The Masters Trajectory
Contested Knowledge I: Gnosis
This Course will be offered in the Academic Year 2012-2013.
Contested Knowledge II: Cosmotheism and Disenchantment
In this module we will explore the fundamental tension in Western culture between “enchanted” and “disenchanted” worldviews. Monotheistic religions are officially based upon a strict separation between God and the world (creator and creation), but in actual reality they have been strongly inffluenced by “pagan” perspectives according to which the divine is at home in the world and inseparable from it. Such “cosmotheistic” worldviews can be traced from antiquity to the present, and we will be analyzing some characteristic examples. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Protestant and Enlightenment polemicists joined forces with adherents of the new natural sciences in a renewed attack on cosmotheism: a process that, in the famous terms of Max Weber, has led to the “disenchantment of the world”. Nevertheless, cosmotheism survived the Enlightenment as an alternative to “the scientific worldview”, and remains a potent force in contemporary religion and culture. By focusing on the conflict between cosmotheism and disenchantment as a “deep structure” in Western culture, we will gain a new perspective on the interwovenness of religion, esotericism, philosophy, science, and even art.
Renaissance Esotericism I: Medieval and Early Modern Alchemy
This Course will be offered in the Academic Year 2012-2013.
Renaissance Esotericism II: Occult Philosophies
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's On Occult Philosophy (1533) is the best-known Renaissance encyclopedia of magic. Its syncretic mixture of material drawn from medieval grimoires, from classical antiquity and from sources new to the Christian West, such as the Jewish tradition of Kabbalah, is an invaluable resource for our understanding of early modern occult philosophy and modern occultism. In this module we shall investigate Philosophia occulta, an important current of Western esotericism, considering the various kinds of knowledge and experience that participate in Renaissance ideas of magic. Ranging through the natural, celestial and divine realms we shall examine some of the sciences and philosophies and encounter some of the significant figures that contributed to its development. We shall seek to amplify Agrippa's writings with material drawn from other influential contemporary sources and conclude the module with sessions on subsequent esoteric approaches that display affinities with his occult philosophy.
Occult Trajectories I
This Course will be offered in the Academic Year 2012-2013.
Occult Trajectories II
Esotericism has been often associated with irrationality, and considered as incompatible with modern science. Indeed, one could argue that modern science has created its identity also by engaging in a polemic with ideas that had been part of the esoteric discourse. In the seventeenth century, the new scientific ideology of Francis Bacon, Marin Mersenne, and René Descartes rejected an initiatic vision of knowledge, as advocated in hermetic, alchemical, and magical literature, and promoted an ideal of knowledge based on open exchange and experimental validation. However, if one gives a closer look at historical evidence, one sees that the distinction between the goals and the procedures of science on the one hand, and those of esotericism on the other, is less clear-cut than one might expect. Such a linear, simplistic picture has been challenged again and again in recent years by historians of science focusing on the early modern period until the eighteenth century. Late modernity, on the other hand, has perhaps received less attention in this respect. This course traces the relationship of science and esotericism from the nineteenth century to the present, beginning with an exploration of key concepts of positivism, scientific naturalism, pseudo and marginal sciences, psychologization and naturalization. The course then focuses on three case-studies that should highlight this problematic relationship in this period. In particular, we will discuss the early development of Mesmerism, with its related controversies, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century; the scientific investigation of spiritualism and paranormal phenomena in the second half of the nineteenth century, with the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research in England; the use of scientific discourses in the literature of the contemporary New Age movement.
Religious Pluralism in Europe
From the beginning, European history of religion has been characterized by a two-fold pluralism: First, religious pluralism – both between religious traditions and within these traditions – has fostered identities by constructing an opposing ‘other’; second, there is a pluralism of cultures of knowledge and societal systems (such as religion, science, philosophy, politics, law, art, literature, economics, etc.). To understand the complex role of religion in European discourse it is essential to look at the mutual dependence and interaction between these cultural systems and the dynamic transfers from one to the other. This interdisciplinary class engages recent research into the pluralistic dynamics of European history of religion. Rather than describing the history of religions in Europe, it focuses on the junctures and interferences between religion and culture in Europe, looking at the formation of present-day Europe in a long process of differentiation and transmission. Special attention will be given to the interaction among religious traditions in Europe (mainly Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) as well as to the reception of non-European religions since the eighteenth century.