Diversifying Philosophy of Religion: Critiques, Methods and Case Studies 9781350264007, 9781350264038, 9781350264014

Table of contents :
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
Contributors
Acknowledgements
Editor’s introduction
Part I: Critique and methods
Chapter 1: Deprovincializing philosophy of religion: From ‘Faith and Reason’ to the postcolonial revaluation of religious epistemologies
Chapter 2: Postcolonialism and the question of global-critical philosophy of religion
Chapter 3: Why philosophers of religion don’t need ‘Religion’ – at least not for now
Chapter 4: Re-envisioning philosophy of religion from a feminist perspective
Chapter 5: Is philosophy of religion racist?
Chapter 6: Philosophy of religion beyond belief: Thinking with anthropology’s new animists
Chapter 7: Theory and method in the philosophy of religion in China’s Song dynasty
Chapter 8: The theory and practice of the multi-entry approach
Chapter 9: Comparison of religious ideas in philosophy of religion
Chapter 10: The relevance of scriptures
Part II: Case studies
Chapter 11: Ethnographically informed philosophy of religion in a study of Assamese Goddess worship
Chapter 12: Praxis
Chapter 13: Nishida Kitarō’s ‘I and Thou’ through the work of Jessica Benjamin: Towards the issue of equality
Chapter 14: The Nguni traditional ‘religious’ thoughts: The Isintu philosophy of the Zulu/Ndebele people
Chapter 15: Approaching a Lakota philosophy of religion
Chapter 16: Yasukuni, Okinawa and Fukushima: Philosophy of sacrifice in the nuclear age
Chapter 17: Technology and the spiritual: From prayer bots to the singularity
Chapter 18: Can you see the seer? Approaching consciousness from an Advaita Vedānta perspective
Chapter 19: The danger in diversifying philosophy of religion
Index

Citation preview

DIVERSIFYING PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Expanding Philosophy of Religion Series Editors:

J. Aaron Simmons, Furman University, USA Kevin Schilbrack, Appalachian State University, USA A series dedicated to a global, diverse, cross-cultural and comparative philosophy of religion, Expanding Philosophy of Religion encourages underrepresented voices and perspectives and looks beyond its traditional concerns rooted in classical theism, propositional belief, and privileged identities.

Titles in the series include: Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Priority of Questions in Religions, by Nathan Eric Dickman Philosophies of Religion, by Timothy Knepper Collective Intentionality and the Study of Religion, by Andrea Rota Diversifying Philosophy of Religion, edited by Nathan R. B. Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska

DIVERSIFYING PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION CRITIQUES, METHODS AND CASE STUDIES

Edited by Nathan R. B. Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Nathan R. B. Loewen, Agnieszka Rostalska and Contributors, 2023 Nathan R. B. Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. xii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover design by Louise Dugdale Cover image © Eugene Mymrin/Getty Images All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-6400-7 ePDF: 978-1-3502-6401-4 eBook: 978-1-3502-6402-1 Series: Expanding Philosophy of Religion Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www​.bloomsbury​.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS

List of Figures vii Notes on Contributors viii Acknowledgements xii Editor’s introduction Nathan Loewen and Agnieszka Rostalska

1

Part I  Critique and methods

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1 Deprovincializing philosophy of religion: From ‘Faith and Reason’ to the postcolonial revaluation of religious epistemologies Jacob Holsinger Sherman

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2 Postcolonialism and the question of global-critical philosophy of religion Andrew B. Irvine and Purushottama Bilimoria

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3 Why philosophers of religion don’t need ‘Religion’ – at least not for now Timothy D. Knepper

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4 Re-envisioning philosophy of religion from a feminist perspective Morny Joy

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5 Is philosophy of religion racist? Sonia Sikka

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6 Philosophy of religion beyond belief: Thinking with anthropology’s new animists Lisa Landoe Hedrick

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7 Theory and method in the philosophy of religion in China’s Song dynasty Leah Kalmanson

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8 The theory and practice of the multi-entry approach Gereon Kopf

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9 Comparison of religious ideas in philosophy of religion Robert Cummings Neville

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10 The relevance of scriptures Steven G. Smith

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CONTENTS

Part II  Case studies

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11 Ethnographically informed philosophy of religion in a study of Assamese Goddess worship Mikel Burley

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12 Praxis Louis Komjathy 康思奇

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13 Nishida Kitarō’s ‘I and Thou’ through the work of Jessica Benjamin: Towards the issue of equality Uehara Mayuko

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14 The Nguni traditional ‘religious’ thoughts: The Isintu philosophy of the Zulu/Ndebele people Herbert Moyo

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15 Approaching a Lakota philosophy of religion Fritz Detwiler

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16 Yasukuni, Okinawa and Fukushima: Philosophy of sacrifice in the nuclear age Cheung Ching-yuen

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17 Technology and the spiritual: From prayer bots to the singularity Yvonne Förster

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18 Can you see the seer? Approaching consciousness from an Advaita Vedānta perspective Varun Khanna 19 The danger in diversifying philosophy of religion Kevin Schilbrack

279 297

Index 313

FIGURES

8.1 ‘猴子嬉树 monkeys playing in the trees’ 129 8.2 ‘練習独立 practicing independence’ 130 8.3 ‘從樹看狼 seeing the wolf from the safety of the trees’ 130 8.4 ‘猴遇見狼 monkey encounters a wolf ’ 131 8.5 ‘狼狩獵猴 wolf chases the monkey’ 131 8.6 ‘自他停戰 the promise of a truce’132 8.7 ‘營救狼崽 rescuing the wolf cub’ 132 8.8 ‘一起旅行 travelling together’ 133 8.9 ‘看水見狼 looking in the water – seeing the wolf ’ 133 8.10 ‘衆生共存 the co-existence of all beings’ 134 8.11 Picture One illustrates the ‘socialization of the self ’(被社會化) (graph 1 ) 135 8.12 ‘searching for uniqueness’ (尋找自我)135 8.13 Graph 3 indicates the world view of the self-conscious self-illustrated by picture 3 136 8.14 The ‘encounter of an independent other’ (自偶遇他) illustrated by number 8.4 of the ten wolf pictures ruptures the homogenous and meaning-bestowing world (graph 4) 136 8.15 Picture and graph 5 depict the stage of ‘being-for-the-other’ (être-pourautrui, 為他存在). In some sense this is a reversal of picture/graph 3 137 8.16 The third possible result of the encounter between self and other is ‘the truce between self and other’ (自他停戰) as illustrated by picture/graph 6 137 8.17 ‘realizing an underlying commonality’ (找同存異)138 8.18 Picture/graph 8 illustrates the cultivation of this athetic modality 139 8.19 This Cultivation leads to the stage of ‘knowing the other – understanding oneself ’ (知他明自) as illustrated by picture/graph 9 139 8.20 At the foundation of the relation self is a web of multiplicity, which ‘exists together and complements each other’ (共存互補) (graph 10) 139 12.1 ‘Dimensions of (Religious) Praxis’ 198

CONTRIBUTORS

Purushottama Bilimoria works on Indian and Cross-Cultural philosophy, Philosophy of Religion and Critical Thinking. He teaches at San Francisco State University and CalState University campuses in California. Named as Lead Scientist of Purushottama Centre for Study of Indian Philosophy and Culture at Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, he is Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Recent publications include: History of Indian Philosophy (with A. Rayner, 2019), and Engaging Philosophies of Religion: Across Global Boundaries (with Gereon Kopf, 2023). Mikel Burley is Associate Professor of Religion and Philosophy at the University of Leeds. His teaching and research interests encompass philosophy of religion, Indian philosophy, religious studies, theology, literary studies and Wittgenstein studies. His most recent monograph is A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion: Cross-Cultural, Multireligious, Interdisciplinary (2020). Ching-yuen Cheung is Associate Professor at the Department of Area Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo. His areas of expertise are Japanese Philosophy, East Asia Literature and Philosophy of Culture. His major publications include Nishida Kitaro: Japanese Philosophy from a Transcultural Perspective (2017) and Monogatari and Japanese Philosophy: Folkloric Turn in Philosophy (2022). Fritz Detwiler was Professor of Religion at Adrian College, where his primary responsibility was for American Religion and non-Western and Indigenous traditions. His area of specialty is Native American Sacred Traditions with a focus on the Lakotas. Yvonne Förster is Foreign Expert and Research Professor at Shanxi University Taiyuan, China and teaches Philosophy at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany. Her research focuses on human–machine relations, critical posthumanism, the future of technology, theories of embodiment and fashion as art. Recent publications include, “Artificial Intelligence: The Dialectics of Transparency,” in The Democratization of Artificial Intelligence. Net Politics in the Era of Learning Algorithms (2019). Lisa Landoe Hedrick is Assistant Collegiate Professor in the Social Sciences and Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago. Her first book, Whitehead and the Pittsburgh School: Preempting the Problem of Intentionality (Lexington, 2021), explores the relationship between Anglo-American philosophy of language and metaphysics. Her current research concerns critical theory in religious studies in the aftermath of genealogy and postcolonialism. Andrew B. Irvine is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Maryville College. He teaches courses in Western and comparative philosophy, and multi disciplinary

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approaches to religious studies. He is co-editor of the volume Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion (2009). Morny Joy is Professor Emerita in the Department of Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary. She has been named Honorary Life Member of the International Association for the History of Religions. Among her many publications is An Abundance of Riches: Women, Religion, and the Gift (2016) and After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion (2012). Leah Kalmanson is Associate Professor and the Bhagwan Adinath Professor of Jain Studies at the University of North Texas. She works at the intersection of comparative philosophy and global-critical philosophy of religion, with special interests in the liberational philosophies of China’s Song dynasty and related discourses on cultivation and transformation via philosophical practice, both personal and sociopolitical. She is the author of the 2020 book Cross-Cultural Existentialism and co-author with Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach of the 2021 A Practical Guide to World Philosophies. Varun Khanna is Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at Swarthmore College. He specializes in Advaita Vedānta, an Indic philosophy of non-dualism; Pāṇinian Sanskrit grammar and Sanskrit pedagogy; and issues of social justice pertaining to South Asia and the diaspora. Timothy D. Knepper is Professor of Philosophy at Drake University, where he directs The Comparison Project, a public program in comparative philosophy of religion, the study of local-lived religion, and the cultivation of interfaith leadership. He is the author of The Ends of Philosophy of Religion (2013) as well as a textbook in global-critical philosophy of religion Philosophies of Religion: A Global and Critical Introduction. Louis Komjathy 康思奇 has a PhD in Religious Studies from Boston University and is a leading independent scholar-educator, outsider-scholar and translator. He is the founding Director and Distinguished Professor of Unlearning at The Underground University (TUU). His research is in Contemplative Studies, Daoist Studies and Religious Studies, following specific interests in contemplative practice, embodiment, and mystical experience. He has published ten books to date, including the more recent Taming the Wild Horse: An Annotated Translation and Study of the Daoist Horse Taming Pictures (2017) and Introducing Contemplative Studies (2018). Gereon Kopf is currently a professor of East Asian religions and philosophy of religion in the religion department at Luther College. He is the founding editor of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy. He is currently working on Zen: Myth, History, and Diversity (2023), Philosophy of Mind Around the World (2023) and a multi-entry approach to philosophy of religion. Nathan Loewen is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He has two primary areas of research and publication. One focuses on globalizing discourses within the philosophy of religion, and the other analyzes the emerging confluence between Religious Studies and Development Studies. The third area of interest for him is critical digital pedagogy – how today’s students might critically

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CONTRIBUTORS

analyze the structure and function of digital platforms that are being used in higher education. His most recent monograph is Dr Loewen’s most recently published Beyond the Problem of Evil: Derrida and Anglophone Philosophy of Religion (2018). Herbert Moyo is Associate Professor in the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics at the University of Kwazulu-Natal. His research as a comparative philosopher involves interest in demonstrating that, among the Nguni people of Southern Africa, ‘religion’ is neither monotheistic nor a belief system. A recent publication is ‘The Changing Face of Religions in Southern Africa’, in Religious Identity and Renewal in the Twenty-First century: Christian and Moslem Explorations (2016). Robert C. Neville is a philosopher, theologian and scholar of religion who retired in 2018 from Boston University. His interests in philosophy are in metaphysics, philosophical cosmology, epistemology, ethics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of education and aesthetics. He works with Western and East Asian philosophies to find special resources in pragmatism and process thought. Among his numerous publications are the books Ultimates: Philosophical Theology Volume One (2013), Existence: Philosophical Theology Volume Two (2014) and Religion: Philosophical Theology Volume Three (2015) as well as Metaphysics of Goodness: Harmony and Form, Beauty and Art, Obligation and Personhood, Flourishing and Civilization (2019). Agnieszka Rostalska (co-editor) is FWO Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Ghent University, she specializes in Indian and Cross-Cultural Philosophy and her current comparative research focuses on the topics of epistemic authority and testimony (mainly Nyāya), and South Asian debates over social justice in ancient Indian philosophy and contemporary philosophy (mainly social epistemology, virtue ethics and philosophy of religion). Among her publications is ‘Diversity in Philosophy: Vignettes on Comparative Philosophy’, in Key Concepts in World Philosophies : A Toolkit for Philosophers, edited by Sarah Flavel and Chiara Robbiano (2023). Kevin Schilbrack is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University. He teaches and writes about the philosophical study of religions, and he is presently interested in the relevance of embodied cognition and social ontology for understanding what religion is and how it works. He is the author of Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto (2014). Steven G. Smith is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Millsaps College. His most recent publication is Full Responsibility. On Pragmatic, Political, and Other Modes of Action Sharing (2022). Jacob Sherman is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy and Religion Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Chair of the program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at CIIS. He teaches, as well, in the Ecology, Spirituality and Religion program at CIIS. he is the author of Partakers of the Divine: Contemplation and the Practice of Philosophy (2014), and editor of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies (2008).

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Sonia Sikka is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa. Her current research addresses questions about the idea of religion and about the political negotiation of religious as well as cultural identities. She also works on issues of race and racism, and on multicultural education, including a concern with expanding existing philosophy curricula to include non-Western traditions. Among her publications is ‘Indian Islamophobia as Racism’, in Political Quarterly (2022). Mayuko Uehara is Professor of Japanese philosophy at Kyoto University. Her research explores post-Meiji and contemporary philosophy focusing mainly on Kyoto school philosophy based on Nishida’s thought. Her goal is to reinterpret and apply it to concrete, current problems such as translation theory, gender politics, embodiment theory, and new philosophical psychology. Her recent publications include Philosopher la traduction/ Philosophizing Translation (2017) and ‘Les femmes savants hors du système académique du Japon modern’ in Diogène (2021). She currently serves as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Japanese Philosophy (SUNY Press).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The path towards the completion of this volume has involved many people. For that, we greatly appreciate the team at Bloomsbury Academic for their abiding interest in seeing it through. Our early conversations with Colleen Coalter were substantive and constructive, and we thank her for taking an interest in the book. Suzie Nash, also at Bloomsbury, guided two rookie editors through a production process. That process drew heavily upon the use of cloud-based applications since we have never synchronously met in person. In that regard, we greatly appreciate readers who graciously gave their time to offer a detailed and critical review of the manuscript during 2021, a year in which this kind of service to the academy is the sign of an excellent scholar. Thanks, too, for the persistence of the contributing authors to organize a project that got started in the fall of 2019 and came to fruition during 2020. We are deeply indebted to the dozens of scholars who participate in the various projects related to the ‘global-critical philosophy of religion’ project (GCPR). There are well over 100 scholars participating on the project listserv in addition to those listed on the project website (https://globalcritical​.as​.ua​.edu/). The group is sustained by a general, collective interest to rethink topics and categories for the philosophy of religion. The project exists in no small part due to the efforts of Gereon Kopf and Timothy D. Knepper. They have played instrumental roles in every event and outcome related to the project. Thanks goes to J. Aaron Simmons for introducing Nathan Loewen to them over a morning coffee in Atlanta in mid-November 2015. Tim and Gereon were scheming to propose a five-year seminar to the American Academy of Religion. The AAR is to be acknowledged for accepting this proposal. The panelists and attendees of those seminars from 2016 to 2020 were instrumental in generating momentum for the project. Agnieszka Rostalska and Purushottama Bilimoria agreed to join the project thanks to their participation in these seminars. Further momentum was created thanks to the support of several granting agencies. The Wabash Center funded two workshops: ‘Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion: A Summer Pedagogy Workshop’ in 2017, and ‘Teaching Philosophy of Religion Inclusively to Diverse Students’ in 2020. The National Endowment for the Humanities supported a workshop on ‘Developing New Questions and Categories for Cross-Cultural Inquiry’ in 2021. More recently, a 2022 project on ‘Cross-Cultural Conceptions of the Self: South Asia, Africa, and East Asia’ was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, awarded via the Global Philosophy of Religion Project (GPRP) at the University of Birmingham (UK). We believe it is important to recognize how these varieties of events and their participants help to create the academic environment that made this book possible. We also wish to thank our colleagues at the University of Alabama, Ghent University and Leiden University. The Department of Religious Studies at UA is a diverse group that brings their expertise from several fields and disciplines to ‘studying religion in culture’. As such, the department provides an excellent atmosphere for rethinking the philosophy of religion. The web presence of GCPR is due to support from the College

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

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of Arts and Sciences at UA, which continues to provide public-facing platforms and data storage for current and future initiatives of the project. We wish to acknowledge the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University, which supports a rich context for thinking about the diversification of philosophy through its research groups: South Asia Network Ghent (SANGH), Ghent Centre for Buddhist (GCBS) Studies, Jaina Studies at Ghent University, East Asian Culture in Perspective: Identity, Historical Consciousness, Modernity (EACP). The department’s support of academic endeavours (research meetings, seminars and invited lectures) is invaluable for the development of cross-cultural philosophical research with a focus on world traditions. Additional support is provided by the Centre for Intercultural Philosophy (LUCIP) at the Institute for Philosophy at Leiden University, which seeks to promote education and dialogue across the world’s variety of philosophical traditions.

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Editor’s introduction NATHAN LOEWEN AND AGNIESZKA ROSTALSKA

Depending upon who is asked, the philosophy of religion may again be at a crossroads. Several philosophers of religion reflected on the nature of the field around the turn of the millennium. Most of this group were at least partly prompted by the ‘religious turn’ in French philosophy, which may be marked by the ‘Capri seminar’ of 1994 (Derrida and Vattimo 1998) or Dominic Janicaud’s volume in 1996, Phenomenology and the Theological Turn. Very few in this group are philosophers of religion whose methods and topics are typical among US philosophers of religion. But all of this might be changing. What’s interesting is the diversity of questions being asked, which changes the nature of the crossroads from something to do with ‘analytic’ versus ‘continental’ to questions on whether the historic composition of the field can entertain new data and objects of study. The chapters of this volume offer a wide range of responses to the latter question. This collection of essays is one of several outcomes from the ‘Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion’ (GCPR) project, whose inception can be traced to a five-year seminar hosted during the American Academy of Religion annual meetings from 2017 to 2021. Conversations with dozens of scholars at those sessions helped formulate the project’s guiding question, ‘Can philosophy of religion enter the globalized, twenty-first-century world? If so, how?’ (https://globalcritical​.as​.ua​.edu/) The question is meant to prompt constructive responses about the scope of academic output in the field. The conversations at those sessions were undoubtedly informed by the venue, which allowed scholars with specializations and backgrounds outside philosophy of religion to participate. Since the meetings occurred in the United States, nearly all participants hail from Canada and the United States. As a result, the contributions to this volume simultaneously reflect the limited participation of scholars from the global south as well as a diversity of expertise on data and examples from around the world. Each year, various GCPR projects and outcomes reflect an ongoing effort to address these flaws of scholarly composition and representation. Prior to writing this volume’s introduction, we presupposed optimistic answers to the questions, ‘Can philosophy of religion enter the globalized, 21st-century world? If so, how?’ Other edited collections written at the turn of the millennium seem to share this perspective. The introduction here reviews a selection of edited volumes that posed similar questions. The introduction also highlights some contextual developments outside the field that may encourage philosophers of religion to ask these questions. Assembling these context clues to answer the GCPR project’s questions provides a way to ask about the field’s status quo, survey related issues in philosophy and provide some perspective on the chapters of this volume. To clarify how the GCPR project’s questions might be answered, we also review an example related to the Society of Christian Philosophers and the emergence of analytic theology among scholars whose training expertise resides more squarely within philosophy of religion. Doing so may allow readers to understand

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the diversity of the book’s chapters, which set out to offer approaches and perspectives relative to the history of the field. Can philosophy of religion enter the globalized, twenty-first-century world? We can quickly see the terminology of this question resonates quite differently across the humanities. Philosophers of religion working in the English language can quite easily do their work without thinking through developments in the humanities related to global studies of gender, race, economics and politics. Perspicuity is something important for philosophical work, but there are reasons why this orientation does not include sensitivity to developments outside the field’s conventional topics. Turning points for conversations among in other humanities scholars often included Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), or, the so-called theory wars’ of the 1980s in US English departments, or, the critical debates on economic and political globalization at the end of the Cold War. Those conversations set the terminology of ‘global’ and a historical marker like ‘century’ within frameworks that critically ask how scholarly fields of inquiry may be reorganized to be intellectually viable across a variety of foreseeable futures. During the roughly thirty years of those debates in the United States, marked perhaps by the widespread reading of Gustavo Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, Salvation (1971), the demographic and theological ‘center’ of Christianity moved from the Western North to the Global South, such that Christian philosophy could no longer be said to entail a Western, European perspective. By contrast, during that same period debates among Anglophone philosophers of religion were largely about the (so-called) analytic/continental divide (see Simons 2001), whose geopolitical binary was largely unquestioned at the time. That binary depends on the assumption that ‘Europe’ is the ‘continent’, rather than a region of South America, Africa or Asia. Some of the chapters in section one of this volume, critique and methods, investigate how these assumptions historically inflect the scholarship of philosophers of religion in terms of how they mobilize their ontologies, subjectivities and topics. The second section presents a series of case studies to practically consider what might be twenty-first-century ontologies, subjectivities and topics. This book is not the first edited volume to ask these kinds of questions. Several volumes appeared since around the turn of the millennium that review the recent history of the field, and then propose critical investigations of issues related to future scholarship by philosophers of religion. In almost every case, these edited volumes are the outcome of a workshop or conference focused on reviewing or revising the philosophy of religion. The various meetings of the GCPR project figure into this context, as do the contents of this volume. The introductory chapter is organized into four sections. The first section situates this book within an ongoing conversation via a brief chronology of these previously edited collections focused on the future of the field. The next section reviews the broader, critical conversation about the topics and composition of English-language philosophy. The third section proposes one explanation for the need of these conferences, edited volumes and critical conversations. The final section briefly reviews this present volume in light of the above.

PREVIOUS EDITED VOLUMES In 1996, Purushottama Bilimoria and Andrew Irvine organized a session at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion on the postcolonial turn in academia. The papers from that session made their way into a 2009 publication, Postcolonial

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION



3

Philosophy of Religion. Quite pessimistically, their introduction states that, ‘Philosophy of religion today is, by and large, a discipline pursued by way of overhauling a critically enfeebled Western tradition of philosophical theology’ (Bilimoria and Irvine 2009, 1). The rationale for the session and volume was to note ways in which the increased internationalization in religious studies might inform research agendas for philosophy of religion. Their prediction, which this introduction will qualify near the conclusion, was that philosophical theology will go the way of phenomenology, with positions dedicated to the field eventually disappearing from public universities except for niche academics working in private institutions with Christian affiliations.1 The contents of the volume aim to show an emerging baseline of scholarly method for philosophy of religion as ‘rational and universal, secular inquiry’ (Bilimoria and Irvine 2009, 2). In their estimation, the pernicious challenge facing the field was the genealogy of the field as a modern, postKantian enterprise. So long as it retains its status as philosophical theology, the field will continue replicating a Eurocentric heritage of the exercise of colonial power. Their contribution to this volume further sharpens this argument. Four years later, at the turn of the millennium, Philip Goodchild organized the ‘Continental Philosophy of Religion’ conference, which resulted in Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: Approaches from Continental Philosophy (2002). A trend is already noticeable: obvious efforts to reshape the content and practices of the field overwhelmingly involve people whose methods and topics are atypical among US philosophers of religion. Goodchild’s introduction does pick up on this, noting that Anglophone philosophy of religion is organized by a set of fundamental topics related to the rationality of truth claims related to classical theism. He notes that even Gary Kessler’s 1999 book on a global perspective for the field retains this orientation.2 ‘Continental’ philosophy of religion is pitched as ‘useful identity marker . . . to rethink the discipline of philosophy of religion’ (2002, 2), where Goodchild notes how success in Anglophone scholarship requires that research ‘pass as members of a hegemonic rational community’ (Goodchild 2002, 7). He argues that the potential to make a difference by adding continental philosophy into Anglophone scholarship is to add further dimensions to the practice of reason, but ‘it is evident that critical reason does not have sufficient power to contest dominant ideologies and fundamentalism. If anything, critical reason has less emancipatory power than it had in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’ (Goodchild 2002, 39). ‘Philosophy of Religion at the Turn of the 21st Century’, a conference in honour of Eugene Thomas Long in 2002, produced the volume Philosophy of Religion for a New Century (Hackett and Wallulis 2014). The contents, composed of scholarship from the perspective of European, Anglo-American, Thomist, Comparative, Feminist and Process philosophy, accurately reflect Long’s perspective on the field.3 In the introduction Hackett and Wallulis note the legacy of Long’s historical survey where philosophy of religion is now ‘a field with a greater historical awareness of itself’ (Hackett and Wallulis 2014, x). In the case of this volume, Long’s exhaustive overview does not describe a key text or scholar who puts historical awareness to work in the form of a self-reflexive, critical approach to the field. A much different outcome arrives with the contents of After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion (2011). Morny Joy, a contributor to this volume, organized the 2006 workshop with the objective of asking what changes when concepts and categories of theism are no longer primary (Joy 2011, ix). The participants concluded that the field needs revising through an emphasis on ‘intercultural philosophy and religion’. They looked to scholarship in anthropology, which demonstrates that the term

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‘culture’ that does not indicate a timeless, closed and static set of ontological predicates. To retain the latter conception of culture is to adopt the hard parochialism deployed by the politics of nationalism, ethnocentrism and bigotry. To take culture as a set of ontological predicates is an overly literal reading of the term that at best leads to a soft parochialism that does not ask how ‘culture’ came to be conceived of so autonomously when rigorous historical scholarship shows otherwise. Such a position ignores, for example, the methodological problems of comparative philosophy which, as Joy noted in 2011, remain unarticulated in a systematic or thematized way.4 The contents of the volume pursue philosophical questions across cultures conceived not as collections of radical incommensurables, but as differences that do not admit a universal, underlying unity. The optimism of Joy’s volume, much like that of Bilimoria and Irvine’s, is qualified by a scholarly awareness of problems related to translation and hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is often conceived of as the domain of ‘continental’ philosophy.5 The ‘Postmodern Culture and Religion’ conference hosted by Syracuse University in 2011 resulted in the 2014 volume, The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion (Crockett, Putt, and Robbins 2014). The volume’s introduction notes how the generation of French scholars informed by the discipline of hermeneutics – Les Soixante-Huitards, as some called the generation of post-war critical and literary theorists – are now a past generation of philosophers (e.g. Jean Baudrillard, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, Etienne Balibar, Alain Badiou, inter alia). The editors’ introduction characterizes the volume’s contents as asking what (Derridean) deconstruction left unthought (2014, 2). Namely, continental philosophy of religion is awaiting its own decolonization. Interestingly, the introduction locates Merold Westphal and John D. Caputo as the most influential figures in the ‘continental’ American field (the former will figure importantly later in this introduction), where their work still carries along the heritage of eighteenth-century Europe, but perhaps points towards critical openings by virtue of their conceptualization of ‘the future’. The future retains its place among key concepts in the discussions of a conference organized by Jim Kanaris in 2013. ‘Has Philosophy of Religion a Future?’ gathered a group of scholars at McGill University, and resulted in Kanaris’ volume, Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion: A Possible Future (2018). In his introduction, Kanaris makes an observation reminiscent of Bilimoria and Irvine, that the twenty-first century is a ‘post-phenomenological era of religious studies and theology’ (2018, x). Among the contents of the volume are two contributors to this one. Wesley Wildman’s review of scholarly literature and academic institutions and structures shows that the philosophy of religion is a field of inquiry, and so there can be no final word about its future in the sense of a universal declaration. Morny Joy’s chapter stands out in the volume because she argues that religious studies should reclaim the field. As with her 2011 volume, Joy’s emphasis is that philosophers of religion must better integrate the cross-cultural insights of the past forty years in humanities scholarship. Overall, the contents of the volume articulate a variety of possible futures within the now-orthodox scope of the field. A third edited volume sustains this focus on the term future. M. David Eckel, C. Allen Speight and Troy DuJardin published The Future of the Philosophy of Religion (2021) as a follow-up to a 2001 symposium, ‘The Future of the Philosophy of Religion’. It was only in 2017 that they decided to contact the participants in that symposium to gain an understanding of how the field had changed. The editors’ introduction also notes the developments in religious studies that have not informed the Anglophone philosophy of religion. Classical, modernist philosophical accounts of religion (e.g., Edward Tylor [1871]

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1970: I, 8, or W. C. Smith 1978) hold very little credibility amid contemporary religion scholars, where, much like the term ‘culture’, essentialist ontologies of ‘religion’ remain a stock in trade as though there are metaphysically necessary and sufficient conditions to be designated by these terms. Thomas A. Lewis’ monograph, Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion & Vice Versa (2015), is noted as among the few examples of American philosophical scholarship that attempts to make sense of this difference. The volume – some of whose contributors also appear in this book – is distinctive in its attempt to align some aspects of the field with global perspectives, critical theory, multiple disciplinary perspectives and religious practices. Eckel et al. mark a contribution that begins to ask questions within frameworks that critically ask which ontological frameworks are useful to understand futures for the field. Most recently, An Yountae and Eleanor Craig’s volume Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion (2021) presses these issues just as acutely. The volume partly emerges from a 2017 session on ‘Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion’ at the American Academy of Religion. The editors’ introduction explains how Sylvia Wynter’s scholarship understands the ideal subjecthood of coloniality of as ‘Man’, whose predicates are secular, rational, bourgeois and white. Wynter’s work shows how Man is overrepresented – both factically and structurally – and is thereby epistemically formative for claims to coherence. The contents of their volume thereby ask important questions of historical awareness that pass by unnoticed by other evaluations of the field. They ask, ‘What does it mean to do philosophy and philosophy of religion when, as Wynter and [Enrique] Dussel demonstrate, the act of thinking about the cogito and the world is already conditioned by such power relations?’ (Yountae and Craig 2021, 5). Answers to this question cannot have a response composed exclusively of theological concepts or analyses segregated from problems of power that shape political life. And yet this is how scholarship among Anglophone philosophers of religion is by and large conducted. As such, the contents of that volume critically qualify the question orienting this book.

HOW DID WE GET HERE? PHILOSOPHY AS A DISCIPLINE Anglophone philosophers of religion do not work in a vacuum. There are several historical factors that play a role in the aggregated composition of their scholarship. Kevin Schilbrack’s survey of the field in Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto (2014), outlines the insularity and highly conventional nature of Anglophone scholarship in philosophy of religion. His recommendation involves expanding the scope of the field through engagement with contemporary religious studies scholarship, much like that of Bilimoria, Irvine and Joy. But what accounts for the state of the field? The explanation offered by Chad Meister’s textbook introduction to philosophy of religion (2009) is that the conventional focus on theism reflects the history of the field, and that most scholars work exclusively in English (Meister 2009, 7–8). Meister’s assessment is true of philosophy generally. A recent quantitative analysis of philosophy measures for ‘insularity’ by comparing three factors with the citation practices of non-Anglophone journals of philosophy in JSTOR versus the citation practices of elite Chinese- and Spanish-language journals (see Schwitzgebel et al. 2018). They compare the citation practices of twelve elite English-language philosophy journals, the editorial boards of those journals and the institutional location of the 100 most-cited philosophers in the

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Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The results depict the state of the discipline as overwhelmingly insular. The study’s conclusion asks: ‘If Anglophone philosophy is as insular, asymmetrically influential, and dominant as it appears to be from our analyses, does that create unjust burdens on philosophers for whom English is not their native language? Rather differently, does philosophy as a discipline suffer epistemically from having become as Anglo-centric as it appears to be from our analyses?’ (Schwitzgebel et al. 2018, 45–6) Another way of framing that question is to ask whether the form and structure of academic institutions and practices may epistemically delimit or filter the content of scholars who work within them. Recent work on the history of philosophy (see Park 2013) explains how this might be the case. Park’s work details systematic exclusion of African and Asian texts and scholarship in philosophy, which the earlier study demonstrates quantitatively, may also be explained as the product of revisionist efforts in the history of philosophy by Kant and Hegel, inter alia, to ensure that philosophy has an exclusively Western, European genealogy. Lisa Li-Hsiang Rosenlee describes how the scholarship of Park and Robert Bernasconi connects these revisionist efforts with the modernist theories of race (2020, 123–4). Bernasconi finds that ‘Hegel believed that the multiplicity of philosophies threatened to put in doubt the very idea of philosophy’ (2009, 217). Emmanuel Chuckwidi Eze’s studies of Hume, Kant and Hegel find passages that read to twenty-first-century eyes as definitively racist (1999, 55–6). Eze argues that philosophers should not pass off interrogation of these passages to other specializations. Instead, they might learn how metaphysics and epistemology are related to wider economic, political and cultural factors, and they might alter naïve understandings of Hume as a sceptic or Kant as a purist. Philosophy of religion has suffered epistemically due to an understudied history of the past 300 years in which the discipline has been purportedly ‘enlightened’. Philosophers of religion are not alone. The field is embedded in a wider disciplinary context facing critical questions relative to scholarship in the twenty-first century. Or is it the other way? Philosophers are not without the perspective afforded by studying the history of the sub-field, whose figures have at times struggled with questions about the composition of their research. The juxtaposition ‘philosophy of religion’ can be taken as a perennial meta-cognitive problem. Its terms point towards a plurality that only ever manifests idiosyncratically. Gerardus van der Leeuw noted that the term ‘religion’ only ever gains content in relation to a historical form (1933, 560). Or, as van der Leeuw’s contemporary Martin Heidegger wrote, ‘History exists only from out of a present’ (in Bernasconi 2009, 211). So, too, with ‘philosophy’, whose content only ever appears in historical forms. It is not possible to know ‘philosophy’, because there is no path from the plurality of concrete examples of philosophizing to ‘philosophy’ without ignoring the particularity of sociocultural context. The idea that philosophy is ultimately the same everywhere and everywhen does epistemic violence to the content of ‘philosophy’ as well as to the practices designated as such (Bernasconi 2009, 210).6 Bernasconi’s charge is that to ontologize ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’ as historically static categories is very likely an imperialist gesture. When philosophers of religion ask about their research in the globalized, twenty-first century, they might find ways to revise the institutional structures and practices of philosophy. The perspicuity of English-language philosophy is only beginning to include these considerations. A series of ‘manifestos’ make it apparent that philosophers of religion are not alone. Kevin Schilbrack’s specific focus on the field in 2014 can be paired with two others. Where Schilbrack offers three diagnoses: philosophy of religion as narrowly

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focused on theism, committed to a scholastic intellectualism, and insulated from wider conversations in philosophy and religious studies, Jonardon Ganeri’s ‘Why Philosophy Must Go Global: A Manifesto’ (2016), notes four changes in the global context for philosophers across all the discipline’s sub-fields. First is a new wave of autonomously formulated philosophies from around the world. Second is a polycentric academia generating scholarship in diverse geo-locations. And third is a widespread recognition that the regions where both Continental and Anglo-Analytic philosophies are produced are provincialized locations. Finally, and the cause for a manifesto is that every scholar of philosophy in the twenty-first century knows these first three to be the case. As Li-Hsiang Rosenlee writes, philosophers must do better (see Rosenlee et al. 2020). The second addition to Schilbrack is Bryan W. Van Norden’s Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto (2017), which partly emerged from the curious response of several philosophers to the 2016 New York Times editorial van Norden co-authored with Jay L. Garfield (Van Norden and Garfield 2016). In the foreword, Garfield observes that social structures can shape the content of an individual’s actions so as ‘to establish or to perpetuate a set of practices that systematically denigrate – implicitly or explicitly – people of particular races’ (2017, ixx). Van Norden’s manifesto is based on similar observations as given earlier: English-language philosophy, which most philosophers of religion count themselves among the ranks, stands alone among the humanities as one in which European and American texts are studied almost exclusively. His chapters make clear links to US politics to explain the formation of the discipline and the nature of its contents. And so, Van Norden’s recommendations to the discipline apply as much to its sub-fields: essentialist ethnocentrism may be overcome by a globally increased scope of study towards the development of an informed and coherent opinion. His manifesto’s provocation is that philosophy either diversifies to include and normalize less-commonly taught philosophy, or the discipline should be renamed ‘Anglo-European philosophy’. The issues facing philosophers of religion in the twenty-first century are part of a wider problem of global diversity among Anglophone scholars. Bilimoria and Rostalska’s (2023, 369–79) publication, ‘Diversity in Philosophy’ promises to bring even greater clarity to these issues. One general upshot from these manifestoes is that philosophers of religion should consider how they might, ‘transcend narrow definitions of what is of interest to the field’ (Eze 2006, 55). Karsten Struhl’s article put the point this way in 2010, there should be ‘No (More) Philosophy Without Cross-Cultural Philosophy’. Revising the structure and content of the field, however, is not as easy as mapping Western criteria onto global sources for the purposes of interrogating their basic assumptions (Struhl 2010, 288). Doing so would only reproduce Western exceptionalism (see Dotson 2012, 11–13). If these transformations take place without historicizing the discipline, then we are implicated in the imperialist project (see Rosenlee et al. 2020, 134). Philosophers of religion may not be alone, but there are peculiarities to the formation of the field near the end of the twentieth century.

HOW DID WE GET HERE? PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION While Anglophone philosophers of religion are surrounded by a wider context of disciplinary insularity, the history of the field may be studied for instances that helpfully explain the field’s structure, demographics and content. These instances are book-ended by Antony Flew and Alasdair MacIntyre’s New Essays in Philosophical Theology in 1955, and the publication of Analytic Theology in 2009 (Crisp and Rea). ‘Philosophy of

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religion’ appears nowhere in the former, perhaps in order to have readers avoid making any connections to European discussions of Hegel, phenomenology or existentialism. The latter is a bookend precisely because the emerging interest in ‘analytic theology’, which even more narrowly focuses the already insular field’s scholarly heritage on issues specific to Christianity, is uncannily coincidental with the interests of the conferences and volumes reviewed in an earlier section of this introduction. To make sense of what is between these bookends, we can look at two speeches made by key figures in Englishlanguage philosophy of religion prior to the turn of the century. In 1999 Merold Westphal – noted as a key figure in ‘continental philosophy of religion’ in the 2014 volume edited by Crockett, Putt and Robbins – gave the yearly address to the Society of Christian Philosophers (founded in 1978).7 Westphal offered his perspective on the field just prior to the new millennium: ‘I think no careful observer would deny that we live in a renaissance of unabashed Christian philosophizing’ (Westphal 1999, 173). The statement was made as part of a retrospective on Alvin Plantinga’s 1983 address to the same society, ‘Advice to Christian Philosophers’. At that time, the Society of Christian Philosophers was in its third year of existence. Plantinga’s advice was that Christian philosophers belong to the church as well as the academy, Christian beliefs should inform their philosophical assumptions and agendas, and that these agendas ought to be pursued with greater boldness. Christian philosophers ought to understand their ‘being Christian as making a real difference to their practice as philosophers’. (Plantinga 1984, 253). Westphal, looking back over the past years, is ‘grateful for this flourishing’ (1999, 174). His speech singles out Plantinga as playing a key role in establishing the influence of Christian philosophers on APA leadership at divisional and national levels. The upshot of Westphal’s speech is that there have been structural and systemic efforts to ensure the contents of ‘philosophy’ in the Anglophone world are substantively influenced by the interests of Christians. Despite all that success at the turn of the millennium, Westphal said, ‘the game is not over’ (1999, 174). Looking towards the future, Westphal proposes three formative proposals to Christian philosophers: One is to write less-technical works that are accessible to the general public. Another is to think about how the community of Christian philosophers might relate to feminist philosophers. And finally, Westphal proposes that the collapse of foundationalism and the Enlightenment project presents an opportunity to unify emphases of Christian philosophers across analytic, continental and pragmatist genres. Doing so may enable philosophers to ‘be more consistent theists’ (1999, 178). Taking this text at its word usefully confirms how the insularity of the field described by the manifestoes of Schilbrack, Ganeri, and Van Norden is not only a product of philosophy’s historic emphases but plausibly also the result of stated interests in shaping the composition of the discipline. These interests may well shape how some philosophers of religion organize their scholarship in the twenty-first century, globalized world. Westphal’s encouragement to engage feminist philosophers is pertinent to thinking about the insularity of the field. Feminist philosophers are among those who successfully challenged classical foundationalism and evidentialism, just as they are among those who pose specific challenges to the epistemological foundations of modern philosophy. Westphal’s first and second notes of advice reveal how at least one significant group of philosophers may understand their research, and, that there is an ‘implacable difference’ (1999, 175) between their work and feminist scholarship. There once was the possibility for ‘feminist philosophy of religion’ in the twentieth-century. Elizabeth Burns’ account is illustrative (2017, 363–75). There was

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indeed an era where feminist scholarship was emergent. It was marked by the 1994 special issue of Hypatia. Nancy Frankenberry’s introduction to that volume, ‘Prolegomenon to Future Feminist Philosophies of Religion’, asks twice on the first page: where are the feminist philosophers of religion? Frankenberry offers a narrative not unlike those of Morny Joy (2011) and Bryan Van Norden (2017). Feminist scholarship is being done across the sciences and humanities, but not so much in philosophy of religion. The explanation for this gap makes sense when juxtaposed with Westphal’s advice to Christian philosophers: the field has no historical antecedents, there is a mainstream resistance to feminism among philosophers, and there is a resistance to mainstream commitments to religion on the part of feminists. A 300-year canon for the philosophy of religion will characterizes feminist philosophy as ‘less-commonly taught’ (to use Van Norden’s nomenclature), and so the field needs feminist scholarship to ‘elaborate new models of interpretation, a broader theory of evidence, a cross-cultural conception of human rationality, and a more complex appraisal of the norms applicable to cases of divergent, rival religious claims’. (Frankenberry 1994, 13). At the time of Pamela Sue Anderson’s review of the field in 2010, New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion, she remarks that not much changed since 1994: ‘a revolution in philosophy of religion has yet to come about’ (Anderson 2010, xi). The foreclosure of an era promising feminist scholarship in the philosophy of religion is critical for understanding the state of English-language philosophy of religion at the turn of the millennium. Philosophers of religion on the aggregate have not paid attention to the 1990s moment of feminism. In her contribution to the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion (2007), ‘Feminism and Analytic Philosophy of Religion’, Sarah Coakley observes that philosophers of religion are ‘predominantly gender blind’ in their thinking. The effect of feminist scholarship on the field, ‘has generally gone no further than a belated concession to the use of gender-inclusive language’ (2007, 494). At this point, it is useful to recall that Anglophone philosophy of religion is predominantly ‘analytic’. Coakley highlights how this gender blindness means analytic philosophers of religion lack language to articulate such issues. To illustrate this point, Coakley’s analysis of texts from Grace Jantzen (1948–2006) and Pamela Sue Anderson (1955–2017) uses scare quotes to lift their theoretical terms out from the copy. Coakley notably demonstrates that, on the whole, philosophers of religion take ‘theory’ to be extra, unordinary language. The import of Jantzen’s work is little, Coakley explains, because Jantzen is too polemical to occupy any relevance other than the ‘semiotic margins of the currently constituted academic discussion’ (2007, 504). Coakley offers Anderson’s work as a counterpoint to Jantzen’s. Anderson articulates epistemological commitments that are recognizable to many in the field, but Coakley argues that even Anderson’s comparatively more nuanced use of feminist theory is ‘too far removed from the existing discourses of analytic philosophy of religion to attract attention’ (2007, 515). Coakley argues that feminist scholarship fails to gain any academic traction with the field because philosophers of religion already possess a more robust mediating strategy from within ‘the guild’ (2007, 519) vis-à-vis ongoing scholarship on religious experience, apophatic discourses and doxastic practices. These studies challenge commitments to realism and thereby cultivate interests that may be disposed towards interest in other realities for which philosophers of religion lack the language, such as women’s experiences. The upshot of Coakley’s argument might be extended to claim that the field will autonomously remedy the issues outlined in the first two sections of this introduction sometime in the twenty-first century.

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The point being developed here is that some conversations about the nature and composition of the field might inform causes for pessimism and optimism in relation to the guiding question for a project on the GCPR. Excepting Philosophy of Religion for a New Century (2004), the composition of the many volumes aimed at revising the field has typically included contributors who are not representative of the field. An explanation for why this is the case may be found by looking at texts from Westphal and Coakley alongside the quantitative observations of Schwitzgebel et al. and the qualitative assessments of Bernasconi, Eze, Rosenlee, Garfield and Van Norden. Anglophone philosophy of religion is a practice largely informed by the commitments of Christian philosophers whose analytical commitments are too far removed from long-standing discourses that prompt a revision of fundamental assumptions about ontologies, subjectivities and topics for the field. That other disciplines in the humanities have done otherwise seems to give most philosophers of religion no fear of missing out. The point may be further illustrated with another example related to the development of analytic theology as one possible future for the field. Keith E. Yandell’s contribution to Philosophy of Religion for a New Century (2004) defines ‘religion’ as a particular system of spiritual diagnosis and cure, both of which are formulated as metaphysical claims that are taken by their adherents to be true everywhere and everywhen. His 2016 textbook introduction does not stray from this definition of religion, such that the terms ‘Hinduism’ and ‘Jainism’, for example, are ‘religions’ so far as they point to specific systems whose contents are unaffected by history. By Yandell’s lights, the clarity of this definition rightly excludes polytheism and shamanism as proper objects of study for philosophers of religion. The epistemological approach excludes the possibility to claim what ‘be true in Benares but false in Boston’ (Yandell 2004, 293). He also frames this definition ‘as an explanation of how religion will be thought of in this essay’ (Yandell 2004, 279) but also as ‘accurate regarding all or most of the traditions that we pre-analytically take to be religious’ (Yandell 2004, 279). Yandell thereby forecloses any relation to scholarship in religious studies, which would present not only critical interrogations of ‘we’, something contested by the contents of Yountae and Craig’s collection but also whether a pre-analytic conception of religion is useful for scholarship, pace the overall emphasis of Joy’s introduction to her 2011 volume. Yandell’s objective, however, is to argue towards an even stronger epistemological foreclosure: philosophy of religion is impossible if philosophical reflection is construed as culture-bound, where ‘culture bound’ entails an ‘airtight conceptual container’ (Yandell 2004, 288). Without citing any scholarship on ‘culture’, Yandell moves to show how claims of cultural specificity cannot be true on their own terms. Such claims are impossible and false if they are minimally understandable to anyone, anywhere and anywhen. Yandell then offers a primer in arguments for ontological necessities and non-contradiction in order to establish that these practices of entailment are not culturally specific. They are operations of minimal rationality which are, ‘true in all possible worlds is also true across all possible cultures in our world’, (2004, 298) which has nothing to do with ‘disguised sociology’. (2004, 297). Philosophy of religion has no need of cross-cultural tools developed by other disciplines. Yandell’s argument is an example that usefully widens Coakley’s explanation of the field’s general epistemological foreclosure to developments in the humanities such as feminism. If ‘religion’ means ‘system’ and system entails an exclusive, organic whole, then philosophy of religion is neatly lifted out from the provenance of social sciences and humanities. And since these religions-as-systems are incommensurable, then the decision

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to study one or the other system may plausibly come to a decision of which works best with ‘philosophy’. There should be no surprise that the winner is theism.8 But sometimes ‘Clarity is not Enough’, as Henry H. Price advised his post-war audience of American philosophers in 1945 (see Price 1963). Arguments like these are not interested in synoptic clarity or a pluralistic conception of philosophical practice. As Coakley observed, those interests are on the semiotic margins of a guild which, if Westphal is correct, is at the centre of a renaissance in Christian philosophy and has little reason to pursue any epistemological mediating strategies. Yandell composes an argument where a purported paradox of cultural specificity supports the validity of making universal claims to resist broadening the scope of philosophy to include sources from ‘everywhere and everywhen’ (Yandell, 283). The argument is exemplary of the exceptionalism Kristie Dotson observes of philosophy generally, where ‘only X is equipped to comprehend a singular, self-contained world’ (Dotson 11–13). It also makes sense of Joseph Prabhu’s (2001, 209) observation about philosophy of religion, where only a privileged group is proper to the norms they espouse. Charles Mills (2007, 25) names this epistemological strategy, where concepts must be cut from whole cloth, as ‘white ignorance’, where unreflective contributions to collective memory establish epistemologies of collective forgetting (2007, 28–9) as the basis for normative claims. By setting aside ‘culture’, for example, philosophers of religion might risk losing the relevance of their field. To paraphrase Linda Alcoff (1998, 8), this is to actively avoid being equipped for critical perception of how social constructions, despite their lack of biological validity, are real and powerful enough to inform the institutional structuring of the field. A recent development in academia illustrates what a fully fledged form of epistemological refusal may look like. ‘Analytic Theology’ is a twenty-first-century development in the field which is said to have begun in 2009 (Arcadi and Turner 2021, 2). Analytic theology aligns clearly with the historical interests of the Society of Christian Philosophers on philosophy of religion. According to Sarah Coakley, the ‘more modest and immediate goal’ of analytic theology is ‘getting “God” back into the picture’ for philosophy of religion (Coakley 2013, 607).9 From another perspective, one shared by this volume, the arrival of analytic theology among English-language philosophers of religion may be viewed as the institutional embodiment of Garfield and Van Norden’s suggestion that philosophy departments change their names to ‘departments of Anglo-European philosophy’.

CONCLUSION How might philosophers entertain new data and objects of study? The question seems warranted based on the review of previous edited volumes about the future of the field as well as manifestoes on the future of philosophy in general. This volume is organized on the idea that the field will not make those adjustments autonomously. A minority of the contributors in this volume are participants in a mainstream Anglophone philosophy of religion. No authors count among those whose training is exclusively in philosophical theology and whose current scholarship contributes to the formation of analytic theology. As Westphal said in 1999, however, the game isn’t over yet. And this may be a very good cause for the contents of this volume to question the structure and content of philosophy of religion. The aim of this introduction is to show how any given structure is an all-toohuman product of contingency. And while the historical contingencies of this field are far

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from precarious – after all, the Journal of Analytic Theology was founded in 2013 – that does not mean other scholars can’t take the risks of suggesting other directions for the field. The chapters of Diversifying Philosophy of Religion: Critiques, Methods, and Case Studies comprise a very fallible production that was initiated at the meetings of the American Academy of Religion from 2017 to 2021. Many contributing authors participated in those sessions. Each responds in their own way to the question that Tim Knepper formulated at the inception of the GCPR project: ‘Can philosophy of religion enter the globalized, twenty-first-century world? If so, how?’ The first section of the book includes critiques of current scholarship and proposals for revised methods. The chapters within the second section offer case studies on how philosophy of religion may be done from perspectives that are not exclusively Western. The section on ‘critique and methods’ assembles a diverse set of concerns about the composition of the field. The first four chapters are written by philosophers of religion, as are the last two in the section. Sandwiched in between are four chapters that substantively engage scholarship in the philosophy of religion with expertise in anthropology, Indian, Chinese and Buddhist philosophy. Critical issues related to epistemological questions are raised by the first four authors, who each explain how conventional methods in the field lead to missed opportunities of relevance and data. Sherman’s chapter recognizes that to diversify the field requires challenging the neutrality of epistemological categories conventional to Anglo-European philosophy. Sherman uses ‘etic-emic’ to designate the dynamism of relations amid epistemologies, and therefore the need to reevaluate the normativity of Eurocentric presentations of the world as provincial (pace Chakrabarty 2000). He proposes that the philosophical context for evaluation and debate first requires fallible and precarious practices of theoretical and linguistic translation prior to engaging in historically contextualized, constructive debate about ‘knowledge’ and how truths are constructed. Andrew Irvine and Purushottama Bilimoria concern themselves with epistemic violence in modern philosophy of religion. That ‘violence’, much like ‘religion’, is a term appearing to be naturalized rather than taken up for analysis should already help bring attention to the cultural dimensions of the field that are all too often overlooked by philosophers of religion. Using Hegel and Descartes as their examples, Irvine and Bilimoria draw attention to how the field inherits careless projections of social circumstance. Their curation of postcolonial critiques establishes the epistemic humility required for scholarship in the field to actualize critical circumspection. Tim Knepper evaluates how abandoning ‘religion’ may be of benefit for scholarship in the field. If ‘religion’ points to a category whose contents have changed due to geopolitical circumstances, then contemporary scholars may take the initiative to actuate a new shift in the field. Doing so requires deliberate choices about what violence is done by the scholarly use of language, as well as assuming responsibility for what new depths of expertise are required by shifts in meaning. None of this is new to feminist philosophers. Morny Joy’s chapter reviews the clearest and possibly longest-standing calls for several remediations of long-standing, masculinist lacunae that have obstructed scholarship in the field. Joy notes how these did not arrive via insider dialogues, but by listening to feminist scholars who learned from postcolonial scholars. Joy’s chapter sets out the ethical and scholarly responsibilities articulated by the unfinished work of Grace Jantzen and the task set forth by Pamela Sue Anderson, in response to which philosophers of religion focus their attention on the actualities of humans and their worlds.

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The next four authors are assembled to bring critical questions into the epistemological clearing provided by their colleagues. Sonia Sikka’s provocative question, ‘Is Philosophy of Religion Racist?’ establishes the urgent call to responsibility for the field. Deeming the current and historical composition of the field as racist is an act of memory with normative implications for remedies, Sikka asks scholars to re-collect the field in ways more far-reaching than charges of insularity or parochialism. The research agendas for philosophers of religion, particularly those in the Anglo-American areas of scholarship, are not well-known to produce historical accounts that reach beyond surveys of problems. Sikka cites the work of Park (2013) and Bernasconi (2009) to show how systematic exclusions in the practice of modern-Western thought serve to shape our field. Leaving out other sources from around the world is a form of falsification that tacitly affirms a narrative of Euro-Atlantic civilizational superiority. Of course, including worldwide sources only continues to normalize structural racism if it serves to identify a dominant group as ‘philosophical’, and others as ‘religious’. Sikka’s chapter calls for methods that engage global sources as dialogue partners who are treated as peers in their conversations. Affirming that the field is currently racist calls philosophers of religion to correct the privileging of Christianity and use their scholarly expertise to recognize as philosophy what was previously excluded as ‘religion’. Similarly challenging the philosophical construction of ‘religion’, Landoe-Hedrick explains how to philosophize about ‘belief’ without an exclusively propositional conception of the term. Where conventional philosophers of religion may see this as a ‘crisis of conscience’, Landoe‑Hedrick explains how doing so enables philosophy on how knowledge is inseparable from dynamic social practices of knowing, such as Nurit Bird-David’s (1999) work on the understanding of personhood among the Nayaka, a hunter-gatherer society in South India. Leah Kalmanson frames a different challenge: how to do philosophy of religion sans theism on areas of cosmology, epistemology, subjectivity and phenomenology. During the Song-dynasty China (960–1279), there was a short time for speculative critique of what may be called theistic cosmology. From those critiques, argues Leah Kalmanson, emerges a ‘philosophy of religion’ that includes debates on first principles as well as the practices required to realize them. Kalmanson shows how Song-era philosophers reject creatio ex nihilo on an a priori basis in order to focus on problems related to human beings’ apprehension of and alignment with cosmic order. Gereon Kopf’s chapter asks how philosophy of religion might constructively address the inheritance of Eurocentric colonialism, particularly if the scholarship is to continue relying upon English. There are no simple ways around this issue. Gereon Kopf’s chapter does this work with a taxonomy of current academic methods in the field with the aim of introducing a ‘fourth-person ontology and a multi-entry approach’ (page 121), which subverts the hegemonic heritage of the field to propose twenty rules of engagement for scholarship that may ‘represent and negotiate a multiplicity of subjectivities’ (Page 125). If conventional, Western scholars adopted these rules, there is a much higher likelihood for novel scholarship than the status quo. The section on critique and methods concludes with chapters from two philosophers of religion. Robert C. Neville, whose recent contributions to the field cannot be underestimated, offers a meditation on the methods of comparison that might be most useful for the future of the field. Granting a potential for the field to take a more global approach to its scope of topics, Neville sees philosophical comparison of ideas as an academically unique practice, because philosophers will attend to the systematic formation of categories more so than the data. For Neville, designing for the fallibility of categories will enable a comparative project to incrementally move from vagueness to precision for

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the continual correction of philosophical ideas. As one example of category-formation in action, Steve Smith considers how the category ‘scripture’ might organize data for analysis by philosophers of religion. Rather than assuming scriptures are final, ontologically static material for philosophical reflection, Smith uses the term ‘scripturalizing’ to emphasize the variability and contingency of scriptures as a human practice. Religious texts are therefore not to be taken as terminal developments from which to derive propositions. They are examples of what Smith calls ‘axial thinking” that are embedded in historical experiences. The second section of the book offers eight case studies that each reconceive how philosophers of religion might produce scholarship that engages diverse perspectives. Their cases may be understood as remediations to the critiques of the book’s first section. Up until these present moments, philosophers of religion have established a very high degree of clarity regarding the specific set of problems for the field as well as the specific skills and competencies to engage them. These approaches will appear revolutionary, if not completely impossible, if they are expected to correspond directly to those problems and competencies. In fact, Kevin Schilbrack’s concluding chapter of the book highlights these challenges. The opening six chapters in this section propose shifts in subjectivity for the philosopher of religion. Mikel Burley asks how an ethnographically informed approach to philosophy of religion might improve the validity of scholarship in the field. Burley’s example is his own fieldwork involving the temple of the goddess Kāmākhyā in Assam, India. An ethnographically informed method aims at engaging first-hand experience of religious phenomena, which is atypical of the comparatively ahistorical approaches prevalent in the field. Louis Komjathy’s chapter proposes how philosophers of religion might investigate embodied activities and patterns of social behaviour at specific times and places. Doing so requires that scholars frame their research outputs with clear explanations of their decisions concerning theory and method. According to Komjathy, methodological attention to ‘praxis’ would enable philosophers of religion to investigate contemplative and mystical practices without having to restrict their scope on inquiry to epistemological problems of theistic revelation. Mayuko Uehara’s analysis of subjectivity in Nishida Kitarō’s work (1870–1945) offers a ‘placial dialectic’, a category Uehara proposes as a translation for Nishida’s concept of bashoteki benshohō (場所的弁証法). Placial dialectic conveys the logic of place as the spatial-social, non-autonomous mediation that gives rise to the possibility of an ‘inter-corporeal-subjective self’ (kan shutaiteki jiko 間主体性的自己). Herbert Moyo formulates problems of categorization by showing how the Nguni culture of the African continent presses philosophers of ‘religion’ towards increased complexity in their scholarship. Moyo shows how the contents of African philosophy of Isintu exceed the conventional methodological reliance upon static data written in English that is derived from a stable, original authority. The importance and scale of the issue are framed by Moyo with three proverbs and their counter-proverbs whose dialectics enable readers to understand one opening onto African philosophy. Similarly, Fritz Detwiler documents resources that are either overlooked or ignored by contemporary philosophers of religion with the example of Lakota thought. Detwiler outlines the misalignment of key terms of Lakota thought with theistic rationality, and then he articulates the philosophical axioms of Lakota thinking. One of these is the importance of personal narrative, which is central to the next chapter by Ching-yuen, whose discussion of Takahashi Tetsuya’s thought on ‘sacrifice’ and the Fukushima is offered as an example of the importance of corporeal and physical location as an

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important, sufficient condition for asking questions of ultimacy. Philosophers of religion may find these chapters opportunities to consider how they might engage thought from Africa, Indigenous America and Japan. These six chapters thereby offer as many subject positions from which philosophers of religion consider what methodological shifts best equip them to diversify the scope of their inquiry. The final chapters in the section offer case studies related to technologies. One ancient, one contemporary. Yvonne Förster’s chapter enframes a perspective on how religious beliefs are intertwined with technologies that are inescapably infused with technologies. Forster’s emphasis on cross-cultural studies of technologies is an important reminder that philosophical reflections avoid being transfixed by Western paradigms. Varun Khanna’s chapter closes this section of the volume with an explication of how Advaita Vedānta thought arrives at valid knowledge through Dṛg Dṛśya Viveka as an ancient technique of perception that continues to be practised today. Khanna proposes that philosophers of religion might use this method to frame elusive objects of inquiry in addition to ‘god’. Taken as a whole, these chapters require meta-questions about the arrangements of the field, which is the focus of this volume’s concluding chapter by Kevin Schilbrack. Such questions require the development of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives that aren’t necessarily prevalent in the English-language domains of the field. In order to expand the scope of the field, Schilbrack first considers meta-questions about the boundary of the category ‘religion’. He then considers questions related to the second half of the volume, which considers how corporeal and material phenomena may be data for philosophers of religion. Schilbrack’s third and final issue is whether and how philosophers of religion might go about evaluating their data. Schilbrack rightly notes that the contributors to this volume offer no unicity in response to these meta-questions. These chapters are not necessarily reflective of the field, since many of the authors’ expertise and training are outside English-language philosophy of religion. As the first of four edited collections planned as outcomes of the GCPR project, this volume represents an initial attempt to gather some of the participating scholars’ insights about perspectives and approaches for doing philosophy of religion around the world. Hopefully, three more volumes will follow. We hope the cumulative outcome will be to establish an ever-expanding circle of interlocutors and conversation partners. The twenty-first century is already well underway.

NOTES 1. Wesley J. Wildman’s later assessments of the field bear out Bilimoria and Irvine’s claim, ‘Philosophy of religion has been so closely associated with Christian interests and perspectives that it was nature for these [religious studies and philosophy] departments to fill vacated [philosophy of religion] lines with specialists in other areas’ (2018, 253). 2. As does, for example, the series of books written by Arvind K. Sharma (1990, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012). 3. Long’s introduction notes the narrowness of the field: ‘Among the primary issues were arguments for and against the existence of God, religious knowledge, the nature and attributes of God, human destiny and the problem of evil. There are signs of change (. . .) but these issues continue to dominate the philosophy of religion today (. . .) In some cases western philosophers of religion confine themselves to what might be called the more universal characteristics of theism and have been somewhat reluctant to deal with issues peculiar to particular faiths’ (Long 2000, 1).

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4. Robert C. Neville’s contribution to this volume takes up this issue, as have others in philosophy as discipline (See Connolly 2015; Mou 2010, 2020). 5. For example, see the contents of Anthony C. Thistleton’s latest introduction to Hermeneutics (2009). 6. Bernasconi’s evaluation of ‘religion’ is applied here to ‘philosophy’: ‘We seem then to be faced with a choice between two violences: on the one hand, the violence of imposing the category “religion” on practices (and perhaps also beliefs) even though those practices and beliefs do not readily fit the model of religion and are thereby distorted, misjudged, and found wanting in the process, and on the other hand, the violence of refusing the term religion to such practices because that denial can also be regarded as demeaning so long as the still dominant framework of the Western tradition remains intact’ (Bernasconi 2009, 222). 7. The organization’s history, as recounted on their website, lists Plantinga among the original group: ‘In 1978, William Alston encouraged a small cadre of Christian philosophers to form a professional group that would do more to promote philosophizing and fellowship among philosophers who shared a commitment to Christianity. That initial group included widely respected philosophers like Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert Adams, Arthur Holmes, Ken Konyndyk, George Mavrodes, Ralph McInerny, Alvin Plantinga, Mary Carmen Rose and Nick Wolterstorff. In the early 1980s, Mike Peterson and others urged the fledgling society to launch what would become one of the most important philosophy journals in the English language, ‘Faith & Philosophy’ (soc​iety​ofch​rist​ianp​hilo​sophe​rs​.com, accessed 7/9/2021). 8. A wider reading of philosophy might offer some correctives to this occlusive practice of clarity. Christopher G. Framarin explains the hermeneutical approach developed among philosophers who, ‘revert to a less literal reading of a textual claim when the literal reading is sufficiently implausible’ (Framarin 2011, 239), due to contradictions or absurdities that arise from the tooliteral reading. The pursuit of clarity in analytic philosophy, at least in Yandell’s performance of it, lacks this exegetical tool. The practice of lakṣaṇā may go unnoticed by readers unfamiliar with the history of this philosophical convention, which takes note of a literal contradiction as a rhetorical device that points towards a qualification: ‘when there is an obstruction (bādha) of the primary meaning (mukhya, abhidhā) of a word or sentence, a secondary meaning (lakṣaṇā, also upacāra, gauṇi, vṛtti, bhakti) must be adopted’ (Framarin 2011, 242). The principle of lakṣaṇā does not entail anything goes. The burden of proof is increased, since the hermeneut – who is fallible – must now demonstrate that contradiction plausibly follows from the literal reading, that such a literal reading is properly attributable to the text, and then provide the sufficient textual evidence for a secondary meaning (Framarin 2011, 251–2). As Framarin notes, none of this is new to a reader of Socratic dialogues. And the more important point is how the principle functions to establish a standard expectation for philosophical practice. 9. ‘We should not forget that it has been one of the great strengths of the analytic school of philosophy of religion, born in the throes of logical positivism, to hold courageous intellectual ground in the face of fierce critique from secular philosophy. To be sure, that has often been at some theological cost: when one is under ferocious assault from philosophical scoffers, it is hard to divert to a subtle explication of the epistemological complications occasioned by divine mystery. Just getting “God” back into the picture at all is a more modest and immediate goal’. (Coakley 2013, 607).

REFERENCES Alcoff, Linda Martín (1998), ‘What Should White People Do?’, Hypatia. A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 13 (3): 6–26, Special Issue: Border Crossings: Multiculturalism and Postcolonial Challenges, Part 2.

