Textbooks and introductions to Western Esotericism

This article reviews the presently available supply of textbooks and introductions to the new academic field of study known as ‘Western esotericism’. By analogy with computer software, the author refers to the early ‘religionist’ phase of research in this domain as ‘Western esotericism 1.0’. He argues that Antoine Faivre's small French textbook L’ésotérisme (1992) marked the beginning of a more satisfactory upgrade that might be referred to as ‘Western esotericism 2.0’ and remains dominant in teaching and research today. A critical review of textbooks and introductions representative of this second phase of academic professionalisation reveals a number of structural problems and weaknesses (‘bugs and design faults’) that need to be corrected in order for the field to complete its adolescence and reach academic maturity. To accommodate the needs and new perspectives of the upcoming generation of scholars in this field, it is therefore time for an upgrade to ‘Western esotericism 3.0’.     

Hidden presence: race and/in the history,construct, and study of western esotericism

ABSTRACT

Except for a few studies that explore the intersections between esoteric ideas/practices and white supremacy, race has largely been ignored in the field of Western esotericism. This article seeks to partake in remedying this lacuna. To do so, it provides a deconstructive analysis of the way race has operated in the field. I argue that race, although consistently overlooked, has functioned as a ‘hidden presence’ that has shaped both the historical formation of the field and the construct of Western esotericism – so much so, in fact, that we may conceive it as a subtext in and for the dominant ‘grand narrative’ of Western esotericism. In conclusion, I investigate recent attempts to omit ‘Western’ as a definitive adjective in the study of esotericism, thereby proposing that, even as we move ‘beyond the West,’ we must also continue to investigate the entanglements of ‘Western’ and whiteness.     

What is it all about? Some reflections on Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy

In reviewing the growth of the field of study of ‘Western esotericism,’ this article compares the attempts at delineating its intellectual and religious genealogy by von Stuckrad (Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Leiden: Brill, 2010) and Hanegraaff (Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). The essay challenges the thesis that ‘Western esotericism’ was a decisive element in the formation of modern Western identities and some other elements of the reconstruction of the origin of the field delineated by Hanegraaff.     

Western esotericism: Towards an integrative model of interpretation

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 studies find their place. The main argument of this article is that such common ground can be found only when esotericism is seen not as a selection of historical ‘currents’, however defined, but as a structural element of Western culture. After reviewing the most influential approaches to Western esotericism, this article identifies two dimensions of an esoteric discourse: claims of higher knowledge and ways of accessing this ‘truth’. To these dimensions can be added certain world views that are typically involved in there discourses. The interpretative model proposed here aims at critically addressing basic aspects of Western self-understanding including the rhetorics of rationality, science, enlightenment, progress and absolute truth. It postulates that conflicts of religious world views, identities and forms of knowledge lie at the heart of Western cultural history.     

Deconstructing ‘Western esotericism’: on Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy

This paper discusses a number of consequences that – although not always intended by the author – can be drawn from the radically historicist approach adopted by Wouter J. Hanegraaff in his monograph Esotericism and the Academy. These consequences are the atomization of ‘esotericism’ into a disparate range of ideas, practices, and currents with few if any shared elements; a better approximation to contemporary anthropological views of culture and cultural innovation; a focus on polemical strategies rather than substantive contents and a concomitant possibility of cross-cultural comparison; a reluctance to engage with theories of broader scope; and a vacillation between seeing ‘esotericism’ as merely a waste-basket category and attempting nonetheless to salvage a minimal substantive definition.     

Discourse theory trumps discourse theory: Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy

This review article argues that Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy is deeply influenced by a methodological cluster usually referred to as ‘discourse theory.’ That the author is not willing to classify his own approach as such is explained with recourse to his dispute with Kocku von Stuckrad, who, according to Hanegraaff, would embody discourse theory, whereas Hanegraaff would embody history. A comparison of Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) and von Stuckrad's Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities (Leiden: Brill, 2010) reveals that this is a misleading classification and that Hanegraaff's study comes closer to what discourse theory is all about. As a consequence, Esotericism and the Academy is the very first study on ‘Western esotericism’ that offers a convincing justification of this particular label as an overarching discursive category.     

