The Swedish Collegium for

Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, SCASSS,

the Swedish Ernst Cassirer Society,
and Gteborg University, hereby invite to the symposium

ERNST CASSIRER AND

THE PHILOSOPHY
AND SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
Jonsereds Herrgrd
May 20, 2005

Although Ernst Cassirer never wrote a philosophy of religion as such,

some of his works can be seen as a contribution to this area of philosophical
reasoning. The most important among these texts undoubtedly is the second
volume of Cassirer s Philosophy of Symbolic Forms in which Cassirer
investigates mythical consciousness and its dialectics on the basis of the
sociological and anthropological literature on this topic, including the works
of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. This volume has recently been
interpreted (by Michael Moxter) as a post-Neokantian attempt to analyze
religion as a non-rationalist critique of mythical consciousness. This
interpretation makes it possible to establish interesting connections between
Cassirers philosophy, modern (pragmatist) semiotics, and the historicosociological debate about the discovery of transcendence.
After the discovery of transcendence in the so-called Axial Age the fusion of
sign and meaning had to be overcome, and this dissolution is characteristic
for religion (as compared to myth) in Cassirers view. If religion sees itself as
an eternally insufficient attempt to articulate the human experience of the
divine, it has to locate its own attempt in the framework of a plurality of
other religions (or, maybe, secular worldviews). This symposium serves to

investigate some of these connections in detail. It consists of two parts: the morning
session will be devoted to Cassirer and the Philosophy of Religion; the afternoon
session to The Philosophy of Religion after Cassirer. The symposium will be
concluded with a panel discussion introduced by John Krois, last years holder of
the Ernst Cassirer Guest Professorship.
In his introductory talk Hans Joas will delineate some main aspects of the
problematique.
Michael Bongardt will concentrate on the question of whether in Cassirers
teleological view of culture as the process of the self-liberation of mankind man
has to liberate himself from religion as well.
Matthias Jung will focus on the intricate relation between feeling and symbolic
form in religious experience. Cassirers concept of symbolic pregnance will be
treated as a convincing attempt to overcome some of the most confusing
dichotomies in the philosophy of religion, especially those of collective vs.
individual experience and activity vs. passivity. He will argue that Cassirers view
has some important shortcomings and needs to be supplemented with pragmatic
and hermeneutic insights regarding the relation between qualitative thought and
expressivity.
Bjrn Wittrock will firstly examine the concept of the Axial Age, including the
core idea of the emergence of a conceptual chasm between a transcendental and a
mundane sphere, secondly relate the idea of axiality to research on periods of
cultural crystallization more generally, and thirdly examine linkages between the
cultural crystallization of modernity and the presuppositions behind classical
sociology of religion. In a final section the possibility of sociology of religion after
the demise of classical modernization theory will be analyzed. It will be argued
that the only prospect for such a sociology, beyond mere description, is one which
makes its own philosophical presuppositions explicit. These presuppositions,
however, are not arbitrary but have to be formulated in terms of an engagement
with existential dimensions that have been central to culturally informed historical
research both on the Axial Age and on the formation of modernity.
Jayne Svenungsson will focus on the return of religion in contemporary
philosophy from a critical theological perspective. Having previously been defined
as Enlightenments demonized other, religion today tends to appear as
Enlightenments mystified or exotic other although still as other.
Ola Sigurdson will discuss some aspects concerning the recent philosophical
turn to religion, with particular regard to the interest in theology among atheist,
Marxist or radical philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Terry
Eagleton and Slavoj Zizek, among others.

PA RT I C I PA N T S
In addition to the speakers, a number of young scholars (Ph.D. students or Postdoctorates) whose own work is related to the theme of the symposium will take
part in the symposium, and thus get the opportunity to talk to leading scholars,
participate in discussions, and raise questions related to their work.

PRACTICALITIES
The symposium will take place on Friday May 20 at Jonsereds Herrgrd just outside Gteborg. The day before, on Thursday May 19, the Second Holder of the
Guest Professorship in Honor of Ernst Cassirer at SCASSS, Professor Hans Joas,
will give the Second Annual Ernst Cassirer Lecture. The lecture will be given in
the Aulan, Gteborg University and followed by a reception.
The organizers would like to thank the VolkswagenStiftung (Hannover), the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences (SCASSS), and Gteborg
University for their generous support.

Professor Hans Joas

Second Holder of the
Guest Professorship in Honor of
Ernst Cassirer, SCASSS

Dr. Mats Rosengren

Ass. Prof. Ola Sigurdson
The Swedish Ernst Cassirer Society

TIME SCHEDULE

F R I D AY M AY 20, 2 0 0 5
09.30 10.00 Arrival & Coffee
! CASSIRER AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

10.00 10.20 Ernst Cassirers Philosophy of Religion. An Introduction

Hans Joas
Max Weber Center Erfurt, University of Chicago, and Holder of
the Second Ernst Cassirer Professorship at SCASSS
10.20 11.20 Myth, Religion, and Liberation
Michael Bongardt
Free University of Berlin
11.20 11.30

Break

11.30 12.30 Making Life Explicit The Symbolic Pregnance of

Religious Experience
Matthias Jung
Max Weber Center Erfurt and University of Frankfurt
12.30 13.20 Lunch
! THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION AFTER CASSIRER

13.20 14.20 Axiality and Antinomies of Modernity: On the Possibility of a

Sociology of Religion after the Demise of Modernization Theory
Bjrn Wittrock
Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences
(SCASSS)
14.20 15.20 Religion as Exotism: Is Religion Still Philosophys Other?
Jayne Svenungsson
Stockholm School of Theology
15.20 15.50 Coffee & Tea

15.50 16.50 Beyond Secularism? Some Thoughts Concerning the Recent Turn
to Religion in Philosophy
Ola Sigurdson
Gteborg University and Vice Chairman of the Swedish Ernst
Cassirer Society
16.50 18.20 Comment and Panel Discussion
John Michael Krois
Humboldt-University Berlin and Holder of the First Ernst Cassirer
Professorship at SCASSS