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Anderson, Pamela Sue, ed. (2010), New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Contestations and Transcendence Incarnate, Feminist Philosophy Collection, Dordrecht: Springer. Arcadi, James M. and James T. Turner, eds (2021), T&T Clark Handbook of Analytic Theology, London, New York: T&T Clark/Bloomsbury. Bernasconi, Robert (2009), ‘Must We Avoid Speaking of Religion? The Truths of Religions’, Research in Phenomenology, 39 (2): 204–23. Bilimoria, Purushottama and Andrew B. Irvine, eds (2009), Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, Dordrecht: Springer. Bilimoria, Purushottama and Agnieszka Rostalska (2023), ‘Diversity in Philosophy’, in Sarah Flavel and Chiarra Robbiano (eds), Key Concepts in World Philosophies: A Toolkit for Philosophers, 369–79, London: Bloomsbury Academics. Bird-David, Nurit (1999), ‘“Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology’, Current Anthropology, 40 (1): S67–S91. Burns, Elizabeth (2017), ‘Feminist Philosophy of Religion’, in Carol Hay (ed.), Philosophy: Feminism, Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks: Philosophy Series, 363–75, Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan. Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Coakley, Sarah (2007), ‘Feminism and Analytic Philosophy of Religion’, in William J. Wainwright (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion, 494–526, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coakley, Sarah (2013), ‘On Why Analytic Theology Is Not a Club’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 81 (3): 601–8. Connolly, Tim (2015), Doing Philosophy Comparatively, London, New York: Bloomsbury. Crockett, Clayton, B. Keith Putt and Jeffrey W. Robbins, eds (2014), The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Derrida, Jacques and Gianni Vattimo, eds (1998), Religion, trans. David Webb, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Dotson, Kristie (2012), ‘How is this Paper Philosophy?’ Comparative Philosophy, 3 (1): 3–29. Eckel, M. David, C. Allen Speight and Troy DuJardin, eds (2021), The Future of the Philosophy of Religion, Boston Studies in Philosophy, Religion and Public Life, Cham: Springer. Eze, Emmanuel Chuckwidi (1999), ‘Philosophy and the “Man” in the Humanities’, Topoi, 18: 49–58. Eze, Emmanuel Chuckwidi (2006), ‘What to Do? Upgrade!’, Topoi, 25: 51–6. Framarin, Christopher G. (2011), ‘The Use of Lakṣaṇā in Indian Exegesis’, in Joy, Morny (ed.), After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion, 239–56, Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Frankenberry, Nancy (1994), ‘Prolegomenon to Future Feminist Philosophies of Religion’, Hypatia. A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 9 (4): 1–14, Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Ganeri, Jonardon (2016), ‘Why Philosophy Must Go Global: A Manifesto’, Confluence, 4: 134–86. Goodchild, Phillip, ed. (2002), Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: Approaches from Continental Philosophy, New York: Fordham University Press. Gutiérrez, Gustavo (1971), A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, Salvation, trans. Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

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Hackett, Jeremiah and Jerald Wallulis, eds (2014), Philosophy of Religion for a New Century. Essays in Honor of Eugene Thomas Long, Dordrecht: Springer. Janicaud, Dominic (1996), Phenomenology and the Theological Turn: the French Debate in Continental Philosophy, New York: Fordham University Press. Joy, Morny, ed. (2011), After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion, Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Kanaris, Jim, ed. (2018), Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion: A Possible Future, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Kessler, Gary E. (1999), Philosophy of Religion: Toward a Global Perspective, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Lewis, Thomas A. (2015), Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion & Vice Versa, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Long, Eugene Thomas (2000), Twentieth Century Western Philosophy of Religion:1900–2000, Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 1, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Meister, Chad (2009), Introducing Philosophy of Religion, London: Routledge. Mills, Charles (2007), ‘White Ignorance’, in Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana (eds), Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, 11–38, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Mou, Bo (2010), ‘On Constructive-Engagement Strategy of Comparative Philosophy: A Journal Theme Introduction’, Comparative Philosophy, 1 (1): 1–32. Mou, Bo (2020), Cross-Tradition Engagement in Philosophy. A Constructive-Engagement Account, New York: Routledge. Park, Peter K. J. (2013), Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Plantinga, Alvin (1984), ‘Advice to Christian Philosophers’, Faith and Philosophy, 1 (3): 253–71. Prabhu, Joseph (2001), ‘Philosophy in an Age of Global Encounter’, APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies, 1 (1): 29–31. Price, Henry H. (1945), ‘Clarity is Not Enough’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 19: 1–31. Rosenlee, Lisa Li-Hsiang, Amy K. Donahue, David Kim, Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Kris Sealey (2020), ‘Symposium: Why Historicize the Canon?’, Journal of World Philosophies, 5 (1): 121–76. Said, Edward (1978), Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books. Sharma, Arvind K. (1990), A Hindu Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion, London, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sharma, Arvind K. (1995), The Philosophy of Religion: A Buddhist Perspective, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sharma, Arvind K. (2000), Classical Hindu Thought: An Introduction, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Sharma, Arvind K. (2001), A Jaina Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Sharma, Arvind K. (2006), A Primal Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion, Dordrecht: Springer. Sharma, Arvind K. (2008), The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedānta: A Comparative Study. Religion and Reason, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Sharma, Arvind K., ed. (2010), The World’s Religions: A Contemporary Reader, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

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Sharma, Arvind K. (2012), Religious Studies and Comparative Methodology: The Case for Reciprocal Illumination, New York: State University of New York Press. Schilbrack, Kevin (2014), Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto, Wiley Blackwell Manifestos, Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell. Schwitzgebel, Eric, Linus Ta-Lun Huang, Andrew Higgins and Ivan Gonzalez-Cabrera (2018), ‘The Insularity of Anglophone Philosophy: Quantitative Analyses’. Philosophical Papers, 47: 21–48. Simons, Peter (2001), ‘Whose Fault? The Origins and Evitability of the Analytic–Continental Rift’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 9 (3): 295–311. Smith, Wilfred C. (1978), The Meaning and End of Religion: A Revolutionary Approach to the Great Religious Traditions, New York: Harper and Row. Struhl, Karsten (2010), ‘No (More) Philosophy Without Cross-Cultural Philosophy’, Philosophy Compass, 5 (4): 287–95. Thistleton, Anthony C. (2009), Hermeneutics. An Introduction, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Tylor, Edward B. ([1871] 1970), Primitive Culture I-II, Gloucester, MA: Harper & Row. Westphal, Merold (1999), ‘Taking Plantinga Seriously: Advice to Christian Philosophers’, Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers, 16 (2): 173–81. Wildman, Wesley J. (2018) ‘Reforming Philosophy of Religion for the Modern Academy’, in Jim Kanaris (ed.), Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion: A Possible Future, 253–69, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Van der Leeuw, Gerardus (1933), Phänomenologie der Religion, Tübingen: Verlag von J.C.B. Mohr (P. Siebeck). Van Norden, Bryan W. (2017), Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto, New York: Columbia University Press. Van Norden, Bryan W. and Jay Garfield (2016), ‘If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call if What It Really Is’, New York Times, May 11. Available online: https://www​.nytimes​.com​ /2016​/05​/11​/opinion​/if​-philosophy​-wont​-diversify​-lets​-call​-it​-what​-it​-really​-is​.html (accessed 28 August 2021). Yandell, Keith E. (2004), ‘Universal Religion and Comparative Philosophy’, in Hackett, Jeremiah and Jerald Wallulis (eds), Philosophy of Religion for a New Century. Essays in Honor of Eugene Thomas Long, 279–306, Dordrecht: Springer. Yandell, Keith E. (2016), Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction, 2nd edn, Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy New York: Routledge. Yountae, An and Eleanor Craig, eds (2021), Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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PART I

Critique and methods

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Chapter 1

Deprovincializing philosophy of religion From ‘Faith and Reason’ to the postcolonial revaluation of religious epistemologies JACOB HOLSINGER SHERMAN

[Originally published in Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2018, Vol. 86, No. 2, pp. 341–63] While most textbook approaches to the philosophy of religion include a section variously entitled ‘Religious Epistemology’, ‘Faith and Reason’, or ‘The Rationality of Belief ’, in this paper I argue that a deprovinicialized, global and critical approach to the question of faith and reason might now appear more fully under the rubric of the postcolonial revaluation of emic epistemologies. Accordingly, a global-critical philosophy of religion will challenge standard assumptions within contemporary philosophy of religion regarding the normativity of certain approaches to rationality and its justification, on the one hand, and the justification of theism as the central religious question, on the other. I argue that such a deprovinicialized philosophy of religion, while challenging certain secular norms, may embrace a religious and philosophical realism without reenthroning a single religious world view as either culturally or epistemologically hegemonic. With justification, the contemporary university . . . may credit itself with having articulated the errors of modern-Western colonialism, of political and economic imperialism, and of a variety of more subtle ways of imposing its conception of the ‘all’ (or totalité) on others. Often, however, these errors are attributed to ‘them’, as if the totalizing tendencies of the west were reified in some isolable, albeit very widespread, aggregations of power, rather than some characteristic of the culture in general, including therefore the discourses of the critics. . . . I would rather assume the latter: that we who are nurtured in the modern west bear some totalizing ‘gene’, so that the objects of criticism ought, reflexively, to include the critics as well. –Peter Ochs, ‘Revised: Comparative Religious Traditions’ (2006, 485) Once Zhuang Zhou dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn’t know he was Zhuang Zhou. Suddenly he woke up, and there he was, solid and unmistakable Zhuang Zhou. But he didn’t know if he were Zhuang Zhou who had dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he was Zhuang Zhou.

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–Zhuangzi, ‘Discussion on Making All Things Equal’ (2013, 36) A number of recent works have made the case for a revaluation of the role of philosophy within religious studies. A common theme throughout most of these works is the claim that for philosophy of religion to become useful for religious studies, philosophy of religion will need to deprovincialize, will need in other words to move beyond its penchant for attending only to the philosophical difficulties raised by certain predominant, largely Western forms of theistic belief. But what might such a deprovincialized philosophy of religion look like in the concrete? Most textbook approaches to the philosophy of religion include a section variously entitled ‘Religious Epistemology’, ‘Faith and Reason’, ‘The Rationality of Belief’, or some other heading along those lines. This is understandable. Some such treatment of the epistemological significance of our diverse religious claims, practices and identities ought to remain a part of any religiously inclusive and critically informed approach to the philosophy of religion. However, in this paper, I will argue additionally that such a project ought also to challenge standard assumptions within contemporary philosophy of religion regarding the normativity of particular approaches to rationality and its justification, on the one hand, and the justification of theism as the central religious question, on the other.1 Put more positively, the challenge that religious epistemology poses to philosophy is not just the abstract challenge of belief but a more global challenge to the putatively neutral epistemological categories of the secular philosophical tribunal. I will argue, in other words, that a global and critical approach to the old question of faith and reason might now appear more fully under the rubric of the postcolonial revaluation of emic epistemologies.

THE POSTCOLONIAL REVALUATION OF EMIC EPISTEMOLOGIES Ever since the end of the World War II, scholars within the humanities and some of the social sciences have increasingly recognized the way in which the thick description of different groups requires us to pay attention to their often quite distinct understandings of reason and rationality. Eschewing, for example, the functionalism of Bronisław Malinowski or A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, such scholars have argued that distinct cultures display their own living coherence, and that these distinct cultures ought to be evaluated on their own terms rather than according to putatively universal criteria of judgement that, upon inspection, turn out to be the all too local and particular products of prevailing academic cultures. Let us call this general movement to consider these different ways of knowing according to their own culturally diverse understandings of what counts as rationality the revaluation of emic epistemologies. Although initially derived from linguistics, the terms emic and etic have become terms of art within anthropology, social and behavioural science, religious studies and other similar fields. An emic approach essentially designates an insider’s view of the matter in question; it is an account of the subject’s belief or action that the subject herself could find meaningful. An etic approach, by contrast, provides an observer’s account of the subject’s beliefs or practices, an account that generally purports to a certain universalizability or neutrality.2 Emic and etic ought to be understood as relative rather than absolute terms. A description that was etic may become emic as the description is assimilated by the subjects in question: a famous example of this can be seen

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in the way that the Buddhist revival in Theravāda countries of South and Southeast Asia often included an image of pristine Buddhism (Gombrich and Obeyesekere’s so-called ‘protestant Buddhism’) that was itself drawn from Western colonialist and missionary representations (Gombrich and Obeyesekere 1988, 202–40).3 The opposite movement from etic to emic may happen, as well, as in cases of conversion, apostasy, the acquisition of a new identity or citizenship or simply when one undergoes a significant change of mind. An emic epistemology is an account not of the knowledge that a subject claims, but of the way in which the subject seeks to attain knowledge. Such epistemologies may be reflexively articulated in sophisticated systems or they may be implicit. Emic epistemologies do not determine what a subject takes to be true, but rather govern what a subject can regard as intelligible, the plausibility conditions under which a claim’s truth might become a compelling candidate for consideration. Furthermore, certain emic epistemologies may aim at something more than what Western academia has considered truth (adequacy, coherence, representation): namely, they may aim at a kind of soteriological oneness with truth (e.g. truth as realization). The revaluation of emic epistemologies in general is a salutary development, but for us to speak of this as a postcolonial revaluation, something more is needed. Over the last few decades, postcolonial theory – associated with writers such as Dipesh Chakrabarty, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha and others – has established itself not only as one of the main currents of contemporary literary theory on the one hand, and history on the other, but has also become a significant academic interdisciplinary field in its own right. Drawing upon but also going beyond the theoretical resources of Marxism, poststructuralism and postmodernism broadly construed, postcolonial studies critically respond to the intellectual, cultural and political legacies of Western imperialism and colonialism while also intending to empower non-Western theorists, critics and writers to speak in their own voices, recall and narrate their own histories and reinvent their own cultural legacies. It is hard to define the boundaries of the field of postcolonial studies, and it continues to be subject to its own internal renegotiation, but it is often marked by a number of common general strategies that range from demonstrating the way that particular, contingent, Eurocentric presentations of the world have come to be regarded as natural to challenging the way that the identities, cultures, struggles and histories of non-Western peoples have been defined by European powers and the norms of European scholarship rather than being allowed to speak in their own name (Prabhu 2012; Spivak 1988). It is not only a question of representation but also a question of parity. As Homi K. Bhabha puts it in his influential essay, ‘The Postcolonial and the Postmodern’: Postcolonial criticism bears witness to the unequal and uneven forces of cultural representation involved in the contest for political and social authority within the modern world order. Postcolonial perspectives emerge from the colonial testimony of Third World countries and the discourses of ‘minorities’ within the geopolitical divisions of East and West, North and South. They intervene in those ideological discourses of modernity that attempt to give a hegemonic ‘normality’ to the uneven development and the differential, often disadvantaged, histories of nations, races, communities, peoples. They formulate their critical revisions around issues of cultural difference, social authority, and political discrimination in order to reveal the antagonistic and ambivalent moments within the ‘rationalizations’ of modernity. (Bhabha 1994, 171)

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The postcolonial not only indicates the study of those who were once subject to colonization – ’post’ shouldn’t be taken to designate a merely temporal relation – but it also refers to the presence of voices, persons, traditions and discourses that have the capacity to call modern, colonial, European constructions of rationality, authority and legitimacy into question. Thus, Bhabha’s oft-referenced claim relating the postcolonial to the postmodern: ‘The wider significance of the postmodern condition lies in the awareness that the epistemological “limits” of those ethnocentric ideas are also the enunciative boundaries of a range of other dissonant, even dissident histories and voices – women, the colonized, minority groups, the bearers of policed sexualities’ (Bhabha 1994). One powerful way to characterize the postcolonial project is that of provincializing Europe, as Dipesh Chakrabarty puts it in his influential volume from the turn of the millennium (Chakrabarty 2000). Contested knowledges lie at the centre of much of this postcolonial critique, so much so that colonialism itself may be seen, in one important sense, as an epistemological disorder and not only a cultural, economic and political project of occupation and extraction. For this reason, it might be more accurate (albeit rather cumbersome) to speak of the postcolonial revaluation of emic and etic epistemologies. It is not enough merely to give a charitable ear to a supposedly emic other; one must also contextualize, politicize and historically situate supposedly neutral and universal etic perspectives at the same time. What this entails in practice can be quite radical, as Chakrabarty has argued (Chakrabarty 2000), for postcolonial criticism is finally something much more than merely the inclusion of previously excluded voices. We can include the voices of the excluded without radically challenging our disciplinary practices. When historians, for instance, write histories-from-below, they quite rightly seek to include the voices of women, workers, the dispossessed, racial and sexual minorities and so forth. But this move towards greater inclusion is itself a quite ordinary aspect of resilient disciplinary practices. As Chakrabarty writes, this is ‘how the discipline of history renews itself’ (Chakrabarty 2000, 99). The postcolonial critique, however, at its most revolutionary, moves beyond the inclusion of excluded voices and minority histories to open itself to what Chakrabarty calls ‘subaltern pasts’, pasts that in principle cannot be entertained by any nonrevolutionary extension of our current academic disciplines. Rather than challenging any given narrative or particular account of the world, subaltern voices present challenges to the presumed horizon of rationality against which any ‘legitimate’ disciplinary development measures itself. What might this look like in practice? Among other things, Chakrabarty suggests this may require us to abandon disciplinary presumptions about the scope of naturalism, demythologization and historicism (Chakrabarty 2000, 104–5, 11–113). Subaltern pasts, which are also contemporaneous with our present, may require scholars to entertain, if not to accept, claims about supernatural agencies, about gods and spirits acting to historical effect, about heterogeneous temporalities and nonordinary forms of subjectivity and agency, claims that at the very least relativize the putatively rational, disenchanted and historical consciousness modern academic disciplines (including religious studies) regularly universalize. What Chakrabarty sees as a challenge to the discipline of history likewise poses a profound challenge to philosophy, religious studies and the philosophy of religion, a challenge I am referring to as the postcolonial revaluation of emic (and etic) epistemologies. There are a host of factors involved in the revaluation of emic epistemologies, some of which are more theoretical, such as the postmodern critique of the ontotheological nature of contemporary Western thought, and some of which are more ethical, such as

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the feminist articulation of standpoint epistemologies or the postcolonial critique of the putative superiority of the Western rational subject and its ties to a politics of domination. Of course, even this tendency to speak of these as either theoretical or ethical may be considered part of the problem. The basic issue that is raised in all these approaches is a concern that the language and epistemic categories that emerge from modernWestern scientific and philosophical traditions may be inadequate and even destructive when it comes to the analysis of knowledge claims from other cultures, other periods, diverse ways of knowing and domains of reality unacknowledged by dominant modern ontologies. The cumulative effect of this revaluation of emic epistemologies often seems to be a new levelling of the field: one engages viewpoints from outside the modern West as interlocutors rather than mere subjects of study. Thus, for example, Gavin Flood argues that neither scholarly (outsider) nor traditional (insider) accounts of religion enjoy a priori epistemological privilege; rather, both traditional accounts and scholarly accounts must be treated as legitimate competing narratives and weighed accordingly (Flood 1999, 139–42). The challenge that serious considerations of emic epistemologies pose to the academy, in general, and to the academic study of religion, in particular, should not be minimized. In contrast to prevailing academic tendencies, many emic perspectives hold that exotic ontological entities (gods, devas, daikinis, angels, demons, the uncreated light, archetypal principles, the true self and so forth) may be both real, agential and constitutively involved in the production of religious knowledge and experience. Although it would be easier to dismiss such claims as mistaken and unsophisticated, careful historical and philosophical scholarship will not allow such an easy judgement, for many of these perspectives include elaborate accounts of the linguistic and social mediation of knowledge, careful tests for communal validation, and reflection upon the ethical consequences of such claims. Arguably, to ignore the alternative epistemological practices and diverse accounts of rationality that subtend what may otherwise appear to be religiously exotic claims is to commit ourselves to the error that Harold Roth has called ‘cognitive imperialism’: the more or less subtle ethnocentrism involved in taking European religious, philosophical and scientific conceptions as academically normative (Roth 2008; Sherman 2014). According to Roth, the chief way in which contemporary religious studies might break with this cognitive imperialism is through a new willingness to incorporate first-person practices into our standard third-person methodological toolkit. In like manner, Jorge Ferrer and I have argued that a critical component in the assessment of many religious knowledge claims may be the revaluation of epistemological frameworks that take into account a wider engagement of human faculties – not only discursive reason but also intuition, imagination, somatic knowing, meditation, contemplation and so forth (Ferrer and Sherman 2008, 10–11). At this point, it may be important to issue a hesitation: recognizing that what counts as rational varies from culture to culture, that is to say, that practices of rationality are tradition- and culture-specific, need not force one into a subjective or nonrealist account of rationality. Here, I suspect, is where philosophy of religion has something to add to the religious studies discussion of these matters. The temptation within religious studies has often been to reduce too quickly the objects of its inquiry – the claims, symbols, traditions, moral practices, ritualized behaviours and experiences we label religious – to some more secular, publically accessible domain of explanation. Arguably, from its very beginning, the modern discipline of religious studies has been searching for a way to legitimate itself. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, religious scholars,

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chastened by Enlightenment critiques and following in a path opened by Schleiermacher, sought to salvage something of the religious by freeing religious experience from putatively discredited metaphysical frameworks and locating the holy, the sacred or the numinous within the epistemological subject. More recently, this turn to the subject itself began to seem utterly suspect. An array of critics challenged the supposedly privileged nature of the subject, pointing to its historicity, contingency, cultural and linguistic particularity, its essentially gendered construction and other such matters. The subject of modern religious studies – this self-conscious, self-reliant, self-transparent and responsible individual – began to appear all too obviously ‘metaphysical’. Thus, hoping to get beyond the essentialization of the subject, many religious studies scholars adopted new linguistic strategies as a means of exploring human religion. There was something fitting about this religious appropriation of linguistic philosophy, for much of religion consists not in private religious experience or mystical enlightenment but in the public and discursive artefacts and practices of religious texts, parables, rituals, myths, doctrines, creeds, symbols, narratives, festivals and so forth. It appears to me that within religious studies today, the prevailing motivation for paying renewed attention to emic epistemologies often stems from the widespread adoption of strong versions of this linguistic turn (although any strong distinction between scheme and content might motivate such a reconsideration, it is today the cultural-linguistic version of this distinction that prevails). And, at first glance, this makes sense. The linguistic turn within religious studies seems to emancipate emic viewpoints by energizing scholars to attend carefully to the richly articulated particular coherencies, speech conditions and cultural frameworks of different religious traditions. However, one can, by contrast, argue that strong versions of the linguistic turn in fact covertly continue and compound the problem of an a priori privileging the scholar’s etic viewpoint over that of his or her emic subjects. Why? Because strong versions of the linguistic turn seem to know ahead of time how thoroughly language can or cannot refer to that which exists before, beyond or beneath language, and this question seems to be one of the central questions involved in any critical tradition of religious practice and inquiry. When a strong version of the linguistic turn is simply assumed, then the object of religious studies is no longer the elucidation of the origin, nature or ontological implications of religious tradition, experience and the world in its own self-transcending. Rather, it is the analysis, interpretation or critical deconstruction and reconstruction of the textual, the linguistic and the symbolic. In this sense, much of modern religious studies can be seen as advancing the process of the linguistification of the sacred, a process that is central to the early Habermas’s description of the modern era itself (Habermas 1984). To ‘linguistify’ the sacred means to evacuate it of its once transcendental authority – an authority vouchsafed by God or heaven or dharma – and to bring the legitimization of its cognitive and normative claims down into the purely human sphere, the cultural, the intersubjective space constituted by communicative exchanges among rational human beings.4 In the supposedly disenchanted world of postmodernity, the sacred has been detranscendentalized, relativized, contextualized and diversified but, most fundamentally, assimilated to human linguistic expression. The effects of this have been widespread and can be discerned within many of the diverse topoi of contemporary religious studies: the currency of Wittgensteinian ‘language games’ and ‘forms of life’ approaches, the demise of classical foundationalism, the conceptual framework approach to understanding religious diversity, the interpretation of mysticism as a particular form of apophatic speech, the reading of medieval women’s religious experience as a form of self-authorization, and

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so forth. In all these areas – many of which are fruitful developments in themselves – the worrying aspect is the tendency to separate the referent of religious claims and practices from the objects, events, experiences and realities of religious life to the manipulation and evaluation only of the language, signs and meanings of religion.

REALISM AND REVALUATION What is it that a philosopher of religion must bring to the ongoing discussion within religious studies about how best to treat emic epistemologies? Crucially, I believe that philosophers may warn their religious studies colleagues that strong versions of the linguistic turn – versions that take linguistic relativism to entail metaphysical nonrealism – cannot ssimply be presumed. Indeed, strong versions of the linguistic turn have come under increasing philosophical criticism, and this is from both sides of the analytic/ continental divide. Consider, for example, John Searle’s defence of metaphysical realism in the face of detractors such as Hilary Putnam and Nelson Goodman. Searle aims to expose the regular confusion within nonrealist philosophies of two separate theses: the thesis that reality exists independent of our representations of it (the external realism thesis), on the one hand, and the thesis that reality is correctly described only by one privileged conceptual scheme (the single-privileged scheme thesis), on the other. If one assumes that realism means there is only one correct account of the world, then the evident truth that all representations of reality are made relative to a set of pragmatically or traditionally selected concepts will indeed lead to a denial of metaphysical realism. But, as Searle argues, there is simply no reason to suppose that the external realism thesis entails the single-privileged scheme thesis. Against Putnam, Searle explains: Putnam thinks that because we can only state the fact that iron oxidizes relative to a vocabulary and conceptual system, that therefore the fact only exists relative to a vocabulary and conceptual system. So, on his view if conceptual relativism is true, then metaphysical realism is false. But the premise of his argument does not entail the conclusion. It is, indeed, trivially true that all statements are made within a conceptual apparatus for making statements. Without a language we cannot talk. It does, indeed, follow from this that given alternative conceptual apparatuses there will be alternative descriptions of reality But it simply does not follow that the fact that iron oxidizes is in any way language-dependent or relative to a system of concepts or anything of the sort. Long after we are all dead and there are no statements of any kind, iron will still oxidize; and this is just another way of saying that the fact that iron oxidizes does not depend in any way on the fact that we can state that iron oxidizes. (Does anyone really, seriously, doubt this?). (Lepore and Gulick 1991, 191) Searle’s non sequitur argument is only one of many such analytic arguments, including Quine’s critique of the two dogmas of empiricism and Davidson’s dismantling of conceptual schemes, that have begun to issue in a sort of philosophical sea change away from the confines of language alone and back, as Husserl once claimed, to the things themselves. As a striking sign of this, we might take note of Timothy Williamson, the successor to A. J. Ayer and Michael Dummett (via David Wiggins) in the Wykeham Chair of Logic at Oxford, who has argued forcefully that analytic philosophy ought to move beyond the linguistic turn. Philosophers cannot rest content simply to talk about talk and, as Williamson notes, much of the best philosophy in the closing decades of the

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twentieth century refused to do so. Williamson points to ‘the revival of metaphysical theorizing, realist in spirit, often speculative, often commonsensical, associated with Saul Kripke, David Lewis, Kit Fine, Peter van Inwagen, David Armstrong and many others: work that has, to cite just one example, made it anachronistic to dismiss essentialism as anachronistic’ (Williamson 2007, 19). The revival of metaphysics, to which Williamson points, is momentous precisely because it was the rejection of such metaphysics that legitimated the linguistic turn in the first place. And yet now, in the wake of Quine’s naturalistic recuperation of ontology, Strawson’s defence of descriptive metaphysics, and the popularity of possible worlds semantics, much analytic philosophy has become overtly metaphysical. These different instances each signal, in their own way, a rejection of an extreme linguistic construal of philosophy – and the recuperation of a new ontic verve. Although different in style and temperament, a similar recuperation of realism in philosophy is taking place within continental circles. From Charles Taylor, Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou to the new generation associated with figures such as Quentin Meillassoux, Catherine Malabou, Maurizio Ferraris, Graham Harman and Markus Gabriel, many of the leading philosophers in the contemporary continental discussion are insisting, no less than their analytic counterparts, upon a return to realism often coupled with a new taste for speculative metaphysics. What does this have to do with the postcolonial revaluation of emic epistemologies? In fact, quite a lot, for so long as we consider that alternative conceptual schemes allow us access only to scheme-relative facts, then we will necessarily conclude that the majority of competing emic religious epistemologies provides us access only to diverse cultural constructions of religious realities. At best, we may find ourselves arguing that different religious traditions, beliefs and practices have some sort of neo-Durkheimian reference. We do not need to entertain seriously claims about the trikāyas of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the Miraaj of the Prophet or the Living Light of Hildegard of Bingen, because we already know that their contingent, contextual social mediation renders them socially constructed all the way down. But if we have reasons to think that strong versions of the linguistic turn are questionable, then we find ourselves having to entertain the possibility that in religion as elsewhere in life, we may be in touch with realities or objects whose antics, to use the language of Donald Davidson, make our sentences either true or false (Davidson 2006, 198).5 In his important text, Orientalism and Religion, Richard King provides a fine illustration of how all that we’ve been discussing might concretely apply to the postcolonial revaluation of emic epistemologies. Pointing to Buddhist philosophers such Dignāga, Kamalaśīla and Dharmakīrti, and also to the Hindu grammarian Bhartṛhari, King shows the way that these pre-modern Asian epistemologists held that real nonconceptual access to reality may require the antecedent use of conceptual tools. King explains that according to Dignāga: Sense-perception (pratyakṣa), although immediate and non-conceptual in itself, is mediated in human experience by conceptual constructions (kalpanā). What we apprehend with our senses, in its unmediated givenness, is the particular instant (svalakṣaṇa) that characterizes what is really there. However, the picture of reality that we, as unenlightened beings, construct is the product of the association of our ‘pure sensations’ with linguistic forms – such as names (nāma), categories (jāti) and concepts in general – acquired from our linguistic and cultural context. These, Dignāga argued, result in a misapprehension of reality since they derive from the construction

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of universals (sāmānyalakṣaṇa) in a world in which only unique particulars exist. (King 1999, 178–9) The point of Dignāga’s teaching is to enable one to cultivate – through ethical, intellectual and analytic formation – the capacity to relinquish attachment to linguistic and cultural conditioning that causes us to misapprehend reality. Dignāga’s approach is essentially therapeutic, but it is not a subtraction story: only by acquiring certain concepts is one able to free oneself from the distorting tyranny of concepts. Put otherwise, in Dignāga’s case at least, we meet scheme-relative or language-relative confessions that are still regarded as truth-conducive – indeed, not only truth-conducive, but truth-realizing. Ordinary reality is constructed reality, but one may move through linguistic and social constructions to the unconditioned state of enlightenment (King 1999, 178–9). The case of the fifth-century CE Hindu grammarian Bhartṛhari may be even more radical, for Bhartṛhari held, long before Derrida, that there is nothing outside of the text, which is to say, no thought possible apart from language. As Bhartṛhari puts it in Vākyapadīya 1.123, ‘There is no cognition in the world in which the word does not figure. All knowledge is, as it were, intertwined with the word’ (Iyer 1965, 110). For Bhartṛhari, language functions holistically. The unit of meaning is not the word, but the sentence, and finally the one continuous, indivisible reality of language as the sound of the universe, the monistic sound of Brahman (śabda‐Brahman). Thus for Bhartṛhari, far from distancing language users from reality, the mediation of language itself becomes how one attains to non-dual realization. None of this settles the matter. The claims of a Dignāga or a Bhartṛhari need to be tested, evaluated and debated, just as we need to test, evaluate, debate and refine the claims of Searle, Taylor, Heidegger, Saussure and so forth, to say nothing of Maimonides, Augustine, Mulla Sadra and others. Nothing about my commendation of the postcolonial revaluation of emic epistemologies in any way entails that a global-critical philosophy of religion should reenthrone one or another religious tradition – there is no question of returning to the hegemonic theological governance of either society at large or the academy in general. Evaluation and debate, of course, raise again the thorny problem of the differing perspectives, standpoints and criteria required for any testing of particular claims. How are we to evaluate each other’s epistemologies if our very criteria of rationality differ? Chakrabarty raises a similar question himself in the course of reflecting on his teacher Ranajit Guha’s classic essay, ‘The Prose of Counter-Insurgency’ (Guha 1988). In that essay, Guha had provided an account of the mid-nineteenth-century Santal rebellion. The Santals, a tribal group from eastern India (modern-day Jharkhand), rebelled in 1855 against British colonial powers and the economically oppressive racism of nonlocal upper-caste Indian landowners. In keeping with Guha’s postcolonial desire to open the discipline of history to subaltern voices – in other words, to take emic subaltern understandings seriously – Guha sought to pay attention to the historical consciousness that animated the Santals during their rebellion. However, as Chakrabarty notes, in doing so Guha encountered a paradox, for Santal leaders ascribed their rebellion not to their own historical agency but rather to the initiative of a god, namely Thakur, the supreme god of Santal tradition. In the months before the rebellion commenced, Thakur repeatedly visited and then deputized the brothers Sido and Kanhu Murmu to lead the rebellion in his name. In the historical decree (perwannah) calling for the revolt, the supernatural agency acting through the brothers Murmu is made explicit:

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The Thacoor has descended in the house of Seedoo Manjee, Kanoo Manjee, Bhyrub and Chand, at Bhugnudihee in Pergunnah Kunjeala. The Thakoor in person is conversing with them, he has descended from Heaven, he is conversing with Kanoor and Seedoo, The Sahibs and the white Soldiers will fight. Kanoo and Seedoo Manjee are not fighting. The Thacoor himself will fight. Therefore you Sahibs and Soldiers fight with the Thacoor himself. (quoted in Guha 1988, 85) The paradox lies in Guha’s desire both to see subaltern classes acting in accord with their own agency and subjectivity (and thus to reject stagist and colonialist readings of the Santals as prepolitical, religiously fanatical, irrational and nonagential), while at the same time wishing to understand the Santals in terms of their own subaltern consciousness. Thus the dilemma, as Chakrabarty puts it: In his own telling, then, the subaltern is not necessarily the subject of his or her history, but in the history of Subaltern Studies or in any democratically minded history, he or she is. What does it mean, then, when we both take the subaltern’s views seriously – the subaltern ascribes the agency for their rebellion to some god – and want to confer on the subaltern agency or subjecthood in their own history, a status the subaltern’s statement denies? (Chakrabarty 2000, 103) Chakrabarty’s conclusion, developed in part through a reading of Rudolf Bultmann, is that insofar as one remains within the discipline of history one cannot countenance the supernatural: ‘A narrative strategy that is rationally defensible in the modern understanding of what constitutes public life – and the historians speak in the public sphere – cannot be based on a relationship that allows the divine or the supernatural a direct hand in the affairs of the world’ (Chakrabarty 2000, 104). The historian can claim that the brothers Murmu believed Thakur appeared to them, but he or she cannot ask the question whether Thakur did in fact call upon Kanoo and Seedoo to lead the rebellion. ‘The Santals’ statement that God was the main instigator of the rebellion’, writes Chakrabarty, ‘has to be anthropologized (i.e. converted into somebody’s belief or made into an object of anthropological analysis) before it finds a place in the historian’s narrative’ (Chakrabarty 2000, 105). More radically and enigmatically, however, Chakrabarty further suggests that history or historicism, thus understood, is not the only legitimate way of remembering the past. For all its putative universality and resilience, the historian’s method of explaining the past can neither discredit nor elide the heterogeneities of human life, including other ways of attending to our diverse histories, temporalities and experience. Human life cannot be captured exhaustively by secular political and historical lenses. Accordingly, Chakrabarty holds that we need to abandon both the assumption of homogeneous secular time and the assumption that ‘gods and spirits’ are functions of the socius, rather than explanatorily basic in themselves. I try, on the other hand, to think without the assumption of even a logical priority of the social. One empirically knows of no society in which humans have existed without gods and spirits accompanying them. Although the God of monotheism may have taken a few knocks – if not actually ‘died’ – in the nineteenth-century European story of ‘the disenchantment of the world,’ the gods and other agents inhabiting practices of so-called ‘superstition’ have never died anywhere. I take gods and spirits to be existentially coeval with the human, and think from the assumption that the question of being human involves the question of being with gods and spirits. (Chakrabarty 2000, 15–16)

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Reflecting on Chakrabarty’s relevance for her own work, the feminist scholar of medieval Christian mysticism, Amy Hollywood, wonders whether we ought not to press Chakrabarty’s account even further. Hollywood notes that the naturalistic explanatory categories of modern social science, religious studies and philosophy of religion alike, categories that make sense to Hollywood and her interlocutors, would be unntelligible both to the Santals and to Hollywood’s medieval Christian mystics. ‘All of which suggests’, she writes, ‘that there might be good epistemological, ethical, and political reasons to question the extent to which we allow modern categories of analysis . . . to shape our reading of the past, particularly the religious past’ (Hollywood 2016, 120–1). Chakrabarty, to be sure, allows that there are other ways of remembering the past, but seems convinced that emancipatory political possibilities require us to play by the rules of a disenchanted, demythologized public square. However, for her part, Hollywood not only wonders how we know this to be the case, but also whether emancipatory political goals exhaust the desiderata of scholarship that aim at understanding, explanation and the promotion of human flourishing. Might there be emancipatory possibilities in the life worlds rendered visible through alternative histories? Perhaps even more radically, should we assume that agency, as understood within secular historiography, is the only way in which to think about politics (either in the past or in the present)? . . . And finally, are there ends other than those of emancipation to which we must attend in our desire to understand, explain, and promote the flourishing of human lives? (Hollywood 2016, 127) How are we to adjudicate such questions? The way forward may lie in recognizing that the salient distinction is not between insider and outsider, emic and etic, or secular and supernaturalist, but rather between critical and noncritical, on the one hand, and translatable and nontranslatable, on the other. Those traditions of reflection that are more critical, those that conduct an ongoing, flourishing conversation about the goods that constitute them, and those that are more readily capable of transposition outside of the cultural nexus of their genesis – such traditions enjoy an epistemic advantage.6 Such transpositions and translations, however, do not suppose some third neutral or universal discourse either in the form of secular and naturalist proscription or in some set of procedural rules for communicative rationality. Of course, interlocutors occupy their own unique standpoints and perspectives, but this is hardly the reason for scepticism. We believe our standpoints provide us fallible but genuine access to the real, and ought to expect the same from our interlocutors. Because we do not yet know what reality is capable of nor how deep the mystery goes, we have no choice but to engage in reflection, dialogue and debate with one another, which necessarily includes the precarity of theoretical (and often linguistic) translation. Such translations are achieved only in the process of attending to another tradition, another way of knowing, another universe of discourse insofar as we are able to engage with it. But our capacity to engage expands precisely through our active participation in such undertakings.

A NEW GOD OR THE NOVA EFFECT? One of the central challenges preventing us from seriously reconsidering the philosophical value of emic epistemologies in the past has certainly been the dominance of normative secularity within the academy. Of course, normative secularity – the active and unabashed

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privileging of etic perspectives, especially the privileging of naturalist etic perspectives – is still alive and well, even in the academic study of religion. Moving beyond the social scientific naturalism of a previous generation of scholars such as Robert Segal, Russell McCutcheon, Donald Wiebe or J. Samuel Preus, the cognitive science of religion takes an even more strictly naturalist and reductionist approach to the explanation of religion and its persistence. Scholars working in this field seek to explain (or explain away) the acquisition and continuance of religion by reference to the sorts of explanations offered in evolutionary psychology and sociobiology. Thus, for example, religion is seen as an evolutionary spandrel, a consequence of the brain’s hazard-precaution system or its Hyperactive Agency Detection Device. From the perspective of a global-critical philosophy of religion, however, what is most noteworthy about these approaches is the degree to which they continue and exacerbate the assumption that etic explanations are to be privileged over emic understandings of these same behaviours. Today, however, such assumptions are much harder justifiably to maintain than in the past. In the heyday of the secularization thesis, many scholars assumed that the scholarly task was that of explaining away religious behaviours and phenomena by reducing them to some more etic explanations of basic agency. Prayer, bhakti, dhikr, biblical study, ritual and liturgical celebration and so forth – religion in all its guises – these were regarded, not as affirmative human behaviours, but as responses to a lack of some sort. Such actions were not to be understood emically on their own terms or in their own emic registers, but rather by reference to some etic standard (e.g. social utility, evolutionary adaptation, material production, etc.). However, once what Charles Taylor has called the immanent frame of secularity is revealed as its own form of traditioned reason, then the formal, de jure prescription against emic frameworks is itself rendered suspect (Taylor 2007; Stout 2004). Arguably, it is a paradigmatically modern and Western belief to assume that reasonable argument is confined to the secular public square. Considered globally, such an assumption appears not only contingent but wholly questionable, and yet much of our current academic practice, even within religious studies, seems to be organized by this and similar intuitions. The marked preference for historicist approaches in the study of religion, for example, seems to be motivated by a strong desire to restrict scholarly inquiries to those aspects of religious traditions that are objectively observable. But one might wonder, what aspects of religious life and practice does this privileging of the third-person perspective leave out? One plausible account would contend that this restriction is itself rooted in particular epistemological assumptions inherited from the European Enlightenment but also in certain theological assumptions inherited from late-medieval Christendom. These philosophical and theological inheritances conspire together to make credible the peculiarly Western and modern assumption that the object of religion is a supernatural and, therefore, cognitively inaccessible agent (this despite the alternative report of many theistic philosophers of religion). Such an assumption, in turn, allows us to treat religious knowledge as something private, leading not only to the widespread sentiment that religious argument can never be more than apologetics but also to the conclusion that whatever religious experience is, it could never be taken as veridical. If we suspend these various assumptions, however, might we not discover that pessimism about the possibility of reasonable religious disagreement, argument and inquiry also falls by the wayside? Surely such an expansion of reasonable discourse is a genuine scholarly desideratum. Far from a critical deficit then, the revaluation of emic epistemologies may provide us with a certain critical advantage when attending to the diversity of lived religious practices, events and phenomena.

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Nor is there any reason to treat such an expansion of discourse as somehow anachronistic: indeed, it can be quite modern. The revaluation of emic and etic perspectives may be understood as part of the proliferation of new spiritual options that paradoxically abound under the sociological conditions of our supposedly secular modernity. Charles Taylor has recently named this surprising efflorescence of new spiritual options the ‘NOVA effect’, but the phenomenon was already noted by Nietzsche (Taylor 2007). Nietzsche recognized that the tremendous cultural event of the death of God did not spell the end of religion but invited new religions, new rituals and new acts of divinization. Consider the familiar lines from The Gay Science: God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it? (Nietzsche 1974, §125) In his notebooks, Nietzsche records a similar sentiment. The crucified god, he thinks, artificially constrained the wild proliferation of divinities that has now at last become possible once again. And how many new gods are still possible! As for myself, in whom the religious, that is to say god-forming [gottbildende], instinct occasionally becomes active at impossible times – how differently, how variously the divine has revealed itself to me each time! So many strange things have passed before me in those timeless moments that fall into one’s life as if from the moon, when one no longer has any idea how old one is or how young one will yet be – I should not doubt that there are many kind of gods. (Nietzsche 1967, §1038) In a less dithyrambic spirit, this insight into the new plurality of spiritual options opened by modernity lies at the heart of Peter Berger’s abandonment of the secularization thesis that he himself helped to make famous. Berger writes that in the late twentieth and now in the twenty-first century, it becomes clear that, as far as religion is concerned, ‘modernity does not necessarily secularize; however, probably necessarily, it does pluralize’ (Berger 2010, 3). When we reconsider emic epistemologies, we will perforce often reconsider epistemologies from outside the modern West. While some may think this a kind of anachronism or a romanticizing of the past, I have tried to show that there is indeed something very modern about considering a vast diversity of spiritual and religious options. In revaluing emic perspectives, philosophers of religion are not involved in a kind of regression to a time when one or another version of theology unproblematically dominated the sciences or even explained all religious phenomena. Instead, this revaluation simply points to the fact that Western, secular epistemologies may not be the best or final arbiters in the assessment of religious knowledge claims, in particular those emerging from long-term, habituated religious or contemplative practice. Here, Richard King’s caveat is important: ‘My point is not that Western scholars should necessarily accept the emic perspectives over which they are claiming the authority to speak, but rather that they at least entertain the possibility that such perspectives are a legitimate stance to adopt and engage them in constructive debate’ (King 1999, 183). This cannot be overemphasized,

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for if we were simply to revert to a situation in which each party enjoyed the privacy of their own theological discourse – somewhat along the lines of the early George Lindbeck whose cultural-linguistic theory reads religious doctrines as the grammatical rules of a given community – then we would perforce remain wholly within the linguistic turn and therefore also within the a priori privileging of etic (linguistified) accounts of rationality (Lindbeck 2009). But we cannot assume that dominant inherited accounts of rationality are immune to transformation, especially the sort of transformation that occurs when one enters into philosophical dialogue with interlocutors whose knowledge practices have been formed through radically different experiences of the world, of other human beings and of the mysteries of life, death, existence and so forth. In the revaluation of emic epistemologies, a critically aware and pluralistic approach to the philosophy of religion expands its horizons and does more than just consider the philosophical viability of religious claims. We do not simply ask whether religious people achieve knowledge or attain truth. Rather, in the light of people’s diverse encounters with the world and with the realities they hold to reverberate at the heart of the world, even beyond the world, we are forced also to ask what knowledge itself is and how truth may yet meet us.

CONCLUSION In this chapter, I have introduced and contextualized the notion of the postcolonial revaluation of emic epistemologies by relating it to a number of diverse movements within religious studies and postcolonial studies, on the one hand, and to the newly contested nature of the secular, on the other. I argued, furthermore, that a revaluation of emic epistemologies in no way entails that a critically engaged and pluralistic approach to the philosophy of religion reenthrones one or another of the hegemonic theologies that putatively governed either society or the academy in the past. Nor, I have suggested, does this attention to religious and epistemological diversity require philosophers of religion to check their truth claims, theistic or otherwise, at the door. Philosophy of religion cannot become cultural studies; it cannot eschew the evaluation of diverse, culturally indexed claims altogether without ceasing to be philosophy in any substantive sense. Especially when dealing with religiously charged concepts about normativity, ultimacy, divinity, the absolute, nature itself and so on, philosophy has no neutral ‘cool place’ from which to assess the claims of others. As a number of excellent works on the intersection of philosophy and religious studies have recently recognized, our inquiries into these matters, whether secular or otherwise, are inherently self-implicating and ought to be acknowledged as such (Roberts 2013; Schilbrack 2014; Lewis 2015). Indeed, it is precisely the claim to a privileged place of neutrality that constitutes the chief strategy of the hegemonic epistemologies we now look at with suspicion. In the classical topoi of philosophy of religion, it has been common to address epistemological matters under the rubric of faith and reason, but I have argued that this too quickly assumes that faith and reason can be neatly divided from one another, and moreover that the philosopher or religious studies scholar can be neatly identified with the latter term. I have endeavoured to show that such monological constructions of reason are politically, geographically and historically contingent, and that they serve to police the field of critical discourse by excluding those who fail to abide by these contingent norms. If, however, we see the task of a global-critical philosophy of religion as, among other things, revaluating both emic and etic epistemologies, then the field of reasonable, realist discourse is thrown open to

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all those who engage in the speculative, reflective activity of reason-giving of whatever sort. There is something potentially emancipatory about this, not least because it widens the field of genuine interlocutors, which is to say the sphere of representation and parity. There is much more that needs to be said and thought about the many issues I have raised, but I hope I have provided at least some impetus to discussion and a few arguments for consideration. By way of conclusion, allow me a few provocative questions. Could it be that a postcolonial revaluation of emic epistemologies is important not only because it affords us a thicker account of what we name religion, but also because it meets a critical personal, sociocultural and even spiritual need? Moreover, might one ask: is our present commitment to modest, delimited, naturalistic inquiries really as innocuous as it appears (or as it pretends to be)? Might it not be the case that the principled refusal to countenance and take seriously religious reasons has in fact ceded the field to a variety of increasingly stringent, sometimes violent voices of competing fideisms against which, in principle, no argument can be raised? In other words, as delicious as philosophy is, might taking seriously the epistemologies of others have a more than philosophical significance?

NOTES 1. I am not claiming that questions about the justification of theism have no place within philosophy of religion—theism is clearly an extraordinarily compelling question for billions of those within Christian, Jewish, Muslim and many Hindu traditions – but only that we cannot take theism and naturalism to exhaust the salient set of metaphysical and theological options worthy of philosophical consideration. 2. For a fine account of the emic/etic distinction, see Russell McCutcheon, ‘Theoretical Background: Insides, Outsides, and The Scholar of Religion’ in McCutcheon (1999). 3. Gombrich and Obeyesekere’s influential thesis has not been without its critics. Anne Blackburn, for example, has persuasively argued that the revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka, at least, was in fact more a function of creative, local Sri Lankan traditions of Buddhist renewal than a function of the assimilation of colonial and missionary representations (Blackburn 2010). 4. Habermas has since tempered his confidence in the secularization thesis and now sees a place for the public expression of religious belief, even if he continues to insist that governmental decisions must be made from within the confines of a still-neutral secular discourse (Habermas and Mendieta 2002; Habermas 2008; Habermas and Cronin 2010). 5. Of course, as a naturalist, Davidson meant that the antics of the objects of the material world make our sentences either true or false, but shorn of his naturalism, his conclusions regarding conceptual schemes can be extended to questions such as those we entertain in the philosophy of religion. For a critique of Davidson’s complete dismantling of conceptual schemes, see ‘The Importance of Herder’ in Taylor 1980 (cf. also Rescher 1980). 6. I am influenced here by MacIntyre’s account of traditions as institutions that exist precisely by virtue of the continuous renegotiation of the goods that constitute them, rather than the putatively conservative vision of traditions as static deposits of identity and stability. As MacIntyre writes, ‘The traditions through which particular practices are transmitted and reshaped never exist in isolation for larger social traditions. What constitutes such traditions? We are apt to be misled here by the ideological uses to which the concept of a tradition has been put by conservative political theorists. Characteristically such theorists have followed Burke in contrasting tradition with reason and the stability of tradition with conflict. Both contrasts obfuscate. For all reasoning takes place within the context of some traditional mode of thought, transcending through criticism and invention the limitations

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of what had hitherto been reasoned in that tradition; this is as true of modern physics as of medieval logic. Moreover when a tradition is in good order it is always partially constituted by an argument about the goods the pursuit of which gives to that tradition its particular point and purpose. So when an institution – a university, say, or a farm, or a hospital – is the bearer of a tradition of practice or practices, its common life will be partly, but in a centrally important way, constituted by a continuous argument as to what a university is and ought to be or what good farming is or what good medicine is. Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict. Indeed when a tradition becomes Burkean, it is always dying or dead.’ (MacIntyre 2007, 221–2).

REFERENCES Berger, Peter L. (2010). Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Religious Resources for a Middle Position. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Blackburn, Anne M. (2010). Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka, Buddhism and Modernity. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. (2000). Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Davidson, Donald. (2006). The Essential Davidson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ferrer, Jorge N. and Jacob H. Sherman. (2008). ‘The Participatory Turn in Spirituality, Mysticism, and Religious Studies’. In Jacob H. Sherman and Jorge N. Ferrer (eds), The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, and Religious Studies, 1–80. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Flood, Gavin D. (1999). Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion. London: Cassell. Gombrich, Richard F. and Gananath Obeyesekere. (1988). Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Guha, Ranajit. (1988). ‘The Prose of Counter-Insurgency’. In Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (eds), Selected Subaltern Studies, 45–89. New York: Oxford University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, Jürgen. (2008). Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Habermas, Jürgen and Ciaran Cronin. (2010). An Awareness of What Is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, Jürgen and Eduardo Mendieta. (2002). Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God and Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. Hollywood, Amy M. (2016). Acute Melancholia and Other Essays: Mysticism, History, and the Study of Religion, Gender, Theory, and Religion. New York: Columbia University Press. Iyer, K. A. Subramania. (1965). The Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari and its Vṛtti. Poona: Deccan College Monograph. King, Richard. (1999). Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India and ‘the Mystic East’. New York: Routledge. Lepore, Ernest and Robert van Gulick. (1991). John Searle and His Critics. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Lewis, Thomas A. (2015). Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion--and Vice Versa. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Lindbeck, George A. (2009). The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. 25th anniversary edn. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox. MacIntyre, Alasdair C. (2007). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. 3rd edn. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. McCutcheon, Russell T. (1999). The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader, Controversies in the Study of Religion. London: Cassell. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. (1967). The Will to Power, trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Random House. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm. (1974). The Gay Science; With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs, trans. Walter Arnold Kaufmann. New York: Random House. Ochs, Peter. (2006). ‘Revised: Comparative Religious Traditions’. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 74 (2): 483–94. Prabhu, Joseph. (2012). ‘Philosophy in an Age of Postcolonialism’. Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 25 (2): 123–38. Rescher, Nicholas. (1980). ‘Conceptual Schemes’. In P. A. French, Jr., T. E. Uehling and H. Wettstein (eds), Midwest Studies in Philosophy. Vol. 5, Studies in Epistemology, 323–45. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Roberts, Tyler T. (2013). Encountering Religion: Responsibility and Criticism after Secularism, Insurrections. New York: Columbia University Press. Roth, Harold. (2008). ‘Against Cognitive Imperialism: A Call for a Non- Ethnocentric Approach to Cognitive Science and Religious Studies’. Religion East & West, 8: 1–26. Schilbrack, Kevin. (2014). Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. Sherman, Jacob Holsinger. (2014). ‘On the Emerging Field of Contemplative Studies and Its Relationship to the Study of Spirituality’. Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality, 14 (2): 208–29. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. (1988). ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ In Marxism and the Interpretation of Cultue, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Stout, Jeffrey. (2004). Democracy and Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Taylor, Charles. (1980). ‘Theories of Meaning’. Man and World, 13 (3–4): 281–302. Taylor, Charles. (2007). A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Williamson, Timothy. (2007). The Philosophy of Philosophy, The Blackwell/Brown Lectures in Philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Zhuangzi. (2013). The Complete Works of Zhuangzi, trans. Burton Watson. Translations from the Asian Classics. New York: Columbia University Press.

Chapter 2

Postcolonialism and the question of global-critical philosophy of religion ANDREW B. IRVINE AND PURUSHOTTAMA BILIMORIA

INTRODUCTION Postcolonialism names a perspective that calls into question the very notion of a globalcritical philosophy of religion. At least, it challenges one important sense that that notion may carry. Postcolonialism doubts that a critical philosophy of religion could, or should pretend to, comprehend religion in a global way, if by ‘global’ we mean ‘total’ – complete, exhaustive, without remainder. Any such ‘total’ philosophy will have been produced from a particular intellectual and lived perspective. As it is effective, the local limitations of that perspective will tend to be denied and eventually forgotten, with grave consequences. Let’s call this latter process the ‘totalization’ of a world view. Simplifying, here is how totalization works. Whatever fits with that local, limited sense of reality is taken as the sum total of what is. It adds up to the world. Whatever fits uneasily, though, or not at all, threatens to disrupt the totality of the world view. Thus, it tends to be subtracted as if it were not. If the process works extremely well, then the presence of things that don’t fit barely registers in the reality sense of the world view’s participants. Even if the world view is refined through philosophical reflection, this does not guarantee an end to totalization. Indeed, our first claim is that if ‘global’ philosophy of religion means total philosophy of religion, we are really pursuing a totalizing, and therefore a deeply incomplete, philosophy. Now, totalization is not completely unconstructive. Every world offers important insights to philosophical reflection. However, the globalization of a philosophy of religion and its local world in this sense will also be destructive – and not only to its proponent’s reality sense. For, denial and forgetting are less mathematical than our language in the previous paragraph. They do not take place just in the mind and world of the totalizer. They happen also in and to the worlds of the others who don’t fit. A totalizing philosophy of religion is premised on what we call epistemic violence: witting or unwitting distortion and exclusion from reasonable dialogue of others’ ways of thinking and living. The basic move of epistemic violence is twofold: reduce others to the status of objects, knowing and dealing with their consequent inanity according to one’s own ways of thinking and living;

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exclude others with their different ways of thinking and living and refuse to recognize them as fellow subjects, sources of wisdom other than our own. For precisely this reason, a global-total philosophy of religion cannot be also a critical philosophy of religion. And in fact (and again simplifying), as the power of the West has been the predominating globalizing force through the modern era, so-called ‘Western’ philosophy of religion has been the predominating global-total philosophy. There is critical work to do.1 Our goals here are modest. First, we want to explicate the notion of epistemic violence in the context of modern colonialism. Second, we will illustrate by examples epistemic violence in modern philosophy of religion and the critical resistance of postcolonial thinking. Third, we will commend a better sense of ‘global’ philosophy of religion at which to aim – philosophy as a medium of decolonizing, cross-cultural dialogue. We focus on the field of philosophy of religion as it is configured in the globalized (that word!) English-speaking academy in the early twenty-first century. Simplifying yet again, what it means in the field to think philosophically about religion is configured all too often as a forced choice between two alternatives. Either you philosophize in an ‘Anglo-American’ Analytic style or in a ‘Continental’ Phenomenological style: the one fixes on clarity and coherence in doctrinal statements, the other fixes on describing and interpreting purported religious experiences, and both are fixated upon categories which, although they developed during the pre-modern theological and spiritual history of Christianity in Europe, are taken as universally applicable. This is the locality from which most work in philosophy of religion today attempts globality. Limited by totalizing reliance upon its local concepts, it is epistemically violent, and unable to recognize, let alone stop its violence.2

COLONIAL EPISTEMIC VIOLENCE Epistemic violence is done in many times and places. Perhaps a measure of it is necessary to think at all. Here, though, we concentrate on the epistemic violence that enables and accompanies globalization of Western ways of thinking and living, colonial epistemic violence. This marks a period beginning in the late fifteenth/early sixteenth centuries. Although it is strongly contested in the late twentieth/early twenty-first centuries, it has not yet ended. We identify this as the span of the modern age. Postcolonial thinking is intimately tied to the experience of Western colonization and, philosophically, to the type of modernity that flowered in its wake. Indeed, it contends that the emergence and growth of modern life and thought were spurred by European colonization of the globe and remain intricately intertwined with colonialism. In other words, colonialism is the underside of Eurocentric modernity. The end of European colonial rule in newly constituted nations, whether in the Americas during the nineteenth century or across Asia and Africa after the World War II, may be interpreted as the triumph of modernity’s authentic universality over the aberrancy of modern European colonialism. On this interpretation, the humanist ideals of the European Enlightenment (starting with the big three: liberty, equality, fraternity), really belong to the world, to all peoples. It is the secularity of those sacred ideals, advanced through scientific progress, which makes possible the modern transcendence of divisive religious and cultural differences towards a universal human community. However, postcolonialism illuminates an underside to this mythology. From its vantage point, colonialism seems less an aberration from, than a condition for, the progress

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of the modern world. From its vantage point, it seems that Enlightenment humanist ideals became thinkable for Europeans because they were denied the peoples they had colonized, in political practice if not also in philosophical reflection. That is to say, the social transformations wrought in Europe as it assumed centrality in a new world system of colonial domination and exploitation made it possible for Europeans (some, anyway) to claim liberty, equality and fraternity as universal ‘Rights of Man’ for themselves, but not yet or never for others whom they deemed did not yet or never could possess the traits of true humanity. The globalization of this modernity, even as it has inspired countless millions all over the planet, has proceeded upon continuing denial of humanity to massive numbers of people. The age of globalization is an age of exclusion, also. The end of formal rule by the colonizers in the twentieth century did not mark the end of colonial habits of mind for the former colonizers or the formerly colonized. These habits of mind, their causes and consequences, constitute a present, persistent form of epistemic violence which we call ‘coloniality’.3 The kernel of philosophy of religion pursued from a postcolonial perspective is the irritating observation that too much work in modern philosophy of religion is distorted by, may even serve as an instrument of, coloniality. The irritation can be enough to call the whole project of modern philosophy of religion into doubt, spurring new inquiry. Postcolonialism as a name for that new inquiry signifies reflective efforts to clarify and criticize coloniality in philosophy of religion, and in so doing foster what some call ‘decoloniality’ – habits of mind for not just a decolonized practice of philosophy of religion, but a decolonized practice of life. Thus, we will sometimes speak of ‘postcolonial and decolonial thinking’ in order to emphasize the constructive side of efforts to develop a distinctive kind of philosophy of religion under the influence of postcolonialism. However various may be the endeavours marked under that kind of philosophy of religion, non-violence will be its hallmark.4

ANTI-COLONIALISM I We begin to better understand the claims of postcolonialism regarding the modern age and modern philosophy by considering two important factors in recent world history: the success of anti-colonialism and its failure. The first, and one of the most significant geopolitical phenomena of the twentieth century, is the worldwide anti-colonial struggle. Especially in the first several decades after the World War II, new nation-states were constituted across the African continent, the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, Oceania and the Caribbean. The significance of achieving national statehood lay in the quintessentially modern political conception of sovereignty: that sovereignty belongs to a people as they independently constitute themselves a nation by means of citizenship in the state. Sovereignty so conceived actualizes liberty, equality and fraternity. In many instances, war against the colonial masters was the central demonstration of independence and sovereignty. Perhaps the most extraordinary liberation movement, then, was in British India. For there, the strategy of popular non-violent resistance to colonial rule led by M. K. (Mahatma) Gandhi was crucial in achieving national independence in 1947. Gandhi’s abiding concern was to overcome what he perceived as the self-defeating impulse to violence. In Hind Swaraj (a title which could be translated, ‘Indian Sovereignty’), Gandhi laid out his well-known doubts about the whole enterprise

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to become modern, warning that those who pursued independence through violence might win superficial change, but would surely become more like the colonizers in the process. Beating the British Empire at its own game, as it were, would prove to be merely ‘English rule without the Englishman’. (Mukherjee 1993, 12; Bilimoria 2022) In Latin America, the situation was somewhat different from what prevailed in other parts of the world. The Latin American nations had thrown off Spanish imperial rule in the early nineteenth century, at a time when other European countries were still extending their empires elsewhere. However, independence from Spain in Latin America did little to disturb relations between elites of Spanish descent and the classes or castes below them, especially the surviving indigenous communities. Furthermore, slavery was not completely abolished from the continent until 1888. In his own lifetime, the revolutionary hero, Simón Bolívar, remarked that formal independence had not brought substantive well-being to the vast majority of Latin Americans. Discontent with the enduring inequities of Latin American societies resurged in the second half of the twentieth century into open dispute of the popular reality beneath state rituals of sovereignty.5 Anti-colonial struggle dramatically affected political relations within the metropolitan centres of empire, too. For instance, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke repeatedly about the exemplary role played by movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean for the civil rights movement in the United States. And, of course, King’s public opposition to US pursuit of the Vietnam War reflected his absorption of Gandhian principles. (Washington 1986) Dipesh Chakrabarty has distinguished a ‘pedagogical’ from a ‘dialogical’ style in post-World War II anti-colonial movements. The pedagogical style employs a rhetoric of ‘catching up with’ the colonial powers. Formerly colonized people must break the shackles of traditions and undergo their own Enlightenment. They must embrace secularism and science. So, they will become more like the colonizers, in the respects that (it is supposed) made the latter the rulers of the age. And so, they will become a modern nation, ready to take their place in the global human community. The dialogical style, by contrast, prizes difference from the colonizers. (Consider Gandhi’s warning against ‘English rule without the Englishman’.) Difference is less an obstacle to be overcome than a pathway in a space of cultural diversity. Dialogue raises the possibility of community that is not contingent on treating differences as if they are deficiencies, deviations from a universal, univocal standard: [H]ow could a global conversation of humanity genuinely acknowledge and communicate across cultural diversity without distributing such diversity over a hierarchical scale of civilization – that is to say, how could one express an urge towards cross-cultural dialogue without the baggage of imperialism? (Chakrabarty 2009, 6–7) For Chakrabarty, the dialogical style in anti-colonial discourse is crucial to the emergence of early postcolonial thinking in the late 1970s to the early 1990s, when anti-colonial claims circulated in contact with the intellectual ferment of ‘postmodernism’, especially French structural and post-structural theories that questioned the ability of the discourse of modernity (as in the mythology of the ‘Rights of Man’) to speak with one voice for all.6 Today, postcolonial and decolonial thinkers typically view postmodernism as useful but insufficient for overcoming Eurocentric frameworks. Postmodern critics expose reductions and exclusions beneath the avowed universalism of modernity, often explicating them as fantasized versions of what the West refuses to admit about itself. Meyda Yeğenoğlu

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(1998, 1) highlights, though, how the West’s cultural representation of itself as ‘sovereign subject’ is made not just through disavowals of itself as other-than-itself, but ‘by way of a detour’ through actual, colonized others. Bizarrely, the limited postmodern critique ends up, in the words of Bilimoria, helping to ‘wipe clean centuries, if not millennia, of real ideas of the sacred, community and social organization, as well as aspirations to rationality, enlightened cultural development, intellectual ferment, and even resistance, in locations other than the mythic space constructed within the orientalist imaginary’. (Bilimoria 2009, 14) To not just expose Eurocentrism but displace it, so that colonizing detours may no longer be made, it is necessary to insist, first, on the real epistemic and other violence done to the colonized, and second, on their real, and alternate, epistemic agency. Otherwise, the colonial subaltern still cannot speak. Postcolonial thinking thus goes beyond postmodern critique, to disentangle dialogical potential in colonial encounters from pedagogical discipline. What Chakrabarty says of postcolonialism generally certainly applies to postcolonialism’s particular challenge to philosophy of religion. While philosophers of religion have begun to engage others, they too often do so as a detour on the way back to affirming modern‑Western conceptions. They operate with a ‘politics of sameness’: the uncritical humanism underlying the pedagogical style of anti-colonialism, or the uncritical humanism underlying ‘the imperial stance of civilising the natives’. (2009, 6) Either way, they tend to repeat the epistemic violence intrinsic to colonialism, by reducing difference and excluding what cannot be reduced. By contrast, insofar as they enact the dialogical style, postcolonial treatments of difference are experiments in non-violence. As Gallien asserts, their goal is not ‘augmenting and elevating Western episteme with new content’ (expanding the Western horizon, we might say, as if to ensure a colonial sun never sets) but rather to produce ‘alternative discourses with and from a subaltern perspective’. (2020, 28, 32–3)

ANTI-COLONIALISM II A second, highly significant geopolitical phenomenon of the twentieth century is the failure of anti-colonial movements to eliminate colonialism – by which we mean a broad cultural system of evaluations that codes the difference of the colonized from colonizers as a deficiency. Assuredly, ‘postcolonialism’ does not mean that colonialism is a thing of the past, even if colonial empires seem to be. We cannot simply say that the imperialism of the West was a misadventure along the way of modernity’s true itinerary. For example, the designation of former colonies as ‘underdeveloped’ nations, with attendant implementation of aid programmes by former colonizers to support ‘development’, have frequently increased control of resources by wealthy Western entities to the detriment of formerly colonized people. Today’s global order remains quite far from free, equal and fraternal. We have been using the term ‘Eurocentrism’ also to refer to the current system of colonialism. Under its sway, whatever is imagined as ‘European’ or ‘Western’ (or as belonging to the global ‘North’, to take up another useful term)7 is deemed good, or at least better than whatever its deficient colonial alternatives (the global ‘South’) are supposed to be. At the root, it is about evaluating different ways of being human.8 Within the value terms of colonialism, to be human means to be ‘European’. That is, a human being in the best sense is really a ‘European’ person; all others fall short of full humanity in some

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measure. ‘Non-Europeans’, the colonial others, therefore, must be made ‘European’ for their own good, or else suffer exclusion from the rights and privileges of universal humanity. In this way, we can see, colonization is vindicated – with or without explicit legitimation from traditional European Christian symbols – as a civilizing mission, the religious obligation of the secular, scientific, modern world to a benighted globe. In short, the actually existing modern world order is a highly qualified, Eurocentric modernity that is constitutively colonial. Epistemic violence is not incidental to it, but foundational. That constitutive moment is what postcolonial and decolonial thinkers call coloniality.9 The postcolonial charge is that modern philosophy has built an intellectual architecture that strengthens Eurocentrism, and that modern philosophy of religion in particular has legitimated its epistemic violence. Unsurprisingly, when modern philosophers have engaged the religions of colonized and formerly colonized peoples, they do so by applying habits of mind, standards of thinking, that articulate supposed ‘Western’ concepts. Further, though, these habits, standards and concepts are held to be uniquely normative. Accordingly, the religions of the colonized can only be data to be normed; they can reinforce the norms, but they cannot correct the norms, let alone be sources of alternative norms. An example of such a norm is embedded in the habit of conceiving religious objects in terms of the purported monotheism of the West. To (seem to) be religiously far from monotheism has meant being regarded as an object in need of philosophical pedagogy. Conversely, to (seem to) be religiously close to monotheism has meant being regarded as at least capable of free, fraternal and equal subjectivity. We will discuss two classic philosophical articulations of coloniality in the following section. Here we can say, in short, that modern philosophy of religion conceives religion Eurocentrically, which is to say, it legitimates Eurocentric religion – religion for which Eurocentrism is ultimate concern; and precisely because of its supposed secular and scientific neutrality, the sacred canopy it extends over colonialism (its act of ultimate epistemic violence) is hardly noticed. 10

POSTCOLONIAL CRITIQUE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION If throughout its history modern European philosophy has articulated an architecture of coloniality, then its habits and standards never have reflected a pure ‘European’ spirit. That supposed spirit has always been affected by others via its imperial intrusions. Philosophical attempts to reduce or exclude others may be interpreted as post hoc efforts at self-identification, as attempts to ‘know’ Eurocentric humanity and thinking as, respectively, the ideal representative and rationality of universal humanity. Thus, philosophy ‘globalizes’ Eurocentric concepts in just the sense postcolonialism challenges. Those concepts become standard motifs in thought, habitually informing ‘global designs’ upon the world while obscuring the disruptive currents of ‘local histories’ that resist Western, colonial geopolitics of knowing. (Mignolo 2000) Let us consider some examples. The first is an inaugural moment of modern philosophy, René Descartes’ 1637 report of his discovery of the self-certifying self, the exclusive ontological guarantee of all knowledge of what is and what is not: ego cogito, ergo sum; ‘I think, therefore I am.’ (Descartes 1998, 18) Dussel (2013b, 10) examines this moment to illustrate how Descartes’ philosophical theology supports a sacred canopy over colonialism:

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The European ‘I’ which had enunciated to the [global] South for over a century and a half, beginning in 1492, its formulation, ‘I conquer the New World,’ now assumed itself as a universal ontological foundation as ‘I.’ This central Ego . . ., around which everything revolved, was inadvertently European: a European ‘I’ with the pretension of discovering itself to be universal and ultimate, which knows itself, and which can reconstruct all of the world (including all of the worlds contained within the South). Dussel’s crucial insight for our purposes is pointing out the inadvertency of the Europeanness of Descartes’ ‘I’. Inadvertency is forgetting or ignoring responsibilities. It happens to be that Descartes is a European living in a time of profound social transformation driven by economic effects of the colonization of the New World. However, he gives no thought to this. He does not (cannot or will not?) ask if his putative ability to doubt all others might reflect this happenstance, rather than rational necessity. At least as he imagines himself in his philosophy, he can doubt that anything and everything other than himself is because he takes the philosophic ‘I’ to be unconstrained by history and geography, not to mention by responsibilities to and for others – including colonized others – which these might impute. As the ground of certainty regarding even God’s existence, this ‘I’ is the keystone of a sacred canopy over the world of Descartes’ experience. His ‘I’ is a ‘universal ontological foundation’ – but it is not a person in society. Yet, suppose Descartes’ ‘I’ is a careless projection of the social circumstances of his time and place, a conceptual globalization of locally emerging Eurocentric self-regard. Then, if Descartes can imagine inadvertence to others as the ground of all truth, it is because he emerges from a society that, by that time for more than a century, had developed its own being and way of life through the reduction and exclusion of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Ironically, tragically, the Cartesian ‘I’ is constitutively affected by arbitrary (not necessary, although fateful) inadvertency to Descartes relatedness with others in an unfathomably violent global design. Further, so long as Descartes remains forgetful or ignorant of the epistemic violence that facilitates his inadvertency, he cannot attain critical self-responsibility. Furthermore, the God of his philosophy absolutizes his self-image as an epistemically self-sufficient know-it-all. In sum, Descartes’ proof of his God’s necessity divinizes the refusal of epistemic and ontological vulnerability that made and makes Eurocentric coloniality a matter of ultimate concern. If Descartes ignored history and geography, the nineteenth-century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel saw great philosophical and religious significance in them. Yet here, too, we find coloniality at work. Hegel defines different (and to his mind, separate) cultures as more or less philosophically adequate expressions of the Spirit (Geist). Spirit is potentiated by an innate, inexorable developmental logic to actualize its absolute form in time and space, that is, in a culture that will be Spirit’s living, absolute self-comprehension. This organizing schema of Hegel’s philosophy is a version of historicism, on account of its faith that history has a goal, and that the goal is the key to understanding everything that precedes it. Hegel coordinates all cultures, as subordinate or superordinate to each other, into his teleology of Spirit’s absolute self-comprehension. Yet his philosophy obviously has a geographical dimension, too. Indeed, in his lectures on the philosophy of history, Hegel proposed ([1837] 1975, 197): ‘World history travels from east to west; for Europe is the absolute end of history, just as Asia is the beginning.’ This ‘geographism’ projects Spirit’s self-realization through history as a movement in space, too, from one culture to another to another. In Hegel’s telling, the historical self-becoming of Spirit began among peoples of ‘Asia’. However, it could not complete its becoming there. Spirit’s historical

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progress also required repeated westward relocation. In the end Hegel asserts, it is in and from Europe that the entire world will come to spiritual maturity. It is not difficult to see how this philosophy of culture sacralizes Western colonialism and coloniality. To Hegel’s credit, he argues Europeans have something to learn about Spirit from thinkers of other cultures. The contrast with the notorious assessment of the Englishman, Thomas Babington Macaulay – whose example is not always taken to heart, alas – could not be starker.11 However, Hegel’s core commitment to Eurocentrism inflicts epistemic violence on others, denying their status as bearers of knowledge other than his own. Remarking on Indian philosophy of religion, for example, Hegel observes that the idea of Brahman appears to be akin to his notion of Spirit. Yet, he denies their equivalence. Brahman, he says, is neither the same idea nor an equally valuable alternative. It is, rather, a deficient image of Spirit. It represents Spirit’s self-sameness, but none of its self-differentiation. The absolute importance of Spirit’s self-differentiation is lost to Indian thought in ‘Hindu’ polytheism, which, Hegel claims, is an incoherent chaos of ‘voluptuous intoxication in . . . either disgusting forms produced by art or those presented by nature’. For Hegel, no real resolution of these inadequacies was possible on Indian terrain alone (Bilimoria 2015, 2018).

