Conference ‘Embodied Religion’

Religion has always been interpreted as primarily belonging to the sphere of the spiritual, but religions are also typically very down to earth, dealing with issues of sexuality, reproduction and family, with practices about food, offering and sacrifice, questions of birth and death etc. Hence the human body is always involved in the concepts and practices of religions. On the other hand, the recent developments of neuroscience have affected the idea that religion is something purely spiritual as well, and thus challenge philosophy of religion to rethink those characteristics of human nature that are vital for religion, such as free will, altruism, morality, and last but not least the human person as a ‘self’.

This offers ample support for the thesis underlying the general theme of the conference that religion is always embodied in various ways. This means that major changes in the basic anthropological concepts regarding the human body inevitably have an impact upon religion, and thus also challenge philosophy of religion to rethink how religions are embodied in the human person. The conference theme will be treated from various philosophical perspectives, differing in style, method and as to their relations to culture and science.

The conference is organised in four sessions:

1. Embodied religion: a philosophical reflection on mystical experiences and religious disciplining.
2. Rituals and sacraments as embodiments of God: beyond a purely symbolic religion.
3. Neuroscience and free will: Can we still say that we ‘are called to be free’?
4. Religion, morality and being human: What about ‘Thy will be done’?

Read more about the conference(pdf)

Call for short papers

• Deadline for submitting abstracts for short papers: 1 March 2012
• Maximum number of words of the abstracts: 350
• The short papers should preferably be related to the conference theme (and to one of the four sessions)
• Submit your proposal with one of the organisers, Prof. Marcel Sarot (m.sarot@uu.nl) or Prof. Peter Jonkers (p.h.a.i.jonkers@uvt.nl)
• Set-up short papers: 20 minutes presentation time (max. 2300 words), followed by 10 minutes discussion

Registration

Deadline for registration for the conference: 1 May 2012.
How to register (pdf)