Papers by Laurens ten Kate
Religions
Discussions on modern pluralism have mainly focused on its socio-political dimension. This articl... more Discussions on modern pluralism have mainly focused on its socio-political dimension. This article focuses on the existential-phenomenological dimension of plurality, conceiving of pluralism as a responsive relationship between the self and the other. We advance a philosophical reading of Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance in order to further give shape to this existential-phenomenological approach to pluralism. The theory of resonance offers a framework to characterize the responsive relationships at play throughout human life. We argue that Rosa’s account is promising in its contribution to thinking the concept of pluralism as responsive relationship, but we problematize how Rosa tends to reduce resonance to subjective experience rather than taking the relationship itself as a focal point. We strengthen the potential of a philosophy of resonance by further embedding it in Arendt’s philosophy of worldliness; this, we conclude, leads to a conceptualization of pluralism as the respon...
Re-treating Religion, Dec 31, 2022
Radical secularization?, 2015
Die Vermessung des Ungeheuren, 2009
Die Vermessung des Ungeheuren, 2009
Journal of Aging Studies
In long-term care for people with dementia, person-centred care (PCC) is widely promoted as an ap... more In long-term care for people with dementia, person-centred care (PCC) is widely promoted as an approach that contributes to the well-being of persons in psycho-geriatric care. The goal of PCC is to acknowledge the personhood of residents and to indicate the responsibility of others to ensure the personhood of persons with dementia. In 2016 and 2018, qualitative empirical research was conducted with the purpose to enhance PCC and meaningful care. Five Dutch nursing homes and a total of eight communities of practice participated in the research project ‘People and their Stories’. The aim of this project was to strengthen the hermeneutic competence of care practitioners, with a focus on informal everyday interpersonal interactions between residents and care professionals. This article highlights how care professionals, by enhancing their hermeneutical competence, can do justice to the unique personhood of residents in everyday care practice. Three distinguished features for strengthening the hermeneutic competence of care professionals were formulated: respectful curiosity as a prerequisite, being able to differentiate between fact and meaning, and the awareness of own perspectives and assumptions.
... Orig. ''La com-parution (De l'existence du 'communisme' a` la commun... more ... Orig. ''La com-parution (De l'existence du 'communisme' a` la communauté de l' 'existence'),'' in Jean-Luc Nancy and Jean-Christophe Bailly, La comparution (politique a` venir) (Paris: Bourgois, 1991), 47–100. ... Trans. Sarah Clift, Pascale-Anne Brault, and Michael Naas. ...
In Medias Res
Es ist das beste an der Religion, dass sie Ketzer hervorruft. Ernst Bloch 1 Monotheism revisited ... more Es ist das beste an der Religion, dass sie Ketzer hervorruft. Ernst Bloch 1 Monotheism revisited in contemporary philosophy A spectre is visiting the western worldthe spectre of monotheism. It is fashionable nowadays, when referring to this spectre, to speak of a 'return of religion' in our times, but in fact, what is returning, what is revisiting the world, is not religion in general, but its threefold western varieties: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The spectre is visiting us, and we have to 'revisit' itin philosophy and science, in politics, in our daily existence. However, what does 'revisiting' mean? Does it simply address the return of something that had temporarily disappeared (or at least one hoped so)? Or does it have to face the possibility that the spectre had never been away? That the western world, that 'we' are in a way the spectre, so that one has to conclude that, when we take on the task of a revisiting of monotheism, we are actually revisiting ourselves? It is this second possibility that forms the emphatic focal point of a new development within contemporary philosophy, in which the works of Peter Sloterdijk take an active part. One need not be surprized, therefore, that the opening phrase of this chapter is a slight, specifying variation of the way Sloterdijk opens his recent book Du musst dein Leben ändern (You Will Have to Change your Life, 2009): "A spectre is haunting the western worldthe spectre of religion." 2 Needless to say, Sloterdijk in turn varies the famous opening statement of Marx's and Engels's Communist Manifesto. 3 However, whereas the latter alludes to a completely new, revolutionary event in Europe, the inevitable rise of communism through and within the political economy of capitalism, Sloterdijk aims at exactly the opposite: the spectre of religion is an old, all too old spectre, that has formed and
Laurens ten Kate Without an external giver, like God, the Nation, or an ideological system, the s... more Laurens ten Kate Without an external giver, like God, the Nation, or an ideological system, the sense of the world has to be formulated and enacted by humanity itself. This is typical of the modern era, and one of the difficult challenges imposed on the modern self. In this study, the starting point is the hypothesis that liberal religion, as a non-dogmatic and non-universalist undercurrent in the plurality of modern religious traditions, can be seen as a possible response to this challenge. The author states that this undercurrent represents not only a specific spiritual community, but a condition in which every modern human partakes: he formulates this as the condition of sensus liberalis. In order to analyze this condition, a theoretical lens is developed that works with a new concept of freedom: a 'strange' freedom already addressed by Albert Camus in the 1950s, which engages a new insight into creation as imagination. The author makes use of the current theories of social imaginaries, like in Charles Taylor's work, of axial theory, of Hannah Arendt's theory of action, and of the deconstructions of the relation between secular modernity and religion by Jean-Luc Nancy and Peter Sloterdijk. Imaginaries are the spaces or 'worlds' created by people, but these spaces create their creators in return. In this interplay, freedom appears beyond negative or positive liberty. Nietzsche's hymn on the "Three metamorphoses" of humanity in his Thus Spoke Zarathustra is used to clarify this complex dynamic of playful imagination.
Literature and Theology, 2007
Part of a threefold publication: Erik Borgman, Laurens ten Kate, Bart Philipsen, A Triptych on Sc... more Part of a threefold publication: Erik Borgman, Laurens ten Kate, Bart Philipsen, A Triptych on Schleiermacher's On Religion, pp. 382-416; preface by L. ten Kate, p. 382. The following three texts form a triptych in the classic meaning this term has in late medieval painting. They are independent panels with their own themes, arguments and disciplinary background (literary theory, philosophy
Journal of Aging Studies, 2022
In long-term care for people with dementia, person-centred care (PCC) is widely promoted as an ap... more In long-term care for people with dementia, person-centred care (PCC) is widely promoted as an approach that contributes to the well-being of persons in psycho-geriatric care. The goal of PCC is to acknowledge the personhood of residents and to indicate the responsibility of others to ensure the personhood of persons with dementia. In 2016 and 2018, qualitative empirical research was conducted with the purpose to enhance PCC and meaningful care. Five Dutch nursing homes and a total of eight communities of practice participated in the research project ‘People and their Stories’. The aim of this project was to strengthen the hermeneutic competence of care practitioners, with a focus on informal everyday interpersonal interactions between residents and care professionals. This article highlights how care professionals, by enhancing their hermeneutical competence, can do justice to the unique personhood of residents in everyday care practice. Three distinguished features for strengtheni...
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Papers by Laurens ten Kate