September 10–12, 2024
KU Leuven
, Belgium 
Stormstraat 2, 1000 Brussels
Room 6108, Hermes Building, 6th Floor

Nietzsche famously claimed that “Christianity gave eros poison to drink – eros did not die from it but degenerated into a vice.” The objective of the workshop is to discuss the ‘afterlife’ of eros in 20th-century thought on religion. Focusing on specific case studies of (post-)modern thinkers who have highlighted the bodily and erotic dimensions of religion and who have studied, used, referenced, and revived older religious traditions and applied them to knowledge, our workshop delineates a renewal of eros in philosophy, theology, and literature in and after the 20th century.

Both at once utterly singular and overarchingly universal, erotic love and religious faith are interrelated in complex ways, and they are related to language and expression: one’s own erotic and/or religious experience is not easily expressible in human language; hence, metaphor and allegory is often used to speak of both the erotic and the divine. How eros and sexuality take shape in discourse and give rise to forms of knowledge – theological, esoteric, mystical or philosophical – will be at the center of our discussions.

There is a rich tradition of thinking eros in new and interesting ways that have not yet been studied in full depth: The works of Foucault, Barthes, Cixous, Irigaray or Kristeva, for instance, deconstruct the boundaries between eros and thinking, desire and discourse. Therefore, our workshop sheds light on those thinkers specifically, focusing on the metaphoricity of the language of love and “god-talk” (theo-logy).

Franz Rosenzweig, The Star of Redemption, interrelates human erotic love and divine love. Placing a discussion of shir ha-shirim, a collection of erotic poetry within the Hebrew Bible, at the center of his quest for the “knowledge of the all,” his ‘new thinking’ revolves around the philosophical and religious significance of erotic love and passion. For Rosenzweig, divine love is perceptible withinand even asthe physical touch of the lover’s hand, the sensual feel of the lover’s skin, and the passionate joining of lovers’ lips in a kiss. Drawing on mystical and theological commentaries on the interrelation of nakedness, sexuality, and knowledge in the Genesis narrative of Eden and the Fall of Man as well as the classical philosophical topos of Plato’s Symposium, Rosenzweig follows a religious and philosophical tradition of connecting Eros to knowledge that gained new pertinence in the 20th century, combining theology and philosophy.

Organisation

  • Caroline Sauter, Goethe University Frankfurt
  • Elad Lapidot, University of Lille
  • Willem Styfhals, KU Leuven
  • Amir Engel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Cooperation
In cooperation with the University of LilleGoethe University Frankfurt, and the Berlin Center of Intellectual Diaspora.

For full program and further details, click here.