Abstract
“Old and New Gods: in Conversation with Arjun Appadurai and Michael Lambek” introduces the reader to some of the broader themes of the work – appropriately – through dialogue; a casual discussion between three young researchers and two distinguished anthropologists. Here the passage of time is thematized as the latter reflect on the various institutional and intellectual changes which they have witnessed leading up to the present; a point in time which constitutes for the junior researchers, a point of departure into an uncertain but exciting future. Furthermore, as with all dialogue, context and location is significant. Though Berlin’s status as a cultural and creative metropole is widely-confirmed, it remains in many ways ‘a house divided unto itself’. No two areas in Berlin are exactly alike, and the young and senior researchers – relative ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ to the city, respectively – explore together its many contours, textures, and contrasts.
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- 1.
‘Magic and Religion’ (Appadurai) and ‘Religion—The Obscure Desire for an Object’ (Lambek).both held at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, February 2017
- 2.
Hans Jonas: German-born Jewish philosopher, former student of Martin Heidegger and close friends. He is best known for his work on bioethics, philosophy of religion and philosophy of technology.
- 3.
Hannah Arendt: Eichmann in Jerusalem. A report on the Banality of Evil, Penguin Books: London: 1963. First published as a series of articles in The New Yorker. Hannah Arendt translated it herself into the German version. The book triggered a worldwide conversation about the crime on the Jews and others during the Second World War. It is still the most read book of Hannah Arendt.
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Posthumous publications The Life of the Mind (1978) in which she also deals with the phenomenon of the will.
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Arendt uses the Christian concept of love that is divided between cupiditas (cupidity) and caritas (charity). These two concepts are from Church father Augustine on whom she wrote her dissertation. Cupidity is always worldly and bounds you to the world that is transitory but carity is a concept of God that bounds you to him and leads you finally into freedom of the world. Hannah Arendt: (1996). Scott, Joanna Vecchiarelli; Stark, Judith Chelius, eds. Love and Saint Augustine. University of Chicago Press.
- 6.
Lambek, Michael, Boddy, Janice 2015. A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion, Blackwell.
- 7.
Stiftung: German term referring in this context to academic ‘stipend’.
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Kynes, J., Rau, V., Schinagl, R.C. (2020). Old and New Gods: In Conversation with Arjun Appadurai and Michael Lambek. In: Hensold, J., Kynes, J., Öhlmann, P., Rau, V., Schinagl, R., Taleb, A. (eds) Religion in Motion. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41388-0_2
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