BODY, CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS AND RELIGION

The article examines the extent to which the cognitive sciences shed light on crucial aspects of religion. According to George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, the theory of metaphors explains how corporeality structurally determines religious representations, thus making it possible to talk about an "embodied spirituality". The paper seeks to show that in order to arrive at a critical judgment about religion, the proposal needs to resolve at least two problems: on the one hand, that of reducing religion to a matter of conceptual systems, and, on the other, that of downplaying the hermeneutical issue for the assessment of religious experience.