SFB 980 „Episteme in Bewegung. Wissenstransfer von der Alten Welt bis in die Frühe Neuzeit“; Teilprojekt C02 „Askese in Bewegung. Formen und Transfer von Übungswissen in Antike und Spätantike“
Zeit: 22.-23.10.2015
Ort: Freie Universität Berlin
Pre-modern asceticism in the West has traditionally been mapped out with clear-cut boundaries separating religions, cultures, and genders. Processes of intra- and interreligious transfer and transformation have been largely ignored. Judaism and Islam, for example, while an integral part of the religious landscape of the post-Late Antique Mediterranean world, were all too often conceptualized as world-affirming religions devoid of ascetic practices, so that they could be excluded from the field of study. The ascetic peaks in the very landscape were perceived as undisputed domains of Christian hegemony, which remained, to a large extent, isolated from the asceticism championed by various non-Christian philosophers and religious sectarians in the Greco-Roman world. As for the Christian heroes who turned against the flesh to lift their spirits toward the heights, they were commonly classified in binary fashion, neatly separated into male monks and female nuns. Read more and source … (Web)