 2019 Authors
2019-11-252019-11-25375210.15388/Relig.2019.13On the Ontology of Law and the Oblivion of Being
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/29510
<p>This article hypothetically puts forth the idea of the ontology of Law as the “First Philosophy”. The presentation and justification of this idea is linked with the rethinking of the approach to examining law. This approach seeks to investigate law neither as the object of jurisprudence, legal theory, nor even, and this is especially crucial, legal philosophy; it rather consists in justifying the possibility of looking at the law from an ontological philosophical perspective, revealing the fundamental link between law and being. In contrast, by treating law as a given and not raising the question of its emergence as such, by searching for “right” laws “in accordance with nature”, even when ontological terms are being used, the ontological context of law’s emergence is not revealed; rather, only ontological pretentions to existing laws are asserted. This article discusses the work of the Ancient philosophy scholar Werner Jaeger, which allows one to rethink the idea of the ontology of law and to outline the direction for “resetting” the notion of law.</p>
ArticlesLawBeingNomosDikeontologyRita Šerpytytė
Copyright (c) 2022 Authors
2018-12-202018-12-2081610.15388/Relig.2018.12Ideology and Idolatry
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/29514
<p>A series of articles has already been published in recent years by the author on the notion of cosmogony as implied by Lithuanian term for it, <em>sutvėrimas</em>. This polysemous term has at least three gross branches of meanings: not only the most usual ‘fencing (in, off, around)’ but also ‘coagulation, solidifying, hardening’ and ‘catching, clenching (by hand)’, and all of these meanings are reflected in traditional views of creation. However, both the very cosmogony and still more various processes of smaller scale corresponding to different meanings of <em>sutvėrimas</em> (and the verb <em>sutverti</em>) may have also negative sense, that of stagnation, hardening, stiffness, stop of the life flow. Hence the notion of freedom, conversely, as softening, thawing, melting and free flow. Therefore, human being either stays in this definitively hardened world which has become a prison to his soul or begins to loosen his grip on it and to thaw gradually himself. On the cosmic scale, this hope and objective is eschatological, and on the personal scale, soteriological, that is, aimed at deliverance and freedom which in this sense is the opposite of cosmogony. The very ‘createdness’ in its different hues then is conceived negatively, as ‘madeness’ and artificiality, as antithesis of freedom and obstacle to it. And its principal manifestations in the inner world, then, are ideology and idolatry, the two aspects of one and the same phenomenon looked at from slightly different angles. That is exactly the subject of this article (which continues two previous, “Without ground, without support” (Razauskas 2022a) and “Ideas, Ideals, and Ideologies” (Razauskas 2022b)).</p>
Articlesstagnationideologyidolatryreligious studieDainius Razauskas
Copyright (c) 2019 Authors
2019-12-202019-12-2081810.15388/Relig.2019.11The Return of Religion and the Problem of Radical Evil: A Case Study of Russia’s War in Ukraine
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/29515
<p>The article analyses the case of Russia’s war in Ukraine by focusing on the ambivalent relationship between radical evil and the “return of the religious”. First, the revival of politicised religious fundamentalism in contemporary Russia is examined by discussing the relationship between the state and the church and its concretisation in the field of foreign policy – the “Russian World” teaching. The article shows how the Russian Orthodox Church legitimises a project that pursues geopolitical goals and justifies the started war as a metaphysical fight against evil. Attention is drawn to the fact that in this case we are dealing with a kind of “secular religion” or “inverted secularism”, when ecclesial forms are used to revive the Soviet imperialism, and faith is replaced by beliefs. Next, when considering the analysed case in the context of the “return of the religious” reflected by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, the emphasis is not only on the principle of violence (which is born from the fusion of political and religious discourses), but also on the positive possibilities of this return, which aforementioned thinkers elaborated by formulating the concepts of elementary faith and ethics of charity. At the same time, the article shows that these concepts lack an existential focus that would allow the problem of radical evil to be grasped at the level of individual existence. Therefore, to highlight the existential aspect of radical evil, the concepts of the perverse will, “grey zone” and impossible hope are used.</p>
