Volume 57, Issue 1

2024

Publication date: 11.12.2024

Description

This publication was financed by the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute of Religious Studies as part of the Strategic Program Excellence Initiative at the Jagiellonian University.
Cover design: Barbara Widłak

Licence: CC BY

Editorial team

Deputy Editor-in-Chief Andrzej Szyjewski

Editor-in-Chief Elżbieta Przybył-Sadowska

Secretary Joanna Malita-Król

Issue Editors Małgorzata Grzywacz, Elżbieta Przybył-Sadowska

Issue content

Instynkt ceremonialny u antropologa, czyli Wittgenstein jako religioznawca

Urszula Idziak-Smoczyńska

Studia Religiologica, Volume 57, Issue 1, 2024, pp. 1-18

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844077SR.24.001.20742

The article deals with one of the most underestimated aspects of Wittgenstein’s thought, namely his remarks on the anthropology of religion. On the one hand, it serves as a reminder of their importance – extraordinary compared with their conciseness – and of what, beyond Wittgenstein’s criticism of Frazer, constituted his positive message, which is only nowadays fully appreciated (Westergaard, De Lara, Nancy, etc.). On the other hand, the article shows, in one example, how the remarks (made by R. Rhees) had an impact (perhaps negative) on their reception. The opportunity offered by contemporary experts in the humanities allows us to observe the evolution of Wittgenstein’s reflection in its original context and realize its inherent potential.

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Ontological and Epistemological Function of Mythical-Religious Consciousness in the Philosophy of Ernst Cassirer and Mircea Eliade

Jan Jakub Kalinowski

Studia Religiologica, Volume 57, Issue 1, 2024, pp. 19-37

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844077SR.24.002.20743

The aim of this article is to present the concept of mythical-religious consciousness and present its ontological and epistemological significance through the meaning-giving aspect of myth and the category of the sacred as demonstrated by Ernst Cassirer and Mircea Eliade. Regardless of the significant differences in the understanding of myth and religion of both thinkers, we shall try to present the common ground, which we believe they have shared within the bounds of their antireductionist and anti-Cartesian attitudes towards the subject of myth. We shall supplement this perspective with the hermeneutical philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (and others) to make this more coherent within the broader field of anthropology. In doing so, we hope to establish a synthetic perspective for such study, rather than relying on analysis and criticism alone. As such, this will be a trans-disciplinary study of literary sources on the intersections of ontology, epistemology, linguistics, psychology, sociology and religious studies, which exposes itself for a critique of oversimplification from all the disciplines listed. Finally, we shall also attempt to make this study more relevant by reference to the ongoing research in 4E cognition.

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Post-religious World and Religion: Toward the Concept of Translation of Jürgen Habermas

Wojciech Szczerba

Studia Religiologica, Volume 57, Issue 1, 2024, pp. 39-50

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844077SR.24.003.20744

This article refers to the broad concept of demythologization understood as a hermeneutic process referring mainly to religious-mythical messages. Demythologization aims to preserve and communicate the profound content of a religious statement by detaching it from its original, often anachronistic form and placing it in a form comprehensible to people living in a different cultural context. Among several contemporary thinkers continuing the tradition of broadly understood demythologization, Jürgen Habermas is of particular relevance to this article. Habermas points out that modern Western liberal societies are based on the modern concepts of democracy, individual freedom, and religious pluralism. The natural consequence of such social development is the process of secularization. In his 2001 speech Glauben und Wissen, Habermas points to religion as an essential ally of the liberal, civic state against the “alienating forces of modernity.” Religion, in his view, is an integral part of Western culture both in a historical-cultural sense and in the ever-present potential for meaning contained in religious language. Habermas advocates a translation of the moral intuitions contained in religious language into a secular language that would be acceptable to the public and that could help to build civic societies and civic attitudes. The concept of imago Dei, which contains the universal truth of the unconditioned dignity of the human being, can serve as an example.

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Religious Revival and its Limitations in the Postwar Soviet Union: The Case of Northern Kazakhstan

Jerzy Rohoziński

Studia Religiologica, Volume 57, Issue 1, 2024, pp. 51-71

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844077SR.24.004.20745

The subject of the paper is the religious revival in the post-war USSR, understood as the limited return of religious practices to the public space, marked by an effort to officially register a religious community. Two types of such revival could be observed in northern Kazakhstan: one on the wave of patriotic intensification of the “Great Patriotic War;” the impetus for the other being the gradual liberalization and abolition of the Gulag system after 1956. The first type was characterized by adaptation with the Soviet system and the intermingling of religious elements with Soviet war mythology. The second type, on the other hand, meant long years of functioning in a religious underground and as a result in two parallel and mutually contradictory realities: the Soviet public sphere, represented first and foremost by the school and the workplace, which was hostile towards religion, and the private sphere, where religious traditions – ridiculed at school – were cultivated, mainly through the involvement of women.

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Religious Origins of Craniosacral Therapy

Andrzej Migda

Studia Religiologica, Volume 57, Issue 1, 2024, pp. 73-94

https://doi.org/10.4467/20844077SR.24.005.20746

The article is an attempt to trace the religious determinants of the development of craniosacral therapy and to situate its origins in theoretical terms in the works of Emanuel Swedenborg and the writings and practice of the founders of osteopathy. Starting from the historical testimonies of the development of this therapeutic concept, I point out structural similarities with religious symbols present in shamanism, Protestant mysticism and in religious attitudes regarding Pentecostal demonology. By conducting observations in the Polish community of people with disabilities and conducting free interviews with mothers of children suffering from cerebral palsy, it was possible to discern the important role of spirituality modelled during therapy. Explaining the way in which modern spirituality and its religious roots are intertwined with medicine, I try to point out the area where their boundaries are blurred, creating an alternative proposal to academic medicine for recovery. This process related to the existential condition of man and his spiritual, individual activity leads to choices of activities that freely combine religious and medical traditions. Cultural changes in this area open religious studies to a new approach and observation of the mentioned research areas aimed at a broader presentation of the phenomena occurring at the interface of spirituality and medicine.

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Słowa kluczowe: Wittgenstein, Frazer, philosophical anthropology, ritual instinct, ontology, epistemology, cognition, meaning-giving, myth, world-building, sacred, symbol, lived-experience, secularism, post-religious society, society, civic society, religion, demythologization, Bultmann, Habermas, hermeneutics, allegoresis, Kazakhstani religious landscape, religious revival, “Great Patriotic War, ” Soviet antireligious propaganda, spirituality, craniosacral therapy, mysticism, shamanism, disability, Pentecostalism, physiotherapy, boundary blurring

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