Kocku Von Stuckrad
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 454446 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Kocku Von Stuckrad |
| NOMBRES | Kocku |
| APELLIDO | Von Stuckrad |
| FIRMA | VON STUCKRAD K |
| AFILIACIONES | Institute of Religious Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2718-2639 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 74 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 96 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 72 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 2 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2000 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Dark Green Sciences
The article examines recent scientific developments in Europe within the parameters of what Bron Taylor (2010) defines as ‘dark green religion’. Using the language of discourse and dispositive research, it describes emerging orders of knowledge as the work of discourse communities formed primarily by scholars, artists, and practitioners of ecological ethics and cosmologies. In addition to changes within academic structures, a new field of ‘undisc…
Genealogien des Undenkbaren
Auf der Grundlage diskursiver Religionswissenschaft geht der Beitrag auf die für viele erstaunliche Präsenz scheinbar „irrationaler“ und für das Säkularisierungstheorem problematischer religiös-spiritueller Praktiken ein, die im 21. Jahrhundert als Mainstream zu bezeichnen sind. Dazu gehören naturzentrierte Spiritualitäten, aber auch „esoterische“ Praktiken wie Astrologie, Tarot usw. Der Beitrag zeigt auf, dass diese Wissens- und Praxissysteme ta…
Religiöse Manifestationen in der europäischen Moderne
Der Beitrag bietet einen kurzen Überblick über die Forschungsarbeit von Hans G. Kippenberg seit den 1970er-Jahren und ihren Einfluss auf die deutsche und internationale Religionsforschung. Das Sonderheft greift zentrale Beiträge Kippenbergs auf und thematisiert insbesondere das Fortleben von Religion in der europäischen Moderne, was sowohl inhaltliche als auch konzeptionelle Fragen aufwirft. Anhand von Forschungen zur Dynamik von religiösem Plura…
Genealogies of the ‘Unthinkable’
Genealogies of the 'Unthinkable
Situated Knowledges and Diffractional Definitions of Esotericism
Languages of Life and the Blending of Worlds
Addressing the links between religion and experiences of nature requires language, and at the same time it moves beyond linguistic forms of communication. After a brief review of the linguistic paradigm in the study of religion, the question of linguistic understandings of nature is addressed from two perspectives. First, linguistic approaches attempt to include experiences of nature in our knowledge about the natural world and the human place wi…
Siv Ellen Kraft, Bjørn Ola Tafjord, Arkotong Longkumer, Gregory D. Alles and Greg Johnson, Indigenous Religion(s)
Indigenous Religion(s): Local Grounds, Global Networks. 2020. By Siv Ellen Kraft, Bjørn Ola Tafjord, Arkotong Longkumer, Gregory D. Alles and Greg Johnson. London: Routledge. 208pp. $136 (hardcover), $39.96 (paperback), Open Access (e-book)
Decentering Humanism in Philosophy and the Sciences
Undisciplining the study of religion
Recent discussions about other-than-human agency and relationality across species and lifeforms are closely tied to theoretical reconsiderations within, and beyond, the humanities. Scholars in the study of religion have only reluctantly picked up these considerations. Theoretical work that includes nonhuman animals in conceptualisations of religion often still operates in binary structures of nature/culture and body/mind. The author reviews recen…
What Is Religion?