ArticlesRussia’s war in Ukraine“Russian World”return of the religiouspoliticised religious fundamentalismsecularisationradical evilperverse will“grey zone”impossible hopeDanutė Bacevičiūtė
Copyright (c) 2019 Authors
2019-12-202019-12-20193610.15388/Relig.2019.12Spirit of Legality: Hegel’s Critique of Law and Turn to Ontology in the Frankfurt Fragments
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/29512
<p>This paper is an attempt to investigate the relation between George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s critique of law in his early Frankfurt fragments, most notably in the treatise <em>Spirit of Christianity and Its Fate</em> and his turn towards an ontological conception of the unity of life and love as its modification. It will be argued that Hegel’s ontological turn can only be understood in light of his rejection of law as the form of absolute opposition. The form of law, moreover, will be treated as the thread to understand the initial movement of Hegel’s profound rejection of Kantian morality. Nevertheless, in following the Christian concept of <em>pleroma</em> that promises to fulfil law and proposing to think unification ontologically, Hegel discovers that law cannot be simply rejected, but pertains or arises out of the very unity that was said to surmount it. If Hegel begins from an opposition of law and being, these fragments reveal the extent to which he will have to think their relationship dialectically, as a contradiction pertaining to the Absolute.</p>
ArticleslegalitypleromaloveunitynegativityPovilas Dumbliauskas
Copyright (c) 2018 Authors
2018-12-202018-12-20173010.15388/Relig.2018.13Critical Remarks on Schmitt’s Political Realism
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/29513
<p>According to a widely accepted line of interpretation, Carl Schmitt’s political philosophy is a classic example of political realism. In this article I propose, starting with an analysis of some themes from the essay published in 1923 <em>Die geistesgeschichtliche Lage des heutigen Parlamentarismus</em>, to challenge this interpretation. An in-depth analysis of Schmitt’s critique of parliamentarism and identitarian democracy may, in fact, suggest that his proposal is a normative theory of political enmity.</p>
ArticlesCarl Schmittpolitical realismpolitical enmitynormative theoryErnesto C. Sferrazza Papa
Copyright (c) 2018 Authors
2018-12-202018-12-20314010.15388/Relig.2018.14The Problem of Representation and Ethical Imagination: Case Study of Son of Saul
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/12314
<p>[full article and abstract in Lithuanian; abstract in English]</p> <p>The Son of Saul (2015), an award-winning film by László Nemes, can be interpreted as an exceptional case in film philosophy, which proposes a specific take on the interconnection between visual and ethical realms. This article reconstructs the premises of long-lasting polemics on the representability of Holocaust, simultaneously placing the case of Son of Saul in a more specific context on the debates concerning the meaning of four photos from Auschwitz taken by members of the Sonderkommando. László Nemes’s work cinematographically engages in these polemics and creates an opportunity to trace down different regimes of representation, as well as to highlight of ethical dimension of technomedia. By combining George Didi-Huberman’s ideas and Pietro Montani’s theory of intermedial imagination, the film can be regarded as a “middle ground” position in the given polemics, as it not only posits the need to “imagine in order to know”, but also employs a cinematographic strategy for performing an aesthetic and ethical revision.</p>
ArticlesrepresentationethicsimaginationHolocaustvisualityKristupas Sabolius
Copyright (c) 2015 Authors
2015-12-282015-12-2814416110.15388/Relig.2015.10Der Mythos Des Postfaktischen Und Die Grenzen Der Vernunft
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/12313
