Sacrifice and Self-Sacrifice: A Religious Concept under Transformation
The special issue of the International Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society entitled “Sacrifice and Self-Sacrifice: A Religious Concept under Transformation” is an organic follow up of the international workshop Doomed to Sacrifice?: Existential and Phenomenological Perspectives on Sacrifice and Gender. The selection of articles includes edited presentations read during the workshop as well as new work of scholars engaged with sacrifice.
Thanks to all the contributors. It was a pleasure to work with you!
Abstract
Sacrifice, originally a religious-cultic concept, has become highly secularized and used in various instances for different social phenomena. The current issue puts forward a selection of papers that offer insights into sacrifice and self-sacrifice and focus on the process of transformation of the sacrificial individual. Three main axes put the concrete papers into a dialogue with one another: first, there is the philosophical-theological and gender reflection of the experience of the paradigmatic sacrificial story of the western tradition, i.e., the Akedah (Gen 22); second, the existential-phenomenological interpretation of self-sacrifice in the secular world which nevertheless aims to reveal a higher good – Freedom, Love, or the Good; third, the gender and feminist reflection of the motherly sacrifice of childbirth both in the religious-cultic context and in the secular context which presents childbirth both as a moment of autonomy loss and submission and a moment of women self-emancipation.
Keywords: sacrifice; self-sacrifice; gender; Binding of Isaac (Akedah, Gen 22); existential phenomenology; feminism
