News / Newly Released Publications

New publication

The newest issue of JRAT (JRAT 6 (2020) Interreligious Dialogue in Context: A European Comparison) has recently been published and can be accessed by clicking on the link below.

(to the full issue)

New Articles by Kurt Appel

Il significato del mito nella filosofia di Pareyson e nella filosofia di Schelling

in: C. Ciancio, M. Pagano (Ed.), Il pensiero della libertà. Luigi Pareyson a cent´anni dalla nascita (Essere e libertà 30), Mimesis Edizioni: Milano, Udine 2020, 75-102 (trad.: Mattia Coser e Ezio Gamba, revisione di Kurt Appel). Peer-reviewed.

Siamo al cospetto di un messianismo universale. La pandemia rischia di diventare la versione moderna della religione universale

 Il Foglio (May 21, 2020)

[Link to the Article]

In cerca della preghiera

Kurt Appel / Massimo Nardello / Andrés Torres Queiruga (Hg.). Dio, dove sei? Ripensare la preghiera nel tempo dell'emergenza. EDB, Bologna 2020, 9-19.

[Abstract] [Link to the book]

Covid-19 - die neue Religion

Die Furche (May 28, 2020)

[Link to the Article] 

New Article by Jakob Deibl

From Kant to Hölderlin: Poetry and Religion in the Wake of Philosophical Aesthetics

Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory

[Link to the Text]

Ästhetik und öffentlicher Raum in Zeiten der Krise

Theocare.Network (May 1, 2020)

[Link to the Article]

New Article - Kurt Appel

The Border of Borders: Christianity and the Rethinking of Public Space

in: JRAT 5 (2/2019), Religion, Community, Borders. Social Imaginaries and the Challenge of Pluralism. Editors: Ernst van den Hemel, Laurens ten Kate

[Abstract]

[Link to the Article]

Desacralisation as the Sanctification of the Church

Contribution by Kurt Appel in Rosmini Studies

In the first part of the essay, the author examines the five plagues of the Church that are presented by the great Catholic intellectual Antonio Rosmini in 1848 in a text entitled Delle Cinque Piaghe della Santa Chiesa which was very influential for Italian Catholicism in the 20th century. The author argues that the text is not simply a diagnosis of the unsatisfying state of Catholicism but also refers to the question of the sacred and the holy. Holiness is to be linked the unpronounceable Tetragrammaton YHWH designating something inaccessible to human power. Rosmini, conscious of the power mechanisms of society and their totalitarian grasp, imagined a lovingly devoted Church to have the task of renunciating earthly regimes of power, thereby remembering its evangelical origins. The author shows that each of the plagues designates a critique of Church's claim to worldly power. In the second part, he examines a conception of holiness in which the holy designates man as oscillating between two subjects, his own and that of Jesus, the latter marking a radical opening of the subject and the abundance of the name of God. It is betrayed when the Church becomes a sacral and institutional space of exception. In the third part, the author introduces four new plagues of the Church: the exclusion of laymen from joint responsibility for the Church, the claim to moral superiority as a legitimisation of sacralised power, sexual abuse and clericalism as patriarchal power and the exclusion of women from the sphere of holiness. While these contemporary plagues indicate an understanding of holiness inadequate to the Gospel, Pope Francis's notion is rooted in the latter, thereby sharing Rosmini's notion of holiness, a notion that according to the author, is decisive for the future of the Catholic Church.

Link to the publisher's website and access to the full text

Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation

Issue 7: The Crisis of Representation, ed. by  Kurt Appel und Carl Raschke

The term “Crisis of Representation” rose to fame through Michel Foucault. The crisis, in the context of this issue, has not only a political and economic dimension, but a cultural, aesthetic and religious one as well. Thus, a serious inquiry into this complex and multidimensional phenomenon requires an interdisciplinary approach. The issue targets the phenomena at hand through 15 contributions – all with unique and innovative approaches to the topic. One common aim that holds the issue together is the analysis of the nature of the crisis, which helps to find suitable theoretical frameworks. On the other hand, the term itself functions as a tool that enables the analysis of specific societal developments. Contributing authors brought with them expertise from their respective fields including philosophy, political sciences, theology, Islamic studies and religious studies. This allowed for a cross-disciplinary approach on the phenomenon with special foci on politics, religions, societies and finance, as well as theoretical developments on current philosophical and post-colonial discourses.

Link to the publisher's eLibrary