POSTCOLONIAL PROSPECTS: DOING PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION DIFFERENTLY What can these examples teach us? Broadly speaking, postcolonial criticism commends humility. Philosophers of religion should take to heart the fallibility of any aspiration to global comprehension. To speak more sharply, philosophers should stop falling into Eurocentric failings so stupidly. There is no excuse for colonial stupidity today. We can see how Eurocentric habits and standards may render philosophy of religion narrow, intellectualistic and insular12 – a surprisingly crude instrument of violence. It does not have to be this way. Philosophy of religion can be a creative resource for confronting the challenges of our times. Too many philosophers of religion still construct colonized and formerly colonized peoples as objects devoid of epistemic agency. If they do not simply ignore them, never giving them a thought, then they engage them as pre- or non-philosophizing objects to whom thought must be given. For their ways of thinking and living are ‘religious’ and, therefore, not philosophical. Left to their own peculiar resources, they cannot comprehend the ultimate nature of their beliefs. Real comprehension comes by the light of secular, scientific, that is, modern, universal thought. Of course, the validity of these assumptions remains largely untested by dialogue with the very people reduced and excluded thereby. Beyond criticizing the modern/colonial philosophical pedagogy of Eurocentric global humanism, then, learning to do philosophy postcolonially means fostering dramatically more inclusive cross-cultural dialogue and creative engagement with the problems of the world. Philosophers who accept the challenge of postcolonialism must learn from, and with, people whose knowledge heretofore has been excluded because of some irreducible difference between their ways of knowing and the ways of the West. For they may challenge and equip philosophers to contribute to a better future than what we currently face. The future-facing task of postcolonial philosophy of religion is to reform philosophy as a tool for, and mode of, conviviality, animated by the hope that we can learn to live differently with one another. Always, otro mundo es posible, ‘another world is possible’.13

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In view of this task, the most important thing postcolonialism offers right now is not any conceptual tool already at hand, but rather advocacy on behalf of ways of thinking which hitherto have suffered the extremes of epistemic violence. The fact is, there are few examples in philosophy of efforts to reform philosophical practice so radically. Indeed, here we are, writing in English, after all, from professional locations in Western academic institutions. However, the rise of self-critical, bi- or multilingual, cross-cultural comparison in philosophical theology and philosophy of religion in recent decades is a dramatic and encouraging step. So, too, is the revival of interest in philosophy not merely as intellectual discourse but as a way of life. To date, though, philosophers involved in these movements have mostly investigated classic texts in high literate traditions. We see this exhibited in the prominence modern philosophers both Western and Indian have given the schools of Vedānta, especially Advaita, over other traditional darśanas of Indian philosophy (let alone over ‘low’ traditions or non-discursive practices and phenomena). Scarcely any philosophers in any high literate tradition have heeded the vast majority of the earth’s formerly colonized peoples, and the wisdom they hold in trust. We have in mind especially the planet’s indigenous peoples, who continue to suffer the worst of coloniality in the form of transnational Eurocentric capitalism, which globalizes itself at the expense of forms of life different from it – not just cultures, but whole life-worlds, whole ecologies.14 In our view, learning to learn from indigenous peoples is urgent and crucial. This is no easy task. Yet, in many places indigenous peoples have managed, with extraordinary adaptability and fidelity, to preserve, pass on and develop local wisdom and ways of life that could serve a different kind of global-critical philosophy. For instance, Brigg and Graham (2020a, 2020b) have begun articulating an Australian Aboriginal philosophy premised not on a political-theological desire for sovereignty of the self and dominion over others, but on relational obligation and proportionality. As we understand Brigg and Graham, Good would not be identified with universal or absolute being (e.g. ‘God’ or ‘I’, ‘Spirit’ or ‘the West’ – tokens of the ‘ontotheological’ tradition) so much as with particularized modes of relating with others in a community of life. Good is not so much being itself as the ecology of being. Goodness is recognizable where the deep relatedness among many is not sacrificed to absolutize one, and where the aspiration to universality is premised upon neither reducing nor excluding the pluriversality of life. The postcolonial-decolonial potential of this philosophy is actualized, on the one hand, in its attention to myriad particular processes of mutual adjustment in the ecology of being, and on the other hand, in its respect for, and deference to, the irreducibly diverse participants necessary to the well-being of those processes. The universe is a pluriverse: many life-worlds, and worlds within worlds, that depend on the well-being of others to be well themselves. At the human level, one of its most relevant facets is biocultural diversity. So, considered as ‘global-critical’ philosophy, this way of thinking and living seems to us less likely to feed the impulse to epistemic invulnerability and the violence that entails. Instead, it may nurture habits of dialogical inclusion and appreciation, from which, we hope, may emerge a better ‘global’ community.15 We end by underscoring the urgency of the postcolonial challenge to philosophy of religion. How very fragile the ecology that sustains us in being is. As the 2021 Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirms, all our likely futures involve drastic destabilization of the community of life on this planet.16 The situation is to a significant degree a consequence of the globalization of the modern-Western mode of civilization. Climate change will cause some life processes to break; consequently, many of their participants will die. Let us not be coy: many human life processes will break; many human beings will die. Insofar as what we do directly determines the future, the

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violent values of coloniality – subjugation, inequity and contemptuous indifference – are cause for grave concern. These values exert insidious pressure to think about our shared vulnerability in terms of zero-sum competition, in which no one gets what they need except by ensuring someone else goes without. This is a problem with a religious dimension. In the terms of postcolonialism, it amounts to a murderous, and perhaps suicidal, contest to (re) sacralize one global design. Postcolonial and decolonial thinking challenges us to recognize that extending again the canopy of Eurocentrism over all others will smother the biocultural pluriversality that is one key to resilient human involvement in the ecology of being.

CONCLUSION We have not argued that postcolonialism is the truly total global-critical philosophy of religion unlimited by locality.17 Rather, postcolonialism names a way of thinking about philosophy of religion and how to do it. We have focused especially on the epistemic violence, the witting and unwitting distortion and exclusion of others’ ways of thinking and living, done by modern philosophers of religion as they uncritically reflect, rather than critically reflect upon, cultural presuppositions of Eurocentric colonialism. They reduce others to mere objects of Western knowledge and will, excluding them from the possible community of thinking, living subjects joined in freedom, equality and fraternity. We have also emphasized the postcolonial challenge to end epistemic violence, to learn and be transformed by communication with formerly colonized, reduced and excluded others. As such, postcolonial and decolonial thinkers are engaged in a vital experiment in epistemic disobedience to prevalent norms of modern philosophy of religion. In becoming vulnerable to alteration by others’ ways of thinking and living, they recognize them, not as threats to be reduced and excluded, but as lures toward a richer community of life. Philosophical care for, or ‘seeing to’, that community, is, in our view, close to the ideal of philosophic theoria. Global-critical philosophers do not occupy a privileged and exclusive vantage point from which they impose a universal vision. Instead, they aspire to think things through together with quite different others. For whatever – and whomever – has not been recognized before may hold possibilities that will enlarge the community of care and enhance the ecology of being. So, postcolonialism is not possessed by any compulsion to condemn outright the purported universality of ideals like liberty, equality and fraternity. It commends them to be rethought and, most importantly, reactivated, in a genuinely mutual pursuit of liberation, equity and empathy for all. It is in this sense that postcolonialism is fundamentally philosophical, fundamentally, that is, a loving pursuit of wisdom for the sake of common good.

NOTES 1. Epistemic violence is just one dimension of colonial violence, and maybe not the worst, taken by itself. It never acts by itself, though: epistemic violence is laden into all colonial violence, enabling, excusing, justifying, obscuring it. 2. The dismissive reactions to a short essay by Garfield and Van Norden (2016) are indicative of this bigger problem. For further discussion, see the first chapter of Van Norden (2017), as well as Garfield’s foreword to that book. 3. Spivak (1999, 127) describes coloniality as the ‘construction of a self-immolating colonial subject for the glorification of the social mission of the colonizer’. Coloniality violates the living, thinking dignity of all concerned, although with special cruelty for

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members of formerly colonized groups. Enrique Dussel (2013a) situates his magisterial Ethics of Liberation in just this context with its subtitle, In an Age of Globalization and Exclusion. See too, Quijano (2000). Even so, postcolonialism looks to take up legacies of modernity in appreciative, albeit ambivalent, ways. Chakrabarty (2000, 4) explains that the modern vision of universal human community ‘has historically provided a strong foundation on which to erect – both in Europe and outside – critiques of socially unjust practices’. 4. This would seem to place us in direct opposition to Frantz Fanon, a major source of postcolonial and decolonial thinking. In the opening sentence of The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon 1967, 27), Fanon states, ‘decolonization is always a violent phenomenon’. A conclusive account of what Fanon meant by this may be impossible. Our claim remains in tension with his. However, we recognize with him that systemic violence already pervades colonial situations: the anti-colonial ‘absolute violence’ he celebrates is supposed to shatter a violent system. Maldonado-Torres (2008, 122–59) argues that Fanon aims not to reduce or exclude colonizers by taking what they have and giving it to the colonized in a preserved colonial system, but to inaugurate a new humanization of all, predicated upon the colonized being free to give of themselves, in short, to be free to love. See also the forceful piece by a Columbia University student, Smith (2016). 5. Dependency theory offered a severe economic critique of the situation. Liberation theology reflected a sharp religious critique inspired by the majorities excluded from representation. 6. Classic contributions from this period include the use of the work of Michel Foucault in Said (1978), of Jacques Derrida in Spivak (1988), and of Jacques Lacan in Bhabha (1994). 7. The usefulness of this term is that it registers the participation of white settler-colonial societies, such as in the United States, South Africa and Australia, in that imaginary ‘Europe’ of Eurocentrism. 8. Here we could also say, evaluating different ‘cultures’, with special emphasis upon each culture’s specific realia (from drainholes separating clean and dirty to deities reigning heavens and hells) that are taken to symbolize its uniquely normative status, and produce in those who personify it a sense thereof. (Those realia are, therefore, by definition religious). See Berger and Luckmann (1967) and Berger (1967). 9. Grosfoguel (2011, 12) states: ‘Coloniality is not equivalent to colonialism. It is not derivative from, or antecedent to, modernity. Coloniality and modernity constitute two sides of a single coin. The new identities, rights, laws and institutions of modernity such as nationstates, citizenship and democracy were formed in a process of colonial interaction with, and domination/exploitation of, non-Western people.’ 10. For discussion of the Indian example, see Yadav (2009). For a more technical discussion of the logic of coloniality, see the excellent introductory essay to Craig and An (2021). 11. Macaulay, who served on the governor-general’s council in British-ruled India from 1834 to 1838, is widely cited by postcolonial theorists. Here is one quotation from Macaulay’s 1835 ‘Minute on Education’, advising the elimination of existing Indian modes of education in favour of schooling in English language and English curriculum: ‘I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.’ A recent Macaulayism occurs in Benatar (2006, 81). Benatar purports to establish “Buddhism” is irrelevant to the topic of suffering – without citing a single

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Buddhist text or thinker – in five sentences and a footnote. (Thanks to Craig Martin for bringing this example to our attention.) 12. The narrowness, intellectualism and insularity of modern philosophy of religion is discussed in detail by Schilbrack (2014). 13. This phrase originated as a slogan of the Zapatista National Liberation Army, representing indigenous peoples’ resistance movement in Mexico. That ‘other world’ is elaborated as ‘a world where many worlds fit’. See Gahman (No date). 14. Close to home for us, as Australians: See Young and Toscano (2020). In a North-American context, see, for example, Flavelle and Goodluck (2021); in India, Gupta (2020); in Latin America, Villareal and Echart Muñoz (2020). 15. For an attempt at a decolonial reading of clashing Australian philosophies of religion informed by Brigg and Graham, see Irvine (2020). We have adopted and adapted the concept of pluriversality from Walsh and Mignolo (2018). For an example of theorizing a more pluriversal mode of global community (as experienced in an undergraduate study abroad programme), see Irvine (2015). See also the unofficial report of Parishar (2020) on an International Conference on ‘Tribal Philosophy’ or ‘Adivasi Darshan’ in India, and Rozzi (2012) for a relatively recent overview of the emergence of indigenous thinking in Latin American philosophy. The dominance of English in the global academy is itself implicated in epistemic violence, so philosophers of religion must create a more multilingual community heedful of indigenous voices, for example as expressed in Tete (2021) or as reflected in Estermann (2006). 16. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2021). Start with the Headline Statements from the Summary for Policymakers (SPM). 17. Here is as good a place as any to acknowledge our own limitations, and the many simplifications and omissions they make unavoidable for the purposes of this chapter.

REFERENCES Benatar, David (2006), Better Never To Have Been. New York: Oxford University Press. Berger, P. L. (1967), The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion, New York: Anchor Press. Berger, P. L. and T. Luckmann (1967), The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Anchor Press. Bhabha, H. K. (1994), The Location of Culture, New York: Routledge. Bilimoria, P. (2015), ‘Philosophical Orientalism in Comparative Philosophy of Religion: Hegel to Habermas (& Žižek)’, Cultura Oriental, 2 (2): 47–63. Bilimoria, P. (2018), ‘Hegel’s Reading of the Logic of Indian Philosophy’ – with Response to Critics by Robert B. Pippin (Chicago), Australasian Philosophical Review, 2 (4): 412–19. Bilimoria, P. (2009), ‘What is the “Subaltern” of the Philosophy of Religion?’, in P. Bilimoria and A. B. Irvine (eds), Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, 9–33, Dordrecht: Springer. Bilimoria, P. (2022), ‘Gandhi’s Philosophy of Economics and Nonviolent Strategy for Civil Rights: A Requiem in Two Movements’, APA Studies, Asian and Asian American Philosophers and Philosophies, 22, no. 1 (Fall): online (Special Issue on the Philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi). Bilimoria, P. and A. B. Irvine, eds (2009), Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, Dordrecht: Springer. Brigg, Morgan and M. Graham (2020a), ‘The Relevance of Aboriginal Political Concepts (6): Relationalism, Not Sovereignty’, ABC Religion & Ethics, 5 December, updated 27 July 2021. Available online: https://www​.abc​.net​.au​/religion​/aboriginal​-political​-philosophy​-relationalism​ /12954274 (accessed August 11, 2021).

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Brigg, Morgan and Mary Graham (2020b), ‘The Relevance of Aboriginal Political Concepts (4): How “proportionality” Can Help Close the Gap’, ABC Religion & Ethics, 13 August, updated 27 July 2021. Available online: https://www​.abc​.net​.au​/religion​/morgan​-brigg​-and​ -mary​-graham​-aboriginal​-political​-concepts​-prop​/12553830 (accessed 11 August 2021). Chakrabarty, D. (2009), ‘An Anti-colonial History of the Postcolonial Turn: An Essay in Memory of Greg Dening’, Melbourne Historical Journal 37: 1+. Available online: Gale Academic OneFile, link.​​gale.​​com​/a​​pps​/d​​oc​/A2​​22249​​154​/A​​ONE​?u​​=tel_​​a​_mar​​yvill​​e​&sid​​=​ AONE​​&xid=​​4ee7f​​61c (accessed 19 August 2021). Chakrabarty, D. (2000), Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Craig, E. and An Yountae, eds (2021), Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Descartes, R. (1998), Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th edn., trans. D. A. Cress, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. Dussel, E. (2013a), Ethics of Liberation: In an Age of Globalization and Exclusion, trans. E. Mendieta et al., Durham and London: Duke University Press. Dussel, E. (2013b), ‘Agenda for a South-South Philosophical Dialogue’, Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 11 (1): 3–18. Estermann, J. (2006), Filosofía Andina: Sabiduría indígena para un mundo nuevo, segunda edición, La Paz: Instituto Superior Ecuménico Andino de Teología. Fanon, Frantz (1967), The Wretched of the Earth, Harmondworth: Penguin. Flavelle, C. and K. Goodluck (2021), ‘Dispossessed Again: Climate Change Hits Native Americans Especially Hard’, New York Times, 27 June. Available online: https://www​ .nytimes​.com​/2021​/06​/27​/climate​/climate​-Native​-Americans​.html (accessed 30 June 2021). Gahman, Levi (No date), ‘Zapatismo’, Global Social Theory. Available online: https:// globalsocialtheory​.org​/topics​/zapatismo/ (accessed 23 August 2021). Gallien, Claire (2020), ‘A Decolonial Turn in the Humanities’, Alif 40: 28–58. Garfield, J. L. and B. W. Van Norden (2016), ‘If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is’, New York Times, May 11. Available online: https://nyti​.ms​/24JZPJv (accessed 16 August 2021). Grosfoguel, R. (2011), ‘Decolonizing Post-Colonial Studies and Paradigms of PoliticalEconomy: Transmodernity, Decolonial Thinking, and Global Coloniality’, Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1, 1. Available online: https://escholarship​.org​/uc​/item​/21k6t3fq (accessed 20 August 2021). Gupta, G. (2020), ‘The Adivasi Struggle Against Environmental Injustice’, The Wire, 23 December. Available online: https://science​.thewire​.in​/environment​/adivasi​-struggle​ -environmental​-justice​-consent​-principle​-economic​-development/ (accessed 21 August 2021). Hegel, G. W. F. ([1837] 1975), Lectures on the Philosophy of World History. Introduction: Reason in History, trans. H. B. Nisbet, with an introduction by Duncan Forbes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2021), ‘AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis’, 9 August. Available online: https://www​.ipcc​.ch​/report​/ar6​/wg1/​#SPM (accessed 15 August 2021). Irvine, A. B. (2015), ‘What Do We Compare When We Compare Religions? Philosophical Remarks on the Psychology of Studying Comparative Religion Abroad’, Teaching Theology and Religion, 18 (1): 46–55.

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Irvine, A. B. (2020), ‘Australia’s “Wicked Tenants”’, ABC Religion & Ethics, 21 October. Available online: https://www​.abc​.net​.au​/religion​/australias​-wicked​-tenants​/12798836 (accessed 21 August 2021). Macaulay, T. B. (1835), ‘Minute by the Hon’ble T. B. Macaulay, dated the 2nd February 1835’. Available online: http://www​.columbia​.edu​/itc​/mealac​/pritchett​/00generallinks​/macaulay​/txt​ _minute​_education​_1835​.html (accessed 20 August 2021). Maldonado-Torres, N. (2008), Against War: Views from the Underside of Modernity, Durham and London: Duke University Press. Mignolo, W. D. (2000), Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Mukherjee, R., ed. (1993), The Penguin Gandhi Reader, New York: Penguin Books. Parishar, S. (2020), ‘“Adi Darshan”: The Only Way to Save the Planet’, IndianExpress​.com​, 21 January. Available online: https://indianexpress​.com​/article​/opinion​/adi​-darshan​-the​-only​ -way​-to​-save​-the​-planet​-6227595/ (accessed 24 August 2021). Quijano, A. (2000), ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’, Nepantla: Views from South, 1 (3): 533–580. Rozzi, R. (2012), ‘South American Environmental Philosophy: Ancestral Amerindian Roots and Emergent Academic Branches’, Environmental Ethics, 34: 343–366. Said, E. W. (1978), Orientalism, New York: Pantheon Books. Smith, K. (2016), ‘Stop Comparing Gandhi and Fanon’, UWIRE Text, 5 October: 1. Available online: Gale Academic OneFile, link.​​gale.​​com​/a​​pps​/d​​oc​/A4​​66456​​855​/A​​ONE​?u​​=tel_​​oweb&​​ sid​=e​​bs​co&​​xid​=5​​a1775​​fb (accessed 30 July 2021). Spivak, G. C. (1988), ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 271–316, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Spivak, G. C. (1999), A Critique of Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of the Vanishing Present, Calcutta: Seagull Books. Tete, V., ed. (2021), आदिवासी दर्शन और साहित्य (Adivasi Darshan Aur Sahitya/Tribal Philosophy and Literature), N. p.: Notion Press. Van Norden B. W. (2017), Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto, New York: Columbia University Press. Villareal, M. and E. Echart Muñoz (2020), ‘Extractivism and Resistance in Latin America and the Caribbean’, openDemocracy, 6 February. Available online: https://www​.opendemocracy​ .net​/en​/democraciaabierta​/luchas​-resistencias​-y​-alternativas​-al​-extractivismo​-en​-am​%C3​ %A9rica​-latina​-y​-caribe​-en/ (accessed 21 August 2021). Walsh, C. E. and W. D. Mignolo. (2018), On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Washington, J. M., ed. (1986), A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. San Francisco, CA: Harper Collins. Yadav, B. (2009), ‘Mispredicated Identity and Postcolonial Discourse’, in P. Bilimoria and A. B. Irvine (eds), Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, 71–103, Dordrecht: Springer. Yeğenoğlu, M. (1998), Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Young, E. and N. Toscano. (2020), ‘“Incomprehensible”: How Rio Tinto Reduced 46,000 Years of History to Rubble’, Sydney Morning Herald, June 6. Available online: https://www​ .smh​.com​.au​/business​/companies​/incomprehensible​-how​-rio​-tinto​-reduced​-46​-000​-years​-of​ -history​-to​-rubble​-20200605​-p54zx7​.html (accessed 21 August 2021).

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Chapter 3

Why philosophers of religion don’t need ‘Religion’ – at least not for now TIMOTHY D. KNEPPER

Just as things began to change, we were told there could be no change – that no matter how much scholars or practitioners of religion recalibrated the modern-Western conceptualization of religion, we could only ever see religion as organized sets of privatized beliefs, the study of religion as the liberal-theological affirmation of a diversity of such beliefs. There is no small value to this critique – it has been a crucial catalyst of creative remediations of religion, not to mention critical interventions against the neoliberal deployment of religion.1 But insofar as this critique demands a wholesale abandonment or radical truncation of religion as a category of academic inquiry, it would seem smallminded and authoritarian. My concern here, however, is not with the academic study of religion per se but with what I call ‘global-critical philosophy of religion’ – a philosophy of religion that is globally inclusive, drawing on a cultural-historical diversity of traditions, thinkers and texts in its investigation of religious reason-giving, while remaining critically minded in a variety of ways, not least of which is the fact that religious reason-giving rarely occurs under the (modern-Western) category of religion. Of course, the critique of religion has been of no small influence for global-critical philosophy of religion, not only in application of critical methods and perspectives but also in attention to global diversities and differences. Nevertheless, insofar as it maintains there is not religion outside certain modern Wests, it forestalls the possibility of certain global philosophies of religion. This here is my concern: a generalized form of the critique of religion insofar as it is taken as pre-empting a global-critical philosophy of religion.2 Although I have not seen this critique in writing as such, I feel it nonetheless, perhaps because I esteem, teach and wrestle with both the critique of religion in general and the globalization of philosophy of religion. Thus, I have sometimes found myself asking: (how) can there be global, cross-cultural or comparative philosophy of religion if there is no religion outside the modern West and its colonial, post colonial and neoliberal reach? Can philosophy of religion be global, cross-cultural or comparative insofar as it only includes

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instances under the modern-Western construction of religion? Is any ‘global philosophy of religion’ that includes, for example Song Dynasty Ruists, first-millennium Naiyāyikas, or even medieval Mu‘tazilites, let alone the ideas and practices of late nineteenth-century Lakota holy-men (wicaša wakan) or Yorùbá fathers-of-secrets (babaláwo-s) of the Ifá tradition, confused and illegitimate since there simply was no religion in these places of the world at these points in time?3 In this spirit and towards this end, I want to push back against this generalized critique of religion, especially as it is taken to pre-empt global, cross-cultural or comparative philosophy of religion. At the same time, however, I want to underscore the importance of this critique for global-critical philosophy of religion, going so far as to suggest that global-critical philosophers of religion can get along just fine without the category of religion, at least for now. As should be abundantly clear, therefore, I am hardly tossing out the critique of religion. In fact, one of my following arguments is that the deployment and critique of the category of religion, whether in a narrow modern-Western sense or in a more expansive sense, is always relative to context and use. Arguably, there are concepts of religion to be utilized and undermined for any given context and use. In the first half of this paper, I will give three reasons why I find a generalized critique of religion off the mark, especially if taken to forestall the possibility of global, cross-cultural or comparative philosophy of religion: it is unrealistic insofar as it neglects linguistic change, especially when instigated by extra-linguistic realities; it is unimaginative insofar as it neglects linguistic innovation, especially in the application of categories of analysis and comparison; and it is unaware insofar as it neglects linguistic injustice, especially the ways in which all sign-functions are entangled in ‘violence’. This is not to say that I do not find this generalized critique of religion ‘spot on’ in many cases; rather, it is simply to say that the critique of religion cannot be generalized and absolutized, not even in pre-modern or non-Western contexts that are absent lexicalized units for ‘religion’. The second half of this paper then does an about-face to argue that philosophers of religion do not actually need the category of religion for much of what they do. As philosophers of religion look for instances of general types of religious reason-giving to compare, explain and evaluate, they should not limit their search to sites deemed religious and therefore should employ heuristic categories that do not involve religion, at least not as such and at first. It might appear, then, that this paper is saying two contradictory things: religion both is and is not a useful category in the study of religion in general and the philosophy of religion in particular. In a sense, this is true: to understand religion as a category of inquiry is to appreciate that it is polysemous and polyvalent at any one time and space, that it varies over time and across space, that it is only ever useful not true, and that it is always entangled in injustice. The question about whether religion should be abolished or retained is therefore not one that can be settled ‘once and for all’, even with respect to its application in particular pre-modern and non-Western contexts. I turn now to my first critique of a generalized critique of religion, that it is unrealistic in failing to appreciate an obvious linguistic phenomenon and fact: semantic categories change over time, and the semantic category of religion has changed over time. Here, I limit myself to the English word ‘religion’ and its Latin antecedents and European cognates. My argument, simply put, is that the meanings of these sign-functions have changed over time and that some of this change is best explained by means of the corrective force of social and physical realities. To assist in this argument, I draw on a semiotic theory of signification, beginning with the basics, later complexifying under my second and third critiques.4 All sign-functions,

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linguistic or other, are composed of a signifier that is taken to stand for a signified in some respect. In the way of the rudimentary, the signifier ‘cat’ stands for the concept cat; the signifier of a stop sign, for the behavioural direction to stop a vehicle. This ‘standing for’ relationship is of course not established a priori; it is a cultural-linguistic fact that is subject to change. Signifiers, signifieds, and signifier/signified relationships change over time and vary over space. Thrice arbitrary, as I tell my students – not only do sign-systems have different written marks and audible sounds as signifiers as well as different couplings of these marks/sounds with signifieds; they also have different signifieds, at least to some degrees and in some respects. Thrice arbitrary from the perspective of structural semiotics, anyway, especially one that maps sign-functions ‘in time’ (synchronically), walls off sign-systems from alterities, and understands the positions and values of signifieds as a function of their differential relationships with other signifieds. From the perspective of post-structural semiotics, however, especially one that considers sign-functions ‘through time’ (diachronically), the values of sign-functions are a product not only of differential relationships with one another but also of interactions with what lies outside. Call it ‘reality’, that which ‘feeds back’ upon behaviours and ideas. Call it the ‘other’, that which continually disrupts sign-systems through perception and conception. Whatever the case, sign-functions are not entirely arbitrary insofar as they are subject to the mitigating force of extra-linguistic realities. Even if attenuated in this ‘post-structural’ sense, thrice arbitrariness is nonetheless controversial, especially in the cases of so-called semantic primitives and natural kinds. Perhaps there is a core set of signifieds that every language does and must possess and that therefore does not change over time and vary over space. Perhaps signifieds that denote natural-kind things in the world are not arbitrary at all since such things determine the semantic content of the signs that are used to refer to them.5 No matter: religion is not a semantic primitive,6 and although there are social and physical realities that impinge upon usages of ‘religion’, these realities do not determine the meaning of religion as directly as they might in the case of natural-kind terms. ‘Religion’/Religion is a sign-function that changes over time and varies over space. There is a simpler way of making this argument: the concept of religion has changed over time. If Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s 1963 monograph The Meaning and End of Religion did nothing else, it demonstrated the cultural-historical fluctuations of religio from its ancient Roman origins to the Enlightenment and beyond: from correct cultic observance to monastic institutions and practices, to a piety that prompts true worship, to a system of beliefs about God, to a core component of culture (Smith 1991). Kevin Schilbrack’s (2013) article ‘What Isn’t Religion’ did the same, though with regard to how scholars of religion gradually broadened the meaning of religion as they wrestled with increasingly diverse religious phenomena: from religion as Christianity, to religion as theistic religion, to religion as polytheistic religion too, to religion as non-theistic religion as well (Shilbrack 2013). Of course, it is possible to chalk some of this change up to variations in cultural-political values and institutions: there are countless ideological factors that have shaped the modern-Western understanding of religion. But countless social and physical realities have played a role too. ‘Systems of belief about God’ (or the like) just does not fit much the religion-like stuff that scholars have found (and created) around the world and through time. Thus understandings of religion have changed – not in ways that float free of ideological influence, but in ways that are nevertheless informed by the social and physical realities.

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One can hardly prove such a theory of language. But it would seem that a philosophy of language that recognizes a dialectical relationship between language and reality, one in which language both shapes and is shaped by extra-linguistic realities, provides a more satisfactory account not only of linguistic innovation and change but also of linguistic failure and success, the ways in which language sometimes does and other times does not offer a useful guide to our interactions with ‘the world’. Why would we think that ‘religion’/religion is a uniquely exceptional sign-function that is absent such interactions, incorrigible to the corrective force of social and physical realities? Why would the modern-Western construction of religion determine perception and thought to such a degree that we are blinded to disconfirming evidence? Granted, modern-Western religion is a powerful ideology deployed in support of political powers and economic orders. Nevertheless, it has been manifestly evident to scholars of religion – critics in particular – that modern-Western religion does not fit the social realities and sign-systems of pre-modern and non-Western societies. For this very reason, we reached the crossroads of abolish versus reform: abolish religion because it does not fit, or reform it so it does. No matter which road we take, religion has changed through exposure to the corrective force of extra-linguistic realities. This leads to my second critique of a generalized critique of religion: it is unimaginative insofar as offers no room for human innovation, especially in the creative application of categories in human inquiry. Worse, it would seem to dogmatically proscribe imaginative applications of the category of religion. Here, I will take up what increasingly strikes me as the most trivial of questions in the academic study of religion: can there be religion where there is no ‘religion’? To preview my answer, let me say: well, it all depends; though also, of course! Before turning to this answer as such, I will sophisticate the semiotic theory I sketched earlier and offer a word of caution. The temptation with a certain semiotic structuralism is to assume there are only concepts insofar as there are lexicalized sign-functions; worse, that people can only perceive or conceive that which is lexicalized. To rehearse arguments against the long-abandoned Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is beyond the purview of this paper. Instead, I want to complexify my semiotic theory earlier in the following two ways. First, there need not be, and usually are not, simple one-to-one correspondences between signifiers and signifieds, especially if that is taken to mean that each word has one and only one meaning, and each meaning has one and only one corresponding word. Second, setting aside the question of whether there can be concepts without corresponding words, we can at least see how combinations of sign-functions could be used to denote concepts that are not lexicalized as such. Obvious examples come from the realm of colour: light-blue, blueish green, Hume’s missing shade of blue, and so forth. But let me also try out this example from the realm of religion: supposing that some language appears not to have a word for pray (in the sense of make a request to a deity) but does have words for request and deity, it is then at least theoretically possible that there is a concept for pray that can be thought and enacted. Of course, the fact that this concept is not lexicalized in this hypothetical language is significant. Moreover, the sign-function deity in this language could have significantly different meanings from our own. Nevertheless, a word of caution is in order: to establish that religion cannot be thought, signified, or said in some particular language at some particular time is not as easy to establish as it might initially seem (especially if one is only looking at canonical uses of lexicalized terms in written formats). Words mean multiply; meanings exceed words.

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More relevantly, though, the key question for me is: Which concept of religion? Here, let me begin by saying that I myself am generally convinced by scholarly arguments for why there was not a concept for modern-western religion in medieval Sanskrit, Chinese and Arabic, as well as nineteenth-century Lakota and Yorùbá (to continue with my earlier examples), not to mention pre-modern European languages. But that is not to say that dharma, jiao (教), dīn, wóčhekiye or ẹsin do not have uses that cannot fit under any concept of religion whatsoever. In fact, the act of showing how dharma, jiao, dīn, wóčhekiye or ẹsin do not match modern-western religion presupposes a broader category of similarity through which these differences are demonstrated. We have now moved from Semiotics 101 to Comparison 101: to demonstrate that any two things are different, one will need both a category and a ‘respect’. Trees and dogs are different with respect to how they move when compared under the category of living things. What about sacrifices to Tian, acts of darśana, pilgrimages to Mecca, performances of the Ghost Dance, or divinations of the cause of suffering? Or diagrams of taiji, proofs for the existence of Īśvara, arguments for the createdness of the Qur’an, visions of eschatological futures in which the dead are resurrected and white invaders are vanquished, or interpretations of verses of Ifá with respect to a client’s destiny? Can all these things be compared under the category of religion? Yes, of course, even if only to say that they are not instances of the modern-Western category of religion. But can they all fit under some broader category of religion? Again, yes, of course, though it all depends on what this category is, how it is applied and to what end. Humans can innovate categories to compare anything. Here we would seem to run into the problem of vagueness. Perhaps. This too will need to be settled on a case-by-case basis. But consider that vagueness might not be such a problem after all. For starters, vagueness is simply to be expected in the case of our categories for social practices and institutions, as Wittgenstein (2001: §6) showed with ‘game’, and as decades of disagreement about the ‘demarcation criteria’ of science makes manifestly obvious.7 Second, vagueness is actually a virtue in at least two respects: not only do vague categories make possible comparison in general;8 vague categories of religion also facilitate insightful exploration of ‘borderline cases’ of religion, which often reveals important insights about religion beyond, below, outside and without ‘religion’ (civil religions and nationalisms for starters). Let me hasten to add that the point of such comparisons, at least as I understand them, is not to say that the content falling under some category is ‘all the same’. Rather, it is by means of categories – in this case broader/vaguer categories of religion – that we can see (and create) significant differences, deviances and discrepancies. It is by means of such categories that we can see (and create) how something religion-like to some degree or in some respect was or is thought and done differently. It is by means of such categories that we can show how religion is not a lexicalized unit for some language, a compartmentalizable component for some culture, a prominent part of identity for some people and so on. This is to say, I hope, that there are useful deployments of ‘religion’. Nevertheless, nagging questions linger. Most of all this: insofar as religion remains to bound to modern-Western conceptions and deployed by liberal-capitalistic ideologies, should scholars of religion utilize it in inquiry? This takes me to my third and final critique of the generalized critique of religion. Let me begin this third critique by saying that it is the one that I ‘feel’ the most. In the case of the first two critiques, I find it somewhat obvious that the meanings of religion can

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change and have changed, in part due to the corrective force of extra-linguistic realities, and that certain understandings of religion can be employed as categories of analysis and comparison, even in contexts where there is no ‘religion’. But are injustices perpetrated in doing so? My initial answer is that injustices are always perpetrated when using language. Of course, that should not serve as an excuse to use language any damn way we want. So we are back to the answer that I have provided throughout this paper: it all depends; injustices must be sorted out on a case-by-case basis. Here, I focus on the central case of this paper: critically globalizing the philosophy of religion. First, though, let me explain what I mean by saying that language always perpetuates injustices. For me, this is a factor of three semiotic staples. First, sign-functions are types that govern the usage of tokens, at least to some extent; the sign-function religion determines to some degree how I use the word ‘religion’ in writing and speaking. Second, sign-functions exist in differential networks where their meanings receive positional values by virtue of their relationships with other sign-functions; the meaning and value of the modern-Western sign-function ‘religion’/religion is partly (largely?) a product of its relationship to other sign-functions, for example, ‘philosophy’/philosophy, ‘secular’/secular, and ‘spiritual’/spiritual. Third, sign-systems are porous, permeable, ever-changing, never-bounded and so forth, so much so that it is somewhat misleading to think of them as systems at all; as Umberto Eco (1978, 314–17) was to say, every semiotic act disrupts a semiotic system. If I am not mistaken, Jacques Derrida (1978) had at least some of this in mind in associating language with violence.9 There is a certain violence to semiotic processes in which what is ‘other’ is semiotized and thereby made ‘same’ (as I do here simply by interpreting Derrida’s ‘Violence and Metaphysics’, whether ‘correctly’ or not). There is a certain violence to sign-systems and sign-functions too, as they are ‘violently’ altered in encounters with what is other. There is even a certain violence to the very deployment of sign-functions, especially insofar as ‘one’ rules over ‘many’, type over token, general category over particulars. Language offers no ‘safe space’ for its users. If there is any truth to any of this, it would seem that religion is yet again not qualitatively distinct from other sign-functions, in this case with regard to its entanglements in valuations, injustices, violences, ideologies and so forth. This is not to give religion a ‘free pass’. Rather, it is again to try to shift attention away from homogenizing generalities – for example, the claim that religion is a term of modern-Western meaning and colonial injustice and therefore should never be deployed in pre-modern, non-Western and post-colonial contexts – to particular uses, particular contexts and particular injustices. What about the particular uses, contexts and injustices of ‘global-critical philosophy of religion’? To return to the examples of this paper: Should I deploy the category of religion in investigation of the reason-giving of Song Dynasty Ruists, first-millennium Naiyāyikas, medieval Mu‘tazilites, and late nineteenth-century Lakota holy-men (wicaša wakan) and Yorùbá fathers-of-secrets (babaláwo-s) of the Ifá tradition? Here, things get personal, as I can only really speak for myself and the choices I have made and continue to make. On the one hand, I must try my best to continually destabilize certain modern-Western categories of analysis, religion first and foremost. If one hand gives (by claiming that there is something religion-like in some way), the other hand must take (by showing how it is not religion-like in the ways that others, especially my students, might assume). On the other hand, however, the greater injustice, at least for me, is that of leaving out Song Dynasty Ruists, first-millennium Naiyāyikas, medieval Mu‘tazilites and late nineteenth-century Lakota holy-men (wicaša wakan) and Yorùbá fathers-of-secrets (babaláwo-s) of the Ifá

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tradition. This is due in part to my own style of philosophizing about religion (to which I will soon turn), which keys on several questions of existential and cosmic importance. Only if I include these ‘philosophers’ of ‘religion’ under the categories of, or categories related to, philosophy and religion will they have an opportunity to voice their compelling answers to these questions. This is violence, I admit. But it is not the greater violence, I submit.10 Thus far I have been critiquing a generalized critique of religion. My arguments have been that the critique of religion is unrealistic insofar as it neglects linguistic change, unimaginative insofar as it neglects linguistic innovation, and unaware insofar as it neglects linguistic injustice. At root is my claim that this generalized critique of religion rests on an impoverished view of language – one that fails to take proper account of dialectical change in relationship to what is other, human innovation in the use of categories, and the ‘violent’ entanglements of sign-functions, sign-systems and acts of semiosis. Once again, this is not to say that the critique of religion is always and everywhere off the mark. Quite the opposite. But the critique and deployment of religion are always relative to uses, contexts, ends, injustices and so forth. To explore one such context in which it might not be useful to deploy the concept of religion, I turn now to the second half of my paper: philosophy of religion without ‘religion’. My argument as to why ‘philosophers of religion don’t need religion’ is contingent on a certain understanding of what the philosophy of religion is and does, which in this case is my own philosophy of the philosophy of religion. I do not take it to be exclusive of other philosophies of the philosophy of religion; in my opinion there are many different ways in which we can and should philosophize about religion. But I do find my own philosophy of the philosophy of religion commendable in several ways, most pertinently, its focus on a cultural diversity of historical acts of religious reason-giving. Let me explain. As I argued in The Ends of Philosophy of Religion (Knepper 2013), taking historical acts of religious reason-giving as a focal point in the philosophy of religion has two distinct advantages: concreteness and completeness.11 By ‘concrete’, I mean that philosophers of religion should train their primary sights on actual instances of written or spoken acts of reason-giving, not on the ideas that populate acts of religious reason-giving and the worldviews that acts of religious reason-giving populate. This gives an empirical rootedness to the philosophy of religion. And although it does privilege the linguistic over the bodily and mental, it does so only for the sake of having a primary focus of inquiry. Moreover, I certainly do not exclude the bodily and mental. In fact, this is what I mean by ‘complete’ – that the unpacking of linguistic forms of religious reason-giving would lead the philosopher of religion to the bodily rituals and mental ideas that those reasons concerned, but in a way that tied such analysis to concrete and discrete speech acts.12 This is not to say that the analysis of these corresponding rituals or ideas could not themselves constitute additional reasons, some of which were absent from or in tension with the primary act of religious reason-giving. Rather, it is merely to give a central target of sorts to inquiry in the philosophy of religion. Under this picture of the philosophy of religion, the philosopher of religion is most interested in the ways that humans actively reason about religion. What does a philosopher of religion do with these acts of religious reason-giving? In The Ends of Philosophy of Religion, I advanced the following four-step method for philosophy of religion. First, the philosopher of religion seeks to thickly describe both the content and context of some act of religious reason-giving (along with its relevant encompassing practices and beliefs). This involves looking not only at the grounds, meanings and forms

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of such acts but also at their cultural-historical settings, social-ideological uses and personal motivations and ends. Second, the philosopher of religion attempts to formally compare one set of descriptions with other sets of descriptions of the same general type. This involves identifying important and interesting similarities and differences with respect to a comparative category that has been critically vetted. Third, the philosopher of religion engages in multidisciplinary explanation in an effort to give reasons for why the instances of the comparative category are patterned as they are. Although this step need not invoke an actual multidisciplinary set of explanations, it should be open to explanations from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Fourth, the philosopher of religion attempts to critically evaluate these comparative instances of religious reason-giving in a manner that is informed by both relevant theories in the sciences and diverse inquiring backgrounds and interests. This is not, in my opinion, to evaluate entire religious traditions; rather it is to evaluate instances of types of religious reason-giving in comparative perspective.13 Now, one might think that comparison is not a necessary step as such, that it is quite possible for a philosopher of religion to move from the description of a single instance of religious reason-giving to a multidisciplinary explanation or critical evaluation of it. However, to the degree to which the philosophy of religion attempts to philosophize about religion beyond the particular, it must compare between these particulars, whether formally or not. (In fact, even the description of a single particular involves implicit comparison since it deploys general categories in its description.14) Moreover, I contend that the act of formal comparison should include non-religious and quasi-religious instances of reason-giving when there are such instances of reason-giving that are of the same comparative class as some type of religious reason-giving. Why? Because the multidisciplinary explanation of patterns of religious reason-giving will be more robust and the critical evaluation of instances of religious reason-giving will be more informed when they include parallel instances of non- and quasi-religious reason-giving. To that end, I argue that the category of religion should be dropped, allowing the philosopher of religion to consider all relevant forms of reason-giving with respect to a particular topic or question without marking them as religious, non-religious or sort-of-religious. Perhaps an example will help. I myself work on the topic of ineffability in general and ineffability discourse in particular – how people speak about things that they say they cannot speak about. I am most interested in studying ineffability within the bounds of traditional religion – allegedly ineffable first principles, ultimate realities, noetic truths, mystical experiences and so forth. But I recognize that humans have called many more kinds of things ineffable – deeply felt emotions, overpowering experiences, non-linguistic forms of expression, cherished convictions, physical pain, know-how and so forth. And I believe that I will only be able to give a robust explanation of religious ineffabilities to the extent to which I understand them in comparison to these other ineffabilities. Are religious experiences understood to be ineffable in the same way as other overpowering experiences? Is this just a trait of such experiences in general? Or are allegedly ineffable religious experiences being protected from reduction to the mundane? Does such protection also happen in the case of cherished experiences that are not commonly classified as religious? Must first principles and ultimate realities be ineffable by definition? Does it also work this way in ‘non-religious’ systems?15 Or are ‘religious’ ultimate realities and first principles defined as ineffable for other reasons? I hope this line of questioning suggests how a robust explanation of religious ineffability requires understanding it in comparison with forms of ineffability not commonly classified as religious. The same holds true for evaluation. Is it possible for anything to be ineffable? Absolutely ineffable?

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Or is everything that is ineffable only relatively so? Is everything relatively ineffable? Is this just a basic rule or fact of language? Or is everything effable? What are the repercussions for ultimate realities and mystical experiences if they cannot be absolutely ineffable? Are these repercussions the same as for love, wine and sunsets? And so on, and so forth. In sum, if philosophers of religion are seeking a robust explanation and informed evaluation of religious reason-giving, they will want to involve non- and quasi-religious reason-giving in their investigations. To put it more strongly, philosophers of religion should drop the category of religion altogether so as not to mark or value ‘religious’ acts of reason-giving over against ‘quasi-religious’ or ‘non-religious’ acts of reason-giving. Well, what category will they then use? As should be clear from my critiques of the generalized critique of religion, all categories are biased, unjust and violent. So we simply must bite a bullet. Mine is ultimacy, provided that we allow its full range of meanings to sound out rather than restricting it to Tillichian ones (Tillich 1957): (a) ‘the best or most extreme of its kind’; (b) ‘a final or fundamental fact or principle’; (c) ‘last in a progression or series’; (d) ‘basic, fundamental’; (e) ‘original’; and (f) ‘incapable of further analysis, division, or separation’.16 For starters, I submit that questions about ‘ultimate beginnings’ and ‘ultimate ends’ are clearly philosophical questions about religion, as applied to both the cosmos and humans. This yields a number of distinct categories and questions for inquiry:

(1) Is there an ultimate origin to or explanation for or nature of the cosmos? If so, what? Is there an explanation for how the cosmos comes to be? If so, what?



(2) Is there an ultimate end to the cosmos? If so, what? Is there an explanation for what happens after the end of the cosmos? If so, what?



(3) Is there an ultimate origin to humans? How do individual humans become the individuals and humans that they are? Is there an original or ultimate nature or condition for humans?



(4) What is the ultimate end of humans? What happens to human beings after they die (if anything)?

Note that in some of these cases we can drill down to some of the questions that have interested philosophers of religion (primarily of the analytic stripe). For example: (1a) What are the attributes of God? (1b) Can the existence of God be proved? (3a) Can the existence of a soul be proved? (4a) Can the immortality of the soul be proved? But other types of religious beginnings and ends also fit in these categories, as do nonand quasi-religious answers to these questions. Question 1 includes ‘religious’ beings and principles such as Brahman and Dao; philosophical systems such as Stoicism and Platonism, and scientific explanations such as Big-Bang cosmology and multiverses. Likewise, questions 2–4 also include non-theistic, philosophic and scientific answers. A second set of primary questions for philosophy of religion can next be generated by asking about the relationship between the questions of the first set. In particular, if we connect the ultimate beginnings and ends both in questions 1 and 2 and in questions 3 and 4, a set of questions about the ‘ultimate paths’ between these beginnings and ends emerges:

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(5) What is the ‘path’ by which the cosmos ‘moves’ from its beginning to its end? What significant obstacles, if any, lie in this path? How, if at all, are those obstacles overcome? What role, if any, do ultimate origins/explanations play in this process?



(6) What is the ‘path’ by which humans ‘move’ from their beginning to their ends? What significant obstacles, if any, lie in this path? How, if at all, are those obstacles overcome? What role, if any, do ultimate origins/explanations play in this process?

And if we connect the ultimate beginnings of the cosmos with the ultimate beginnings of humans, a set of questions about the ‘ultimate connections’ between these ‘ultimate beginnings’ can also be produced:

(7) What are the means, if any, by which ultimate origins/explanations are revealed or manifested to humans?



(8) What are the means, if any, by which humans experience or know ultimate origins/explanations?

Note that at least one more core topic of traditional philosophy of religion is involved in questions 5–8: ‘evil’ (natural in the case of question 5, moral in the case of question 6). But broader religious questions of ‘ultimate problems’ (e.g. sin, karma-saṃsāra, disharmony, sickness, etc.) and ‘ultimate solutions’ (e.g. salvation, release, harmony, health, etc.) are also involved in questions 5–6, as are general religio-philosophical questions of cognition, experience and practice in questions 7–8. Of course religion is implicated in all these questions, for they are designed to capture many of the ways in which people reason about religion. Moreover, the category of ultimacy not only has a genealogy in Christian theology and religious studies but also is used here as a surrogate for religion (albeit one that is arguably more broad and philosophical). Nevertheless, dropping ‘religion’ for ‘ultimacy’ serves a useful and practical end – allowing philosophers of religion to consider a fuller range of answers to philosophical questions about religion, especially answers that are not typically classified under the category of religion. This in turn enables more informed evaluations of these answers with respect to their truth, value and meaning, as well as more robust explanations of these answers with respect to what is typically considered quasi- or non-religious. Dropping ‘religion’ might also facilitate an understanding of the ways in which what is not commonly classified as ‘religion’ actually is religious or functions religiously, thereby bringing greater understanding of religion beyond, below, or without ‘religion’. For it is these messy phenomena, not their limiting labels, that are most important, even if the former are always entangled in the latter. And where the latter are too limiting, well, then, time to innovate.

NOTES 1. Throughout this paper, I will try my best to italicize concepts/signifieds and put words/ signifiers in single quotes when mentioning them as such. 2. As should be clear and will become clearer, I am not singling out any particular critique or critic of religion; therefore, I try to avoid including relevant works or names. By ‘generalized critique of religion’, I have in mind, at minimum, (a) the view that there were not terms or concepts for religion, especially modern-Western religion, in most if not all

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pre-modern and non-Western contexts (at least up until around the twentieth century, and even then ones that often meant much differently), and (b) the decision not to deploy terms or concepts for religion with respect to these contexts not only due to lack of fit but also implicit conceptual colonization. 3. I choose these five traditions – East Asia (Ru-ism or Confucianism in this case), South Asia (Nyāya in this case), Abrahamic (Mu‘tazilite theology in this case), Lakota and Yorùbá – because, alongside ‘contemporary’ or ‘academic’ philosophy of religion, they constitute the traditions of philosophy of religion in my forthcoming textbook on global-critical philosophy of religion (Knepper 2022). 4. I am most familiar with the European tradition of semiotics, especially Ferdinand Saussure and Umberto Eco. Saussure is who I have in mind when speaking about structural or synchronic semiotics; Eco, ‘post-structural’ or diachronic semiotics. My own views largely align with those of Eco, especially as found in his A Theory of Semiotics (Eco 1978). 5. Here, I am thinking especially of the work of Wierzbicka on semantic primitives (1996) and some of the early contributions to natural kinds by Kripke (1972) and Putnam (1975). 6. I do not base this argument on the views of critics of religion but on the work of Anna Wierzbicka with regard to semantic primitives. Although Wierzbicka has proposed (and rigorously tested) dozens of semantic primitive-universals (e.g. I, you, this, other, one, some, good, bad, think, feel, see, say, do, move, be, have), religion is not one of them. 7. See, really, any philosophy of science textbook for an introduction to this century-long disagreement – for example, Chapter 1 of Cover and Curd (1998). 8. Here, I am influenced by Robert Neville (who is influenced by Charles Sanders Pierce). For Neville, a vague category is one that admits different and possibly contradictory items to fall under it. See Neville and Wildman (2000). 9. I am thinking in particular of Jacques Derrida’s essay (1978) ‘Violence and Metaphysics’. 10. In the words of Jacques Derrida, ‘language can only infinitely tend towards justice by acknowledging and practising the violence within it. [. . .] a violence chosen as the least violence by a philosophy which takes history, that is finitude, seriously’ (1978, 117). I thank Nathan Loewen for calling these words to my attention. 11. In some respects, my theory and practice of philosophy of religion has changed since Ends, as will be reflected in my forthcoming introductory textbook in global-critical philosophy of religion. I will note below some of these changes. See also Knepper (2022). 12. It also leads to investigation of the philosophical presuppositions concerning these concepts (e.g. ritual, belief). Kevin Schilbrack has a better way of representing these ‘three axes’ of investigation in the philosophy of religion: an x-axis of all religious traditions, a y-axis of all dimensions of religion, and a z-axis of all the philosophical presuppositions involved in the dimensions of the y-axis – see Schilbrack (2014) Chapter 1. My approach, by contrast, is to prioritize a focal object (religious reason-giving) and let the tertiary fields of study unfold as the focal object dictates and suggests. 13. I remain ambivalent about individuating and formalizing the step of explanation in philosophy of religion, in part because it strikes me as an aspect of comparison, in part because it reaches beyond the philosophical practice of evaluation. For these reasons as well as for the sake of economy, I have not included explanation as a separate step in my forthcoming textbook, nor really have I thematized it as such. Nevertheless, I do practice explanation in the textbook as an aspect of comparison. Also worth mentioning is that my understanding of and tools for evaluation are much richer in the textbook than indicated here. See Knepper (2022).

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14. For a fuller rendition of this and related arguments about the role of comparison in philosophy of religion, see my forthcoming contribution on ‘The Comparative Paradigm’ for Gereon Kopf and Purushottama Bilimoria’s edited volume on Multi-entry Philosophy of Religion. See also Knepper (2013) Chapter 4. 15. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean by ‘“ non-religious” systems’. From the perspective of a certain semiotics, must everything that lies ‘outside’ a semiotic system be ineffable prior to or apart from acts of semiosis that give those things differential values within that system? From the perspective of a certain Big-Bang cosmology, must a ‘first-cause’ singularity be ineffable since it lies prior to the generation of the cosmos and therefore cannot be known and said as such? 16. By ‘Tillichian’ meanings of ‘ultimacy’, I have in mind either an existential meaning regarding what is of ‘ultimate concern’ for the self or a liberal-Christian meaning regarding God as that with which the self ought to be ‘ultimately concerned’.

REFERENCES Cover, J. A. and Martin Curd (1998), Philosophy of Science: The Central Issues, New York: W. W. Norton & Company. Derrida, Jacques (1978), ‘Violence and Metaphysics’, in Alan Bass (trans.), Writing and Difference, 79–153, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Eco, Umberto (1978), A Theory of Semiotics, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Knepper, Timothy (2013), The Ends of Philosophy of Religion: Terminus and Telos, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Knepper, Timothy (2022), Philosophies of Religion: A Global and Critical Introduction, New York: Bloomsbury. Kripke, Saul (1972), Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Publishers. Putnam, Hillary (1975), ‘The Meaning of “Meaning”’, in Mind, Language and Reality, Vol. 2, 215–71, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Neville, Robert C. and Wesley J. Wildman (2000), ‘On Comparing Religious Ideas’, in Robert C. Neville (ed), The Human Condition, 9–20, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Schilbrack, Kevin (2013), ‘What Isn’t Religion’, The Journal of Religion, 93 (3): 291–318. Schilbrack, Kevin (2014), Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell (1991), The Meaning and End of Religion, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Tillich, Paul (1957), Dynamics of Faith, New York: Harper. Wierzbicka, Anna (1996), Semantic Primes and Universals, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2001), Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, with a Revised English Translation, 50th Anniversary Commemorative Edition, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Chapter 4

Re-envisioning philosophy of religion from a feminist perspective MORNY JOY 1

INTRODUCTION Religious studies as a discipline has been much criticized in recent years for its continued adherence to outdated methods and a predominantly Eurocentric orientation. ‘Philosophy of Religion’, as a sub-field of religious studies, is indeed a product of modernity that continues to suffer from a similar syndrome of objectivity. In the twentieth century, in the UK and in North America, particularly, ‘philosophy of religion’ became mainly associated with Anglo-American analytic philosophy. It appealed to a distinctly rationalist approach that focused principally on logical arguments and is concerned with proofs and truths. During the past two decades, I have been involved in a number of projects that have attempted to revise the ways in which ‘philosophy of religion’ can be studied. These activities, for my part, have resulted in two books that I have edited, Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion (2011) and After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion (2012a), as well as numerous articles on women and religion. Another recently published work is entitled Explorations in Women’s Rights and Religions (2020). In this chapter, I will explore the different ways in which my own attitudes to ‘philosophy of religion’ have changed, especially in regard to the roles of and attitudes towards women. Given this precedence, my own orientation during this period was to examine critically the study of ‘philosophy of religion’ until, at some stage, a more acceptable term will emerge by consensus. In these explorations, my intention is to avoid interpretations of philosophy and religions where they are presented unilaterally in terms of rational Western concepts. I will, however, investigate approaches when they appear to be compatible with an affirmation of life in this world. As a result, my investigations will not be preoccupied with proofs of the existence of God. They also do not involve speculations about life after death, nor with theodicies that defend the existence of a good and omnipotent God who confronts the existence of evil. As a result, I will introduce different approaches that can encourage ‘philosophy of religion’ to move beyond the limited parameters that have thus far largely determined its reductive definitions and rigid methodologies.

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In the introduction of the volume, Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion (Joy 2011), I selected a number of distinctive developments that were viewed as having had negative effects on ‘philosophy of religion’ over the previous decades. Among the developments I listed were: the death of God, as promoted by Nietzsche, and the secular theories of Marx and Freud, which undermined confidence in the certainties of rationality. Dogmatic Christian rules and regulations also floundered as a result of the carnage that wreaked havoc with human behaviour during and after the two world wars. As a result of such disastrous interventions, neither philosophy nor religion could continue to uphold superior knowledge and its supportive behaviours. Instead, both philosophy and religion appeared to be in dire need of revision. Rather than reiterate the list of the resultant changes, which can be found in the book, Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion (2011), I decided to investigate the building blocks that, over the years, have helped to inform my own approaches. This venture involved examining carefully the writings and activism that have inspired me.2 In particular, I will explore the strategic proposals that have been presented by female scholars over the past forty years. In their revisionary studies, they have taken to task the certainties of ‘philosophy of religion’, which they have regarded as a male-dominated enterprise. They have also introduced alternative suggestions that would help to enhance women’s status. The two principal feminists to whom I will appeal for their insights are Grace Marion Jantzen and Pamela Sue Anderson. Both indicate their findings about the problematic dominant ‘masculinist’ orientation that has dominated the discipline of ‘philosophy of religion’. I will also briefly present the work of Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who are activist feminist scholars from India, teaching in the United States, who have had a remarkable influence as critical opponents of Western attitudes and the classifications of non-Western peoples.

Grace Marion Jantzen Grace Marion Jantzen (1948–2006) was born into a Mennonite family in northern Saskatchewan, Canada. She was a feminist philosopher of religion, who, at the time of her death, was professor of Religion, Culture, and Gender at the University of Manchester. Earlier in her academic career, she had received two doctoral degrees, one from the University of Calgary, Canada, and another from Oxford University. While at the University of Manchester, Jantzen proposed to write an ambitious series of six books, collectively entitled Death and the Displacement of Beauty. Unfortunately, Jantzen died soon after completing her first volume in this series, entitled The Foundations of Violence (2004). Jantzen had intended to investigate Western civilization over the centuries, beginning with the Homeric era and its idealization of the heroic death of males in battle, and then to carefully examine contemporary acts of violence against women. In The Foundations of Violence, Jantzen was also concerned with the preoccupation of those seeking an eternal reward of life after death. Jantzen viewed this goal as a rejection of human love and the beauty of this world. It was in this context that Jantzen also detected long-held evidence of an obsession that she named ‘necrophilia’, which she associated with male hegemony and hostility towards women.

Pamela Sue Anderson Pamela Sue Anderson (1955–2017) was born in Minnesota, but she spent much of her intellectual life in the United Kingdom, particularly at the University of Oxford, where

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she had studied for her doctorate. After graduation, she taught for short periods in the United States and the United Kingdom before becoming a fellow of Regent’s Park College at the University of Oxford, where, since 2011, she was professor of Modern European Philosophy of Religion. Anderson was one of the first women scholars invited to write a book about contemporary women and religion. Her volume was entitled A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief (1998). Among her many wide-ranging topics in the intervening years, Anderson published another volume, entitled Revisioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion (2012), which examined the vital and distinctive changes that had since developed in women’s progress. However, another topic that was of utmost importance to Anderson was ‘vulnerability’. She described vulnerability as a somewhat speculative form that had infiltrated philosophical concepts. Her other fear was that its harmful effects on mind and body, when associated with human weakness, could erupt in violence. In order to introduce a positive meaning of ‘vulnerability’, Anderson determined to include the concepts of love and care to help lessen such negative effects. An integral aspect of Jantzen’s and Anderson’s work was that they both regarded evil as not innate in human beings. They declared that it was established according to human dispositions and acquired cultural practices. Jantzen and Anderson also appealed to positive approaches as part of their respective explorations, especially in relation to their transformative ideals for women and religion. Sadly, both female scholars died early from cancer at the height of their respective careers. Their deaths marked the loss of two leading figures who advanced women’s knowledge in the study of religion.

EARLY EXPLORATIONS Any contemporary examination of a textbook concerning ‘philosophy of religion’ confirms, unfortunately, that business still continues as usual. The perennial topics are constantly repeated: for example, arguments for the existence of God, belief and reason, death and the afterlife, the problem of evil; miracles and questions regarding moral behaviour. In more recent years, there has nonetheless been an occasional nod in the direction of diversity, with book titles such as Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Palmer 2011) and The Philosophy of Religion Reader (Meister 2007). Although such books occasionally included relevant readings of ‘world religions’, the principal approach has remained primarily Christian-centric. Perhaps this was the problem that Eugene T. Long had in mind when, in his book, Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion: 1900–2000, he expressed some critical views of his own approach to philosophy of religion: Some philosophers argue that the philosophy of religion is too embedded in the eighteenth-century problematic of western theism at a time when persons are becoming more global in outlook and the boundaries of our histories are being expanded. Other philosophers argue that the traditional approach to philosophy suffers from unacknowledged ideologies which limits its scope and prevents it from taking account of the rich diversity of human experiences, purposes, and social contexts. In some cases, this results in calls to expand the scope of western philosophy of religion. In other cases, philosophers call for the reconstruction of the philosophy of religion. At the root of many of these challenges are deep questions involving the nature of philosophy itself. (Long 2000, 2)

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Nonetheless, Long chose not to issue challenges about such complex questions in his book. It appeared to be sufficient for him to register his principal complaints. However, there were a number of fine exceptions, such as the volumes of Gerald J. Larson and Eliot Deutsch (1988); Fred Dallmayr (1996); and Gary Kessler (1998). These authors were adamant in presenting serious contributions to help develop an appreciation of ‘nonWestern’ religions. Their observations, however, were not published in popular textbook series. The results were that, when attempts were made to combine exacting issues with both comparative religion and comparative philosophy, such explorations did not receive the attention they deserved. In addition, there was also the obvious exclusion of female scholars who were rarely included in such publications.

A PREPARATORY WORKSHOP It was in response to these lacunae that, in 2007, a group of professors from the departments of Religious Studies and Philosophy at the University of Calgary organized an invited workshop to bring together a group of scholars who specialized in the two fields of what were then named respectively ‘comparative religion’ and ‘comparative philosophy’.3 Their mandate was to explore the current state of affairs in these disciplines and to discover whether there could be a rapprochement between them. To further expand this task, the workshop also intended to investigate a number of immediate problems and their alternative approaches. The unique intention of the workshop was that it was perhaps one of the first times that a small group of male and female scholars with expertise in both fields of comparative philosophy and comparative religion had been intentionally assembled. A central problem that presented itself initially in planning the workshop was finding an approach as to ways of approaching past distortions that had affected the study of ‘non-Western’ religions, specifically those that did not belong to Christian communities. While the division between the two disciplines of religious studies and philosophy is commonplace in Western academia, such a bifurcation does not necessarily apply in non-Western settings, where religion and philosophy are often blended. As a result, whereas ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’ in the West can remain mutually exclusive, an appreciation of non-Western approaches, where religion can meld with philosophy, is not so easily realized. Problematic issues, such as those of appropriation and assimilation, have often occurred. Nevertheless, during the last forty years, there has been a concerted effort on the part of a dedicated number of scholars from diverse backgrounds who have attempted to address such deficiencies. It was necessary, however, for this workshop to distinguish itself from other models that were being proposed. It was not an exercise in inter-religious dialogue, nor did it claim to have an apologetic nature, where one religion could then maintain dominance over another. Instead, it was identified as an academic activity, initiated with the goal of re-examining ideas that may have been misappropriated or otherwise excluded by a cursory version of comparative studies. Such errors had resulted in ideas and values being modified to combine solely with Western concepts and categories. To counter such outcomes, one of the aims for the workshop was to explore ways that would support dialogues of a compatible, if not a completely identical, nature. Such an approach would allow for dynamic interactions to take place as if they were on a level playing field.

