Are we living in a ‘post-secular age’, and can phenomenology help us better understand the discontents of secularism? From Habermas’ claim that the secular hypothesis has failed for democratic reasons to the fact that religion, far from its predicted dwindling, is as strong as ever (or even stronger than before), some have concluded that secularism as we know it is over. Others have questioned whether we have ever truly been secular, if the concept applies only to European societies, or whether the very notion of religiosity is merely a weapon of pacification in the hands of Western universalism. The post-secular notion thus lingers between sociological fact and philosophical theory, and it is the latter that we need to investigate if we want to confront the challenges that any ‘return of religion’ entails. Although phenomenology has furnished manifold devices to rethink religious experience in a post-metaphysical way, its investigations often remain individualistic and beholden to unproductive dichotomies. This volume assembles investigations into secularism’s discontents by addressing religion’s role in forming the fabric of contemporary societies and unveiling new constellations of faith and reason beyond many beloved modernist dichotomies (e.g. theism/atheism, myth/Enlightenment, fundamentalism/tolerance) that often go under-investigated. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Philosophical Studies.

Philosophy has been always received or bypassed for its resonance or aloofness with the spirit of the time. Should not philosophy/phenomenology of life be expected to do more to ascertain its validity? Should it not pass the pragmatic test, that is to respond directly to the life-concerns of its time? What is the role of the philosopher and philosophy today? Due to the ever-advancing scientific, technological, social and cultural changes that are shaping human life and the life-world-in-transformation, we are desperately seeking a measure to estimate life's unfolding, a compass to stir the course between Scylla and Charibda to maintain human-hood and creative insight for laying the cornerstones for the unforeseeable unfolding of life dynamisms. It is this challenge which philosophy/phenomenology of life meets with underlying ontopoietic unraveling of the hidden logoic concatenations of beingness-in-becoming. The present collection of essays offers contributions to answer this challenge by focusing upon measure, sharing-in-life, intersubjectivity and communication, societal equilibrium, education, and more. It will be of great interest to those working in the fields of Phenomenology, Philosophy, History of Philosophy, and Contemporary Philosophy.

This book offers new reflections on the life world, from both phenomenological and hermeneutic perspectives. It presents a prism for a new philosophy of science and technology, especially including the social sciences but also the environment as well as questions of ethics and philosophical aesthetics in addition to exploring the themes of theology and religion. Inspired by the many contributions made by the philosopher Joseph Kockelmans, this book examines the past, present and future prospects of hermeneutic phenomenology. It raises key questions of truth and method as well as highlights both continental and analytic traditions of philosophy. Contributors to The Multidimensionality of Hermeneutic Phenomenology include leading scholars in the field as well as new voices representing analytic philosophers of science, hermeneutic and phenomenological philosophers of science, scholars of comparative literature, theorists of environmental studies, specialists in phenomenological ethics and experts in classical hermeneutics.

Using phenomenology to uncover the implicit logic in personal love, sexual love, and hatred, Peter Hadreas provides new insights into the uniqueness of the beloved and offers fresh explanations for some of the worst outbreaks of violence and hatred in modern times. Topics discussed include the value and subjectivity of personal love, nudity and the temporality of sexual love, the connection between personal, sexual love, and the incest taboo, the development of group-focused hatred from individual focused hatred, and prejudicial discrimination. The work encompasses analysis of philosophers and writers from ancient times through to the present day and examines such episodes as the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing and the Columbine High School massacre.

Simone de Beauvoir's Le Deuxi_me Sexe has been studied extensively since its appearance in 1949. Through the years, certain passages have taken on prestige; others are seen as unimportant to understanding Beauvoir's argument. In Toward a Phenomenology of Sexual Difference, Sara HeinSmaa rediscovers those neglected passages in her quest to follow Beauvoir's line of thinking. HeinSmaa, like some other recent philosophers, finds that Le Duexi_me Sexe is a philosophical inquiry, not the empirical study it is commonly thought to be. Others who view Beauvoir's masterpiece as a work of philosophy argue it is a criticism not only of Sartrean phenomenology, but of phenomenology as a whole. HeinSmaa thinks differently. She finds that Beauvoir's starting point is the Husserlian idea of the living body that she found developed in Merleau-Ponty's PhZnomZnologie de la perception. So when Beavoir wrote Le Duexi_me Sexe, she was writing not as Sartre's pupil, but as a scholar in the tradition of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty.

The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History explores a variety of geographical and cultural contexts to examine what literary texts, grasped as material objects and reflections on urban materialities, have to offer for urban history. The contributing writers’ approach to literary narratives and materialities in urban history is summarised within the conceptualisation ‘materiality in/of literature’: the way in which literary narratives at once refer to the material world and actively partake in the material construction of the world. This book takes a geographically multipolar and multidisciplinary approach to discuss cities in the UK, the US, India, South Africa, Finland, and France whilst examining a wide range of textual genres from the novel to cartoons, advertising copy, architecture and urban planning, and archaeological writing. In the process, attention is drawn to narrative complexities embedded within literary fiction and to the dialogue between narratives and historical change. The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History has three areas of focus: literary fiction as form of urban materiality, literary narratives as social investigations of the material city, and the narrating of silenced material lives as witnessed in various narrative sources.