Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion

This collection of essays is an exercise in comparative philosophy of religion that explores the different ways in which humans express the inexpressible. It brings together scholars of over a dozen religious, literary, and artistic traditions, as part of The Comparison Project's 2013-15 lecture and dialogue series on "religion beyond words." Specialist scholars first detailed the grammars of ineffability in nine different religious traditions as well as the adjacent fields of literature, poetry, music, and art. The Comparison Project's directors then compared this diverse set of phenomena, offering explanations for their patterning, and raising philosophical questions of truth and value about religious ineffability in comparative perspective. This book is the inaugural publication of The Comparison Project, an innovative new approach to the philosophy of religion housed at Drake University (Des Moines, Iowa, USA). The Comparison Project organizes a biennial series of scholar lectures, practitioner dialogues, and comparative panels about core, cross-cultural topics in the philosophy of religion. Specialist scholars of religion first explore this topic in their religions of expertise; comparativist philosophers of religion then raise questions of meaning, truth, and value about this topic in comparative perspective. The Comparison Project stands apart from traditional approaches to the philosophy of religion in its commitment to religious inclusivity. It is the future of the philosophy of religion in a diverse, global world.

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Chapter 1. Introduction (by Knepper).- Chapter 2. "Ineffabilities and Conventional Truth in Jñanasrimitra's Buddhist Philosophy of Language," Amy Donahue.- Chapter 3. ". "The Reformatting of Matter as 'Stuff': Contemporary Inexpressibility as the New Ineffability," Barbara Stafford.- Chapter 4. "How To Speak About An Unspeakable God: The Christian Mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite," Timothy Knepper.- Chapter 5. "After Silence: That Which Comes Nearest," Jonathan Bellman.- Chapter 6. "'Names Are the Guest of Reality': Apophasis, Mysticism and Soteriology in Daoist Perspective," Louis Komjathy.- Chapter 7. "Translating the Ineffable: How Hunters Hear and Talk to the Dead in Côte d'Ivoire," Joseph Hellweg.- Chapter 8. "Expressing the Inexpressible: The Heartbeat of Sikh Mysticism," Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh.- Chapter 9. "When Expression Is Expressed, Non-expression Is Not-expressed: A Zen Buddhist Approach to Talking About the Ineffable," Gereon Kopf.-Chapter 10. "'That From Which All Words Return': The Distinctive Methods of Language Utilization in Hinduism's Philosophical Tradition of Advaita Vedanta," Anantanand Rambachan.- Chapter 11. "Using a Net to Catch the Air: Poetry, Ineffability, and Small Stones in a Shoe," Christopher Janke.- Chapter 12. "The Sayings and Missayings of Samuel Beckett," Craig Owens.- Chapter 13. "Kabbalah, Language, and Transcendental Mysteries," Steven Katz, Alvin J. and Shirley Slater.- Chapter 14. "Love Is to Renounce Naming the Beloved: Muslim Mystic al-Rabi'a and Her Teaching of the Ineffable," Tamara Albertini.- Chapter 15. "Title To Be Determined," Leah Kalmanson.- Chapter 16. "Title To Be Determined," Timothy Knepper.