Nec cum te nec sine te. An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy)

Global Phenomenologies of Religion An Oral History in Interviews Edited by Satoko Fujiwara Executive Editor University of Tokyo David Thurfjell Södertörn University Steven Engler Mount Royal University The phenomenology of religion is a branch of religious study that claims to represent the core of the study of religion as an autonomous discipline. First used as a term by the Dutch scholar Chantepie de la Saussaye in 1887, it was developed by Gerdardus van der Leeuw in the 1930s and 40s, became popular in the 1960s and 70s and then subsequently met severe criticism, virtually disappearing by the beginning of the twenty-first century.This volume investigates how the phenomenology of religion was accepted and developed in different national contexts. It consists of interviews with senior scholars, who are experts on the development of the phenomenology of religion in their countries, along with commentary and analysis. It examines the reasons why it disappeared so abruptly in each country and reveals how scholars of religion currently evaluate the phenomenology of religion in their countries. Series: The Study of Religion in a Global Context ISBN-13 (Hardback) 9781781799147 Price (Hardback) £75.00 / $100.00 ISBN-13 (Paperback) 9781781799154 Price (Paperback) £22.95 / $29.95 Pages 308 EQUINOX Sheffield 2021 Table of Contents Introduction Introduction: The Contested Legacies of Phenomenologies of Religion [+]1-27 Satoko Fujiwara Executive Editor,David Thurfjell,Steven Engler Chapter 1 Semantic Confusions and the Mysteries of Life: An Interview with Ulf Drobin (Sweden) [+]29-49 David Thurfjell Chapter 2 Universal Parallels, Meaningful Lives and Predisposed Minds: A Conversation (Finland) [+]51-76 Veikko Kalevi Anttonen,Teuvo Laitila Chapter 3 Phenomenology of Religion Meets Theory of Science – A Lethal Encounter: Interviews with Peter Antes and Hubert Seiwert (Germany) [+]77-99 Katja Triplett Chapter 4 Nec cum te nec sine te: An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) [+]101-122 Alessandro Testa Chapter 5 “What’s Wrong with Philosophy?”: Interviews with Toshimaro Hanazono and Yoshiko Oda (Japan) [+]123145 Satoko Fujiwara Executive Editor Chapter 6 The Grammar to Read “Religion in Culture”: An Interview with Chin-Hong Chung (South Korea) [+]147167 Sukman Jang Chapter 7 Religiologie and Existential/Therapeutic Phenomenologies of Religion: Interviews with Louis Rousseau and Earle H. Waugh (Canada) [+]169-194 Steven Engler Chapter 8 “Why … So Complicated?”; “a Term with No Subscribers”: Interviews with Charles H. Long and Ivan Strenski (United States) [+]195-220 Eric Ziolkowski Chapter 9 A Proposal for an Epistemologically Humble Phenomenology: An Interview with Denise Cush (United Kingdom) [+]221-244 Suzanne Owen Chapter 10 “There Was No Dutch School of Phenomenology of Religion”: Academic Implacability and Historical Accidents – An Interview with Jan G. Platvoet (The Netherlands) [+]245-276 Markus Altena Davidsen Afterword Afterword: The Meta-theoretical Landscape of Phenomenologies of Religion [+]277-285 Satoko Fujiwara Executive Editor,David Thurfjell,Steven Engler End Matter Index of Institutions [+]287-288 Satoko Fujiwara Executive Editor,David Thurfjell,Steven Engler Index of Professional Associations and Journals [+]289-290 Satoko Fujiwara Executive Editor,David Thurfjell,Steven Engler Index of Names [+]291-295 Satoko Fujiwara Executive Editor,David Thurfjell,Steven Engler General Index [+]296-302 Satoko Fujiwara Executive Editor,David Thurfjell,Steven Engler 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 –4– Nec cum te nec sine te An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) Alessandro Testa Giovanni Casadio (b. 1950) is Professor of History of Religions at the University of Salerno. MA Bologna, PhD Rome. EASR Vice-President (2013-2019). IAHR Honorary Life Member. Associate editor of the II ed. of the Eliade’s Encyclopedia of Religion (2005) and co-director of Symposia Cumana (2002–2012). Around 160 contributions about ancient Mediterranean religions, Christianity, Gnosticism, Manichaeism, method and theory in the study of religion, history of religious scholarship, with a special focus on R. Pettazzoni and M. Eliade. Books: Storia del culto di Dioniso in Argolide (1994), Vie gnostiche all’immortalità (1997), Il vino dell’an-ima (1999), Ugo Bianchi: Una vita per la storia delle religioni (ed. 2002), Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia (co-ed. 2009), Lo sciamanesimo prima e dopo Mircea Eliade (2014). Introduction I have known Giovanni Casadio and have been familiar with his scholar-ship for several years now. He is not only a renowned specialist of ancient and comparative religions – among other things – but also a prominent figure in the field of history of religions in Italy and Europe. Casadio has authored a vast number of works on the history of the history of religions and on Italian as well as non-Italian scholars in the realm of Religionswissenschaft (Raffaele Pettazzoni, Ugo Bianchi, Ioan Petru Keywords: “Rome School”, Raffaele Pettazzoni, Ernesto de Martino, Ugo Bianchi, History of Religions, Methodology 101 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 ONLINE Alessandro Testa 1 Culianu, Mircea Eliade). His penchant for establishing lines of intellec2 tual genealogies as well as for historiography and scientific biographies 3 made him the ideal candidate for the writing of this interview. 4 This interview’s themes and general planning sprang from a number 5 of conversations held in person between the interviewer and the inter6 viewee mostly in Rome and Leuven (Belgium; the location of EASR 2017 7 Conference) during the second half of 2017. However, the text as it is 8 presented here has taken shape mostly through phone calls and e-mail 9 interaction between the second half of 2017 and the beginning of 2018. 10 11 How would you define PoR? 12 Within the framework of the (comparative) study of religion as an academic 13 field, PoR has its own status as a scientific discipline or, more appropriately, 14 as a particular perspective, or method, or approach, or paradigm. At one 15 end of the spectrum we find a philosophical-psychological (virtually theolog16 ical) PoR and, at the other end, a descriptive, systematic, comparative and 17 historical phenomenology, which verges from the pure descriptive style of 18 the first Dutch and British comparative religionists to an approach aiming 19 at comprehensive phenomenology (phänomenologisches Verstehen) which is 20 typical of the second generation of the Dutch and German schools. A tertium 21 genus, combining the two perspectives outlined above, is the hermeneutical 22 phenomenology (Gilhus 1984, 32–34), whose most productive and charac23 teristic representative is Mircea Eliade (1907–1986). 24 Classical definitions of phenomenology were given by historians of religions 25 previous or contemporaneous to the generation of my academic grandpar26 ent, Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883–1959), perhaps the real founding father of 27 the modern discipline history of religions (Widengren 1983, a fundamental 28 contribution that has gone completely ignored, due to having been published 29 in German in an Italian journal) and a seminal influence in the field of religious 30 studies (admittedly mentor of Mircea Eliade, not to mention his own notable 31 Roman school), with all due respect to Cox (2006, 6), who gives priority to 32 a North European and Afro-centric perspective. In my green years, I had the 33 privilege to be in contact with the two Swedish upholders of historical and 34 typological phenomenology (Widengren and Hultkrantz), whose scholarly 35 vision has been of great relevance for my own formation as a historian of 36 religions. But there are also explicit or, more often, implicit definitions of re37 ligious phenomenology in the works of scholars belonging to the generation 38 of my master Ugo Bianchi (1922–1995), or to my own generation, with 39 whom I have shared conference sessions, graduate defences and publications. 