The Ethics of Religious Studies

2021 ◽  
pp. 18-42
Author(s):  
Richard B. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Education ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Theoretical Justification ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Routine Work ◽  
Shadow Cast ◽  
Value Neutrality

This chapter argues that the study of religion lacks an “ethics of religious studies,” by which the author means a theoretical justification of the guild. Focusing on a 1971 report by Claude Welch, Graduate Education in Religion: A Critical Study, it targets Welch’s refusal to provide such a justification and explains its silence by referencing the long shadow cast by Protestant thinking about the dangers of self-justification. It is argued that Welch’s argument erects a firewall between the study of religion and the justification of that study, one that reinforces the commitment to value-neutrality that is described in chapter 1. To explain the field’s preoccupation with methodology, the chapter turns to Stephen Toulmin’s discussion of scientific disciplines and the importance of having a goal as a condition for organizing mature research. It concludes by sketching the outlines of scholarship in religious studies and the distinction between routine work and metadisciplinary work.

‘Religion,’ ‘the Secular’ and the Critical Study of Religion

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Engler
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
History Of Religion ◽  
Critical History ◽  
Il Y A ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Current ◽  
Academic Study

This essay critically engages Timothy Fitzgerald’s Discourse on Civility and Barbarity (2007), arguing that it takes an important step beyond Fitzgerald’s first book, The Ideology of Religious Studies ( 2000 ), in diagnosing a current malaise of the academic study of religion and in modelling a way past this malaise. Highlighting this valuable aspect of the book, I argue, requires correcting certain problems with its argument. Specifically, there is a tension between two overarching goals: writing “a critical history of ‘religion’ as a category,” and criticizing “modern discourses on generic religion.” Once these genealogical and critical projects are brought into more effective alignment, the book models an approach where a properly critical study of religion begins with a contingently and strategically theorized domain of ‘religion’ and explores its relation to other domains—not only ‘the secular.’ Cet essai reconsidère d’un œil critique le livre Discourse on Civility and Barbarity (2007), de Timothy Fitzgerald. Il soutien qu’il donne un pas important au-delà du premier livre de Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies ( 2000 ), dans les faits de diagnostiquer une malaise actuelle de l’étude des religions et de modeler une piste alternative. Pourtant, pour accentuer cet aspect important du livre, on doit corriger des problèmes logiques avec son argument. Spécialement, il y a une tension problématique entre les deux buts du livre : l’écriture « d’une histoire critique de ‘religion’ comme une catégorie »; et la critique « des discours modernes sur la religion générique ». Dès que ces projets généalogiques et critiques sont apportés dans une meilleure alignement, le livre modèle une approche de grande valeur : c’est le travail d’une étude proprement critique du concept ‘de religion’ de le suivre où il mène, et d’analyser ses relations avec des autres concepts.

Epilogue

2021 ◽  
pp. 303-306
Author(s):  
Richard B. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
The Future ◽  
Value Neutrality ◽  
Regime Of Truth

The epilogue concludes the book by clarifying how Critical Humanism makes possible an ethics of religious studies. Positioned against an episteme that draws its sustenance from Reformation, Enlightenment, and post-Enlightenment thinking, Critical Humanism provides reasons that enable present and future generations to grasp the values of studying religion and provides a model of reasoning that can break the spell of the field’s regime of truth of value-neutrality. It thereby enables scholars to overcome a long-standing repression of desire and discover humanistic excellences according to which motives for studying religion are desirable and worthy of attachment and transmission. Seen in this way, the epilogue argues, Critical Humanism is a vocation. It allows scholars to recommend religious studies for the present and in ways that make possible hope for the future.

scholarly journals Ritual explained: interdisciplinary answers to Tinbergen's four questions

2020 ◽  
Vol 375 (1805) ◽  
pp. 20190419
Author(s):  
Cristine H. Legare ◽  
Mark Nielsen
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Fundamental Aspect ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Cognition And Culture ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Key Questions

Convergent developments across social scientific disciplines provide evidence that rituals are a psychologically prepared and culturally inherited behavioural hallmark of our species. The dramatic diversity of ritual practices ranges from simple greetings to elaborate religious ceremonies, from the benign to life-threatening. Yet our scientific understanding of this core human trait remains limited. Explaining the universality, functionality and diversity of ritual requires insight from multiple disciplines. This special issue integrates research from anthropology, archaeology, biology, primatology, cognitive science, psychology, religious studies and demography to build an interdisciplinary account of ritual. The objective is to contribute to an integrative explanation of ritual by addressing Tinbergen's four key questions. These include answering ultimate questions about the (i) phylogeny and (ii) adaptive functions of ritual; and proximate questions about the (iii) mechanisms and (iv) ontogeny of ritual. The intersection of these four complementary lines of inquiry yields new avenues for theory and research into this fundamental aspect of the human condition, and in so doing, into the coevolution of cognition and culture. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours’.

Abandonment Issues: Reflections on Redescription, Rectification, and J.Z. Smith’s “Trading Places”

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-70
Author(s):  
Andrew Durdin
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Do So

Abstract I reflect here on Jonathan Z. Smith’s influence on my approach to the study of religion, interweaving these reflections into the outline of a larger argument for the continued critical study of the category of religion—a project central to Smith’s intellectual project. While many have pursued Smith’s denaturalization of the category of religion, few have tried to imagine what Religious Studies might look like without religion as its primary explanatory category. Here I argue that Smith’s notions of redescription and rectification offer clues for how such a methodological shift might work. I do so by looking specifically at Smith’s brief essay “Trading Places” where he explicitly recommends rejecting efforts to theorize “magic.” I argue that not only do his considerations apply to the category of religion but also that the procedures he discusses in “Trading Place” might be understood as a more radical view of redescription and rectification.

scholarly journals A new method for constructing kernel vectors in morphological associative memories of binary patterns

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiannis Boutalis
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Intelligent Control ◽  
Image Understanding ◽  
Input Pattern ◽  
New Method ◽  
Associative Memories ◽  
Theoretical Justification ◽  
High Recall ◽  
Scientific Disciplines

Kernel vectors represent an elegant representation for the retrieval of pattern associations, where the input patterns are corrupted by both erosive and dilative noise. However, their action completely fails when a particular kind of erosive noise, even of very low percentage, corrupts the input pattern. In this paper, a theoretical justification of this fact is given and a new method is proposed for the construction of kernel vectors for binary patterns associations. The new kernels are not binary but ?gray?, because they contain elements with values in the interval [0, 1]. It is shown, both theoretically and experimentally that the new kernel vectors carry the good properties of conventional kernel vectors and, at the same time, they can be easily computed. Moreover, they do not suffer from the particular noise deficiency of the conventional kernel vectors. The recalling result is in general a gray pattern, which in the sequel undergoes a simple thresholding action and passes through a simple Hamming network to produce high recall rates, even in heavily corrupted patterns. Retrieval of pattern associations is very significant for a variety of scientific disciplines including data analysis, signal and image understanding and intelligent control.

scholarly journals Automation and digitalization of accounting: similarities and differences

2021 ◽  
pp. 9-14
Author(s):  
K. Afanaseva
Keyword(s):  
Accounting Information ◽  
Digital Method ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Theoretical Justification ◽  
Goal Object ◽  
Distinctive Features ◽  
Routine Work ◽  
Similarities And Differences

In the modern world, the accounting methodology is undergoing significant changes under the influence of new trends of our time - digitalization and automation. Modern IT-technologies make it possible to optimize the accounting process, simplifying the routine work of specialists or completely freeing them from it. The article discusses the existing approaches to the concepts of automation and digitalization of accounting, identifies their similar and distinctive features according to a number of criteria: goal, object, subject, resources, technologies, stages, result. The author investigates the essence of automation and digitalization of the accounting process, presents a theoretical justification for the allocation of a new digital method for registering accounting information.

scholarly journals Ukrainian Religious Studies in the Context of World Religion Science

2006 ◽  
pp. 69-92
Author(s):  
Liudmyla O. Fylypovych
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Community ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Western Science ◽  
World Religion ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
The One ◽  
Scientific Atheism

Ukrainian religious studies has recently entered the world scientific community. Acquaintance with Western science, which has proven to be heterogeneous, often based on different methodological approaches and methodological means, has coincided with difficult internal transformations that have undergone all humanitarian knowledge in Ukraine after worldviews and political changes in society. In pursuit of its identity, domestic religious studies went, on the one hand, by contrasting itself with theology, and on the other, by distinguishing itself from scientific atheism. At first, the emergence of religious studies from the bosom of ideologized social science was more relevant. In the form of a critical study of religion, Soviet-era religious studies were included in scientific atheism. Therefore, religious studies came not as knowledge of religion, but as its critique.

scholarly journals The contradiction between traditionalism and reformism in the context of the formation of religious identity

2013 ◽  
pp. 381-389
Author(s):  
Iryna Klimuk
Keyword(s):  
Religious Identity ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The State ◽  
Religion And Theology ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
Frequency Of Use ◽  
The Individual

The concept of "religious identity" is now the most popular term in terms of frequency of use. Actualization of religious identity as a problem is considered in science, politics, journalism, literature and other spheres of life. The complexity and at the same time the importance of the problem under study requires an interdisciplinary approach to the study of religious identity. The development of the concept of religious identity is associated with scientific disciplines (religious studies, sociology, philosophy, anthropology). But one can not imagine the consideration of this phenomenon without taking into account the theological approach, without which the study of religious identity would be one-sided. One of the most important aspects of religion and theology, which determines the state of religiosity in modern society, is the contradiction between traditionalists and reformers. In our time, they are considered as important factors influencing the formation of the religious identity of the individual.

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