{"title":"Puffing, Vexation, and Emanations in the Cognitive Science of Religion","authors":"Tenzan Eaghll","doi":"10.1558/imre.26667","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.26667","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>.</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139265388","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This study presents a case of East–West entanglement not confined to dynamics internal to the Western trajectory of production and critique of Eurocentric notions of religion. It explores how the critical opening initiated by Wilfred Cantwell Smith in 1962 against reifying “religion” cannot be treated exclusively as an antecedent to the critical genealogy of religion performed by Talal Asad. We suggest that it needs to be read in the context of Smith’s collaboration with Toshihiko Izutsu, whose approach possessed a stronger counterhegemonic potential than the genealogists’ interventions in the critique of religion, which are still inscribed within a Western conceptual compass. We argue that thanks to his original skills as a philosopher of language, Izutsu put to better fruition Smith’s embryonic approach to the power-fraught character of language and discourse by studying Islamic traditions semantically, discursively, and contextually.
{"title":"ReOrienting Religion?","authors":"Armando Salvatore, K. Obuse","doi":"10.1558/imre.23162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23162","url":null,"abstract":"This study presents a case of East–West entanglement not confined to dynamics internal to the Western trajectory of production and critique of Eurocentric notions of religion. It explores how the critical opening initiated by Wilfred Cantwell Smith in 1962 against reifying “religion” cannot be treated exclusively as an antecedent to the critical genealogy of religion performed by Talal Asad. We suggest that it needs to be read in the context of Smith’s collaboration with Toshihiko Izutsu, whose approach possessed a stronger counterhegemonic potential than the genealogists’ interventions in the critique of religion, which are still inscribed within a Western conceptual compass. We argue that thanks to his original skills as a philosopher of language, Izutsu put to better fruition Smith’s embryonic approach to the power-fraught character of language and discourse by studying Islamic traditions semantically, discursively, and contextually.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41693506","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) remains an enigma for philosophers, historians and lay audiences. Being chosen to be made “World Teacher” by the Theosophical Society (Adyar), Krishnamurti renounced his demi-godhood, in 1929, and went on to become a spiritual teacher. Krishnamurti’s vexed life has increasingly come under scrutiny, in the last three decades, owing to his perceived acts of immoral behavior. This correlates to the growing culture of public denunciations of acts of moral transgressions that we have witnessed particularly over the last decade. Considering the importance of the themes of conscience and morality within Krishnamurti’s “spiritual anarchy,” this paper tries to locate the absent centre of his seemingly decentered philosophy. It draws a comparative trajectory of the centrality of these themes in the lives and works of his philosophical parents, Helena P. Blavatsky and Annie Besant. The paper contends that Krishnamurti’s conception of morality and its role in human suffering needs to be examined, that his philosophy atavistically recapitulates the struggles of Blavatsky and Besant and, ultimately, that his perceived forays into unconscientious realms do not disqualify but reaffirm his crusade against the “still small voice of conscience.”
{"title":"Jiddu Krishnamurti and the Problem of Conscience","authors":"Arup K Chatterjee","doi":"10.1558/imre.21305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.21305","url":null,"abstract":"Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) remains an enigma for philosophers, historians and lay audiences. Being chosen to be made “World Teacher” by the Theosophical Society (Adyar), Krishnamurti renounced his demi-godhood, in 1929, and went on to become a spiritual teacher. Krishnamurti’s vexed life has increasingly come under scrutiny, in the last three decades, owing to his perceived acts of immoral behavior. This correlates to the growing culture of public denunciations of acts of moral transgressions that we have witnessed particularly over the last decade. Considering the importance of the themes of conscience and morality within Krishnamurti’s “spiritual anarchy,” this paper tries to locate the absent centre of his seemingly decentered philosophy. It draws a comparative trajectory of the centrality of these themes in the lives and works of his philosophical parents, Helena P. Blavatsky and Annie Besant. The paper contends that Krishnamurti’s conception of morality and its role in human suffering needs to be examined, that his philosophy atavistically recapitulates the struggles of Blavatsky and Besant and, ultimately, that his perceived forays into unconscientious realms do not disqualify but reaffirm his crusade against the “still small voice of conscience.”","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41491470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
While strictly conceptual matters have dominated much of the discussion concerning religion as an object of scientific research, different understandings of the scientific character of the study of religion have also always had a significant role in the scholarly self-understanding. Here two significant conceptualizations of this scientific character—that of the so-called new scientificity (as advocated mostly by scholars from the cognitive science of religion) as well as that of the comparative history of religion—are described in detail and then thoroughly analyzed and criticized. It will be shown how both conceptualizations face problems, but those of the new scientificity are significantly more serious. Lastly, some more general reflections will be offered concerning the significance of these matters for the study of religion overall.