Reverse-engineering ‘esotericism': how to prepare a complex cultural concept for the cognitive science of religion

The article introduces a framework for preparing complex cultural concepts for the cognitive science of religion (CSR) and applies it to the field of Western esotericism. The research process (‘reverse engineering') rests on a building block approach that, after problematic categories have been deconstructed, seeks to reconstruct new scholarly objects in generic terms that can be operationalized in interdisciplinary contexts like CSR. A four-step research process is delineated, illustrated by a short discussion of previous work on ‘Gnosticism,' ‘magic,' and ‘religion,' before applying it to ‘esotericism.' It is suggested that the implicit scholarly objects of esotericism scholarship can be reconstituted in generic terms as concerned with processes of creating and disseminating ‘special knowledge.' Five definitional clusters are identified in the literature; these provide a basis for formulating research programs on the psychological and cognitive level, drawing on metarepresentational processes, event cognition, and psychological dispositions for altering experience.     

Contextual Citizenship in Modern Islamic Thought

This paper examines the concept of citizenship in Egyptian Islamic thought. It focuses on a group of intellectuals referred to as the ‘New Islamists’, who have articulated a kind of Islamic citizenship which would include non-Muslim minorities. In contrast to many Islamists, these thinkers do not advocate reviving the dhimma as a model for the treatment of non-Muslims within an Islamic state. The paper looks at the methods and arguments used for justifying citizenship within the Islamic ideological framework. It compares this conception of citizenship with Western assumptions and shows that there are a number of divergences. However, it also questions the efficacy of simply judging citizenship in Islamic thought through this lens. It asks whether a more constructive question is whether Egyptian Islamists have been able to articulate a conception of citizenship that has evolved ‘contextually’, taking into account Egyptian social, moral, and political culture.     

Hidden or Forbidden,Elected or Rejected: Sufism as ‘Islamic Esotericism’?

The article analyses the background of a popular conception of Sufism as equivalent to ‘Islamic esotericism’ by tracing two different but sometimes confluent currents: reifications of Sufism within Western romanticist and modern environments, and the approach to it in Islamic reformist movements. A further aim is to nuance and problematize such understandings, making use of examples from both historical and contemporary Sufism. Finally, the article briefly discusses possible pros and cons related to the interbreeding of Islamic Studies and the academic studies of Western esotericism.     

Freud,Bion and Kant: Epistemology and anthropology in The Interpretation of Dreams

This interdisciplinary article takes a philosophical approach to The Interpretation of Dreams, connecting Freud to one of the few philosophers with whom he sometimes identified – Immanuel Kant. It aims to show that Freud's theory of dreams has more in common with Bion's later thoughts on dreaming than is usually recognized. Distinguishing, via a discussion of Kant, between the conflicting ‘epistemological’ and ‘anthropological’ aspects of The Interpretation of Dreams, it shows that one specific contradiction in the book – concerning the relation between dream‐work and waking thought – can be understood in terms of the tension between these conflicting aspects. Freud reaches the explicit conclusion that the dream‐work and waking thought differ from each other absolutely; but the implicit conclusion of The Interpretation of Dreams is quite the opposite. This article argues that the explicit conclusion is the result of the epistemological aspects of the book; the implicit conclusion, which brings Freud much closer to Bion, the result of the anthropological approach. Bringing philosophy and psychoanalysis together this paper thus argues for an interpretation of The Interpretation of Dreams that is in some ways at odds with the standard view of the book, while also suggesting that aspects of Kant's ‘anthropological’ works might legitimately be seen as a precursor of psychoanalysis.     

Looking back,looking forward: A reexamination of Benjamin Wolstein’s interlock and the emergence of intersubjectivity

In this paper the author takes a close look at Benjamin Wolstein’s chapter, ‘Therapy’, from his book, Countertransference, published in 1959. This chapter contains a discussion of what he refers to as the interlock between analyst and patient, or today what we might describe as transference/countertransference enactment. The author shows how Wolstein’s concept of the interlock and its relation to the analyst’s countertransference was radical and innovative for its time. Wolstein’s notion of a transference/countertransference interlock, along with the seminal contributions of Ferenczi and some of the early interpersonal theorists, anticipates the complexities of a two‐person psychology and the entanglement which can occur from the intermingling of unconscious processes of analyst and patient in the experiential field. The author highlights three main ideas. First, the author provides a brief review of enactment with an emphasis on the role of the analyst’s participation as conceptualized by the various theoretical perspectives. An historical context is given for Wolstein’s clinical theorizing. Second, the author explicates Wolstein’s concept of the interlock, with particular attention to the processes involved which account for the complexities it presents. Third, the author examines the ‘working through’ process, including the emergence of intersubjectivity in the resolution of the interlock. The author shows throughout Wolstein’s emphasis on the influence of the analyst’s personal psychology, mutuality, and intersubjectivity, all of which anticipated the gradual interpersonalization of psychoanalysis across the various schools of thought.     

