About the Research Consortium
At least since the works of Edward Said, Talal Asad, and others, we know that the Western view on "the Orient" from the Near East to Japan is essentially a construct. Then again, the "Christian occident" as well has often been - and still - used as a politically charged term. Analogous to "Orientalism", "Occidentalism" has recently entered the debate. The geopolitical consequences of this confrontation seem to be obvious and culminate in Samuel Huntington's thesis of a "Clash of Civilizations" based on essential religious differences. But the concepts of "Orient" and "Occident" are not, and have never been, homogenous nor have they formed and continue to evolve without mutual interaction. The global interdependence we witness today, often labeled "globalization", has its origin in the formative phase of the major cultural and religious traditions.
The research of the Käte Hamburger Collegium "Dynamics in the History of Religions" focuses on the origins and the development of the major religious traditions by stressing the mutual contact beyond the construction of stereotypical and ideological misuse. We presume that the interconnections of self-perception and perception by the other, of adaptation and separation that have become self-evident in the Humanities are an essential constituent of religious and historical dynamics. The research program is based on the thesis that the major religious traditions form, establish and develop in mutual dependency.
The five characteristics of the collegium:
- Religion as a Focal Point
- History & Modern Times
- Philologies & Social Sciences
- Identification of tertia comparationis
- Development of a Theory of Religious Transfer
The participating disciplines (Classical Philology, Protestant and Catholic Theology, South Asian Studies, Jewish Studies, Islamic Studies, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Studies, History, Systematic Religious Studies, and Philosophy) are incorporated into this program by four focal points on which the study of the dynamics of religious history will be based. The aim of this program consists of developing systematic criteria for a comparative approach. This will enable us to show differing and common elements of religions in the context of a general history of religion as well as the various cultural and social conditions to differentiate between the religious and the secular, based on philological, theological, and historical as well as social scientific and philosophical research. Thus, we will aim to create a hermeneutics oriented toward mutual understanding that might contribute to a culture of mutual respect.