{"title":"Dilemmas with Disciplinary Hierarchies and Ideals of Scientific Research in the Study of Religion","authors":"Indrek Peedu","doi":"10.1558/imre.23314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23314","url":null,"abstract":"While strictly conceptual matters have dominated much of the discussion concerning religion as an object of scientific research, different understandings of the scientific character of the study of religion have also always had a significant role in the scholarly self-understanding. Here two significant conceptualizations of this scientific character—that of the so-called new scientificity (as advocated mostly by scholars from the cognitive science of religion) as well as that of the comparative history of religion—are described in detail and then thoroughly analyzed and criticized. It will be shown how both conceptualizations face problems, but those of the new scientificity are significantly more serious. Lastly, some more general reflections will be offered concerning the significance of these matters for the study of religion overall.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45697272","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article will problematize shamanism as an analytical category and challenge it through a critical reading of scholarship about the area that has attracted scholars and travelers in search of Siberian shamanism— Sakha Sire [Sakha: ‘Sakha Land’], currently known as the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic. The term ‘shaman’ entered European and then global imaginations and vocabularies through the writings of eighteenth-century travelers and missionaries. I argue that the term was initially reserved for Siberian practitioners to mark their assumed ethnic and civilizational differences. With the added -ism, shamanism became one of the imagined commonalities of people grouped by Eurocentric thinkers into “tribal,” “primitive,” and “aboriginal.” The translation and categorization of Sakha practitioners oiuun to shamans resulted not only in exotification and dehumanization of Sakha practitioners, but also in their imprisonment during the Soviet regime. As this article will argue, the study of Siberian shamanism tells us more about colonial scholarships on shamanism than about the practices and people who inhabit the imagined region of Siberia.
{"title":"What does Siberian Shamanism do for the Academic Study of Religion?","authors":"L. Nikanorova","doi":"10.1558/imre.23253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23253","url":null,"abstract":"This article will problematize shamanism as an analytical category and challenge it through a critical reading of scholarship about the area that has attracted scholars and travelers in search of Siberian shamanism— Sakha Sire [Sakha: ‘Sakha Land’], currently known as the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic. The term ‘shaman’ entered European and then global imaginations and vocabularies through the writings of eighteenth-century travelers and missionaries. I argue that the term was initially reserved for Siberian practitioners to mark their assumed ethnic and civilizational differences. With the added -ism, shamanism became one of the imagined commonalities of people grouped by Eurocentric thinkers into “tribal,” “primitive,” and “aboriginal.” The translation and categorization of Sakha practitioners oiuun to shamans resulted not only in exotification and dehumanization of Sakha practitioners, but also in their imprisonment during the Soviet regime. As this article will argue, the study of Siberian shamanism tells us more about colonial scholarships on shamanism than about the practices and people who inhabit the imagined region of Siberia.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48526720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This case study contributes to ongoing debates about religious comparativism by focusing on the emergence of the notion of “esoteric” as a de facto comparative category since the seventeenth century. Scholars have so far restricted their studies to a preconceived “Western esoteric corpus” that limited our view on the majority of source material. This obfuscated the fact that notions such as “esoteric,” “gnosis,” or “Cabala” have been widely employed historically to discuss subjects ranging from the Arabic and Persianate world via India to East Asia. Since the eighteenth century, “esoteric” language formed an integral part of orientalist scholarship, which explains its omnipresence in (South) Asianist scholarship today. This immediately relates to broader issues of religious comparativism: I argue for the necessity of a decentered historiography to understand the development of categories such as “esotericism” and “religion,” not as a unilateral process of “Western” diffusion and projection but through entangled historical exchanges. Based on the approach of global religious history, I provide preliminary insights into what conditioned and structured these exchanges.
{"title":"The Emergence of “Esoteric” as a Comparative Category","authors":"J. Strube","doi":"10.1558/imre.23260","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23260","url":null,"abstract":"This case study contributes to ongoing debates about religious comparativism by focusing on the emergence of the notion of “esoteric” as a de facto comparative category since the seventeenth century. Scholars have so far restricted their studies to a preconceived “Western esoteric corpus” that limited our view on the majority of source material. This obfuscated the fact that notions such as “esoteric,” “gnosis,” or “Cabala” have been widely employed historically to discuss subjects ranging from the Arabic and Persianate world via India to East Asia. Since the eighteenth century, “esoteric” language formed an integral part of orientalist scholarship, which explains its omnipresence in (South) Asianist scholarship today. This immediately relates to broader issues of religious comparativism: I argue for the necessity of a decentered historiography to understand the development of categories such as “esotericism” and “religion,” not as a unilateral process of “Western” diffusion and projection but through entangled historical exchanges. Based on the approach of global religious history, I provide preliminary insights into what conditioned and structured these exchanges.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46097177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
De Ray argues that relying on inference to the best explanation (IBE) requires the metaphysical belief that most phenomena have explanations. I object that instead the metaphysical belief requires the use of IBE. De Ray uses IBE himself to establish theism that God is the cause of the metaphysical belief, and thus he has the burden of establishing the metaphysical belief independently of using IBE. Naturalism that the world is the cause of the metaphysical belief is preferable to theism, contrary to what de Ray thinks.
De Ray认为，依靠推理得出最佳解释（IBE）需要形而上学的信念，即大多数现象都有解释。相反，我反对形而上学的信仰需要使用IBE。雷利用IBE自己建立了上帝是形而上学信仰的原因的有神论，因此他有独立于IBE建立形而上学信仰的负担。自然主义认为世界是形而上学信仰的原因，这比有神论更可取，与德雷的想法相反。
{"title":"Inference to the Best Explanation, Naturalism, and Theism","authors":"Seungbae Park","doi":"10.1558/imre.21371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.21371","url":null,"abstract":"De Ray argues that relying on inference to the best explanation (IBE) requires the metaphysical belief that most phenomena have explanations. I object that instead the metaphysical belief requires the use of IBE. De Ray uses IBE himself to establish theism that God is the cause of the metaphysical belief, and thus he has the burden of establishing the metaphysical belief independently of using IBE. Naturalism that the world is the cause of the metaphysical belief is preferable to theism, contrary to what de Ray thinks.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47184358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Global Perspectives on Religion as an Object of Historical and Social Scientific Study","authors":"Florian Zemmin","doi":"10.1558/imre.24236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.24236","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44894841","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion as a category and object of study in (Western) academia has under-gone a sequence of upheavals over the last several decades, responding to significant transformations in global society and as a reflection of internal disciplinary developments. This paper focuses on such transformations and developments principally within the disciplines the sociology of religion and religious studies. After summarizing these transformations, it presents three interrelated arguments: a) Both transformations, in the disciplines and in the larger social context, are the latest versions of very long discus-sion and development that have their roots in the nineteenth-twentieth century foundation of religion as an analytic category, in the imperial/colonial spread and glocal appropriation of the category of religion, and in the “Westphalian” institutional modeling of religion with the modern nation-state. b) The current transformations in the “religious field” are a reflection of a decline in that modeling, yielding further uncertainty about how reli-gion should be conceived. c) The ideas of religion and secularization should not be discarded, but should be contextualized in a broader diversity of categorization that goes beyond the binary modeling of religion/not-religion (or secular). A systems-theoretical approach informs all three arguments.
