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Religija ir kultūra
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This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 1822-4571 - ISSN (Online) 1822-4539
Published by Vilnius University

[38 journals]

Paradoxes of an Image: A Pictorial or Postsecular Turn'
- Authors: Vaiva Daraškevičiūtė
  Pages: 37 - 52
  Abstract: The article discusses the interaction between religion and art, focusing on contemporary visual theories, especially on the concept of vitality of image, formulated by such authors as David Freedberg, Thomas William Mitchell and Horst Bredekamp. The article states that the aspect of immediate fate (in the sense of pathos), which is emphasized in the concept of vitality of image, opens up the possibility to discuss the postsecular approach of the pictorial turn (Mitchell). The article recalls a recent situation in one of the Vilnius (Lithuania) churches, when the original sculpture of St. Virgin Mary, created by Lithuanian artist Ksenija Jaroševaitė, was replaced by the copy of widely circulated sculpture of St. Mary of Lourdes, originally created in 1864 by French sculptor Joseph-Hugues Fabisch, at the request of the churchgoers. In the article the latter situation also serves as a representative model, revealing the paradoxicality of an image, when the aesthetic judgement is changed by the unreflected recognition of the power of the image. The article discusses the problem of the ontological status of an image, admitting that the condition of emancipation of the image implicated in the concept of its vitality leads to the condition of the uncanny and questions related to such fundamental controversies as distinctions between creator and image or vitality and artefact.
  PubDate: 2022-11-25
  DOI: 10.15388/Relig.2019.13
Ideology and Idolatry
- Authors: Dainius Razauskas
  Pages: 8 - 18
  Abstract: A series of articles has already been published in recent years by the author on the notion of cosmogony as implied by Lithuanian term for it, sutvėrimas. This polysemous term has at least three gross branches of meanings: not only the most usual ‘fencing (in, off, around)’ but also ‘coagulation, solidifying, hardening’ and ‘catching, clenching (by hand)’, and all of these meanings are reflected in traditional views of creation. However, both the very cosmogony and still more various processes of smaller scale corresponding to different meanings of sutvėrimas (and the verb sutverti) may have also negative sense, that of stagnation, hardening, stiffness, stop of the life flow. Hence the notion of freedom, conversely, as softening, thawing, melting and free flow. Therefore, human being either stays in this definitively hardened world which has become a prison to his soul or begins to loosen his grip on it and to thaw gradually himself. On the cosmic scale, this hope and objective is eschatological, and on the personal scale, soteriological, that is, aimed at deliverance and freedom which in this sense is the opposite of cosmogony. The very ‘createdness’ in its different hues then is conceived negatively, as ‘madeness’ and artificiality, as antithesis of freedom and obstacle to it. And its principal manifestations in the inner world, then, are ideology and idolatry, the two aspects of one and the same phenomenon looked at from slightly different angles. That is exactly the subject of this article (which continues two previous, “Without ground, without support” (Razauskas 2022a) and “Ideas, Ideals, and Ideologies” (Razauskas 2022b)).
  PubDate: 2019-12-20
  DOI: 10.15388/Relig.2019.11
The Return of Religion and the Problem of Radical Evil: A Case Study of
Russia’s War in Ukraine
- Authors: Danutė Bacevičiūtė
  Pages: 19 - 36
  Abstract: The article analyses the case of Russia’s war in Ukraine by focusing on the ambivalent relationship between radical evil and the “return of the religious”. First, the revival of politicised religious fundamentalism in contemporary Russia is examined by discussing the relationship between the state and the church and its concretisation in the field of foreign policy – the “Russian World” teaching. The article shows how the Russian Orthodox Church legitimises a project that pursues geopolitical goals and justifies the started war as a metaphysical fight against evil. Attention is drawn to the fact that in this case we are dealing with a kind of “secular religion” or “inverted secularism”, when ecclesial forms are used to revive the Soviet imperialism, and faith is replaced by beliefs. Next, when considering the analysed case in the context of the “return of the religious” reflected by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, the emphasis is not only on the principle of violence (which is born from the fusion of political and religious discourses), but also on the positive possibilities of this return, which aforementioned thinkers elaborated by formulating the concepts of elementary faith and ethics of charity. At the same time, the article shows that these concepts lack an existential focus that would allow the problem of radical evil to be grasped at the level of individual existence. Therefore, to highlight the existential aspect of radical evil, the concepts of the perverse will, “grey zone” and impossible hope are used.
  PubDate: 2019-12-20
  DOI: 10.15388/Relig.2019.12
Editorial Board and Table of Contents
- Authors: Religija ir kultūra
  Pages: 1 - 6
  Abstract: [text in Lithuanian]
  PubDate: 2019-01-07
Author Guidelines and Bibliographic Data
- Authors: Religija ir kultūra
  Pages: 162 - 165
  Abstract: [text in Lithuanian]
  PubDate: 2019-01-07