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Another problematic occurrence was that Western-based academic studies of religion tended to focus narrowly on one aspect of a particular religion to the exclusion of other possible topics. In contrast, grandiose assertions were often proposed, claiming distinct similarities of philosophy with a variety of religions. Such assessments could lead to vague generalizations or inaccurate reductions of questionable constructs. In response, participants in such workshops needed to be on the alert for propositions that had simply taken the matters at issue for granted. Vigilance was especially expected of scholars’ diverse projects which would be presented as a basis of conversations at the workshop. Nevertheless, the practice of bringing one culture, language, philosophy and religion into contact with another culture, language, philosophy and religion, for the purpose of clearer appreciation of their respective definitions, contexts and topoi remained, as ever, a daunting task. What were required were innovative endeavours that searched for constructive ideas that could respond to most of the earlier issues. One final qualification that required attention in the workshop was the term ‘the other’. This word had recently become a seemingly offensive insult. It was often mentioned in debates as the way of addressing ‘the others’; given that they were designated as a minority. Not only did such a query necessitate a clarification of certain languages that may not readily find suitable translations; it also entailed an exposure to ways of thinking that may be either unknown or marginalized within one’s own linguistic conventions. However, the workshop also sought to repair possible erroneous depictions that were deliberately imposed on the ‘other’. Such a self-critical process would help to foster an awareness of the disparities in one’s own vocabulary that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. It was in this connection that the development of ‘postcolonial theory’ came to be of assistance.

THE INFLUENCE OF POSTCOLONIALISM ON WOMEN AND ‘PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION’ ‘Postcolonialism’ was a movement that originated in India, beginning in the 1970s. At that time, Indian scholars reprimanded the colonizing attitude with which Westerners belittled both male and female Indian scholars. It was Edward Said’s work, Orientalism (1978), that featured as a ‘postcolonial critique’ which alerted Western scholars of their own condescending attitudes and expressions. Said, however, did not mention the tenuous situation of women.4 However, women were soon to take matters into their own hands. One could readily discern a rapport between the postcolonialism critique and the aim of the intended Calgary workshop. This was because the overall aim of the workshop was not to reach a final solution or to recommend a definitive method or procedure. It anticipated a more modest endeavour. This was to stimulate constructive discussions, which would encourage the participants to submit their findings and communications for publication. This would provide the contributions of both women and men as participants. (The results of the workshop were published in the book, After Appropriation; Joy 2011.) It was Grace Jantzen, with her sharp perception, who first drew attention to the parallels between feminism and postcolonialism. She stated her connection in an essay, ‘“Uneasy Intersections”: Postcolonialism, Feminism and the Study of Religions’ (2009b, 295–301). In this article, Jantzen outlined a number of strategies presented by two Indian women scholars who lectured on postcolonial theories at universities in the United States. Chandra Talpade Mohanty is a Distinguished Professor of Women and Gender Studies

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and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, while Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is a university professor at Columbia University, New York. Jantzen had observed that there was a resemblance in the protests of these two women from India with the conditions of their ‘Western sisters’, who had begun to contest their own marginalized situations. She also observed that the impetus resulting from the challenge of postcolonialism could be extremely helpful for Western women to define their own feminist viewpoints. Jantzen proposed that it would be wise to heed the newly found voices of those designated as ‘inferior women’, who were located in multiple regions and religions of the world. At this time, they were mainly described as belonging to the ‘Third World’ (Spivak 1988).5 During the coming years, both Mohanty’s and Spivak’s explorations would evolve from a purely theoretical approach to that of activist interventions with regard to the situation of women who were being increasingly exploited by a second mode of colonialism, that is, globalization (Mohanty 2003a; Spivak 2004). It was Mohanty, however, who first criticized ethnocentricity. This rebuttal provided insight into the privileged male of the species who deemed globalization as his rightful inheritance. Mohanty disputed such behaviour as an injustice, because it was manipulated by ‘Western man’, together with his ‘othering’ of women. In addition, Mohanty also declared that Western feminists were not themselves entirely without blame. She proclaimed: It is only insofar as ‘Woman/Women’ and ‘the East’ are defined as Others, or as peripheral, that Western ‘Man/Humanism’ can represent himself as center. It is not the center that determines the periphery, but the periphery that, in its boundlessness, determines the center. Just as feminists such as Julia Kristeva and Hélène Cixous deconstructed the latent anthropomorphism in Western discourse, I have suggested a parallel strategy in this essay in uncovering a latent ethnocentrism in particular feminist writings on women in the third world. (Mohanty 1984, 74) It was during this period that many other women scholars from different countries began to contest the subjection of woman and their degradation in relation to their different religious affiliations. Their work ranged from authors such Donaldson (1993), Donaldson and Kwok (2001), Dube (2002), and Marcos (2006, 2010), who helped to enrich women’s knowledge of their sisters’ accomplishments. It was by taking their lead from other voices, such as Jantzen and Anderson, as well as Mohanty and Spivak, that women today continue to propose and transform developments, which are well received.

GRACE M. JANTZEN, WOMEN AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Jantzen introduced other observations that helped to diminish the forms of refusal that women received. One example that Jantzen denounced was the acquisition of Eurocentric languages with their specific idioms. She declared that they no longer needed to be approved as a linguistic prerequisite for the recognition of one’s rationality. In a number of early publications, notably ‘What’s the Difference? Knowledge and Gender in Post Modern Philosophy of Religion’ (1996), Jantzen also introduced other major interventions as part of her determination to support women’s full participation in scholarly debates involving ‘philosophy of religion’. She forecasts that only such provocation would help to enlighten the insular structure of ‘philosophy of religion’. Jantzen determined

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that the silencing of women’s voices would, in time, have an impact on contemporary scholarship. She encouraged the admission of women’s voices to challenge ‘philosophy’ and ‘religion’ with their distinctive feminist views. Yet, unfortunately, male attitudes and behaviours still remained in need of both reprimand and removal. Such impediments induced strong reactions when women attempted to alter or critique the entrenched features of ‘philosophy of religion’. As a feature of their relatively recent arrival in the academic world, women soon discerned that male domination persisted in guarding the discipline of philosophy, as well as of religion. It was in more recent times, however, that masculinity studies have supplied insights into the self-protective enforcement of male institutions. However, no one has undertaken a major in-depth study of masculine power tactics as they have been implemented by the ‘philosophy of religion’.6 In addition to Jantzen’s contributions depicted in the previous section, she remained particularly troubled by other obstacles that stood in the path of aiding women to become both recognized as philosophers and activists. What disturbed her particularly was the use of rationality to justify the existence of what she described as a ‘putative transcendent being’. Jantzen challenged the ratification of such a being, together with its selective attributes, as proposed by certain male philosophers of religion. In particular, Jantzen was offended by the British philosopher and theologian Richard Swinburne’ and his thought experiments (1996, 434). Jantzen’s own account of Swinburne was that he seemed to imagine God in his own image. In her own rebuke, Jantzen declared: ‘He argues that because he can imagine himself as a disembodied person . . ., he can continue to have such experiences and still act in the world’ (1998, 28). Swinburne then declared that it was conceptually coherent to think of God as an infinite disembodied subject. In Jantzen’s view, Swinburne’s presentation, which described his own male selfhood as an analogue of God, was somewhat presumptuous. There were other aspects of ‘philosophy of religion’ to which Jantzen took exception, most especially its preoccupation with the notion of immortality and the life hereafter. She objected that such other-worldliness indicated a ‘detachment from “community and cosmos,” so that the world is perceived not as a home, but as an alien reality to be fled from or conquered’ (1998, 151). Such an attitude also seemed to indicate an aversion of the human body and all things physical – including one’s mortal being. Equally disturbing for Jantzen was the attempt, with the application of reason, to reconcile both a good God and the existence of evil by undertaking an exercise in theodicy. In response, Jantzen proposed that the justification of this enigma lay more within the nature of the divine being’s depiction, rather than with the need to explain his seemingly unpredictable behaviour. Jantzen then declared her own evaluation of such an unwarranted exoneration in no uncertain terms: A feminist approach to the ‘problem of evil’ is first of all outrage and bewilderment at the suffering and evil itself: how can the world be like this? How dare some people make others suffer in the way that they do? What sort of divinity could we possibly be talking about if such suffering is allowed to continue? (1998, 263) As a result of her disapproval of the earlier issues, Jantzen herself was charged with exacerbating a stark binary division between men and women in her version of ‘philosophy of religion’. However, this was certainly not Jantzen’s intention. Jantzen had her own riposte at hand, which she expressed on a number of occasions: Double reading, or deconstruction as I understand it, is a careful analysis of a standard text or position, especially in order to identify its repressed other: that which it denies

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even while depending upon it. Secondly, it lifts up this repressed other to see what has been hidden and what can come of bringing it to light: it therefore pays particular attention to it, thus beginning to correct the imbalance which has existed by its repression. (2000, 119) While Jantzen’s judgement did not intend to introduce a new binary, she affirmed that the emergence of previously neglected views could help to stimulate original forms of thinking and acting (2000, 119–20). From this perspective, Jantzen’s work was, in one sense, similar to Anderson’s own search for omissions, repressions, and negligence on the part of male scholars’ explorations (Jantzen 2001, 2002). Above all, however, Jantzen’s criticism was especially directed at the widespread inequity and depredation that was not limited solely to women, but to all minority victims and their unjust conditions of living. It soon became evident that Jantzen’s strongest motivation was a quest for justice that would permit women and other excluded peoples to flourish in both word and deed. This move would also assist in mitigating the traditional depiction of women as the daughters of Eve, which deemed them to be subject to gross desires, to the seduction of males, and to other impious evils. Another activity that Jantzen recommended was to exercise caution in examining Western philosophical and religious traditions, which she identified as having been imbued with a ‘symbolic of mortality’ or ‘necrophilia’. Perhaps certain of Jantzen’s harshest indictments against such mortality were evident in her planned but unfinished work, A Place of Springs (2009), the third volume in her series, Death and the Displacement of Beauty (2004–2009). Jantzen had also detected other aspects of mortality, identifying them as elements that had characterized much of the violence in Western cultures, dating from the Homeric period of the immortalization of male warriors in Greek antiquity, to examples of contemporary Christianity’s violent abuse, particularly in regard to the treatment of women. Jantzen was profoundly distressed by what she had discerned in contemporary domestic violence, with its sexual and physical assaults, and even killings as definitive evidence of centuries of male supremacy and patriarchal control. Towards the end of her life, Jantzen was committed to introducing a proposal to fellow human beings that would allow women to take their place as rightful co-inheritors of a creative existence. She depicted this achievement as similar to finding one’s voice and also the realization of one’s own potential for cultivating both love and beauty in this world. Jantzen’s own supportive response was: ‘But though we will all die, surely it is at least as important that we have all been born’ (2002, 145).

PAMELA SUE ANDERSON, WOMEN AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION One of the strongest impressions that one encounters as a woman in reading books and articles today about ‘philosophy of religion’ is that, as an area of study, it has still retained a number of items that indicate a non-reflexive male approach. Fortunately, a growing number of female scholars, inspired by Anderson and Jantzen, have undertaken explorations where they have collected certain extant questionable observations and practices. By way of introduction, I will describe Anderson’s own appeals to the need for addressing such vital contemporary issues. Second, I review Anderson’s most important criticisms and suggestions as she inspects the past rejections of women. This survey is

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followed by Anderson’s amendments that have assisted her in repairing the damage already done. In an interview regarding her earlier book, A Feminist Philosophy of Religion (1998), Anderson had made an intriguing comment about what had prompted her to write it. She referred to the ‘philosophy of religion’ as a ‘strange discipline’, declaring that: The intention is to rend strange the conceptions which are, or have been, all too familiar in order to see the exclusive nature of a now traditional perspective. In particular, there is too much familiarity, and so unquestioning acceptance, accompanying the classical model of traditional theism. (Anderson 2001) The task that Anderson undertook was that of exploring the very strangeness of the nature of an immortal God who is at the centre of debates regarding both his existence and attributes, such as omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence (Anderson 1998). Anderson observed that such theoretical argumentation appeared to be at a distant remove from the lives of many women (Anderson 2001). Anderson was also concerned about what she considered to be a virtual obsession with the demand for clarity and coherence of argument in philosophical and theological debates. It was not as if Anderson would totally dismiss such ideals and principles, but, for her, they seemed to be absent from the many discrepancies that inform human existence. From Anderson’s perspective, a sole emphasis on such an abstract approach failed to take into consideration the inequity of social factors, economic interests and political programmes, which could deeply affect human beings. In response to this lack of sensitivity, Anderson stated that she would attempt to develop a mode of philosophizing that endorsed epistemic justice. Central to Anderson’s approach to this topic was an acknowledgement of the ‘deeply gendered – often sexist and racist – nature of our social and physical locations’ (Anderson 2001). In response to such a charge, Anderson aimed to develop a transformative mode of philosophizing in religion. This, she believed, would help to encourage an acceptance of the notions of sex/gender as well as the diversities of race, class, ethnicity and sexual orientation.7 However, in examining the present situation, Anderson had observed that it has been the ‘man of reason’ who has dominated the Western philosophical tradition. She noted: ‘While for man philosophy is the rational activity par excellence, for women – she is imagined as unable to think for herself’ (2007, 108). While Anderson did not automatically exclude males from her investigations, she helped to provide a refuge for both women and men who had experienced exclusion. Anderson was well aware that her main goal of epistemic justice would be a demanding task, which could not be achieved without a definite epistemological strategy. She described this much-needed approach by presenting the reflections that needed to be assessed as ‘thinking from the lives of others, and reinventing ourselves as other’ (Anderson 2001). As remarked in Jantzen’s previous section, the term ‘otherness’ has been questioned frequently in recent years, with variable implications (see Joy 2011, 221–46). In this case, however, Anderson employed the term in a manner that was distinct from its earlier forms. She appealed to a number of other women scholars to help her define suitable solutions. Her two main influences in these explorations were the American scholar, Sandra Harding, who introduced ‘standpoint theory’, and French philosopher, Michèle Le Doeuff, who provided insights into the construct of a ‘philosophical imaginary’ (Le Doeuff 2002).

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Anderson adapted what Harding called a ‘standpoint theory’ by adding the strategic word ‘feminist’. She then qualified her understanding of Harding’s theory by stating that one does not simply attain such a position by virtue of being born a woman, nor by experiencing life from a woman’s perspective (Anderson 2001). Anderson then refined how an ‘epistemically informed perspective’ is achieved by thinking from the lives of other people, especially those who have been relegated to the margins by the prevailing epistemological standards of the day (Anderson 2001). Both males and females could be involved in these processes, although Anderson’s concern with women’s status is the more receptive. She then recounted her struggle to define a suitable standpoint. She first presented the ‘problem of a hierarchy of values, in which reason is valued over desire, male over female, upper class over working class, infinite over finite, power over weakness, centre over margin, and other similar (value) combinations, inherent in philosophical texts’ (Anderson 2001). As a result, Anderson stipulated that this standpoint was not the equivalent of a woman’s experiences or of her situation; nor did it depict what was a distinctly female perspective. Anderson then also described how a ‘feminist standpoint’ emerged from the struggle of those women and men who have been exploited, oppressed or dominated. However, Anderson also added that women have been ‘exploited or even oppressed by very specific, pernicious monotheistic beliefs’ (Anderson 2001). This clarification by Anderson provided a space for specific religious deletions, which, once erased, could no longer exercise power, such as exploitative demands. Instead, women’s insights were directed towards an appreciation of the struggles by human beings who have realized the cause of their sufferings yet, at the same time, have discovered a new-found constructive potential of remedial insights. Such an approach, however, is more easily said than done. It was for this reason that Anderson appealed to Michèle Le Doeuff and her study of the ‘philosophical imaginary’. It is only by introducing this aspect, that Anderson could undertake such an experimental task. In this context, a ‘philosophical imaginary’ does not claim any relation to psychoanalytic theories in the manner of either Lacan or Irigaray. Instead, it referred initially to a form of philosophical remembering, that released imaginative recollections that Anderson viewed as both valuable and reparative. Le Doeuff maintained that such a task needed to be undertaken because of women’s long-standing absence from the philosophical tradition. As a result, it was a necessary task to reclaim the experiences and ideas of ‘disinherited’ or minority women. In this situation, Anderson’s task with other women scholars was directed specifically towards a new-found flourishing of feminist philosophers: [T]hey should imagine alternative thought patterns and intellectual spaces in which they glimpse possibilities that have been excluded through polarizations of (male) reason and (female) emotion; or, knowing and imagining. This critical task would be a philosophical exercise of the philosophical imaginary, and, I suggest at this time, it is the most constructive exercise. (Anderson 2007, 110) In this way, Anderson sought to modify the stark claims of objective knowledge that presumed to provide a God’s-eye view (2007, 108). It was in her adaptation of Le Doeuff’s work, that Anderson demonstrated that the role of the imaginary in philosophy was not simply an ornamental additive. It thus operated most effectively in a manner that is crucial to the self-definition of philosophy itself, by the screening of the words employed to

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convey its relevant ideals and worth. The task, then, involved a mimetic refiguring of the images and ideas about women as they have been configured in philosophy. This means removing them from the margins whence they had been relegated as untrustworthy. Unfortunately, beginning from the Greek philosophers, women have been deemed as both emotional and irrational. Le Doeuff herself, however, does not prescribe any specific method for detecting the means by which women were excluded from the exercise of philosophizing.8 In keeping with Le Doeuff’s reluctance to prescribe a definitive method, Anderson adopted her own specific approach. It would involve first an investigation of certain female mythical figures, for example Antigone, as she was configured by men. Anderson then introduced an exploration of women’s own desires, or ‘yearning’, as a way of examining women’s own refigurations of their own roles and identities. ‘Yearning’ is a word that Anderson appropriates from the African-American poet and writer bell hooks. Anderson appreciated hooks’ use of the term as one that evokes a ‘rational passion’ that helps to achieve a parity or worth in a society that has deprived women of their means to attain knowledge. Anderson quotes from hooks’ work: ‘[U] nder the heading Yearning . . . I looked for common passions, sentiments, shared by folks across race, class, gender and sexual practice. I was struck by the depths of longing in many of us’ (Anderson 2006, 43).9 Anderson, however, extended this passionate longing for equity not only to refer to African-American women’s exclusion from Anglo-American philosophy but also as an analogy for women’s exclusion throughout history until the present day. Anderson was very careful in this move not to diminish in any way the force of hooks’ call for an end to social injustice nor to distance herself from the necessary struggles that help to end all forms of oppression. Nevertheless, Anderson endowed her conclusions with her own specific interpretations, whereby yearning takes on both personal and political dimensions for women philosophers. Anderson states: ‘My contention is that the ultimate goal of a woman’s philosophical search for identity is mutual recognition, even if unreachable.’10 Her own passionate yearning is one that would ideally affect an egalitarian reciprocity, first between women, and then between women and men. In support of this aspiration, especially as it includes women philosophers, Anderson also invokes Judith Butler’s post-Hegelian reading of ‘longing’ as described in her article ‘Longing for Recognition’ (Butler 2008).11 Yet, Anderson is well aware of the risks involved in such a wager of intersubjective viewpoints. This is due to the fact that Le Doeuff has alerted her to the fact that women need to remain extremely conscious that they do not, in their turn, initiate a new form of exclusivity by establishing a women’s-only mode of philosophizing. At the heart of the work of philosophy, for both Pamela Sue Anderson and Michèle Le Doeuff, it is imperative that women retain the responsibility to see themselves through the eyes of others, that is, reflexively and less partially, and to never presume that they have access to an ultimate truth.

CONCLUSION Pamela Sue Anderson and Grace Jantzen have made invaluable contributions to women’s ongoing struggles to reform philosophy of religion. Their respective ‘therapies of philosophy of religion’, each in their own way, provide alternative modes of constructive and imaginary interventions that cannot but disrupt the existing categories, concepts and practices, which were firmly established in a masculinist world view. Anderson’s

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and Jantzen’s ethical dedication are guided by an unwavering commitment to justice and responsibility towards others. Such an orientation cannot but introduce a serious challenge to the contemporary male-centred philosophy of religion. If one were to take seriously the criticisms and recommendations for the renovations suggested in the earlier proposals by Jantzen and Anderson, philosophy of religion would be transformed. It is not my intention to propose what it would include exactly, but my hope is that it would inspire deep reflections. In concluding, I will list a number of the vital changes that I envisage as requisite for a revitalized approach to philosophy and its encounters with religion. Instead of remaining an elitist, modernist project, and an exceedingly abstract one at that, it needs to acquire a more grounded and contextual approach that acknowledges the material conditions of all forms of knowledge. This does not imply that epistemic enquiry would be utterly abandoned. It would require, however, that it ceases to be solely concerned with debates about other worlds, qualifications about an absent God who is construed in accordance with human designs, and theodicies that avoid the actual sufferings of humanity, especially in the hands of their superiors. Proofs and truths would be replaced by an ethical disposition that confronts abuse of power and exclusions based on hierarchical privilege. Questions of sex, race, gender and class, that is intersectionality, would inform an awareness that respected the body with its diverse incarnations as well as the precious mind (Joy 2006). Above all, ethical relationships would be ordered towards recognition and justice. Such priorities would contribute to an affirmation of this human world instead of a fixation on mortality and violence. In this way, philosophy of religion would cease to be related to disassociated idealizations or defensive mechanisms. Instead, it would contribute to the continuity of the flourishing of all the vulnerable creatures that inhabit this planet.

NOTES 1. Parts of this article were previously published in Kanaris (2017); reprinted with permission of SUNY Press. 2. This section draws on material in the Introduction to my edited book (Joy 2012a); reprinted with permission of the University of Calgary Press. 3. The participants from the University of Calgary were Tinu Ruparell, then Head of the Department of Religious Studies, and Katrin Froese and Chris G. Framarin, who both hold joint appointments in the departments of Religious Studies and Philosophy. Other invited contributors were: Tamara Albertini, Head of Philosophy Department, Specialist in Renaissance and Islamist Studies, University of Hawaii, Manoa; Arindam Chakrabarti, Professor of Philosophy, University of Hawaii, Manoa; Francis X. Clooney, S. J., Parkman Professor of Divinity and Professor of Comparative Theology, Harvard University; Chen-Kuo Lin, Professor Emeritus, Chenchi University, Singapore; Dan Lusthaus, South Asian Studies Department, Harvard University; Michael McGhee, Honorary Senior Fellow, University of Liverpool; Michael Oppenheim, Concordia University, Montreal, retired; the late Vincent Shen (1949–2018), Department of East Asian Studies and Department of Philosophy, University of Toronto; Ahmad F. Yousif, who was associate professor, Department of Usuluddin, University of Brunei, Darussalam, at the time of the workshop. 4. In her volume, A World of Difference, Australian anthropologist Julie Marcus observes: ‘In his book Orientalism, Said documents the European obsession with women and oriental sexuality, but he does so incidentally, as part of the process by which the oriental was

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constructed as an objectified other’ (1978, 40). From her remark, it would seem that Said was not a supporter of women’s quest for freedom from male dominance. 5. Such terms as ‘Third World/South’, ‘First World/North’ and ‘Western’ and ‘Non-Western’ described social minorities and majorities that indicated distinct categories of worldviews. They were, however, problematic, even if written in parentheses. Such words were regarded as First-World designations that carried imperialist baggage. With the onset of globalization, these terms were abandoned (see Mohanty 2003a, 509). 6. For an overview of this topic, I recommend Australian sociologist R. W. Connell’s ‘A Thousand Miles from Kind: Men, Masculinities and Modern Institutions’ (2008), as well as later volumes. 7. This acknowledgement is an early reference to what today is called ‘intersectionality’ (see Crenshaw 1991). 8. See especially Le Doeuff’s reading of Descartes in The Philosophical Imaginary (Le Doeuff 1989). 9. This quotation is from bell hooks’ book, Yearning (hooks 1999, 12–13). 10. Anderson will describe her own understanding of ‘yearning’ as related to a passionate task referring to a woman’s search for a philosophical form of identity. This is ‘to recognize a common yearning for recognition. This yearning is evident in sexual desire, political rage, unavoidable grief and self-giving/self-creating love’ (2006, 14). 11. Anderson acknowledges that her work also owes a debt to Simone de Beauvoir’s reading of Hegel and the influence it had on a certain stream of French feminism. One could also argue that Anderson’s work shows the influence of Paul Ricoeur’s own revising of Hegel’s understanding of recognition as it appeared in Oneself as Another (2002).

REFERENCES Anderson, Pamela Sue (1998), A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief, Oxford: Blackwell. Anderson, Pamela Sue (2001), ‘The Case for a Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Transforming Philosophy’s Imagery and Myths’, Ars Disputandi, 1 (1): 1–17. Anderson, Pamela Sue (2006), ‘Life, Death and (Inter)Subjectivity: Realism and Recognition in Continental Feminism’, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 60 (1/3): 41–59. Anderson, Pamela Sue (2007), ‘Book Review: The Philosophical Imaginary and the Sex of Knowing’, Feminist Theory, 8: 107–14. Anderson, Pamela Sue (2012), Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love, and Epistemic Locatedness, London: Ashgate. Butler, Judith (2008), ‘Longing for Recognition: Commentary on the Work of Jessica Benjamin’, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 1 (3): 271–90. Connell, R. W. (2008), ‘A Thousand Miles from Kind: Men, Masculinities and Modern Institutions’, Journal of Men’s Studies, 16 (3): 237–52. Crenshaw, Kimberlé W (1991), ‘Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color’, Stanford Law Review, 43 (6): 1241–99. Dallmayr, Fred (1996), Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Donaldson, Laura E. (1993), Decolonizing Feminisms: Race, Gender, and Empire-Building, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. Donaldson, Laura E., and Pui-Lan Kwok, ed. (2001), Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, New York/London: Routledge.

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Dube, Musa W. (2002), ‘Postcoloniality, Feminist Spaces and Religion’, in Laura E. Donaldson and Kwok Pui-Lan (eds.), Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, 100–20, New York/London: Routledge. hooks, bell (1999), Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics, Boston: South End Press. Jantzen, Grace (1996), ‘What’s the Difference? Knowledge and Gender and Modern Philosophy of Religion’, Religious Studies, 32 (4): 431–48. Jantzen, Grace (1998), Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Jantzen, Grace (2000), ‘Response to Harriet Harris’, Feminist Theology: The Journal of the Britain & Ireland School of Feminist Theology, 23: 119–20. Jantzen, Grace (2001), ‘Flourishing: Towards an Ethic of Natality’, Feminist Theory, 2 (2): 219–32. Jantzen, Grace (2002), ‘Birth and the Powers of Horror: Julia Kristeva on Gender, Religion, and Death’, in Philip Goodchild (ed.), Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: Approaches from Continental Philosophy, 139–61, New York: Fordham University Press. Jantzen, Grace (2004), Death and the Displacement of Beauty, Vol. 1, Foundations of Violence, London: Routledge. Jantzen, Grace (2008), Death and the Displacement of Beauty, Vol. 2, Violence to Eternity, ed. Jeremy Carrette and Morny Joy, London: Routledge. Jantzen, Grace (2009a), Death and the Displacement of Beauty, Vol. 3. A Place of Springs, ed. Jeremy Carrette and Morny Joy. London: Routledge. Jantzen, Grace (2009b), ‘“Uneasy Intersections”: Postcolonialism, Feminism and the Study of Religion’, in Purushottama Bilimoria and Andrew B. Irvine (ed.), Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, 295–301, New York/Heidelberg: Springer. Joy, Morny (2006), ‘Gender and Religion: A Volatile Mixture’, Temenos, 42 (1): 7–30. Joy, Morny, ed. (2011), Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion, Dordrecht: Springer. Joy, Morny, ed. (2012a). After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion, Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Joy, Morny (2012b), ‘Revisiting Postcolonialism and Religion’, Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, 25 (2): 102–22. Joy, Morny (2017), ‘Re-envisioning the Philosophy of Religion’, in Jim Kanaris (ed.), Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion: A Possible Future, 3–34, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Joy, Morny, ed. (2020), Explorations in Women, Rights, and Religions, Sheffield: Equinox. Kessler, Gary (1998), Philosophy of Religion: Toward a Global Perspective, Boston: Wadsworth Publishing. Larson, Gerald, and Eliot Deutsch, eds. (1988), Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Le Doeuff, Michèle (1989), The Philosophical Imaginary, trans. Colin Gordon, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Long, Eugene T. (2000), Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion: 1900–2000, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Marcos, Sylvia (2006), Taken from the Lips: Gender and Eros in Mesoamerican Religions, Leiden: Brill. Marcos, Sylvia, ed. (2010), Women and Indigenous Religions, Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Meister, Chad (2007), The Philosophy of Religion Reader. New York: Routledge. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade (1984), ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, Boundary, 2: 333–58.

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Mohanty, Chandra Talpade (2003a), ‘“Under Western Eyes” Revisited, Feminist Solidarity through Anti-capitalist Struggles’, Signs, 28 (2): 499–535. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade (2003b), Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practising Solidarity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Palmer, Michael (2011), Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Said, Edward (1978), Orientalism, New York: Pantheon. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988), ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’, in C. Nelson and L. Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, 271–313, Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (2004), ‘Righting Wrongs’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 103 (2–3): 523–81.

Chapter 5

Is philosophy of religion racist? SONIA SIKKA

The project of globalizing the philosophy of religion, to which this series is dedicated, seeks to correct the narrowness of the subject as currently constituted. The vast majority of scholarship in this subdiscipline of philosophy is oriented towards Christianity in methodology and content, reflecting the fact that philosophy of religion is a historical successor of Christian philosophical theology. That scholarship is consequently a poor fit for other religious traditions and lifeways, particularly non-Abrahamic ones. It is not that all philosophy of religion remains Christian apologetics (though arguably too much of it still does). There are critical participants, but by and large, the tenets that philosophers of religion undertake to analyse and assess are inherited from the history of Christian theology. This is true of the classical arguments for the existence of God; the problem of reconciling the attributes of this God with the fact of evil; the possibility of resurrection; the status of faith and the entire faith/reason dichotomy.1 Granted, the evolution of Christian theology is heavily influenced by a dialogue with Greek philosophy, as in Aquinas’s appropriation of Aristotelian arguments in his ‘ways’ of demonstrating the existence of God, versions of which continue to be debated. Granted also that some of these themes can be generalized without radical modification to Judaism and Islam, as well as theistic strands within, for instance, Hinduism. It remains the case that the selection and design of these topics does not fit the character of many major religious traditions, as scholars have increasingly stressed. Central elements of Asian, African, and indigenous traditions are not captured by discussions revolving around such topics, and some of these traditions might not even fit under their presumed idea of ‘religion’. It also matters that current discussions within the philosophy of religion rarely draw on non-Western sources in formulating their arguments. With a few notable exceptions, they do not incorporate Islamic, Judaic or Indic arguments for and against the existence of God, for example, or on the status and interpretation of scriptures and other authoritative teachings. Admittedly, understanding and engaging with such arguments requires considerable scholarship, contextualization and adaptation to a modern idiom and set of concerns. But the same could be said of Aquinas, Augustine, Irenaeus and a host of other Christian theologians in the distant past whose work is regularly mined for material relevant to debates within philosophy of religion today. These selections and exclusions have histories as well as effects. There are historical reasons why Christian doctrines have been and continue to be the ones exclusively examined by philosophers of religion (again, with some notable exceptions). And that exclusivity has consequences for

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the dissemination of knowledge and reflection on religion by philosophers in this field, whether within the academic community or to students or to the wider public audience directly and indirectly influenced by philosophical discussions. What, though, could be the justification for calling such choices ‘racist?’ Should they not be described merely as Eurocentric and narrow, due to their historical origins and religious exclusivism or, at most, religious and cultural bigotry? I argue in the following pages that the philosophy of religion, in its current shape, should be called racist both because of the views that have determined and implicitly continue to determine its design and because of the continuing effects of that design. We need to think carefully about what counts as ‘racism’ in comparison with neighbouring categories such as bigotry and xenophobia, entertaining pragmatic questions about why we debate the usage of this term and what the social and political consequences of labelling some attitudes or behaviour as racist are. We also need to acknowledge racism in the history of philosophy of religion, along with philosophy as a whole. In this regard, I point to recent scholarship exposing the overtly racist views of seminal philosophers who shaped the design of the Western philosophical canon, such as Hegel, while proposing, in agreement with Bernasconi, that the equation of racism with beliefs about biology is misguided. Given this history, philosophers of religion ought to consider the social effects of continuing to engage with a set of questions and sources whose selection has been affected by racism, in a global context where expressions of racism against religious minorities, including state policies, are a serious concern. The solution might seem to be for philosophy of religion to simply expand, incorporating study of religious traditions that have been ignored as a result of racist attitudes. I propose, however, that such inclusion must be accompanied simultaneously by a critical interrogation of the prejudices that lead to non-Western authors and texts being classified as religion rather than as philosophy. Without such interrogation, globalizing the philosophy of religion may only serve to reinforce the parochialism of philosophy.

WHAT IS ‘RACISM?’ Although the term ‘racism’ is used in a variety of ways within popular discourse, accounts of racism in the construction and preservation of the Western philosophical canon still tend to identify the concept with beliefs about biology.2 This is in spite of a considerable body of historical and philosophical scholarship arguing that beliefs about an underlying biology are not a necessary condition for an attitude, behaviour or institutional practice being racist. Critiques of racism directed towards such beliefs often target the scientific idea of race, according to which it is supposed to be constituted by unalterable natural characteristics, as opposed to the changeable characteristics we acquire through culture. Robert Bernasconi points out, however, that ‘the radical distinction between nature and culture was and remains inadequate to the task both of mounting a defence against racism in its myriad forms and of illuminating the history of racism’, for ‘there is nothing inherent in the distinction between nature and culture that sets it against any but the most narrowly conceived and relatively recent scientific racism’ (Bernasconi 2012, 52). After all, examination of contemporary racism (in its myriad forms) reveals strong continuities in representations of the imagined ‘other’, whether the difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’ is alleged to be produced by nature or by culture. Can we not conclude that the attitudes and sentiments motivating such representations are much the same? Examination of the history of philosophy certainly suggests that prior dispositions favouring the superiority

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of one’s own clan (one might call them modalities of the ‘will to power’, to use a Nietzschean term) have motivated racialist scientific classifications and hierarchizations. Consider the case of Immanuel Kant, who participated in debates about race in the eighteenth century, at a critical juncture where scientific theories of race were being formulated for the first time. Kant argued against those who denied there were any human racial types, and he may have been the first to claim that human races are biologically fixed and unalterable. He proposed the following typology, dividing the ‘races of man’ according to their lineage: Original stock: White, of a brunette colour First race: Light blond (Northern Europe) of damp cold Second race: Copper red (America) of dry cold Third race: Black (Senegambia) of damp heat Fourth race: Olive yellow (Indians) of dry heat (Kant [1775] 1964, 28) There is, for Kant, a natural hierarchy among these races. In his lectures on anthropology, he attributes to the white race all the possible perfections of humanity, noting the deficiencies of the other races, and adding that ‘if ever a revolution occurred, it was always brought about by the whites, and the Hindus, Americans, Negroes never had any part in it’. (Larrimore 1999, 112–3). Does anyone genuinely believe that such conclusions are based on an objective (if mistaken) observation of human differences and attempt at scientific explanation? It seems obvious that Kant’s ‘scientific’ hypotheses about race reflected pre-existing Eurosupremacist prejudices. The essentialist biological account was shaped by those prejudices and not the other way around. Consider as well Hegel’s historical hierarchy of civilizations, proposed as a progressivist narrative within which non-European peoples are situated at lower stages on the scale of human development, Africans occupying the very bottom rung. This influential narrative is a primary target of Peter Park’s (2013) critical analysis in Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830. Park’s account emphasizes the role of racialist ideas specifically in the construction of an idea of philosophy according to which it begins with the Greeks and is exclusively the product of a superior Western culture. He notes that alternative accounts did exist and that this idea of philosophy was constructed against a good deal of contrary evidence. Serious effort was required to exclude Egypt, India and China, for instance, from the history of philosophy, and this exclusion was intimately linked, Park claims, to racialist views about the capacities for reflection and reason among the peoples inhabiting these cultures. Park’s argument is convincing, demonstrating that at the very least there is an uncertainty about the natural, biologically based capacities of non-White peoples among philosophers such as Kant and Hegel, who also see Christianity as superior to any other form of religion. However, while Park is at pains to establish that the claims about European superiority he examines are linked to biological theses about human types and are not only ‘cultural’ (Park 2013, 95), I would argue that the cultural claims should also be counted as racist. They are linked to a white/coloured binary that maps a ‘west versus rest’ frame of perception constituted not merely by limited knowledge but by self-aggrandizing will to power. Bernasconi points out that, in his philosophy of history, Hegel systematically distorted his sources to portray Africans in a manner that would fit with negative stereotypes about their uncivilized nature and lack of any consciousness of freedom (Bernasconi 2012, 115). That systematic distortion points to a will to position

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Africans as inferior to Europeans and excuses their enslavement in spite of evidence to the contrary. A similar spirit informs Hegel’s placement of China and India on the scale of human progress and his often convoluted, clearly partisan, attempts to refute European scholarship that pointed to the presence of metaphysics, as well as ethics and sophisticated forms of religion, within these ancient civilizations. Park is quite right that ‘Hegel’s history of philosophy . . . is actually the history of the philosophical deeds of white Man’ (Park 2013, 129), but we should notice that at work here is a desire for supremacy that wants to look down on other peoples, that takes pleasure in the pathos of distance, to use another Nietzschean idea, and that disregards evidence in manufacturing the knowledge that fits with its wants. Within the configurations of power in which Hegel was writing, this will to supremacy already deserves to be called ‘racism’, I propose, whether it expresses itself as a biological theory or as a theory about the relative rank of human cultures. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion is a significant moment in the development of philosophy of religion as a distinct field. It matters, then, that the history it tells is also one where the ideal form of humanity – the goal of being as a whole, for Hegel – is expressed in the accomplishments of White Western culture. Christianity, the religion of this culture, is presented as the highest form of religion, and the moral and metaphysical content of this religion finds clear expression in philosophy, which in its proper form is an exclusively Western achievement. These views belong to the history of Western racism, and they are already present in Kant’s philosophy of religion. In Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, Bernasconi points out, Kant claims that only Christianity truly fits the definition of ‘religion’, which for Kant is supposed to have a true moral content of universal application (Bernasconi 2009, 215). While Hegel, by contrast, does acknowledge the existence of different religions, he certainly agrees that there is only one true religion, Christianity, in line with his hierarchy of peoples. Such views had rivals among European orientalists, but they won the historical contest in defining the content of both philosophy and philosophy of religion. The article by Bernasconi cited earlier is called ‘Must We Avoid Speaking of Religion? The Truths of Religions’ (Bernasconi 2009). It takes up the question, much discussed in recent years, of whether the idea of religion, with its provenance in Christianity, fits other traditions that have been called ‘religions’ in modern, originally Western, discourses. Bernasconi traces the Western history of excluding all traditions other than Christianity from the proper idea of religion. This is a history of racism, in which, he writes, ‘an unwillingness on the part of any people or race to accept the tenets of Christianity was seen as a deficiency of that race or people’. He adds that ‘religions and races have often been linked together, but once a religion had been “raced,” then it is easier to dismiss it’. Within this history, ‘to deny religion to some peoples is like denying them reason’ (Bernasconi 2009, 243), and the historical act of violence whereby traditions are measured by an idea of religion taking Christianity as its ideal model, cannot now be undone by withholding the word. As a result, Bernasconi ultimately argues that we need to continue using the word, but ‘if the philosopher is to speak of religion, and I believe it is incumbent on him or her to do so, it should preferably be in the plural’ (Bernasconi 2009, 223). Bernasconi’s focus in this article is on Asian and African religions, but another example of the nexus between race and religion, highly salient in the contemporary context, is the case of Islamophobia. Tariq Modood, who likewise argues for widening our understanding of racism to include more than biological varieties, defines Islamophobia as ‘the racializing of Muslims based on physical appearance or descent as members of a community and

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attributing to them cultural or religious characteristics to vilify, marginalize, discriminate or demand assimilation and thereby treat them as second-class citizens’ (Modood 2018, 2). Note Modood’s use of the term ‘assimilation’ in this working definition. It suggests that racism, of which Islamophobia is an instance, does not have to include the thesis that the identity of the racialized other is unchangeable. Consider, in this regard, policies aiming at the assimilation of indigenous peoples on the part of white settler-colonial states. In Canada, the notoriously cruel residential school system, which took native children away from their parents and subjected them to an education designed to extirpate their Indianness – to ‘kill the Indian in the child’, as an American military officer put it in voicing similar attitudes – was undeniably racist. And yet its underlying ideology did not hold that native people were incapable of being ‘civilized’, of being remoulded to remove their offending difference. This observation complicates Anna Lauwers’s contention that ‘racism is present when a group of people experiences exclusion because they are believed to share certain allegedly “innate” and “unchangeable” characteristics’ and that ‘religious and cultural bigotry are conceptually distinct from racism because they do not involve the assumption that group membership is “natural” and “innate.”’ (Lauwers 2019, 307–8). Lauwers uses the example of Islamophobia as an illustration herself, adding that ‘anti-Islam bigotry, unlike anti-Muslim racism, assumes that individuals can choose to change their allegedly problematic culture and/or religion’ (Lauwers 2019, 308). Strictly speaking, this would mean that dispositions and policies seeking the disappearance of the otherness of certain groups through cultural assimilation could not be described as racist. Yet the term seems highly appropriate in some contexts where assimilation is precisely the goal, as is registered in Modood’s definition of Islamophobia. Modood’s work on Islamophobia is oriented towards the European context, where racist attitudes towards Muslims are generally linked to perceptions of bodily difference and situated within a long-standing white/coloured binary. If one examines Islamophobia within the context of India, the matter becomes more complex still. There are in India no physical markers of a difference between Hindus and Muslims, and Indian Islamophobes usually do not appeal to a difference of biological lineage. Yet there are good reasons for describing Islamophobia in India as a form of racism. Indian Muslims are demonized wholesale as a group with a single essence, any one being able to stand in place of any other. The same tropes are applied to them that one finds in the lethal history of European anti-Semitism. They are accused of deliberately spreading disease (Daniyal 2020; Bajoria 2020). They are represented as permanent foreigners, a hostile internal enemy bent on destroying the nation whose population needs to be controlled.3 These vilifications are, moreover, supported by a power differential, Muslims being a vulnerable minority in India. Accompanying them are patterns of discrimination and violence against Muslims, identified by their names and clothing, regardless of what they believe or do. Concerns have been voiced about a possible loss of citizenship for Indian Muslims, and even pogroms and genocide, within a programme of Hindu-supremacist nationalism (Ayubb 2019; Kamdar 2020). This ‘religious’ nationalism is not very different from the Identitarian nationalisms in Europe that have been described in terms of neo-racism or cultural racism (Balibar 1991, 21). Given these factors, it is arguably legitimate to describe Indian Islamophobia as racism, in spite of the fact that the targeted group bears the name of a religion, and exit from it through renunciation or conversion – in other words, through assimilation to a Hindu-supremacist majority identity – is not ruled out. In his work on ‘dehumanization’,

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David Livingstone Smith has pointed to the ‘psychological essentialism’ through which we group entities into natural kinds, proposing that this capacity or tendency enables the representation of certain groups of human beings as non-human or subhuman, in spite of their human appearance. Smith argues that such representations serve to disable the inhibitions against violence that check our desires for the advantages to be gained from harming others (Smith 2018, 266–70). He also analyses ‘demonization’ as a variety of dehumanization, wherein the represented class of beings is perceived as ‘metaphysically threatening’ (Smith 2018, 272). Smith does not want to identify all such cases as instances of racism, but I would suggest that for legal, moral and political purposes, there is no practically meaningful distinction, certainly no bright line, to be drawn between: (1) essentialist demonizations of the other appealing to biology or insisting on the impossibility of individuals exiting the demonized group and, (2) demonizations granting the possibility of change at an individual level but striving for the elimination of the differences from ‘us’ that constitute the identity of the offending group as ‘them’. In either case, the psychology of othering directs hostility towards the demonized group, excludes its members from being objects of moral concern, and seeks their disappearance. When this psychology is authorized by power and shapes the body politic, it is hard to see how it matters whether the group is distinguished by physical characteristics or some other markers. The effects are painfully the same, and our normative reactions ought to be the same. Commenting on Falguni Sheth’s Toward a Political Philosophy of Race, Eduardo Mendieta defines ‘racism’ as ‘a dispositif by means of which some subjects are thrown into a region within the social body politic that is the equivalent of a “free-fire zone”, while others are both authorized and rendered blameless for taking aim within that region’ (Mendieta 2012, 909). Groups bearing the names of religions can and have been thrown into this region. Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are examples, illustrating that neither in its history nor in its effects does racism require belief in biological determinism or an absolute fixity of types.

RACISM AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION The question of whether or not to describe some belief, attitude, behaviour, or institution as ‘racist’ is not a purely semantic one. It has normative implications, for the judgement that something ought to be called racist offers a diagnosis, requiring certain kinds of remedy. It connects the phenomenon labelled as racism with a history of injustice and immense suffering, the remembrance of which carries moral weight. At the same time, it points to the need for ameliorative measures to counter the disadvantaging and stigmatization of the racialized group(s). To describe the philosophy of religion as racist means pointing in these two directions, connecting the current shape of the field with a history of racism while calling for revisions that will help to counter racism rather than perpetuate it. The content of philosophy of religion, like that of philosophy generally, has evolved within the cauldron of a racist pattern of views about Western civilizational superiority. I argued above that there is no bright line, and little practical difference, between beliefs in biological versus cultural superiority, and that projects of cultural assimilation involving Christianization, such as those directed at indigenous people, can still be described as racist. The remarkable privileging of the Christian mythos that persists in current philosophy of religion scholarship, in both analytic and continental schools (see Knepper 2013, 25–73),

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inherits this racist history and perpetuates its Eurosupremacist prejudices. Understandably, much of the discussion about the narrowness of the field has focused on the exclusion of non-Abrahamic forms of religion. In particular, philosophers wanting to broaden this subdiscipline of philosophy (including myself, Sikka 2018) have highlighted varieties of religious life and thought that are significantly different from so-called classical theism, meaning theism as propounded and debated within Christian philosophical theology. We have wanted to draw attention to the fact that standard debates within current philosophy of religion – about the nature and existence of God, for example, or the possibility of the ‘soul’ surviving death – do not capture the content of many of these excluded forms of religion, with the result that the field misrepresents ‘religion’ and misrepresents itself in claiming to be philosophy of religion, when it is actually philosophical analysis and evaluation of Christian doctrine. By presenting Islamophobia as an example of racism, however, I am emphasizing a different dimension of exclusion that has perniciously racist effects. Many of the debates within classical Christian theism are relevant to Islam, as they are to Judaism. Not only are these the three Abrahamic religions, but their traditions of philosophical theology are historically intertwined, with a common and mutually influential appropriation of Greek philosophy. Consequently, standard philosophy of religion arguments about the existence of God, or debates about how a perfectly good and all-powerful creator could allow evil, should have purchase in relation to basic Islamic beliefs, even if they proceed with reference to Christian authors such as Aquinas and Leibniz. Yet I think we should also consider the effects of that exclusive, or nearly exclusive, engagement with European Christian authors, particularly in the context of education. We live in a world where religious prejudice meshes with racism to produce discriminatory behaviours and social policies and where communal and sectarian conflicts revolving around religious identities continue to thrive. The philosophy of religion can play an important role in fostering better understanding, which in turn can help to counter the narratives on which these conflicts depend. I do not mean that the philosophy of religion should be led by a moral and political agenda rather than a scholarly one, aiming at social improvement rather than truth. But when the denigration and demonization of certain religious groups is buttressed by racist attitudes that in turn rely on ignorance for their justification, telling the truth also serves the good. In this case, not telling the whole story, moreover, is a form of falsification. When we teach the philosophy of religion exclusively through the evaluation of positions within Western philosophical theology, leaving out Islamic, Jewish, Asian, African and indigenous sources and viewpoints, we affirm a narrative of Euro-Atlantic civilizational superiority that has been intimately linked to racism, whether or not we as individuals agree with that narrative. Personal intentions and beliefs do not exhaust what should be counted as racism, if the use of this term is, as I have suggested, diagnostic and prescriptive.

RACISM AND PHILOSOPHY The exclusion of non-European subjects and ideas from the canon of philosophy is not, of course, confined to the philosophy of religion. It applies to philosophy as a whole, and this raises a further complication for initiatives aiming to globalize the philosophy of religion. Richard King points out that ‘the modern academic field of study known as the philosophy of religion is founded upon a central epistemological distinction – namely the cognitive

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separation of something readily identifiable as ‘philosophy’ from that which it deems to examine, in this case “the religious”’. (King 2009, 35). That distinction, moreover, is fundamental to the perceived sense of radical difference between the modern and the premodern in the colonial imagination, which in turn maps a difference between the West and its others, whose cultures are seen as still at the less advanced level of religion. ‘The trope of the modern, secular and liberal West in contrast to a more religious, spiritual and/or superstitious “non-west” has been a key feature in the construction of the West’s sense of its own modernity’ (King 2009, 43), King observes, and this trope, I would add, reflects views about superior and inferior human types that cannot be disentangled from racism. We therefore need to be cautious about positioning non-Western beliefs, views, practices, and ways of life as objects of study within a field called ‘philosophy of religion’, rather than engaging with them as co-subjects in philosophy. Jay Garfield and Bryan Van Norden describe as racist the common attitudes of dismissal, within the profession of philosophy in the West, that refuse to recognize non-Western thought as philosophy prior to familiarity with any non-Western tradition or author. In his foreword to Van Norden’s Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto, Garfield argues that ‘ignoring non-Western philosophy in our research, curriculum, and hiring decisions is deeply racist’, adding that ‘a social structure can be racist without any individual who participates in it being racist when it serves to establish or to perpetuate a set of practices that systematically denigrate – implicitly or explicitly – people of particular races’. (Garfield 2017, xix). This structural racism within philosophy often involves a gesture of denigration that places non-Western thought, instead, in the category of religion. Van Norden relates the case of a doctoral student, Eugene Sun Park, whose advocacy for a more diverse approach in the Midwest department where he was pursuing his degree was met with ‘ignorance and, at times, thinly-veiled racism’. ‘When Sun Park tried to at least refer to non-Western philosophy in his own dissertation’, Van Norden recounts, he was advised to ‘transfer to the Religious Studies Department or some other department where “ethnic studies” would be more welcome’. (Van Norden 2017). Such cases and the underlying attitude they reveal teach a cautionary lesson. While the project of globalizing the philosophy of religion is per se laudable, if it proceeds without casting a critical eye on the categorization of non-Western worldviews as ‘religious’, it may actually serve to entrench rather than challenge the structural racism of philosophy as an academic discipline. Doing so inadvertently lends support to the views about civilizational superiority and inferiority reflected in the standard philosophical canon and communicated to students via the curricula of university programmes. One illustrative example might be the debate about ātman and anattā in ancient and classical Indian philosophy. Claims about the soul or self were and still are linked to contemplative practices aiming at liberation in Asian spiritual and religious traditions. They can therefore be studied as ‘religious beliefs and practices’ within the philosophy of religion. But these claims are also supported and contradicted via arguments. They are not simply articles of doctrine to be taken on faith, nor are they only ritual practices performed by custom. The arguments in their favour, which include phenomenological observations, are not different in kind from Western philosophical discussions about selfhood and personal identity (see Siderits, Thompson and Zahavi 2011). Why, then, should the varying positions on the ontology of the self within, say, Advaita, Nyāya and Mādhyamaka schools be classified as topics within the philosophy of religion while similar reflections by Hume and Locke are treated as philosophy? This classificatory choice rests on the implicit judgement that the cultures of non-Western peoples do not contain

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reasoned reflection. It may help to destabilize the parochialism of the philosophy of religion, but at the cost of reinforcing the Eurosupremacism of philosophy, permitting these ‘“foreign” wisdom traditions’ into the mainstream of Western intellectual debate only by labelling them as religious – and therefore not rational (King 2009, 44). Indigenous worldviews offer another example that should give one pause. In A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion, Mikel Burley argues for the inclusion of indigenous perspectives and ways of life, as part of a general argument for expanding the philosophy of religion beyond Christianity. He offers a nuanced critical analysis of how animist views might be interpreted, for example, proposing that we need to engage in a careful, contextually sensitive hermeneutics. This means questioning the modern prejudice that animism consists merely of primitive superstitions projecting consciousness onto inanimate things but without reducing animist claims to the status of poetic metaphor (Burley 2020, 176f). Burley also asks that scholars ‘resist the temptation to romanticize or otherwise essentialize indigenous peoples’, (Burley 2020, 184), criticizing in particular contemporary environmental discourses constructing an image of ‘the ecologically noble savage’ (Burley 2020, 181). His account is persuasive and commendable in many respects. It does not, however, raise the question of why animist and other indigenous perspectives should be classed as ‘religion’, nor does it explore the implications of this classification. After all, we are dealing in this case with comprehensive worldviews, whose content includes claims related to metaphysics, ethics and politics. While Burley is right to caution against essentialism and romanticism, many indigenous groups do hold up their understandings of land and the relation between the human and the non-human as an alternative to a dominant modern-Western paradigm that separates man from nature and sees the latter purely as a resource to be exploited. Representatives of indigenous groups fighting to preserve lands from what they perceive as ruinous economic activities have sometimes expressed frustration at having to translate their worldview into the language of ‘religious freedom’ to fit the legal framework of settler-colonial states, this being their only recourse in law. The Ojibway activist Winona LaDuke writes in this context: Everywhere there are Indigenous people, there are sacred sites, there are ways of knowing, there are relationships. The people the rivers, the mountains, the lakes, the animals, and the fish are all related. In recent years, U.S. courts have challenged our ability to be in these places, and indeed to protect them. In many cases, we are asked to quantify ‘how sacred it is . . . or how often it is sacred.’ (LaDuke 2013, 88) At the same time, many have pointed to the religious roots of the contrasting assumption, embedded in Western laws regarding property rights and land use, that the human world is separate from the earth and that non-human entities as a whole are delivered over to human subjects to utilize as they please. Lynn White’s seminal 1967 article, ‘The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis’, advanced the thesis, since then echoed many times, that the current ecological crisis has its roots in this essentially Christian idea of dominion (White 1967). To be sure, ‘dominion’ can be interpreted in more than one way and may be read as mandating a responsibility of stewardship.4 It is nonetheless quite different from the idea of forming a community with nature reflected in many indigenous traditions and narratives. In the final analysis, neither of these fundamental conceptions of the relation between humanity and nature is more or less rational, more or less ‘religious’, than the other.5 These points about indigenous views on land reveal a difference between how one engages with perspectives and traditions when they are participants within areas such

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as political philosophy and ethics, as opposed to when they are positioned as objects of examination for the philosophy of religion. Certainly, a global philosophy of religion can and should be respectful of the phenomena it studies. In this spirit, Burley calls for a suspension of evaluation, in favour of an anthropological approach whose ‘aim is to deepen and enrich our understanding of religion in all its messy variety’. (Burley 2020, 118). But studying indigenous worldviews as part of the ‘messy variety’ of religion, rather than engaging with them as dialogical partners in a philosophical conversation, means they continue to be excluded from reasoned debates about the true and the good. We do not approach Locke’s conception of property or Kant’s understanding of nature as objects of a charitable anthropological investigation or as expressions of religious belief, even though they are explicitly tied to Christian ideas. The fact that indigenous conceptions are classed as ‘religious’ while Western ones are taken to be ‘secular’, the product of a supposedly neutral reason, is a function of a white settler-colonial history backed by power. Its self-elevating discourses inscribe a divide between the rational and irrational, primitive and modern, secular and religious, that serves to distinguish the West from the rest. Consequently, however well-meaning the attempt, when non-Western voices are ‘included’ as religion rather than as counter-points to Western philosophy, the effect is often to reinforce a cluster of hierarchical colonial binaries founded on racist judgements. I would make a related point about Islamic and Jewish authors. Their exclusion from the philosophy of religion is a result, historically, of Christian exclusivism, which in turn has been tied up with a narrative affirming Western civilizational superiority. Scholarship and teaching that reproduces such exclusions, I suggested earlier, reinforces this narrative, whereas including Jewish and Islamic sources in the philosophy of religion can help to counter anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Whether classified as racism or bigotry, animosity towards Jews and Muslims feeds on negative stereotypes, which education about religion can counter. Philosophy of religion can contribute by ensuring that the wealth of reasoned theology within Judaic and Islamic traditions is appropriately represented within its discussions. That wealth is not limited to theology, however, and if Jewish and Islamic philosophers are only represented within the philosophy of religion, the story of ‘Western civilization’ and its march towards reason continues to be a white Christian one. Jewish and Islamic thinkers should certainly be considered alongside Aquinas, Augustine, Irenaeus and other commonly referenced historical figures in the standard philosophy of religion canon. But what does it say about Western self-regard if historical luminaries such as Maimonides and Ibn Sina are left out of philosophical discussions when their Christian contemporaries are given a seat at the table, or if Muslim voices are allowed into multicultural anthologies only as the conservative religious ‘other’ to liberal Western modernity? What message do we send to our students? Professors do not need to be personally racist to send this message. They only need to continue teaching in their areas of philosophical expertise in the same way that they always have, engaging with the dominant topics and sources in scholarly literature within their various fields.

CONCLUSION Addressing the question posed in the title of this essay, I pointed to the racist history underlying the current configuration of philosophy of religion as constituted almost entirely by Christian philosophical theology and its interlocutors. The very fact that Christian doctrines are given so much space and leeway, to the point where some

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critical philosophers of religion maintain that prominent strands of this subdiscipline are Christian apologetics,6 reflects a deep-seated cultural and religious bias. This bias cannot be separated from the history of Western racism, which, I argue, is not limited to beliefs about innate and unchangeable biological characteristics. Rather, we need to recognize that the term ‘racism’ is prescriptive. It names a grave moral wrong involving the vilification, backed by power, of a human type represented as essentially ‘other’ and deserving to be subjugated, eliminated or absorbed. Given the motivations and aims of such representations, no bright line, no distinction that matters for moral and political purposes, can be drawn between religious or cultural bigotry and racism. We should keep this in mind, I propose, when considering what Bernasconi writes about racism in philosophy: [Even] if the history of the discipline and the conception of the discipline that history supports is not racist in design, the question must still be addressed as to whether it is racist in its effects. Whole peoples experience themselves as excluded, in part because of the systematic diminishment of the achievements of their group. Philosophers almost everywhere are implicated. The problem must be addressed not just in research, but also at the institutional level in each and every department. (Bernasconi 1997, 224–5) Philosophy of religion is racist both in its effects and in the history of prejudice that has determined its design. That prejudice is not simply in the past. It continues to justify the exclusion of historically racialized groups: Africans, Asians, indigenous communities as well as the objects of ‘Europe’s oldest racisms, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia’ (Modood 2005, 28). Including voices from these groups within a globalized philosophy of religion can help to correct a privileging of Christianity that has been entangled with Western racism for centuries. I want to caution, however, that as we move towards this goal, we should also cast a critical eye on the ready classification of all non-Western thought and practice as ‘religion’ and therefore not philosophy. Thus, we need simultaneously to remedy the parochialism of the philosophy of religion and of philosophy as a whole, recognizing the blatant racism in the prejudice that only Europeans and their descendants were ever fully capable of reasoning.

NOTES 1. On this last point, see Sikka and Peetush (2021). 2. For instance, Park (2013). I make this point in Sikka (2017). 3. Such representations of the Muslim other have always been an integral part of Hindu nationalism (see Jaffrelot 1998), but they have been greatly amplified by online sites in recent years through popular media, including television news channels, online sites, and social media platforms such as WhatsApp and Twitter (Gilbert 2019; Basu 2019; Roy 2020; Sikander 2020). 4. The second encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato si: On care for our common home, proposes such a reading, as does Matthew Scully’s defence of care for animals in Dominion (Scully 2002). 5. I make this argument in Sikka (2016). 6. For example, see Schellenberg (2009).

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REFERENCES Ayubb, Rana. (2019), ‘Citizenship Bill Puts India on a Path to Become a Hindu Nationalist State’, Washington Post, 10 December. Available online: https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​ /opinions​/2019​/12​/10​/citizenship​-bill​-puts​-india​-path​-become​-hindu​-nationalist​-state/ (accessed 28 May 2020). Bajoria, Jayshree (2020), ‘CoronaJihad is Only the Latest Manifestation: Islamophobia in India has Been Years in the Making’, The Polis Project, 1 May. Available online: https://www​.hrw​ .org​/news​/2020​/05​/02​/coronajihad​-only​-latest​-manifestation​-islamophobia​-india​-has​-been​ -years​-making (accessed 28 May 2020). Balibar, Etienne (1991), ‘Is There a “Neo-Racism”?’, in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (eds), Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, 17–28, London: Verso Books. Basu, Soma (2019). ‘Manufacturing Islamophobia on WhatsApp in India’, The Diplomat, 20 May. Available online: https://thediplomat​.com​/2019​/05​/manufacturing​-islamophobia​-on​ -whatsapp​-in​-india/ (accessed 28 May 2020). Burley, Mikel (2020), A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion: Cross-Cultural, Multireligious, Interdisciplinary, London: Bloomsbury. Bernasconi, Robert (1997), ‘Philosophy’s Paradoxical Parochialism: The Reinvention of Philosophy as Greek’, in Keith Ansell-Pearson, Benita Parry and Judith Squires (eds), Cultural Readings of Imperialism. Edward Said and the Gravity of History, 212–26, London: Lawrence and Wishart. Bernasconi, Robert (2009), ‘Must We Stop Speaking of Religion? The Truths of Religions’, Research in Phenomenology, 39: 204–223. Bernasconi, Robert (2012), ‘Race, Culture, History’, in Paul C. Taylor (ed.), The Philosophy of Race: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, Vol. I., 41–56, London & New York: Routledge. Daniyal, Shoaib (2020), ‘Scapegoating Muslims for Covid-19 is Communal – and Hobbles India’s Battle Against the Pandemic’, Scroll, 2 April. Available online: https://scroll​.in​/article​ /957954​/scapegoating​-muslims​-for​-covid​-19​-is​-communal​-and​-hobbles​-indias​-battle​-against​ -the​-pandemic (accessed 28 May 2020). Garfield, Jay L. (2017), Foreword to Bryan van Norden, Taking Back Philosophy: A Multicultural Manifesto, xi–xxii, New York: Columbia University Press. Gilbert, David (2019), ‘Facebook in India is Drowning in Anti-Muslim Hate Speech’, Vice, 12 June. Available online: https://www​.vice​.com​/en​_in​/article​/mb8xxb​/facebook​-in​-india​-is​ -drowning​-in​-anti​-muslim​-hate​-speech (accessed 28 May 2020). Jaffrelot, Christophe (1998), Hindu Nationalism in India, New York: Columbia University Press. Kamdar, Mira (2020), ‘What Happened in Delhi was a Pogrom’, The Atlantic, 20 February 2020. Available online: https://www​.theatlantic​.com​/ideas​/archive​/2020​/02​/what​-happened​ -delhi​-was​-pogrom​/607198/ (accessed 28 May 2020). Kant, Immanuel ([1775] 1964), ‘Von den verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen (“On the Different Races of Human Beings”)’, in Wilhelm Weischedel (ed.), Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichsphilosophie, Politik und Pädagogik 1, Werkausgabe Band XI, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. King, Richard (2009), ‘Philosophy of Religion as Border Control: Globalization and the Decolonization of the “Love of Wisdom” (philosophia)’, in Purushottama Bilimoria and Andrew B. Irvine (eds), Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, 35–53, Dordrecht: Springer. Knepper, Timothy D. (2013), The Ends of Philosophy of Religion: Terminus and Telos, New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

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LaDuke, Winona (2013), ‘In the Time of the Sacred Places’, in Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (ed.), Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth, 85–102, Inverness: The Golden Sufi Centre. Larrimore, Mark (1999), ‘Sublime Waste: Kant on the Destiny of the “Races”’, in Catherine Wilson (ed.), Civilization and Oppression, 99–126, Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Lauwers, Anna Sophie (2019), ‘Is Islamophobia (Always) Racism?’, Critical Philosophy of Race, 7 (2): 306–332. Medieta, Eduardo (2012), ‘From Metaphysical Racism to Biopolitical Somatology’, Review of Falguni Sheth’s Toward a Political Philosophy of Race, Hypatia, 27 (4): 906–911. Modood, Tariq (2005), Multicultural Politics: Racism, Ethnicity, and Muslims in Britain, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Modood, Tariq (2018), ‘Islamophobia: A Form of Cultural Racism’, A Submission to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims in Response to the Call for Evidence on ‘Working Definition of Islamophobia’, 1 June. Available online: https://www​.academia​.edu​/ 36775691​/Islamophobia​_A​_Form​_of​_Cultural​_Racism (accessed 27 May 2020). Park, Peter (2013), Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon 1780–1830, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Pope Francis (2015), ‘Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home’, Second Encyclical of Pope Francis, 24 May. Available online: http://www​.vatican​.va​/content​/francesco​/en​/ encyclicals​/documents​/papa​-francesco​_20150524​_enciclica​-laudato​-si​.html (Accessed 28 May 2020). Roy, Siddharthya (2020), ‘Hate Goes Viral in India’, The Diplomat, 4 May. Available online: https://thediplomat​.com​/2020​/05​/hate​-goes​-viral​-in​-india/ (accessed May 28, 2020.) Schellenberg, John L. (2009), ‘Philosophy of Religion: A State of the Subject Report’, Toronto Journal of Theology, 25 (1): 95–110. Scully, Matthew (2002), Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy, New York: St. Martin's Press. Siderits, Mark, Evan Thompson, and Dan Zahavi, eds (2011). Self, No Self? Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological and Indian Traditions, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sikander, Zainab (2020), ‘Indian Media is Waging a Holy War Against Muslims’. The Print, 13 April. Available online: https://theprint​.in​/opinion​/indian​-media​-waging​-holy​-war​-against​ -muslims​-hyenas​/400407/ (accessed 28 May 2020). Sikka, Sonia (2016), ‘On Translating Religious Reasons: Rawls, Habermas and the Quest for a Neutral Public Sphere’, Review of Politics 78: 91–116. Sikka, Sonia (2017), ‘“Racism(s) and Philosophy Curricula”, contribution to “Author Meets Readers’ Discussion of Peter Park’s Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy’, Journal of World Philosophies, 2 (2): 78–81. Sikka, Sonia (2018), ‘Rescuing Religion from Faith’, in Paul Draper and John L. Schellenberg (eds), Renewing Philosophy of Religion, 15–32, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sikka, Sonia and Ashwani Kumar Peetush, eds (2021), Asian Philosophies and the Idea of Religion: Beyond Faith and Reason, Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Smith, David Livingstone (2018), ‘Manufacturing Monsters: Dehumanization and Public Policy’, in David Boonin (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Philosophy and Public Policy, 263–275, London: Palgrave MacMillan. Van Norden, Bryan (2017), ‘Why the Western Philosophical Canon is Xenophobic and Racist’, Aeon, 31 October. Available online: https://aeon​.co​/essays​/why​-the​-western​-philosophical​ -canon​-is​-xenophobic​-and​-racist (accessed 28 May 2020). White, Lynn (1967), ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’, Science, 155 (3767): 1203–1207.

Chapter 6

Philosophy of religion beyond belief Thinking with anthropology’s new animists LISA LANDOE HEDRICK

INTRODUCTION In recent decades, anthropologists have undergone a crisis of conscience in response to postcolonial critiques. At the same time, scholars of religion have endured a crisis of identity as similar critiques have challenged the notion that ‘religion’ names anything universal about human behaviour. Both disciplines have proven remarkably resilient by allowing these challenges to transform them for fitness in an increasingly globalized world. Philosophy of religion, however, has experienced comparatively little transformation – and to its detriment. As a result, philosophy of religion has become a highly suspect enterprise due to its failure to appropriately respond to accusations of religious bias and disciplinary parochialism. The worry of its critics is that such myopia has, among other things, stunted philosophy of religion’s conceptions of human nature and understanding (Wildman 2010). The purpose of this chapter is threefold: (1) to echo such concerns specifically with regard to philosophy of religion’s preoccupation with doctrine and argument; (2) to elucidate recent scholarly efforts to historicize the modernist notion of ‘belief’; and (3) to think with New Animist studies in anthropology in order to challenge philosophers of religion to reimagine human nature and understanding beyond the modernist paradigm. In the following section, I illustrate the predominance of the concept of ‘belief’ in contemporary philosophy of religion. I consider an existing authority on the subject – the 2005 Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion – in order to provide a foil for a more global-critical philosophy of religion. My focus in the third section is on recent critiques of the historical tendency to define religion in terms of belief. In the fourth section, I suggest ways in which thinking indigenously with anthropologists of New Animism can help philosophers of religion to reconceive religion beyond doctrine and argument, and thus beyond modern European Christian prototypes. I conclude the chapter with suggestions for how philosophy of religion’s much-needed crisis of conscience needn’t precipitate a prolonged crisis of identity, provided we learn how to disambiguate critique and conquest.

