Hans Ruin

Sara Heinämaa

D. Zahavi

The essays collected in the present volume introduce the reader to the phenomenological work done in the Nordic countries today. The material is organized under three general headings: metaphysics, facticity, and interpretation. The volume is of interest to researchers and students working in the areas of epistemology and ontology as well as philosophy of language, history, and intersubjectivity.

Phenomenology in the Nordic Countries

Metaphysics, Facticity, Interpretation

Philosophy, Socrates declared, is the art of dying. This book underscores that it is also the art of learning to live and share the earth with those who have come before us. Burial, with its surrounding rituals, is the most ancient documented cultural-symbolic practice: all humans have developed techniques of caring for and communicating with the dead. The premise of Being with the Dead is that we can explore our lives with the dead as a cross-cultural existential a priori out of which the basic forms of historical consciousness emerge. Care for the dead is not just about the symbolic handling of mortal remains; it also points to a necropolitics, the social bond between the dead and living that holds societies together--a shared space or polis where the dead are maintained among the living. Moving from mortuary rituals to literary representations, from the problem of ancestrality to technologies of survival and intergenerational communication, Hans Ruin explores the epistemological, ethical, and ontological dimensions of what it means to be with the dead. His phenomenological approach to key sources in a range of fields gives us a new perspective on the human sciences as a whole.

Burial, Ancestral Politics, and the Roots of Historical Consciousness

Being with the Dead

Sara Hein Maa

filosofisk dagbok 1999

Tidsvändning

Jonna Bornemark

The distinction between the secular and the sacred or holy seems at first to constitute a definitive line, the establishment of which also defines Western modernity. Yet this apparently strict demarcation is today not only questioned, but also increasingly difficult to maintain. In order to understand and conceptualize what is happening in the intersection between religion, politics, and aesthetics, we need to rethink the very meaning of the sacred in its full ambiguity, to explore again in thinking the vicissitudes and possibilities of this complex phenomenon, and to learn to move more freely through the category itself. The book contains contributions by researchers from many different fields, philosophers, theologians, political scientists, and literary historians, who also comment on each other. It establishes new connections and trajectories for mapping and understanding the nature and meaning of the sacred both as a social, an aesthetic, and a religious phenomenon. With contributions by: Bettina Bergo, Ward Blanton, Marcia Sa Cavalcante Schuback, Karolina Enquist Kallgren, Mattias Martinson, Paivi Mehtonen, Elena Namli, Jacob Rogozinski, Hans Ruin, Muniz Sodre, Fredrika Spindler and Jon Wittrock.

Phenomenology, Politics

Ambiguity of the Sacred

Hans Ruin

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