The distinction between the secular and the sacred or holy seems at first to constitute a definitive line, the establishment of which also defines Western modernity. Yet this apparently strict demarcation is today not only questioned, but also increasingly difficult to maintain. In order to understand and conceptualize what is happening in the intersection between religion, politics, and aesthetics, we need to rethink the very meaning of the sacred in its full ambiguity, to explore again in thinking the vicissitudes and possibilities of this complex phenomenon, and to learn to move more freely through the category itself.

The book contains contributions by researchers from many different fields, philosophers, theologians, political scientists, and literary historians, who also comment on each other. It establishes new connections and trajectories for mapping and understanding the nature and meaning of the sacred both as a social, an aesthetic, and a religious phenomenon.

The last two decades have witnessed a rising interest from philosophers in the phenomenological, hermeneutic, and continental tradition in questions concerning religion, religious experience, and the relation between faith and reason. The essays in this volume, written by philosophers, theologians, and religious scholars engage in a dialogue concerning these new frontiers. They retrace the earliest roots of phenomenological reflection on religion in the work of Husserl, Heidegger, and Stein, and they address contemporary debates, not least the much discussed "theological turn" in phenomenology, in the work of Marion, Derrida, and Henry. Among the themes treated are transcendence and immanence, immensity, prayer, and the messianic. The essays trace new paths and open up questions of relevance for all those interested in what it means to think religion from a philosophical position today.

Jonna Bornemark holds a PhD in philosophy and is a lecturer and researcher at Södertörn University

Hans Ruin is professor in philosophy at Södertörn University

How could we describe the situation and obligation of the humanities today, theoretically, historically, institutionally, and culturally? In a time of increased control over academic research, it is of special importance to reflect on the academic task. We need to explore new avenues for a relevant and creative humanistic culture. This bilingual volume contains contributions by Simon Critchley, Michał Paweł Markowski, Sven-Erik Liedman, Cecilia Sjöholm, Stefan Jonsson, Fredrik Svenaeus, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback och Irina Sandomirskaja. They originate from a conference held at Södertörn University in December 2008.

I uppsatsen "Frågan om tekniken" från 1952 utvecklade Heidegger tanken om hur tekniken i moderniteten omstöpt hela vårt erfarenhets- och handlingsrum. Inom det mångförgrenade fältet teknikens filosofi har den kommit att spela en central och omstridd roll. Den fenomenologiska teknikanalysen har samtidigt kritiserats för att den inte beaktar teknikens samhälleliga funktion och för att den är oförmögen att tänka medialiseringens verklighet. I en serie nyskrivna uppsatser av ledande internationella och svenska forskare inom teknikens filosofi, diskuteras det fenomenologiska arvet, från Husserl över Heidegger till Derrida och Stiegler, med särskild tonvikt på Heidegger. Här upprättas nya linjer mellan kritisk teori, dekonstruktion, fenomenologi och medieteori, som sammantaget ger en unik ingång till samtida teknikfilosofi.

In this chapter, Hans Ruin investigates Heidegger’s conception of fate and destiny. The chapter takes as its point of departure Heidegger’s exploration of the Greek concept of moira in his lecture course on Parmenides from 1942/3. Ruin argues that the lecture course forms an important stage in Heidegger’s life-long attempt to think about destiny, fate, and “the destinal,” and that it demonstrates that Heidegger’s thoughts on destiny also form part of his attempt to articulate what he also terms “the ontological difference.” Ruin further argues that Heidegger’s thoughts on “the destinal” help illuminate the way in which the Greeks become a topic in and for Heidegger himself. For moira is not simply a term taken from Parmenides and the Greek tradition. Translated as “the destinal,” it also designates the way in which Heidegger invites us to think of our relation to the Greek tradition, a tradition that is bequeathed to us as destiny and whose thinkers point to future possibilities in our own thinking. The chapter explores the problem of fate and destiny as a thread that may guide us to the center of Heidegger’s way of articulating the mode in which the Greek origin of our tradition manifests itself to contemporary thought, a theme central for Heidegger beginning with Being and Time and extending into his late work. The concepts of fate and destiny, Ruin also argues, are intimately connected to Heidegger’s political thought as expressed not least in his Rectoral Address from 1933. As such they concern the problem of politics and authority in Heidegger and have a bearing on his thoughts about origin and the way these thoughts develop in the course of his work. The chapter ends by asking whether Heidegger’s thinking about fate is closely tied to his National Socialist sympathies, or whether it may have a broader significance relevant also to a modern, globalized world-view.

The topic and theme of memory has occupied an ambiguous position in phenomenological and hermeneutic thinking from the start, at once central and marginalized. Parallel to and partly following upon the general turn toward collective and cultural memory in the human and social sciences over the last decades, the importance of memory in and for phenomenological and hermeneutic theory has begun to emerge more clearly. The article seeks to untangle the reasons for the ambiguous position of this theme. It describes how and why the question of what memory is can provide a unique entrance to thinking the temporality and historicity of human existence, while at the same time it can also block the access to precisely these most fundamental levels of subjectivity. The text argues for a deeper mutual theoretical engagement between phenomenological–hermeneutical thinking and contemporary cultural memory studies, on the basis of an understanding of memory as finite and ec-static temporality, and as the enigma of so-called anamnetic subjectivity.

Philosophy, Socrates declared, is the art of dying. This book underscores that it is also the art of learning to live and share the earth with those who have come before us. Burial, with its surrounding rituals, is the most ancient documented cultural-symbolic practice: all humans have developed techniques of caring for and communicating with the dead. The premise of Being with the Dead is that we can explore our lives with the dead as a cross-cultural existential a priori out of which the basic forms of historical consciousness emerge. Care for the dead is not just about the symbolic handling of mortal remains; it also points to a necropolitics, the social bond between the dead and living that holds societies together—a shared space or polis where the dead are maintained among the living. Moving from mortuary rituals to literary representations, from the problem of ancestrality to technologies of survival and intergenerational communication, Hans Ruin explores the epistemological, ethical, and ontological dimensions of what it means to be with the dead. His phenomenological approach to key sources in a range of fields gives us a new perspective on the human sciences as a whole.

Taking its point of departure in an enigmatic passage from the Analects, in which the interlocutor is likened by the master to a sacrificial vase, the essay explores how this teaching can be read as a indirect commentary on the proper way of inhabiting and communicating tradition. The relation to the ancestors and the proper way of handling the rites for the dead is shown to reveal a more basic hermeneutic argument in Confucian thinking, opening the text to its own future transformation.