Willem Lemmens

Walter Van Herck

In recent decades contemporary Anglo-American philosophy has seen a boom in publications on the subject of ‘the emotions’. Most publications focus on the cognitive value of emotions and on their moral significance. The role which emotions play in religion, however, has sofar received little attention. In this volume a number of scholars present their research on ‘religious emotions’. Is there a category of ‘religious emotions’? What is so distinctive about them? Was there really a Christian-inspired repression of the emotions? Or did Christianity also made use of the human emotional potential? How is the relation between religion and emotions conditioned by the process of secularisation? How and why did a shift from the concept of ‘passion’ to that of ‘emotion’ occur from the eighteenth century on? This collection includes systematical treatments as well as historical approaches of these issues. The last part gives some paradigmatical cases of religious emotions, like emptiness and oceanic feeling. In the study of what constitutes a human being neither religion nor emotion can be neglected. The reader is invited to reflect on their interaction.

Some Philosophical Explorations

Religious Emotions

Arthur Cools

Koenraad Verrycken

This collection of essays examines the role of metaphors in philosophy against the background of a reflection on the nature and function of metaphors in general. Drawing on the insights formulated in Ralf Könersmann's 'Wörterbuch der philosophischen Metaphern' and in the 'Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie', the editors acknowledge that philosophical metaphors are to be distinguished from philosophical concepts properly speaking, that not all metaphorical language in philosophy can be translated into pure concepts and that philosophical metaphors can have their own irreducible cognitive value. In the first and systematic part of the book different approaches to the role of philosophical metaphors in general are proposed from different angles. In the second part some selected metaphors in the history of modern philosophy are discussed. In the third part selected cases of metaphorical philosophical language are studied.

Metaphors in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy

Hans Geybels

Leading scholars analyze the importance and functioning of humor in different world religions.

Challenges and Ambiguities

Humour and Religion

Liliana Gómez

This book reflects the way in which the city interacts with the sacred in all its many guises, with religion and the human search for meaning in life. As the process of urbanization of society is accelerating thus giving an increasing importance to cities and the 'metropolis', it is relevant to investigate the social or cultural cohesion that these urban agglomerations manifest. Religion is keenly observed as witnessing a growth, crucially impacting cultural and political dynamics, as well as determining the emergence of new sacred symbols and their inscription in urban spaces worldwide. The sacred has become an important category of a new interpretation of social and cultural transformation processes. From a unique broader perspective, the volume focuses on the relationship between the city and the sacred. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, combining the expertise of philosophers, historians, architects, social geographers, sociologists and anthropologists, it draws a nuanced picture of the different layers of religion, of the sacred and its diverse forms within the city, with examples from Europe, South America and the Caribbean, and Africa.

Walter Van Herck

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