The author comments on Leonardo Ambasciano's book An Unnatural History of Religions: Academia, Post-truth and the Quest for Scientific Knowledge (2019) and develops the line of its argument that a fideistic, sui generis, confessional History of Religions tradition continues due to the tacit support from scholars, institutions and organisations. Gnosticism is presented as a case study, showing how it exemplifies core critiques of HoR, and is supported by the same scholars and institutions, particularly the IAHR. The author then considers the recent British Academy report into Theology and Religious Studies in the UK to argue that the HoR tradition in contemporary Religious Studies is not a "problem to be solved", but rather something at the very basis of the discipline. The argument is therefore made that there cannot be a truly scientific academic study of religion while RS exists.
Cieľom tohto textu je poukázať na „odpornosť“ knihy O gramatológii, ktorú tu stotožňujeme s odporom voči kritike (v texte ale implicitne pracujeme s obomi významami slova „odpor“). Prvý z týchto významov slova „odpor“ spájame s Derridovým neografizmom „restance“, a tým vlastne navrhujeme preklad tohto neografizmu do slovenčiny (odporovanie). Toto odporovanie súvisí s odolávaním voči pojmovosti, voči transparentnému prenosu významu. V závere hovoríme o istej radikálnosti takto poňatého odporu, ktorým sa kniha O gramatológii vyznačuje., This paper aims to highlight “ugliness”, of which the book Of Grammatology is certainly not devoid. This ugliness is identified here with a resistance to critique (in the Slovak language the words meaning “ugliness” and “resistance” share a common root – “odpor” and “odpornosť”). It is resistance referring to a “rester”, to something that rests in its place without being penetrated by conceptuality, a transparent transport of the meaning. We propose a translation of Derrida’s term “restance” to Slovak. Contrary to what is often believed, we claim that Of Gramatology is more radically resistant – more silent., and Nous entendons de montrer dans notre texte que la « résistance » par laquelle se signale le livre De la grammatologie, identifiée ici avec la résistance envers la critique (tout en travaillant dans notre texte avec les deux significations de mot la « résistance »). Nous joignons la première signification du mot la « résistance » avec le néographisme derridien « restance » et par là nous proposons de traduire ce néographisme en slovaque comme « odporovanie ». Le mot slovaque « odporovanie » se relie à la résistance contre la conceptualité, contre la transposition transparente de la signification. Nous parlons à la fin de notre texte de la radicalité certaine de cette résistance, si caractéristique pour le livre De la grammatologie.
Article compares some aspects of current interdisciplinary discourse critical of religion with Lucretius' poem De rerum natura. In the first part, I try to show how a brief review of modern scientific literature can assist to resolve one of the much discussed problems in Lucretian scholarship, namely the attitude of Lucretius towards traditional Graeco-Roman religion and the question of (in)coherence of his thought. In the second part, I change the perspective in order to show that, in some key aspects, Lucretius can be viewed as the precursor of contemporary critique of religion.