{"title":"Religion in the 21st Century","authors":"P. Beyer","doi":"10.1558/imre.23665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23665","url":null,"abstract":"Religion as a category and object of study in (Western) academia has under-gone a sequence of upheavals over the last several decades, responding to significant transformations in global society and as a reflection of internal disciplinary developments. This paper focuses on such transformations and developments principally within the disciplines the sociology of religion and religious studies. After summarizing these transformations, it presents three interrelated arguments: a) Both transformations, in the disciplines and in the larger social context, are the latest versions of very long discus-sion and development that have their roots in the nineteenth-twentieth century foundation of religion as an analytic category, in the imperial/colonial spread and glocal appropriation of the category of religion, and in the “Westphalian” institutional modeling of religion with the modern nation-state. b) The current transformations in the “religious field” are a reflection of a decline in that modeling, yielding further uncertainty about how reli-gion should be conceived. c) The ideas of religion and secularization should not be discarded, but should be contextualized in a broader diversity of categorization that goes beyond the binary modeling of religion/not-religion (or secular). A systems-theoretical approach informs all three arguments.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44724270","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The critique of power asymmetries reproduced by Eurocentric and essentialist conceptualizations of generic terms and analytical concepts is well-established in religious studies and gender studies, especially when investigating Islam. Yet each discipline is in danger of omitting the most critical discussions of the other. Discussions about conceptualizations of religion and Islam, even those adapting theoretically sophisticated global history approaches, largely ignore gender. Scholars of gender studies, in turn, have barely queried or nuanced “religion” and “Islam” as categories. Thus, they fail to take into account how conceptualizations of religion and Islam as generic terms have affected the power relations under scrutiny. This article aims to address this momentous mutual exclusion by examining a tract published in 1940 in the context of Anglophone Southeast and South Asian Muslim intellectual circles. Drawing on Judith Butler’s critical engagement with Luce Irigaray and on Butler’s notion of subversion by thoroughgoing appropriation and redeployment and situating this case study within the mentioned mutual exclusion, I argue that studying the relation between concepts of femininity and masculinity and concepts of religion and Islam poses important questions regarding colonial, androcentric, and phallogocentric epistemologies underlying contemporary religious studies and gender studies. I contend that religion-making and gender-making should not be investigated apart from each other.
{"title":"Gender and the Conceptualization of Religion and Islam","authors":"G. Maltese","doi":"10.1558/imre.23274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.23274","url":null,"abstract":"The critique of power asymmetries reproduced by Eurocentric and essentialist conceptualizations of generic terms and analytical concepts is well-established in religious studies and gender studies, especially when investigating Islam. Yet each discipline is in danger of omitting the most critical discussions of the other. Discussions about conceptualizations of religion and Islam, even those adapting theoretically sophisticated global history approaches, largely ignore gender. Scholars of gender studies, in turn, have barely queried or nuanced “religion” and “Islam” as categories. Thus, they fail to take into account how conceptualizations of religion and Islam as generic terms have affected the power relations under scrutiny. This article aims to address this momentous mutual exclusion by examining a tract published in 1940 in the context of Anglophone Southeast and South Asian Muslim intellectual circles. Drawing on Judith Butler’s critical engagement with Luce Irigaray and on Butler’s notion of subversion by thoroughgoing appropriation and redeployment and situating this case study within the mentioned mutual exclusion, I argue that studying the relation between concepts of femininity and masculinity and concepts of religion and Islam poses important questions regarding colonial, androcentric, and phallogocentric epistemologies underlying contemporary religious studies and gender studies. I contend that religion-making and gender-making should not be investigated apart from each other.","PeriodicalId":53963,"journal":{"name":"Implicit Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-07-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46447571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：