Walter Van Herck professor

Research Walter Van Herck

Research team

Expertise

Research and referee assignments concerning philosophy in general, philosophy of religion, world views and their interactions with culture and society.

Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil on affliction, 'decreation' and divine vision: a trans-historical dialogue. 01/11/2023 - 31/10/2025

Abstract

On the eve of her death, the French philosopher and mystic Simone Weil (d. 1943) quoted passages in her Notebooks from The Mirror of Simple Souls, a text written by an anonymous 'fourteenth-century French mystic.' Weil makes note of The Mirror's 'image of fire and iron,' followed by a second quotation, 'exhaust the human faculties (will, intelligence, etc.) so as to pass over to the transcendent.' Weil's quotations from The Mirror address preoccupations central to her religious metaphysic, specifically her notion of 'decreation.' It was not until after Weil's death in 1946 that Romani Guarnieri reacquainted The Mirror with its true author, Marguerite Porete (d. 1310) a woman who was burned for heresy. Strong thematic parallels between the writings of Porete and Weil have been noted yet remain critically underexamined. Weil's engagement with Porete's Mirror as part of the matrix of thought in which she developed her ideas offers a vital opportunity for elucidating themes most pertinent to both Porete and Weil's corpora: affliction, 'decreation' and divine vision. A sustained, critical examination of the thematic affinities between Porete and Weil is an urgent area of research for three reasons: firstly, to consider Porete's mystical theology philosophically as religious metaphysics; secondly, to elucidate Weil's own religious philosophy; and thirdly, as an important study for the de-marginalisation of women's spiritual writings within the history of Western philosophy.

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  • Research Project

'Trembling Curiosity': The Naturalizing of Religion in the Early Modern Period 01/10/2015 - 30/09/2018

Abstract

This research project examines the shifting relationship between curiosity and religion and argues for curiosity's centrality in new 'naturalized' accounts of religion in the early modern period (1500- 1800). At once seen as a natural human propensity, central to scientific knowledge, and a sin by some theological thinkers, British philosopher Thomas Hobbes puts curiosity to new and transformative use, making it the foundation of his explanation of religion and, in doing so, providing the resources for a naturalized account of religion, or an account that appeals to psychological, cognitive, and social features of the human being. Religion begins to be seen as a human social practice like any other, not an exceptional, supernatural phenomenon. The project uses Hobbes as an anchoring figure and then turns to David Hume and others in the period, including Spinoza and Malebranche, and focuses primarily on curiosity and related concepts like anxiety and wonder. The project analyzes the shifting relationship between new understandings of curiosity and religion in the period and seeks to use these insights to take on questions encountered today, for example, questions about whether and how religion might be part of our humanness, how and why religion persists as it does, and, in light of changing perspectives on curiosity, how to make better sense of the relationship between religious and scientific knowledge.

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  • Research Project

Beyond theism and atheism. 01/10/2015 - 31/12/2015

Abstract

A contribution to a theological-philosophical hermeneutics that aims to do justice to the contemporary religious landscape. An investigation (1) into the reconceptualization of transcendence in post-theistic discourses, and (2) into the theological and philosophical consequences of religious atheism, religious naturalism, and post-theism, by studying to what extent those three discourses problematize dualistic concepts like 'belief' versus 'unbelief' and 'religious' versus 'atheistic'.

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  • Research Project

Monograph "Metaphors in Modern and Comtemporary Philosophy". 26/08/2013 - 31/12/2013

Abstract

The monograph "Metaphors in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy" is a book that brings together valuable material on the role and function of metaphors in philosophy. Part I offers systematic approaches. Part II is historical. In several chapters the role of metaphors in modern and contemporary philosophers is analyzed.

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  • Research Project

From Archimedean Pluralism to Negotiated Pluralism: The Relevance of Indian Views of Pluralism for a Reconceptualization of the European Context. A Case Study with Bilgrami. 01/10/2010 - 31/12/2010

Abstract

The projects addresses questions regarding ways of accommodating religious opinions within a secular but radically pluralising social and cultural context and political discourse. A main theoretical-methodological invention of this research would be the consideration of the equally plural Indian context and related debates in political philosophy, and the ways of (re)inventing of certain elements of this Indian discourse within the European context, especially Bilgrami's ideas.

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  • Research Project

Modern Metropolis: Towards a Cultural Analysis of the Sacred in Urban Space. 15/01/2009 - 14/04/2009

Abstract

Against the background of the rationalization/secularization of modern society, the project will try to re-conceptualize the sacred and its manifold, displaced, and transformed forms in modern culture, particularly in urban spaces. The project verifies the program of the Collège de Sociologie and its principal concepts ('sacred-profane', 'magic', 'myth', 'symbol') as 'a theory of the sacred' in order to decipher the re-emergence of the sacred in contemporary urban spaces.

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  • Research Project

The end of secularization? Charles Taylorr and Marcel Gauchet on the significance of the religious in a secularized world. 01/01/2009 - 31/12/2012

Abstract

The confrontation between Gauchet and Taylor starts from the following research question : what is the cultural and social relevance and significance of the religious in the secular world? The aim of this question is to make explicit the tension which currently occurs between the religious experience which is circumscribed in terms of the sacred, the godlike and the transcendent on the one hand and the advancing process of secularisation on the other

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  • Research Project

Separation of church and state in evolution. In search of an appropriate politic-philosophical framework. 01/01/2008 - 31/12/2011

Abstract

The relationship between religions (and worldviews) and the political community is not fixed, but always in evolution. The questions, central in this research project, are 1. What kind of recent evolutions challenge the relationship between religions (worldviews) and the political community in Belgium? 2. What kind of historical and philosophical perspectives are developed in the past, to guide these evolutions and challenges? 3. What are the relevant normative arguments and reflections, if we want to 'choose' a particular model or perspective?

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  • Research Project

Religious passions and emotions. Study of the specificity of the passional attachment in religion and of the crucial role of the accompanying emotions. 01/01/2002 - 31/12/2005

Abstract

This project is situated at the intersection of philosophical anthropology and the study of spirituality. It aims at the investigation of the role of passions and emotions in religious attachment(s) and identification(s). The working hypothesis is that the recent developments in the philosophical theory of the emotions, in particular moral phychology, can be assimilated and integrated in the hermeneutics of the following aspects of religion and spirituality: (i) the role of passions and emotions in religious symbolism and incarnation; (ii) the purification and/or cultivation of passions and emotions in spiritual experience; (iii) the passional attachment to the absolute and the development of an attitude of religious trust.

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  • Research Project

Ex abundantia cordis. A philosophical inquiry into the role of emotions in religion. 01/01/2002 - 31/12/2005

Abstract

Especially in the philosophy of mind and in moralphilosophy there is an important theoretical tradition on passions and emotions. These theories were never applied to the specific domain of religious passions and emotions. By doing just that this research project wants to get clarity concerning the question whether emotions hinder, accompane or constitute the religious attidtude of the subject.

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  • Research Project