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Document Details : Title: Hoor, een stem klinkt op Subtitle: Theoretische notities over de plaats van de theologie onder de geesteswetenschappen Author(s): BORGMAN, Erik Journal: Tijdschrift voor Theologie Volume: 48 Issue: 3 Date: 2008 Pages: 225-236 DOI: 10.2143/TVT.48.3.3203497 Abstract : Following up on earlier discussions in this journal on the future of theology and its relation to religious studies and inspired by the French philosopher B. Latour’s reflections on the relation of politics and science, of shaping and knowing, this essay undertakes a triple investigation into theology’s contribution to the humanities. The first part develops the notion that research in the humanities has to deal with the fact that people receive meaning through the culture that they create. Building upon E. Schillebeeckx’ work, the author interprets this situation as evidence for a religious claim in the heart of each culture, i.e. the perception of meaning to which we can entrust ourselves. The second part draws on an analysis of the famous sermon by Antonio de Montesinos (from 1511), directed against the treatment of the indigenous people in the Spanish colonies, and concludes that religious and cultural meaning is revealed time and again at those places where traditions are confronted with new situations. This implies that theology cannot take itself to mean a way of translating religious meaning into a modern context, but must focus on the religious meaning coming to light in the present. The third part uses the work of anthropologist P. Rabinow to understand what it means for modernity to find meaning in places where a diversity of truths regarding a situation intersect and collide rather than in stable systems that make sense or produce order. American philosopher J. Dewey’s distinction between religion and ‘the religious’, in which the latter stands for reflecting on one’s own life from the perspective of the greater whole of which it is a part, is used to identify the religious aspect of the humanities. The conclusion is that taking this religious aspect into account – which is basically theology’s contribution – can help make clear that what makes the humanities scientific is their ability to register the prospects for a new future that are revealed in the culture of which they are a part. |
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