This essay attempts to comprehend how one might think about old masjids in Malabar using Martin Heidegger’s idea of “dwelling,” while also relating it to Talal Asad’s concept of “tradition,” and Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism. It is not, obviously, looking to a universal definition of masjids in Malabar. Rather, it is, in the most mundane sense, a thought exercise. Through his hermeneutic phenomenology, I use Heidegger’s philosophy to help me make sense of some of my t...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Like Foucault, I suspect that a new anthropology, a new form of mind, a new ‘episteme’ is taking shape, as the previous understandings of the human disappear, like figures written into the sand on a beach. In the codes of modern mystical experiences, I detect a future mentality attempting contact with our own hopelessly inadequate religious and rational forms of thinking. —Jeffrey J. Kripal, “Introductory Essay,” Rice University Department of Religion.| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
A few years ago, I had an experience during meditation that I cannot put into words. I can try to describe it with weak metaphors and approximations, but suffice it to say, it was one of those astonishing, sublime, blow-your-doors-off experiences that mystics and many others have recounted for centuries. I had been in the middle of writing an article about proto-communist radicals who attempted to overthrow the government in late eighteenth-century France, just before Napoleon’s coup, and c...| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
There are two streams of events in the world we may call public and non-public. The first constitutes officially acknowledged, publicly certified or certifiable events and the second a rub rosa realm…| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
Book Review contributions are single-authored or multiple-authored reviews of recent books in the area of social epistemology.| Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective
