Carsten Herrmann-Pillath on 'A Conceptual Model of Two Modes of Religious Individualization: Theory and application on China'

Religious individualization is a multi-facetted phenomenon. There have been attempts at developing a taxonomy of forms of individualization. Starting out from one advanced proposal, the so-called ‘Otto-matrix’, I argue that taxonomy needs to be supplemented by an analysis of evolutionary dynamics. On the one hand, this provides additional rationale for a specific taxonomic structure, and on the other hand, this helps to project the taxonomy on historical trajectories of religious individualization. Against the backdrop of a methodological debate in Chinese religious studies over the so-called ‘religious market model’, I submit a conceptual model of two modes of religious individualization that builds on Henáff’s distinction between the gift exchange and market exchange. In the China debate, Palmer had argued that there is a systematic tension between the market mode and the gift mode which results into a dynamic co-existence. I generalize this idea in extending the market mode along the lines of institutional theory, going back to Hegel’s use of the market as a conceptual template of ‘civil society’. The market mode covers phenomena such as individual rights, freedom of choice and institutionalization, whereas the gift mode is about authenticity, personal experience and community. The two modes connect via two dynamic forces that I demote as ‘religious entrepreneurship’ and ‘community formation’, respectively. These are actually dialectical mechanisms, as, for example, institutionalization may protect formal individual rights, but also may trigger religious entrepreneurship re-establishing claims on authenticity. I show how this dialectical mechanism involves the different dimensions and criteria of the Otto-matrix. The case of China serves as a brief illustration of this conceptual model.

Max Deeg presents a paper on 'Multiple Individualities – The Many Identities of the Chinese Buddhist Monk Xuanzang'

This paper tries to bring into conversation the results and ideas of the KFG „Religöse Individualisierung in historischer Perspektive“ and the material and the sources I am working with. I changed the structure and content of the original draft I had in the light of the discussions in the plenary session and some of the colloquia which had a direct impact on my material and my approach. I found the framework of individualisation particularly helpful for my attempts to de-historisize the biographical material, i.e. to move it away from the positivist reading which is still very much en vogue in the academic field I am working in. I read the biographies as expressions of narrative individualisation through which the same „individual“ can be imagined and appropriated in different ways with different intentionalities and purposes for which I tentatively introduce the term „function“ (to be developed, if feasible at all, into a concept). The paper is therefore a combination of information and material from my „database“ and some deliberations about how this could fit into the wider discourse about individualisation.
The wider project which leads to a series of sub-projects is a new English translation and extensive historical commentary of and to Xuanzang’s „Record of the Western Regions“ written in the 7th century and having had a huge impact in East Asia and on western historical scholarship of Asia. The present paper is part of this main project insofar the latter will include all the relevant material and its analysis and discussion that is connected with Xuanzang and his text, particularly the various biographical traditions and the author’s and the text’s reception history (Rezeptionsgeschichte) which have to be analyzed in their respective contexts. The paper was originally conceived as a to be modified chapter for a monograph on Xuanzang and his wider context requested by Oxford University Press India which can also be used as an introductory complement to the rather bulky and specialized translation cum commentary, meant to be published in installments.

Knud Haakonssen presents a paper 'To know yourself – that’s a whole crowd! Ludvig Holberg as a case study of multiple authorial personae'

This is a revised and expanded version of a lecture that I gave at the Gotha Forschungszentrum in January. The reason for reviving the paper is that it addresses central issues discussed in the KFG plenaries preparing for the end time (cf. the theses from Martin Mulsow and me). The paper is thus not part of my project on natural law. Nor is it theoretical, or methodological, in character; rather, it provides a case study of multiple authorial personae, namely, the work of the Danish polymath Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754). I show how Holberg uses the techniques of contemporary eclecticism in a wide variety of works and genres of works. I suggest that this goes along with an espistemic attitude that is somewhat different from the usual moderate scepticism often associated with eclecticism. And I indicate how a many-sided ambiguity about the supposedly ‘real’ author is effected in order to secure space for a basic, somewhat simplistic but earnest religiosity without jeopardising the pervasive pluralism. A key factor here is the ‘creation’ of the audience, including the scholars who nearly three centuries later pursue the real Holberg. But he, too, is always a persona for an audience. The conclusion – if any – is that it is a kind of category mistake to ask what ‘he’ really believed.