40 Thus I intend to extend to this group of scholars who have studied, or still 41 study, religions in a phenomenological perspective the label of “new-style 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 phenomenology” that Jacques Waardenburg (1930–2015) adopted for his 42 102 An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) 1 own approach. Waardenburg called for due attention to the intentionality 2 of religious actors (2001), and that also holds for the theoretical project of 3 Jeppe Sinding Jensen (b. 1951), which aims at a description of religion as a 4 cultural system (Gilhus 1994; for details cf. Jensen 1994, 279, 282). 5 In my long career in the field of religious studies, I have had the opportunity 6 to meet scholars who have consciously practiced a type of history of religions 7 within a phenomenological perspective. Notably enough, they are all charac8 terized by a religious affiliation (which has somewhat influenced their outlook 9 with no direct bearing on the scholarly quality of their work) and by a hectic 10 international activity crossing through different cultural and academic milieus. 11 The eldest, who has been extremely active during his long life, is the Belgian 12 Catholic priest and eventually cardinal Julien Ries (1920–2013). His forma13 tion was obviously Belgian but for many years he had close contacts with 14 the Italian academic and especially (lay) ecclesiastic milieu (Communion and 15 Liberation). The “Père Ries” (as he was confidentially called in Ugo Bianchi’s 16 Rome and Milan school) never wrote or said “I am a phenomenologist”. In 17 his entire theoretical and historiographical work he was more descriptive 18 than assertive, but the man who founded a series entitled “Homo religiosus”, 19 including a trilogy L’expression du sacré dans les grandes religions (Louvain-la20 Neuve, 1978–1986), and another one entitled Trattato di antropologia del 21 sacro (Jaca Book, Milano 1989–2009), had an evidently “substantial” vision of 22 religion and the sacred, conceived in more essentialist terms than that of his 23 inspiration Eliade (Nanini 2008, 2015, 2016). 24 25 Raffaele Pettazzoni was one of the founding fathers of modern compar26 ative religion, and the founding father of history of religions in Italy. Has 27 PoR influenced the early Italian history of religions, and Pettazzoni more 28 in particular? If so, how? 29 In the introduction to a Swedish “IAHR Special conference”, Jackson and 30 Thurfjell (2008, 7) include Raffaele Pettazzoni (IAHR co-founder and second 31 president) in a list of scholars (comprising R. Otto, M. Eliade and M. Douglas) 32 that understood the “sacred” as a sphere secluded “from everyday human 33 consumption and interaction”. The claim that the sacred (religion) constitutes 34 a unique domain, irreducible to any other dimension within human experi35 ence and conceived as isolated by any historical, social, and cultural context 36 looks distinctly phenomenological. In the same vein, another Scandinavian 37 scholar, T. Laitila (2008, 168), mentions Pettazzoni, along with G. Widengren, 38 N. Söderblom and F. Heiler, as a scholar that Cox should have included in 39 the group of top phenomenologists of religion. Paradoxically enough, the 40 standard image we have of Pettazzoni in Italy (esp. among the exponents 41 of the so-called Roman School: exhaustive evidence collected by Nanini 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 2003, 93–96; 2012b, 82) is that of a stout supporter of historicism and an 42 103 ONLINE Alessandro Testa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 unyielding adversary of phenomenology and hermeneutics. This representa- 1 tion of Pettazzoni as a full-fledged historicist is shared by Eliade who, as is 2 well-known, positioned himself in the middle ground between the Dutch and 3 German phenomenologists and historical and social reductionists. His disci- 4 ple, and my professor, Ugo Bianchi (1922–1995) considered him a positivist: 5 and this was not a compliment! The truth, perhaps, lies in the middle. Clearly, 6 if to be a phenomenologist you have to practice the epoché and eidetic 7 vision, seeking the structure and meaning of single religions to show that they 8 all share a common essence, and to exert empathy or sympathetic under- 9 standing in your appreciation of a religious tradition or experience, the Italian 10 scholar was not a phenomenologist. On the other hand, he went further 11 than the second Scandinavian school, which advocated a purely descriptive 12 and classificatory approach, aiming to point out categories and conceptions 13 to be used for comparison and eliminating any metaphysical presupposition 14 about the nature of religion. Pettazzoni had, in fact, his own secular faith from 15 his juvenile adhesion to Freemasonry to the civil religion ideals of his older 16 years. And this was not without influence on his scholarly vision. 17 In an insightful review of Pettazzoni’s first important work on the forma- 18 tion of monotheism, philosopher Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944) pointed out 19 that the posited distinction or opposition in religious phenomena between 20 conceptual and natural elements was flawed and, more generally, that it 21 is impossible to do an ethnographic or historical research in the study of 22 religion without a general concept of the subject matter, i.e. religions, and 23 its ideal genesis (Gentile 1922, 985–986). In the letter where he paid due 24 homage to his reviewer (Severino 2002, 115–116), the Bologna professor 25 recognized that a preliminary “concept of religion” is necessary in order to 26 do “history of religions” in a fruitful way – a requirement which is typical of 27 the phenomenological approach. But in the following he declares, with some 28 embarrassment, that at present he is unable to decide whether to adopt 29 an inductive method of inference (based on empirical investigation), or a 30 method of deductive inference (based on theorizing). As underscored by 31 Severino in his comments (2002, 116), Pettazzoni felt this necessity to figure 32 out “the central and vital problem of our discipline” until the end of his life. 33 After the dialogue with the Sicilian idealist philosopher Gentile, most 34 decisive was, for Pettazzoni, the encounter with the foremost Dutch phe- 35 nomenologist G. van der Leeuw, whose systematic works (Einführung in die 36 Phänomenologie der Religion, 1925; Phänomenologie der Religion, 1933) were 37 both enthusiastically – although not without some reservation – reviewed by 38 him, and exerted a great impact on his vision of the study of religion and his 39 own attempt at founding a new epistemology of the study of religion where 40 “religious phenomenology and history are not two sciences but are two 41 complementary aspects of the integral science of religion” (Pettazzoni 1959a, 42 104 An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) 1 66; all the materials concerning the relationship between the two scholars are 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 collected and discussed by Nanini 2012b, 84–87). 