Upcoming Event

What is a Metaphysical Institution? Reflections on the Relationship between Islam and the Modern Project

The most common and consequential concepts scholars use to explore and conceptualize Islam are religion, culture, civilization, and tradition, but what are they? When human beings in the modern world want to name their most ultimate sense of belonging, or their collective state of wisdom and maturity, it is these ideas they reach for, yet they remain at the level of folk-knowledge and are not well-defined even in academia, partly because these kinds of realities are much more mysterious than commonly assumed, and partly because of a certain reticence to explore the deepest reasons why they are so hard to define. What is needed is a consistent, coherent, and comprehensive way of theorizing the nature of human beings in their act of thinking together and living as a conscious “we.” This brings us to the concept of the metaphysical institution.

About the Lecturer

Caner Dagli is an associate professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA). He is a specialist in Quranic studies, Sufism, Islamic philosophy, and interfaith dialogue. He is one of the General Editors of The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (2015). His other publications include Metaphysical Institutions: Islam and the Modern Project (SUNY 2024); Ibn al-ʿArabī and Islamic Intellectual Culture: From Mysticism to Philosophy (2016); and The Oxford Encyclopedia of Science, Philosophy, and Technology in Islam (senior co-editor, 2014). He has written articles for Renovatio: The Journal of Zaytuna College.