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THE CENTRALITY OF ‘BELIEF’ IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION In his introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion (OUP 2005), editor William J. Wainwright begins by explaining why philosophy of religion lost its vogue among academic philosophers during the first half of the nineteenth century. ‘There were several reasons for this’, he writes. ‘One was the widespread conviction that the traditional “proofs” [for the existence of God] were bankrupt.’ He continues, ‘Believers and non-believers alike were persuaded that [David] Hume and [Immanuel] Kant had clearly exposed their fatal weaknesses’ (Wainwright 2005, 4–5). This description of events reveals at least two critical elements of contemporary philosophers of religion: (1) the recent history centres around the defensibility of theistic propositions; (2) the primary distinction between academic philosophers of religion is couched in the language of belief. Wainwright then continues to explain the resurgence of interest in philosophy of religion in the latter half of the twentieth century, specifically among analytic philosophers. Whereas initially their attention turned to questions of the nature of religious language, sometime in the mid-1960s there was a resurgence of interest in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scholastics. Analytic philosophers began to focus on traditionally scholastic issues (e.g. the coherence of the concept of ‘God’, God’s existence, the problem of evil), but ‘broadened’ their attention in the early 1980s to arguing the coherence and rationality of ‘such specifically Christian doctrines as the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Atonement’ (Wainwright 2005, 6). The irony of this last statement notwithstanding, Wainwright does eventually admit that ‘until quite recently’ philosophers of religion have been ‘somewhat myopic’. The reason simply being that the traditions Western philosophers ‘have been intimately acquainted are Judaism and Christianity (and, to a lesser extent, Islam)’, and so ‘it is not surprising that they have focused their attention on theism’. Of course, ‘Increased knowledge of Asian and other traditions has made this attitude seem unduly parochial’ (Wainwright 2005, 8). While this description is true as far as it goes, it also demonstrates a fantastic missing of the point. The point is not that Western philosophers just so happened to find themselves more acquainted with Abrahamic monotheism and so naturally focused on theistic doctrines and arguments. Rather, the inextricability of Western monotheism from the cultural milieu in which the premodern and modern history of Western philosophy was formed also generated the criteria by which a phenomenon gets to count as ‘religion’ in the first place – a point to be developed more fully in the following section. By missing this point, Wainwright is able to claim a few sentences later that ‘there is no [. . .]’ intrinsic reason, however, why the tools of analytic or continental philosophy can’t be profitably applied to non-Western doctrines and arguments, and good work is currently being done in this vein’ (Wainwright 2005, 8). There are at least two glaring issues with this statement. The first issue is related to the prior point missed by Wainwright: the reason why philosophers of religion have focused on theism was not because of some happenstance acquaintance with Abrahamic monotheism; what philosophers recognized as ‘religion’ in the first place (why philosophy of religion came to be) was based upon this Near-Eastern prototype (specifically Protestant varieties). So, the reason for attention to theism is anything but extrinsic to philosophy of religion. What Wainwright gets right, to be fair, is that the myopia is not intrinsic

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to theism per se, but rather to the larger genera of ‘doctrines and arguments’ which it qualifies. This is the second issue; namely, that what Wainwright identifies as the means to overcoming the myopia or parochialism of traditional philosophy of religion is to attend to ‘non-Western doctrines and arguments’ – and with the very same tools traditionally used by analytic and continental philosophers. The problem here is that, far from allowing ‘non-Western’ traditions to restructure philosophy of (Near-Eastern- Monot​ heist​ic-Sp​ecifi​cally​-Prot​estan​t-Eur​opean​) religion from within, philosophers of religion are merely imposing the traditional framework onto others. As Tomoko Masuzawa (2005) has argued, such imposition often creates ‘religions’ out of phenomena that would not otherwise appear as such according to the standards of the modern-Western democratic state, which has the structural prerequisite that religion be predominantly a matter of personal perspective, world view or doctrine entertained freely in the individual province of the mind – in short, a matter of private belief (Masuzawa 2005). Wainwright drives home this impression with a follow-up statement: ‘Work of this sort is essential because a defense of one’s favored religion’s perspective should include reasons for preferring it to its important competitors’ (Masuzawa 2005, 9). This last phrase is cringeworthy for anyone attuned to postcolonial critique. But it is the formerly emphasized phrase that illustrates the root of the problem of which the latter is a symptom. The classification of ‘religions’ as primarily ‘perspectives’ (qua systems of belief, either implicit or explicit) is anything but neutral; it is the result of a specifically Western European intellectual and political history. The proceeding section will address that history in more detail, with a focus on how it has engendered belief-centred definitions of religion, through the lens of contemporary critique.

DECENTERING ‘BELIEF’ IN CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF RELIGION Talal Asad’s 1993 Genealogies of Religion presents a strong case for how we came to regard ‘religion’ as a distinctive conceptual space occupied by private belief. Asad’s broader aim in this work is to show how the separation of religion from politics (power) is a ‘modern Western norm, the product of a unique post-Reformation history’ (Asad 1993, 28). The conviction that ‘religion’ occupies a distinctive social and conceptual space – such that we can define it in terms that cannot be reduced to politics, law, science and so on – is, for Asad, ‘at once part of a strategy (for secular liberals) of the confinement, and (for liberal Christians) of the defense of religion’ (Asad 1993, 28). It is no accident, insists Asad, that twentieth century efforts to define religion in universalist or essentialist terms ‘converges with the liberal demand in our time that [religion] be kept quite separate from politics, law and science – spaces in which varieties of power and reason articulate our distinctively modern life’ (Asad 1993). The primary target of Talal Asad’s critique in Genealogies of Religion is Clifford Geertz. Geertz was the darling of humanists in the second half of the twentieth century; here was an anthropologist who refused, on popular interpretations, to explain away or infantilize religion by reducing it to false consciousness, primitive science or reifications of society. In ‘Religion as a Cultural System’ (1966), Geertz defined religion as ‘a system of symbols’ that formulate ‘conceptions of a general order of existence’ in ways that seem ‘uniquely realistic’ to people because of the ‘powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods

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and motivations’ that attend to them (Geertz 1973/1993, 90). But, for Asad (Geertz 1973/1993, 30), this is precisely the sort of universal definition of religion of which the pursuit can be none other than imperialist and patronizing on a global scale. Why? Because by defining religion primarily in terms of ‘systems of symbols’, anthropologists have imposed upon native practices a specifically modern notion of religion, by whose measure those practices can only appear confused or mistaken. Nancy Frankenberry and Hans Penner have critiqued Geertz’s definition of religion as primarily a ‘system of symbols’ for evincing a defunct theory of truth-as-correspondence.1 The philosophical assumption that underwrites a correspondence theory of truth, argue Frankenberry and Penner (pace Donald Davidson), is called ‘scheme-content dualism’ (Frankenberry and Penner 1999, 635). Scheme-content dualism holds that there are two fundamentally distinct domains of reality – the symbolic and the non-symbolic – and that the relationship between them is functionally akin to a sieve. Accordingly, a conceptual scheme ‘filters’ or organizes the otherwise undifferentiated (because uninterpreted) ‘stuff’ of the world.2 The primary issue with scheme-content dualism, they claim, is its internal incoherence: who is this omniscient narrator who can non-relatively declare the truth of relativism? Or who can confirm the existence of the undifferentiated ‘stuff’? By defining religion as ‘systems of symbols’ that provide models of reality (‘conceptions of a general order of existence’), they conclude, Geertz depends upon a picture of symbols as vehicles that at once traffic and construct meaning in the world. But this ‘World’, as the uninterpreted ‘Given’, is a myth (Frankenberry and Penner 1999, 636). If there is no non-symbolic dimension of ‘meaning’ that can be variously schematized, then we cannot base our definition of ‘religion’ on the idea of conceptual schemes.3 Since the only way to be epistemically related to a conceptual scheme is by way of propositional attitudes, the critique amounts to a rejection of a definition of ‘religion’ in terms of propositional attitudes – predominately that of ‘belief’. In recognition of critiques like the forgoing, Bruce Lincoln has attempted to improve upon Geertz’s definition in a way that decenters ‘belief’. In Holy Terrors, Lincoln (2003/2006) rightly insists that a ‘proper definition’ of religion must be ‘polythetic and flexible’ and must attend, ‘at a minimum’, to the following four domains: (1) ‘A discourse whose concerns transcend the human, temporal, and contingent, and that claims for itself a similarly transcendent status’; (2) ‘A set of practices whose goal is to produce a proper world and/or proper human subjects, as defined by a religious discourse to which these practices are connected’; (3) ‘A community whose members construct their identity with reference to a religious discourse and its attendant practices’; and (4) ‘An institution that regulates religious discourse, practices and community, reproducing them over time and modifying them as necessary, while asserting their eternal validity and transcendent value.’ The last three domains are indexed to the first – that of religious discourse – which Lincoln defines as a discourse concerned with transcendence of various sorts. As Brent Nongbri (2013, 17) points out, Lincoln proposes this alternative definition in order to account, in a way he doesn’t think Geertz’s definition can, for the sorts of ‘things one intuitively wants to call “religion” – Catholicism and Islam, for instance – that are oriented less towards “belief” and the status of the individual believer, and more to embodied practice, discipline and community’. And yet, how can we identify religious discourse or religious ways of life if we have yet to define religion? (2013, 164 ftn.10) Lincoln’s appeal to an ‘intuitive’ sense of religion exhibits an ‘I’ll know it when I see it’ attitude, which runs the risk of reinforcing ethnocentric biases. The primary bias for our

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purposes is precisely what Lincoln himself named as a shortcoming of Geertz’s definition: the dominant orientation towards ‘belief’. Catherine Bell, a scholar of ritual, has argued the case in even greater detail by appeal to ethnographic research. Bell (2002, 106) notes that, whereas scholarly and popular uses of ‘religion’ alike often intend to denote ‘a dimension of open-ended commonality’ among diverse cultures, the implied or assumed primary substance (or at least mode) of this commonality is ‘belief’. Bell sees the persistence (if not reemergence) of belief-talk as an attempt to avoid the very ethnocentrism scholars like Asad have exposed. In an effort to affirm the radical particularity of other religions, scholars in the social sciences and humanities alike have appealed to beliefs or systems of beliefs as the loci of meaning for the culturally specific practices identified as ‘religious’. According to Bell, however, these ‘coherent systems of belief’ are impositions, constructions by scholars under a false pretence of pluralism. Rather, ‘coherence’ (and its vehicle, ‘systems of belief’) only became a focus of concern for scholars in the second half of the twentieth century. Providing coherence is ‘what we theorists think [religion] should do when [it] clearly can no longer explain the nature of the universe or act as the authoritative source of Morality’. (2002, 107) Appeals to the diversity of ‘belief systems’, it follows for Bell, is really just a scholarly euphemism for designating a religion as ‘encultured, culture-bound, or culturally determined’ (2002, 106). There can be perfectly commendable reasons for speaking about religions in this radically particularist way, such as resisting reductive or evaluative analyses of unfamiliar modes of life. The problem, for Bell, is that difference is thereby overstated, exaggerated, and even systematically constructed in such a way that ultimately serves to undercut any good-intentioned attempt to avoid ethnocentric theorizing by construing religions as incommensurable or untranslatable singularities. The notion of ‘belief’ perpetuates this construal insofar as it is treated as a ‘type of deeply held mental orientation or conviction’, a private state that is ‘all-or-nothing, on-or-off’ (2002). Outside of specific catechistic, creedal or systematic-textual practices – where coherence is taught, performed and composed – do we believe like that? If not, why do we suppose that ‘they’ think so differently from ‘us’? Bell writes: ‘[I]f the Chinese “believe” in spirits in anything like the way my Long Island community believe in papal authority, or even the way Christian colleagues believe in a central doctrine like the divinity of Jesus Christ, then [statements like] the Chinese believe in ancestral spirits is, at best, a very vague generalization that ignores everything interesting.’ (2002, 110) She continues (2002): It ignores the great differences from one person to another, awareness of the possibility of other positions, the individualized inner struggling and tensions, as well as pragmatic non-judgments and refusals to engage. Most language about belief, and about Chinese religion in general, leaves little room for these features and certainly does not begin to account for them. In order to account for them, we must reconceptualize ‘belief’ and ‘believing’ such that it is not just something ‘they’ have or do, but that scholars of religion and social scientists must construct holistically in order to make those beliefs ‘coherent among themselves and understandable as a type of meaningful truth’ (2002). To regard belief and believing not as mental convictions or linguistic statements, but as dynamic social practices, enables the scholar of religion to recognize his or her own analyses as different from those practices only in degree, rather than in kind. The search for coherence in another’s beliefs is just as much a search for coherence in one’s own thinking; which is to say, scholars need

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coherence as much as they say others do. Coherence is a ‘rhetorical project’ undertaken both by scholars and the natives they study, and the difference between those two groups mustn’t be exaggerated (2002, 113). By allowing the data of empirical research to push back on our preconceptions about the possibility of defining religion, Bell suggests, we can critically and inclusively improve our theorizing about religion. Similarity must be stressed at least as much as difference. Human beings are not as culture-bound as particularistic backlashes suggest, not because context doesn’t matter, but because it isn’t monadic. Much in the way Bell asked us to reconsider ‘belief’ in dynamic terms, Tyler Roberts (per his reading of J. Z. Smith) asks us to abandon ‘locative’ approaches to religion that emphasize congruity over incongruity, coherence over incoherence, place over journey (Roberts 2013, 235). This means moving beyond the insistence of Willi Braun and Russell McCutcheon (1999) that the only acceptable way to study religion in the public university is by means of naturalistic, explanatory paradigms that view religion as one among other all-too-ordinary modes of social formation (Braun and McCutcheon 1999). Such insistence is a reaction to the ground swell of phenomenological approaches to religion that peaked in the 1960s and 1970s because of Eliadean fixations on ‘the sacred’ or ‘the holy’ as the peculiar referent of religious sensibilities – fixations incipiently dubbed ‘crypto-theological’, ‘sentimental’, and ‘ideological’. To be sure, the study of religion today has benefited from social formation theory and naturalisms of various stripes; because of them, scholars of religion can today ‘think about ‘religion’ in ways that are no longer exclusively textualist’; ‘study prosaic or popular religion as well as the religious expressions of elites’; ‘have rigorous cognitivist and structuralist theories of religion’; and ‘analyze religious forms of power that are not beholden to the claims of religious actors and ideologies’. (Roberts 2013, 12). Nevertheless, these developments have come at their own costs – namely, an over-attention to the centralized, authoritative, and stabilizing functions of religious practice (linguistic or otherwise). Such over-attention renders neat boundaries that help us to locate religion, but those locative practices systematically ignore or obfuscate de-stabilizing, non-centering and overall incongruous aspects of the practices we identify as religious. In short, as scholars of religion look to securely locate themselves in the academy, they too securely locate their subjects (Roberts 2013, 14–15). The prevalence of assertions about the ‘secular’ nature of the academic study of religion implies that we know what we are avoiding, namely, the ‘religious’ study of religion. But are we really so sure, Roberts wonders, that we know what ‘religious thinking of religion’ is such that we can ‘define the secular, academic study of religion simply by opposing “it”?’ (Roberts 2013, 15). Until we are, I would add, we cannot effectively argue that philosophy of religion suffers from religious bias even while it applies its tools to ‘non-Western doctrines and arguments’. We need to examine in more depth the very idea of ‘religious thinking’ or ‘thinking religiously’. If the fear is crypto-theological thinking, then the greater issue is not occasional ‘religious thinking’ but thinking in a systematically ‘religious’ way. But the very possibility of thinking in this way presupposes that to be religious is to subscribe – consciously or unconsciously – to a body of propositions that entail normative claims about the nature of ultimate reality. The implication is that one is either ‘inside’ or ‘outside’ of said religious conceptual scheme; constrained by or liberated from the respective mental model of reality. And yet, both the idea of a ‘mental model’ and its qualifier ‘religious’ have been taken to task. The proceeding section will explore the work of anthropologists whose ethnographic research is helping to problematize ‘belief’ as the substrate for understanding difference.

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THINKING WITH ANTHROPOLOGY’S NEW ANIMISTS The emphasis given to ‘belief’ in traditional philosophy of religion is an instance of a broader dominance of a particular theory of cognition or subjecthood. According to this theory – widely assumed in Western philosophy but also in the classical social sciences – thought is like internal speech, sententially structured and proceeding inferentially through a lineal, propositional sequence. Maurice Bloch (2018, 23) has called this the ‘folk model’ of thought that has perpetuated imperialist modes of anthropological study.36 Per the title of his study – How We Think They Think – this model has informed how anthropologists assume other peoples (the titular ‘they’) think.4 Many ethnographic accounts appear to remedy this bias by providing first-person accounts in the form of direct quotations. But the problem is not thereby avoided, according to Bloch, because informants asked to give retrospective accounts of their own practices fall back on conventional descriptions which ‘usually involve reinventing a hypothetical quasi-linguistic lineal, rational thought process which appears to lead satisfactorily to the conclusions reached’ (2018, 24). But the satisfaction is deceptive; it is the product only of ‘post hoc rationalizations’ (2018). The difficulty is one of medium: anthropologists write books, and in so doing, they try to account for the everyday thought processes of their subjects by means of the semantics of natural languages. The difficulty is doubled, however, by the fact that anthropologists aim to persuade their readers, and, in turn, their readers expect accounts that match up with the folk model of cognition. For Bloch, this ‘double complicity’ (first, between anthropologists and their informants, and second, between anthropologists and their readers) perpetuates the notion that the sorts of knowledge involved in everyday practices takes propositional form. Entailed in this notion is a further one: that we can understand what they do by understanding how they think, and understanding how they think involves making explicit linear processes of inference. In short, we can explain their ‘perspective’ or ‘mental model’ by probing them for reasons and attributing to them a system of beliefs. ‘Fortunately’, Bloch writes, ‘recent work in cognitive science helps us to resist the insidious influence of the folk theory of thought by suggesting an alternative to it’ (2018). Much of the work he is referring to (and much since) has grown out of increasing attention to the embodied and material nature of understanding (Lakoff 1987; Johnson 1987/1990; Bucholtz and Hall 2016). Knowledge is inseparable from practices of knowing; it is not principally acquired by learning ‘verbal rules and lexicographic definitions’, but by ostension, by negotiating one’s way through the material world and (especially in the case of linguistic norms) through practices of mutual recognition. Bloch writes, ‘The anchoring of conceptualization in the material – the body, houses, wood, styles of speaking – and in practices – cooking, cultivating, eating together – means that the cultural process cannot be separated from the wider processes of ecological, biological and geographical transformation of which human society is a small part.’ We might paraphrase by saying the following: knowing how precedes knowing that.5 He concludes that ‘culture is not merely an interpretation superimposed on these material facts but integrated with them’ (2018, 36). In other words, how ‘they’ think is not understood by constructing a coherent system of beliefs which ‘they’ project upon an objective world. Recent efforts in New Animism provide compelling examples of just how traditional models of cognition have thwarted not only classical anthropology, but also (and for the same reason) philosophy of religion. Edward Burnett Tylor provided the classical

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theory of ‘animism’ in his 1871 Primitive Culture. Tylor was a developmentalist; he subscribed to a naturalistic metanarrative of human history according to which human beings develop from ruder states to civilized states. If this seems innocuous at first blush, note that he did not regard this development as universal but rather achieved on behalf of humanity by the (largely middle- to upper-class European) civilized few. Instances of so-called undeveloped or archaic modes of human thinking could still be observed (for Tylor) in remote indigenous communities or domestically among the European peasantry. The development of human thinking, he argued, could be understood as a series of intellectual errors and advances in a process ultimately resulting in modern ‘Western’ science – but not without first passing through magic and religion. Animism represented Tylor’s primitive religion insofar as it is the first instance of ‘the doctrine of the souls’ – this doctrine being ‘the minimum definition of religion’. (Tylor 1871, 385). The doctrine of the soul (related to the Latin concept anima, hence animism) is ‘that of an animating, separable, surviving entity, the vehicle of individual personal existence’ (Tylor 1871, 453) While this doctrine has ‘undergone extreme modification in the course of culture’ (Tylor 1871, 452), from the alleged belief in souls of inanimate objects to that of the penitent Christian, from belief in many spiritual powers to belief in a singular, all-powerful (and distinctively male) Deity, the continuity between these cognitive tendencies of ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ races is undeniable for Tylor. In all instances, the presence of this doctrine represents the developmental history of ‘religious belief’ (Tylor 1871, 380) – which is, of course, synonymous for Tylor with simply religion ‘at a minimum’. Nurit Bird-David wrote in her 1999 article ‘Animism’ Revisited’ that animism continues to be construed in the scholarly literature as ‘simple religion and a failed epistemology’ largely because of the enduring positivistic assumptions of modernism (1999, S67). Such assumptions about the meaning of ‘nature’, ‘life’, and ‘personhood’ have ‘misdirected these previous attempts (e.g. Tylor’s) to understand the local concepts’. ‘Classical theoreticians’, she argues (Bird-David 1999, S68): attributed their own modernist ideas of self to ‘primitive peoples’ while asserting that the ‘primitive peoples’ read their ideas of self into others! This lead the theoreticians to prejudge the attribution of ‘personhood’ to natural objects as empirically unfounded and consequently to direct analytical effort to explaining why people did it and why and how (against all appearances) their ‘belief ’ was not a part of their practical knowledge but at best part of their symbolic representations or a mistaken strategic guess. But ‘animism’ is not belief based at all. Bird-David’s ethnographic research with the hunter-gatherer Nayaka in South India leads her to conclude as much. In so doing, she continues to develop a case earlier developed in the ethnographic material of A. Irving Hallowell’s 1960 ‘Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View’. In this article, Hallowell reports on his decades-long study of the Northern Ojibwe in the Manitoba and Ontario provinces of modern Canada. What he concludes is that the anthropologist cannot understand the Ojibwe way of life by imposing natural/ supernatural or spirit/body modernist dichotomies. ‘It may be argued’, he writes, ‘that a thoroughgoing “objective” approach to the study of cultures cannot be achieved solely by projecting upon those cultures categorical abstractions derived from Western thought. For, in a broad sense, the latter are a reflection of our cultural subjectivity’ (Hallowell 1976, 359). But he does not for this reason abandon all senses of objectivity – to do so would be to privilege yet another modernist dichotomy, objectivity/subjectivity. Rather, he says that we must seek a ‘higher order of objectivity’, which can be achieved only by

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inviting the Ojibwe modes of existence ‘as a complementary procedure’ to our analysis (Hallowell 1976). Like Hallowell, Bird-David sees modernist dichotomies as the reason that ethnographers have so often gravitated towards ‘spirit’, ‘supernatural’, and ‘religion’ descriptions of animistic societies (Bird-David 1999, S68). She appeals to Nayaka devaru, which she translates as ‘superpersons’ (Bird-David 1999) or ‘other-than-human-persons’ (Bird-David and Naveh 2008, 60) – to be read in strong distinction from any notion of ‘super-natural persons’. The Nayaka notion of ‘person’ cannot be understood in the modernist sense of an ‘individual’, according to which an entity is essentially itself regardless of to what or to whom it stands in relation. Personhood is not an essence but a mode of relationship. Accordingly, posits Bird-David, devaru are ‘dividuals’ rather than ‘individuals’ (Bird-David 1999, S68). As ‘dividual’ persons, devaru are ‘constitutive of sharing relationships reproduced by Nayaka with aspects of their environment’ – they are ‘relatives’ in the broadest sense of the term (Bird-David 1999, S68, S73). Devaru are not individual entities or beings; rather, they are objectifications (in the sense of rendering something an object of attention; namings, rather than projections or personifications) of sharing relationships between, for instance, Nayaka and that hill or this rock (Bird-David 1999, S73). Nayaka personhood is produced and reproduced by the maintenance of relations, and this is true not only of the personhood of the devaru but also that of the Nayaka themselves (Bird-David 1999). Thus, ‘we cannot say – as Tylor did – that Nayaka ‘think with’ this idea of personhood about their environment, to arrive by projection at the idea of devaru. The idea of ‘person’ as a ‘mental representation’ applied to the world in pursuit of knowledge is modernist’ (Bird-David 1999). She continues, ‘Nayaka maintain social relationships with other beings not because, as Tylor holds, they a priori consider them persons. As and when and because they engage in and maintain relationships with other beings, they constitute them as kinds of person’ (Bird-David 1999). We can summarize the distinction between the modernist and the Nayaka understanding of devaru thus: for Tylorians, devaru are relatives only metaphorically; for Nayaka, they are relatives synecdochally (Bird-David 1999, S89). Devaru are not personified ‘representations’ of relationships with ‘objectively’ inanimate objects; devaru name or ‘dividuate’ the real, immediate participation or becoming with others-than-self. Bird-David translates her analysis into epistemological terms: ‘“Meaning ” is not “imposed ” on things – it is not pregiven in consciousness – but “discovered ” in the course of action; it is “both physical and psychical, yet neither”’ (Bird-David 1999, S74)6. For the Nayaka, ontology cannot be separated from epistemology because the world is not ‘full of objects’ but rather ‘full of subjects’ (Bird-David and Naveh 2008, 57). But it is not enough simply to say that Nayaka reject Cartesian subject/object dualism, if that means that we simply reposition this dualism between indigenous and modernist so-called worldviews (Bird-David and Naveh 2008). It is incorrect, this means, to read a cosmos ‘full of subjects’ as a mere substitution for ‘full of objects’, as if the inanimate objects of the latter were merely personified in the former. This would reinstate the positivist logic of conceptual schemes, according to which the ‘persons’ or ‘subjectivities’ of the indigenous cosmos were mere ‘interpretations’ underwritten by a system of beliefs. Moreover, it is to read the universalizing tendencies of modernist thought into indigenous ways of knowing. A crucial element of Nayaka personhood is that it is incapable of abstraction from the constitutive event. To return to Hallowell’s account, for Ojibwe, ‘persons’ are ‘loci of causality’ such that ‘explanations of events’ are inextricably couched in ‘personalistic terms’ (Hallowell

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1976, 381–3). Personhood, subjectivity or animacy is thereby inconceivable as an abstract category. Life for Ojibwe is not a ‘thing’ but an ‘attitude of mind’; not a ‘philosophical entity’ but a mode of attention (Hallowell 1976, 387). What this means is that the so-called animacy (the Tylorian ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’) of, say, ‘that hill’ cannot be abstracted from meattending-to-this-hill-right-now. It is the abstraction, however, which would render the animacy of the hill a propositional attitude – say, a belief. No abstractability, no believability. In responding to some critics who accuse her of failing to maintain the difference between religious and scientific knowledge by describing Nayaka animistic practices as ‘ways of knowing’, Bird-David points out that such description rescues ‘these practices from our pigeon-hole “religion”, in which they were formerly placed’. She explains, ‘To describe, say, kinds of devaru, where they live, and what they are like without describing how Nayaka get to know them is not to describe their ontology freed from modernist concerns with epistemology. Rather it is to describe their ontology crossed with our favoured epistemology, which claims disengagements of known, knower, and knowing’ (Bird-David 1999, S86). Animism should not be understood in terms of Cartesian epistemology, but rather as a form of ‘relational epistemology’ which, qua relational, presupposes no ontological gap between knower and known.7 For Bird-David, as I read her, the category of religion has done the bidding of developmentalists; it pegs a way of knowing as archaic or otherwise in error. Moreover, insofar as ‘religion’ was understood by way of the Christian prototype as at a minimum having to do with beliefs, classical ethnographers couldn’t conceive of anywhere else to ‘place’ indigenous practices except in the category of a failed religious (read: proto-scientific) epistemology. Echoing the former section of this chapter, ‘religion’ can no longer be understood in the sense that allowed it to do this work of dismissal for anthropologists. The solution cannot be a wholesale rejection of the term, as Timothy Fitzgerald (2000) has imagined. Such demands are predicated on the idea that once the theological (or more specifically ‘doctrinal’) premises of ‘religion’ talk are eradicated, ‘religion’ becomes nothing but an empty signifier that dies the death of a thousand cuts (or qualifications). Arguments such as this fall prey to the modernist logic of universalism/particularism; that is, they argue from the premise that ‘religion’ cannot be a universal category to the modernist conclusion that it is hopelessly particular. But this accusation of ‘hopeless particularity’ is itself an instance of the defunct universalism insofar as it subscribes to the same meta-logic. Tim Ingold (2006, 11) describes a logic indexed to the forgoing as the modernist ‘logic of inversion’: ‘Through inversion, the field of involvement in the world, of a thing or person, is converted into an interior schema of which its manifest appearance and behavior are but outward expressions.’ We will not understand Ojibwe or Nayaka ways of knowing unless we realize that the indigenous attention to the primacy of relations and the irreducibility of events has nothing to do with ‘the infusion of spirit into substance, or of agency into materiality, but is rather ontologically priori to their differentiation’ (2006, 10). To impose the logic of inversion upon indigenous practices is to construe an Ojibwe or Nayaka way of being as merely a way of believing. It is for this reason that Bell (2002, 106) has noted, ‘the interpretation of beliefs is the central anthropological question – and its fault line’.

CONCLUSION In some handwritten notes that appear in his original manuscript for ‘Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough’8, compiled sometime between 1931 and 1948, Ludwig Wittgenstein

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observes, ‘here [in Frazer’s work] the elimination of magic has itself the character of magic. For, back then, when I began talking about the ‘world’ (and not about this tree or table), what else did I want but to keep something higher spellbound in my words?’9 Wittgenstein, an Austrian-born but Cambridge-educated philosopher of language, was famously suspect of anthropology’s mission to ‘rationalize’ or ‘explain’ the apparently ‘irrational beliefs’ of non-Western or otherwise ‘uncivilized’ peoples.10 While he did not include these notes in the typescript, Wittgenstein penned them as a critique of Frazer’s self-described work on ‘primitive superstition and religion’ wherein ‘the human mind has elaborated its first crude philosophy of life’ (Frazer 1894, 3, 9–10). Frazer had sought to explain ancient rites by way of their purported ‘superstitious beliefs’.11 But Wittgenstein rejected Frazer’s imposition of the priority of belief to practice: ‘all one can say is: where that practice and these views occur together, the practice does not spring from the view, but they are both just there’ (Wittgenstein 1993, 119). He writes later, to similar effect, ‘No opinion serves as the foundation for a religious symbol’ (Wittgenstein 1993, 123). Taken together in context, these remarks convey Wittgenstein’s suspicion of the modernist pretension to stand on neutral ground, free from the excesses of subjectivity, particularity or historical accident. As Bell notes, from this perspective, ‘beliefs’ are codewords for the way others are ‘encultured, culture-bound, or culturally determined’. They believe; we know. ‘Belief’ is rather something of a watchword for modernist critique. And as such, it is an insufficient notion by which to attend to the polythetic and fluid phenomena identified or identifiable as religion today. To be clear, critique itself is not the problem. Far from it; after all, the goal of this chapter is to suggest one way in which philosophers of religion might do critique better, not less. What I mean is that something worthy of the description ‘global-critical philosophy of religion’ would very much be an heir to the Enlightenment, to its incessant adventure of emancipation, but not to Modernism, not to the stultification of this adventure in the interest of disillusioning others of so-called mere social constructions. This doesn’t mean, as Isabelle Stengers insists, that critique cannot bring emancipation; it only means that we must sever the modernist identification of emancipation with epic conquest (Stengers 2015, 58). On the model of Bruno Latour’s ‘anthropology of the Moderns’ (Latour 2012), philosophers of religion today must conduct a radical self-assessment. In thinking with New Animist studies in anthropology, contemporary philosophers of religion can move beyond endeavours to simply place the human phenomena to which they attend, and instead begin to truly engage them in transformative ways.12 And yet, while philosophers of religion are indeed due for this crisis of conscience, it needn’t issue in a protracted crisis of identity. To be sure, the way in which philosophers conceive the nature of that identity will need to change, but it is a modernist fallacy that to deny essence is to deny reality. After all, it is that reality which grates against ongoing failures to conceive of religion in more global and more critical terms – to reconceive religion, for one, beyond belief.

NOTES 1. According to classical correspondence theories of truth – which fell out of academic vogue after the demise of logical positivism after the 1950s or so – and the representationalist theories of symbolism underwritten by them, what makes a symbol ‘true’ is whether or not it ‘fits’ or otherwise represents to the mind something outside of the mind.

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2. Logically entailed in such an assumption is the possibility of many (perhaps infinitely many) conceptual schemes, incommensurable with one another, all ‘true’ in their own way. This is called conceptual relativism, and despite seeming to be pluralistic and democratic at first blush, its logical conclusion is, rather, an insidious insulation of ‘worldviews’ from one another destined to be incommunicability. 3. For Geertz, what made such models of reality distinctively ‘religious’ was that they ‘recommend’ with persuasive authority a certain way of conducting oneself in world – in short, an ethos. Geertz calls these recommendations ‘models for’ reality, and their authority is parasitic upon the persuasiveness of the logically prior models of reality. The integrity of Geertz’s theory of religion as providing ‘models for’ reality is therefore entirely dependent upon that of defence of religions as ‘models of’ – a defence which finally fails by Frankenberry and Penner’s estimate. 4. Where ‘thinking’ is, on the modernist assumption, contrasted with acting, behaving or otherwise living. 5. This is both logical and developmental precedence. 6. Bird-David is quoting from J. J. Gibson (1979, 242). 7. Interestingly, Bird-David acknowledges in a reply to her commentators that she has found Martin Buber’s I-Thou concept ‘particularly insightful’ and had even considered including an excerpt of his as an epigraph. See S87. 8. ‘Bemerkungen über Frazers Golden Bough’ (1967). 9. ‘Ja, das Ausschalten der Magie hat hier den Charakter der Magie selbst. Denn, wenn ich damals anfing, von der ‘Welt’ zu reden (und nicht von diesem Baum oder Tisch), was wollte ich anderes, als etwas Höheres in meine Worte bannen.’ Wittgenstein (1967, 116). 10. For an excellent introduction to this reading of Wittgenstein, see The Mythology in Our Language: Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, Wittgenstein (2015). 11. See, for example, pages 18, 29, 37, 41, 64, 73. 12. I am here borrowing heavily from Tyler Roberts’s description of what he calls ‘humanistic criticism’ (2013, 236). I should note, however, that what I myself am advocating for is something stronger, something more reflexive, than what I understand him to be so doing in this text. I would not use the label ‘humanistic’, for instance. Nevertheless, Roberts’s work is compelling and has evoked my sympathies at many points.

REFERENCES Asad, Talal (1993), Genealogies of Religion, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bell, Catherine (2002), ‘“The Chinese Believe in Spirits”: Belief and Believing in the Study of Religion’, in Nancy K. Frankenberry (ed.), Radical Interpretation in Religion, 100–16, Malden, MA: Cambridge University Press. Bird-David, Nurit (1999), ‘“Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology’, Current Anthropology, 40 (1): S67–S91. Bird-David, Nurit and Danny Naveh (2008), ‘Relational Epistemology, Immediacy, and Conservation: Or, What Do the Nayaka Try to Conserve?’, Journal of Religion, Nature and Culture, 2 (1): 55–73. Bloch, Maurice (2018), How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy, New York: Routledge.

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Braun, Willi and Russell T. McCutcheon (1999), Guide to the Study of Religion, New York: Bloomsbury. Bucholtz, Mary and Kira Hall (2016), ‘Embodied Sociolinguistics’, in Nikolas Coupland (ed.), Sociolinguistics: Theoretical Debates, 173–98, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Fitzgerald, Timothy (2000), The Ideology of Religious Studies, London: Oxford University Press. Frankenberry, Nancy K. and Hans H. Penner (1999), ‘Clifford Geertz’s Long-Lasting Moods, Motivations, and Metaphysical Conceptions’, Journal of Religion, 79 (4): 617–40. Frazer, James George (1894), The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion, Vol. 1. New York and London: MacMillan and Co. Geertz, Clifford (1973/1993), ‘Religion as a cultural system.’ in: The Interpretation of Cultures, 87–125, Fontana, CA: Fontana Press. Gibson, J. J. (1979), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Hallowell, A. Irving (1976), ‘Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View’, in Contributions to Anthropology: Selected Papers of A. Irving Hallowell, with introductions by Raymond D. Fogelson, 391–448, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ingold, Tim (2006), ‘Rethinking the Animate, Re-Animating Thought’, Ethnos, 71 (1): 9–20. Johnson, Mark (1987/1990), The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Lakoff, George (1987), Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Latour, Bruno (2012), Enquête sur les modes d’existence: Une anthropologie des Modernes, Paris: Édition La Découverte. Lincoln, Bruce (2006), Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11, 2nd edn, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Masuzawa, Tomoko (2005), The Invention of World Religion; Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Nongrbi, Brent (2013), Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Roberts, Tyler (2013), Encountering Religion, New York: Columbia University Press. Stengers, Isabelle (2015), Catastrophic Times: Resisting the Coming Barbarism, Lüneberg: Open Humanities Press. Tylor, Edward Burnet (1871), Primitive Culture, Vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wainwright, William J (2005), ‘Introduction’, in William J. Wainwright (ed.), Oxford Handbook for the Philosophy of Religion, 3–11, London: Oxford University Press. Wildman, Wesley J. (2010), Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion, New York: State University of New York Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1993), ‘Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough’, in James Klagge and Alfred Nordmann (eds), Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Occasions, 1912–1951, 115–55, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2015), The Mythology in Our Language: Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, trans. Stephan Palmié, ed. Giovanni da Col and Stephan Palmié, Chicago: Hau Books.

Chapter 7

Theory and method in the philosophy of religion in China’s Song dynasty LEAH KALMANSON

In late Joseon-dynasty Korea (1392–1897), the scholar Jeong Yakyong (1762–1836), pen name Dasan, engaged in what we might call cosmological or metaphysical debates over the origins of existence as we know it. He criticized what he saw as the overly speculative philosophy of his major predecessors in Song Dynasty China (960–1279). In particular, he questioned the abstract and impersonal picture of the cosmos (tian 天) that he associated with Song thought, and he argued instead that only a personalistic, creative and caring ‘cosmos’ can adequately account for ‘both the origin of the physical universe and its moral order’ (Ivanhoe 2016, 111). For many today, this may sound like standard fare in philosophy of religion – that is, the argument that our world is the product of a creator who fashioned us with purposeful and loving intention. However, in Joseon Korea, this was a somewhat novel claim. Dasan incorporated these distinctively theistic elements partly under the influence of his brother, a convert to the recently introduced foreign religion of Catholicism (Ivanhoe 2016, 101). Dasan found evidence for a latent theistic understanding of tian in the early classic texts by applying the then-popular scholarly method of evidential learning (kaozhengxue 考證學), a conservative movement that rejected the speculative trends associated with Song thought and called for a renewed emphasis on textual fidelity via close readings of earlier and foundational moral philosophies, especially the work of Mengzi (372–289 BCE). Nonetheless, Dasan’s work, under the influence of the exotic Catholic theology, performed its own transformative re-reading of these classic sources. For so long in Western scholarship, the major questions in philosophy of religion have more or less aligned with theological questions. But, as the story of Dasan shows, the theistic framework has a relatively short history in East Asia. The earliest sustained encounters might be traced back to the arrival of Catholic missionaries in China and Japan beginning in the late 1500s. The proselytizing activities of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) in particular set off a theological controversy among European clergy regarding whether the rites to honour family and cultural ancestors in China were ‘civic’ customs, which Chinese converts to Catholicism could continue to practice, or ‘idolatrous’ rituals, and hence unacceptable to the church. This controversy was linked to a related theological disagreement over whether the Chinese language had any pre-existing word for ‘God’

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(Deus) and hence possessed a concept of transcendent divinity (the position favoured by those committed to the rationality of Christian teachings), or whether the indigenous traditions were ‘pagan’ and hence the language lacked an adequate translation for Deus (the position favoured by those committed to the notion that God’s divinity is revealed) (cf. Sun 2013, Chapter 1). On the European side, this was a high-stakes debate (Liu 2020, 19). However, as with many other key topics in Western philosophy of religion, neither the reason-versus-revelation dynamic nor the religion-versus-paganism distinction correspond to any major subjects of discourse in Chinese intellectual history. In what follows, we will limit ourselves mainly to a consideration of the mismatch between theistic conceptions of creation and the study of cosmological origins in Song Dynasty thought. By following the contours of a philosophical response that is not initially premised on theistic reasoning, we thereby showcase the theories and methods of what we might call, through an anachronistic reconstruction, a Song ‘philosophy of religion’. I use this term in a specific sense here to mean theorizing about questions whose answers may lay outside the capacities of ordinary consciousness or may evade direct confirmation via mechanistic testing procedures. The question of whether one side is ‘philosophical’ (i.e. theorizing) and the other ‘religious’ (i.e. direct experience), and what this means for contemporary philosophy of religion as a discipline, is an issue we will revisit several times.

A WORD ON CONSTRUCTED CATEGORIES We begin with the last point first: To what extent can we apply the categories of ‘philosophy’ and ‘religion’ to Song-era thought, or to East Asian traditions more broadly? The word ‘religion’ derives from a Latin root (religio), whose precise meaning is unclear, although as Jason Josephson-Storm says: ‘Regardless of its origins, in pre-Christian Roman usage, religio generally referred to a prohibition or an obligation’ (2012, 17). By the fifteenth century, religio was used in Catholicism to refer to ‘the performance of ritual obligations, especially . . . to describe a state of life bound by monastic vows’; and, accordingly, ‘the noun ‘the religious’ referred to monks and nuns’ (2012, 16). Strictly speaking, these terms are specific to European intellectual history; or, as Robert Ford Campany says: ‘Discourse about religions is rooted in Western language communities and in the history of Western cultures . . .. To speak of ‘religions’ is to demarcate things in ways that are not inevitable or immutable but, rather, are contingent on the shape of Western history, thought and institutions. Other cultures may, and do, lack closely equivalent demarcations’ (2003, 289). By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European scholars had developed a specific way to ‘demarcate things’ with a hierarchical schema that tended to include, according to Tomoko Masuzawa’s analysis, Christianity as the one true religion, Judaism and Islam as ‘almost Christian, or at least would-be Christians’, and a multitude of socalled idolators or pagans who did not possess true religion at all (Masuzawa 2005, 49). Prior to colonial contact, other areas of the world demarcated things differently. When Chinese scholars first encountered European cultures and traditions, their language had no precise equivalents for terms such as ‘philosophy’, ‘religion’, or ‘science’. In other words, these were not the generic categories by which scholars would attempt to understand and classify foreign traditions. To the contrary, Chinese discourses in the Song era were shaped by at least three major categories, including the ‘scholarly lineage’ (rujia 儒家), the lineage of the ‘way’ (daojia 到家), and the South Asian dharma or ‘teachings’ (fa 法)

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associated with buddhas or ‘awakened beings’ such as Śākyamuni Buddha, who lived on the Indian subcontinent in the fifth or fourth century BCE. These three categories range across and combine features of what contemporary Eurocentric discourses might associate with religion, science, medicine, morality, politics and so forth. Hence, understanding how these categories were coherently distinguished from each other in their indigenous context is an important first step in our discussion of a Song ‘philosophy of religion’. By China’s ‘scholarly lineage’ I mean the tradition that European languages have come to call ‘Confucianism’, a somewhat misleading term that portrays the historical figure of ‘Confucius’ (Kongzi 孔子, 551–479 BCE) as the founder of a religious or philosophical movement. In fact, the tradition known in Chinese as rujia (儒家) well predates the life of Kongzi, and Kongzi himself denies being an innovator (Lunyu 論語 2011, 3.14).1 Rather, he was a member of the ‘lineage’ or ‘family’ (jia 家) of the ru (儒), a term better translated as ‘scholar’ or ‘literati’. The ru were members of China’s educated elite: they were most often employed as educators or government officials, they were versed in the classic scholarly and literary texts of Chinese culture, and they were qualified to preside over various state rites and civic ceremonies as well as the rituals performed at ancestral shrines. Reflecting the diversity and complexity of the tradition, the Chinese of the Song period would have associated this scholarly lineage with studies of ethics, politics and statecraft; empirical investigations of the natural world (especially astronomy); training in music, poetry and gymnastics; the maintenance of official court rites and ceremonies; and institutions of family and civic ancestor worship. Throughout this chapter, I use the alternative English terms ‘Ruism’ and ‘Ruists’ to refer to the tradition and its members. Similarly, the lineage of the way, or Daoism, would have been understood to be multifaceted. It was a competitor to Ruism associated with the teachings of early iconoclastic masters such as Zhuangzi in the Warring States Period (475–221 BCE). Unlike the overt Ruist emphasis on civic life and public service, Daoism came to focus on medicine, bodily health and longevity, spiritual and contemplative exercises, esoteric alchemical investigations and other modes of inner cultivation. By the Song dynasty, these two indigenous traditions were joined by the ‘buddha-dharma’ (fofa 佛法) imported from the India subcontinent over trade routes. It was a tradition concerned with existential matters, inquiring into the conditions of life, death and future rebirths. In terms of practice, it was associated with institutions of monasticism, on the one hand, and lay rituals for generating karmic merit, on the other. The branches of dharma that become established in China were associated not only with Śākyamuni Buddha but with a range of other buddhas past, present and future, some based on earth and some on other worlds, in what we might call the Buddhist multiverse. Although Ruism, Daoism and Buddhism all have what we would see today as philosophical and religious aspects, as mentioned earlier such generic categories did not exist in East Asian terminology historically. The contemporary translations for these words enter Chinese via Japanese coinages. As Josephson-Storm recounts, when the Japanese first encountered Jesuit priests in the mid1500s, they classified Christianity as a deviant form of dharma (J. hō 法) and promptly banned it (2012, 24–8). He stresses that, by associating Christianity with dharma, the Japanese effectively understood religion at large as ‘a subset of Buddhism’ (2006, 144). They did not, to be clear, understand either tradition as a subset of religion or philosophy, because, as said earlier, these generic terms did not exist in Japanese. Instead, dharma was used as a flexible cross-cultural category – a genus that could plausibly include unfamiliar or foreign species. In observing that Christianity was categorized as a type of dharma and not a strand of scholarly lineage akin to Ruism, we see the operation of foundational

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terms that are not reducible to either philosophy or religion at this period in Japanese history. This all changes with the Perry Expedition’s forceful opening of the Japanese economy to international trade in the mid-1800s. Japan was compelled to sign a number of treaties with American and European governments, all of which included clauses requiring Japan to acknowledge ‘freedom of religion’. As Josephson-Storm says: When Japanese translators first encountered the English word ‘religion’ in the international trade treatises of the late 1850s, they were perplexed and had difficulty finding the proper corresponding term in Japanese. There was no indigenous word that referred to something as broad as ‘religion’ nor a systematic way to distinguish between ‘religions’ as members of a larger generic category. Instead, words such as shū 宗, kyō 教, ha 派 or shūmon 宗門 were used interchangeably to designate Christianity, divisions within Buddhism, distinctions between Daoism and Confucianism, and different strands of intellectual thought (such as different schools of painting or mathematics) . . .. Ultimately, some translators chose to render ‘religion’ as ‘sect law’ (shūhō 宗法) while others settled on ‘sect doctrine’ (shūshi 宗旨). Regardless, both terms were already situated in their own system of meaning, referring generally to a preexisting sub-categorization of Buddhist schools. (2012, 144) The word that eventually sticks, and which we use today, is shūkyō (宗教). The same character compound was adopted in Chinese, as well (zongjiao). Like the other words Josephson-Storm cites earlier, it has a Buddhist flavour (although in contemporary usage, the Buddhist connotations are relatively diminished). The translation of ‘philosophy’ as tetsugaku (Ch. zhexue 哲学) shares a similar history, being coined in Japan in 1874 by Nishi Amane (1829–1897) and later adopted in Chinese. Just as shūkyō once had Buddhist connotations, tetsugaku ‘echoes older Confucian words such as tetsujin or sage’ (Maraldo 2011, 555). Despite this Ruist heritage, Nishi was clear that his intention was to translate the name of a European discipline that had no precise analogue in either Chinese or Japanese sources (Maraldo 2011, 556). He defined philosophy according to European accounts influential in his time, describing it as the love of wisdom, a discourse on first principles, and the unitary foundation underlying the various sciences (Maraldo 2011, 556–8). The term was given more explicitly Kantian associations by Inoue Enryō (1858–1919) in his 1886 work An Evening of Philosophical Conversation. There, he imagines a group of travellers on a boat discussing the meaning of philosophy: ‘This tetsugaku is a new kind of discipline that has come from the West, but just what sort of discipline is it?’ Inoue answers: ‘There are . . . several disciplines that have to do with matters of the mind: psychology, logic, ethics, and pure tetsugaku. People are more or less familiar with psychology, logic, and so forth, but when it comes to pure tetsugaku people haven’t the slightest idea of what it is. In short, pure tetsugaku, as the study of the pure principles of tetsugaku, must be called the study that inquires into the axioms of the truth and the foundation of the disciplines’ (qtd. in Maraldo 2011, 561). Inoue is obviously excited by what he sees as philosophy’s critical and progressive potential, as a discipline that allows for sharp and clear analysis, unbiased judgement, and, perhaps most importantly for Inoue, apprehension of what he called the ‘absolute’ (zettai 絶対), which he associated variously with the Hegelian absolute, the Kantian thing-in-itself, and Buddhist ‘thusness’ (Sk. tathātā, Jp. shin’nyo真如) (Josephson 2006, 159).

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As this all shows, even after the translations of ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’ into Japanese and Chinese languages, the extent to which Ruism, Daoism and Buddhism can be defined as one or the other, or can be divided into their religious versus philosophical aspects, remains ambiguous. As a case in point, although Ruism or ‘Confucianism’ is routinely included in any standard English-language textbook on ‘world religions’, it nonetheless is not included as one of the People’s Republic of China’s five officially recognized religions. Today, for as many people who might understand Confucianism as a religion, there are others who will understand it as a kind of philosophical naturalism or secular humanism. The applicability of all such categories must be critically interrogated when we turn our attention to Song-era work that predates any sustained contact with Christianity in particular or the categories of European intellectual history in general. An excellent discussion on the usage of these categories in Song context is Deborah Sommer’s 2020 article ‘Zhu Xi’s Philosophy of Religion’. There, her focus is on the work of the famed Song scholar Zhu Xi (1130–1200) and his ‘interpretations of the classics regarding the spirit world, his conceptualization of ghosts and spirits, and his understandings of the performance of the rites of sacrificial offerings’ (524). These topics are, as she says, ‘the subjects more commonly deemed religious by the parameters of modern Western disciplinary boundaries’ (2020, 523). However, she cautions that such disciplinary boundaries can only be artificially applied to a thinker like Zhu Xi: Zhu’s views on spirits and sacrificial offerings might be viewed as philosophical, religious, or both; for that matter, they were also political in nature. His understanding of ghosts and spirits is closely tied to his ontological understanding of the nature of the cosmos – a subject that commonly falls within the purview of philosophy. Zhu’s program for reading texts – which might be considered a largely secular, educational project by modern standards – had, however, strong spiritual dimensions, for the written word provided access to the learning of the sages and allowed the reader to apprehend them directly. He established or renovated a number of private academies, and some if not all contained altars for paying reverence to the sages of antiquity. (2020, 524) In what follows, we retain a focus on the cosmological theorizing of Zhu and some of his contemporaries. And we see that Sommer’s predictions bear out here, too, in that we find no easy way to separate cosmological speculation from either scholarly methodologies, practices of spiritual cultivation or indeed political interests.

COSMOLOGICAL SOURCES IN THE SONG In pre-Song times, Ruism was closely associated with morality, statecraft and ancestor worship. It inquired into the nature of people, debating how best to raise them, support them and nurture their well-being as necessarily social creatures living in unavoidably political structures. It did not often launch in-depth inquiries into cosmologies, whether physical or metaphysical. Such discussions came to the forefront during the Song in response, at least in part, to increased competition from Daoism and Buddhism. This crucial time period of intellectual exchange and Ruist revitalization has come to be called ‘neo-Confucianism’ in Western discourse. In its earliest textual history, Daoist cosmological theories are notoriously sparse. As Daodejing Chapter 42 succinctly says, ‘Dao gives birth to one, one gives

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birth to two, two gives birth to three, and three gives birth to the myriad things’ (道生一，一生二，二生三，三生萬物) (Daodejing 2011). The ‘one’ here could be associated with Taiyi (太一), the ‘Great One’ or ‘Great Unity’, a personified divinity worshipped in the Warring States period and Han dynasty (Puett 2004, 160–2). It could also be associated with ‘primal qi’ (yuanqi 元氣), an undifferentiated state of the primordial material that differentiates and develops to give rise to existence as we know it. Qi has been translated into English variously as ‘vital stuff’ (Angle and Tiwald 2017), ‘psychophysical stuff’ (Gardner 1990), and ‘lively material’ (Ivanhoe 2016). It is the matter–energy matrix that accounts for all that exists, whether we mean what is condensed and palpable, as in physical objects or what is dispersed and ethereal, as in the mental energies of human thoughts and feelings. In most Chinese cosmologies, the behavioural tendencies of qi play a crucial role. The ‘two’ of Daodejing Chapter 42 refers to the polar forces of yin (陰) and yang (陽), where yin refers to forces that settle and sink, that are dark and heavy, and that tend to condense; and yang refers to forces that rise or flow, that are clear and light, and that tend to disperse. No single phenomenon is yin or yang on its own but only in relation to other phenomena in specific contexts. This accounts for the so-called correlative cosmology so often associated with Chinese philosophical and metaphysical theories (Puett 2004, 146). In these theories, there is usually at least one intermediary stage named between yin and yang and the ‘myriad things’, or the diverse reality that we inhabit. In Daodejing passage 42, the intermediary ‘three’ is likely a reference to the trinary relation of cosmos (tian 天), earth (di 地), and humans (ren 人), whose proper alignment was seen as central to attaining and maintaining cosmic harmony. In other areas, such as medicine or agriculture, texts might refer instead to the transition from yin-yang to the five phases (wuxing 五行) of water, fire, wood, metal and earth, which constituted a schematic according to which certain correspondences could be mapped between phenomena of similar structures or constitutions. The five phases were often associated with specific bodily organs, seasonal changes, ecological features and so forth, as an aid in diagnosing and correcting imbalances such as disease (in the body) or blight (in crops). In Chapter 42 the most mysterious term is, of course, dao itself, the wellspring from which the initial unity emerges. Chapter 4 explains that dao existed even before the gods, and indeed, in many Chinese accounts, gods, ghosts and other spiritual beings are seen as part of the existent cosmos, not its purposeful creators. Chapter 25 tells us that dao existed before the universe was formed, concluding that dao is what is ‘spontaneously so’ (ziran 自然).2 Another cosmological source text, more closely associated with Ruism, is the Yijing (易經) or Book of Changes, one of the scholarly lineage’s traditional Five Classics. As stated in an early companion commentary to the Yijing, the text is a vehicle for the same primal cosmological progression that birthed the universe: ‘The Book of Changes contains the Great Ultimate; the Great Ultimate brings forth the two polar forces; the two polar forces bring forth the four images and the four images bring forth the eight trigrams. These eight establish good fortune and misfortune. From fortune and misfortune come forth the great affairs [of life] [是故，易有太極，是生兩儀，兩儀生四象，四象生八卦， 八卦定吉凶，吉凶生大業]’ (Yijing 2011, Xici shang 繫辭上, 11). Of central importance in the Song will be the nature of this Great Ultimate (taiji 太極) and our manner of apprehending it. Before turning to this, we look at the last major tradition driving Song-era cosmological speculation, Buddhism, an import from South Asia whose texts, practitioners, and items

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of material culture began arriving in China piecemeal along trade routes as early as the first or second century. Perhaps the foundational thesis of Buddhist thought can be found in what are referred to as the ‘three marks’ of reality: impermanence (Skt. anitya), suffering (duḥkha), and non-self (anātman). Together these express that all forms of existence are temporary, including the so-called ‘self’ or ‘soul’, and our resistant attitude towards the inevitability of change contributes to our continued dissatisfaction with existence as we experience it. The form of Buddhism that entered China, Mahāyāna Buddhism, brought with it an explicit and overt emphasis on emptiness (śūnyatā), which took the teachings on impermanence and change to mean that all temporary forms are ‘empty’ of any inherent ontological substance or ‘own-being’ (svabhāva). The question over the meaning of emptiness is another key factor driving Song-era debates and cosmological theories. In particular, Ruists objected that the Buddhists’ philosophical emphasis on emptiness fostered quietism, emotional detachment, nihilism and moral relativism. Often these critiques were extended to Daoist thought, as well, which even since the early days of the reception of the dharma in China had been seen as similar to Buddhism. Both traditions emphasize the relativity of certain values and social norms, criticize greed and desire and advocate for a measure of detachment from life’s vicissitudes. Moreover, passages in the Daodejing do speak of dao as vacuous or empty (e.g. Chapters 5, 11 and 42, among others), and certain Daoist practices such as ‘fasting the heart-mind’ (xinzhai 心齋) or ‘sitting and forgetting’ (zuowong 坐忘) prescribe techniques for emptying the mind of accumulated thoughts, emotions and intentions. However, contemporary scholar JeeLoo Liu asserts that overt theorizing about nothingness is a contribution of Buddhist sources in particular: ‘in both classical Daoist and Neo-Confucian conceptions, there was no primordial absolute nothingness’ (Liu 2014, 181). She provides strong textual and etymological evidence to show that, in early Daoist texts, apparent references to nothingness or emptiness are in fact references to formlessness, which is to say, primordial formless qi. As a result, she asserts, both early Ruists and early Daoists share the same basic qi-cosmology in which utter nothingness is not a plausible metaphysical possibility. Accordingly, she argues that many Song-era Ruist critics of Daoism were often making a moral point about Daoist passivity; that is, they were mostly worried about the perceived abnegation of social responsibilities, not the ontological or cosmological status of nothingness in anyone’s metaphysical theory. With all this in mind, in what follows, we look at the Ruist critics of emptiness as performing what we would today call a ‘philosophy of religion’, marked by increased interest in investigating the origins of the cosmos so as to best understand the spiritual trajectory of human existence.

SONG ‘PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION’ IN THEORY AND METHOD As indicated earlier, the meaning of the Great Ultimate as a cosmic origin occupied the thinkers of the Song. A central debate revolved around whether the field of primordial formless qi itself had emerged from a more primal void. As mentioned, the theory of the void was often characterized as a Daoist or Buddhist position, and the Song-era Ruists generally sought to distance themselves from it. The contemporary historian Tze-Ki Hon describes one such early Song Ruist, the semi-hermit and later famed educator Hu Yuan

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(993–1059). In Hu’s commentary on the Yijing, he boldly overturned the positions of several then-dominant commentaries3 that, as he argued, were unduly influenced by Daoist notions of voidness (wu 無), tended to overly romanticize hermits, and adopted a fatalistic attitude towards inevitable political unrest. Responding to the issue of voidness, Hu rejected the notion that primal qi had emerged from an even more primal void, insisting there is always some state of qi, either ‘lacking-form’ (wuxing 無形) or ‘havingforms’ (youxing 有形) (Hon 2005, 55). Here we are reminded of Liu’s etymological point that the character wu (無) in non-Buddhist sources, even when used on its own, rarely means ‘emptiness’ per se but instead gestures towards the range of compounds in which it appears in a descriptive capacity (i.e. empty of form as in wuxing, empty of action as in wuwei 無為, empty of pedantry as in wuzhi 無知 and so forth). As Hon explains, Hu’s seemingly obscure theoretical point was in fact an act of political resistance. By rejecting the theory of a primal void underlying the world of forms, ‘Hu treated phenomenal affairs as ontologically real, and thereby significant in their own right’ (2005, 53). In other words, Hu returned emphasis to the concrete meaningfulness of the political affairs of his day, making sociopolitical progress itself a function, and appropriate goal, of spiritual self-cultivation. Hon explains: Whereas Kong Yingda’s [much earlier] reading of the Yijing tended to support the absolute power of the king, underlying Hu Yuan’s reading was his belief in human activism, directed broadly to all individuals . . .. He also believed that, as part of the universe, human beings were already fulfilling their cosmic mission by improving their social and political order. For him, since the universe is actively renewing itself with the interaction of the yin and the yang, human beings should also be actively renewing themselves in matters big and small (2005, 58–9, bracketed material mine). Hon’s comment introduces a key point: cosmological forces like yin and yang are as active now as they ever were. Primordial undifferentiated qi is not only a feature of our cosmic origins but a vital energy that remains with us in the present. As such, all existing forms emerge from undifferentiated qi, whether we are speaking of the first forms at the inception of the cosmos or the myriad forms around us now that continue to live out, in the present, ongoing processes of materialization, persistence and eventual disintegration. And, under the right conditions, this primordial qi is available to us as a raw material, as it were, from which we can manifest or realize new forms, events or processes. The ability to draw on this primal material is often portrayed as revitalizing, refreshing and healthy. Methods for ‘actively renewing’ ourselves included, for the Song-era scholar-officials, certain meditative techniques such as ‘quiet sitting’ (jingzuo 靜坐) that were influenced in part by the Chan Buddhist practice of seated meditation (zuochan 坐禪). Although superficially similar, the Ruist focus on settling the mind via qi-cultivation was quite distinct from Buddhist practice and its emphasis on realizing the correct understanding of emptiness and impermanence. Ruist quiet sitting was meant to relax the heart-mind into its primordial formless state, for the sake of reinvigorating the mind’s own productive and creative powers. As stated earlier, qi can be condensed, as in palpable material objects, or dispersed, as in mental or spiritual energies – to be clear, mental life is understood here on a qi-based causal model. The Song scholar Zhu Xi explains: ‘The capacity for awareness is the numinous aspect of qi [能覺者，氣之靈也]’ (Zhu Xi 2011b).4 According to this causal model, our mental capacities can be enhanced or diminished according to whether the state of mental qi is clear and bright or cloudy and agitated. Joseph Adler comments, in his

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study of neo-Confucian spirituality: ‘In human beings, spirit [shen 神] is a quality of mind – specifically mind-qi in its finest, most free-flowing state’ (2004, 141, bracketed material mine). Attaining some degree of mental agility and clarity was seen as a necessary precursor to scholarship, especially reading classic texts. This is a core feature of Zhu Xi’s pedagogy and scholarly methods. He advises: ‘Now, when you want to read books, you must first settle the mind to make it like still water or a clear mirror [今且要讀書，須先定其心，使之 如止水，如明鏡]’ (Zhu Xi 2011b).5 Reading books – that is, studying the classics and the commentaries – was the activity that Zhu most closely associated with another central Ruist methodology known as ‘investigating things’ (gewu 格物). The term plays a pivotal role in the Daxue (大學) or ‘Great Learning’ section of China’s classical text the Liji (禮記) or Book of Rites. Zhu elevated this section itself to the status of one of the Four Books that, along with the earlier canon of Five Classics, undergirded the pedagogical programme by which he is credited with reinvigorating the Ruism of the Song. The Daxue gives a clear picture of ‘investigating things’ sitting at the turning point of personal, social, indeed even cosmic, transformation: The ancients, in wishing to illuminate luminous power in the world, first brought good order to their own states. Wanting to bring good order to their states, they first regulated their households. Wanting to regulate their households, they first cultivated themselves. Wanting to cultivate themselves, they first corrected their minds. Wanting to correct their minds, they first made their intentions sincere. Wanting to make their intentions sincere, they first extended their knowledge. Extending knowledge consists in investigating things. Investigate things, and knowledge is extended. Extend knowledge, and intention becomes sincere. Make intention sincere, and the mind becomes correct. Correct the mind, and the self is cultivated. Cultivate the self, and the household is regulated. Regulate the household, and the state is brought to good order. Bring good order to the state, and the whole world will be at peace. From the ruler down to ordinary people, all must regard the cultivation of the self as the root [古之欲明明德於天下者，先治其國;欲治其國 者 ， 先 齊 其 家 ; 欲 齊 其 家 者 ， 先 修 其 身 ; 欲 修 其 身 者 ， 先 正 其 心;欲正其心者，先誠其意;欲誠其意者，先致其知，致知在格 物。物格而後知至，知至而後意誠，意誠而後心正，心正而後身 修，身修而後家齊，家齊而後國治，國治而後天下平。自天子以 至於庶人，壹是皆以修身為本]. (Daxue 2011) Here we can appreciate that the practice of quiet sitting, as the key preparatory practice Zhu recommends before embarking on the investigation of things, activates the personal, social and cosmic trajectories of the Daxue. The role of mental cultivation in investigating cosmological questions figures prominently in the debates that occupied Zhu and his contemporaries. As such, as we discuss next, the boundary between scholarly method and spiritual practice is necessarily ambiguous here.