2 We find Pettazzoni’s official programmatic position in an essay with a very 3 telling title: “History and Phenomenology in the Science of Religion” (1954). 4 In his view, in order to undertake the study of religions, there are two re- 5 quirements which are evidently inherent to the heritage of phenomenology: 6 (1) the recognition of the peculiar nature of religious facts and of the science 7 of religion which studies them; (2) a deeper understanding of the (religious) 8 meaning of these events. However, he is reluctant to admit “a cleaving of 9 the science of religion into phenomenology and history” (Pettazzoni 1954, 10 218). Instead, “the studies of comparative religion form a unity. Only in close 11 contact with the history of religion does phenomenology have a meaningful 12 function” (Pettersson in Pettersson and Åkerberg 1981, 47). Pettazzoni re- 13 turns to the question of the relation between history and phenomenology 14 in his last contribution to NVMEN (1959b). His conclusion is well-known: the 15 two approaches should integrate and somewhat interpenetrate each other, 16 by strengthening religious phenomenology with the historicist concept of de- 17 velopment and historicist historiography with the phenomenological require- 18 ment of the autonomous value of religion. Consequently, phenomenology 19 remains resolved in history, and religious history acquires the character of a 20 qualified historical science (“una scienza storica qualificata”), in other words, a 21 specific, sui generis, historical science (Pettazzoni 1959b, 14). His middle-way 22 position met immediate approval as well as notable criticism from his two 23 companions in the governance of the IAHR who were at the same time the 24 two upholders of the Dutch and Scandinavian phenomenology: C. J. Bleeker 25 and G. Widengren. (In my view, Pettazzoni’s position is somewhat facile: cf. 26 Bleeker 1972, 38, stating that this attitude of reconciliation “does not give the 27 solution of the problem at stake.”) For Bleeker, Pettazzoni had not done full 28 justice to the phenomenological method (Bleeker 1959; 1972, 37: “It is ques- 29 tionable whether he fully understood the nature of the phenomenology of 30 religion”). Widengren (in Bianchi, Bleeker and Bausani 1972, 5–14; expanded 31 by Widengren 1983, 34–44), instead, underscored some historico-philological 32 shortcomings in Pettazzoni’s last great comparative work and pleaded for a 33 rigorous demarcation between the historical method and the comparative 34 one. Echoes of this methodological debate can be found also in scholars of 35 later generations who were somewhat extraneous to this inner-European 36 discourse. It is a fact that, in private notes of his later years (around 1957), he 37 put phenomenology in the list of the four enemies of the history of religions, 38 in third place, after “psychologism” and before “philology” (cf. Nanini 2012a, 39 342). 40 41 Our impression is that Pettazzoni’s “third way”, with his continuous plea 41 42 for history (an hypostatized concept of history which became the specious, 42 105 ONLINE Alessandro Testa 1 somewhat abusive, slogan of the various branches of his Roman school), 2 is certainly a personal utopia, in the sense that it is virtually impossible to 3 “revive” such a scholarly personality, given his own unique talents and ex4 perience. But it also seems to me that his project of a new science had 5 inherent, as well as insoluble, contradictions in its attempt to conciliate the 6 irreconcilable – the static with the dynamic, historicism with hermeneutics, 7 Verstehen (interpretative understanding) with Erklären (causal explanation), 8 and empiricism with intuitionism. How can a cultural or historical reason 9 clarify an “ineffable mystery” (Pettazzoni’s own definition of religion: cf. the 10 passage quoted by Nanini 2003, 73, and a further discussion of the evidence 11 by Montanari 2016, 89–103)? The conflict of interpretations that was born 12 immediately after his death gives evidence of this epistemological cul-de-sac 13 but at the same time shows the fertility of the theoretical challenge, which led 14 to a series of interventions that spread from the drastic criticism of Franco 15 Bolgiani (in Bianchi, Bleeker and Bausani 1972, 45–51) to the apologetic ap16 proach of Pisi (1990) pleading for the view of a fully historicist Pettazzoni 17 triumphing on all sides, passing through the thought-provoking questions 18 raised by Nanini (2012b, 87–95). 19 Among the disciples of Pettazzoni the only one who has not harboured 20 an utterly negative attitude toward phenomenology has been Ugo Bianchi, 21 a foremost scholar of the history of religions who was an IAHR President 22 (1990–1995) like his mentor Pettazzoni. Bianchi’s official position toward 23 (Dutch) PoR is expounded in a chapter of his treatise (Bianchi 1975, 178– 24 181). Van der Leeuw’s and Bleeker’s efforts in “understanding the faith of 25 believers” are “useful to historico-religious research”, even if certain philo26 sophical (van der Leeuw) and theological (Bleeker) inclinations “leave some 27 fundamental perplexities” (for more detail and criticism see Terrin 2002, 28 372–375). Bianchi’s stance is more articulated in a work where he attempted 29 to clarify “the epistemological statute of the discipline we call the History of 30 Religions” (Bianchi 1980, 10) by situating the category of dualism in the frame 31 of the “historical phenomenology of religion”, an approach that implies a 32 combination of “historical research and typological categorization” (ibid., 17). 33 He adopts that expression instead of his favourite formula “historical typol34 ogy” (derived from Pettazzoni and Gustav Mensching) in order to familiarize 35 with his Scandinavian readers, but he insists that any positive religio-historical 36 treatment of the matter religion (“that vast ‘concrete universal’ we call ‘re37 ligion’”: Bianchi 1980, 23) must exclude the classical tools of philosophical 38 phenomenology and hermeneutics: “No intuition, no ‘eidetic reduction’, no 39 philosophical ‘concept’ of religion will be of use under those conditions” 40 (Bianchi 1980, 18–19). Instead, any special research in the field “must always 41 be built on a historical and philological basis” (Åkerberg, in Pettersson and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Åkerberg 1981, 77), being susceptible of revision “in view of the progress of 42 106 An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) 1 historical research”. Apparently, like his mentor Pettazzoni, Bianchi adopted 2 a “third way”. Religion is a human experience sui generis but conditioned 3 by cultural variety and historical circumstances. Comparison can lead to a 4 better understanding of the more or less similar (“analogous” in Bianchi’s 5 terminology) formations of a certain phenomenological type, as it appears 6 in various religious worlds. PoR is just an aspect of history of religions and 7 can be absorbed by it, as a precisely comparative history of religions. Bianchi 8 is criticized (as is Widengren, who shared similar rationalistic lines) for his 9 marked “attitude of hesitation against the importance of the psychological 10 view in history of religion and phenomenology” (Åkerberg, in Pettersson and 11 Åkerberg 1981, 85). According to an exponent of the Lund phenomenolog12 ical school (influenced by Car-Martin Edsman and Erland Ehnmark), Bianchi’s 13 stern rejection of the psychological, emotional and somewhat irrational com14 ponents of religious phenomena implies “a certain rationalistic one-sidedness 15 which definitely limits his field of vision as to science of religion, as well as his 16 ability to understand religion in its invariably integrated historical-psychological 17 contexts” (Åkerberg, in Pettersson and Åkerberg 1981, 85–86). 