Devotion and Artifice - Themes of Suspension in the History of Religions

How have humans sought to prevent viable assumptions about themselves and their world from being in force, how does this propensity manifest itself, and in what terms has it been theorized and criticized throughout the ages?
Through a diversity of discrete case-studies spanning a vast time-scale (including topics such as paleolithic personal ornaments, pre-ancient ritual economy, ancient philosophy, and modern artful science), this study explores the means by which humans voluntarily suspend habitual patterns of judgement and disbelief in order to perceive the world differently. In recognizing how such modes of suspension can be variously traced back to religious comportments and institutions, a new sense of religious participation is identified beyond the credulous subjunction to artifice and its critical dismissal.
The relevant outcome of this long-term comparative approach is that sincere devotion to a (practical or theoretical, scientific or spiritual) cause and the temporary affirmation of artifice are not mutually exclusive comportments, but rather genealogically akin to the discretely sacred (alchemical, ataraxic, epistemological, spectacular, thaumaturgic, etc.) concerns of a pre-modern world.

Product details

• Authors: Peter Jackson Rova
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 01.01.2025
• EAN: 9783112213605
• ISBN: 978-3-11-221360-5
• No. of pages: 205
• Dimensions: 155 mm x 13 mm x 230 mm
• Weight: 331 g
• Illustrations: 4 b/w and 2 col. ill.
• Series: Religion and Reason
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Religion/theology > General, dictionaries; Religionsgeschichte, Religion & beliefs, History of Religion, Philosophie Ästhetik, REL000000 RELIGION / General, Suspension of Judgment, Aussetzung des Urteils, Aussetzung des Unglaubens, Suspension of disbelief, science-religion divide