Do We Need Religion?: On the Experience of Self-transcendence (The Yale Cultural Sociology Series)

Description

The old assumption that modernization leads to secularization is outdated. Yet the certainty that religion is an anthropological universal that can only be suppressed by governments is also dead. Thus it is now a favorable moment for a new perspective on religion. This book takes human experiences of self-transcendence as its point of departure. Religious faith is seen as an attempt to articulate and interpret such experiences. Faith then is neither useful nor a symptom of weakness or misery, but an opening up of ways of experience. This book develops this basic idea, contrasts it with the thinking of some leading religious thinkers of our time, and relates it to the current debates about human rights and universal human dignity. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Preface Part 1: Religious Experience 1. Do We Need Religion? 2. Religion in the Age of Contingency 3. On the Articulation of Experience Part 2: Between Theology and Social Science 4. Sociology and the Sacred: Key Texts in the Sociology of Religion 5. Sophisticated Fundamentalism from the Left? On John Milbank 6. A Catholic Modernity? Faith and Knowledge in the Work of Charles Taylor 7. God in France: Paul Ricoeur As Theoretical Mediator 8. Post-Secular Religion? On Jürgen Habermas Part 3: Human Dignity 9. Decency, Justice, Dignity: On Avishai Margalit 10. Respect for Indisposability: A Contribution to the Bioethics Debate 11. Human Dignity: The Religion of Modernity? Index About the Author