COSMOLOGY AND CULTIVATION Many trace the revival of Ruism in the Song back to Zhou Dunyi (1017–73), a thinker deeply engaged with both Daoist and Buddhist sources. As JeeLu Liu discusses in her study of neo-Confucian thought, Zhou’s prominent use of the Daoist term wuji (無極) in his cosmological theories sets off many later debates over the question of emptiness

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and its role in Ruist thought (2018, 32). The first character (wu 無) can mean ‘empty of’ or ‘lacking’, and we saw it earlier associated with the Daoist idea of voidness. The second character (ji 極) means ‘ultimate’, ‘extreme’, or ‘utmost’. We saw this earlier in the compound taiji (太極) meaning ‘great ultimate’ in the Ruist source text the Yijing, where it referred to the primal cosmic force that birthed yin and yang. In Zhou’s famous cosmic map the ‘Diagram of the Great Ultimate’ (taiji tushuo 太極圖說), he begins his commentary with the ambiguous phrase wuji er taiji (無極而太極), which might be read as ‘wuji then taiji’ or ‘wuji and also taiji’. Every aspect of the phrase presents difficulties. Does wuji mean ‘no-ultimate’? Does it mean ‘ultimate of non-being’, as it is often rendered in English? Or does it mean, instead, ‘limitless’, or that ‘utmost extreme’ beyond which there is nothing greater? All such possibilities are present in the Chinese. As such, the phrase as a whole might mean that before the ‘great ultimate’ there was ‘no ultimate’ – perhaps there was nothing at all. It might mean that the ‘ultimate of non-being’ is also the ‘great ultimate’. Or, it might mean, in quite a different sense, that the ‘ultimate’ is limitless and also great. By the time figures such as Zhu Xi and contemporaries were debating all this, the Daoist uses of wu and wuji were readily read through the lens of Buddhist emptiness. So, some interpretations of Zhou’s obscure wording would paint him as a quasi-nihilist and deserter to Daoism, whereas others would retain him within the Ruist fold. As Liu discusses, Zhu strives to keep him within the lineage of the ru: ‘Therefore, Zhu Xi argues, Zhou Dunyi’s wuji should be understood as a depiction of something that is so grand, so ultimate, that we cannot confine it with our descriptions. This state is exactly the state of Taiji, that which is so grand and so supremely ultimate. Therefore, according to Zhu Xi, wuji and taiji are simply two names of the same state; they stand for two sides of the same coin’ (2018, 34). What is this ‘same state’? Liu provides extensive and detailed research and argumentation to show that, according to most Ruist understandings, taiji refers to the primordial formless qi out of which yin and yang spontaneously differentiate themselves (2018, 51–8). As she concludes, this amounts to a strong rejection of what we would call in Western terms ‘creation ex nihilo’ or the idea that something can ever come from nothing (2018, 55). The Ruist view situates us within a cosmology in which sheer voidness is simply not metaphysically plausible – as Liu sums up, there has always been ‘something’, and this something is qi (2018, 56). She encourages us to think of this in scientific terms as the quantum field in its vacuous state as understood in contemporary physics (2018, 54).6 But, recalling Sommer’s point at the start, Ruist cosmological theory remains bound up with spiritual practices of self-cultivation, as well. This comes to the fore in two of the competing methodologies of the Song, lixue (理學) and xinxue (心學), or ‘learning via principle’ and ‘learning via thinking-and-feeling’. Here, li (理) is an important companion term to qi. It can mean principle, pattern, order or structure. Generally, li refers to the self-organizing behaviour of qi seen, for example, in its tendency to arrange itself along the yin-yang polarity and the tendency of yin and yang to further interact and give rise to the complex universe that we inhabit. Li refers to both cosmic order as well as moral order, or perhaps it is more precise to say that Song thought does not differentiate between the two. The efficacious functioning of the cosmos is ‘good’ just as the efficacious functioning of the human heart-mind is ‘good’, and both senses of ‘good’ have a moral valence. The historian Hon comments, ‘As part of the ceaseless flow of qi in the universe, morality is understood metaphysically’ (2005, 97). Similarly, Liu also associates the qi-based world view with what she calls a neo-Confucian ‘moral metaphysics’

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(2018, 2–3), in which anything that exists can be considered morally, or at least axiologically, significant. By seeing so-called facts as always value-laden, the Chinese tradition avoids the dilemma that Western philosophy refers to as the ‘fact–value distinction’. The question that occupied Song scholars concerned not facts versus values but how to best apprehend the cosmic-moral order of li and align ourselves with it. Zhu Xi is associated with the side of lixue, also translatable as ‘school of principle’, which held that moral order was best apprehended via the investigation of things. As we saw earlier, he believed that the properly prepared heart-mind, in a state of contemplative stillness, was capable of studying classic texts and attuning directly with the minds of the sages who wrote them, in order to understand the tendencies of the cosmos and the place of humans within it. To sustain and amplify the transformative effects of book learning, he recommended a range of other methods in addition to quiet sitting, including memorizing and reciting texts, as well as committing to an attitude of seriousness (jing 敬) in scholarly affairs. Zhu compares seriousness to a state of tranquillity (jing 靜) and vacuity (xu 虛) that exists in the mind before feelings are aroused (Zhu Xi 2011a).7 This demonstrates again the pervasive sense in Ruist thought that the well-cultivated mind is a wellspring akin to primal qi in its formless state before the arising of distinctions. A scholar’s speculative investigations into cosmology, then, were necessarily bound up with the experiential dimension of mental attunement by which the scholar’s own mind could be aligned with greater cosmic orders. The competing school xinxue, also translatable as ‘school of the heart-mind’, was associated with other Song scholars such as Cheng Hao (1032–85) and Lu Xiangshan (1139–93) and, perhaps most famously, the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644) scholar Wang Yangming (1472–1529). The differences between lixue and xinxue are in many ways a matter of emphasis, as both schools share a range of contemplative scholarly methodologies such as those mentioned earlier. But whereas Zhu emphasized expanding the mind via book learning, the xinxue scholars tended to emphasize introspective and phenomenological methodologies. Their key premise was that moral order lies innately within the heart-mind and is accessible without needing to bring in outside information via book learning. For both schools, direct experience remains a key method for investigating and resolving the cosmological debates between Ruists, Daoists, and Buddhists that occupied this aspect of ‘philosophy of religion’ in the Song. In her landmark work on Zhu Xi’s religious thought, Julia Ching explains: Both the Diagram of the Great Ultimate and the doctrine of emotional equilibrium and harmony require a meditative discipline. The Great Ultimate cannot just be reasoned. It has to be understood in contemplation. Equilibrium and harmony both refer to states of meditative consciousness. Such a consciousness is aimed at penetrating a cosmic mystery, through the mind and heart’s descent into the depths of its own being, which is where it meets the mind and heart of the universe. Perhaps, I should say, this is where it discovers itself to be the mind and heart of the universe, in a mystical consciousness that unites the self and the universe. (2000, 40) Ching’s commentary reminds us that any use of the term ‘philosophy of religion’ to describe Song scholarship makes room for an intervention in our understanding of contemporary disciplinary boundaries. The implications of this intervention necessarily invite us into complicated but productive methodological territory. In the following

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we consider both the spiritual and political dimensions of a possible intervention in philosophy of religion as commonly practised.

CONCLUSIONS If viewed through the lens of religious studies, then we might consider Ching’s call to practice in terms of the so-called insider/outside debate. That is, we might read her comment as an invitation to become practitioners of the Ruist ‘religion’. In that sense, some might see us as leaving behind ‘philosophy of religion’ strictly speaking, in that we are no longer philosophizing about Ruist claims (i.e. what can ‘just be reasoned’, as she says) but adopting its teachings, seeking its direct insights and undergoing the personal transformations it offers. In contrast, suppose that we consider Ching’s comment as an invitation not to join a religion but to adopt a new scholarly method as philosophers. In that case, her words have an impact on our basic understanding of what it means to ‘do’ philosophy. We might be reminded here of Pierre Hadot’s work on ‘spiritual exercises’, or the forgotten contemplative practices of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers that reflect, as he asserts, an approach to philosophy as a comprehensive ‘way of life’ distinct from the pedantry of the academic discipline today. These ancient Western practices line up remarkably well alongside the pedagogies and scholarly methods employed at Ruist academies in the Song and Ming periods. In Hadot’s words, ‘Stoico-Platonic inspired philosophical therapeutics’ include research (zetesis), investigation (skepsis), reading (anagnosis) and meditation (meletai), which all contribute to the development of self-mastery (enkrateia) and the training of attention (prosoche), the latter of which Hadot identifies as ‘the fundamental Stoic spiritual attitude’ (1995, 84). As he says, ‘attention to the present moment allows us to accede to cosmic consciousness, by making us attentive to the infinite value of each instant, and causing us to accept each moment of existence from the viewpoint of the universal law of the cosmos’ (1995, 85). Meditative practices to develop this spiritual attitude include self-examination to identify shortcomings, the use of memorization (mneme) to ingrain philosophical teachings into the mind and imaginative reflections to foster appreciation of the impermanence of material life from the larger perspective of the immaterial intellect (1995, 85, 93–101). Although certain assumptions about the divide between the material and immaterial go against the grain of the qi-cosmological framework in Song thought, nonetheless Hadot’s work shows that philosophy as a transformative way of life is certainly not unknown within the Western tradition. The suggestion that we revisit some of these former philosophical methods has consequences not only for philosophers of religion but for philosophers generally. To sum up, if we are to speak of a Song ‘philosophy of religion’, then we will speak of methods for theorizing about questions whose answers may require a transformation in consciousness. In the case discussed here, we have seen that cosmological investigations require that scholars employ techniques designed to allow the mind to experience for itself the potency of formless qi that is the wellspring of all forms. The major cosmological debates of the Song do not touch on questions of intentional design, God’s attributes or the relation between reason and revelation. Rather, the debates centred on moral and political issues: Does Buddhist emptiness lead to nihilism? Does Daoist voidness lead to political pacifism and moral relativism? The Ruists could experience for themselves the

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invigorating effects of quiet sitting and scholarly seriousness. Surely, it was this direct experience of the mind’s capacity for ever-vital transformation and renewal that led so many Ruists to see their cosmology as the life-affirming counterpoint to what they portrayed as the enervating emptiness of the Buddhist and Daoist paths. This brings us to a final point regarding the interventions in contemporary philosophy of religion made visible by this study of Song sources. The Ruists, like many critical theorists today, built political critique into their speculative philosophy. Some theologians and philosophers of religion also incorporate similar critical-theoretical aspects into their work: What is the political history that shaped Christian dogma? Who benefits from the doctrine of revelation? What kind of political consciousness is fostered by the Christian understanding of the transcendence and divinity? Ruist ‘philosophy of religion’ – with its conflation of scholarly methods, spiritual self-cultivation practices and critical-theoretical analyses – offers us the opportunity to reassess not only our own disciplinary boundaries but our role as scholars in both navigating and shaping a pluralistic world.

NOTES 1. In this passage, Kongzi famously declares himself a follower of the ways of the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE). 2. For this turn of phrase, see the twenty-fifth chapter in the translation by Ames and Hall (2003). 3. These included Wang Bi (226–249) and Kong Yingda (574–648). See Hon (2005), especially the second chapter. 4. Zhuzi yulei, xing li er 性理二, xingqing xinyi deng mengyi 性情心意等名義, passage 27 (https://ctext​.org​/text​.pl​?node​=586504​&if​=en). I consulted Virág (2019, 40). 5. Zhuzi yulei, xuewu 學五, dushufaxia 讀書法下, passage 12 (https://ctext​.org​/zhuzi​-yulei​/11​/ zh). I consulted Gardner (1990, 145). 6. In another work, ‘In Defense of Qi-Naturalism’, Liu considers the theories of He Zuoxi who ‘argues that the theory of primordial qi is the origination of the contemporary quantum field theory. He traces the quantum field theory to Einstein, Einstein to Leibniz, and Leibniz to the theory of primordial qi’ (52). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) was, of course, one of the earliest readers of Chinese thought in Europe. 7. Jinsilu 近思錄, Chapter 4, passages 47 and 53 (https://ctext​.org​/wiki​.pl​?if​=gb​&chapter​ =395496).

REFERENCES Adler, Joseph (2004), ‘Varieties of Spiritual Experience: Shen in Neo-Confucian Discourse’, in Tu Wei-ming and M. E. Tucker (eds), Confucian Spirituality, Vol. 2, 120–48, New York: Crossroad. Ames, Roger T. and David L. Hall, trans. (2003), Daodejing “Making This Life Significant”: A Philosophical Translation, New York: Ballantine Books. Angle, Stephen C. and Justin Tiwald (2017), Neo-Confucianism: A Philosophical Introduction, Cambridge: Polity Press. Campany, R. F. (2003), ‘On the Very Idea of Religions (in the Modern West and in Early Medieval China)’, History of Religions, 42 (4): 287–319.

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Ching, Julia (2000), The Religious Thought of Chu His, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Daodejing 道德經 (2011), Chinese Text Project, ed. Donald Sturgeon, https://ctext​.org​/dao​-de​ -jing​/zhs. Daxue 大學 (2011), Chinese Text Project, ed. Donald Sturgeon, https://ctext​.org​/liji​/da​-xue​/zh. Gardner, Daniel K., trans. (1990), Learning to Be a Sage: Selection from the Conversations of Master Chu, Arranged Topically, ed. Chu Hsi [Zhu Xi], Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Hadot, Pierre (1995), Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase, Oxford: Blackwell. Hon, Tze-Ki (2005), The Yijing and Chinese Politics: Classical Commentary and Literati Activism in the Northern Song Period, 960–1127, Abany, NY: State University of New York Press. Ivanhoe, Philip J. (2016), Three Streams: Confucian Reflections on Learning and the Moral Heart-Mind in China, Korea, and Japan, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Josephson, J. Ā (2006), ‘When Buddhism Became a “Religion”: Religion and Superstition in the Writings of Inoue Enryō,’ Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 33 (1): 143–168. Josephson, J. Ā (2012), The Invention of Religion in Japan, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Liu, JeeLoo (2013), ‘In Defense of Qi-Naturalism’, in Chenyang Li and Franklin Perkins (eds), Chinese Metaphysics and Its Problems, 33–53, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Liu, JeeLoo (2014), ‘Was There Something in Nothingness? The Debate on the Primordial State between Daoism and Neo-Confucianism’, in JeeLoo Liu and Douglas L. Berger (eds), Nothingness in Asian Philosophy, 181–96, New York: Routledge. Liu, JeeLoo (2018), Neo-Confucianism: Metaphysics, Mind, and Morality, Malden, MA: Wiley. Liu, Yu (2020), ‘Behind the Façade of the Rites Controversy: The Intriguing Contrast of Chinese and European Theism’, Journal of Religious History, 44 (1): 3–26. Lunyu 論語 (2011), Chinese Text Project, ed. D. Sturgeon, https://ctext​.org​/analects​/zh. Maraldo, J. C. (2011), ‘Beginnings, Definitions, Disputations: Overview,’ in J. W. Heisig, T. P. Kasulis, J. C. Maraldo (eds), Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 553–69, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press. Masuzawa, T. (2005), The Invention of World Religion; Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press. Puett, Michael J. (2004), To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China, Cambridge: Harvard. Sommer, Deborah (2020), ‘Zhu Xi’s Philosophy of Religion’, in Kai-chiu Ng and Yong Huang (ed.), Dao Companion to Zhu Xi’s Philosophy, 523–41, Cham: Springer. Sun, Anna (2013), Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Virág, Curie (2019), ‘Moral Psychology and Cultivating the Self ’, in Philip J. Ivanhoe (ed.), Zhu Xi: Selected Writings, 35–55, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yijing 易經 (2011), ‘Xici shang 繫辭上’, in Donald Sturgeon (ed.), Chinese Text Project, https:// ctext​.org​/book​-of​-changes​/xi​-ci​-shang. Zhu, Xi 朱熹 (2011a), ‘Jinsilu 近思錄’, in Donald Sturgeon (ed.), Chinese Text Project, https:// ctext​.org​/wiki​.pl​?if​=gb​&chapter​=149165. Zhu, Xi 朱熹 (2011b), ‘Zhuzi yulei 朱子語類’, in Donald Sturgeon (ed.), Chinese Text Project, http://ctext​.org​/zhuzi​-yulei​/zh.

Chapter 8

The theory and practice of the multi-entry approach GEREON KOPF

INTRODUCTION This essay will introduce the multi-entry approach (Kopf 2019). It proposes a philosophical method that suggests philosophers of religion should recognize a multiplicity of methods and traditions in order to facilitate engagements among them in a manner that is neither hegemonic nor centralized. The approach calls for a multilogue of methods and standpoints. The current essay introduces two taxonomies that categorize existing approaches to philosophy of religion in order to argue for the need for the multi-entry approach, develops this approach from philosophies found in postmodernism as well as Huayan and Zen Buddhism, introduces a meta-psychology that analyze frequent resistance to inclusive approaches and proposes twenty rules of engagement of how such a multilogue could be realized. At the beginning of my essay, I would like to add a quick comment with regard to the terminology that I will be using. Attempts to make philosophy of religion in particular and philosophy in general more inclusive and diverse have been alternatively called ‘global’ or ‘postcolonial’.1 The project of ‘globalizing’ philosophy implies, in some sense, a top-down approach, ‘decolonizing philosophy’, on the other hand a bottom-up one. I call an approach that decenters the discourse by emphasizing hybrid and liminal identities ‘cosmopolitan philosophy of religion’.2 Using the language of the Kyoto School, one could add that the global approach privileges the principle of universality and/oneness while the postcolonial one emphasizes particularity and/or the principle of multiplicity. A cosmopolitan philosophy embodies the principle prominent in Tiantai Buddhism and Kyoto School philosophy ‘one-and-yet-many’ (Chin. yijiduo, Jap. issokuta).

THE CHALLENGE OF CURRENT PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Dangers of a single story I would like to begin my analysis of the current state of philosophy of religion with a story. In a talk popularized on YouTube, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie warns of the ‘dangers of a single story’. In this talk, she uses humour to critique the assumption

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that there is only one single narrative, what Francois Lyotard calls ‘meta-narrative’ (métarécits), one story about persons, communities, countries, specific geographic regions and the world. Recounting how she grew up in a middle-class family associated with the university in Lagos, she confesses that she had only one story of the village from which the servant of her family hailed from: the story of poverty. Only when she visited the village herself, she realized the multifaceted nature of life in that village. Similarly, when she went to university in the United States, she found out that many citizens of the United States had only one story of Africa: the story of poverty. For example, a professor of creative writing criticized a story of hers as not being authentically ‘African’ enough. What the professor meant was that the characters in her story owned houses, drove cars and lived a life that was not substantially different from his. Her essay did not confirm his stereotypes about ‘Africa’. The main point of her talk is that a single story is limiting and reduces groups or individuals to one characteristic such as poverty. In the same way, philosophers of religion often teach their field as one single story. Their approaches to philosophy of religion often adhere to one narrative and one set of questions. Even approaches that attempt to be more global only expand the sources for philosophy but, for the most part, do not question methodological premises, heuristic lenses and assumed frameworks of reference. They thereby fail to tell more than one story about their world. Rather these kinds of approaches superimpose the narrative of Christian theology onto a variety of religious systems and philosophies.

The need for a new approach Global, postcolonial and cosmopolitan approaches to philosophy of religion are, at best, rare. Philosophy of religion originated in academic contexts that combined the monotheisms of the so-called Abrahamic traditions with the philosophical project developed in the Greco-Roman world and later matured into an academic discipline in predominantly Christian Europe. Therefore, it is no surprise that the method, terminology and framework of reference applied in philosophy of religion tend to reflect the thought patterns and concerns of the Abrahamic traditions, in particular, Christianity. Contemporary attempts to make philosophy of religion more inclusive continue to utilize a toolkit of questions and concepts that depend upon a monotheistic, European disciplinary narrative. In addition, the concepts of ‘religion’, ‘philosophy’, and ‘tradition’ themselves are not free from the vestiges of monotheistic concerns and the project of European modernity. To rethink philosophy of religion, it is, therefore, necessary not only to engage texts and thinkers from multiple traditions but also to construct a terminology and a method from a multiplicity of standpoints without privileging one language or method over the others.

A taxonomy of approaches based on discursive layers To understand the requirements for such a new philosophy of religion, I would like to classify current approaches by identifying how a given approach proposes to globalize or decolonize the discipline. I distinguish four discursive layers: (1) the surface layer outlines the subject of the study and identifies the texts and sources explored. (2) A second, implied, layer creates the organizational structure of the study and identifies the method of the study. In the discipline philosophy of religion, the method is evident in the questions investigated such as ‘do we have free will?’ (3) The third and foundational layer indicates the meta-discourse and implies the horizon of the study. It discloses our preconceived

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definitions of, for example, ‘religion’ and ‘philosophy’. The choice of questions asked during the inquiry and the sources interrogated depends on these definitions. (4) Finally, the heuristic framework and cognitive frames applied in the inquiry reveal the discursive deep structure and constitute the world view and value system that is implied by the definitions of religion and philosophy as well as by the questions that are investigated. Current attempts to globalize or decolonize philosophy of religion tend to (1) add sources from around the world to the existing canon, (2) critique and overhaul the very method applied by philosophers of religion, (3) question the assumptions inherent in the various approaches to philosophy of religion, and (4) challenge the very paradigm that drives our assumptions about religions and the philosophical study thereof. Illustrations of the first type, a ‘global philosophy of religion’, are Joseph Runzo (2001) and Andrew Eshleman (2008); of the second type, a ‘critical philosophy of religion’, feminist and postcolonial approaches and essays that challenge the Christocentric paradigm such as Arvind Sharma’s philosophies of religion from a ‘Buddhist’ (1997), a ‘primal’ (2010), and a ‘Sikh’ (2007) perspective; of the third type, a global-critical philosophy of religion’, Timothy Knepper (2022); and of the fourth type, I envision to be the multi-entry approach to philosophy and/or/of religion. Anthologies such as those edited by Morny Joy (2011), An Yountai and Eleanor Craig’s (2021), and Jim Kanaris (2018) provide important and invaluable interrogations and interruptions of the discipline on one or more of these discursive levels but are difficult to categorize since they do not provide one cohesive vision of philosophy of religion. The multi-entry approach, on the contrary, intends to destabilize the very paradigm that drives current assumptions of what qualifies as philosophy and/or/of religion by way of granting equal standing to multiple voices within the field of inquiry. The method of the multi-entry approach constitutes a multilogue of divergent voices in the form of the Buddhist dictum ‘one-and-yet-many’.

A taxonomy of approaches by method To argue the uniqueness of the multi-entry approach, I wish to introduce a second taxonomy that examines the academic method applied by specific inquiries. In some sense, ‘institutionalized’3 approaches to philosophy of religion, are mostly methods of philosophy of religion that privilege one particular theological standpoint can be called first-person approaches. These approaches draw their assumptions about the nature of religion and its structural elements from one religious tradition or system. In contrast, approaches developed in the context of religious studies apply methods that do not belong to any one particular religious tradition, community or system. These include anthropology, systems theory, cognitive sciences and also gender, queer and race studies. Examples of this type are Pamela Sue Anderson (1997), Wesley Wildman (2011), and Loyal Rue (2006). The application of methods external to the religious systems investigated can be called a third-person approach. Furthermore, in the twentieth-century scholars such as Ninian Smart (see, e.g. 1981) proposed a comparative approach. Since then, this approach has undergone multiple changes and has given rise to numerous versions. If the author applies one outside strategy to engage two or more religious systems such as Timothy Knepper (2022), it falls under the category ‘third-person approach’. If the exercise in comparative philosophy involves two equal methods provided by two interlocutors, both of which are applied to both systems equally, we have a new, interactive approach. A conversation or debate between one representative each of two different systems can be called a ‘dialogical approach to philosophy of religion’. This approach requires that both

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dialogue partners are equal participants. The closest approximation of such a dialogical approach that I know of is the famous conversation between C. G. Jung and Hisamatsu Shin’ichi on the nature of religious experience in 1958. In this conversation, Jung applies his Analytical Psychology to Rinzai Zen and Hisamatsu Zen philosophy to Jung’s Analytical Psychology. Socratic dialogues and the encounter dialogues found in the Zen Buddhist tradition while conversational by design imply a power/truth differential insofar as the two interlocutors are not on equal footing, but one is considered more cognizant of the subject matter than the other. A single-author account of such an encounter between representatives of two systems that gives each participant in this conversation their due I call ‘second-person approach’. The author of such an approach is obligated to present both dialogue partners equally in content and method. A global-critical philosophy of religion has to take this multiplicity of religious and philosophical systems into account. A single-author account of the interaction among multiple conversation partners in philosophy of religion constitutes a fourth-person approach, while a multi-author version of this constitutes a multi-entry approach. The former negotiates a multiplicity of stories, the latter facilitates a multilogue of multiple authors engaging each other on their own terms.

THE NEED FOR A FOURTH-PERSON ONTOLOGY AND A MULTI-ENTRY APPROACH Criticisms of the hegemonic paradigm Inclusiveness is one central condition of a cosmopolitan philosophy, the subversion of hegemonic thinking is another. Most philosophers today are familiar with Edward Said’s (1935–2003) trailblazing critique of the geopolitical consequences inherent in the project of modernity that inevitably led to orientalism and the ‘colonialization of the mind’, Francois Lyotard’s (1924–98) shift from meta-narratives to ‘small narratives’ (petit-récits), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s evocation of the subaltern, Trinh Minh Ha’s encouragement to engage in ‘walking with the disappeared’ (2016), and Kwame Anthony Appiah (2007) plea for a cosmopolitan paradigm. Thus, the question arises what makes a fourth-person approach or a multi-entry approach unique? The quick answer to this question is that while above-mentioned theorists identify the problem, the question remains how can philosophy of religion become more diverse in content and method? How can we break open and diversify what Adichie calls ‘the single story’? Spivak implies a practice of giving a voice and listening to the marginalized that has echoes in the writings of feminists, womanists and postcolonial authors for, at least, the past sixty years. Similarly, Trinh asks us to walk with those who have been silenced and sacrificed. These are important strategies, but how does one envision a global philosophy of religion from them? I think the key to this problem lies in the way we negotiate the standpoint of the participants in the discourse. Postcolonial thinkers have correctly criticized the universalization of European subjectivity but what is the alternative: the subjectivity of the subaltern? A multiplicity, perhaps a cacophony of subjectivities? How would such a cacophony be regulated? by Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844–1900) ‘will to power’? Are we left with Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1929–80) alternative between ‘being-for-oneself’ (être-poursoi) and ‘being-for-the-other’ (être-pour-autrui)? It seems that if we do not change the underlying framework of the way we do philosophy of religion, we will always create subalterns and the disappeared.

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One of the key problems is that our discipline still adheres to the constructed dichotomy between subjectivity and objectivity whether it emerges as the ‘pseudo problem’ juxtaposing an insider and an outsider perspective (Jensen 2011, 30) or as the juxtaposition of first-person and third-person approaches. Juxtapositions like these not only essentialize subjectivity and objectivity but they also ignore that dialogue implies intersubjectivity and that the landscape of ideologies and identities cannot be reduced to two opposites but is extremely diverse. Therefore, I believe that the presumed alternative of first- and third-person approaches is not only artificial but actually mapped onto the grammatical structure of European languages and the metaphysical dualism that has dominated European and North-American philosophies for quite a while.4 Many philosophers today are critical of mind–body dualism and might even prefer network theories but yet retain the duality of subjectivity and objectivity. But how do we represent and negotiate a multiplicity of subjectivities? Even individuals represent and hypothesize their own subjectivity in writing and orality, while onlookers, no matter how detached from the subject, project their own individual heuristic lens, methodological assumptions and personal experience on the subject matter. All theorists exist in relationships and locate themselves in a discursive and ideological marketplace. Subjectivity, abstraction, relationality and diversity are fundamental features of philosophy of religion. I believe that the fourth-person approach can negotiate the first-, second- and third-person approaches.

What is a fourth-person approach? To understand the strengths of such a fourth-person approach, I would like to map out all four approaches and explore which story or stories each approach privileges. In some sense, “a first-person approach constitutes a philosophy of religion that is driven by MY narrative, a third-person approach by THE grand narrative, a second-person approach by TWO potentially conflicting stories, (and) a fourth-person approach by a MULTIPLICITY of vantage points.”5 The first-person and third-person approaches lend themselves to single-author works, while the second-person approach constitutes a singleauthor account of a dialogue and the fourth-person approach a single-author version of a multilogue. If the participants are caught up in their own individual systems, the multilogue degenerates into a cacophony; if one conductor is in charge, the multilogue transforms into a symphony in which all individual voices are surrendered in the service of one whole. A multilogue in which every participant maintains their own voice yet listens to everyone else, can be understood in analogy to free Jazz wherein the participants agree on a basic structure and then express themselves in-relation to each other. James Heisig calls such an interaction ‘antiphony’ (Heisig 2013, 128–30). He coins this term to translate Kōyama Iwao’s ‘kō’ō’, literally, ‘call-and-response’ (Heisig 2011, 738). In Desire and Nothingness, Heisig proceeds to develop his own theory of inter-religious and inter-traditional dialogue on this model. However, a cosmopolitan philosophy of religion is not necessarily harmonious but rather includes respectful disagreement and concrete engagement. The term ‘antiphony’ describes such a practice of global‑critical philosophy quite well. It presents the middle way between the harmony of a grand narrative and cacophony of multiple subjectivities. The relationship between the global community and the multiplicity of voices, between the grand narrative of equal representation promoted by global philosophies, on the one side, and the multiplicity of subalterns ironically silenced by the narrative of human rights and, therefore, empowered by postcolonial approaches, on the other,6 constitutes the key to a cosmopolitan philosophy of religion.

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Inspiration for the fourth-person approach I received inspiration for the multi-entry approach from Gilles Deleuze’s and Felix Guatarri’s rhizomatic model (1987) as well as the philosophies of Chengguan (738–839) and Dōgen (1200–53). Most formative for my development of first the fourth person and the multi-entry approach were Chengguan’s ‘four dharma worlds’ (si-fajie), the dharma worlds of ‘particulars’ (shi-fajie), ‘universals’ (li-fajie), ‘non-obstruction of universal and particular’ (lishiwuai-fajie), and ‘non-obstruction among particulars’ (shishiwuai-fajie) (T 1883.45.672), Dōgen’s notion of intersubjectivity, NISHIDA Kitarō’s interpretation of the three-liners common in the Zen literature, and, finally, Dōgen’s philosophy of ‘expression’ (dōtoku).7 Chengguan’s concept of four dharma worlds illustrates the role the particulars and the whole play in our conception of discourses. A third-person approach focuses on the world of particulars, while a fourth-person approach discloses how a multiplicity of voices combine to give expression to the whole. Many people have heard of confounding Zen sayings. One of the more famous ones is the following saying reported in The Supplemental Records of the Transmission of the Lamp (Xu chuangdeng lu): Thirty years ago, when I had not yet started meditation, I saw that mountains were mountains, waters were waters. After I had begun meditating and gained some knowledge, I saw that mountains were not mountains, waters were not waters. But now as I achieved a place free of desire, I see that mountains are just mountains and waters are just waters’ (T 2077.51.614) In his commentary on this verse, Dōgen paraphrases the first two lines as the standpoint of ‘persons outside’ and ‘persons inside the mountains’ (DZZ 1: 258). Nishida provides the analogy of a play to illustrate the three epistemic modalities denoted here. The ‘persons outside the mountains’ symbolize the third-person approach who observe the drama of this world from the standpoint of the audience’; ‘persons inside the mountains’, scholars applying a first-person approach, are like actors who ‘participate in the performance, are completely absorbed in it and any place for reflection upon the performance itself is eliminated’. But in reality, we ‘simultaneously perform in and observe the play’ (NKZ 15:291). But how can we understand this non-dual both/and, or to paraphrase Nishida’s neologisms, being both subject-and-yet-object’?8 A lot of interpreters of Kyoto School philosophy suggest that this terminology points towards a mystical oneness in which all dualities are dissolved. Dōgen, however, suggests a more meaningful way to understand this non-duality. In his commentary on the above-cited verses from the Transmission Records, Dōgen identifies intersubjectivity as the place of this non-dualism of subjectivity and objectivity when he observes that Zen master ‘Decheng emerges when the person sees Decheng’ and ‘the person emerges when Decheng encounters the person’ (DZZ 1:266). In other words, in the intersubjective encounter both self and other become ‘subject-and-yet-object’.9

PHILOSOPHY OF EXPRESSION Dōgen’s conception of ‘expression’10 The final piece of the puzzle is Dōgen’s philosophy of ‘expression’ (Jap. dōtoku), literally, ‘attaining the way’. In the fascicle Shōbōgenzō dōtoku, Dōgen gives an interpretation of the ‘encounter dialogues’ between masters and disciples, buddhas and ancestors. He

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proposes that ‘[a]ll Buddhas and all ancestors constitute expression. For this reason, when ancestors select ancestors, they ask whether or not they can express themselves. They ask this question with their heart/mind, they ask this question with their body; they ask this question with the walking staff, they ask this question with the pillar and stone lantern’ (DZZ 1: 302). People express their shared nature, buddha‑nature, verbally and non-verbally. Philosophy constitutes such a linguistic and discursive expression of our shared reality that focuses on the elucidation of arguments and concepts. These discursive utterances express our shared reality fully but not completely since (1) they are located in interpersonal encounters, and (2) ‘[w]hen we express expression we do not express non-expression’ (DZZ 1: 303). In other words, all discursive expressions are relational and incomplete. A global philosophy of religion thus requires a multiplicity, an infinity, of voices. A fourth-person approach presents such an antiphony, a multi-entry approach enacts it.

Metaphysics of expression A philosophy of expression combines these insights of Chengguan and Dōgen and expands on the Tiantai dictum ‘one-and-yet-many’. To translate the Buddhist vocabulary into more contemporary philosophical terms, I use Mutai Risaku’s terminology of ‘totality’ (Jap. zentai), ‘specific’ (Jap. shu), and ‘many’ (Jap. ta). ‘Totality’ refers to the spatiotemporal whole, while ‘many’ indicates the numerous individual moments of experience. The totality does not exist without being expressed in the infinite moments of experience across space and time (MRC 4:83-85). Based on Nishida Kitarō’s complex dialectics between individual and universal as ‘fourfold determination’ (NKZ 7: 264) I wish to call the relationship between this totality and the individuals the ‘fourfold dialectics of expression’: totality and individual only determine themselves if the totality is expressed in a specific individual and vice versa. In each individual moment of experience, the totality is expressed fully but not completely in the same sense in which every individual human being expresses the universal ‘humanity’ fully but not completely since, as Dōgen remarked, ‘whenever one side is realized another is obscured’ (DZZ 1:7). Mutai opines that since individual moments are ever-elusive and the totality can never be reached, human beings form ‘specific’ identities such as culture, religion, profession, etc. as their expression. While their specific identities are constructed vis-à-vis each other and are subject to change, human beings tend to reify, absolutize them and mistake them to be permanent realities when in fact they are impermanent and effervescent. I will return to this problem of reifying these impermanent expressions later, now I would like to examine the implication of postulating that the totality, or truth, is realized in/by numerous individual expressions.

The need for multiplicity To summarize: every identity is posited vis-à-vis a constructed “other” located in a field of multiplicity. Each specific (such as religious identities, truth claims and academic methods) constitutes a full but incomplete expression of reality/truth. Each specific is neither permanent nor absolute but temporary and in-relation. Applied to the discursive context this means that the starting point of philosophy is individual consciousness and a specific discourse. This starting point is neither permanent nor absolute but temporary and in-relation to other starting points. Each philosophical discourse constitutes a full but incomplete expression of the truth. Every individual discourse is necessary to construct

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a philosophy that is not only inclusive but also relevant. A philosophy of expression calls for the solidarity among and equality of philosophical approaches.11

The strategy of a philosophy of expression Thus understood, a philosophy of expression shifts the focus of the philosophical method significantly. The purpose of philosophical inquiry is no longer whether or not an argument is correct or not. A valid argument depends on its premises. Kurt Gödel (1906–78) has shown that mathematics as well as logic comprise systems that depend on axioms. The assessment of the argument structure and the premises is one of the great contributions of analytical philosophy in general and formal logic in particular. A philosophy of expression investigates what, in the case that the argument is more or less coherent, the premises of an argument express. In case of incoherent and invalid arguments, this approach will explore the reasons why these arguments failed. What standpoint do the premises of an argument disclose? A philosophy of expression shifts the focus from an ethics of judgement to an ethics of understanding. I use the term ‘ethics’ here since these methodological considerations determine whether or not specific systems and traditions are included in the philosophical discourse. This is an ethical question. A philosophy of expression, then, discloses what standpoint a philosophical position or system expresses and, subsequently, what aspects of the human experience or what kind of religious experience it highlights and gives voice to.

RESISTANCE TO GLOBALIZING PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Identity politics Despite our claims to universal applicability, we philosophers are not as inclusive as we like to be. Strategies of exclusion are often couched in the rhetoric of method but reveal identity politics, nevertheless. How many logic textbooks include Buddhist or Nyāya logic or the logic of Xunzi (third century BCE)? How many sections on the proofs of the existence of God include the proofs fashioned by the Mu’tazilites and the Nyāya philosophy or pair Pascal’s (1623–62) famous wager with Shinran’s (1173–1263) comparable ‘faith’ (Jap. shinjin) in ‘other power’ (Jap. tariki)? Some philosophers of mind like Evan Thompson include Buddhist texts and philosophers but these works are a minority. For example, the proponents of the new panpsychism such as Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers do not mention Inoue Enryō’s (1858–1919) panpsychism that preceded them by roughly 100 years. Of course, some texts are excluded from philosophical discussions since they are not translated into English and thus not known in the Anglo-American academia. One reason for this, in turn, lies in a presupposition about what can be counted as valuable philosophical discourse. And this presupposition is caused by either ignorance or identity politics. Cosmopolitan philosophies such as the multi-entry approach are needed to remedy this situation. Another reason lies in the limited horizon of human beings due to our psychological make-up.

‘It’s a small world after all’ I use this line from the famous children’s song not in the way it was intended. As mentioned earlier, Mutai challenged our tendency to reify our specific identities and expressions. In

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order to come to terms with the fact that the work of both of his teachers, Nishida and Tanabe Hajime (1885–1962), in the 1940s disclosed some nationalistic tendencies, he proposed that the cause for their missteps lay in the fallacy to mistake the specific, such as a national identity, for the absolute. Specifics are constructed in-relation to others and constantly changing. In addition, Mutai suggests are they function as ‘small worlds’ (Jap. shōsekai) (MRC 4:59): they appear to represent the world when in fact they reify one specific experience. Using Jean Piaget’s (1896–1980) language, I would like to suggest that we are limited by the horizon of our cognitive framework. We tend to ‘assimilate’ new experiences and ideas when, according to Piaget, we should ‘accommodate’ them by expanding our cognitive frameworks. If we fail to do so, we fall into hegemonic thinking and identity politics.

A fable To illustrate the origin of hegemonic thinking and identity politics that disrupt dialogues and multilogues and, I would like to propose a fable that is told by a series of ten pictures, the ‘Ten Wolf-Encounter-Pictures’ (十遇狼図), which are accompanied by ten descriptive poems.12 It is the story of a monkey that grows up in a monkey clan and sees the world through monkey eyes until its world is threatened by an ominous encounter with a wolf:​

FIGURE 8.1:  ‘猴子嬉树 monkeys playing in the trees’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

猴在树顶 相互嬉戲 全無干擾 這是猿界

high up in the trees the monkeys’ play is unencumbered there is no present danger it is the monkey world​

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FIGURE 8.2:  ‘練習独立 practicing independence’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

从树到树 小猴跳跃 脱离父母 練習独立

From tree to tree the little monkey jumps leaving the parents practising independence​

FIGURE 8.3:  ‘從樹看狼 seeing the wolf from the safety of the trees’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

身处树上 感到安全 虽闻狼嚎 猴是树王

the top of the trees feels peaceful and safe even though wolves howl in the distance monkey is the king of the trees​

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FIGURE 8.4:  ‘猴遇見狼 monkey encounters a wolf’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

为探新界 猴子离树 忽然之间 猴遇見狼

to explore new worlds monkey leaves the trees when, all of a sudden, a wolf shows up​

FIGURE 8.5:  ‘狼狩獵猴 wolf chases the monkey’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

凶残狠狼 追杀小猴 猴试逃脱 谁又称王

the ferocious wolf chases the monkey who escapes into the trees who is the king now?​

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FIGURE 8.6:  ‘自他停戰 the promise of a truce’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

休戰達成 各有領域 狼统地面 猴统树林

a truce is reached each has their territory wolf roams the land monkey rules the trees​

FIGURE 8.7:  ‘營救狼崽 rescuing the wolf cub’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

然有一天 河变洪流 猴来營救 共同强大

then, one day, the river becomes a torrent monkey comes to the rescue together they are stronger​

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FIGURE 8.8:  ‘一起旅行 travelling together’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

共同合作 互相学習 拜访狼家 猴明狼世

they now work together and learn from each other visiting the home of the wolf monkey understands the wolf’s world​

FIGURE 8.9:  ‘看水見狼 looking in the water – seeing the wolf’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

返回家後 upon returning home 猴飲甘泉 monkey drinks from the spring 猴望水时 in the water, however, 狼脸映出 wolf’s face is reflected​

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FIGURE 8.10:  ‘衆生共存 the co-existence of all beings’. © Gereon Kopf; idea, story, captions and poems by Gereon Kopf, illustrations by Amber Takano, Chinese captions and poems edited by Qianran Yang and Irene Lok.

在湖底部 無數面現 有帝釋網 衆生共存

at the bottom of the lake numerous beings appear it is Indra’s Net the co-existence of all beings

A meta-psychology of the resistance to cosmopolitan philosophy But what does this fable tell us about the relationship between representatives of various traditions and disciplines? In this section, I offer a metapsychology13 to shed some light on the reluctance of engaging in cross-traditional, cross-disciplinary and interpersonal dialogue. In the ten wolf-encounter-pictures. I chose a monkey to represent the self, inspired by the famous Chinese novel The Journey to the West (Xiyouqi). The monkey symbolizes an intrepid and resourceful agent, while the wolf symbolizes the other who is often experienced as menacing and, in cases of hegemony and oppression, actually constitutes a ‘clear and present danger’. In both cases the self experiences the ‘other’ as a threat to one’s world. There is, however, one significant difference. If the other threatens the existence and integrity of the self as in the cases of colonialism, racism and misogyny, this threat constitutes a real danger, and the self has to be protected (Figure 8.5). If, however, the very existence and integrity of the other simply interrupts the self’s assumption of how the world is supposed to be, the fear of the other is imagined and the other constitutes a necessary corrective to the self’s illusion (Figure 8.3). An example of the latter is the heteronormative fear that same-sex relationships and unions devalue the so-called ‘traditional marriage’. ​ A child, a member of cultural and/or religious group but also a PhD student internalizes the world view of one’s in-group, constructs a heuristic framework and participates in an already existing Lebenswelt. This heuristic framework, which is illustrated in Figure 8.11, provides the vision of a centralized and homogenous world. At one point, even members of tight-knit group and, especially, teenagers begin to ‘search for uniqueness’ (尋找自我) (graph 2) as illustrated by the second of the wolf pictures.​

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FIGURE 8.11:  ‘Picture One illustrates the “socialization of the self” (被社會化)’. I used Piktochart to illustrate these stages. © Gereon Kopf.

FIGURE 8.12:  “searching for uniqueness” (尋找自我)”. © Gereon Kopf.

Psychologically, this constitutes the state of ego-formation. But, as feminist psychologists, especially, Jessica Benjamin but also Confucian and Buddhist philosophers as well as thinkers in the so-called indigenous traditions throughout the ages have pointed out, ego-formation is not the process of a solitary individual that strives for independence but requires a relationship and what Jessica Benjamin calls, the paradox of ‘mutual recognition’ (Benjamin 1988, 23). The ego is always in-relation. At this stage, persons adopt the Lebenswelt of their in-group but give it a new centre: their own self.​ This corresponds to Jean-Paul Sartre’s ‘being-for-itself’ (être-pour-soi) and the ‘mind’ (citta) in early Buddhist philosophy. The self’s ego is at the center of its world, it treats the world as object of its own project and assimilates, in Piaget’s sense, the objects of its experience into its own world. Other individuals, identities and worldviews are constructed as others that fit neatly into the given world. One example of this comportment is theology of religion in which thinkers of one tradition or

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FIGURE 8.13:  Graph 3 indicates the world view of the self-conscious self-illustrated ‘knowingoneself-constructing-the-other’ (知自構他). © Gereon Kopf.

FIGURE 8.14:  The ‘encounter of an independent other’ (自偶遇他) illustrated by 8.4 of the ten wolf pictures ruptures the homogenous and meaning-bestowing world (graph 4). © Gereon Kopf.

culture assess beliefs and practices of another on own their terms disregarding the motivations, arguments and concerns of those being talked about. The purpose of this exercise is, of course, not to understand the other but to exert the hegemony of the self over the other. I call this stage ‘know​ing-o​nesel​f-whi​le-co​nstru​cting​-the-​other​’ (知自構他).​ The two worlds constructed by the self and other collide and combine to an antithetical encounter in which the projects intended by and the worlds constructed by the two individuals oppose each other. In the tension between these projects self and other fight for hegemony of the territory in the case of the wolf pictures, or of control of the discourse in politics but also in academia. Interfaith dialogue is an example of this stage. The question, then, becomes who determines the terms and the criteria of the dialogue or encounter. In Satrean terminology, the self’s choice is between being-for-itself or being-for-the-other. In the wolf pictures, the monkey exists for-itself in the tree but becomes the object of the wolf’s desire, a being-for-the-other so to speak, on the ground. On this stage, the self experiences the ‘other’ as independent agent. The other’s mere existence destroys the world constructed by the self, by which the other was imagined.​

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FIGURE 8.15:  The stage of ‘being-for-the-other’ (être-pour-autrui, 為他存在). In some sense this is a reversal of figure 8.3. © Gereon Kopf.

FIGURE 8.16:  The third possible result of the encounter between self and other is ‘the truce between self and other’ (自他停戰) as illustrated by figure 8.6. © Gereon Kopf.

However, this state is one of the three possible results of the encounter of two independent agents: conflict (Figures 8.4 and 8.14), hegemony (Figures 8.5 and 8.15), and an uneasy truce (Figures 8.6 and 8.16). An example of hegemony (Figure 8.15) is religious exclusivism as well as disciplinary and methodological dogmatism. This stage also illustrates that, as Jessica Benjamin convincingly argued (1977), difference leads to hegemony. Its consequence is the objectification of self, the comportment of ‘kno wing-the-other-forgetting-the-self’ (知他忘自), and what Sartre calls ‘being-for-onese lf-as-for-an-other’ (‘soi-même comme un autre’).​ The comportment of finding a truce (Figures 8.6 and 8.16) is exemplified by the contrat social as a common project shared by the citizens of a country and by the NOMA theory that assigns ‘religion’ and ‘science’ to two ‘non-overlapping magisteria’ (Gould 1997). However, this comportment embodies the dichotomy of opposites and marks the dissociation of our Lebenswelt into two unconnected realms. The three dead-ends of the antithetical encounter illustrated by Figures 8.14–8.16 can be only broken, if self and other move beyond a merely thetic modality of existence and interaction. Both have to undergo an existential transformation. In Figure 8.7, the monkey and wolf ‘realize an underlying commonality’ (找同存異) (Figure 8.17).​ This commonality is evoked by the ‘presence of the third’.14 In the wolf picture, this is the wolf cub that reminds the monkey of their own childhood. Psychologically, speaking the presence of the third breaks open the presumed clash between self and other and reveals the complexity of identity formation and choices. Imagine,

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FIGURE 8.17:  “realizing an underlying commonality” (找同存異). © Gereon Kopf.

for example, the trialogue between an Egyptian, Evangelical Christian, a Christian feminist in the U.S.A. and an Islamic feminist in Egypt. If only two of them dialogue, the focus will lie on their differences. In a trialogue, commonalities become visible and alliances emerge. The former two are united by the Christian tradition, the latter two, by feminism, and the first and third, by the Arabic language of worship. In this way, the presence of the third drives home an underlying solidarity and commonality and creates space for shifting allegiances.​ The commonality with the other that flashes into the self’s consciousness in the presence of the third has to be cultivated by ‘putting oneself in the shoes of the other’ (换位思考). This can happen, for example, through the practice of a common pilgrimage to sites significant to one’s culture as hinted at in Ching-yuen Cheung’s ‘Yasukuni, Okinawa and Fukushima: Philosophy of sacrifice in the nuclear age.’ [in Chapter 16 of this volume.] Shigenori Nagatomo describes this process of cultivating an athetic insight in his ‘theory of attunement’ (1992). Basis for this cultivation is a modality of engagement that is different from the objectifying intentionality. Buddhists call the attunement of the emotional interaction with the environment and others ‘intersecting paths of feeling response’ (kannō dōkō 感応道交).​ This stage reveals the dialogical self that is who it is only in-relation to an other, embodies Benjamin’s paradox of ‘mutual recognition’, proposes a radical intersubjectivity and marks the decentralization of self. It discloses that the self comprises an open system. In some sense, this stage reflects Dōgen’s re-reading of the famous words attributed to Bodhidharma, ‘you attained my marrow’ (T 2035.49.291), as ‘you attain me, I attain you’ (DZZ 1: 333).​ The ‘demand of the fourth’15 that is based on nonthetic expressions evokes this multiplicity and reveals that the self always constitutes a hybrid/liminal self. Epistemes that distinguish between a first-person and a third-person approach, between East

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FIGURE 8.18:  Picture/graph 8 illustrates the cultivation of this athetic modality. © Gereon Kopf.

FIGURE 8.19:  This Cultivation leads to the stage of ‘knowing the other – understanding oneself’ (知他明自) as illustrated by picture/graph 9. © Gereon Kopf.

FIGURE 8.20:  At the foundation of the relation self is a we web of multiplicity, which ‘exists together and complements each other’ (共存互補) (graph 10). © Gereon Kopf.

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and West, between monotheism and polytheism or between religious and areligious people are based in a thetical modality that defines itself in-relation to an other and thus imagines an antithetical conflict with an imagined other. This implied dualism creates the conditions for politics of exclusion and hegemonic thinking. The multi-entry approach challenges this approach in that it presupposes a fourth-person ontology, which envisions a multiplicity of agents who relate to each other using, simultaneously, thetic athetic and nonthetic modalities. The former carves out identities by highlighting differences, the latter discloses fluid hybrid identities and liminal selves that share common ground. Both are important. That’s why a multi-entry approach strives to engage a multiplicity of approaches with each other to communally express the shared commonalities not only fully but also completely.

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT In the last section, I would like to introduce some practical guidelines16 of how a multilogue envisioned by the multi-entry approach could work. I present here the blueprint of the five foundations, disqualifications, conditions and strategies of engagement in abbreviated form.

Foundations of engagement The foundations of such a multilogue are (1) ‘acknowledge your social position’ (地 位意識), (2) ‘erase all power difference – level the playing field’ (消除力差 – 公平場 所), (3) ‘protect all participants’ (守護大家), (4) ‘remember the past – envision the future’ (記憶過去 – 展望未來), and (5) ‘search for the common good’ (求共同善). All participants have to be aware of their own socio-historical context. Many of us embrace the ideal of equality, but this ideal is a far-off goal. Our relationships are determined by our history and by real-existing power relations. Without not only an understanding of these historically created power structures but also the recognition of past and present victims of hegemonic politics and discourses, the multilogue is doomed to fail and, at best, deteriorates to a charade or a discursive photo op. To envision an equal encounter of cultures and disciplines, we first have to recognize and name past and present inequalities. This is especially important in the engagement between the traditions of the colonizers and colonized. Without this recognition an encounter of, for example, white Christians and Lakota in the Midwest is immensely difficult. Only on the basis of a shared understanding of history can we successfully formulate the vision of a common good.

Disqualifications of engagement To protect all participants and to guarantee that the multilogue is fruitful, it is best to avoid the following behaviour: (1) ‘male fide assumptions’ (惡意推測), the assumption that the ‘other’ does not participate in good faith, is only interested in personal gain, and intends to sabotage the multilogue. This bad faith assumption is one of the main reasons the political debate in the United States has come to a crashing hold; (2) ‘ad hominem arguments’ (人身攻撃); (3) ‘all-or-nothing’ or ‘pars-pro-toto-thinking’ (以 偏概全), the assumption that the negative behaviour or statement of one person is

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symptomatic for the moral deficiency or the irrationality of the other’s position; (4) ‘ethics of judgment’ (道徳判斷), the intent to find reasons to condemn rather than understand the other; (5) the attitude of ‘conf​i rmin​g-the​-self​-by-d​efeat​ing-t​he-ot​ her’ (認己排他), which sees the purpose of all discourse in proving the superiority of one’s own tradition. The third attitude can be seen in Paul Churchland’s dismissal of ‘all religion’ based on his narrow understanding of Christianity in Matter and Consciousness.

Conditions of engagement Instead of these disqualifications it is suggested that the participants of the multilogue subscribe to the following attitudes: (1) the ‘bona fide assumption’ (好意推測), the presupposition that, barring evidence to the contrary, all participants in the multilogue sincerely want to understand the standpoint of all other participants and work towards the common good; (2) ‘respectful language’ (尊己重他); (3) ‘pars pro pars’ or ‘toto is elusive’ thinking (偏不概全 ), the attitude that only specific beliefs can be philosophically examined but not traditions and cultures in toto; (4) an ‘ethics of understanding’ (理 解倫理), the attitude that the goal of the multilogue is to understand not to condemn the conversation partners as ‘irrational’ etc.; (5) the desire to ‘expansion of knowledge by means of forgetting-the-self-gaining-the-world’ (擴展知識 忘己得世), the attitude that the goal of the multilogue is to further our understanding not to confirm our previously held beliefs. Unfortunately, even in academia the latter attitude is frequently evident.

Strategies of engagement If the foundations, the disqualifications and conditions are agreed upon, the multilogue can begin. Its basic strategies are (1) ‘listening to the other’ (聆聽他者), (2) a thorough and systematic ‘examinations of assumptions, arguments, and beliefs’ (考察論點) on their own terms which also includes a discussion of the other views from those particular perspectives; (3) ‘standpoint analysis’ (分析立場), by means of which we assess what standpoint and cognitive frames specific beliefs express; (4) the applications of the ‘dialectics of similarities and differences’ (辯證異同), which facilitates a differentiated understanding of a multiplicity of positions and does not rely on wholesale condemnations of systems; (5) ‘locating the conversation partners on the ideological landscape’ (重視語 境). The goal of a multilogue is to examine what positions and attitudes certain beliefs express and to thus achieve a deeper understanding of the matter at hand, here the phenomenon we call ‘religion’.

CONCLUSION The multi-entry approach facilitates global-critical philosophy of religion through rules of engagement based on a fourth-person ontology and the philosophy of expression. I anticipate that many philosophers of religion – especially those trained in analytical philosophy or those strongly committed to one specific set of religious beliefs – might have qualms with some of the fundamental assumptions underlying this approach. But it is not necessary for participants in the multilogue to agree with these assumptions as long as they commit to the twenty rules. It is not the intention of this essay to convince

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philosophers to embrace a fourth-person ontology but to provide a framework in which representatives of multiple traditions and practitioners of various disciplines can meet as equal conversation partners. This does not mean that all truth claims are presumed to have equal truth value––that would be absurd––but that to keep our discipline relevant in the current, digital age characterized by the Anthropocene and a global pandemic, we need to challenge hegemonic structures, develop inclusive practices of discourse and enter into such a multilogue. Due to space limitations, I am unable to develop more detailed criteria of how a dialogue of, for example, first- and third-person approaches can be facilitated. It should be obvious that personal experiences do not carry the same discursive weight as publicly verifiable hypotheses even though both are important participants in the multilogue. Instead, I focused on outlining a multilogue envisioned by the multi-entry approach. I cannot predict its outcome in any way but see it as the only option to break the discursive stalemate, in method and in content, in academia and to shatter the hegemony of the single story in philosophy of religion.

ABBREVIATIONS 1. DZZ

Dōgen zenji zenshū 『道元禅師全集』[Complete Works of Zen Master Dōgen]. 2 vols, ed. Dōshū Ōkubo 大久保道舟, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 1969–1970.

2. MRC

Mutai risaku chosakushū『務台理作著作集』 [Collected Works of Mutai Risaku]. 9 vols, Tokyo: Kobushi Shobō, 2000–2002.

3. NKZ

Nishida kitarō zenshū 『西田幾多郎全集』 [Complete Works of Kitarō Nishida]. 20 vols, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1988.

4. T 

Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 『大正新脩大藏經』 [Buddhist Canon - The Taishō Version], ed. Junjirō Takakusu and Kaigyoku Watanabe, Tokyo: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō Kankōkai, 1961.

NOTES 1. A discussion in my course ‘Global Tradition’ reminded me to fine-tune the terminology in this essay. 2. For discussions of cosmopolitanism see Appiah (2207) and Derrida (1992). Similarly, Evan Thompson (2020) is calling for a ‘cosmopolitan’ philosophy of mind. 3. My inspiration for this word choice is Eric Nathan Dickman’s essay in Phi​loso​phyo​freligion​​ .org : ‘Disturbing the Definite Article: Taking “The” out of Institutionalized Philosophy of Religion’, 11 June 2021. Available online: https://phi​loso​phyo​freligion​.org/​?p​=525516 4. An exploration of the connection between grammar and ways of thinking, would be exciting but requires significantly more space than this essay can provide. However, the Ainu language (the language of the indigenous people of Hokkaidō, Japan, includes a fourth-person pronoun. Similar cases can be found in the Eskeleut languages. José Andrés Alonso de la Fuente and Anna Bugaeva have been kind enough to point me into this direction. Also, see Toyama (2010).

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5. Gereon Kopf “How to Make Philosophy of Religion Relevant for the Future,” essay in the series “Is there a Future of the Philosophy of Religion,” published on Philosophy of Religion: big question philosophy for scholars and students hosted by Boston University (Philosophyofreligion.org) (12/2021). 6. Mutai Risaku argues the greatest challenge is to unite the demands of ‘peace’, which requires a unity, and ‘justice’ emphasizing the right of the individuals (MRC 9:217). 7. In my recent work, I have replaced the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ with the term ‘dōtokuism’ to describe my approach (Kopf 2022, 92). 8. Nishida tends to use phrases of the form ‘A-soku-(-)A’. 9. For a more detailed discussion see Kopf (2023). 10. For a more detailed discussion see Kopf (2014). 11. For a discussion of how such a discourse can function see Ziporyn (2016, 235–72). In an engaging thought experiment, Ziporyn illustrates how every position can be included into a moral discourse that results in a robust moral philosophy. The same reasoning can be applied to truth claims. 12. The idea, story and poems are mine. The poems were illustrated by Amber Takano. I thank Qianran Yang and Irene Lok for checking my Chinese. 13. I would like to thank Ching-yuen Cheung for checking the Chinese in this section. 14. I have argued for the importance of recognizing the ‘presence of the third’, elsewhere (Kopf 2018). 15. I have argued for the importance of recognizing the ‘demand of the fourth’, elsewhere (Kopf 2018). 16. These ‘20 rules’ were inspired by the Q&A session after my guest lecture in Chiara Robbiano’s seminar on ‘Dōgen in dialogue with contemporary thinkers’ on 15 April 2021. At this time, Anna Hilton Ibold specifically asked about how we can protect historically disenfranchised participants in multilogues.

OTHER WORKS Anderson, Pamela Sue (1997), A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality of Myths and Religious Beliefs, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Appiah, Kwame Anthony (2007), Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, New York W. W. Norton & Company. Benjamin, Jessica (1977), ‘The End of Internalization: Adorno’s Social Psychology’, Telos 32: 42–64. Benjamin, Jessica (1988), Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination, New York: Random House. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari (1987), One Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi, New York: Continuum. Derrida, Jacques (1992), The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe, Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press. Eshleman, Andrew, ed. (2008), Readings in the Philosophy of Religion: East Meets West, Oxford: Wiley–Blackwell. Gould, Stephen Jay (1997), ‘Non-Overlapping Magisteria’, Natural History, 106: 16–26. Heisig, James W., trans. (2011), ‘Identity in Antophony’, in James W. Heisig, Thomas P. Kasulis, John C. Maraldo (eds), Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 738–43, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.

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Heisig, James W. (2013), Nothingness and Desire: An East-West Philosophical Antiphony, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press. Jensen, Jeppe Sinding (2011), ‘Revisiting the Insider-Outsider Debate: Dismantling a PseudoProblem in Religious Studies’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 23: 29–47. Joy, Morny, ed. (2011), After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy of Religion, Calgary: University of Calgary Press. Kanaris, Jim, ed. (2018), Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion [A Possible Future], Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Knepper, Timothy (2022), Philosophies of Religion: A Global and Critical Introduction, Expanding Philosophy of Religion, London: Bloomsbury Academics. Kopf, Gereon (2014), ‘Philosophy as Expression: Towards a New Model of Global Philosophy’, Nishida tetsugakkai nenpō (The Annual Review of the Nishida Philosophy Association), 11: 181–55. Kopf, Gereon (2018), ‘Self, Selflessness, and the Endless Search for Identity: A Meta-Psychology of Human Folly’, in Ingolf U. Dalferth (ed.), Self or No-Self, 239–62, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. Kopf, Gereon (2019), ‘Emptiness, Multiverses, and the Conception of a Multi-Entry Philosophy’, APA Newsletter on Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies, 19 (1): 34–6. Kopf, Gereon (2022), ‘Envisioning Multi-Cultural and Multi-Disciplinary Engagement: Lessons from the Twelve Wolf Encounter Pictures’, Culture and Dialogue, 10(1): 60–94. Kopf, Gereon (2023), ‘Dōtoku (Expression)’, in Sarah Flavel and Chiara Robbiano (eds), Key Concepts in World Philosophies: A Toolkit for Philosophers, 381–91, London: Bloomsbury Academics. Kōyama, Iwao 高山岩男 (1976), Bashoteki ronri to kō’ō no genri [The Logic of Basho and the Principle of Antiphony], Tokyo: Sōbunsha. Nagatomo, Shigenori (1992), Attunement Through the Body, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Rue, Loyal (2006), Religion is not about God: How Spiritual Traditions Nurture our Biological Nature and Why the Fail, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Runzo, Joseph (2001), Global Philosophy of Religion. A Short Introduction, Oxford: Oneworld Publications. Sharma, Arvind (1997), The Philosophy of Religion: A Buddhist Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharma, Arvind (2007), The Philosophy of Religion: A Sikh Perspective, New Dehli: Rupa Publications. Sharma, Arvind (2010), A Primal Perspective on Philosophy of Religion, Dordrecht: Springer. Smart, Ninian (1981), Worldviews: Crosscultural Explorations of Human Belief, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Thompson, Evan (2020), Why I am not a Buddhist, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Toyama, Shigehiko 外山滋比古 (2010), Daiyonninshō [The Fourth Person Pronoun], Tokyo: Misuzu Shobō. Trinh, T. Minh-Ha (2016), Lovecidal: Walking with the Disappeared, New York: Fordham University Press.

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Wildman, Wesley (2011), Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Yountai, An and Eleanor Craig, eds (2021), Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ziporyn, Brook (2016), Emptiness and Omnipresence: An Essential Introduction to Tiantai Buddhism, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Chapter 9

Comparison of religious ideas in philosophy of religion ROBERT CUMMINGS NEVILLE

INTRODUCTION The topic of this chapter is the comparison of religious ideas within philosophy of religion. Much more than ideas can be compared among religions, even within philosophy of religion. Often these comparisons are made by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists and historians, although philosophers of religion also compare practices and existential elements of religion.1 No sharp and uncontestable lines exist between ideas, practices and existential workings of religion. Nevertheless, here I shall focus on ideas as generally understood and shall present a theory about their comparison. Philosophy of religion in Europe and America has been accused of covert Christian bias leading to colonialist misreadings of the ideas (and sometimes practices) of other religions. This accusation has been made against those in favour of Christianity, such as Friedrich Schleiermacher in his On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers and G. W. F. Hegel in his Lectures on Philosophy of Religion. A similar accusation has been made against those critical of Christian theism and deism, such as David Hume in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In the case of Hume and his followers in analytic philosophy, part of the accusation has been that they know or care little about any other religion except Christianity, perhaps Judaism, and perhaps secular European theism/ deism. This is largely true about them. Schleiermacher and Hegel knew a great deal about other religions, however, especially in light of the state of European scholarship in their day. Nevertheless, they were rightly accused of using European, if not Christian, frames of mind to set up and assess comparisons. Today, to base philosophy of religion on fairly serious erudition about religions of many kinds is imperative. Colonialist biases are vulnerable to correction, and the state of scholarship is such that a great many texts of the major (and minor) religious traditions have been translated into European languages in which philosophy of religion is mainly conducted. Philosophy of religion, of course, does not have to limit itself to comparative topics. Much contemporary philosophy of religion is an apologetic for Christian theology. The work of Alvin Plantinga and Bernard Lonergan, S.J., and the more historical work of Marilyn McCord Adams, along with their abundant students, is of this sort. But even

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their sort of Christian philosophy of religion should, in my view, frame its topics out of a background of knowledge of different religions, especially their ideas and how they relate. The reason for this global grounding of even Christian philosophy of religion is less from Christianity than it is from philosophy. Christianity can be made as narrow and exclusive as you might want. But philosophy has entered a new stage. Whereas most philosophers are Westerners with Western educations, nearly all of them know about other cultural traditions. Some of them know rather much about those others. And some of us know a disciplined amount. So I expect that nearly all philosophers will feel a least a bit of guilt about having only a Christian approach to the issues of philosophy within their religion. Moreover, that guilt is wholly deserved, if not much to be answered. At least on the big issues, for instance the nature of God or of salvation, attention ought to be called to alternatives to the various Christian models. I hope to persuade you by the end of this essay to make this attention to alternatives an imperative. But first we must attend to comparison. The nature of comparison is itself an advanced topic in philosophy of religion. An already abundant literature is rapidly growing concerning both the methods of comparison and the results of work so far. Sometimes, as in the work of Francis X. Clooney, S.J., this is called ‘comparative theology’ (Clooney 2010). Other times it is comparative philosophy about religious topics. Mainly Euro-American religious discussions draw a great distinction between philosophy and theology; in most other traditions, theology is just the religious part of philosophy or the philosophical part of religious life. These distinctions do not amount to much in any case, however, because any great thinker in the general area is going to redesign the field, as Hume, Kant, Schleiermacher and Hegel did. Or Plato, Aristotle, Mahi and Plotinus. Or the Bhagavad Gītā, the Sāṃkhya Sūtra, Śaṅkara, and Abhinavagupta. Or the Dhammapada, Vasubandu, Nāgārjuna and Hui-neng. Or Laozi, Zhuangzi, Huainanzi and Wang Bi. Or Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi and Zhu Xi. All of these greats, and many more, changed their whole fields, not just reflections on philosophy of religion. In this chapter I mean to write about the comparison of religious ideas as might be done by philosophers (even if their academic degrees or employment are in theology or religious studies rather than philosophy). The relevant distinction is between the philosophical comparison of religious ideas and the social science comparisons of other aspects of religion and religious cultures. Of course, these two sides, the philosophical and the social scientific, can benefit from learning from each other and many important thinkers are both philosophers and scientists. In this chapter I will analyse an approach to the philosophical comparison of religious ideas. It is comparison of religious ideas according to their content or subject matter, with methodological considerations aimed at being fruitful, unbiased and especially vulnerable to correction. This is the approach generally followed by the Comparative Religious Ideas Project at Boston University described in footnote 3 and referred to in what follows.2 I will briefly discuss an alternative. It is to expand the base of one’s own religious ideas and commitments, with methodological considerations aimed at being faithful to one’s base but also asking what can be learned from the study of the ideas of other religions; this is a kind of theological apologetics in the tradition of ‘faith seeking understanding’. We can learn important things from both these approaches. But the first takes comparison most seriously.

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COMPARISON BY SUBJECT MATTER Comparison by subject matter begins by noting that all philosophers of religion and other comparativists are conditioned by their social location in religion, intellectual traditions, cultures and employment, as well as by age, experience, the luck of friendships, historical settings and personal experiences. While striving for consciousness of these social locations to control for bias, however, this approach stresses the development of methodologies and a backlog of comparative work where the religious ideas themselves set the agenda. On the one hand comparison needs comparative categories with respect to which ideas from different religions can be compared and on the other hand it needs the texts and other intellectual venues articulating the content of the religious ideas. The work of comparison then consists in analysing how the various contents to be compared specify the comparative category in various ways, with similarities and differences. Although one’s own religious ideas, practices and orientations might or might not be altered by comparative work, this approach to comparison is controlled by the disciplined orientation to be good about the subject matters being compared. To be sure, the more one knows about religions and how they compare, the more one’s own positive and negative perspectives on religion become more sophisticated. My presentation of this approach here is something like an ideal type. I shall try to expose some basic elements of the logical of comparison. Different actual comparative practices illustrate this logic in many versions, or various parts of it. Jeffrey J. Kripal (2014) discusses different approaches to comparison of religions (including scientific studies) that have been practised since ancient times through many changes down to comparative programmes today. His delightfully mischievous historical account shows how variations have played out in the very meaning of ‘religion’. Many of these approaches to comparison illustrate different versions of the logical of comparison by subject matter, different parts or different stresses, within the ideal type. I intend the ideal type to be normative in the following sense. Comparison of religious ideas in this approach is indefinitely self-correcting regarding its comparative categories, indefinitely self-correcting regarding the contents it takes to be compared, indefinitely self-correcting regarding how it says the ideas compare, and indefinitely self-correcting regarding how it puts various comparisons of religious ideas together in systematic or unsystematic ways. Another way of saying this is that all aspects of this approach to comparison are fallible and methodologically recognized as such. Furthermore, these aspects should be engaged in the spirit of setting themselves up to be vulnerable to correction where they might be wrong. Instead of entrenching positions regarding comparative categories, interpretations of ideas to be compared, actual comparisons and the connections of comparisons, this approach exposes itself as on a high hill to invite criticism, amendment, falsification and further inquiry. This emphasis on vulnerability to correction reflects a pragmatic philosophical background, as will be brought out in much that follows.3 In addition to its stress on fallibilism and vulnerability, pragmatism also stresses that we already know and live with a great richness of experience. We know a lot about religious ideas, even if our knowledge has recognized lacunae and might be improved in the future in ways we cannot imagine now. In fact, the knowledge or beliefs we live with should not be doubted unless there is good reason to doubt. We do not doubt in principle but only because we have some suspicion that something is wrong with our understanding.4 Most well-educated philosophers of religion and other comparativists of religious ideas

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already have a store of comparative categories and ideas about the main comparisons. Further comparative inquiry aims to correct and extend this store and make it vulnerable to criticism.

