«Не произноси имени Божьего всуе» — нечто вроде проповеди о затруднениях религиозной речи

Abstract

The work is an attempt to rethink religion beyond the horizon of modernity. The secular view, which treats religion as a relic, reducing it to an internal mental state and placing it on the other side of reality, appears to be a dead end from all sides. First, it cuts us off both from the rich religious heritage of the past and from religious phenomena of the present. Second, it creates a dysfunctional public sphere in which multiple meaningful relations with the world as a merely-internal relationship lack ontological dignity, and the reality of which science speaks is devoid of meaning. In contrast, the author proposes to abandon viewing religion in connection with the total social institution of the past (the church) and to understand it as a special mode of utterance, the key to which is the religious speech act. The mode of religious utterance is contrasted with the modern mode of scientific utterance. Science transports information without deformation: through representation it provides access to distant states of affairs in space and time. In contrast, the essence of the religious speech act is re-presentation, a return to the here-and-now that creates personalities and collectives of personalities in presence. Today’s crisis of religion as a mode of utterance is associated with two opposing but overlapping points. On the side of religion there is a “debt of translation:” having lost the spirit of innovation, the champions of religion stop translating its (always the same) message into the living language of everyday life, which results in a reactionary critique of modernity. On the other hand, the social sciences are characterized by “anti-fetishism:” for them religion serves as a model of irrationality, but their critique is based on a false understanding of religion as a belief.