Sigmund Freud’s A Future of an Illusion (1927) is one of the classical works in psychology of religion that students still read nowadays. And for a good reason, because Freud’s ideas informed the whole bunch of twentieth century psychologists, many of whom, like Erich Fromm, also touched a topic of religion. Following is my brief […]
Traditional Music: Scarborough Fair
Scarborough Fair (Traditional English) Scarborough Fair is a traditional English folk song about the Yorkshire town of Scarborough. The town traces its history back to the Roman times, and the famous fair was performed there since the 13th century in August and September. One of the first mentions of the song appears in 1891 in […]
Interview with Glenn Alexander Magee
A year ago I interviewed American scholar Glenn Magee, the author of Hegel and the Hemetic Tradition and the editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism, for Russian journal “Research in Religious Studies”. The interview was published in Russian in issue 2(12)/2015 of the journal (pp. 109-117).
On van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism
Constructive empiricism is a theory proposed by Bas van Fraassen (born 1941) in the book The Scientific Image, published in 1980. It is based on the idea that to hold a theory it is enough to agree that the theory is empirically adequate and it is not necessary believe that it describes the world as […]
Re-reading H. Rickert: some thoughts on study of esotericism
Some time ago I have re-read “Kulturwissenschaft und Naturwissenschaft” of German philosopher Heinrich Rickert (1863-1936), and some thoughts about application of his ideas to the history of study of esotericism appeared in my mind. Of course, the book was published a century ago, yet ideas described in it seems somehow fruitfull for understanding of the […]
Scientism as a case of pseudoscience
When we talk about a pseudoscience, one usually think about religion-related examples like creation science or astrology as an example of pseudoscience. However, pseudoscience is often generated by scientists themselves when they try to make universal implications of their particular scientific knowledge. As an example, let me use scientism, which is the idea that all […]
On diversity in the study of esotericism
For me, this winter and spring were full of experiences related to communication with colleagues from different countries. The experience led me to some thoughts that I’d like to share and listen for your feedback. First of all, I should say that the greatest thing that one can see during such meetings is that we […]