18 In my view, in his practical, idiographic work Bianchi was not so rigorous 19 as in his theoretical statements, leaving space for a variety of psychological 20 intuitions, in pure phenomenological style, as has been brilliantly (with some 21 overstatement) stressed by A. N. Terrin. In this light, Bianchi moves toward 22 the goal indicated by Paul Feyerabend: “we need a dreamworld in order to 23 discover the features of the real world we think we inhabit” (Terrin 2002, 24 390). 25 26 Which Italian authors have better represented, in your opinion, the 27 phenomenological study of religion? In other words, is or was there an 28 “Italian PoR”? 29 Unlike the preceding two questions, the answer to question 3 is very straight30 forward. In Italy we have in fact had only one eminent scholar of religion 31 that has professed to be a full-fledged phenomenologist of religion, namely 32 Aldo Natale Terrin (b. 1941). Terrin is an ordained Catholic priest but his 33 approach is far from being confessional, in spite of the charges of theological 34 bias frequently levelled against him. He expressly adheres to the positions of 35 classical phenomenology inasmuch as he claims that “our approaches must 36 take better account of the irreducibly religious nature of religious experience 37 by doing justice to the nature of religious symbolism; that is, considering it 38 from the ‘inside’ of culture and not ‘outside’ of it” (Terrin 1998, 380–381). 39 Even more explicitly he professes that PoR is “the best method with which 40 to study and to understand other religions” (ibid., 383). Along with a host of 41 monographs dedicated to specific forms of religiosity (especially New age and 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Neo-Hindu religious movements) and thematic issues (ritual, neuroscience, 42 107 ONLINE Alessandro Testa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 water mythologies and fundamentalism), all studied in close connection to 1 religious experience, Terrin has produced a series of theoretical and histo- 2 riographical textbooks (Terrin 1983, 1991 and especially 2008) where he 3 severely criticizes other scholarly approaches and pleads for a genuinely phe- 4 nomenological, hermeneutical and experiential approach (cf. Nanini 2015, 5 84–90; 2016, 21–24). Quite recently, Terrin has eloquently described the 6 theory and practice of his phenomenological method (or outlook) in the 7 foreword and the first introductory chapter of a book dedicated to one of 8 the most characteristic (and controversial) among the new religious move- 9 ments of the mid- to late– twentieth century, Scientology, which arose as 10 part of the counterculture response to the growth of American Science 11 (Terrin 2017).12 According to Terrin, the phenomenologist who studies a religious group 13 (in this specific case the Church of Scientology) must adopt a sympathetic 14 attitude to grasp the eidos (in other words the original and founding element) 15 of that group through its self-perception, in order to avoid a reductionist 16 approach and instead access the original vision (Terrin 2017, 6–7). Currently 17 the phenomenological approach, by adopting a “participatory” attitude, finds 18 an endorsement in the crisis of objective visions and indisputable perceptions 19 that implies the dissolution of the notion of “hard facts”. Terrin (ibid., 29–31) 20 therefore opines that one is able to adequately describe a reality only when 21 in some way he has empathized himself in that given reality. Those who 22 describe a reality that in fact does not touch and does not convince them will 23 not be very effective in their description, let alone have a real capacity for investigation. Only some tuning with the object of inquiry makes the researcher 25 more attentive and more able to grasp all the nuances of a cognized and lived 26 experience. Knowledge itself, as such, is nothing but a kind of identification 27 and leads to an act of assumption, of appropriation of the reality itself that 28 we intend to describe. In the study of a religious experience, one is somehow 29 always involved. In other words, when we study the religious beliefs of oth- 30 ers, we study them as beliefs that have their possible and probable internal 31 coherence, which is valid and acceptable and have a meaning that involves us 32 directly or indirectly. From this perspective, the “hermeneutics of suspicion” 33 must never involve our research area beforehand. Phenomenology, without 34 ever giving a final judgment of truth or non-truth, is only brought to take 35 note and to value the world of such experiences, especially insofar as they 36 are expressions shared by a circle of believers.37 In sum, phenomenology moves from two fundamental assumptions that 38 are expressions of “respect” and “recognition” of what is offered to the ob- 39 server’s gaze. The first prerequisite is the empathy (Einfühlung) or empathic 40 look. As pointed out by L. Wittgenstein at the linguistic level, it is logically 41 impossible to deny the believer when he claims to believe. The second 42 108 An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) 1 prerequisite is the bracketing of one’s own ideas (epoché), of the load of 1 2 judgments and prejudices of which we are carriers, applying a kind of “sus- 2 3 pension of disbelief” (S. T. Coleridge). Inspired in a certain way by the theory 3 4 of “methodological ludism” recently proposed by K. Knibbe and A. Droogers 4 5 and by the “participant observation” of the anthropological tradition, Terrin 5 6 (2017, 32–34) proposes that the investigator of religious reality assumes an 6 7 attitude similar to that of a player, seeking to interact with the object and, in 7 8 a way of speaking, to play with alternative ways of conceptualizing the world, 8 9 without interfering with the concept of truth. 9 An original application of a phenomenological hermeneutics without 10 10 11 any explicit reference to Terrin’s neo-phenomenology is that of Massimo 11 12 Campanini (b. 1954), in regard to the field of Islamic studies, more specif12 13 ically exploring a possible phenomenological and hermeneutical reading of 13 14 the Holy Qur’an (Campanini 2017). On the wake of Annemarie Schimmel 14 15 (1922–2003) and Fazlur Rahman (1919–1988), two scholars of Islam who 15 16 adopted a phenomenological if not theological approach, Campanini reads 16 17 the Qur’an as a genuine message of God living in the faith and the daily wor- 17 18 ship of the believers, and he puts its historical and authorial context in brack- 18 19 ets. Moving further from the phenomenology of Husserl to the ontology of 19 20 Heidegger, he contends that if we want to arrive at an immediate vision of 20 21 divinity we must reduce it to its pure essence. The profound meaning of the 21 22 tawhid (the uniqueness of God) is grasped by reducing the essence to exist- 22 23 ence, while other Heidegerrian concepts are applied to a linguistic-symbolic 23 24 analysis of the holy text. In a phenomenological perspective, the Islamic vision 24 25 of God and Truth (haqq) is presented in a dialectical key: as presence and lack 25 26 or absence, as immanence and transcendence, as revelation and concealment 26 27 (Campanini 2017, 316–319). 27 28 28 29 What are the reasons for the lesser impact that PoR has had in Italy, 29 30 compared to other theories and methods? 