Consisting of twelve colloquia and a final discussion, this lecture series will be organized during the 2025-2026 academic year by CEU Professor Istvan Perczel (CRS Director 2023-2025) and Dr. Marion Rastelli of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. It is funded by CRS with a work package of the "EurAsian Transformation" cluster of excellence, and it will build on the experience gained through the 2024/25 lecture series “Introduction to South Asian and Tibetan Religion and Philosophy.”
The lectures will cover the broad geographic area of Eurasia and North Africa, treating religious philosophy (mostly metaphysics and ethics) of different cultural horizons in the perspective of translatability. We ask whether and how concepts of religious philosophy are transferable or translatable from one natural or cultural language to another. Does, for example, the concept of the “unity of being,” which is expressed in similar terms in Advaita Vedanta, Christian Origenism, Sufism, and Kabbalah, mean the same thing in the respective religious systems? Can concepts be separated from their historical context and be made compatible to each other? Is there a possible modern metalanguage to translate them, or must we stay within the native vocabulary of each religious philosophy if we want to describe it faithfully? Can modern Western philosophy function as this possible metalanguage, or do we need to include other discourses and traditions of thought? In this case, are the ethical norms of religious philosophies meant to be universal and transferable to outsiders? We will invite specialists in linguistics, western philosophy, and religious studies to an interdisciplinary dialogue, and we will draw important practical conclusions for the reading, understanding, and edition of texts.
LECTURERS AND TOPICS
Rafal Stepien (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Translating Buddhism: Religious Philosophy between India and China, between Asia and Europe, October 16
John Taber (University of New Mexico / Austrian Academy of Sciences)
The Reasonableness of Śaṅkara's Misgivings About Reason, November 18
Marco Ferrante (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Translating Sattā: Existence, Being, or Something Else?, November 27
Cristina Pecchia (University of Vienna)
Birgit Kellner (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
Philosophy and the Study of Buddhism, January 15
Arash Khorashadi (Central European University, PhD candidate)
Khorasani Sufism, 12 February
Yosef Schwartz (Tel Aviv University)
Divine Logos in Translation: Religious Philosophy between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, 17 February
Levan Gigineishvili (Tbilisi State University)
Ioane Petritsi, Middle-Byzantine and Georgian Philosophy, 5 March
Ursula Schattner-Rieser (University of Innsbruck)
The Deciphering of a Hebrew-Aramaic Midrash in Irenaeus of Lyons’ 'Demonstration of the Apostolic Teaching' Transmitted in Armenian, and the Aramaic Origins of Saint John’s Gospel, 12 March
Tim Crane (Central European University), 24 March
Himal Trikha (University of Vienna)
Translation and Adaption of Philosophical Notions in Medieval Jaina Literature (5th to 10 Centuries CE), 5 May
Erna Manea Shirinian (Erevan State University)
Armenian Religious Philosophy, 19 May
The full schedule of the lecture series will soon be announced on this page.