Towards an interreligious understanding of Hikma

In contemporary Islamic thought the dichotomy betweenrevelation andreason has emerged as a crucial issue, reinforced by cultural conflicts between East and West. Thus S. H. Nasr puts divinely inspired knowledge —sapientia orhikma — at the heart of Muslim culture, claiming God‐less rationality,scientia, to be characteristic of the Occident. This analogy is used as an established fact in some writings of apologetic nature. At the same time, the traditional concept of ‘wisdom’,hikma, is brought up to date in order to serve a new purpose in a world of increasingly specialized sciences. Whereas many Muslim writers recognize the need for an informed approach to ‘all branches of knowledge’, most of them insist on retaining a link between science and ethical values.Hikma is now launched as the authentic Islamic answer to ‘the confusion created by profane philosophies’. As the Islamic way of making science,hikma is seen as holistic and God‐centred in contrast to the Western type of science. Not all Muslim intellectuals, however, are satisfied with one single concept for the entirety of Islamic thought. Hasan Hanafi highlightshikma and Shari ^c a as ‘twin sisters, nursed at the same bosom'; Nasr proposes a hierarchy of knowledge with ‘Divine wisdom’ at the top. Related ideas can be found among some Christian theologians of religion, who have suggested that people of living faiths try to rediscover their shared heritage in ‘the universal economy ofhokhmah’, which may come to serve as a useful interreligious concept.     

Some reflections on Wouter Hanegraaff's Esotericism and the Academy

The article presents some critical remarks on the recent book by Wouter Hanegraaff. There are three criticisms: his concept of ‘Platonic Orientalism’ because it doesn't correspond to the way in which we tend to read the theme of the Orient in late Antiquity today; the fact that the attention of the author is concentrated mainly on the perspective of the history of modern (German) philosophy and neglects other areas; and some problems posed by its radical historicist perspective.     

Conspirituality Reconsidered: How Surprising and How New is the Confluence of Spirituality and Conspiracy Theory?

Those who have followed the development of online new religiosity over the past decade will not have failed to notice that conspiracy theories and ‘New Age’ ideas are thriving together. But how new and how surprising is the phenomenon of ‘conspirituality’? In the present article, we challenge the thesis put forward by Charlotte Ward and David Voas in their article of 2011, published in the Journal of Contemporary Religion, that a confluence of spirituality and conspiracism has emerged in the past two decades as a form of New Age theodicy. Instead, we argue, on theoretical grounds, that conspirituality can be viewed as a predictable result of structural elements in the cultic milieu and, on historical grounds, that its roots stretch deep into the history of Western esotericism. Together, these two considerations allow us not only to suggest that conspirituality is old and predictable, but also to identify a large potential for further research which will contribute to the study of conspiracy culture and enable a new line of comparative research in religious studies.     

Materialism and ‘the soft substance of the brain’: Diderot and plasticity

ABSTRACT

Materialism is the view that everything that is real is material or is the product of material processes. It tends to take either a ‘cosmological’ form, as a claim about the ultimate nature of the world, or a more specific ‘psychological’ form, detailing how mental processes are brain processes. I focus on the second, psychological or cerebral form of materialism. In the mid-to-late eighteenth century, the French materialist philosopher Denis Diderot was one of the first to notice that any self-respecting materialist had to address the question of the status and functional role of the brain, and its relation to our mental life. After this the topic grew stale, with knee-jerk reiterations of ‘psychophysical identity’ in the nineteenth-century, and equally rigid assertions of anti-materialism. In 1960s philosophy of mind, brain–mind materialism reemerged as ‘identity theory’, focusing on the identity between mental processes and cerebral processes. In contrast, Diderot’s cerebral materialism allows for a more culturally sedimented sense of the brain, which he described in his late Elements of Physiology as a ‘book – except it is a book which reads itself’. Diderot thus provides a lesson for materialism as it reflects on the status of the brain, science and culture.     

