Violent times, the horror of the unspeakable and the temporality of religious experience

Abstract

Violence is essential to religion, while religion holds the promise of transcending violence. The designation religious refers not to a type of violence, but to a specific issue of violence, namely the claim to higher (theodical) justification. This religious aspect is not confined to religion; it is also evident in the secular domain. A critique of religious violence needs to show the gap between violence and its justifications, experienced affectively in horror. This horror in response to the unspeakable is structurally akin to mystical experience, the temporal structure of which indicates the failure of the theodical justification for violence.