30 31 The reasons are mostly to be traced back to the influence of both Catholicism 31 32 (PoR originated against the background of Protestant liberal theology) and 32 33 Historicism, two conceptions of the world and man within history that look 33 34 and are opposite but share some basic elements, including a deep distrust to- 34 35 ward the irrational and emotional components of life and history. A Catholic 35 36 influence (the Thomistic doctrine of analogy and definition) is evident in 36 Bianchi and some of his pupils; historicism – in fact a mixture of elements 37 37 38 variously borrowed from the idealism of Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) and 38 39 dialectic materialism of Marxism (especially in the Italian variant elaborated 39 40 by Antonio Gramsci [1891–1937]) is the battering ram used against every 40 41 sort of phenomenology or irrationalism (the two terms being used as quasi 41 42 synonyms; cf. Terrin 1998, 378; Prandi 2006, 167–169). 109 42 ONLINE Alessandro Testa 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Croce himself wrote a painfully dismissive 1934 review of van der Leeuw’s 1 masterpiece (cf. Nanini 2000a, 805–806, n. 6). Among the disciples or as- 2 sociates of Pettazzoni, Vittorio Lanternari (1918–2010) and Alfonso Maria 3 Di Nola (1926–1997) made only occasional (disparaging) references to 4 phenomenology. Instead, PoR is a haunting presence in the methodological 5 writings of Ernesto de Martino (1908–1965), Angelo Brelich (1913–1977) 6 and Dario Sabbatucci (1923–2004). For Sabbatucci (1990, esp. 234–246) the 7 only phenomenologies worthy (or unworthy) of being taken in consideration 8 were those of van der Leeuw and Eliade, though both were rapidly dismissed 9 with (supposedly) historical arguments.10 De Martino looks theoretically more sophisticated, and it will be worth- 11 while to briefly present his arguments (carefully examined by Nanini 2000a). 12 Of the two methodological essays (de Martino 1953–1954, and 1957, repr. 13 in de Martino 1995, 47–95), written when the Neapolitan intellectual had 14 not yet obtained the chair of history of religions in Cagliari, the titles them- 15 selves are telling: in the first one, phenomenology (the “Other”) is drastically 16 opposed to his own “absolute historicism”; in the second one, “irrational- 17 ism” is virtually used as a synonym of phenomenology, as noted above. De 18 Martino easily highlights the basic flaw of van der Leeuw’s PoR and Rudolf 19 Otto’s ontology of the sacred and experience of the numinous, a flaw that 20 can be resumed in the felicitous metaphor of the “mitsingen ist verboten” 21 (de Martino 1995, 77). In other words, the attempt of the phenomenologist 22 to reach a pure intuition, to grasp the deep essence of the phenomenon 23 implies the risk of a confusion of planes between subject and object, of a 24 loss of distinction between religious outlook and scientific outlook (ibid., 54), 25 producing a hybrid product “in which historical science of religious life and 26 real religious life merge” (ibid., 77). Therefore, Otto’s concept of the numi- 27 nous as well as van der Leeuw’s meta-historical Erlebnis (lived experience) of 28 religious mystery (ibid., 47–55) belong to the manifestations of current reli- 29 gious life rather than to the methodology of religious studies (ibid., 78). The 30 epistemological problem with de Martino arises when he attempts to build 31 up his own hermeneutics of the origin and formation of religious phenomena 32 (the hierogenetic process – ibid., 88–94, 120 – where he attempts a defini- 33 tion of the roots of religious life and sacred which indulges in psychological 34 reductionism). In fact, he introduces a set of categories (loss of presence or 35 risk of not being in history aka religious destorification: ibid., 62, 82, 94) that 36 have evident philosophical roots (Martin Heidegger’s metaphysical existential- 37 ism, as recognized by M. Massenzio in the introduction to de Martino 1995, 38 22–26) and are overtly psychologistic in spite of his own denial of this (ibid., 39 94–96), being reductionistic and deeply embedded in his own psychological 40 42 42 41 drama (cf. Casadio 2013).41 110 An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) 1 Angelo Brelich’s attitude toward phenomenology was irreducibly hostile, 2 perhaps even more than that of his senior colleague. In supporting the cause 3 of historicism, he exhibited a zeal that can only be found in a fresh convert 4 to a religion. In fact, before meeting Pettazzoni and the historicist Italian mi5 lieu, the Hungarian historian of religions had mentors like Karoly Kerényi 6 (1897–1973) and – in a more subliminal form – Julius Evola (1898–1974), 7 two personages both belonging – in very different ways – to the “ambiguous 8 family of the irrationalists” (to use a notorious derogatory formula coined 9 by de Martino). Brelich was inflexible in refusing and reviling all approaches 10 to the study of religion that were different from his own, labelling them 11 as aridly philological and scientifically inadequate, or definitely theological, or 12 dangerously irrationalist (a label which is, of course, unacceptable according 13 to current academic standards). In his coherent, staunchly partisan vision, all 14 opponents of the good historicist method were irrationalists, a stigma which 15 grouped Catholics like Pater W. Schmidt and U. Bianchi with hermeneuts like 16 Kerényi and Eliade, or phenomenologists like van der Leeuw and F. Heiler, all 17 scholars who – in his view – shared the same ultraconservative, politically re18 gressive if not overtly fascist ideology (for a partial collection of these militant 19 interventions, see Nanini 2004, esp. 18, 28, 32). The importance of Brelich’s 20 belligerent advocacy of historicism in the Italian context of religious studies 21 cannot be overstated. With a single notable exception (Enrico Montanari, b. 22 1942), all his direct disciples that have taken up teaching positions in Italian 23 universities, from Gilberto Mazzoleni (1936–2013) and Ileana Chirassi (b. 24 1936) to Anna Maria Gloria Capomacchia (b. 1952), have, with various nu25 ances, shared Brelich’s uncompromising, monolithic attitude. 26 27 Do you integrate theories and methods belonging to – or associated with 28 – PoR in your own methodological endeavour as a historian of religions? 29 If so, why, and how? 30 This is an intriguing question and difficult to answer simply. As a member 31 of the second generation of the Roman School of History of Religions my 32 education was surrounded by the cult of history and philology. Consequently, 33 I have never been particularly sympathetic to PoR as practiced by the Dutch 34 (van der Leeuw, Bleeker) and German schools (Otto, Wach and Heiler) 35 and definitely I feel more at home with the rather empirical, descriptive and 36 taxonomical approaches practiced by Scandinavian scholars (Kristensen, 37 Widengren, and Hultkrantz in particular). My encounter with Eliade, in so 38 far as he can be considered a phenomenologist, took place quite late, at the 39 beginning of the century, following an invitation by Larry Sullivan and Bryan 40 Rennie, but I was fascinated by his intellectual acumen in the perception and 41 comparison of human phenomena much more than by his ontological vision 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 of the sacred and the series of hierophanies. 42 111 ONLINE Alessandro Testa 1 However, having said this, I must confess that I find the stance of phenom- 1 2 enological epoché (with its Pyrrhonist more than Husserlian ring) – or “brack- 2 3 eting”, a suspension of judgment that blocks our biases and assumptions in 3 4 order to examine how the phenomenon presents itself in the world of the 4 5 participant and explain/understand it in terms of its own inherent system of 5 6 meaning – intellectually fascinating and epistemologically convincing. 