CFP: The Redemption of Feeling

Chapter proposals are invited for the edited book The Redemption of Feeling. Interested authors should send a 300-word abstract, 200-word biography, and final draft to [email protected] by January 15, 2016. Chapters should not be more than 25 pages double spaced. Proposers will be notified about whether their submissions are accepted for the book by Feb. 28, 2016.  Potential authors should already have earned a Ph.D. or other doctorate. All chapters should be previously unpublished.

Traditional philosophizing has generally depended upon logic or reason as its primary or sole access to truth. Subjective experiences such as feelings or emotions have typically been viewed as secondary, at best, accompanying reason, or, at worse, clouding or misleading reason. This conference attempts to revisit how the movement of existentialism—and more specifically, the religious existentialists—have contributed to a rethinking of the role of subjective experience for the philosophical enterprise in contrast to the rationalist and idealist traditions. This rethinking of our subjective experience is what we are characterizing as the redemption of feeling. As such, this includes anything and everything that can be thought of as outside of a rationalistic approach such as feelings, emotions, moods, intuitions, etc.

The redemption of feeling, then, can be thought of as a rethinking of subjective experience as a whole, and its role in our philosophical enterprise, which may include a re-evaluation of the non-rational approaches to reality introduced above (emotions, moods, intuition, etc.) Expanding our understanding of philosophical thought to include these subjective experiences opens the door for the possibility of a mode of philosophizing that does not reject human experience as philosophically significant, thus reframing the significance of feelings in general for philosophical inquiry. We are interested in papers that creatively explore the importance of feeling within philosophy, but in particular, how the religious existentialists have contributed to such a re-valuation of feeling.

Preference will be given to essays generally related to the following topics:

·       Kierkegaard’s, Marcel’s, Levinas’ (or any other religious existentialist) contribution to our understanding of feeling

·      What role can feeling/emotions have in relation to our faith or relation to God? (note: by feelings we do not mean just the emotions)

·      What cognitive importance do feelings have for any particular existentialist?

·      What role do feelings have in moral/ethical questions or behaviors?

·      What might be the role of feelings/emotions, if any, with respect to our knowledge of God?

·      A discussion on the range of human experience, or feelings

·      How do any two religious existentialist relate to one another on this issue?

·      A discussion on lesser known religious existentialists, such as Ebner, Berdyaev, etc.

We are especially interested in essays on the following thinkers:

Soren Kierkegaard, Gabriel Marcel, Karl Jaspers, Emmanuel Levinas, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Ferdinand Ebner, Nikolai Berdyaev, Miguel de Unamuno, Lev Shestov, Luce Irigaray and Simone Weil

Confirmed contributors to The Redemption of Feeling include 

• Catherine Chalier, University of Paris X--Nanterre

• Brendan Sweetman, Rockhurst College

• Anthony Malagon, Queens College.

The editor of The Redemption of Feeling, Dr. Anthony Malagon, is Assistant Lecturer at Queens College (CUNY). Forthcoming work is "Kierkegaard and Marcel: A Conciliatory Study" in Marcel Studies, and Toward an Existential Proof of God with Lexington Books.