Arthur Bueno presented a paper on: 'The Psychic Life of Freedom: Social Pathology and its Symptoms'

This paper discusses the relationship between Honneth's intersubjective theory of recognition and his political theory of democratic ethical life by addressing the potentials and difficulties attached to the concept of social pathology. Taking into account the diverse uses of this concept throughout Honneth's oeuvre, it focuses initially on two of its formulations: first, the more recent discussions presented in “Die Krankheiten der Gesellschaft” (2014), some of which can be read in continuity with arguments presented in Das Recht der Freiheit (2011); second, an implicit conception of social pathology which can be found in Kampf um Anerkennung (1992). These formulations involve contrastingly different premises with regard to phenomenological, methodological, social ontological and etiological matters. I argue that such differences can be better grasped if one bears in mind two distinctive ways of understanding the fundamental intuition at the basis of the notion of social pathology: either as an analogy or as an homology. By explicating some of the actual or potential discrepancies between both conceptions, the intention is to outline the grounds on which they could be brought together within the framework of a comprehensive concept of social pathology. Having this in mind, I then examine a third conception of social pathology which was first presented in Leiden an Unbestimmtheit (2001) and later developed, with some restrictions, in Das Recht der Freiheit (2011).
This paper is part of a larger project which aims at exploring the social theoretical and normative foundations of the concept of social pathology. However, it was not written as the chapter of a future book or Habilitation dissertation, but rather as the first draft of an article. The text was originally presented in the workshop “Freiheit und Anerkennung – eine Verhältnisbestimmung”, dedicated to internal readings of Axel Honneth's works, with a special interest in the relations between his early theory of recognition and his recent political theory. Although the reconstruction of Honneth's concept of social pathology is not the primary aim of my research at the MWK, some of the topics discussed in the paper will likely be further developed in the project. Particularly relevant is the distinction between analogical and homological conceptions of social pathology and their different underlying assumptions regarding the phenomenology, methodology, social ontology and etiology of such phenomena.

Knud Haakonssen presents a paper on 'To know yourself – that’s a whole crowd! Ludvig Holberg as a case study of multiple authorial personae'

This is a revised and expanded version of a lecture that I gave at the Gotha Forschungszentrum in January. The reason for reviving the paper is that it addresses central issues discussed in the KFG plenaries preparing for the end time (cf. the theses from Martin Mulsow and me). The paper is thus not part of my project on natural law. Nor is it theoretical, or methodological, in character; rather, it provides a case study of multiple authorial personae, namely, the work of the Danish polymath Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754). I show how Holberg uses the techniques of contemporary eclecticism in a wide variety of works and genres of works. I suggest that this goes along with an espistemic attitude that is somewhat different from the usual moderate scepticism often associated with eclecticism. And I indicate how a many-sided ambiguity about the supposedly ‘real’ author is effected in order to secure space for a basic, somewhat simplistic but earnest religiosity without jeopardising the pervasive pluralism. A key factor here is the ‘creation’ of the audience, including the scholars who nearly three centuries later pursue the real Holberg. But he, too, is always a persona for an audience. The conclusion – if any – is that it is a kind of category mistake to ask what ‘he’ really believed.

