Boredom and the Religious Imagination (Studies in Religion and Culture) - Tapa dura

"Attention and discernment are central to religious practice in many traditions. Raposa shows that attention to boredom and its causes can illumine religious experience and practice. Ritual meditation, and the cultivation of mental states and habits have been neglected by philosophers of religion because of the Protestant origins of the discipline. Using insights from Peirce, Heidegger, and others, Raposa extends the scope of current analyses of religious experience. This is a very interesting book.--Wayne Lee Proudfoot, Columbia University Lyrically written and judiciously composed, informed by esoteric sources and reflections but arranged so that a general, intellectual readership can enter and be drawn in, Boredom and the Religious Imagination is anything but boring. It's the book William James might write if this were his subject: offering the reader a way to reexperience everyday phenomena in new and more subtle ways. Rather than simply talking about boredom, this book performs a way out of it. Raposa turns his religious sensitivity and human concern back through the ages to report on the ways noted thinkers of old have lost their drive to create and do, and he leaves us their diagnoses along with remedies that may have lasting value for us: including physical work, spiritual exercises, and ways to practice and maintain attention.--Peter Ochs, University of Virginia Michael Raposa has analyzed a topic too seldom studied in the Anglophone world. His book is learned, subtle, and deeply thought-provoking. I highly recommend it.--David Tracy, University of Chicago Divinity School Raposa has fulfilled the religious thinker's dream: to compose an erudite creative study that is also a spiritual gem. Building on his previous studies of Peirce's semiotics and theory of religious experience, this book explores 'boredom' as a key religious semiotic activity, and in so doing Peirce's philosophic contribution is enriched. But it does so through enlightening our own experience of boredom with the classic insights of the last thousand years of Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Buddhism. I commend this book to those who care nothing about Peirce, for it is our best analysis so far of boredom or acedia. To those who do, I say that this is a genuine extension of Peirce's thought.--Robert C. Neville, Dean, Boston University Raposa has fulfilled the religious thinker's dream: to compose an erudite creative study that is also a spiritual gem. Building on his previous studies of Peirce's semiotics and theory of religious experience, this book explores 'boredom' as a key religious semiotic activity, and in so doing Peirce's philosophic contribution is enriched. But it does so through enlightening our own experience of boredom with the classic insights of the last thousand years of Christianity and, to a lesser extent, Buddhism. I commend this book to those who care nothing about Peirce, for it is our best analysis so far of boredom or acedia. To those who do, I say that this is a genuine extension of Peirce's thought.--Robert C. Neville, Dean, Boston University Michael Raposa has analyzed a topic too seldom studied in the Anglophone world. His book is learned, subtle, and deeply thought-provoking. I highly recommend it.--David Tracy, University of Chicago Divinity School "Attention and discernment are central to religious practice in many traditions. Raposa shows that attention to boredom and its causes can illumine religious experience and practice. Ritual meditation, and the cultivation of mental states and habits have been neglected by philosophers of religion because of the Protestant origins of the discipline. Using insights from Peirce, Heidegger, and others, Raposa extends the scope of current analyses of religious experience. This is a very interesting book.--Wayne Lee Proudfoot, Columbia University Lyrically written and judiciously composed, informed by esoteric sources and reflections but arranged so that a general, intellectual readership can enter and be drawn in, Boredom and the Religious Imagination is anything but boring. It's the book William James might write if this were his subject: offering the reader a way to reexperience everyday phenomena in new and more subtle ways. Rather than simply talking about boredom, this book performs a way out of it. Raposa turns his religious sensitivity and human concern back through the ages to report on the ways noted thinkers of old have lost their drive to create and do, and he leaves us their diagnoses along with remedies that may have lasting value for us: including physical work, spiritual exercises, and ways to practice and maintain attention.--Peter Ochs, University of Virginia

Boredom matters, claims this text, because it represents a threat to spiritual life. It can undermine prayer and meditation and signal the failure of religious imagination. If it is engaged seriously, however, it can also be the point for philosophical reflection and spiritual insight.