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Critical discussion of René Girard’s distinction between the sacred and saintliness to understand the relationship between violence and religion.

René Girard’s later distinction between the sacred and the holy is important to understand the relationship between violence and religion. This distinction will be discussed on the background of the war over the sacred in French sociology (E. Durkheim, M. Eliade, R. Otto, C. Lévi-Strauss, M. Gauchet) and a tradition of saintliness that emerged at the same time with the Dreyfus affair (C. Péguy, H. Bergson, J. Maritain, S. Weil, E. Lévinas). Finally, also the main features of saintliness will be discussed: its understanding of sacrifice, its individuality, its concept of an intimate mediation, its detachment from worldly power and its kenotic concept of a nonviolent God.

Text reading and discussion.

Active participation in the class and seminar paper.

General information on exams, dates and sign-on at the department:
https://www.uibk.ac.at/systheol/lehre/pruefungen.html.en.

-    H. Bergson: The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Notre Dame 1977.
-    W. T. Cavanaugh: The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict. Oxford 2009.
-    J. Galtung: Peace by Peaceful Means: Peace and Conflict, Development and Civilization. Oslo 1996.
-    R. Girard: Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore 1977.
-    R. Girard: Battling to the End: Conversations with Benoît Chantre. East Lansing 2010.
-    A. L. Mittleman: Does Judaism Condone Violence? Holiness and Ethics in the Jewish Tradition. Princeton 2018.
-    W. Palaver, Transforming the Sacred into Saintliness: Reflecting on Violence and Religion with René Girard. Cambridge 2020.
-    C. Tarot: Emile Durkheim and After: The War over the Sacred in French Sociology in the 20th Century. In: Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory (10/2) 2009, 11-30.
-    R. W. Wrangham: The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution. New York 2019.

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Course will be held in English.