Emiliano Rubens Urciuoli gives a paper on '“I Have Nothing Else To Live By”: Religious Individualization as Comfort-Zone Religiosity (Tertullian vs. Idol-Makers; On Idolatry 3-8)'

This essay is interested in testing the epistemic reliability and the critical reach of the individualization focus of the “Live Ancient Religion” project. In my opinion, such a check-up demands (a) to draw attention to the diverse constraints and conditioning biases with which the individual agency is woven together; (b) to highlight the accommodationist scope of some individual appropriations of religious systems as comfort-zone religiosities. I elected Tertullian’s On Idolatry 3-8 as a case study. These few pages correspond to the literary framing and rhetorical embellishment of the author’s occasional confrontations with the arguments of some Carthaginian Christian “idol-makers”, who, when asked, advocated in different ways the religious-moral legitimacy of their job. Developing a multi-layered approach to the individualization processes, my analytic strategy is twofold: while attempting to theoretically discomfort religious individualization by pointing at its multiple obstacles, I describe also Tertullian’s efforts to concretely interfere with too comfortable and socially adequate appropriations of Christian beliefs and practices. In this sense, this paper aims to indirectly criticize the “feel-good spirituality” that underlies any palatable and marketoriented survey on ‘personal religions’, and thus to distance itself from such questionable enterprises.
The essay is part of a larger project on 't Forbidden Jobs: Making a Living as a Jesus Follower in the Roman Empire':
This project is a thematic expansion and a methodological refinement of the research conducted, in the last three years, at the crossroads of early and late ancient Christian studies. The aim of the enquire was to sketch the fading profile of the Jesus follower engaged in public-political affairs before Constantine and the “Christianisation” of the Roman state, thereby attempting to answer to the following question: how and how far a Greco-Roman officeholder could appropriate, embody, adapt and innovate (at least) a part of the Christian set of experiences, beliefs and practices, without being forced to quit his honours and public duties? This line of research, which tries to capitalize on Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory of action, while integrating it with more self-centred perspectives at the intersection of dispositions and strategies, could be profitably extended to other empirical domains. Politics, i.e., ruling and administrating political communities, is definitely not the only sphere of socio-symbolic production where an objective tension between different forms of commitment and interest may be felt by believers in Jesus and influence their private and public behaviours. Other occupations, activities and trades are equally involved in the interplay between Christian normative definitions of an appropriated religious conduct, related expectations from both religious authorities and “significant others”, and material interests in accomplishing social duties, doing businesses and holding tasks provided by the current socio-economic system. Within this perspective, a “forbidden job” is no more an indisputable ban coming from an overwhelming authority. What is a forbidden job in the eye of the Christian (prescribing and writing) beholders might turn into a matter of religious appropriation and innovation from the point of view of the Christian professional and worker: a spot where “practical individuality” is at stake. In this sense, to advocate an analysis at the level of the individual should not lead to underrate the question of how historically deep-rooted and structured relations of power create dispositions to act. Why, how, to what extent, under which material conditions and social conditioning do Christian people obey to normative discourses about “how much religious they are when they make a living in everyday life”? A suitable answer should probably bypass both interactionist and hard structuralist lines of theorizing. Rather, it presupposes a sociological theory of embodied powers which, while taking institutions and agencies of power seriously, is also acquainted with the idea of a subject storing a plurality of dispositions ready to be strategically activated in a plurality of situations. Succeeding in these socially conditioned performances may be the magic formula of a religious appropriation.

Roman Madzia gives a paper on 'Mind, Symbol, and Action-Prediction: George H. Mead and the "Embodied" Roots of Language'

The pragmatist philosopher George Herbert Mead is arguably one of the most original but at the same time neglected thinkers of embodiment. The paper ‘Mind, Symbol, and Action-Prediction: George H. Mead and the ‘Embodied’ Roots of Language’ presents Mead’s radically embodied and anti-intellectualist view of language and symbolic behavior. The paper develops a Meadian perspective on the phenomenon of the participatory, embodied sense-making called language and connects it with Jakob Hohwy’s theory of ‘prediction error minimization’ in order to elucidate the role which symbolic thinking plays in the process of action-understanding. It also demonstrates the way in which Mead understood significant symbols as encoding environmental and social affordances. Further, the paper re-defines some key concepts of philosophy of language like that of meaning, reference, intension and extension, etc. Finally, it also demonstrates that the classical pragmatist understanding of concepts such as goal-directedness of action, resolution of action-problems, etc., is indispensable if we want to come up with a persuasive account of embodied roots of linguistic behavior.