<p>[full article, abstract in German; abstracts in English and Lithuanian]</p> <p>This article deals with the central philosophical problem that is left unsolved by the ending age of postmodernism – that there are no facts, but only interpretations (Nietzsche). In the context of digitization, there is often talk of the post-factual and alternative facts. Therefore, the article first attempts to clarify the relevant basic concepts. This is followed by a presentation of proof that the denial of the possibility of facts ends in a scepticism that is detached from life, including a lack of orientation, which has come into the general consciousness through global networking. Finally, it is shown that every form of life, with its naturalistic or generally philosophical reflections, must surely presuppose facts, which, properly speaking, can only be partly identified. This limitation is considered to be a boundary experience, which points to the necessity to recognize a certain “alterity” of reason and thus also leaves religious alternatives open.</p> <p><strong>Der Mythos Des Postfaktischen Und Die Grenzen Der Vernunft</strong></p> <p>Die Abhandlung kreist um das philosophische Zentralproblem, wonach es keine Fakten, sondern nur Interpretationen gibt (Nietzsche), das uns das gegenwärtig zu Ende gehende Zeitalter der Postmoderne ungelöst zurückgelassen hat. Dabei ist im Zusammenhang mit der Digitalisierung häufig vom Postfaktischen und von alternativen Fakten die Rede. Daher werden zuerst die relevanten Grundbegriffe geklärt. Anschließend folgt der Nachweis, dass die durch die Vernetzung der Welt in das allgemeine Bewusstsein gelangte Leugnung der Möglichkeit von Tatsachen in einer lebensfernen Skepsis samt der heutigen Orientierungs-losigkeit endet. Zum Schluss wird gezeigt, dass jede Lebensform samt deren naturalistischen oder allgemein philosophischen Reflexionen sicher Tatsachen voraussetzen muss, die man allerdings nur zum Teil identifizieren kann. Diese Einschränkung wird als Grenzerfahrung betrachtet, welche auf die Notwendigkeit eines Anderen der Vernunft verweist und damit auch religiöse Alternativen offen lässt.</p>
ArticlesPostfaktischenVernetzung der WeltFaktenAnderen der VernunftGrenzen der VernunftKurt Wuchterl
Copyright (c) 2015 Authors
2015-12-282015-12-2812414310.15388/Relig.2015.9Heidegger’s πóλεμοσ
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/12312
<p>[full article and abstract in Lithuanian; abstract in English]</p> <p>This article deals with the problem of the relationship between Martin Heidegger’s philosophy and Daseinanalysis – a trend of psychotherapy that was founded by Medard Boss in Switzerland in the mid-twentieth century. It is generally believed that, in collaboration with Boss, Heidegger was looking for ways in which his developed theory could be applied in practice. The article questions this view and suggests that the seminars, which were held by Heidegger in Boss’s house in Zollikon, were important to Heidegger as a situation, in which during the confrontation between the philosophical and psychotherapeutic discourses occurs the Heraclitean πόλεμος – a tension in which a person may experience the openness of presence.</p>
ArticlesMartin HeideggerMedard BossDaseinanalysisθεωρίαπόλεμοςbeingTomas Sodeika
Copyright (c) 2015 Authors
2015-12-282015-12-2810012310.15388/Relig.2015.8Hegel’s Book of Sand, Or on the Beginning of the Beginning and Its Impossibility
https://www.journals.vu.lt/religija-ir-kultura/article/view/12311
<p>[full article and abstract in Lithuanian; abstract in English]</p> <p>This paper addresses the still-prevailing problem of the beginning in Hegel’s Science of Logic by focusing on the major arguments of Schelling’s critique, which basically laid the foundation for the subsequent reception of Hegel. According to Schelling, Hegel’s concept of the beginning as pure being can only be understood as either a pure tautology or a negative determination, i.e., indicating only the realm of the possible. Contrary to the prevailing strategies, it is argued that the paradox of the beginning, which is present in the Science of Logic, should be maintained instead of resolved. The paper attempts to demonstrate how the dynamic structure of the unity of being and nothing, and the impossibility of (the principle of ) the beginning, appear to be precisely what allow this thinking to proceed and ground the identity of form and content. Thus, by relying on the suggested alternative, which emphasizes the performative aspect of the paradox, the paper seeks to answer Schelling and to bring closer the apparently contradicting positions of both authors.</p>
ArticlesHegelbeginningconceptperformativityBrigita Gelžinytė
Copyright (c) 2015 Authors
2015-12-282015-12-28899910.15388/Relig.2015.7