The editors of What Is Religion? Debating the Academic Study of Religion asked seventeen leading scholars of religion to finish the statement “Religion is . . .” in a sentence or two, at most a paragraph. Their answer then went to another contributor to write an essay based on it (whether as a reply, a critique, or an application), to which the original author of the paragraph then responded in a brief essay. The result is a collection of scholar…
Institutional Histories, Identity Work, and Critical Theory
In a response to Markus Davidsen’s article ‘Theo van Baaren’s Systematic Science of Religion Revisited: The Current Crisis in Dutch Study of Religion and a Way Out’, this contribution first reviews Davidsen’s claim of a crisis in the study of religion in the Netherlands, as compared to what he calls the ‘systematic mentality’ of the ‘Nordic countries’. It then turns to the prescribed cure for the alleged ailment that Davidsen develops as an ident…
The Moral Triangle
Berlin is home to Europe's largest Palestinian diaspora community and one of the world's largest Israeli diaspora communities. Germany's guilt about the Nazi Holocaust has led to a public disavowal of anti-Semitism and strong support for the Israeli state. Meanwhile, Palestinians in Berlin report experiencing increasing levels of racism and Islamophobia. In The Moral Triangle Sa'ed Atshan and Katharina Galor draw on ethnographic fieldwork and int…
Discourse Research and Religion
The discursive study of religion is a growing field that attracts increasing numbers of students and researchers from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds. This volume is the first systematic presentation of the research into religion and discourse. Written by experts from various disciplines, each chapter offers an integrative overview of theory, method, and contextual studies by focusing on a specific approach, interdisciplinary relations…
Straw Men and Scientific Nostalgia
Making Religion
Discursive approaches to the study of religion have received a lot of attention recently. Making Religion brings together leading theorists in the field who explore the theoretical and practical dimensions of the analysis of religious discourse. The volume provides an overview of current debates in the field, extends and improves upon contemporary theories and methodologies, and contributes to the discipline more broadly by flagging the importanc…
Stars and Powers
Heavenly signs played a considerable role in the legitimization of political power in the ancient world. During imperial Roman times, astrology was closely tied to philosophy, religion, and politics, and the Romans’ expectation of a Golden Age had clear astrological and astral connotations. This chapter describes how these interpretations and expectations were adopted in Jewish politics, beginning with the Hasmoneans in the second century bce, co…
Ancient Esotericism, Problematic Assumptions, and Conceptual Trouble
The article critiques the idea that what scholars today call "Western esotericism" emerged only after the "Renaissance". It argues that for an understanding of the complex dynamics that have shaped the construction of esoteric knowledge and counter-knowledge, the ancient world is crucial in two ways: First, ancient cultures provide a rich spectrum of polemical discourses of knowledge in philosophy and religion, most of them prefiguring the discur…
The Scientification of Religion
The enigmatic relation between religion and science still presents a challenge to European societies and to ideas about what it means to be ‘modern.’ This book argues that European secularism, rather than pushing back religious truth claims, in fact has been religiously productive itself. The institutional establishment of new disciplines in the nineteenth century, such as religious studies, anthropology, psychology, classical studies, and the st…
The Scientification of Religion
The enigmatic relation between religion and science still presents a challenge to European societies and to ideas about what it means to be `modern.' This book argues that European secularism, rather than pushing back religious truth claims, in fact has been religiously productive itself. The institutional establishment of new disciplines in the nineteenth century, such as religious studies, anthropology, psychology, classical studies, and the st…
Religion Im Kulturellen Diskurs / Religion in Cultural Discourse
Discursive Study of Religion
The article explores recent approaches to historical analysis of discourse that have been developed in disciplines such as the sociology of knowledge and historical epistemology. These approaches have only sporadically been taken seriously in the academic study of religion, although they have a great potential to establish a study of religion that is both academically rigorous and aware of its societal and historical contexts and limitations. The…
Secular Religion
In many countries in Western Europe today, religion is an important factor in public debates. Contrary to most expectations, religion has not vanished or even become subordinate under the influence of secularism. While this phenomenon has put the general theory of secularization under pressure, an alternative model for explaining the place of religion in Western Europe is only slowly taking shape. The present article is a contribution to this dis…
