Rationality and the Study of Religion - Couverture rigide

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 8772886927 ISBN 13 : 9788772886923

Editeur : Aarhus University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Does rationality, the intellectual bedrock of all science, apply to the study of religion? Religion, arguably the most subjective area of human behaviour, has particular challenges associated with its study. Attracting crowd-healers, conjurers, the pious and the prophetic alongside comparativists and sceptics, it excites opinions and generalisations whilst seldom explicitly staking out the territory for the discussions in which it partakes. Increasingly, scholars argue that religious study needs to define and critique its own field, and to distinguish itself from theology and other non-objective disciplines. Yet how can rational techniques be applied to beliefs and states of mind regarded by some as beyond the scope of human reason? Can these be made empirically testable, or comparable and replicable within academic communities? Can science explicate religion without reducing it to mere superstition, or redefine its truth in some empirical but meaningful way? Featuring contributions from leading international experts including Donald Wiebe, Roger Trigg and Michael Pye, Rationality and the Study of Religion gets under the surface of the religious studies discipline to expose the ideologies beneath. Reopening debate in a neglected yet philosophically significant field, it questions the role of rationality in religious anthropology, natural history and anti-scientific theologies, with implications not only for supposedly objective disciplines but for our deepest attitudes to personal experience. 'Interesting and important.

A propos du livre

Book Description

Religion, arguably the most subjective area of human behavior, has particular challenges associated with its study. Attracting crowd-healers, conjurers, the pious and the prophetic alongside comparativists and skeptics, it excites opinions and generalizations whilst seldom explicitly staking out the territory for the discussions in which it partakes. Increasingly, scholars argue that religious study needs to define and critique its own field, and to distinguish itself from theology and other non-objective disciplines. Yet how can rational techniques be applied to beliefs and states of mind regarded by some as beyond the scope of human reason? Can these be made empirically testable, or comparable and replicable within academic communities? Can science explicate religion without reducing it to mere superstition, or redefine its truth in some empirical but meaningful way?

About the author

Jeppe Sinding Jensen is Associate Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Aarhus, and is co-editor of Religion, Tradition and Renewal (Aarhus, 1991). Luther H. Martin holds a professorship in religion at the University of Vermont.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Aarhus University Press
• Date d'édition: 1997
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 8772886927
• ISBN 13: 9788772886923
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 200
• Éditeur: Jensen Jeppe Sinding, Martin Luther H
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
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