COMPARATIVE CATEGORIES Comparative categories are the respects in which religious ideas are compared. Things cannot be compared except in certain respects. Aaron Stalnaker calls these ‘bridging concepts’.5 Comparative categories are logically vague, in Peirce’s sense.6 A category is logically vague when it allows of being specified by things that might be contradictory of each other or otherwise not determinate with respect to one another. For instance, the category of ‘self’ is vague with respect to whether it connects to an underlying greater reality, as most forms of Hinduism claim, or is empty, as most forms of Buddhism claim, a distinction that was developed by Hindus and Buddhists in explicit contradiction of each other.7 ‘Self’ is also vague with respect to whether it should be understood with a Skinnerian behaviourist model, a Freudian psychodynamic model or a functionalist computer model. Furthermore, ‘self’ is vague with respect to whether it is specified with religious models or scientific ones. That ‘self’ is vague means that as a category it can be specified by or apply to any one of these instances. From the standpoint of the category as vague, any one of them might be true, although they cannot all be true together on the face of it. Further inquiry might show that they indeed are all true in some respect or other, but not in the same respect; this would require saying just how they compare under the vague category of self. The first place to control for bias in comparison of religious ideas is to examine whether the comparative category at hand allows for and is friendly to the expression of all of the instances that might fall under it. If the category of ‘self’ is friendly to the Hindu theories of self but not to the Buddhist, or the behaviourist but not the cognitive scientific, then it is biased and needs to be modified. At the beginning of inquiry, often it is difficult to tell whether the comparative category is biased, and the inquiry needs to wait until more specifications of the category are examined. The result of this is that the comparative category remains a hypothesis ready for modification and development throughout the whole of the inquiry. A candidate comparative category is needed to get the comparison started, but it must be kept under constant review. All through the development of comparisons, the comparative category itself is likely to be changing. Sometimes comparativists are tempted to just stop the critical inquiry into amending the comparative category and claim that, well, I’m just comparing according to the category I meant to start with. Comparing religious ideas of the self, you could say that you declare Buddhism not to have anything to compare or to have a deficient version because of its anātman (no-self) doctrine. Comparing religious ideas of God, you could say that Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism and some forms of Hinduism are not religious because they do not have ideas of a supreme God or believe in too many gods with none supreme. But those religions do have alternative conceptions of supreme ultimacy, and those alternatives should be compared under a properly revised and tolerant comparative category, for instance, ultimacy. Only prolonged inquiry can discover what conceptions are genuine alternatives to those under comparative examination. Comparative categories for religious ideas can be of many sorts. The Comparative Religious Ideas Project compared religions with respect to their understandings of the

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human condition, ultimate realities and religious truth. These are extremely broad comparative categories (and can be understood by funding agencies as culturally important) and were broken down into many subcategories. More specific categories could be used for comparison, for instance religious teachers and gurus, or avatars and human incarnations. Or one could compare intoxication rituals or food prohibitions. Many categories are interesting and can be pursued because of the interests of the comparativists. I shall return to the connections among comparative categories shortly.

SPECIFICATIONS The specifications of comparative categories are what the ideas being compared have to say about the category, for instance about selfhood, ultimacy, gurus or food prohibitions. The specifications need to be detailed in laying out of what the ideas say, in their own term. The result is that the comparative category is enriched by Hindu theories of the self and also by Buddhist theories of the self, or by monotheistic, Brahmanical and Chinese Daoist and Confucian theories of ultimacy. This detailed specification transforms the comparative category so as to have comparative content, although the many different specifications are not yet compared. Specification itself allows of degrees. In the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, Livia Kohn and her collaborator James Miller lumped Daoism, Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism together to discuss what Chinese religions say about the human condition, ultimate realities and religious truth. They argued that these traditions overlap so much in daily life and have interacted intellectually throughout history that it would be false to separate them. At the other end of the spectrum, Francis Clooney and his collaborator Hugh Nicholson, say little about Hinduism as a whole, focusing on the Vedānta tradition, for instance, and there not on the whole tradition but on one representative, Vedānta Deśika, and were happiest dealing with just one text from one stage in Deśika’s writing career. The other comparativists in the Project fell between these extremes, venturing fairly general comparisons but set within the histories of the traditions they represented for comparison and happiest when dealing with specific texts. All of these degrees or modes of specification are legitimate and the conversations negotiating the differences are extremely fruitful. Ideally, comparative inquiry would fill in all the levels and modes of specificity, subject to constant revision in light of what each has to say about the others. As specifications of comparisons proceed, they take on historical depth, for instance showing how Yoga and Vedānta differently appropriate Sāṃkhya ideas, or how Advaita Vedānta and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta compare with one another. The work of specification of comparative ideas indicates how comparison is not only for broad visions but also goes all the way down in analysis of religious ideas. Specification of a comparative category also varies in scope, that is, the number of different ideas compared. Specification has degrees of extension. Comparison of Hindu and Buddhist ideas of the self can be supplemented by comparing those with more individualistic, agent-oriented ideas in Judaism, Christianity, Paganism and Islam. This points to the fact that specification of the comparative categories naturally opens to questions about alternative possible specifications. The category itself will not be well-understood until it has been filled in with all the alternative ways it might be specified. Of course, ‘all’ is a fallible notion here. As the specifications and their comparisons

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become more sophisticated, and shift through questioning one another, new alternatives might show up.

COMPARISON Comparison itself can take place only when the comparativist knows how the ideas to be compared differently specify the comparative category. The Hindus say one thing about the self and Buddhists something different. Comparison then takes place when inquiry is made into how these are different and similar. In what respects do the Hindus interpret the self, and in what respects do the Buddhists? Are they talking about the same thing? Are they saying different things about the same thing? Are they saying the same thing about the same thing using different language? Are they using the same language to say different things about different things, misleading comparativists to a false similarity? Comparison is saying just how the ideas compare. Of course, comparison is enormously complex because it needs to work through all the levels and modes of specification that relate differently in different traditions or thinkers. It needs to set specific comparisons in the different historical trajectories of the ideas compared. It needs to attend to the subtle shifts in the comparative categories themselves as they are modified to shed bias about what can specify them. It needs to backtrack again and again as the comparisons make the comparativists re-evaluate how they had specified the ideas compared. Comparison asks questions of ideas or theories that were not asked in their native contexts and the ideas might change in addressing those new questions. Comparison does not leave the positions of religious ideas alone, but challenges and alters them. This happened when the orthodox schools of Hinduism organized themselves against the Buddhists, and then again in the later Hindu-Buddhist debates. It happened when Hellenistic Judaism, Christianity, and Paganism reorganized themselves in comparative interaction with one another, and then again with the rise of Islam. Comparison constantly shifts the ideas being compared.

RELATIONS AMONG COMPARATIVE CATEGORIES Comparative categories do not stand alone when being specified and their specifications are compared. An artificial beginning with a single category very quickly gets complicated. Theories of the self are obviously related to different ideas about religious salvation or fulfilment, for instance attainment of immortality or ceasing the round of karmic reincarnations, neither of which is particularly attractive to Confucian concerns for cosmic harmony though some of which are attractive to Daoists seeking transformative immortality. In the first year of the Comparative Religious Ideas Project the comparativists were hesitant to speak outside their own specialties and distrusted their comparative categories. It fell to Wildman and me to make actual comparisons, and we divided the category of the human condition into cosmological subcategories and personal and social subcategories. The cosmological subcategory we divided into sub-subcategories of issues of unity, ontological status, value and causation. The subcategory of the personal and social I (Wildman demurred) divided into issues of personal identity, obligation, human predicaments and affiliations. These subcategorial divisions allowed us to say how what the specialists said about their subject compared in many instances.

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Nevertheless, the system of categories, subcategories and sub-subcategories was extremely rigid and clunky. It did not lend itself to the historical dynamism of any of the ideas compared, it was a bare snapshot of the comparative categories at the moment of my editorial work, not reflecting the dynamic revisions of those categories, and it killed the living dynamism of our year’s comparative conversations. The second, third and fourth years of the project elicited much bolder comparisons from the historical specialists with much more dynamic comparative results. The published volumes from that Project are greatly enhanced by Wildman’s ongoing commentary on the conversation itself. The downside of the Comparative Religious Ideas Project was that it was too exhausting. The diversity of kinds of historical and philosophical expertise and the constant feedback just about every month for four years, requiring both conversation and written responses, was a very fine guarantee of its vulnerability for correcting bias. The main participants were young and vigorous, but the interactive strain was too great to be sustained, and we all were relieved to be back working more or less on our own when the project ended. I fear that inquiry into comparative religious ideas will have to follow the slower and less disciplined interactive processes of the academy, travel and informal inquiry. But it is normed by the logic I have indicated here: the development and continued revision of comparative categories, the specification of those categories by the ideas to be compared, the making of actual comparisons, and continued inquiry into how the different kinds or categories of comparison interact with each other.

AN ALTERNATIVE: COMPARISON AS EXPANDING ONE’S BASE An alternative approach to comparison treats it as expanding the comparativist’s home religious tradition. This of course assumes that the comparativist has a home religion. Nothing in the approach oriented to subject matter requires that the comparativist be religious at all, only interested in religion as a subject to study and understand. A comparativist might not be interested in taking comparison to be important for understanding the world, only as a way of understanding how religious ideas compare. But being religious is central to the alternative approach. Leaders of this second approach are Francis X. Clooney, S.J., and Catherine Cornille. Clooney (2014, 10) defines comparative theology as follows: Comparative theology – comparative and theological beginning to end – marks acts of faith seeking understanding which are rooted in a particular faith tradition but which, from that foundation, venture into learning from one or more other faith traditions. This learning is sought for the sake of fresh theological insights that are indebted to the newly encountered tradition/s as well as the home tradition. Clooney emphasizes that comparative theology in his sense is always theological, aimed at understanding theological truth. Comparative theology is aimed at making truth claims about the theological ideas compared, for him. The first approach through subject matter aims at making truth claims about how the ideas compare, but not necessarily about whether any of the ideas compared are true on their own or as supplemented by the things with which they are compared. To be sure, my own interest in comparison is to have a better theology, a truer one, which I think is facilitated by comparative work. Indeed, I argued that the pursuit of comparison can lead us to the really important categories,

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important because they register something in reality. Nevertheless, a comparativist following that approach need not have that interest in theological truth (although it is difficult not to care whether the religious ideas in comparison have merit regarding what they are about). Clooney explicates theology as ‘faith seeking understanding’, the slogan made famous by Anselm but affirmed by many Christian theologians. ‘Faith’, for him, means being in a religious or faith tradition, being a member. Many ways of being religious exist that do not require membership in a religious tradition. Also, some people claim membership or identify with more than one tradition, with none of them an exclusive ‘home tradition’. However, for Clooney and his approach, comparison begins with a strong commitment to the theological truth of a home tradition. No clearly defined religious tradition is empty of controversies or is not subject to different interpretations. Clooney is only one of many different possible kinds of Roman Catholic theologians. Nevertheless, the affirmation of the tradition as bearing truth is central to this approach to comparison. His comparativist then studies other traditions with the hope that they can provide additional religious or theological truth. Clooney himself focuses on reading theological texts from various Hindu traditions. Catherine Cornille (2014) goes so far as to say that comparative theology always remains confessional theology, confessing the theology of the comparativist’s home tradition. She writes (2015, 4): The goal of comparative theology, however, is not in the end the understanding of the other on its own terms but the meaning of the other tradition (or some element within it) for one’s own religious self-understanding. As such, it may be presumed that the ultimate interpretation of the other tradition will be colored by one’s own tradition. Although people who are deeply imbued with their own tradition might have great difficulty in identifying and surrendering the bias of that tradition when interpreting another, that is precisely what the first approach’s critique of bias is to aim for. The continual correction of comparative categories, of the ways religious ideas are specified under them, of the comparisons drawn out, and of the ways by which the comparative categories are related to one another aims precisely at preventing the comparativist’s own tradition from biasing the interpretation of other traditions. This sensitivity to bias, however, is not a major concern for Clooney’s approach, comparison as a function of faith seeking understanding. To be sure, the ideas of the other tradition are to be studied as carefully and accurately as possible, but only for the sake of determining whether and if so how the other tradition might expand the theological truth of the comparativist’s own. Comparison as faith seeking understanding is surely a good way to do theology. In fact, it would be stupid not to learn from other traditions if there is something there to learn. Moreover, comparison of this sort greatly helps to articulate the boundaries of the comparativist’s own tradition and may in fact cause it to improve its own self-understanding. This kind of comparison challenges a home tradition to improve. Nevertheless, I believe this approach to comparison is lacking as comparison, however much it might serve the confessional theology of a given religious tradition. First, as already mentioned, too much ambiguity exists regarding what it means to have a home tradition or faith. For Roman Catholics such as Clooney and Cornille, the meaning of belonging to that tradition can be rather clear, with explicit boundary markers such as excommunication that mark membership. For Protestants, by contrast, that sense of belonging to a tradition is often subject to criticism. Furthermore, to be a member of

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the United Methodist Church is a different sense of membership from being a member of the Roman Catholic Church and tradition. ‘Membership in’ or ‘identity as’ is itself a complicated comparative category. Being a Buddhist is different from being a practitioner of Yoga or a Hindu warrior like Arjuna. Confucianism does not have institutions that define membership with anything like the institutions of churches or mosques. Religious affiliations do not have to mean participation in congregations. A person’s deepest spiritual partners in the life of faith seeking understanding might be from vastly different traditions, including secular paths, from the person’s own heritage. In this day when so many people, particularly from the intellectual classes likely to be interested in comparison of religious ideas, are ‘spiritual but not religious’, I suspect that our ‘home’ starting point is a mélange of different traditions and sources of ideas, housed in lives that are internally pluralistic even if united by a naming label. Only after considerable comparative work are we likely to be able to identify the operative ideas and sentiments in our home tradition, coming to understand ourselves, to the extent we ever do, only at the end. This is so for intellectual Roman Catholics such as Clooney and Cornille as well as for secular people who imagine themselves not to be on any kind of spiritual path and look to comparison out of sheer curiosity’s sake. Second, in addition to ‘faith seeking understanding’, which is meaningful only for those who have some clear idea what their committed faith means in the first place, an intellectual and religious notion also exists of ‘understanding seeking faith’. Many people inquire into what is worth having faith in. Most intellectuals have periods of disillusionment, shifts in authority, great changes of mind or revelations of whole new worlds when they encounter some new religious ideas and venues of practice. Indeed, if comparison of religious ideas, or comparative theology to use Clooney’s phrase, is thoroughly theological, then faith commitments should be expected to grow and change as inquiry proceeds, coming at the end or transforming themselves critically as inquiry proceeds. Although many comparativists might be practising a religion all along, an important sense exists in which their intellectual and spiritual life is understanding seeking a faith worth having. Third, a special irony exists in the fact that ‘faith seeking understanding’ in the strong sense of a faith tradition really reduces theological faith to sociological description. If a comparativist solidly affirms a home tradition and then expands it by deep learning from Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or Methodist texts, the result is just what a member of that home tradition ends up believing after deep learning cross boundaries. It says nothing about whether the home tradition is theologically true or whether anything true has been learned. If affirming a home tradition is a confession, confession is an act of will, not intellect (to use a problematic distinction), and says only that the person believes the ideas, not that the ideas are worth believing that would be the theological point. Of course, good theology, especially good comparative theology, does look beyond articulating theological discourse to examining what the ideas reveal about reality. Clooney, Cornille, and their many followers are not mere sociologists (sociologists, please forgive the ‘mere’), they are truth-finding theologians. But I think they misrepresent their work in theological comparison as expanding beyond theological rootedness in a home tradition.

ERUDITION AND COMPARATIVE INQUIRY Earlier I made the point that, despite the fallibility of our current knowledge, we still know a lot and act upon it to live our lives; this is especially true for religious ideas. We

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never have to start comparative religious inquiry, except in the sense of organizing our work, but are always in the middle. Now I want to stress the importance of being erudite in matters of religious ideas and becoming more erudite. The more erudite we are, the better comparativists we will be. Beyond this, however, is the fact that we deal with religious ideas, and people with religious ideas, all the time in everyday affairs. We might not spend much if any time doing original comparative inquiry into religious ideas. But what we know about how different religious ideas compare will make a huge difference to how well we understand others and ourselves in important matters. Just as comparison needs comparative categories that are fair and do not disqualify ideas that seem not to fit, how we think of our relations to others, to social institutions, and to larger nature depends on having unbiased categories, or at least increasingly unbiased ones. Just as what we know in respect of a comparative category depends on how thoroughly we have specified it, how we specify the categories of our world is unbiased and fulsome to the extent we are erudite about the things that are in it of religious significance, including all those other perspectives that differ from our own. Academic comparative inquiry is a model for the inquiry of life that insists that we bear in mind that many perspectives on ultimate matters exist besides our own, and it is imperative that we know, respect and evaluate them along with our own perspective. We live now in a period where many people believe we should hunker down into our own context, and let that context determine how we relate to the larger world. Here let me stress that erudition in comparison is a moral calling for relating to the things in the world, especially the religiously significant things, with respect, bringing our own starting point about religious ideas into comparative connections with others. As global erudition grows in the comparison of religious ideas, we slowly learn what the categories are in respect of which it is important to compare. The important categories are not just the broad ones, such as the human condition, ultimate realities and religious truth. Many other categories emerge as important as well. Importance is a vast topic in itself, but here it means the categories that religious thinkers, traditions, institutions and cultures have come to think is important to say something about. Then the interesting thing is whether they say similar or different things about it. More interesting is how deeply and thoroughly they develop what they have to say. The categories that emerge as important are likely to be philosophically important on their own, at least with regard to those parts of philosophy that bear upon religious ideas. Some people are tempted to think that religious ideas are all merely conventional and do not refer to anything real. To be sure, the ideas are always expressed within the conventions of semiotic and cultural systems. Those systems, however, evolve through history in response to having to deal with the realities of life. Life’s realities, which is what philosophical categories ought to be about, provide feedback over the long haul. The comparative categories that are honed and sustained in comparative inquiry are likely to be those with which to build a philosophy, or over which to debate about philosophies. Despite all this there remains hostility to comparison of religious ideas (and most other cultural things) that manifests itself in insistence on microstudies and disapproval of comparative research projects in academic programmes, dissertation topics and publications. Nevertheless, the usual attack on large theories as logocentric is mistaken on two counts. On the one hand, any large theory in philosophy or theology should be conceived as hypothetical, and if it marginalizes something or distorts it, the hypothesis should be amended. Any theory can be amended if it is shown to dismiss or distort. On the other hand, the anti-logocentric position is a comic instance of its own condemnation, a

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sweeping story that pays no attention to the pragmatic approach to large-scale theories that might be used in comparison, let alone the large-scale theories in Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism and nearly all other non-Western philosophical and theological traditions. Its limitation of legitimate discourse in Western philosophy to the Continental readings of the West is logocentric in the extreme. Histories can be studied and interpreted along many scales of detail, from microstudies to larger studies to huge philosophical historical generalizations such as done so masterfully by Roger T. Ames, David Hall, Karl Jaspers, Mircea Eliade and Robert Bellah. No reason exists that would prevent any scale of history from bringing legitimate knowledge, so long as it understands itself to be fallible and vulnerable to correction by alternative histories. Microstudies themselves are vulnerable to being corrected by other contexts that view their subject matter from other perspectives. A microstudy is incomplete, or simply naïve and likely to be unconscious of its own assumptions, unless it is put in a comparative context with other studies of the same subject matter, microstudies of other subject matters, and different perspectives from the one sustained by its subject matter. My argument here is that microstudies that eschew comparison with other perspectives are irresponsible if they do not put themselves in larger comparative perspectives. Of course, a given inquirer cannot do everything and it is permissible to do ‘only so much’ now. Nevertheless, there should be an explicit recognition that when a microstudy is examined from a larger comparative perspective its conclusions might be radically altered. The humility claimed by adherence to microstudies is a false humility because it does not seek out, learn to recognize and respect the other sources of religious ideas that would require comparative bridge-building. That false humility either marginalizes those others from consideration or distorts them to fit them into the categories of its own philosophy. Scrupulosity about refraining from talking about others might seem like humility. Nevertheless, it amounts to disrespecting and marginalizing the other traditions of religious ideas.

CONCLUSION In this chapter I have laid out a logical and methodological structure for philosophy of religion to compare religious ideas, even across widely separated cultures of religious ideas. Its heart is to attend to four things simultaneously, each treated as filled with fallible but already well-developed hypotheses. The first is the project of developing comparative categories that are properly vague with respect to the kinds of things they can relate. The second is the project of specifying or filling in those categories with the details of the ideas to be compared. The third is the explicit drawing of comparisons so that it can be said how the ideas are similar, different, related or unrelated. The fourth is to envision how the comparative categories, specified and compared, relate to one another so that their relations of various sorts can be understood and their interactions dealt with. I have argued here that, whether we want to or not, we make comparisons in philosophy of religion. We ought to do so responsibly. Therefore, we ought to engage, at some times at least, in disciplined comparative philosophy of the sort outlined here.

NOTES 1. In this chapter, I defend no particular definition of religion, assuming that, for the purpose of discussing comparison of religious ideas, anyone’s definition of religion and notion

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of what makes ideas ‘religious’ is a good enough place to start. Nevertheless, in Defining Religion I propose that we regard religion as the human engagement of ultimate realities in cognitive, existential and practical ways, which lies behind the distinction in the text here. I discuss the cognitive ways in Ultimates, the existential ways in Existence, and the ways of religious practice in Religion. 2. The senior participants in the Project included six historians of religion who were suspicious of comparison, namely, Francis X. Clooney, S. J. (Hinduism), Malcolm David Eckel (Buddhism), Paula Fredriksen (Christianity), Nomanul Haq (Islam), Livia Kohn (Chinese Religions) and Anthony Saldarini (Judaism), and four generalists who were commissioned to press for comparisons, namely, Peter L. Berger, John H. Berthrong, Wesley J. Wildman and myself. 3. The pragmatism is that of Charles S. Peirce regarding both fallibility and the very logic of comparison; his works will be cited as follows. An early version of the pragmatic logic of comparison of religious ideas by subject matter was developed by the Comparative Religious Ideas Project at Boston University in the late 1990s with the results published in 2001 in the volumes (Neville 2001a, 2001b, 2001c). For methodological discussions in that Project, see the introduction and Chapter 1 in Neville (2001a), both co-authored by Wesley J. Wildman and me, and Appendix A, ‘On the Process of the Project During the First Year’, by Wildman; in Neville (2001b) see the introduction and Chapters 8 and 9 by Wildman and me, Chapter 10 by John H. Berthrong, and Appendix A, ‘On the Process of the Project During the Second Year’, by Wildman; in Neville (2001c) see the introduction and Chapters 8 and 9 by Wildman and me, Chapter 10 by me, and Appendix A, ‘On the Process of the Project During the Third Year’ by Wildman. For Wildman’s more elaborate theory of comparison in philosophy of religion, see Wildman (2010). For my pragmatic philosophical justification for this approach to comparison of religious ideas, see Neville (1995) Chapters 1–4. On Peirce’s approach to religion, see Pierce (2000) and Raposa (1989). For a later and broader vision of comparison that was in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project, see Deuser et al. (2016). 4. See Charles Peirce’s essays, ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’ and ‘The Fixation of Belief ’ in Peirce (1992), Volume 1, Chapters 8 and 7 respectively. 5. See Stalnaker (2006), especially Chapters 1 and 2. Bin Song (2019) criticizes Stalnaker a bit in his ‘Robert C. Neville: A Systematic, Nonconformist, Comparative Philosopher of Religion’. 6. Peirce discussed logical vagueness in many places. A mature statements is in ‘Issues of Pragmaticism’ in Peirce (1998), Volume 2, Chapter 25. 7. See Eckel’s (2008) Bhāviveka and His Buddhist Opponents. Bhāviveka was a sixth century comparative Buddhist philosopher who in his The Heart of the Middle Way compared his own Mahāyāna position with his Buddhist opponents, the Śrāvakas and Yogācāras, and with his Hindu opponents, the Sāṃkhyas, Vaiśeṣikas, Vedāntins and Mīmāṃsākas. He commented on the religious debates among the positions contemporary with himself.

REFERENCES Ames, Roger T. (1995), Anticipating China: Thinking Through the Narratives of Chinese and Western Culture, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Ames, Roger T. (1998), Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Culture, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Ames, Roger T. and David L. Hall (1987), Thinking Through Confucius, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

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Bellah, Robert N. (2011), Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clooney, Francis X., S. J. (2006), Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders, Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Clooney, Francis X., S. J. (2010), Comparative Theology: Deep Learning Across Religious Borders, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Cornille, Catherine (2014), ‘The Confessional Nature of Comparative Theology’, in Studies in Interreligious Dialogue, Vol. 24 No. 1, p 9–17, Spring. Deuser, Hermann, Hans Joas, Matthias Jung, and Magnus Schlette, eds. (2016), The Varieties of Transcendence: Pragmatism and the Theory of Religion, New York, NY: Fordham University Press. Eckel, Malcolm David (2008), Bhaviveka and His Buddhist Opponents, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Eliade, Mircea (1959), The Sacred and the Profane, trans. Willard R. Trask, New York: Harper & Row. Eliade, Mircea (1963), Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed, New York: Meridian Books. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1962), Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, In three volumes, Translated from the second German edition by J. Burdon Sanderson and E. B. Speirs, New York, NY: The Humanities Press. Heidegger, Martin (2010), Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh, revised and with a Foreword by Dennis J. Schmidt, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Hume, David (1955), Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. with an intro. Henry D. Aiken, New York, NY: Hafner. Jaspers, Karl (1953), The Origin and Goal of History, trans. Michael Bullock, Oxford: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Kant, Immanuel (1960), Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, and “The Ethical Significance of Kant’s Religion”, trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, New York, NY: Harper & Brothers. Kripal, Jeffrey J., with Ata Anzali, Andrea R. Jain, and Erin Prophet (2014), Comparing Religions: Coming to Terms, Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell. Neville, Robert Cummings (1995), Normative Cultures, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Neville, Robert Cummings (2014a), Ultimates: Philosophical Theology Volume One. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Neville, Robert Cummings (2014b), Existence: Philosophical Theology Volume Two. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Neville, Robert Cummings (2015), Religion: Philosophical Theology Volume Three, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Neville, Robert Cummings (2018), Defining Religion: Essays in Philosophy of Religion, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Neville, Robert Cummings, ed. (2001a), The Human Condition, with a foreword by Peter L. Berger, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Neville, Robert Cummings, ed. (2001b), Ultimate Realities, with a foreword by Tu Weiming, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Neville, Robert Cummings, ed. (2001c), Religious Truth, with a foreword by Jonathan Z. Smith, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

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Peirce, Charles Sanders (1992), The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings: Volume I (1867–1893), ed. Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders (1998), The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings: Volume II (1893–1913), ed. Peirce Edition Project, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders (2000), Religionsphilosophische Schriften, trans. with the cooperation of Helmut Maassen, with an introduction and commentary by Hermann Deuser. Raposa, Michael L. (1989), Peirce’s Philosophy of Religion, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1958), On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, trans. John Oman with an introduction by Rudolf Otto, New York: Harper and Brothers. Song, Bin (2019), ‘Robert C. Neville: A Systematic, Nonconformist, Comparative Philosopher of Religion’, American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, 40 (3): 11–30. Stalnaker, Aaron (2006), Overcoming Our Evil: Human Nature and Spiritual Exercises in Xunzi and Augustine, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Wildman, Wesley J. (2010), Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Chapter 10

The relevance of scriptures STEVEN G. SMITH

There is now a widely shared awareness that each of the so-called world religions has its own ‘scripture’ or collection of scriptures.1 With the presence of these books in our bookstores comes an expectation that what any scripture says will be worth pondering, given its presumed power to direct any human being’s life. A scripture has a universal interest that accredits its sponsoring religion as a ‘world’ religion more meaningfully than the fact of having many adherents. In the cosmopolitan world figured by literacy, any scripture is globally relevant – life-guidingly relevant somehow to each of us, and to each of us positioned in relation to everyone else, despite our varying sensibilities and circumstances. How it should be relevant is a matter for rational evaluation and thus for philosophy – ideally a philosophy cognizant of the larger historical phenomenon of ‘scripturalizing’ (W. C. Smith) within which most of the world’s religiously dominant concepts have been formed. Customarily, philosophers of religion extract from scriptures the metaphysical and moral claims that they wish to examine without asking what scripture and the long-term activity of scripturalizing consist of – an understandable way of proceeding, given their mission of establishing reasonable criteria and findings without merely perpetuating a tradition or accepting anyone’s dictates, but with the drawback of leaving hidden their own involvement in scripturalizing insofar as they reflect on scripturalized topics. Those who do show interest in the connection between religious meaning and scripture are almost always concerned with a particular scripture and not with testing their claims comparatively. For example, Spinoza (2007) argues in a Jewish and Christian context that the real significance of the Bible’s apparently irrational elements is that its essential purpose is to teach the common people obedience to basic moral values, not to disclose truths. His argument suggests a plausible broader thesis: that moral obedience by the whole community is the essential goal of scriptural promulgation. Attending to scripture devoutly would thus be a practically reasonable act of coordinating with one’s community. Considering this idea comparatively, we may observe that Spinoza’s view of biblical meaning agrees strikingly with the Mīmāṃsā emphasis on obedience as the rationale of the Vedic texts and injunction as the essence of Vedic language. It does not agree at all, however, with Mīmāṃsā’s nonmoral, purely ritualist rationale for Vedic observance or with its elitist premise that only properly trained Sanskrit speakers can take the Vedic direction.2 Of course, the Spinoza/ Mīmāṃsā example by itself does not decide anything about the concept of scripture either positively or negatively, but it is enough to prompt questions about the dimensions of the scriptural phenomenon (if the moral teaching view of scripture

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is too limited, then what may or must scripture include?) and about our own motivations in paying attention to this category (what would make scripture compelling?).

A FAIR AND ENGAGING DEFINITION OF SCRIPTURE A global conception of scripture obviously must be broad enough to register functional and spiritual similarities between the Bible, the Qur’an, the Vedas, the Adi Granth and the various canons of Buddhists, Jains, Daoists and Confucians, along with any other textual mediations of religious life that seem to follow much the same pattern. The definition should not be too narrow (as in ‘word of God’), but neither should it be so broad (‘sacred text’) that it misses the historical emergence of scripture as an intellectually and spiritually decisive religious asset for a relatively large community that is hospitable to relatively extended reflection and free discussion. I will start by offering a minimal list of essential features of scripture. Though my stipulations are not uncontroversial, I believe they usefully pick out issues and ideas that deserve attention. (1) As regards form, scripture (from Latin scriptura, ‘a writing’) is fixed, published and communally enshrined utterance. It is firmly in place, awaiting all comers like a temple – a temple made of language that you and I, the interpreters, can enter anywhere, anytime. In practice, a scripture does not exist solely in an ideal space of understandable content; its subscribing community is obliged to renew its oral and aural presence regularly.3 But the large, diverse, potentially universal community associated with scripture is possible only because scriptural content does lodge in the minds of individuals. Scripture capitalizes to the greatest possible extent on the capacity of texts to guide individuals and communities together with the general dependence of humans on linguistic guidance. I refrain from defining scripture as ‘written’ in consideration especially of the Vedas, which are said to have existed on a purely oral basis for most of their career. The oral processes that produced the Vedas were evidently not inferior to scribal processes in developing and fixing content and sustaining critical reflection on content.4 Thus, our focus should be on the properties of a corpus of repeatable utterance regardless of whether it is written down. We should be mindful, too, that the brahmans (like some of their counterparts in other traditions) had weighty religious reasons not to write scripture down lest it be reduced to mere information and released to faulty interpretations (Graham 1987, 73–4). (2) As regards content, the distinctive power of scripture lies in providing guidance of the most profound practical interest to a community. This Guidance is taken as commanding, exhorting, advising, inviting, even teasing, but in any case, decisive for ultimate human success. A scripture-embracing community sponsors for the generality of its members a textually guided conversation about right thought and action in relation to the best human outcome and sponsors for those of its members who are so inclined a scripturalist mode of devotion in which performing and pondering Scripture is a worthiest endeavour. ‘Guidance’, the preferred self-categorization of the self-consciously scriptural Qur’an, is an advantageous central notion in a general account of scripture for several reasons. First, it frames the commonly held notion that scripture establishes a ‘worldview’ in an appropriately religious way: a religious worldview is not simply in place like the modern worldview, or simply available like string theory, but solicits the world-viewing mind

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as the possibly requisite view for self and community. The believer holds that view not simply on its ostensible merits but as guided. Second, the notion of guidance is broad enough to accommodate scripturalists whose focus is on ritual or moral practice together with those whose focus is on true representations or a dialectic of interpretations; it works equally well for those who suppose they are hearkening to a personal Guide who communicates by means of the text and those for whom some other sort of reality is the ultimate source of Guidance; and it works for those whose attention is captured by an extraordinary numinous quality in their scripture together with those who regard their scriptural directives pragmatically as the best available textual helps toward the best living. Third, it puts the centre of our thinking right where the action of thoughtful religious life is, in experiences of appeal and deliberations of response. (3) The actual community of scripture, though historically and culturally particular, is conceived as expansive and potentially universal. A guiding text relevant only to a small, homogenous or fixed group would count merely as a manual or charter for that group. Thus, the covenant recorded between the ancient Israelites and their god YHWH is a type for a Jewish version of scripture only because the Israelite scheme has become interpretable as a model of righteous comportment with directive force that anyone can feel. Negatively, it seems possible and desirable to keep certain other features out of the definition, including these:

1) Scriptures are often associated with supernaturalist beliefs about the origination of the texts, the quality of the text, the effects of heeding the text, or the subject matter to which the texts give privileged testimony – but not always. Naturalism is a mainstream option in Confucian scripturalism and cannot be excluded in many other traditions. Scripturalists are conceptually required to take cues somehow from past cultures represented in their texts but not to believe in supernatural beings or miracles that were formerly believed in.



2) Scriptures can serve as the paramount recordings of Guidance in their communities without being the sole or supreme religious authorities in those communities. The general notion of scripturalism can be distinguished from a narrower, polemically pointed sola scriptura programme.



3) Nor are scriptures necessarily regarded as uniquely valid. South and East Asian scripturalists often express great respect for scriptures not their own. The Qur’an is famously ‘matchless’ yet claims to be continuous with prophetic revelations all over the world and to be closely associated with Jewish and Christian scriptures. In some scriptural comparisons it may not be appropriate to ask which among their ‘conflicting truth-claims’ could be true, because not all scripturalists claim to receive truth in that conflictable sense in their Guidance from Scripture.



4) While strong claims are made in certain traditions for the unique excellence of scriptural language, in historical and comparative perspective one sees no linguistic quality that could be considered necessary for scripture. If one wants to say with W. C. Smith (1993, 231) that scripture is a distinctive mode of language, the distinction must be located in scripture’s function – according to Smith, the function of supporting human involvement with transcendence. Scriptures are composed out of pre-existing textual materials of various qualities and genres that in many cases were not conceived as scriptural when they were first produced.

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SCRIPTURAL CONTENT AS AXIAL Scripture is a compelling topic in philosophy of religion because there is reason to think that (1) scripture distinctively enables or constrains the pursuit of the best life, and (2) some of the paradigmatically religious pursuits of the best life are dependent on scripturalizing. Thus, scripture looms large in either an ideal or a critical interpretation of religion. Both of these evaluative hooks can be set in one claim: scripture is an essential part of axiality, understanding by ‘axiality’ the cultural turn towards freer thinking that became well enough established about 2,500 years ago in the literate centres of Asia and the eastern Mediterranean that many of us still trace our intellectual and spiritual lineages to texts of that time. I draw this loaded sense of ‘axial’ from Karl Jaspers, who coined the term ‘Axial Age’ as part of arguing that the true ‘axis’ of humanity’s spiritual history is not the birth of Christ exclusively (as Hegel had said) but is shared by multiple civilizations in the mid-first millennium BCE (Jaspers 1953, chapter 1). The classic thinkers of this era – Zarathushtra, the Hebrew writing prophets, the Indian and Chinese scriptural sages, and the Greek philosophers – all capitalize on expanding literacy (albeit from a base in small counter-cultural groups and still with a very restricted audience), making textually recorded claims about the nature of reality, the world and the human good on the premise that a mentally free individual can weigh the merits of any such claim against others in a competitive market for such proposals. Henceforth, the appeal of religious teachings can no longer be merely traditional or ethnic or personal. The new axial ways begin to divide into the genres we call ‘philosophy’ and ‘religious teaching’ insofar as philosophers focus on free rational analysis and justification of views while religious writers focus on directly proclaiming and explaining the ultimates or reflecting on experiences of the ultimates. But underlying this difference of approach is the shared gambit of offering the mentally free individual, positioning himself or herself in relation to other mentally free individuals, a necessarily abstract but sufficiently articulated supreme appeal (e.g. a single attention-centering conception of ultimate Reality or Righteousness) and a cogently specified ideal for a sovereign attitude (a single life-centring orientation like Reason or Faith or Detachment).5 A scripture may contain much material that does not deal directly with such points, but it will be thought to centre on material that does. The major Axial Age ideas are almost inescapably interesting to us – to anyone who might read these words – because we too find ourselves in the communicative situation of literate cosmopolitans. We conduct ourselves as though each of us is mentally available to be persuaded by the best available world- and life-organizing ideas, and these ideas reach us through the mediation of texts, that is, published, adoptable, portable and discussable proposals. Further, we are embroiled in the difficulties inherent in sustaining a partly voluntary community of individuals whose free choices must be compatible and whose material basis for concord, a historic tradition (probably national, perhaps also religious), will certainly contain troubling legacies from the past like sexism, classism and cultural chauvinism even as it reliably hosts many of the community’s most serious conversations. The notion of axiality can be used to identify an attractor that would account for the strong interest in scripture taken by diverse audiences through time. Part of the attractor is the intellectual accessibility we associate with rationality and reasonableness, but there is more. Considering the persistent broad sharing of interest among the more literate and less literate, we might surmise that the scripture-norming axial ideals are cogent in such a way that they fundamentally reorient older religious positions without severing their roots with older kinds of meaningful experience.

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We can see something of how this works by comparing shift-points in the Vedas and the Hebrew Scriptures that exhibit the reorienting power of the axial proposals dramatically. Both involve revision of the ideal of sacrifice. Sacrificial ritual, a linchpin of religion in pre-axial agriculturalist societies, is elaborately described and rationalized in some of the older layers of the Vedas and in the biblical book of Leviticus. The conscious purpose of sacrificing is to do the best that can be done to attain the greatest attainable well-being for sacrificers and their community. When the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad takes up the topic, the unwary reader will feel reassured at first that the system works: I.2.1 Here is the truth: The rites that the wise poets saw in the Vedic formulas, Stretched in many ways across the three Vedas – Perform them always, you who long for the Truth; That’s your path to the world of those who correctly perform the rites. 2. When the flame flickers after the fire is lit, Then let him make his offerings, between the two pourings of ghee... 6. ‘Come! Come!’ say the oblations shining bright, as they carry their offerer on the sun’s rays of light. They praise him, telling him flattering things: ‘This is yours, this brahman’s world [svarga, ‘heaven’], built by good deeds and rites well done.’ So far, so good: the sacrificer gains a heaven (or is ‘flattered’ to think so). Suddenly a different view rears its head: 7. Surely, they are floating unanchored, these eighteen forms of the sacrifice, the rites within which are called inferior. The fools who hail that as the best, return once more to old age and death... 10. Deeming sacrifice and gifts as the best, the imbeciles know nothing better. When they have enjoyed their good work, atop the firmament, they return again to this abject world. 11. But those in the wilderness, calm and wise, who live a life of penance and faith, as they beg their food; Through the sun’s door they go, spotless, to where that immortal Person is, that immutable self. 12. When he perceives the worlds as built with rites, a Brahmin should acquire a sense of disgust – ‘What’s made can’t make what is unmade!’ (Olivelle 1996). This text asserts a new Upaniṣadic ideal of perfect tranquillity (a sovereign attitude) realized in an immutable Self (a supremely appealing being). Priestly sacrifice is not completely rejected, however. The traditional guidance is modulated to a new key. Rather than give up a goat or a horse for the sake of higher goods and enjoyment, one should give up desire itself; rather than give up shorter-term for longer-term happiness, one should detach oneself from the whole temporal pursuit of happiness and dwell only in the imperishable. A similarly profound critique of sacrifice occurs in the prophetic book of Amos (5:21– 24), long celebrated for stating the axial position of ethical monotheism: [Thus says the Lord to Israel:] I loathe, I spurn your festivals, I am not appeased by your solemn assemblies. If you offer Me burnt offerings – or your meal offerings –

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I will not accept them; I will pay no heed To your gifts of fatlings. Spare Me the sound of your hymns, And let Me not hear the sound of your lutes. But let justice well up like water, Righteousness like an unfailing stream.6 The sacrificial cult is not simply thrown out in this context, either, but its positive meaning is made conditional on a more fundamental requirement of righteousness. Righteousness is sometimes portrayed by the Hebrew prophets as the fruit of an inward sacrifice that reconstructs the self: With what shall I approach the Lord, Do homage to God on high? Shall I approach Him with burnt offerings, With calves a year old? Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, With myriads of streams of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, The fruit of my body for my sins? He has told you, O man, what is good, And what the Lord requires of you: Only to do justice And to love goodness, And to walk modestly with your God... (Micah 6:6–8) Part of the power of the ideal of Immutability or the ideal of Justice is that you or I could lift it out of the text that presents it and deal with it however we see fit. But a specifically scriptural attractor in these cases is that the axial ideals are embedded in their cultural context with their historical precursors. To be a disciple of Upanishadic tranquillity is still to be required to go to one’s guru with firewood for sacrifice in hand (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad I.2.12–13). To be a disciple of the ethically demanding God of Israel is still to be embedded in the festivals and solemn assemblies of the people. The sacrificial cult is part of the route to the axial realizations, both as a historical reality of membership in a community’s shared action and as a pedagogical strategy for arriving at the crucial understanding in the best way. Axiality understood as a strategy of continuity also supports the idea that the power of spiritually impressive ideals depends on a historically older sourcing – Brahman as everything’s living Reality derived from brahman as priest-managed power, Tian as the cosmic law derived from Tian the royal ‘great man’, Zion as communal perfection derived from Zion as the central strong point Israel took from the Jebusites and lost to the Babylonians.

THE SCRIPTURAL FORMATION OF AXIAL CONCEPTS It is a fact of cultural history that the perceived meaning of scriptures depends on axial concepts. More important for the present purpose, there is arguably a related truth concerning the essential scripturality of the axial concepts, namely, that their commanding

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intellectual and spiritual interest and their general negotiability are inseparable from their scriptural formation. The concepts can be taken seriously and can do serious work for us because they have been baked in a scriptural oven and we take them up in a scripturally enabled conversation. The ideal relevance of the historical preparation of a key concept is fairly well appreciated by philosophers within their own realm. Consider the concept of subjectivity. Of course, anyone can talk about it, but a philosophically serious treatment of the concept would have to be cognizant of its development from Descartes’ ‘I think’ forward, with a number of major idealist enrichments and counter-idealist challenges. This development is canonical, which is a short way of saying that a claim addressing or implicating the nature of subjectivity will be seen as most likely to be worthy of consideration in philosophical research (the current conceptual research we think most likely to inform future conceptual research) if the conception it uses has been tested by the relevant major arguments of modern philosophy. We might call this the dialectical formation of the concept. When we take a concept to be the product of the most developed relevant dialectic, we suppose that it is, for now, charged with the right content and inescapably relevant in whatever discussions it might properly come up in. Scriptural concepts are dialectically formed as well. In the preceding section I picked out a couple of highlights in the intrascriptural development of the concept of sacrifice. As in the philosophy example, the dialectic is created partly by the accumulating contributions of writers working with the ideas of earlier writers and partly by later gatekeepers (teachers and editors) who arrange textual selections in such a way as to make relations between them into a normative itinerary that serious thinkers are obliged to adopt as part of the infrastructure of their thinking. Addition, subtraction and alteration of concepts have occurred in the scripture-making process. In a scripturalized culture the most serious religious discussion, much like the most serious philosophical discussion, repeatedly verifies results of the scriptural dialectic by rehearsing them. Intertwined with the dialectical development of key concepts, a scripture might also incorporate rhetorical discoveries permitting distinctly powerful ways of identifying a supreme Appellant or involving the audience in relation. To use that language, whether or not in conscious loyalty to a scriptural tradition, is to think scripturally insofar as scripture remains its paradigmatic deployment. Even the brief expression ‘Oh my God!’ (Psalm 22:2) depends on two crucial linguistic developments in the Bible noted by Northrop Frye: metonymic use of the term ‘God’ to refer to an Appellant understood as transcending all possible concrete description, and a proclamatory idiom of existential concern (Frye 1982, chap.1). As little as it conveys in the way of ordinary content, saying ‘Oh my God!’ summons up important aspects of an evolved consideration of superhuman reality. A deity that cannot be addressed by this expression will fail a crucial test for theists. Anyone wanting to gauge the meaning and viability of this expression had therefore better be aware of its scriptural genesis and refinement. Another way in which scripture can set benchmarks for a consideration-worthy discussion of a religious topic is in representing the experiences that most strenuously demand consideration. This point can be illustrated with the association of the concept of God with the so-called problem of evil. In my own religious culture ‘God’ is a reliably available, standard topic to the extent that I can enter into a reasonable conversation with nearly anyone about whether a ‘supreme being’ exists (or intervenes, or has particular concerns). Nearly anyone I meet is likely to have his or her own view concerning the existence or nature or conduct of a

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personalizable supreme being. This view need not have been gleaned from a scripture. A religiously uneducated person might simply have heard mention of God in various real and fictional contexts; a thoughtful person might have formed an understanding of God by reflecting on the causation of the universe or the authority of values. No matter: the concept has an important connection with scripture in the prospects for a conversation about God – where that conversation can go, with what seriousness of results. Admittedly such conversations often go almost nowhere, remaining conceptually vague and lacking significant support or application. God can be summarily affirmed or denied simply as a way of expressing a general optimism or pessimism about life, or as a way of limiting or expanding the horizons of science. In a more serious conversation, however, the concept will be seriously tested. Often the reality of evil is brought up with the understanding that it is one of the most serious of all tests of the very thinkability of God. It is stipulated that a God worth discussing must be powerful, wise and good to such a degree that the evil in our world is inconsistent with theism. Theism depends, then, on having a credible model of God’s engagement with an evil-ridden world. What should count as the kind of evil that makes this a serious discussion? Pain, death, inhumane treatment – when ‘horrendous’? What should disturb us that much in that way? One can turn to a theist scripture at this point and be taught how to understand the ultimate terms of reference. The Hebrew Bible points out murder and enslavement as perennial primary evils, and its historical dramatization of the relationship between God and humanity offers conceptions of God and evil tested by experiences of intense suffering. In my culture, a serious discussion of God is very often drawn into the biblical formation of the meanings of God and evil (especially in the collective ordeals of the Israelites and the personal ordeals of Job and Jesus) because biblical material, to those who know it, seems unsurpassably relevant to the development and testing of our understandings of these things. But suppose the God discussion stays clear of biblical material because the discussants are ignorant of the Bible, or actively want to disconnect from a biblical framing they see as unhelpful (as some reject the term ‘the Holocaust’), or are more interested in non-biblical points of reference such as modern experiences of sexist and heterosexualist oppression. A well-informed listener would still judge the seriousness of their discussion by biblical benchmarks. If their discussion seems serious, it would be in part because it either converges with the biblical terms of discussion or appears to match those terms. For example, a feminist repudiation or reconstruction of God would seem serious to a well-informed listener only if it premised a supreme causality not less consideration-worthy than the biblical creator and an evil not less disturbing than murder and enslavement as biblically condemned. It may be objected that scriptural religion, though undeniably of great influence de facto in the cultures in which many of us are raised, should not be granted authority de jure over the standards of consideration-worthiness since one can step clear of any religious tradition, precisely for the sake of thinking as seriously as possible, and construct a rationally purified religious ideal. That is what Plato and Aristotle did. I deny, however, that Plato and Aristotle did step or could have stepped entirely clear of traditional religious utterances while having their theological proposals register as worthy of religious consideration, for they, too, must have been subject to the listener’s test of comparative relevance and depth; their conceptions, too, had to engage recorded traditional wisdom concerning human failure and unhappiness. Another reason to deny

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that Plato and Aristotle’s works exist outside of a scriptural context lies in their own accomplishment. By assiduously teaching their newly powerful, revisionary conceptions, the Greek philosophers turned out to be the climactic scripturalists of classical Greek culture, supplying in texts the supreme ideals by which everything else in that tradition would henceforth be evaluated. The objection to the ideal relevance of scripture could also be made as follows: even granting that our concepts of greatest leverage must have evolved in a cultural process of which scripture forms a historically important part, scripture is not the only manifestation of this process, it is not necessarily the most definitive or useful manifestation of this process, and thus it need not be taken as paradigmatic for serious use of the concepts. On any of the rationales I have canvassed (dialectical, rhetorical, experiential) the current ideal relevance of scriptures could be relatively weak or even negligible depending on the particularities of a scripture and the stream of cultural history it belongs to, not to mention the variable interests of individuals. To insist on the ideal relevance of the scriptural formation of central religious concepts involves a circularity, therefore: religious concepts are compelling in that scripturally dependent way only to those whose interests are already so firmly aimed in the same direction by conviction or by their culture that they feel bound to apply scripture-based standards of relevance. Even if we grant that scripture is not the only cause or expression of axial thinking, it would be premature to evaluate the position of scripture in an axial culture going strictly by whether the concepts deployed in scripture are uniquely scriptural. As we will see presently, there are other factors to consider in how scripture places those concepts in reflection and communication. For the rest, to reply effectively I must distinguish between two levels of scripturality. The objection seems well founded at the level of the historical actuality of a particular scripture, for I think it must be admitted that only persons who happen to be affiliated with Christianity will be ideally constrained to apply New Testament standards of religious relevance to claims about God (even if it also happens to be true that many others in a Christianity-influenced culture will apply those standards and agree on their relevance). But there is another level of scripturality occupied not by a particular scripture but by the existence and authority of scriptures generally. On the first level, I may be a Christian oriented to the New Testament; on the second level, I am a literate person generally oriented to textual guidance and sensitive to religious issues and thus interested in such a thing as scripture – perhaps insistently the New Testament, if I am a devout Christian, but perhaps all scriptures, if I am a diligent student of the scripture phenomenon. My religious sensitivity is inseparable from scripture because it is formed in the literacy-based world religion mode. My thesis here can be most directly demonstrated by considering what we would do with a religious concept that has no particular scriptural affiliation. Suppose we learn that a heretofore unknown group has a fascinating concept of Z communicated through strictly oral conventions; perhaps (this is vaguely inspired by the movie Avatar) they are thinking of a both-actual-and-ideal circulation of both-active-and-receptive life properties among plants, animals and humans. Concerned as we are about healthy relationships and sustainable living, we are strongly motivated to study and try out the concept of Z. The concept catches on so well that people all over the world see the point of granting it a central position in their conversations, because Z has appeal for making a refreshing change from conventional concepts they have come to mistrust. By this time, though, Z has been positioned in the kind of discussion that relies on terms like ‘God’ or ‘the

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Way’ for a supreme Appellant, that develops tenets of belief in an overt dialectic, that specifies individually salvific attitude ideals, that relates reappraisingly to older rites and symbols, and that maintains its plausibility in a cosmopolitan frame of reference (Z for us cannot dwell only in its original location) with benchmarks of relevance implicitly if not explicitly set by accepted great texts – all of which presupposes a reliance on textuality that the original group did not utilize. I project that the thoughts of Z that are now so strongly appealing to us will have shifted significantly from the thoughts of the original group – just as the scriptural thoughts already in our possession have shifted from their prescriptural precursors – and that understanding the meaning shift will require taking account of the scriptural formation of religious concepts.

SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY Enshrined by a community as supreme Guidance, scripture possesses an authority over its devotees that might be seen through a Durkheimian lens as a textual implementation of the community’s power to control the minds of its members. Habermas did use a Durkheimian lens in his Theory of Communicative Action and this may explain why he granted scriptures no role whatever in his account of what he called the ‘linguistification of the sacred’, a historic shift from archaic social norming by collectively maintained myth and ritual to modern social norming by the communicative action of reflectively self-conscious actors pursuing mutual understanding.7 Literacy, understood in a strong sense as the active use of individual mental independence supported by reading and writing, is at the heart of the modernization of consciousness and culture that Habermas is concerned with. But literacy is an essential ingredient of scripturalism and scripturalism is a major historical agent in expansions of literacy. To relegate scripturalism to archaic groupthink would be spectacularly to miss a main part of the ‘linguistification’ story. It is true that scriptural religion can operate very much in the style of pre-axial religion when the intentional community of believers coincides with the local or ethnic community. Scripture can be taught repressively and studied in a completely conformist spirit. But that is not the only form of scripturalism that obtains historically and is certainly not the scripturalism that would be a live option for a philosophical inquirer now. Any use of reading and writing that lacks critical thinking, that provides no remedy for heteronomy and the colonizing of minds, will seem to us a sadly stunted realization of literacy. On the axiality thesis, free questioning is essential to scriptural devotion because scripturality is constituted in part by the published text’s affirmation of the mental freedom of individuals. Thus, scripturalism cannot be deemed essentially ‘authoritarian’ with the usual negative implications of arbitrary imposition and blind compliance. But scripture is understood to be eminently authoritative in some sense. How then is its authority best construed? Scripture possesses outstanding axial interest, on the present account, because its content supports supremely responsible encounter with a supreme appeal. But scripture is also more than a predictably powerful ‘classic’ (in the usual Western sense) or ‘great book.’ A translation of the Daodejing might be life-changing this week for a particular reader whose life was changed last week by Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael; such a reader can respond to the Daodejing as a classic or great book without being minded to respect its instituted scriptural status. Yet that instituted status gives the Daodejing a distinct importance in principle such that Daoists are obliged to prioritize it (even as it Guides

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them not to trust any written guidance!) and literate people around the world will have to deal with it throughout the foreseeable future. So our conception of scripture must include a consideration about how a religiously instituted text positions the axial mind. The Hebrew, Sanskrit and Chinese scriptures contain some of the oldest surviving texts in the world, long a bragging right for those cultures. Although few would argue now that older thoughts and statements are necessarily better ones, temporal priority in discourse can still be a significant consideration in organizing communication into a whole. If we view the diachronic extension of our community’s communications as a historical growth significantly like a conversation in which touchstones are continually being established for what can relevantly be said, we will want to determine which of the things said earlier are most important to keep track of for our most important purposes. Scripture speaks to this question as no other kind of text does. Scripture’s conversation-framing role is foundational, like that of a political constitution or body of law except with the special charge of governing the whole conversation about getting life right. Regardless of when they were actually uttered or recorded, scriptural utterances count ideally as the first things said, the most original Dicta. In a scriptural community, all religiously significant utterances can be ordered in an ideal larger conversation according to the relevance and propriety implications of such Dicta. The designated priority of scripture in the order of communicative action needs grounding, however; the choice and the experience of the scriptural Dicta cannot be arbitrary or merely convenient. The axial ideals in themselves do not vouch for this priority because they seem detachable. Unlimited Love, for example, is a compelling possibility as modelled by the story of a monk whose compassion is so great that he vows not to enter the most blessed state except in company with all other sentient beings. Anyone can be struck by such a story. For Pure Land scripturalists, however, the great Love is a declared real Love, not merely a possibility, and one maintains a relationship with this Love by taking Guidance from the recorded vows of Dharmākara in the Larger Pure Land sūtra and related Buddhist texts.8 Generally scripturalists bind themselves to their scripture as authoritative by embracing a real relationship with their supreme Appellants, the Buddha-mind or Self or God or Heaven, as sponsors of the text’s prioritized utterances. Their beliefs about the Appellant determine who or what is the most controlling presence in the conversation that scripture verbally frames – the conversation from which one could withdraw only if one gave up one’s scripturalist optimism about a textually supported relationship with the divine, on the basis of which the designated first words would be the ultimately right first words. How might a scriptural text appear convincingly to be one of the right venues for relationship with the source of life-ordering utterance? (1) The direct presentation of First Things (‘revelation’) premise. The great Vedānta commentator Śaṅkara asserts that even when the Upaniṣads seem to be rationally or empirically justifying a belief they are in fact directly disclosing the truth of Brahman. Thus, the intellectually engaging ‘philosophy’ of the Upaniṣads is really ‘revelation’ (which is not to deny that the rational aspects of the text are useful for the thinking scripturalist).9 Scripturalists in any tradition can make the same claim about any element of scripture, even the most incredible or banal, if they are apprehending it as actively scriptural. The directly presentative force of scripturalized utterances corresponds to the ultimacy of the scriptural directive. Its logical position is at the base of evaluation where first principles must be grasped, not inferred. With scriptural presentations of ultimate rightness, the grasping of that meaning is not primarily guided by a reasoning process or

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experience of the world in general (although these factors can come into play) but depends on encounter with a pre-existing utterance proceeding from a supreme Appellant. There is a scripturalist emotion of awe in personal closeness to the first principle of Guidance, in contrast to simply being informed about its content. As the Guidance is in an interpretable text, however, it is not an intimidating divine tremendum; in the respect that it is detached from the saying of the content, it is not even as coercive as an ordinary face-to-face encounter. So its authority is not anti-axial. Because the scriptural utterance is interpreted by a large, long-term historical community, there is some protection from arbitrariness and inadequacy in what individual scripturalists glean from it. To be sure, that very protection imposes a risk of being epistemically manipulated by the community as a whole or its authorized interpreters. Another risk that seems serious from the point of view of ideal religious psychology is that the dominance of the scriptural appeal over reason and experience will encourage the scripturalist to seize on the textually offered Ultimate superstitiously – impelled by hope or fear rather than in sober cognizance of how things are. These risks are reduced to the extent that reasoning concurs with scriptural proposals, but only a dogmatist could be sure in advance that a scripture and a discipline of reasoning will fully agree about topics they both address. (2) The communalist premise of scripture is that the reader is brought to the possibility of encountering the first principles of Guidance authentically – to being able to grasp the unconditionality and real relevance of the Upaniṣadic immutability ideal or the prophetic justice ideal, for example – by enrolling in the practice and story of an existing community. The first principles are presented in their fullness of practical meaning by giving the individual the benefit of the community’s historical experience with its essential lessons tellingly focused and dictally ordered in scriptural narratives and directives. The experience of the community with these texts shows that they stand the test of time and include everything the audience crucially needs to be thinking about (Saadya Gaon, Book of Doctrines and Beliefs 3.5). The respondent to the scriptural appeal now has answers, beyond free-floating abstract ideals of love and respect, to spiritually vital questions: How can free individuals live together in deep agreement? To which other existents should a free individual be most actively responsible? Tradition provides a foothold for the historical extension of communicative reasonableness into the relevant past. The legal sort of tradition offers one model for this; thanks to the recording of rules and precedents we are able to make and go on making coherent determinations of justice. Scripture is thought to put the ground rules for the best life in place by having published the most suitable words. In a scripturally guided conversation, the first principles of Guidance can be invoked by quoting texts: ‘It is written’, ‘The Lord says’, ‘Here is the truth’, ‘Thus I have heard’. Then, suitably reminded, the scripturalist community is tasked like a panel of judges with collectively realizing the implications of what has already been said in scripture for the decisions they now have to make. The legal model highlights the power of scripture to settle questions, the finality of realized scriptural meaning, which might seem the very backbone of its authority and the devoutly desired promise of an elimination of uncertainty. But finality cannot be the whole story of the practical status of understood Guidance. Ideals that are axial must be presented not as conformist dictates of right living but as instigations of enlightened reflection and discussion on the best life – and thus not merely as an elimination of risks of error but also as an encouragement of good risks to run. In this respect the teaching model of guidance is more relevant than the legal model. The free reception and fully

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personal realization of scriptural guidance requires initiality, we might say, as well as finality in what scripture says. Identify with the Imperishable Self (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad) – or walk modestly with your God (Micah) – or adopt ‘reciprocity’ (shu) as the ‘one word that one can act upon throughout the course of one’s life’ (Lunyu 15:23) – and find out what this can mean, in company with fellow students of the ideal (Analects 1999, 59–60).

SOME CONCLUSIONS AND QUESTIONS I hope to have shown that there is a cross-culturally tenable general definition of scripture that allows for conceiving scripture as a necessary element in religious life on an ideal of Guided life that is worth taking seriously by all free inquirers. In closing, I will recapitulate the positive characterizations I have offered and note some of the most interesting evaluative questions that they generate as an agenda for future studies. Scripture conceived as an axial phenomenon assumes an audience of mentally free individuals to whom it caters with cogent supreme appeal and sovereign attitude proposals that are effectively embedded in an ideally ordered historical conversation. What makes these proposals ideally attractive, other than their formal power to unify? What makes a scriptural process more trustworthy or less so in producing them? Scripture is taken by scripturalists to be indispensable for contact with the first principles of Guidance. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, cognitively and morally, compared with philosophical or political norming? Scripture asks its adherents to be committed participants in a historic communal experience. Can scripturally guided social responsibility be reconciled with other relevant intellectual, moral and political standards of responsibility? Scripture can be conceived as reorienting older religious ideals while preserving continuity with older layers of religious experience. Can we distinguish reasonable from unreasonable ways to order relations between older and newer meanings in the scriptural text? For example, can Zionism be a scriptural position now? Scripture is geared to initiating as well as settling life-guidance discussions. How can it perform both of these functions without one undermining the other? Scripture is adapted to a marketplace of multiple philosophical and religious options offered to a diverse clientele of free agents. Can or should the alert seeker of Guidance be a multiscripturalist? Compared with priestly lore – and we might add, compared with abstruse philosophy – scripture is inclusively communicative. How can the supposedly benign communicative reasonableness of scripture not be violated by the dominant position it grants the more-literate class and the magisterium of authorized interpreters? Scripturalism need not be supernaturalistic or authoritarian in privileging a direct presentation of the first principles of Guidance. But scripturalism is religion, and religion always runs risks of superstition, fantasticality and fanaticism. Does scriptural discourse have adequate means of managing these risks? In sum: while philosophers of religion are entitled to inquire into the inherent logic of concepts like God and nirvana without being concerned about their scriptural sourcing, and are even encouraged by scripture to do so, there is good reason for philosophers to inquire into the inherent logic of scripturality itself. There is at least as much reason to ask about scripturality as to ask about faith or piety or love or religious experience as a basis for judging reality and value, given the large epistemic role played by scripturalism in

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literate forms of religion; and there is at least as much reason to seek the conditions of an ideal scripturalism as there is to formulate ideals for law or science or market capitalism as an acceptable platform for community. Philosophically, scripturalism is not antithetical to rationality; the Axial Age perspective helps us to appreciate that scriptural religion and philosophy are close kin. Scripturalism on the basis of existing religions’ scriptures might appear to be an older version of rationalism encumbered by baggage that will have to be dropped one day, but meanwhile its historical and communal substance arguably gives it the advantage over a purely suppositional treatment of religious topics that it provides for fuller realization of the practical meaning of the most durably impressive life-guiding ideals.

NOTES 1. This chapter originated in a presentation to the Global-Critical Philosophy Seminar of the American Academy of Religion at its 2015 conference in Boston. It overlaps extensively with Chapter 5 of my book Scriptures and the Guidance of Language (Smith 2018). 2. On Mīmāṃsā, see Biderman (1995) chap. 5, and Clooney (1990). 3. On the oral and aural aspects of scripturalism see Graham (1987). 4. For reasons to think that writing played an important role in Vedic composition see Goody (1987) chap. 4. 5. This scheme is explained and developed further in my book Appeal and Attitude (Smith 2005). 6. All Hebrew Scriptures translations are JPS. 7. Habermas (1987, 47–62, 77–111). Habermas later (2003, 40) expresses a positive view of the Axial Age civilizations as supporting moral autonomy in The Future of Human Nature, and by implication acknowledges a ‘wider semantic potential’ of scriptural content in public reasoning (Habermas et al. 2011, 28, 115). 8. Larger Pure Land Sutra §8. 9. Śaṅkara, Brahma-Sūtra Bhaṣya, quoted and discussed by Clooney (2002, 52–3).

REFERENCES Analects of Confucius (1999). Trans. Irene Bloom, in Sources of Chinese Tradition, 2nd edn, Vol. 1, ed. William Theodore de Bary and Irene Bloom. New York: Columbia University Press. Biderman, Shlomo (1995). Scripture and Knowledge. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Clooney, Francis X. (1990). Thinking Ritually. Vienna: De Nobili. Clooney, Francis X. (2002). Hindu God, Christian God. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frye, Northrop (1982). The Great Code. The Bible and Literature. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Graham, William A. (1987). Beyond the Written Word. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goody, Jack (1987). The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Habermas, Jürgen (1987). The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2: Lifeworld and System, trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press.

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Habermas, Jürgen (2003). The Future of Human Nature, trans. Hella Beister, Max Pensky, and William Rehg. Cambridge: Polity. Habermas, Jürgen et al. (2011). The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere. New York: Columbia University Press. Jaspers, Karl (1953). The Origin and Goal of History, trans. Michael Bullock. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Olivelle, Patrick (1996). Upaniṣads. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Quinn, Daniel (1992). Ishmael: an Adventure of the Mind and Spirit, New York: Bantam Press. Smith, Steven G. (2005). Appeal and Attitude. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Smith, Steven G. (2018). Scriptures and the Guidance of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell (1993). What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Spinoza, Benedict de (2007). Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, trans. Michael Silverthorne and Jonathan Israel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

PART II

Case studies

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Chapter 11

Ethnographically informed philosophy of religion in a study of Assamese Goddess worship MIKEL BURLEY

INTRODUCTION In recent discussions of how to expand both the range of religious traditions and the number of aspects of religiosity with which the philosophy of religion engages, suggestions have included a stronger emphasis on interdisciplinarity (e.g. Schilbrack 2014; Lewis 2015) and the cultivation of methods that deploy ‘thick description’ (Knepper 2013; Burley 2018). Many commentators have noticed that Western philosophy of religion has not only been obsessed with questions relating to an ahistorical and rarified ‘theism’ (Knepper 2013, 9) but has tended to approach those questions through a filter pervaded by Christian (and perhaps predominantly Protestant) assumptions – assumptions that privilege intellectual or doctrinal matters over other dimensions of religion. When Ninian Smart identified multiple ‘dimensions of the sacred’ – including ritual, mythic, experiential, ethical, legal, social, material and political as well as explicitly doctrinal dimensions (Smart 1996) – he was being broadminded and forward-looking in contrast to the field of philosophy of religion as a whole. The same goes for John Hick when he opined that philosophy of religion, if it is to be worthy of its name, should be concerned, at least in principle, with ‘religion throughout history and throughout the world’ (2010, 12–13). Whether Hick himself lived up to that observation, or whether, in practice, he was complicit in perpetuating the marginalization of what he called ‘primal’, ‘primitive’ or ‘archaic’ religions in comparison with ‘the great developed world faiths’ (1990, 3) remains a point of contention. But the observation itself, that philosophy of religion ought to be globally and historically capacious, is nonetheless a pertinent provocation to imaginatively minded philosophers of religion today. Taking up the call for moves in the direction of greater interdisciplinarity and thicker description, the present chapter articulates why these moves are potentially advantageous and how they might be enacted. More specifically, it explores the possibility of an

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ethnographically informed philosophy of religion – an approach that not only draws upon existing ethnographic studies in disciplines such as anthropology and sociology but also engages in fieldwork itself. Since my own modest ventures into the field have been primarily in India, it is upon an aspect of contemporary Indian religion that my principal example focuses. In August 2017, I undertook a trip to Assam in Northeast India to experience a three-day festival at the temple of the goddess Kāmākhyā, located on a hilltop near the southern bank of the Brahmaputra River. Over the days before, during and immediately after the festival, the occurrences I witnessed included multiple acts of animal sacrifice and a prolonged ‘shamanistic’ dance performed by around twenty men, of whom it is claimed that they are, for the duration of the festival, possessed by deities, including several of the most ferocious goddesses of Tantric Hinduism. Ritual phenomena of these kinds have received little attention in the philosophy of religion. Rare instances of philosophical reflection upon sacrificial rites include Kierkegaard’s interpretation, in Fear and Trembling, of Abraham’s response to being commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac (Kierkegaard 2006 [1843]); also relevant are Wittgenstein’s notes on the forms of human sacrifice, or mock human sacrifice, described in James Frazer’s The Golden Bough (Wittgenstein 1979). I refer to each of these philosophers later in the chapter, along with some of the other philosophical literature that mentions sacrificial acts. For the most part, however, blood sacrifice is conspicuous by its absence in the philosophy of religion, as are rituals involving divine possession. In view of these absences, it is not immediately clear what to do, philosophically, with observations of the sort that I made in Assam. There is a sense in which merely introducing these observations into the conversation shines a light on the narrowness of purview that has afflicted much philosophy of religion hitherto. But there is more to say than that. As I argue in this chapter, if a global-critical philosophy of religion is to do justice to religion in all its messy and variegated complexity, then thickly descriptive and ethnographically informed philosophical inquiry constitutes one potentially fruitful means of furthering that end.