The Gods as Role Models in Western Traditions
What I Cannot Build I Cannot Understand
The article scrutinizes the genealogy of transgressive discourses in the fields of the natural sciences, metaphysics, and religion. Throughout Western cultural history, and still today, we find influential examples that transgress the borders between empirical method and metaphysical knowledge claims. These borders are shifting constantly and thus it seems more fruitful to address their negotiation as an ongoing discourse in Western culture, rath…
Discursive Study of Religion
This article addresses the predicament of the academic study of religions and directs the debate into more fruitful fields of research. After a brief account of the most important problems - identified as the "crisis of representation", the "situated observer", and the "dilemma of essentialism and relativism" - I argue that, in order to cope with these afflictions, we should scrutinize religions as systems of communication and action and not as s…
Discursive Study of Religion
The article explores recent approaches to historical analysis of discourse that have been developed in disciplines such as the sociology of knowledge and historical epistemology. These approaches have only sporadically been taken seriously in the academic study of religion, although they have a great potential to establish a study of religion that is both academically rigorous and aware of its societal and historical contexts and limitations. The…
Reflections on the Limits of Reflection
It has repeatedly been claimed that the study of religion should not essentialize “religion” as an object of study that exists “out there,” waiting for us to discover and understand “it.” Reflection on the contexts and hidden agendas of concepts of religion are part and parcel of scholarly activity. But can there be an end to such a circle of reflection? This paper argues that definitions of and approaches to religion are intrinsically linked to …
Discourse Research and Religion
The discursive study of religion is a growing field that attracts increasing numbers of students and researchers from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds. This volume is the first systematic presentation of the research into religion and discourse. Written by experts from various disciplines, each chapter offers an integrative overview of theory, method, and contextual studies by focusing on a specific approach, interdisciplinary relations…
Secular Religion
In many countries in Western Europe today, religion is an important factor in public debates. Contrary to most expectations, religion has not vanished or even become subordinate under the influence of secularism. While this phenomenon has put the general theory of secularization under pressure, an alternative model for explaining the place of religion in Western Europe is only slowly taking shape. The present article is a contribution to this dis…
Western esotericism
Despite the fact that during the last fifteen years we have witnessed the emergence of a research field of 'Western esotericism', scholars are still far from agreeing on definitions of 'esotericism'. For an academic 'field', however, that wants to establish international networks and to bring together scholars from various research areas and disciplines, it is highly desirable to provide an interpretational framework in which these different stud…
Finding Data
The very name of the new International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture is a programmatic challenge. It brings together three concepts that are notoriously difficult to grasp. Instead of providing ultimate definitions for these concepts, this article argues that the object of scrutiny in academic research is not nature as such, but the cultural processes that produce certain ideas about nature as nature. Thus, ontological sta…
Undisciplining the study of religion
Recent discussions about other-than-human agency and relationality across species and lifeforms are closely tied to theoretical reconsiderations within, and beyond, the humanities. Scholars in the study of religion have only reluctantly picked up these considerations. Theoretical work that includes nonhuman animals in conceptualisations of religion often still operates in binary structures of nature/culture and body/mind. The author reviews recen…
The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature
2005 ALA/RUSA Outstanding Reference Source2005 CHOICE Outstanding Academic TitleThe Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature is a landmark work in the burgeoning field of religion and nature. It covers a vast and interdisciplinary range of material, from ecology, theology, philosophy, and beyond. Entries cover major thinkers, religious traditions, and important events, with clarity and style. Widely praised by reviewers and the recipient of major awar…
Why philosophy and history matter