6 Descending from theory to practice, if I examine my own scholarly pro7 7 8 duction spanning through 40 years of activity I can find among my inspirers 8 9 the names of famous “irrationalists”, such as L. Frobenius, W. F. Otto, K. 9 10 Kerényi, W. B. Kristensen and – of course – M. Eliade, along with mentors be- 10 11 longing to other intellectual milieus like Giambattista Vico or Sigmund Freud. 11 12 Based on these premises, I think I may be placed at the edges of the Roman 12 13 School of history of religions in its various declensions and inflections. 13 14 14 15 15 Commentary 16 16 17 17 18 In these final remarks and comments on Giovanni Casadio’s thorough 18 19 survey, I will complement some of his arguments by focusing mainly on 19 20 the heritage and the ongoing influence of the greatest Italian tradition in 20 21 the academic study of religions: the so-called “School of Rome”. 1 This is 21 22 somewhat inevitable, since all discussions concerning the modern study 22 23 of religions in Italy cannot but centre around said school, its founder 23 24 Pettazzoni, and his epigones. Moreover, I will take the liberty of offer- 24 25 ing a few biographic insights centred around the memories of my years 25 26 as a young student at the department of “Studi storico-religiosi” at “La 26 27 Sapienza” University in Rome – the locus of the so called “School of 27 28 Rome”. 28 29 As should be patent after reading the interview, Italy has never pro- 29 30 duced a systematic discussion about the theses and methods of PoR, 30 31 comparable to that of the historical-comparative method. Nor has it ever 31 32 reached any general conclusion about the phenomenological approach. 32 33 With the exception of Aldo Natale Terrin, Italy has actually never pro- 33 34 duced a phenomenologist of religion nor, therefore, a “new-style phe- 34 35 nomenology” (Waardenburg 2001). 35 36 36 37 37 38 38 39 1. 40 41 42 The literature in Italian about this ensemble of scholars, who have navigated 39 the panorama of religious studies in Italy for the last century, is enormous (it is reviewed in the second half of the book Testa 2010). Much poorer is the English 40 one (for a short overview, see Stausberg 2008, 2009). In these final remarks, I am 41 intentionally limiting the bibliographic apparatus to the very essential. 112 42 An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Therefore, the history of PoR in Italy takes a limited and peculiar form. 1 However, its limited appeal as a method for the study of religions does 2 not mean that it has been absent from the Italian intellectual landscape. 3 In fact, apart from Terrin’s scholarship, it has been present in two main 4 forms: (1) as an explicit polemical “other” for most Italian historians 5 of religions of the last century, and (2) in the shape of implicit (if not 6 crypto-) phenomenological tendencies that have characterized several 7 Italian historians of religions from Pettazzoni to Casadio himself. 8 There was, obviously, no “conventional” or normative stance of the 9 entire “Rome School” on phenomenology, but rather a variety of stances, 10 associated with a generally shared mistrust. This state of things lasted 11 from the post-Second World War period until the first decade of the 12 new Millennium. And here is where my personal memories merge with 13 more general considerations on PoR’s eminent role as a methodological 14 “other” in Italy – particularly in Rome. As a student during the years 15 2003–2009 (not continuously), I remember very well the insistence of 16 many teachers on considering their historical-comparative method as 17 not only different, but actually opposite to the phenomenological one. 18 The rants were frequent, even repetitive, and at times vehement. What 19 puzzled me at the time, and still puzzles me today, is that most of this 20 critical verve was being exercised against scholars that were then long 21 gone (van der Leeuw, Rudolf Otto, Eliade), and especially, but not exclu- 22 sively, by former disciples of Angelo Brelich. Although not an orthodox 23 phenomenologist – and certainly not a self-declared one – Eliade (and the 24 Eliadian “variation” of PoR) was the common rhetorical target, with the 25 Romanian scholar actually coming to represent, rather oddly, a veritable 26 symbol of phenomenology and its mistakes. Until a few years ago this 27 polarization, which constituted a veritable “us vs. them” discourse, was 28 still very much alive at the department. (I might mention, for example, 29 my BA thesis mentor, Anna Maria Capomacchia, a historian of ancient 30 religions, who was always eager to challenge – and almost delighted in 31 chastising – the phenomenological approach.)32 The narrative of my lecturers and professors back then was that the 33 School of Rome had been, between the twenties and the fifties, a reaction 34 to Urmonotheismus and phenomenology, then, between the fifties and the 35 seventies, a reaction to both phenomenology (especially in its Eliadian 36 declension) and structuralism. Things, however, stand rather differently, 37 as Casadio claims in the interview – and as I have claimed elsewhere and 38 claim here.39 Today, the former polemical tones and mistrust for PoR have mostly 40 given way to indifference: the new generation of scholars of the “Roman 41 School” (Sergio Botta and Marianna Ferrara) are much more interested 42 113 ONLINE Alessandro Testa 1 in new topics and approaches (materialism, cognitivism, post-modern 2 and post-colonial theories, etc.) than in old ones. Eliade is mentioned 3 seldom, and more in regard to his alleged political stances than anything 4 else. 5 The second question, of implicit (if not crypto-) phenomenological 6 tendencies of many Italian (and “Roman”) historians of religions, is 7 thornier. One preliminary consideration: the assumed “unity” of the 8 “School of Rome”, which was accepted until not so long ago, is actually 9 only partial: if we take into consideration the most important Italian 10 historians of religions of the two generations following Pettazzoni and 11 productive until the end of last century (i.e. Ernesto de Martino, Angelo 12 Brelich, Ugo Bianchi, Vittorio Lanternari, Dario Sabbatucci, Cristiano 13 Grottanelli, Giovanni Casadio and others) we discover that the differ14 ences in their methodologies and in their conceptions of religion are at 15 least as significant as the similarities. 2 16 In his interview, Casadio summarizes and evokes the ambiguities of 17 Pettazzoni’s method, especially with regards to PoR; no wonder, then, 18 that we find discrepancies in the methods of his disciples. The most sen19 ior and perhaps important was the Italo-Hungarian Angelo Brelich. 20 While more or less all scholars of religion affiliated with Rome ex21 pressed reservations about the phenomenological approach, the most 22 vocal were Brelich and his disciples, up to a few years ago at least. 23 Nevertheless, it is also possible to isolate a few elements of direct in24 fluence of phenomenological, or rather Eliadian traits in him; as noted, 25 for the second generation of Italian historians of religions, Eliade repre26 sented, along with van der Leeuw, and however odd this judgment will 27 seem to non-Italians, the phenomenologist of religion – with Rudolf Otto 28 usually following as the third one in the trittico (irrationalist and phe29 nomenological approaches and authors have traditionally been associ30 ated in Italian scholarship). 