Panel: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION - RELIGION AND SOCIETAL-CULTURAL TRANSFORMATION 2nd day



73_2.3 - RECONCEIVING THE DEMONIC: A NEW APPROACH IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

AUTHORS:
Casewell D. (University of Chester ~ Chester ~ United Kingdom)
Text:
Traditional philosophy of religion, both analytic and continental, focuses more on talk about God than talk about demons, despite the importance of daimons in early Christian thought and Greek philosophy. Although here has been engagement with the demonic in philosophy and theology, most notably following on from Goethe's account of the demonic and Otto's theorisation of the Holy, aside from Paul Tillich, theorisations of the demonic have been neglected in favour of focus on traditional arguments for the existence of God or continental accounts of being and revelation. In this paper, I aim to show how theorising, and providing an account of the demonic enables reflections on diverse social and cultural transformations, I will be focusing in particular on how the demonic is present in contemporary cultural expression, and argue that it is a form of re-enchantment that can enable further conversations about themes in philosophy of religion. I will draw on the work of Paul Tillich and George Bataille, as well as exploring contemporary writing on the demonic in relation to the occult.