The article picks up some ideas that Ann Taves presents in her book Religious Experience Reconsidered, and looks at possible conversations that are not fleshed out in detail in Taves' book. In particular, it is argued that the disciplinary confrontation with philosophy and with historiography is of crucial importance if the disciplines of cognitive science and psychology of religion want to become in the future what they pretend to be now-a serio…
Esoteric discourse and the European history of religion
Often, when people nowadays talk of ‘esotericism’, they are using this word either as more or less synonymous with ‘New Age’, or as a term for movements that are based on a secret wisdom that is only accessible to an ‘inner circle’ of initiates. In academic discussions, however, during the past fifteen years, a field of research has been established that critically engages these assumptions and applies the term ‘esotericism’ in a very different w…
Ancient Esotericism, Problematic Assumptions, and Conceptual Trouble
The article critiques the idea that what scholars today call "Western esotericism" emerged only after the "Renaissance". It argues that for an understanding of the complex dynamics that have shaped the construction of esoteric knowledge and counter-knowledge, the ancient world is crucial in two ways: First, ancient cultures provide a rich spectrum of polemical discourses of knowledge in philosophy and religion, most of them prefiguring the discur…
What I Cannot Build I Cannot Understand
The article scrutinizes the genealogy of transgressive discourses in the fields of the natural sciences, metaphysics, and religion. Throughout Western cultural history, and still today, we find influential examples that transgress the borders between empirical method and metaphysical knowledge claims. These borders are shifting constantly and thus it seems more fruitful to address their negotiation as an ongoing discourse in Western culture, rath…
Refutation and Desire
The article discusses learned debates that evolved at the end of the eighteenth century in Europe about the interpretation of shamanism. Intellectuals, philosophers, and enlightened monarchs engaged in controversies about shamanism that were clearly linked to Enlightenment ideals of rationality and religious critique. The article addresses the ambivalence of ‘refutation and desire’ in French, German, and Russian responses to shamanism, with speci…
Utopian Landscapes and Ecstatic Journeys
Against the background of fascism and the disasters of two world wars, during the first decades of the twentieth century many European intellectuals were formulating negative responses to “modernity” and to what they regarded as the decline of human civilization. Often, these intellectuals sought for alternatives to the modern conditio humana and looked for solutions in religion, art, or philosophy. Friedrich Nietzsche’s conceptualization of the …
Rewriting the Book of Nature
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it seems as if biology, genetics, and the ‘life sciences’ are in normative control of cultural discourses regarding nature, the body, and the cosmos. This article addresses religious and esoteric semantics that underlie modern biology. The ‘deciphering’ of the human genetic ‘code’—a metaphor introduced to the ‘life sciences’ by Erwin Schrödinger in 1944—rests on Pythagorean and kabbalistic notions abo…
Jewish and Christian Astrology in Late Antiquity - A New Approach
In late antiquity astrology held a key position among the accepted and well-reputed sciences. As ars mathematica closely connected with astronomy, it made its way into the highest political and philosophical orders of the Roman Empire and became the standard model of interpreting past, present, and future events. Although this is widely acknowledged by modern historians, most scholars assume that the application of astrological theories is limite…
Religionen, religiöse Bewegungen und Traditionen
Bastide, Roger: The African religions of Brazil. Toward a sociology of the interpenetration of civilizations, Baltimore 1978 (Org.: Paris 1960); Fernández Olmos, Margante / Paravisini-Gebert, Lizabeth (Hgg.): Sacred possessions. Vodou, Santería, Obeah, and the Caribbean, New Brunswick/ NJ 21999 (11997); Pinn, Anthony B.: Varieties of African American religious experience, Minneapolis 1998; Pollak-Eltz, Angelina: Trommel und Trance. Die afroamerik…
Relative, Contingent, Determined
1Department of Art, Religion, and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Relative, Contingent, Determined
1Department of Art, Religion, and Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam, 1012 GC Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Discursive Study of Religion
This article addresses the predicament of the academic study of religions and directs the debate into more fruitful fields of research. After a brief account of the most important problems - identified as the "crisis of representation", the "situated observer", and the "dilemma of essentialism and relativism" - I argue that, in order to cope with these afflictions, we should scrutinize religions as systems of communication and action and not as s…
Constructions, Normativities, Identities
Western esotericism