31 The categories and concepts that Brelich relied upon to exercise his 32 “storicizzazione” were often not dissimilar from those used by phenome33 nologists, even though he never gave any real credit to the empathetic 34 and irrational dimensions that were central for the phenomenologists, 35 and instead always placed central emphasis on the operation of his36 toricizing (“storicizzare”) religious facts by paying attention to their 37 contexts and to the conditions of their emergence and developments. 38 Several categories presented in Brelich’s books, and most crucially in his 39 40 41 2. In my first book (Testa 2010), I tried to expose some of the methodological 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 ambiguities or even inconsistencies of the “Roman” historians of religions. 42 114 An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) 1 handbook, Introduzione alla storia delle religioni 3 (Brelich 1966), resemble 1 2 typical phenomenological and/or Eliadian ones: the conception of time 2 3 in festive ritualism, for example, or his theorization about the nature 3 4 and functions of myth, which shows a rather interesting fusion of ideas 4 5 from both Mircea Eliade and Bronisław Malinowski. 4 5 6 Ernesto de Martino comes second, in this ideal genealogy of the now 6 7 “classical” Italian scholars of religions who had, in one way or another, 7 8 contacts/contrasts with PoR and with Eliade and his personal variant of 8 9 it. Although much younger than Pettazzoni, de Martino – a scholar not 9 10 fully belonging but rather tangential to the Rome School – is the only 10 11 Italian historian (and anthropologist) of religions, along with Pettazzoni, 11 12 who in those times engaged in direct intellectual duel with Eliade, 12 13 mainly by means of mutual-reviews and replies, chiefly about magic and 13 14 shamanism. 5 Along with Vittorio Lanterari and Dario Sabbatucci, he also 14 15 remained mostly uninfluenced by Eliade’s theories, methods, and his- 15 16 torical conclusions. De Martino remained sceptical of Eliade’s endeavour 16 17 throughout his life. He also remained sceptical of another coeval giant in 17 18 the field, Claude Lévi-Strauss, who himself ignored or disregarded both 18 19 de Martino and Eliade throughout his career – even though other paral- 19 20 lels among these scholars do exist (Testa 2015). 20 21 Perhaps more importantly, de Martino wrote what is likely the most 21 22 important Italian critique of PoR, as theorized and diffused by van der 22 23 Leeuw: de Martino 1953–1954 . A dense and rather complex text, this cri- 23 24 tique has been thoroughly analysed in Nanini 2000a . De Martino’s firm 24 25 theoretical and methodological distancing does not prevent him from 25 26 recognizing the great importance, and even the historical primacy, of 26 27 van der Leeuw’s approach in the scientific study of religion: nec cum 27 28 te nec sine te (neither with nor without you), as de Martino concluded, 28 29 a motto that still functions, in part, to describe the entire attitude of 29 30 many Italian scholars of religion of the twentieth century towards PoR, 30 31 31 32 32 33 3. This book has been repeatedly published for decades, in dozens of editions. It has 33 34 been taught to dozens of cohorts of students, and, in spite of its author’s intentions, 34 6 it is probably the work most influenced by Eliade in the entire production of the 35 35 “Roman School”. 36 4. Be it noticed here that Brelich’s first master, Károly Kerényi, was much prone to 36 37 archetypical and irrationalist types of explanations for religious matters, and was 37 38 methodologically much closer – unsurprisingly – to phenomenology and Eliade 38 than Brelich’s second master, Pettazzoni. 39 5. The reviews, critiques, and exchanges between de Martino and Eliade have been 39 40 the object of a rather rich scholarship, which is mostly reported and discussed in 40 41 Testa (2015). 41 42 6. English translation presented at the 2018 EASR conference. 115 42 ONLINE Alessandro Testa 1 and also the attitude of the most dissident ones (after all, criticizing and 1 2 refusing a specific tradition of studies also means taking it into consid- 2 3 eration seriously). In addition, the influence of Eliadian PoR, especially 3 4 his idea of religion as a “rupture of levels” has also been noticed in Ugo 4 5 Bianchi (Stausberg 2009, 267). 5 6 In short, a veritable direct or indirect influence of Eliade is only 6 7 completely absent, in my opinion, in scholars such as Dario Sabbatucci, 7 8 Vittorio Lanternari and Cristiano Grottanelli, although of course they 8 9 discuss his ideas and influence in their works. The latter two developed 9 10 a distaste for PoR because they considered it too theological (as did 10 11 others) and for Eliade more because of his alleged political views than 11 12 for his scholarship (a motivation which is not to be discovered in other 12 13 Italian scholars until the sixties or even seventies of the last century). In 13 14 Lanternari, a more prolific author and a more internationally known one 14 15 than Grottanelli, this also happened, probably, because of his experience 15 16 as a fieldworker (which Eliade never was) and his interest in more con- 16 17 temporary matters, beyond a genuine methodological distance between 17 18 his materialistic stance and those that, on the contrary, opted for fideis- 18 19 tic/theological, irrationalistic and/or phenomenological ones. 19 20 In Sabbatucci, we find another true example of an Italian religionist 20 21 showing a profound, genuine theoretical incompatibility with Eliade, 21 22 van der Leeuw and classical phenomenology more generally: if we con- 22 23 sider that, as Casadio writes in the interview (and I firmly believe) , “the 23 24 claim that the sacred (religion) constitutes a unique domain, irreducible 24 25 to any other dimension within human experience” is “distinctly phe- 25 26 nomenological”, then the least phenomenological of Italian scholars of 26 27 religions was precisely Dario Sabbatucci, who, in a rather structuralist 27 28 fashion (and probably precisely on the basis of the direct influence of 28 29 Lévi-Strauss’s speculation, as I claim in Testa 2010), did not credit any 29 30 ontological autonomy to religion, 7 and remained unimpressed by irra- 30 31 tionalistic or phenomenological approaches throughout his career. 31 32 It is thus perhaps not by chance that the greatest interest in PoR and 32 33 in Eliade in more recent scholars has been shown by two disciples of 33 34 Bianchi, the one Italian professor in the history of religions of his gener- 34 35 ation who did not stand in fierce stance against PoR: I refer to Paola Pisi, 35 36 36 37 7. Lévi-Strauss notoriously held Eliade’s work and thought in utter disregard. 37 38 However, Lévi-Strauss’s and Sabbatucci’s political views were also at odds, not to 38 39 say completely opposite. Moreover, Sabbatucci remains one of the most parochial 39 scholars of religion Italy produced throughout the twentieth century, even though 40 he strongly influenced certain French historical anthropologists (namely Marcel 40 41 Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant: Testa 2010). Lévi-Strauss probably never heard 41 42 of Sabbatucci in his life. 42 116 An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) 1 who devoted a few book-long articles to Eliade and to the history of the 2 history of religions, and especially Giovanni Casadio, who has devoted 3 numerous books and writings to Italian religionists as well as to Eliade 4 (unlike Casadio, Pisi was an active scholar only for a relatively short span 5 of time). 