The return of religion as a challenge to thinking

In the context of the so-called "return of the religious," this joint Slovenian-Austrian research project proposes to build a new platform for promoting dialogue between postmodern philosophy and theology. Its main task is to identify theologically relevant topoi in postmodern thought. More specifically, we distinguish three important venues in this regard: the first venue focuses on the "theological turn" of French phenomenology (including thinkers like Levinas, Henry, Marion, Chrétien, Lacoste), which revealed new possibilities for reconsidering the relationship between philosophy and theology. The second venue concerns hermeneutical thinkers (e.g. Ricoeur, Vattimo, Caputo), who have initiated a dialogue with the biblical heritage and thus demonstrated the potential of postmodernism for theological reflection. The third venue comprises two alternative, yet differently orientated postmodern approaches: in this context, the project will, on one hand, deal with Girards affirmative anthropological return to Christianity, and, on the other hand, Irigaray`s critical reinterpretation of Christianity from the feminist point of view. Viewed against this general background, the project`s agenda is set up as follows: in the first phase of the project, the research team will critically examine different postmodern notions of transcendence in order to demonstrate their crucial importance for a timely dialogue with Christian theology. In the second phase, we will extrapolate theologically relevant topoi that are common to different postmodern approaches. The main quality of this project will, finally, consist in combining these two research foci: thus, our inquiry into postmodern thought will not only investigate its relevance for theology (ad intra) but will also explore the presence of (often unreflected) religious elements and topoi on the level of contemporary post-secular societies (ad extra). The synergy of both approaches (ad intra and ad extra) and the impact of the bilateral research framework will provide a sustainable basis for developing new possibilities of dialogue between theology and secular thought, as well as between religion and society. Thus, this project will contribute significantly to overcoming the modern, Enlightenment paradigm of separation between religion and society, which often amounts to an exclusion of religion from society, and will help us to move toward a new culture of coexistence and mutual respect.

The so-called "return of religion" in the contemporary world was the major topic of this bilateral project. Our major question concerned the reception of this "return"-which should not be misunderstood as the return of something repressed-in philosophy and theology. The background of this question relates to the discontents of a late modernity "spinning out of control" (Habermas) and losing its monopoly of rational explication and existential securitization. Our overall task, however, did not consist in a comprehensive survey of the disconcerting realities that this "return" affords us (epitomized in global forms of "religious violence" and "religious communalization"). Our intention rather was to reflect on the ways in which this "return" has started to affect the self-understanding of the disciplines interested in it. In our project this question was posed with regard to philosophy (of religion) and theology-the disciplines that have traditionally been preoccupied with religion, whether by ostracizing it from the bonds of discursive reason or by exploring its specific "truth." The project started from the presumption that the "return of religion" has already affected the traditional shapes of philosophy and theology. In light of this insight it asked whether this transformation does not offer motivations for reconceiving the relationship between philosophy and theology-a relationship that has always been preconceived in exclusivist and oppositional terms. Our research demonstrated that proponents of postmodern philosophy have picked up various religious concepts and theological motifs in order to approach a better understanding of philosophy's position in the "post-secular" context. By exploring several contemporary positions (notably phenomenology, hermeneutics, feminist thought, and "post-secular theory"), we confronted some of the potentials that can be derived from a both critical and creative reception of such theological motives. The critical discussion of French phenomenology was key in this context. The so-called "theological turn" of French phenomenology and its reception in hermeneutics played an exemplary role in this regard: as we have shown, it embodies the first case of a productive incorporation of theological motifs by philosophy that has resulted in a profound transformation of philosophy as such. Later on, this reception of such motives and their transformation started to productively feed back onto theology, too. The concrete topics of our research have also been developed by reference to phenomenology. Most importantly we investigated the concept of transcendence and its various phenomenological articulations. In this context our aim was to demonstrate how new forms and practices of transcendence offer a both powerful and ambiguous potential of collective imagination and transformation-a potential which needs to be explored all the more in order not to let the crisis of secular reason degenerate into the downfall of reason a such.