Despite the fact that during the last fifteen years we have witnessed the emergence of a research field of 'Western esotericism', scholars are still far from agreeing on definitions of 'esotericism'. For an academic 'field', however, that wants to establish international networks and to bring together scholars from various research areas and disciplines, it is highly desirable to provide an interpretational framework in which these different stud…
Visual Gods
Academic research into the cultural changes that took place in Europe between 1400 and 1650 is notoriously fraught with terminological difficulties. With regard to the place of paganism and polytheism in Western culture, three questions in particular stand in the foreground: Most generally, is it adequate to isolate a period as "Renaissance" or "early modernity" and what is gained by doing so? Is the period called "Renaissance" characterized by a…
The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature
2005 ALA/RUSA Outstanding Reference Source2005 CHOICE Outstanding Academic TitleThe Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature is a landmark work in the burgeoning field of religion and nature. It covers a vast and interdisciplinary range of material, from ecology, theology, philosophy, and beyond. Entries cover major thinkers, religious traditions, and important events, with clarity and style. Widely praised by reviewers and the recipient of major awar…
Polemical Encounters
In its historical development from late antiquity to the present, western esotericism has repeatedly been the issue of polemical discourse. This volume engages the polemical structures that underlie both the identities within and the controversy about esoteric currents in European history. From Jewish and Christian kabbalah through heretical discourse and interconfessional polemics in early modernity to the legitimization of esoteric identity in …
Polemical Encounters
The Brill Dictionary of Religion
new and impressively comprehensive Dictionary of Religion addresses religion as an element of daily life and public discourse. Richly illustrated and with more than 500 entries, the dictionary is a multi-media reference source on the many and various forms of religious commitment. It is unusual in that it not only addresses the different theologies and doctrinal declarations of the official institutionalized religions but it also gives equal weig…
Finding Data
The very name of the new International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture is a programmatic challenge. It brings together three concepts that are notoriously difficult to grasp. Instead of providing ultimate definitions for these concepts, this article argues that the object of scrutiny in academic research is not nature as such, but the cultural processes that produce certain ideas about nature as nature. Thus, ontological sta…
War in Heaven/Heaven on Earth
Interreligious Transfers in the Middle Ages
This article describes the discipline of astrology as an example of manifold interreligious contacts and transfers in the Middle Ages. Over against an image of the Middle Ages as being predominantly Christian and striving to violently suppress science, philosophy, and astrology, it is shown that in fact Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities shared common interests and participated in an ongoing communication, even if in polemical differentiat…
Europe and Religion
Christen, Juden, Muselmanen
Ideas of Nature and Their Cultural Impact
Dieter Groh, Schöpfung im Widerspruch: Deutungen der Natur und des Menschen von der Genesis bis zur Reformation (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), 846 pp., EUR 20.00 (approx. $26 US), ISBN 3-518-29089-4. Ruth Groh and Dieter Groh, Die Außenwelt der Innenwelt: Zur Kulturgeschichte der Natur 2 (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1996), 150 pp., EUR 8.99 (approx $12 US), ISBN: 3-518-28818-0. —Weltbild und Naturaneignung: Zur Kulturgeschichte der Natur (Frankfurt/…
Alef, Mem, Tau
Esoteric discourse and the European history of religion
Often, when people nowadays talk of ‘esotericism’, they are using this word either as more or less synonymous with ‘New Age’, or as a term for movements that are based on a secret wisdom that is only accessible to an ‘inner circle’ of initiates. In academic discussions, however, during the past fifteen years, a field of research has been established that critically engages these assumptions and applies the term ‘esotericism’ in a very different w…
Rewriting the Book of Nature
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it seems as if biology, genetics, and the ‘life sciences’ are in normative control of cultural discourses regarding nature, the body, and the cosmos. This article addresses religious and esoteric semantics that underlie modern biology. The ‘deciphering’ of the human genetic ‘code’—a metaphor introduced to the ‘life sciences’ by Erwin Schrödinger in 1944—rests on Pythagorean and kabbalistic notions abo…
Den Irrtum liquidieren
Astrologumena Judaica
Theologies and Scholars
Chapter Nine. Political Consideration
Philosophy (53 obras) · Sociology (39 obras) · Epistemology (31 obras) · History (26 obras) · Political science (24 obras) · Religious studies (24 obras) · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices (22 obras) · Art (18 obras) · Philosophy (18 obras) · Law (17 obras)