Russell's Early Theory of Denoting

The ancient Greek method of analysis has a rational reconstruction in the form of the tableau method of logical proof. This reconstruction shows that the format of analysis was largely determined by the requirement that proofs could be formulated by reference to geometrical figures. In problematic analysis, it has to be assumed not only that the theorem to be proved is true, but also that it is known. This means using epistemic logic, where instantiations of variables are typically allowed only with respect to known objects. This requirement explains the preoccupation of Greek geometers with questions as to which geometrical objects are ‘given’, that is, known or ‘data’, as in the title of Euclid's eponymous book. In problematic analysis, constructions had to rely on objects that are known only hypothetically. This seems strange unless one relies on a robust idea of ‘unknown’ objects in the same sense as the unknowns of algebra. The Greeks did not have such a concept, which made their grasp of the analytic method shaky.     

On questioning being: Foucault’s Heideggerian turn

Attempts to resolve the question of Foucault’s relationship to Heidegger usually look for points of substantive correlation between them: the coincidence of being and power, the meaning of truth, technology, ethics, and so on. Taking seriously Foucault’s claim in his final interview that he uses Heidegger as an ‘instrument of thought’, this paper looks for a correlation in practice. The argument focuses on a structural isomorphism between Heidegger’s concept of the fourfold event (Ereignis) of being and later Foucault’s critique of ‘problematization’ (problématique). This isomorphism, I argue, indicates a covert philosophical confrontation between Foucault and Heidegger, which was determinative for Foucault in the period of the turn to ethics (1976–84). This is a confrontation over the meaning of the ‘event of thought’. Such an interpretation not only permits a literal reading of Foucault’s comments regarding Heidegger in his final interview, but also casts the developments in Foucault’s later work in a fascinating new light. Foucault’s critique of problematization, on this view, is founded in an historicized version of Heideggerian ‘other’ thinking, and pivots on a ontologically tempered enactment of the Heideggerian turn (Kehre).     

Aporia and the postsecular

The Politics of Postsecular Religion by Ananda Abeysekara provides a novel critical intervention within the growing debate on religion and the secular. It does this by exposing a limitation of the influential form of criticism known as ‘genealogical critique’ that has become popular in disciplines such as postcolonial studies, history of religions and anthropology. By grounding critical thought on the logic of aporia, it is possible to interrupt conventional forms of critique that merely recover or inherit the name, and thus to re-imagine political futures. The paper briefly demonstrates the applicability of aporetic logic by way of reference to the violent interdictions of modes of speech that were prevalent in pre-colonial India and which eventually enabled the Western category of ‘religion’ to take root in the minds of Indian elites in the late 19th and early 20th century.     

The Structure of Frege's Thoughts

Fregean thoughts (i.e. the senses of assertoric sentences) are structured entities because they are composed of simpler senses that are somehow ordered and interconnected. The constituent senses form a unity because some of them are ‘saturated’ and some ‘unsaturated’. This paper shows that Frege's explanation of the structure of thoughts, which is based on the ‘saturated/unsaturated’ distinction, is by no means sufficient because it permits what I call ‘wild analyses’, which have certain unwelcome consequences. Wild analyses are made possible because any ‘unsaturated’ sense that is a mode of presentation of a concept together with any ‘saturated’ sense forms a thought. The reason is that any concept can be applied to any object (which is presented by a ‘saturated’ sense). This stems from the fact that Frege was willing to admit only total functions. It is also briefly suggested what should be done to block wild analyses.     

The Content of Emotional Thoughts

Abstract

In this paper I examine Peter Goldie's theory of emotional thoughts and feelings, offered in his recent book The Emotions and subsequent articles. Goldie argues that emotional thoughts cannot be assimilated to belief or judgment, together with some added-on phenomenological component, and on this point I agree with him. However, he also argues that emotionally-laden thoughts, thoughts had, as he puts it, ‘with feeling,’ in part differ from unemotional thoughts in their content. The thought ‘the gorilla is dangerous’ when thought with an emotional feeling of fear differs in its content from the thought ‘the gorilla is dangerous’ when thought without actually feeling fear. I argue that Goldie offers no good reason to think that the difference between emotional and unemotional thoughts is found in their contents. In fact, the analogies Goldie presents to help make his case actually suggest that the contribution feelings make to the distinctive role played by emotional thoughts consists solely in their influencing the way we think emotional thoughts. However, this position is consistent with Goldie's broader point: that theories which treat emotional feelings as phenomenological afterthoughts should be rejected.