The capabilities and boundaries of human language in talking about transcendent realities have interested religious thinkers for centuries. The issue is far from being settled and continues to puzzle and intrigue philosophers, theologians, and various other scholars.

​

The 2021 conference of the Nordic Society for Philosophy of Religion is entitled “Symbolizing Transcendence: the limits of language” and focuses on how transcendent realities can be represented and expressed by words, signs and symbols. What are the grounds and limits of such representations? How to express the ineffable? Can the transcendent be articulated at all, and if so, directly or indirectly? These are the kinds of questions that will be addressed at this meeting.

​

The conference is open to contributions from different philosophical and religious perspectives. Both historical and contemporary approaches to the subject are welcome. The conference aims to bring together continental and analytic philosophers of religion, theologians of different confessions, scholars of diverse religions, semioticians of religion, as well as literary and art scholars.

​

The topic of the conference is divided into the following subtopics reflecting various ways in which transcendent realities could be represented in different academic disciplines, religious and artistic practices, and forms of life.

​

Religious Language

​

What is religious language? What are the criteria of meaningfulness for religious language? Is literal God-talk possible? Insofar as metaphorical use of language is necessary for attempts to speak about the divinity, what exactly is the cognitive value of religious metaphors? What is the relationship between religious language and religious cognition? How are religious symbols related to truth and reality? The papers in this section may investigate the traditional questions concerning the cognitive meaningfulness and truth-aptness of religious language, but they may also address the ways in which semiotics, as a general theory of signs and signification, can enrich philosophical and theological analyses of religious symbolizing.

​

Transcendence, Truth and Ontology

​

Are there mind- and discourse-independent truths about the transcendent? In what respect would transcendence, qua ineffable, constitute an ontological realm of its own, beyond human symbolization and representation (as in negative theology)? Traditional issues concerning realism and truth in the philosophy of religion are obviously relevant here, but they have recently been transformed by the concerns about the "post-truth" or "post-factual" era. The papers in this section may address the ways in which the controversies on truth and post-truth influence the truth-claims we might in religious discourse make on realities taken to be transcendent (or their irreality, as the case might be).

​

Symbolizing Transcendence in Arts, Technologies and Sciences

​

Cultural meanings, including meanings of transcendence, are not so much determined as overdetermined, produced by multiple associative paths converging on the same points. Thus transcendence may find expression in fine arts, or rude mechanics and technology. The yearning and the idea, the body and the resistance in the things, the promise and the hope as appropriations and naturalizations of the religious promises penetrate into the post-secular realities. The papers may look into the queries of different arts, technologies and sciences that approach transcendence in their own many ways.

​

Gender and the Language of Transcendence 

​

There has been relatively little feminist discussion of the transcendence. Is transcendence a sort of salvation, or falling into sin for feminists? Is language of transcendence too strong, or conceptually irrelevant for gender sensitive thought? Can we do without expressing some of our imaginative needs without some sort of transcendence-language? Academic philosophy does not offer transcendence as a salvation from the task of seeking the meaning. Are there ways transcendence can still do important conceptual work for us? We are expecting papers from the intersection of language of transcendence and gender. 

​

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

​

Dr. Timo Koistinen (University of Helsinki)

Prof. Dr. Gesche Linde (University of Rostock) 

Prof. Toomas Siitan (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre)

​

Submission

​

We invite abstracts of 300–400 words for 20 minute papers (10 min response). Papers must be categorized within one of the aforementioned subtopics of the conference. Please indicate by submission to which subtopic your paper contributes.

We encourage PhD students to present their research at the conference.

Please send your abstract as PDF to tartu.symbol@gmail.com.

Deadline for submission is 31 August 2021.

Notification of abstract approval: 10 September 2021.

​

Organizers

​

Assoc. Prof. Roomet Jakapi (Department of Philosophy, University of Tartu)

Prof. Anne Kull (Faculty of Theology, University of Tartu)

Prof. Marius Timmann Mjaaland (Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo)

​

Contact

​

All questions about submissions or about the conference in general should be emailed to tartu.symbol@gmail.com

​

​

 

​