فهرست نشریات علمی دسترسی آزاد ایران

The purpose of this paper is to explore “the religious imagination.” Relying on sources that claim a distinct entwinement of the human imagination with religious life and thought, this essay points out how these expositions embody certain “enlightened” sensibilities that are essential to the topic as a whole. By “enlightened” I intend a term of art characterized by Michel Foucault as the effort to “separate out, from the contingency that has made us what we are the possibility of no longer being, doing or thinking what we are, do, or think.” This definition implies a critical reflexive moment with transformative effect—both of which are key to the scholarly explication of the religious imagination as an imaginary. This claim stands in tension with a phenomenological take on things that situates the religious imagination within traditional forms of expression. While there is some truth to this, it becomes apparent that without an “enlightened approach” to the religious imagination, it would not even show up as an issue demanding further scrutiny.