Adaptation: Varieties of Religious Experience

I used Adobe Photoshop to layer the cover image of William James' influential publication, Varieties of Religious Experience with Michaelangelo's Creation fresco. The detail of the hand of Adam reaching out to the hand of God was chosen to illustrate James' publication.

In 2002 Canadian philosopher, Charles Taylor published his book entitled Varieties of Religious Experience in which he responds to not only the ideas initiated by James but also a century of contributions to this robust conversation.

As we explore issues of the Creative Commons in terms of what can legally and/or ethically be shared there is an urgency to not forget that all our intelligent conversations, visual, textual or musical, etc were and are built over centuries, each remembering another, answering back, building, deconstructing, arguing, finding resonance or dissonance but always citing the other ... Through this process, in the rapidly disappearing present we understand a little more of our communal past so that we can have a greater measure of determining the kind of future we want.

In Acts of Religion (2002) an anthology on religion, Jacques Derrida raised the questions of tradition, faith and sacredness, moving towards a return of religion with its values of spirituality, community and faith. Derrida's discussions on religion are based on the notion of the Abrahamic, the original, gathering root of the three major montheistic religions also referred to as "People of the Book" as used by Mohammad, Kierkegaard, Scholem and Massignon. Derrida nudges the critical mass forward beyond Nietzsche's proclamation of the demise of religion. This is a project of deconstruction which Derrida (1982) describes as a 'seism of the truth.'