6 In the works and thought of Casadio, a tension can be found between 7 different visions of history, religion, and the role religion and particular 8 religions have had in history: for example, in one of his last books, which 9 is dedicated to the historiography of shamanism “before and after Eliade” 10 (Casadio 2014), we see clearly at work a theoretical-methodological – if 11 not epistemological – tension between two different conceptions of 12 history of religions: the former could be defined as historicist and rel13 ativistic, the latter historicist and phenomenological. The former theo14 rizes a form of “absolute” historicism, which would lead to a relativistic 15 posture undermining the very idea of shamanism (here read: religion) 16 itself; according to this vision, each cultural fact conventionally defined 17 or definable as shamanic should be investigated according to their own 18 developments, specificities, and contexts, and perhaps associated (but 19 nothing else than that) to others on the basis of analogies, homogenei20 ties, and homologies, 8 just for the sake of saving the comparative method. 21 The latter embraces a historical-phenomenological vision according to 22 which the individuation (or construction) of a religious type, like that of 23 shamanism, cannot but depend on the recognition and the acceptance of 24 an ontological or experiential (and maybe also morphological or histori25 cal) “kernel”, in other words, a sort of “essence”, that would associate all 26 the phenomena that contribute to recognizing/constructing such a type. 27 Perhaps another sort of “crypto-phenomenology” amongst the Italians? 28 Last but perhaps not least – considering his prominence in historical 29 sciences – comes the work of Carlo Ginzburg: an Eliadian influence on his 30 conception of shamanism – which in turn informs his most renowned 31 work about the European Sabbath (Ginzburg 1991) – is easily recogniza32 ble, in spite of the author’s overt dislike of Eliade’s methodology . 33 34 Alessandro Testa (b. 1983) is a Lecturer and Research Fellow at the Department 35 of Social Sciences, Charles University, Prague. He has a background in Classics, 36 History, Religious Studies, and Anthropology. In the last 15 years he has studied, 37 worked, or undertaken ethnographic fieldwork in Italy, France, Estonia, Czech 38 Republic, Germany, Austria, and Catalonia (Spain). He can write and speak seven 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 languages and has a good understanding or a passive knowledge of another half 40 41 8. For a typological distinction between analogy, homogeneity, and homology in 39 40 41 42 comparing similar religious traits or facts, see Testa (2017). 117 42 ONLINE Alessandro Testa 1 a dozen. His publications include some seventy articles in journals and chapters 2 in volumes, four edited volumes, and four books (Miti antichi e moderne mitologie. 3 Saggi di storia delle religioni e storia degli studi sul mondo antico, 2010; Il carnevale 4 dell’uomo-animale, 2014; La religiosità dei Sanniti, 2016; Rituality and Social (Dis) 5 Order: The Historical Anthropology of Popular Carnival in Europe, 2020). 6 7 References 8 9 10 Bianchi, Ugo. 1975. The History of Religions. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 11 Bianchi, Ugo. 1980. “The Category of Dualism in the Historical Phenomenology 12 of Religion.” Temenos 16: 10–25. https://doi.org/10.33356/temenos.6251 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Bianchi, Ugo, Bleeker, C. J. and Bausani, Alessandro (eds). 1972. Problems and Methods of the History of Religions. Leiden: Brill. Bleeker, C. J. 1959. “The Phenomenological Method.” Numen 6(2): 96–111. Bleeker, C. J. 1972. “The Contribution of the Phenomenology of Religion to the Study of the History of Religions.” In Problems and Methods of the History of Religions, edited by Ugo Bianchi, C. J. Bleeker and Alessandro Bausani, 35–54. Leiden: Brill. Brelich Angelo. 1966. Introduzione alla storia delle religioni. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo. 23 Campanini, Massimo. 2017. “Filosofia e Corano: un percorso ermeneutico tra 24 ontologia e fenomenologia.” In Appropriation, Interpretation and Criticism: 25 Philosophical and Theological Exchanges between the Arabic, Hebrew and 26 Latin Intellectual Traditions, edited by A. Fidora and N. Polloni, 303–321. 27 Barcelona: Féderation Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales. 28 https://doi.org/10.1484/m.tema-eb.4.2017182 29 Casadio, Giovanni. 2010. “Comparative Religion Scholars in Debate: Theology 30 vs History in Letters Addressed to Ugo Bianchi”. In Chasing Down Religion: 31 In the Sights of History and the Cognitive Sciences. Essays in Honor of Luther H. 32 Martin, edited by P. Pachis and D. Wiebe, 59–80. Thessaloniki: Barbounaki 33 Publications. 34 Casadio, Giovanni (ed.). 2002. Ugo Bianchi. Una vita per la storia delle religioni. Rome: 35 Il Calamo. https://doi.org/10.4000/kernos.860 36 37 Casadio, Giovanni. 2013. “Ernesto de Martino at Home and Abroad: Fortunes and 38 Misfortunes.” In Studium Sapientiae, edited by A. Cosentino and M. Monaca, 39 75–86. Soveria Mannelli (CS): Rubbettino. 40 Casadio, Giovanni. 2014. Lo sciamanesimo prima e dopo Mircea Eliade, Rome: Il 41 Calamo. https://doi.org/10.5209/ilur.53856 42 118 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 An Interview with Giovanni Casadio (Italy) 1 Cox, James L. 2006. A Guide to the Phenomenology of Religion: Key Figures, Formative 1 2 Influences and Subsequent Debates. London: T. & T. Clark International. 2 3 Cox, James L. 2010. An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Religion. London: T. & 3 4 4 T. Clark International. 5 5 6 De Martino, Ernesto. 1953–1954. “Fenomenologia religiosa e storicismo 6 assoluto.” Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 24–25: 1–25. 7 7 8 De Martino, Ernesto. 1957. “Storicismo e irrazionalismo nella storia delle 8 9 religioni.” Studi e materiali di storia delle religioni 28(1): 89–107. https://doi. 9 10 10 org/10.2307/3269473 11 De Martino, Ernesto. 1995. Storia e metastoria. I fondamenti di una teoria del sacro. 11 12 12 Lecce: Argo. 13 13 Gentile, Giovanni. 1922. “La formazione del monoteismo.” La critica: 298–30. Repr. 14 14 in G. Gentile, Frammenti di storia della filosofia, edited by H. A. Cavallera, 15 15 983–985. Firenze 1999: Le Lettere. https://doi.org/10.3280/sf2015-003008 16 16 17 Gilhus, Ingvild Sælid. 1984. “The Phenomenology of Religion and Theories of 17 18 Interpretation.” Temenos 20: 26–39. 19 Gilhus, Ingvild Sælid. 1994. “Is a Phenomenology of Religion Possible?: A 20 Response to Jeppe Sinding Jensen.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 21 6(2): 163–171. https://doi.org/10.1163/157006894x00082 22 Gilhus, Ingvild Sælid. 1999–2000. “Phenomenology of Religion Critically 23 Observed: Introduction.” Temenos 35–36: 7–23. https://doi.org/10.33356/ 24 temenos.4859 25 Ginzburg, Carlo. 1991. Ecstasies: Deciphering the Witches’ Sabbath, translated by 26 Raymond Rosenthal. New York: Pantheon (original edition: Storia notturna: 27 Una decifrazione del sabba, Torino: Einaudi, 1989). https://doi.org/10.1086/ 28 ahr/97.3.837 29 30 Hultkrantz, Åke. 1970. “The Phenomenology of Religion: Aims and Methods.” Temenos 6: 68–88. 31 32 Jackson, Peter and Thurfjell, David. 2008. “Introduction: Reflections on the 33 Concept of ‘Border’ and its Present Status in the Study of Religion.” 34 Temenos 44(1): 6–11. 35 Jensen, Jeppe Sinding. 1993. “Is a Phenomenology of Religion Possible? 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