ETHNOGRAPHY AND PHILOSOPHY In order to reflect upon the viability of an ethnographically informed philosophy of religion, it will be helpful to begin with a brief sketch of ethnography’s history and its relation to philosophy. The practice of describing diverse peoples and their ways of life has occurred for millennia, and was evident in, for example, ancient Greek, Roman, Arabic, Byzantine and Chinese travel writings. But it was in eighteenth-century Europe, especially among German scholars and explorers, that what became known as ethnography and ethnology were first systematized into identifiable academic disciplines. The term ethnographia, which was to become ‘ethnography’, was first coined in 1767 to denote the ‘description of peoples and nations’, and ethnologia (‘ethnology’) was coined in 1781 to denote a more comprehensive study that compares peoples and nations from across the world (Vermeulen 2015, xv). From its beginnings, ethnography involved the study of peoples and their ways of life by observing them at first-hand rather than merely reading or listening to second-hand reports, but it was from the 1920s onwards that the method of participant observation became virtually synonymous with ethnography, at least as it was practised in what had by that time become known as the discipline of social or cultural anthropology. Associated

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especially with Bronisław Malinowski (1884–1942), the method of long-term fieldwork, living among the people one is studying, became de rigueur, and Malinowski’s study of the Trobriand Islanders (1922) ‘gained acclaim as one of the foundational texts of ethnography’ (Gullion 2016, 4). The major figures that followed include E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, each of whom carried out ethnographic studies during the 1920s and 1930s that, when published, were to become anthropological classics. At this time, an expectation developed that ethnography demands an extended stay, of a year or longer, with people remote from Western society. But there were already precedents – from the Chicago school of sociology in the 1920s, for instance – for ethnography being used also to study communities closer to home (Murchison 2010, 6–9). It is sometimes said of ethnographic approaches that they exhibit ‘a strong anti-philosophical strand’, for they accentuate ‘the practice and products of research’ as opposed to more theoretical ruminations upon the research findings (Hammersley 1992, 43). Although not baseless, this observation could be misleading if overgeneralized. The grain of truth in it might at first appear to be illustrated by an anecdote concerning a debate between two philosophers, namely Peter Winch and Alasdair MacIntyre, both of whom had an interest in anthropology but without undertaking ethnographic research themselves. Held at the University of Oxford in the late 1960s, the debate had been prompted by earlier publications by the two philosophers. In one well-known article, Winch had taken issue with the Oxford anthropologist Evans-Pritchard over how best to understand the ‘magical’ practices and world view of the Azande of southern Sudan, among whom Evans-Pritchard had conducted fieldwork in the 1920s (Winch 1964); MacIntyre had been among those who responded critically to Winch in print (MacIntyre 1967, esp. 112–13). It was a source of some excitement that Evans-Pritchard was in the audience at the debate; yet he refrained from speaking until, upon being asked for an opinion, he replied that the discussion had been ‘very interesting but, you know, Azande have no cattle!’ It would seem that Winch or MacIntyre had implied that the Azande were cattle owners, perhaps conflating them with the Nuer, whom Evans-Pritchard had also studied (de Lara 2000, 120). As Philippe de Lara notes, it would be tempting to interpret Evans-Pritchard’s remark as typifying an ‘empiricist irony’ and aversion to theorizing. The temptation should be resisted, however, since Evans-Pritchard was not only a proficient theorist himself, but deliberately strove to be one (de Lara 2000). Much the same might be said of many other anthropologists. If there is, then, any suspicion about philosophy from certain ethnographic quarters, this is apt to take the form of dubiety not about theorizing per se, but about philosophy’s tendency to float free of empirical grounding. When ethnographers do participate in theoretical endeavours, however, it is often philosophical work to which they turn for conceptual support. Of all the philosophically minded anthropologists that could be mentioned, an especially pertinent example is Clifford Geertz (1926–2006), whose influence extends both into the social sciences more generally and into the multidisciplinary field of religious studies. The next section will take as its starting point the connections between philosophy and Geertz’s ethnography, before focusing on the notion of thick description, which Geertz did so much to popularize.

CLIFFORD GEERTZ, THICK DESCRIPTION AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Philosophy’s significance, though pervasive in Geertz’s oeuvre, is most explicitly expounded in the preface to Available Light (2000). There he admits that, in the late 1940s,

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he had supposed himself to be destined for a career in philosophy, but his fascination with the particularities of ‘other peoples’ ways-of-life’ took him in the direction of anthropology (Geertz 2000, xi). It was, however, precisely this fascination that made Geertz receptive to ideas from Wittgenstein from the publication of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953) onwards. Especially pertinent was Wittgenstein’s emphasis on treating the meaning of human thought and language not as sequestered in the minds or heads of individuals, but as embedded in publicly discernible behaviour (Geertz 2000, xi–xii). This way of understanding meaning opens it up to ethnographic study, and Geertz considered it important to inform fellow anthropologists of this philosophical reorientation that he found not only in Wittgenstein but also in other philosophers who attend closely to how language is used, including Susanne Langer, Paul Ricoeur, Gilbert Ryle and J. L. Austin (see Geertz 1973, ch. 1; 1983, 77, 153). Searching for a term to encapsulate what he considered ethnography to consist in, Geertz seized upon ‘thick description’, which he borrowed from two essays by Ryle (Ryle 1971, chs. 36 and 37). The concocted example of Ryle’s that Geertz finds conducive for illustrating the kind of description at issue is one in which Ryle invites his readers to ponder two instances of someone’s eye rapidly closing and reopening. In one case, the contraction of the eye’s lids is the result of an involuntary twitch, thus lending itself to a concise description in terms of a mere bodily movement. In the other case, however, the nictation is a deliberate wink, intended to communicate a message. Its description thus requires more than an account of the bodily movement alone, for the movement carries meaning; it is, as Geertz notes, ‘a gesture’ (Geertz 1973, 6). Ryle proceeds to add further complexity to the range of possible scenarios: someone might, for example, amuse his friends by parodying someone else’s conspiratorial winking; to perfect the parody, he might practise it repeatedly. To adequately convey what is going on, any description of this practising activity must be adverbially thick, analogous to a sandwich with several layers (Ryle 1971, 482). Adapting Ryle’s notion of thick description, Geertz emphasizes the extent to which ethnographic writing demands more than merely reporting what one has observed. In many instances it involves interpreting the words or behaviour of people whose ways of going about things are already saturated with their own implicit or explicit understandings of the world. As Geertz puts it: ‘Right down at the factual base, the hard rock, insofar as there is any, of the whole enterprise, we are already explicating: and worse, explicating explications. Winks upon winks upon winks’ (1973, 9). As certain critics have pointed out, Geertz’s appropriation of Ryle’s terminology conflates description with interpretation. While Ryle’s examples of winking call for increasingly dense descriptions, they were not designed to illustrate cases in which there might be competing interpretations of what is happening. Geertz, meanwhile, is concerned with the semantic complexity of sociocultural situations in which even those who participate directly in some interpersonal exchange are liable to offer diverging accounts of what is going on. Under such circumstances, even the most basic description that an ethnographer provides will be imbued with interpretation: it will require piecing together a narrative from other narratives, a choral symphony (so to speak) from multiple discordant voices. Geertz has thus been accused of misunderstanding or misinterpreting Ryle (Descombes 2002; Bazin 2003). A more charitable assessment, however, would be to view Geertz as having reoriented or customized the notion of thick description for a particular purpose. Despite its enthusiastic adoption across many social sciences, the idea of thick description, whether in the Rylean or the adapted Geertzian sense, has been largely

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neglected in philosophy. In the philosophy of religion, however, its relevance to expanding this subdiscipline’s scope is beginning to be noticed. Knepper, in particular, includes it as one component of a threefold methodology for promoting a more historically informed and religiously encompassing approach to philosophy of religion, the other two components being ‘formal comparison’ and ‘multidimensional explanation and evaluation’ – with all three components being concerned specifically with ‘religious reason-giving’ (2013, 75). Following intimations by John Clayton (2006) about the importance of contextualizing instances of reason-giving within their respective historical and cultural (or intercultural) milieus, Knepper treats reason-giving as the primary target of thick description. For example, rather than supposing that the non-duality of Brahman and ātman, as affirmed by the eighth-to-ninth-century Indian philosopher Śaṅkara, could usefully be understood and evaluated in abstraction from its argumentative context, a thickly descriptive approach would ask who is making the claim, who the audience is, who its opponents are, how such a claim was arrived at, under what conditions it might be amended or relinquished, and so on (Knepper 2013, 80, 37–8). ‘To begin to answer such questions is to begin to describe thickly and critically’ (38). Much of my own recent work has sought to extend the task of thickly descriptive philosophy of religion beyond an exclusive focus on reason-giving and towards a comprehensive recognition of the radical diversity not only of religious traditions but also of the forms religiosity takes within and across those traditions (see esp. Burley 2020). Reason-giving may be the element of religious life with which philosophers have characteristically been preoccupied, but this very preoccupation runs the risk of nurturing an over-intellectualized conception of what religion typically consists in. If a guiding purpose of philosophy of religion is to do conceptual justice to the phenomena under investigation, then the descriptive enterprise should remain open to religion’s multiple dimensions. To this end, the philosopher may productively utilize existing sources that offer richly textured expositions of religious forms of life. These include works of narrative fiction (novels, plays, films) and biographical or autobiographical works. All of these can afford elaborately contextualized depictions of religious outlooks and practices that may be discussed and analysed philosophically and compared with one another. There are also debates to be had over whether certain narrative artworks can themselves be deemed to actively philosophize when they present their readers or viewers with imaginative explorations of diverse perspectives on the world (Burley 2020, ch. 3). Another resource to be drawn upon is, of course, ethnography, which is my principal topic here. In addition to engaging with existing ethnographies, a further innovative option is for philosophers themselves to undertake ethnographic research. Although my own moves in that direction do not amount to full-blown ethnographic studies, I am confident that it is an option with considerable potential. I thus devote the remainder of this chapter to examining it in more detail.

ETHNOGRAPHY AS A PHILOSOPHICAL RESOURCE AND METHOD Religious practices originating in South Asia have long been among the key subjects of my academic and personal research, and this interest has taken me on several trips to India and Nepal. In 1993–4, I spent seven months travelling around these two countries, sometimes on my own and sometimes with others, visiting temples and pilgrimage sites

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that are sacred to Hindus, Buddhists or Jains. This was not a sharply focused ethnographic inquiry, but it gave me first-hand familiarity with aspects of the religion and culture of India and Nepal that I could not have acquired at home. It also provided invaluable background experience for my second trip, from September 1999 to March 2000, when I again travelled through India and Nepal, this time with the more deliberate purpose of being a participant observer at several locations where varieties of yoga and related spiritual disciplines are taught. A report on this research trip was published in two successive issues of a popular yoga magazine (Burley 2001a, 2001b), and the research itself has contributed to my understanding of the diversity of South Asian spiritual traditions, which I have made use of in subsequent work. More recently, in August 2017, I undertook a two-week field trip to Assam in Northeast India to carry out research into goddess worship at the Kāmākhyā temple, which is just north of the city of Guwahati. Having read as much literature as I could find about a specific festival that is held at this temple in mid-August each year, there remained gaps in the information available. Since I wanted to learn and write about Assamese goddess worship as part of a larger project on religious diversity, I decided to attend the festival myself. Although a trip of only two weeks hardly amounts to sustained ethnographic research, the opportunity to be present at the festival, to speak with people there, and to explore the surrounding natural and cultural environment advanced my understanding of the forms of religiosity practised in and around the Kāmākhyā temple complex. I shall say more about what I learnt in the next two sections. First, however, let us reflect briefly upon the more general question of how philosophy of religion can benefit from ethnographic material. When contemplating the deficiencies of contemporary philosophy of religion, a convenient diagnosis to deploy is one proposed by Kevin Schilbrack (2014), who identifies three main problems. The first is narrowness with regard to the range of religious traditions that are typically discussed. The second is intellectualism, in the sense that, as I noted in the introduction to this chapter, of all the many dimensions of religion (including the ritual, mythic, experiential, ethical, and so on), Western philosophy of religion gravitates towards the doctrinal or belief-centred dimensions; moreover, it does so in ways that implicitly characterize religions as though they were supplying competing theoretical explanations of the world. Without our needing to deny that theorizing and explaining have a place in religions, it may be recognized that intellectualist conceptions overemphasize these facets to the near exclusion of others. Finally, the third problem specified by Schilbrack is insularity – a tendency to remain embroiled in debates and disagreements internal to the subdiscipline rather than seeking methodological expansion by engaging with other branches of philosophy or other disciplines involved in the study of religion. My contention is that using ethnography as a philosophical resource – or indeed as a philosophical method – can ameliorate all three of these problems, in ways that I shall now elaborate. The obvious means of overcoming the narrow predominance of Christian themes is to pursue philosophical questions that relate to more than just Christianity and perhaps to more than Abrahamic ‘theism’ as well. This by no means requires ethnography, for there are plenty of textual sources, both primary and secondary, concerning non-Christian and non-Abrahamic traditions that are readily available in translated editions. However, ethnography can add further levels of interest to the inquiry, enabling the exploration of religious dimensions that evade easy encapsulation in standard religious or philosophical texts. Indeed, for this reason, ethnography has as much to offer to philosophical

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investigations of Abrahamic religions as it does to the investigation of others, since it is capable of disclosing aspects of ‘everyday’, ‘lived’ or ‘living’ religion that are routinely omitted from studies that restrict themselves to non-ethnographic published materials (cf. Ammerman 2007; McGuire 2008; Gregg and Scholefield 2015). In this respect, it addresses the problem of intellectualism at the same time as tackling narrowness. For example, an ethnographically informed philosophical inquiry into the problem of evil is apt to shift the focus away from exclusively theoretical responses in the form of theodicies and defences of belief, and towards the multiple ways in which religious attitudes and practices enter into the lives of people confronted by evil, suffering and violence. If we were to find, for instance, that a person’s religious faith is just as likely to be strengthened as to be weakened under conditions of affliction, the philosopher would do well to bear this in mind before assuming that the problem of evil, constructed as a theoretical argument, necessarily counts against religious commitment. Ethnographic inquiry may reveal features of the role of religion in people’s lives that are commonly overlooked when the philosopher’s gaze is trained exclusively on the arguments of fellow philosophers and theologians (see, e.g. Winkelmann 2004). An ethnographic approach is thus capable of refocusing the researcher’s attention upon the bodily, behavioural, practice-oriented dimensions of religious life, and upon how those dimensions figure within life as a whole. While studying Hindu ascetics in Nepal, for example, I spent several weeks at the Paśupatināth temple complex just northeast of Kathmandu, both in 1993 and then again in early 2000. There I met renouncers from various ascetic orders, including a Vaiṣṇava holy man named Paramhaṃsa Rām Kṛṣṇa Dās and a motley group of Śiva-worshipping Nāths led by a certain Yogīrāj Dr Tyāgīnāth Aghorī Bābā. Notwithstanding the fact that each of these individuals had taken vows of renunciation, the differences between them were striking. Rām Kṛṣṇa Dās is also known as Dūdhādhārī Bābā, meaning ‘the holy man (bābā, lit. “father”) who drinks milk’, on account of his having vowed several decades ago to consume nothing but cows’ milk (supplemented by tea and, I am told, a regular vitamin pill). During the time that I visited him, his principal form of religious practice was the recitation of devotional songs (bhajans). He would sing these while playing the harmonium on the stone path outside his small brick hut, situated above the Bāgmatī River, where human corpses are regularly cremated. Tyāgīnāth, by contrast, would reside directly adjacent to the main cremation site, in a building with no wall on the side closest to the river. Smoke from the cremation fires frequently billowed in, mixing with the smoke of the fire that was burning in the centre of the room during the winter months – and with the cannabis smoke emanating from Tyāgīnāth’s entourage of six or seven Nāth yogīs as they passed the chillum around their circle. As an Aghorī (a member of the Aghor Panth), Tyāgīnāth’s vow was to inhabit cremation grounds. Literally meaning ‘one who is not terrible’, aghorī is one of the many epithets of the god Śiva (see Bharati 1965, 305). It carries an ironic insinuation, given that the Aghorīs are notorious for their menacing and volatile persona – a persona that Tyāgīnāth had himself cultivated. On one occasion, while sitting with him and a small group of Nāth yogīs, I asked Tyāgīnāth what his spiritual practice (sādhana) consists in. Enigmatically, he stood up, walked over to me, stuck two fingers in my ears and pressed his thumbs against my eyelids, pushing my eyeballs back into their sockets until all I could see was a mass of internal flickering lights. I grabbed Tyāgīnāth’s wrists and forced his hands away from my face. He grinned, half sardonically and half disconcerted by my resistance. The ‘technique’ he had demonstrated does bear a remote resemblance

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to a yogic procedure, referred to in some traditional texts as yoni mudrā (‘womb seal’), which involves physically closing one’s senses with fingers and thumbs and drawing one’s attention inwards (see, e.g. Gheraṇḍa Saṃhitā 3.33, in Digambarji and Gharote 1997, 82). More than this, however, Tyāgīnāth was performing his role as the eccentric Aghorī, exhibiting the ‘divine and calculated madness’ that an ‘authentic ascetic’ is expected to display (Parry 1994, 257). A complex figure, Tyāgīnāth was also a renowned Āyurvedic doctor, whose purported healing abilities attracted patients from far afield. Being with renunciants such as Rām Kṛṣṇa Dās, Tyāgīnāth and the other sādhus and yogīs with whom I associated in India and Nepal brought home to me the sectarian divergences between renouncer traditions but also the particularities of each practitioner – the ways in which his own amalgamated and partially improvised style of practice makes its mark upon his body and is enacted through his comportment. It is in the everyday lived realities of these practitioners that the religious traditions at issue have the life that they do. Furthermore, it is through interpersonal encounters with such individuals and groups that one comes to see the many forms that a religious attitude to life can take and how religion’s cognitive and intellectual strands are interwoven with those of an experiential, affective and ritualized nature. With regard to the problem of disciplinary insularity, not only is an ethnographically informed philosophical approach itself inherently interdisciplinary, but it naturally encourages imaginative styles of philosophical thinking that enable the researcher to transcend the confines of standard debates in the philosophy of religion. Along with this potential strength of the approach, however, comes the difficulty of making the research relevant to existing philosophical debates. Indeed, it remains a hazard of interdisciplinary methodologies in general that the research findings can be hard to situate in relation to the extant literature. This is certainly a challenge that bears upon my research both into yoga traditions and into goddess worship in Assam, but there are ways of confronting that challenge. The one I have generally adopted is to accentuate the hermeneutical and phenomenological aspects of philosophical inquiry – the search for a descriptive account that is sufficiently evocative and conceptually nuanced to do justice to the phenomena under examination and, at the same time, capable of disrupting widely held assumptions in the philosophy of religion. It is by this means that a thickly descriptive philosophical approach avoids being ‘merely descriptive’ in the derogatory sense of that term. Instead, it becomes critically descriptive by agitating and unsettling facile expectations and presuppositions, militating against overgeneralizing philosophical theories and definitions. To illustrate what I mean by this, I now turn to a fuller account of my research in Assam.

STUDYING GODDESS WORSHIP AT A FESTIVAL IN ASSAM The focal point of my field trip to Assam was the three-day festival known variously as Manasā Pūjā, Deodhanī Utsav or Deodhanī Nāc. Manasā is the Sanskrit name of a goddess who is associated with snakes. According to Northeast Indian folklore, she was born from semen ejaculated by the god Śiva and raised by Kadrū, queen of the subterranean snakelike beings called nāgas (Haq 2015, 39). Manasā (often referred to in Assam as Māre or Mārāi) is thus typically depicted in statues or illustrations as a princess holding a cobra or with hooded cobras rising up behind or on each side of her. But she is also represented aniconically in the form of a pot, which can be symbolic both of the dwelling place of

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snakes and of wombs and fertility (Dimock and Ramanujan 1964, 321). Manasā is thus one of several Indian goddesses with an ambivalent nature: like a snake, she can be a venomous bringer of death and destruction; yet like a womb or a pot, she can be a source of fecundity and healing, to whom offerings will be made by those desiring pregnancy or relief from illness (Dimock 1962, 317; Maity 1989, 71). Pūjā means ‘worship’, utsav means ‘festival’, and nāc (from Sanskrit nāṭya) means ‘dance’. The meaning of the term Deodhanī is more elusive. According to one etymology, it means ‘woman of god’ (Neog 1984, 45), a meaning that coheres with the fact that, in several parts of Assam, the dance constituting the centrepiece of Manasā worship is performed by women. But at the Kāmākhyā temple, the dancers – between fifteen and twenty-one in number – are all male, and here the festival organizers treat Deodhanī as an Assamese approximation of the Sanskrit term Devadhvani, meaning ‘sound [or echo] of the deity’. This latter phrase alludes to the conception of the dancers, known as Deodhās, as being possessed by gods or goddesses; as such, the Deodhās are held capable of expressing the voice or will of these deities – both through bodily movements and audible yells and also through advice that they give to devotees who come asking for spiritual or practical guidance. Prior to attending the festival, I had read accounts of how these dancers would howl and shriek and jump as they danced in a ‘shamanistic’ fashion to the accompaniment of drums, cymbals and brass horns (e.g. Mahanta 2008, ch. 20). I had also seen photographs and short videos available via the internet. But only by being physically present at the temple was I able to experience the dramatic assault on the senses that the festival imparts. This is indicative of what several ethnographers have referred to as the importance of ‘being there’ (Bradburd 1998; Watson 1999). Though not sufficient for one’s descriptive account to be philosophically significant, simply being present at a particular event does enable a more phenomenologically percipient perspective on the event than would otherwise have been available. Here I shall concentrate on two main themes in the Deodhanī festival, namely blood and rhythmic sound, before turning more directly to the question of how to connect the experience with issues in philosophy of religion. Blood, both real and symbolic, is a central element in the Deodhanī festival as well as, more generally, in the branch of Tantric Hinduism of which it is a part – a branch that has, no doubt, been influenced by the indigenous cultures of the Northeast Indian region (Urban 2011; Borkataky-Varma 2017). The origin myth of the Kāmākhyā temple itself involves bodily dismemberment, for the temple is said to have been built on the site where the severed vulva of the goddess Satī fell to earth. In Hindu mythology, after Satī sacrificed herself to maintain the honour of her husband Śiva, her body was sliced into pieces by other gods who wished to curtail Śiva’s grief by destroying its immediate object (Kālikā Purāṇa 18.37–43, in Shastri 2008, 97). Prior to this act of disseverment, Śiva had carried Satī’s body across the world in a state of mournful rage. Those regions of eastern India over which the corpse was conveyed, including Assam, became renowned ‘as the land fit for the performance of sacrifice’ (18.44). The goddess Kāmākhyā herself (who, in practice, is not differentiated from Satī) is said to fertilize the land with her menstrual blood, which is symbolically linked with the colour of the nearby Brahmaputra River as it swells with monsoon rain and becomes reddish brown with iron-rich soil deposits. This occurs especially in late June at the time of another major festival, known locally as Ambubācī Melā – the ‘gathering’ (melā) that celebrates ‘the issuing forth of water’ (ambubācī). A further connection with blood is the prevalence of animal sacrifice. As is the case at many temples dedicated to Tantric goddesses in India, the sacrifice of animals by means

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of beheading is a daily occurrence at Kāmākhyā, and the number of sacrifices increases at festival times. The majority of the sacrificial victims are pigeons and young male goats, though other animals, including water buffaloes, are also regularly sacrificed, again by decapitation. During the Deodhanī festival, the sacrifice of pigeons and goats is integrated with the performance of divine possession. Several of the Deodhās, who are said to be possessed by bloodthirsty goddesses, come running into the temple courtyard carrying live pigeons in their hands and young billy goats slung over their shoulders. These animals are then dropped onto the ground or handed to temple assistants before being carried off to the sacrifice house at the westernmost end of the temple. At certain points during the festival, the Deodhās – again like the fearsome goddesses they are held to embody – participate in the ritual drinking of animal blood, in some instances directly from the freshly severed heads of the goats and pigeons. One of the most histrionic, and deliberately gruesome, episodes takes place on the second day of the festival and is repeated on the third. It begins with two of the Deodhās carrying into the temple courtyard two long swords of the type that are normally used for decapitating buffaloes. As they hold these swords parallel to each other at thigh height, with the sharp edge of each blade turned upwards, the atmosphere among the watching crowd intensifies. Spectators standing in the courtyard close in around the two Deodhās and most of the hundreds of spectators who are sitting on the stone steps to the side of the courtyard rise to their feet. Then, one at a time, other Deodhās stand barefoot upon the sword blades. As they do so, they generally place a hand on the head of one of the men holding the swords to steady themselves, raising the other arm aloft in a triumphal gesture. Members of the crowd whoop and ululate, adding a shrill clamour to the already tumultuous sound of drums and cymbals. From among the crowd, live pigeons are passed to the Deodhā standing upon the swords. In a couple of instances, the Deodhā stepped down from the swords before he could do anything with the pigeons, presumably because he had lost his balance or because the blades were cutting too severely into the soles of his feet. But in most instances the Deodhā would seize the pigeon and thrust its head into his mouth. Biting into the pigeon’s neck, he would jerk the body away from his face, snapping off the pigeon’s head. He would then toss the body, with wings still flapping reflexively, into the crowd while crunching up the skull in an exaggerated manner. Some Deodhās spat out the head; others gulped it down, spitting out only some residual feathers (and on one occasion almost choking). In most cases, the Deodhā would then project his tongue and roll his eyes, resembling mythological and iconographic depictions of the predacious goddesses being personified. The sound of drumming is a common feature of possession rituals not only in India but across numerous cultural contexts (Alter 2008; Rouget 1985). At the Deodhanī festival at Kāmākhyā, it is generated by between thirty and forty double-headed barrel drums, known as barḍhols. These are played by standing drummers who strike one end of the drum with a stick and the other with the hand. Lining the edge of the courtyard, they are accompanied by a similar number of cymbal players. The combined effect of pounding drums and clashing cymbals, plus several brass horns, is a thunderous sound that reverberates in the ears and vibrates one’s chest, creating an immersive soundscape. The Deodhās interact with the drummers, frequently urging them to speed up the rhythm. When the rhythm slows, it resembles the beat of a giant heart, which might be imagined as the heartbeat of the goddess (Dold 2011, 55). Drums and cymbals are also played in the dancing hall of the temple, wherein the worship of Manasā in the form of a pot takes place. The rhythm inside the temple differs from that outside; so, as the Deodhās dance from one location to

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another, they move between soundworlds. The sonic barrage persists for several hours on each of the three days of the festival, with only brief hiatuses, such as when the Deodhās collectively sit down to participate in meals comprising animal blood or coconut water. Having witnessed and gathered information pertaining to an extended ritual performance such as the Deodhanī festival, it is not immediately obvious how to utilize this material in philosophically productive ways. In large part, this is because of the paucity of existing discussions of phenomena such as animal sacrifice and divine possession in the philosophical literature. One partial exception is Søren Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, which discusses at length the story in Genesis 22 of Abraham’s being called to sacrifice his son Isaac. Provocatively, Kierkegaard (or his pseudonym Johannes de silentio) argues that Abraham is a ‘knight of faith’ who, by being willing to obey God’s command, demonstrates a religious commitment that exceeds – or suspends – the demands of ethics (Kierkegaard 2006, esp. 46–59). Although the story ends with a ram being sacrificed in place of Isaac, Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice his son casts a disquieting shadow over the narrative. As Douglas Hedley remarks, Kierkegaard’s treatment of the story not only ‘challenges any cozy domestication of religion’: it could also be construed as ‘furnishing warrant for fanaticism’ (Hedley 2011, 4). But, of course, neither the story of Abraham and Isaac nor Kierkegaard’s treatment of it, nor indeed the secondary literature that discusses Kierkegaard’s thoughts on this matter, is centrally concerned with the sacrifice of non-human animals; what is significant about the story is the possibility that a man was willing to sacrifice his own child in obedience to God, not that a ram ended up being sacrificed instead. In the few instances when philosophers of religion refer to animal sacrifice in its own right, this is normally done in a brusque and dismissive manner, as though such practices were merely an antiquated phenomenon that, fortunately, the ‘major’ or ‘great’ religions have outgrown. When writing about Vedic ritual sacrifice in India, for example, John Hick is clear that Vedic religion belongs in the category of ‘pre-axial’ religions, which are ‘essentially conservative’ (2004, 27). According to the theory of an ‘axial age’, such religions were concerned only with maintaining human life ‘on an even keel’ rather than with the attainment of individual salvation. It is, allegedly, this latter goal that characterizes ‘the great world faiths’ that superseded the so-called pre-axial religions (2004, 12). Another author, John Stewart, has described animal sacrifice as something that, ‘[f]rom our contemporary vantage’ appears ‘both quaint and economically ill-advised’ (2008, 110); and Hedley, who writes insightfully about sacrifice as a prevalent feature of the human imagination, disregards ‘sacrifice in the strict ritual sense’ as a component of religion that ‘is generally limited to ancient or archaic societies’ (2011, 2). Though undoubtedly an ancient form of religious practice, animal sacrifice also remains widespread today, albeit in cultures that are typically given short shrift by philosophers of religion. An author such as Hedley makes it clear that his ‘primary concern is not in the anthropological or sociological phenomenon of sacrifice’ (2011, 4), and there is nothing wrong with adopting the particular focus that he does. But an ethnographically informed philosophy of religion is well placed to fill a substantial lacuna precisely by giving attention to that ‘anthropological or sociological phenomenon’. Discussions of divine possession are, if anything, even rarer in the philosophical literature than are those of animal sacrifice, despite there being a wealth of anthropological research on the topic. Again, therefore, an ethnographic philosophy of religion has something to offer in this regard. The challenge is to find ways of presenting the material that are philosophically relevant and illuminating.

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‘SOMETHING DEEP AND SINISTER’ When searching for a point of connection between sacrificial rituals and existing philosophical discussions, an important place to look is Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’. In those remarks, Wittgenstein is critical of Frazer’s tendency to treat the ritual practices of ancient or small-scale indigenous peoples as based on false beliefs about causal relations. Instead, Wittgenstein urges us to look for possible meanings in rituals that are not reducible to instrumental purposes. In the case of rituals involving actual or mock human sacrifice, Wittgenstein observes how learning about such rituals can stir in us an impression of ‘something deep and sinister’ (1979, 16e). He recommends that we not ignore this impression, for it is likely to disclose something telling about the ritual itself. In at least many instances, we need look no further for the ‘purpose’ of the ritual than the fact that it is disturbing in this way: ‘what strikes us in this course of events as terrible, impressive, horrible, tragic, &c., anything but trivial and insignificant, that is what gave birth to them’ (1979, 3e). Whether we should emulate Wittgenstein’s apparent confidence in asserting what gave birth to sacrificial rituals is contestable. Nevertheless, we might acknowledge that he offers a possible perspective that, in turn, provides an entry point for philosophical reflection upon many forms of ritual, including possession dances and animal beheadings. In those rituals, too, we see something deep and sinister: a vivid enactment of the powerful and often destructive forces pervading the world. To revere those forces, and to comprehend them as the power of a goddess who is both wild and sovereign, need not be understood in terms of seeking to avert the dangers that threaten us, though talk of averting such dangers may indeed enter into the rituals themselves. What Wittgenstein, and others who have been influenced by his thought, are urging is that we take seriously the extent to which ritual practices give expression to features of the human predicament – of the precarious contingencies of life – that may not be readily articulable in other terms. To call this, as many critics have done, ‘expressivism’ or an ‘expressive theory’ (e.g. Banner 1990, ch. 4) is misleading for two main reasons. First, it is misleading because what we are being offered are alternative ways of thinking about ritual activities, not a theoretical blueprint that is designed to explain them or to explain away the phenomena to which they allude. Second, it is misleading because talk of expressivist theories could imply that identifying what is being expressed should be relatively straightforward, perhaps by reference to some desire or wish or emotion; in that respect, pointing to these conative or affective attitudes might be construed as an explanation of the ritual. What Wittgenstein is suggesting, by contrast, is that there may be, or need be, no explanation for certain rituals at all: the ritual expresses something, but not something to which we can point independently of the ritual; rather, we see the meaning only in the ritual itself. There is, of course, much more that would need to be said if this line of thinking were to be adequately fleshed out. My purpose here, however, is not to provide a thorough account of what a Wittgenstein-inspired approach to ritual might look like; it is to indicate how ethnographic observations may be brought into connection with existing philosophical ideas. Another method that I have adopted in my own work for imbuing descriptions of ritual phenomena with further philosophical depth is that of borrowing conceptual resources from discussions of literary and other art forms. For example, I have invoked the concept of the grotesque, as it occurs in the work of literary theorists such as Mikhail Bakhtin, for the purpose of enriching a description of the bodily demeanour presented by

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the shamanistic dancers in the Deodhanī festival (Burley 2019, 2020, ch. 6). Bakhtin, in his examination of stories by Rabelais, emphasizes the function of the devouring mouth in constituting the centrepiece of the grotesque face. The mouth becomes the paradigmatic orifice through which the body engages with its world: ‘The victorious body receives the defeated world and is renewed’ (Bakhtin 1984 [1965], 283). A comparable focality of the mouth is observable in rituals such as those that I have described, in which drinking animal blood or biting the heads off live pigeons executes a relation of consuming dynamism to the world on the part of the goddesses who are embodied through the performance of possession. By utilizing the concept of the grotesque – or related concepts, such as those of ‘dark comedy’ (Styan 1968) or the ‘aesthetics of discomfort’ (Almada and Lindenberger 2016) – we do not move towards a general theory of possession rituals; still less do we address the kinds of metaphysical questions that some philosophers may be tempted to ask about how a supernatural being might take over a human body. Instead, we enable ourselves to perceive aspects of the ritual proceedings that might otherwise have remained underexplored and to thereby develop an enhanced phenomenological hermeneutics – a thick and conceptually rich description – of the religious occasion.

CONCLUSION When describing any aspect of religion, there is always a risk of underplaying the complexity, and of thereby distorting the phenomena at issue, by adducing only a onesided selection of examples. In a case such as that of the Assamese festival that has been my chief example in this chapter, an especially salient danger is that of ‘exoticizing’ the forms of religiosity involved. To exoticize ritual practices such as animal sacrifice and the performance of divine possession would be to present them as radically distant from ourselves and from the forms of religiosity with which we are most familiar. The purpose of an ethnographically informed philosophy of religion is, however, neither to exoticize nor to try to eradicate differences where they exist. Instead, it is to bring to life – to make more real for us – a wider repertoire of religious ways of being than has generally been available in the philosophy of religion. Sometimes those ways of being will indeed appear irreducibly strange to some readers; sometimes they may even appear morally repulsive. But the philosophical task is to do conceptual justice to the phenomena, in the sense of finding modes of description that facilitate a deepened rather than a diminished understanding of what is going on. Importantly, along with that deepened understanding may come a questioning and a disruption of previously taken-for-granted assumptions about what the category of religion encompasses. If, for example, one were to adopt an overly homogenizing picture of religious ethics or of how gods are conceptualized, then an ethnographically informed examination of types of religion that involve blood sacrifice and the celebration of aggressive deities may begin to inject a more heterogenizing spirit into that picture. For this heterogenizing purpose, the description of examples that are striking and unusual is instructive. But the aspiration is not to gaze in wonder at the peculiarities: it is to broaden one’s appreciation of the diverse possibilities that are characteristic of religious life. With reference to the festival I have been describing, it should be mentioned that many different religious and moral outlooks exist alongside one another in modern-day Assam. During the week leading up to the Deodhanī festival, for example, a local branch of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON, also known as the Hare

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Krishna Movement) was celebrating Śrī Kṛṣṇa Janmāṣṭamī – the birthday of Lord Krishna – in a large temporary marquee less than a mile down the road from the Kāmākhyā temple. Members of this society are, for the most part, vegetarians who would have no truck with animal sacrifice. Without directly protesting against the events at the Kāmākhyā temple, these devotees of Krishna exemplified a contrasting presence in what we might call the polyphonic hubbub of religious voices. (And yet there were similarities, too, such as the booming of drums and clashing of cymbals, in this case amplified through a PA system turned up to distortion level.) Recognizing and foregrounding this diversity is part of what is meant by ‘doing conceptual justice to the world in all its variety’ (Phillips 2007, 207). It contributes to a thickening of description by enabling us to view things from different angles, building up a multi-perspectival picture. There thus occurs a softening of the common distinction between ‘mere description’, on the one hand, and the kind of ‘critical’ analysis and evaluation characteristic of ‘genuine’ philosophy, on the other. As indicated earlier, the descriptive method serves the critical function of probing and unsettling assumptions that may harbour tendencies to overgeneralize, ignore certain religious possibilities or dismiss particular practices or conceptions of divinity as ‘clearly morally defective’ on the basis of thin and inadequate accounts (see Hick 2004, 339). Once a more full-bodied and nuanced account is on the table, many philosophers will then wish to subject the practice or belief or conception of divinity to rational evaluation, and they will indeed be in a position to do so in a less prejudiced manner than would otherwise have been the case. It would be misleading, however, to view this ‘evaluative’ stage as the point at which philosophy proper comes into play, since, for the reasons I have suggested, thickly and critically descriptive work itself serves important philosophical purposes. It also encourages critical reflection upon the pervasive interests of much existing philosophy of religion, revealing many of them to be based on ‘ahistorically rarified’ abstractions (Knepper 2013, 9), as opposed to the complicated particularities of everyday religion. None of this entails that the philosophical wrangling over puzzles arising in relation to a ‘standard’ or ‘restricted’ or ‘bare’ theism must be abandoned. But it does expose the limitations of a conception of philosophy of religion that regards such an attenuated version of theism as the subdiscipline’s cynosure. It would be presumptuous to suppose that an ethnographic, or ethnographically informed, approach is a panacea for the ills of contemporary philosophy of religion – ills of the sort that Schilbrack pithily characterizes in terms of narrowness, intellectualism and insularity. But I hope to have explained in this chapter how, if one considers a global-critical orientation to be worth advancing, then drawing upon ethnographic sources or engaging in ethnography oneself constitutes a viable and yet also a physically, ethically and personally demanding method to pursue.

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Vermeulen, Han F. (2015), Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Watson, C. W., ed. (1999), Being There: Fieldwork in Anthropology, London: Pluto Press. Winch, Peter (1964), ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’, American Philosophical Quarterly 1(4): 307–24. Winkelmann, Carol (2004), ‘“In the Bible, It Can Be So Harsh!” Battered Women, Suffering, and the Problem of Evil’, in Peter van Inwagen (ed.), Christian Faith and the Problem of Evil, 148–84, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953), Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1979), Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’, ed. Rush Rhees, trans. A. C. Miles and Rush Rhees, Retford: Brynmill.

Chapter 12

Praxis LOUIS KOMJATHY 康思奇

The philosophy of religion, by definition, has tended to focus on the examination of beliefs primarily through analyses of texts such as doctrines and scriptures. Accounts of experiences are included to buttress these analyses in arguments about the supposed existence of souls (e.g. near-death experiences) or ultimate reality (e.g. ecstatic religious experiences). These analyses tend to concentrate on one particular element or expression of religiosity, even if ‘thought’ is framed through diverse lenses like epistemology, linguistics, ontology, soteriology and theology. The method of propositional reconstructions based on texts among philosophers of religion lacks the attention given in other studies of religion such as community, embodiment, material culture and ritual. The philosophical investigation of religious practice, especially with attendant theoretical and methodological reflection and application, remains underdeveloped. One reason for this appears to relate to the embodied, ethical, applied and potentially political dimensions of praxis. As embodied activity in the world, usually rooted in and manifesting specific values and commitments, ‘praxis’ may pose a subversive category for philosophers of religion.1 For the purposes of this chapter, ‘praxis’ directs our attention to embodied activities and patterns of social behaviour, especially as undertaken by specific people at specific times in specific places. The category focuses not only on actors and actions but also on the scholarly decisions to make these objects of study. I would like to propose and develop a more technical usage of ‘praxis’ for philosophers of religion and scholars of religion. Praxis includes informing views, associated practices (embodied activities), related experiences and projected goals. These may be connected to a larger ‘way of life’ and ‘being-in-the-world’ when philosophers recognize these as interrelated, and then attempt to represent them as a system. In the present chapter, I first discuss the concept of ‘praxis’ in terms of its etymology and conventional meaning. I then move on to advance my own ‘theory of praxis’ and ‘philosophy of practice’. This is followed by a specific and perhaps unfamiliar example of religious praxis that may be analysed in a deeper manner using my proposed framework.

ON ‘PRAXIS’ Let us begin with a brief exploration of the etymology and historical uses of the term. ‘Praxis’ derives from the Greek πρᾶξις and originally referred to activities engaged in by free people. Here ‘freedom’ referred to an individual’s actual legal and sociopolitical status, rather than to a cognitive or spiritual condition. On some level, praxis is selfdirected and self-determined action, although the degree of personal agency (‘freedom’)

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must be examined. According to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–22 BCE), there are three basic types of human activity: theoria (thinking), poiesis (making) and praxis (doing) (see, e.g. Pilario 2005, 1–3). These overlap with episteme (knowledge), techné (art/craft/skill) and phronesis (practical wisdom). They supposedly relate to three epistemological modes, or ways of knowing: theoretical, with the goal being ‘truth’; poietical, with the goal being production; and practical, with the goal being action. By extension and in application, The purpose of a theoretical discipline is the pursuit of truth through contemplation;2 its telos [purpose] is the attainment of knowledge for its own sake. The purpose of the productive sciences is to make something; their telos is the production of some artefact. The practical disciplines are those sciences which deal with ethical and political life; their telos is practical wisdom and knowledge. (Carr and Kemmis 1986, 32) From this perspective, we may begin by recognizing that praxis is about applied activity, about embodied being-in-the-world.3 More broadly, it is about the ways in which specific views inform and become expressed in specific practices and vice versa. It is about the intersection of being and action. The extent to which these are ‘conscious’ and intentional remains an open question and will be explored momentarily. In a larger ‘Western’ context, ‘praxis’, whether as concept or phenomenon, was employed to designate and study dimensions and expressions of human behaviour. It has been discussed in the work of such theorists as Karl Marx (1818–83), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), Hannah Arendt (1906–75) and Paulo Freire (1921–97) (see, e.g. Feenberg 2014).4 The concept and concern have also played a role in some contemporary theologies, including the ‘liberation theology’ advocated by Gustavo Gutiérrez (b. 1928) and his intellectual heirs. Readers familiar with these individuals will immediately think of sociopolitical action, specifically aspirations towards collective ‘liberation’ and social transformation. So, for example, in his ‘Theses on Feuerbach’ (dat. 1888), Marx comments, ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it’ (Marx 1998, 574, italics in original). Similarly, Paulo Freire, a leading advocate of ‘critical pedagogy’, understands praxis as ‘reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed’ (2000 [1970], 126; italics in original; see also Rosado 2007). These texts represent reality in terms of exploitative and oppressive social systems. Through praxis, oppressed people can acquire a critical awareness of their own condition, and, with their allies, struggle for liberation (Rosado 2007, 36; also 106). Rooted in a materialist worldview, these texts imagine ‘praxis’ as the exercise of human freedom and agency involving some kind of restructuring of human society and possibly even the world (see also Sartre 1991). While these conceptions of praxis narrowly exclude alternative forms such as contemplative practice and ecological frameworks, they do include a relationship between consciousness and action that will be explored later. We may simply note that many social scientific uses of ‘praxis’ tend to define it as some type of sociopolitical engagement, even political activism rooted in social justice concerns. From these preliminary points, ‘praxis’ basically corresponds to practices and specifically to ‘practical disciplines’. The term may be related to embodied activities and to patterns of social behaviour. For some social scientists and social activists, influenced by the theories mentioned earlier, praxis relates to social activities and to socially and politically conscious undertakings (e.g. radical [re]education). Here we might pause and reflect on the following questions: Is praxis self-directed and self-determined, or

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socially conditioned and habituated? Is praxis self-chosen and a form of conscious and even liberating movement or an enculturated and mandated behaviour? I submit that these questions likely pose false dichotomies. Every form of praxis appears to have both characteristics in varying degrees. As explored later, attention must be given to the phenomena of particular communities whose values and commitments become expressed in unique activities, performances and movement patterns. That is, the concept of praxis directs us to consider informed and committed action. For the ‘philosophy of religion’, praxis inspires deeper engagement with the embodied, experiential, lived and participatory, even somatic and kinesthetic, dimensions of human activities such as religiosity. This raises the possibility of ‘theorizing (religious) praxis’ and developing a ‘philosophy of practice’ (see also Schilbrack 2014; Komjathy 2015, 2018).5 From my perspective, it also points towards the importance, perhaps even necessity, of ‘theorizing from the inside out’. Such an approach involves a revisionist exploration of the relationships between practice and theory as well as embodiment and intellectualism.

THEORIZING (RELIGIOUS) PRAXIS Praxis, most often referred to as ‘practice’ in a more general sense rather than as a designation for specific methods or techniques, refers first and foremost to embodied activities and to patterns of social behaviour. Praxis cannot be reduced to mere ‘technique’. When praxis is explored through social scientific lenses, especially anthropological and sociological ones, there is a tendency to privilege the cultural and social, over the subjective and psychological. By far the greatest influence on the academic study of praxis broadly conceived has come from French sociology, especially the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) and, to a lesser extent, Michel de Certeau (1925–86). Readers familiar with the topic might immediately think of the former’s Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) and the latter’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1984),6 both originally published in French and subsequently translated into English.7 In a seminal passage in his Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu defines habitus as follows: The habitus, the durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations, produces practices which tend to reproduce the regularities immanent in the objective conditions of the production of their generative principle, while adjusting to the demands inscribed as objective potentialities in the situation, as defined by the cognitive and motivating structures making up the habitus . . .. These practices can be accounted for only by relating the objective structure defining the social conditions of the production of habitus which engendered them to the conditions in which this habitus is operating, that is, to the conjuncture which, short of a radical transformation, represents a particular state of this structure. In practice, it is the habitus, history turned into nature, i.e. denied as such, which accomplishes practically the relating of these two systems of relations, in and through the production of practice. (Bourdieu 1977, 78, italics in original) Note how Bourdieu focuses on larger patterns of social behaviour embodied in the lives and activities of a given society’s members. For Bourdieu, ‘practice’ basically corresponds to ‘habitus’, a socially influenced and habituated way of acting. Habitus can, in turn, be defined as a system of dispositions, that is, lasting, acquired schemes of perception, thought and

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action. Individual agents develop these dispositions in response to the objective conditions that they encounter. In this way, Bourdieu theorizes the inculcation of objective social structures into the subjective, mental experience of agents. Practice (worldly activity) is habitus (enculturation) reproducing itself through personal agency (self as cultural product). Bourdieu’s insights are relevant and important concerning social conditioning, but they have certain deficiencies with regard to personal transformative practice. While some degree of enculturation is involved in most forms of practice, we must also investigate intentional, self-directed agency, especially in terms of lived praxis. Simply consider the action of standing up or sitting down: the human locomotor system is activated, possibly through habituated patterns, but this usually requires intentional direction, including with varying degrees of awareness. One might also raise the question of origins. Like the complex relationship between originary, revelatory or mystical events with respect to religious communities and traditions, it is important to recognize that specific practices originate in individual lives. Some of these practices and associated experiences, which will be discussed later, are then preserved, transmitted and confirmed among subsequent individuals and communities. On some level, received and fixed practices are iterations and encodings of earlier lives (see Komjathy 2013; cf. Goodman 1990). Thus, only studying practices inscribed in and by larger institutional structures may result in very limited interpretations of praxis in its diverse and multi faceted expressions. Incorporating Bourdieu as a necessary foundation, we may go beyond his particular focus and accompanying limitations to develop a more integrated and comprehensive theory of praxis. To begin, religious praxis, especially as expressed in specific forms and specific methods like contemplative or mystical practices (see, e.g. Komjathy 2007, 2015, 2018), often involves radical transformation, ontological shifts and psychosomatic restructurings. This topic relates to what might be labelled ‘transformative practice’ or ‘techniques of transformation’. There is a conscious, usually self-directed process of behaviour modification and personality alteration, although it may be influenced by particular teachers or supervised by particular communities (see below). In his monumental The Future of the Body (1992), the American transpersonal psychologist Michael Murphy emphasizes the human capacity for transformation through embodied practice. He examines somatic disciplines, adventure and sport, martial arts, as well as more distinctively religious practices. In the final section of the book, he then moves on to discuss a larger conception of ‘transformative practice’ with an aim towards ‘integral practices’ (cf. Wilber et al. 1986, 2008). According to Murphy, In establishing transformative practices, we depend upon inherited bodily processes. We can cultivate somatic awareness and control, for example, because nerve cells that evolved from analogous structures in the earliest vertebrates are deployed throughout our bodies. (Murphy 1992, 543) And Transformative disciplines, then, rely on inherited, socially acquired, and egotranscending activities [. . .] I will refer to their deliberate employment as transformative moves or modalities. (Murphy 1992, 544, italics in original). Murphy, in turn, correlates his proposed integral practices with the corresponding transformative modality, including practice outcomes related to twelve attributes of higher human functioning (Murphy 1992, 567–75). The emphasis on individual agency and transformative effects involved in specific practice systems may be further connected

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to the French historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot’s (1995) notion of ‘spiritual exercises’ and the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s (1999) investigation of ‘techniques of self’ (see also Martin et al. 1988). Both Hadot and Foucault demonstrate the ways in which ‘Western’ (Greco-Roman and Western European) philosophy has often been historically rooted in contemplative practices and meditative disciplines. Combining these three theorists, the study of praxis allows for the exploration of particular methods, understanding of subjective aspirations and charting of transformative effects. From these preliminary points, we may develop a more integrated and syncretic approach to understanding praxis. First, almost every form of practice occurs within a particular context and encodes a particular culture on individual agents, including on psychological and corporeal levels. It is important to consider the degree to which a given form of activity is conditioned and self-directed. The associated enactments and effects may confirm the associated enculturation and/or lead to radical personal transformation. With respect to the latter, more attention needs to be given to the transformative effects of specific forms of practice and even of specific methods. Granted that these are usually system-, communityand/or tradition-specific, they nonetheless lead to restructurings of consciousness and different ways of being. It is important to identify ‘techniques of transformation’ and to map their projected outcomes, including states (temporary psychological effects) and traits (more enduring personality shifts). This line of inquiry might also inspire deeper reflection on human capacities and potentialities, including with respect to ‘higher levels of consciousness’ and ‘ontologies of realization’. Finally, every practice utilizes specific postures. ‘The body’ is always involved. This point of course raises the question of the degree to which human existence may be divided in such a manner, the extent to which any practice is psychosomatic. While there are diverse views of embodiment and consciousness at work in such systems, it is important to consider body-configuration, including potential psychological effects of specific postural and movement patterns. Thus, a ‘theory of praxis’ must be more than a simple inventory of social activities or individual habits. In my way of thinking, it must attempt to reconstruct the entire system

FIGURE 12.1:  ‘Dimensions of (Religious) Praxis’ © Louis Komjathy.

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in which particular practices are embedded and expressions. Partially influenced by Peter Moore’s (1978) discussion of the relationship between doctrine, practice and experience in mystical events, I propose that we use ‘praxis’ in a more technical sense (see Komjathy 2007, 2015, 2018). Praxis would be a larger, umbrella category that designates informing views, associated practices (embodied activities), related experiences and projected goals (see Figure. 12.1).​ From my perspective, these are interrelated and inseparable in actual embodied activities, even if they are assumed in the system or isolated for analysis. If one analyses a given practice with attention to this framework, one inquires into the ways in which specific methods express and confirm specific worldviews and lead to specific types of experiences, the ways in which specific worldviews inform specific practices and lead to specific types of experiences, and the ways in which specific types of experiences confirm specific worldviews and the efficacy of specific methods.

HANDLING SNAKES INSIDE AND OUTSIDE OF ACADEMIA As a case in point, I would like to explore the praxis of Pentecostal Christian snakehandling.8 An ‘elitist’ perspective9 might make claims such as, ‘Only fools or crazy people would engage in such behaviour’. In the contemporary United States, snake-handling as a religious practice is performed by a relatively small minority of Pentecostal Christians,10 especially in the rural southeastern part of the country, southern Appalachia in particular.11 A fuller treatment of this form of religious praxis would require attention to not only these movements but also the history of southeastern American and Appalachian snakehandling.12 In terms of historical precedents and informing views, these Christians point towards the New Testament in the Christian Bible, specifically the Gospel of Mark as appearing in the King James Bible (translation). 14 Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen. 15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. 16 He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. 17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; 18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16: 14–18, italics added) Here it is important to understand the belief in scriptural inerrancy and Biblical literalism in this form of Christianity. According to this passage, a devout and true Christian infused with the Holy Spirit should have at least five salvific qualities and be able to demonstrate the reality of God’s power through five corresponding activities. The latter include exorcism, glossolalia, snake-handling, drinking poison and faith-healing. Thus, if one is truly saved, one gains the ability to handle poisonous snakes without fear of injury or death. As might be expected, in addition to speaking in tongues, some members of these communities also drink poison. According to the internal logic of this practice, Christians who cannot and perhaps who do not engage in such practices lack the authentic Spirit, and, by definition, the state of their salvation is precarious.

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Applying the interpretive framework proposed herein, we may understand and perhaps appreciate a type of religious praxis that may initially appear bizarre or incomprehensible. Pentecostal Christian snake-handling is informed by and expresses a specific understanding of Christianity in general and the Christian Bible in particular. Just as the apostles were supposedly infused with the Holy Spirit and gained specific miraculous powers through faith, so too would and should ‘them that believe’. They should take up serpents. This practice is one of, perhaps the most essential signs of salvation. In addition to the obvious, namely, that the practice results in a greater familiarity and ease with poisonous snakes, it also points towards an ecstatic state of being infused with the Holy Spirit. This, presumably, not only creates a heightened sense of intimacy with God but also confirms the certainty of one’s personal salvation through Christ.13 That is, the goal of snake-handling is attained through practice. The specific method of snake-handling expresses and confirms the specific worldview and leads to specific types of experiences; the specific worldview informs the specific practice and leads to specific types of experiences; and the specific types of experiences confirm the specific worldview and the efficacy of the specific method. The practitioner of this form of religious praxis is a Pentecostal Christian and becomes a Pentecostal Christian through the practice of snake-handling. This brief analysis of snake-handling hopefully has revealed how snake-handling may be instructive for a global-critical philosophy of religion, where praxis refers first and foremost to embodied activities and to patterns of social behaviour. These considerations include recognizing the subjective dimensions along with reflection on enculturation and social conditioning. Through attentiveness to specific practices in concert with a larger philosophy of praxis, we may explore the ways in which views are embodied and life is informed. We may recognize that philosophical positions are enacted, and thus philosophical investigation may result in clarification of ways of being, experiencing, and living.

EMBODIED AND LIVED RELIGIOSITY My emphasis on praxis has a variety of implications for philosophy of religion, especially the project of the Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion (GCPR/GCPOR). Given its stated aims, GCPR must be global and critical. It needs attentiveness to diverse cultural and geographical expressions of religiosity and critical reflection on its own habitus, including working assumptions, informing concerns, and enculturated (mandated?) approaches. This includes investigation of human being and experiencing in terms of embodied and lived religiosity, as somatic, kinesthetic and social activity in the world. This is praxis as view/ practice/experience/goal, with each informing and expressing the others. For example, glossolalia, the practice of speaking in tongues that often accompanies Pentecostal Christian snake-handling, is a cross-cultural practice with global dissemination and complex dimensions (e.g. Cartledge 2006; Goodman 2008 [1972]). How would GCPR philosophize about this, or change philosophy based on it? One accompanying suggestion for a ‘praxis of philosophy’, a more self-conscious and enacted form of philosophy, involves making the familiar unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar familiar (see Smith 1982; Komjathy 2015). Through the lens of the ‘philosophy of praxis’, one is able to ‘make sense of the non-sensical’. One is also able to engage ‘the weird’, the anomalous and unexpected (unacceptable?) outside of the usual purview of Religious Studies (see e.g. Orsi 2005; Kripal 2010; Harvey 2014; Komjathy 2015). Snake-handling is one such example.14

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What initially appears ‘strange’ or ‘crazy’ to the outsider, especially an outsider concerned with ‘philosophy’, becomes not only comprehensible (sense-making activity) but also an opportunity for philosophical reflection and clarification. For non-adherent participants, observers, or theorists, snake-handling reveals one’s own (alterior) commitments, concerns and practices.15 It is a form of embodied and lived religiosity with its own informing worldview. The same is true of philosophy of religion, albeit perhaps with less explicitly religious characteristics.16 The critical category and interpretive framework of ‘praxis’ may, in turn, be applied to philosophy of religion in particular and academia in general. This involves reversing ‘our’ gaze, assuming one is involved and implicated (complicit?). From this perspective, at least some scholars would research scholars themselves; rather than the observers they/we would become the observed. While I am more inclined to use an ethnographic approach to academia, a philosophical perspective has the potential to shift the assumed subject/object discourse. Philosophers of religion tend to philosophize about other peoples’ religions. Religion/religions/religious is the object studied, while the scholar is the subject studying. This involves a power dynamic of interpretation, one in which the scholar establishes the grounds for inclusion and the criteria for relevance and acceptability. (There are many other dimensions as well, including symbolic capital and material income.) Through the lens of ‘praxis’, one might rather analyse and evaluate the philosophy of religion as a specific practice, a specific form of embodied activity and social behaviour. It too is a form of praxis, accompanied by its own informing views, practices, experiences and goals. To follow these patterns, such as believing in rational inquiry and epistemology as, presumably, valuable for human flourishing, is to be a POR ‘adherent’; not to adhere (conform?) is to be an ‘outsider’. Each and others are different forms of embodied being-in-the-world, with different commitments and resultant states and traits. Some may also be more or less enlivening and fulfilling. ‘Praxis’ thus offers a unique contribution to the philosophy of religion, especially the revisionist and revivifying project of the GCPR. It inspires us to investigate, reflect on and philosophize about the complex interrelationship among views, practices, experiences and goals. It directs our attention to embodied activities and patterns of social behaviour, especially as undertaken by specific people at specific times in specific places. This includes the ways in which philosophy of religion itself is a specific form of praxis. Through increased critical reflection and awareness, we may develop not only a fuller ‘philosophy of praxis’ but also a deeper ‘praxis of philosophy’. These would involve attentiveness to the diverse expressions of embodied being-in-the-world, including the possibility of different ways of being, knowing, perceiving, moving and living. How might a somatic or kinesthetic GCPR be conducted? It might result in a more conscious commitment to ‘philosophy as a way of life’.

NOTES 1. Especially if one extends the conversation to include critical adherence, participantobservation, scholar-practitioners and the so-called insider-outsider question (‘problem’). It becomes even more destabilizing and dissonant (dissident?) when one ‘reverses the gaze’ towards scholars themselves/ourselves. See, e.g. Komjathy (2011, 2016, 2018). 2. Here the conventional use of ‘contemplation’, in the sense of ‘reflection’ or even rumination, deserves further consideration. Cf. Komjathy (2015, 2018). 3. Momentarily setting aside questions of epistemology, say compared to ontology, psychology, or even soteriology, and what may be a social scientific bias.

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4. I discuss some major social scientific theorists relevant to my project below. 5. Perhaps it also requires that we develop a more conscious ‘praxis of philosophy’. I am grateful to Timothy Knepper (Drake University) for this suggestion. 6. Interestingly, the second edition of The Practice of Everyday Life consists of a photograph of cars (and thus drivers) on an urban freeway. 7. I expand the relevant conversation partners in my own work to include Michel Foucault (1926–84; philosophy), Felicitas Goodman (1914–2005; anthropology), Pierre Hadot (1922–2010; philosophy), Gordon Hewes (1917–97; anthropology), Marcel Mauss (1872–1950; sociology), Michael Murphy (b. 1930; psychology), and Ken Wilber (b. 1949; psychology). Here I will summarize some of their salient insights, identify certain limitations and then provide a larger synthesis. Concisely stated, the key concepts and concerns are as follows: habitus (Bourdieu), techniques of self (Foucault), ecstatic body postures (Goodman), spiritual exercises (Hadot), posture (Hewes), body techniques (Mauss), techniques of transformation (Murphy), and integral practice (Wilber). 8. The present discussion is indebted to Them That Believe: The Power and Meaning of the Christian Serpent-Handling Tradition (Hood and Williamson 2008). In addition to an excellent microstudy, I find the latter to be a clear and sophisticated model for research on praxis more generally. Interested readers may also consult the various YouTube videos on snake-handling. See also Covington 2009 (1994). As far as my reading goes, there have not been any engagements with snake-handling in the philosophy of religion. Most research is conducted through a social scientific lens, especially anthropology and sociology. 9. As a counterpoint, one thinks of the work of various scholars of religion and anthropologists on unfamiliar forms of practice. For example, Robert Orsi has studied the ‘lived religion’ and popular religiosity of neighbourhood Catholic communities, especially with respect to social life and festival activities. In fact, Chapter 6 of Orsi’s Between Heaven and Earth (2005) discusses snake-handling. Interested readers might also consult the work of Tim Ingold on indigenous modes of being beyond ‘worldview’. 10. Pentecostalism is a Protestant Christian denomination that emphasizes direct personal experience of God though baptism with the Holy Spirit. The name derives from Pentecost, which as a Christian event commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit on the followers of Jesus of Nazareth (c. 0–33 CE) (see Acts 2), with the latter identified as the Christ (Hebrew: messiah; lit., ‘anointed one’) or Son of God. As an American movement, the emergence of Pentecostal Christianity is often associated with the charismatic American evangelists and preachers Charles Parham (1873–1929) and William Seymour (1870–1922). Pentecostalism emerged in the early twentieth century among radical adherents of the Holiness Movement, which is, in turn, connected to nineteenth-century Methodist Christianity. The early representatives of the American Pentecostal movement were energized by revivalism and expectation of the imminent Second Coming of Christ. Believing that they were living in the end times, they expected God to renew the Christian Church spiritually, and thereby initiate the restoration of spiritual gifts and the evangelization of the world. 11. I ask actual scholars of Pentecostal Christianity to excuse my rudimentary understanding and possibly problematic presentation here. 12. The practice apparently began in the early twentieth century. While the actual origins are unclear, the dissemination and popularization of the practice is often associated with George Went Hensley (1880–1955). According to this ‘adherent account’ and ‘insider history’, Hensley introduced snake-handling into the Church of God Holiness, an association of autonomous Christian Methodist congregations. He in turn founded the Dolly Pond Church of God in Birchwood, Tennessee around 1910. As practised among

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a minority of contemporary Pentecostal Christians and largely independent preachers, snake-handling involves picking up poisonous snakes, especially rattlesnakes. Although the practice is only a small part of their meetings and actual church services, these largely independent communities tend to believe that snake-handling is evidence of salvation. 13. I have no direct experience of snake-handling. Again, for a more comprehensive and sophisticated treatment, interested readers are directed to Hood and Williamson 2008 and related publications. There are also many other dimensions that could be analysed, including the geographical location (e.g. the place of venomous snakes in Appalachia) and the psychological effects of the apparent neutralization of danger. 14. As is supposed ‘senseless violence’. I am grateful to Nathan Loewen (University of Alabama) for this example. 15. Here I use ‘alterior’, a portmanteau of ‘alternative’ and ‘ulterior’, to refer to a different mode that is not being concealed. As a decentering response, resisting the privileging of a specific view as normative or hegemonic (e.g. secular materialism and/or social constructivism), it points towards any view and approach as ‘an-other’, rather than an ‘alternative’. 16. Given the influence of Christian theism on the sub discipline, and its conventional questions and concerns as an apparently secularized version of the former, the accompanying religiosity may be more structural than conscious.

REFERENCES Bourdieu, Pierre (1977), Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Carr, Wilfred and Stephen Kemmis (1986), Becoming Critical: Education, Knowledge and Action Research, Victoria, Australia: Deakin University Press. Cartledge, Mark, ed. (2006), Speaking in Tongues: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives, London: Paternoster Press. Covington, Dennis (2009 [1994]), Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia, 15th anniversary edn. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. de Certeau, Michel (1988), The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Feenberg, Andrew (2014 [1981]), The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukács, and the Frankfurt School, London and New York: Verso. Foucault, Michel (1999), The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, 3 vols, New York: Vintage. Freire, Paulo (2000 [1970]), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos, 30th anniversary edn, London and New York: Continuum. Goodman, Felicitas (1990), Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Goodman, Felicitas (2008 [1972]), Speaking in Tongues: A Cross-Cultural Study of Glossolalia, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. Hadot, Pierre (1995), Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell. Harvey, Graham (2014) Food, Sex and Strangers: Understanding Religion as Everyday Life, London and New York: Routledge. Hood, Ralph and W. Paul Williamson (2008), Them That Believe: The Power and Meaning of the Christian Serpent-Handling Tradition, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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Komjathy, Louis (2007), Cultivating Perfection: Mysticism and Self-transformation in Early Quanzhen Daoism, Leiden: Brill. Komjathy, Louis (2011), ‘Field Notes from a Daoist Professor’, in Judith Simmer-Brown and Fran Grace (eds), Meditation and the Classroom, 95–103, New York: State University of New York Press. Komjathy, Louis (2013), The Daoist Tradition: An Introduction, London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Komjathy, Louis, ed. (2015), Contemplative Literature: A Comparative Sourcebook on Meditation and Contemplative Prayer, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Komjathy, Louis (2016), ‘Möbius Religion: The Insider/Outsider Question’, in Jeffrey Kripal (ed.), Religion: A Next-Generation Handbook for Its Robust Study, 305–23, New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Komjathy, Louis (2018), Introducing Contemplative Studies, Hoboken, NJ and West Sussex, England: Wiley-Blackwell. Kripal, Jeffrey (2010), Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Martin, Luther, Huck Gutman and Patrick Hutton, eds (1988), Techniques of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault, Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. Marx, Karl (1998), The German Ideology, Including Theses on Feuerbach, Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Moore, Peter (1978), ‘Mystical Experience, Mystical Doctrine, Mystical Technique’, in Steven T. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, 101–31, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murphy, Michael (1992), The Future of the Body: Explorations into the Further Evolution of Human Nature, New York: Penguin Putnam. Orsi, Robert (2005), Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pilario, D. F. (2005), Back to the Rough Grounds of Praxis: Exploring Theological Method with Pierre Bourdieu, Leuven, Belgium: Peeters Publishers. Rosado, Raúl Quiñones (2007), Consciousness-in-Action: Toward an Integral Psychology of Liberation and Transformation, Caguas, Puerto Rico: Ile Publications. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1991), Critique of Dialectical Reason, trans. Alan Sheridan-Smith, 2 vols., London: Verso. Schilbrack, Kevin (2014), Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto, West Sussex, England: Wiley-Blackwell. Smith, Jonathan Z. (1982), Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Wilber, Ken, Jack Engler and Daniel Brown, eds (1986), Transformations of Consciousness: Conventional and Contemplative Perspectives on Development, Boston: Shambhala. Wilber, Ken, Terry Patten, Adam Leonard and Marco Morelli (2008), Integral Life Practice: A 21st–Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity, and Spiritual Awakening, Boston: Integral Books.

Chapter 13

Nishida Kitarō’s ‘I and Thou’ through the work of Jessica Benjamin Towards the issue of equality UEHARA MAYUKO

A PRELIMINARY REFLECTION Nishida Kitarō’s (1870–1945) philosophical thought attained a crucial juncture right at the outset of the 1930s. It would seem that Nishida characterizes the passage of his philosophy as being from a logic that emphasized the ‘transcendent predicate plane’ (chōetsuteki jutsugo men 超越的述語面) or ‘place’ (basho 場所)1 (Nishida 1979a NKZ 5, 421)2 to a new, dialectical logic. The former logic explains the single ‘individual’ (kobutsu 個物) which is not ‘particularized’ (tokushuka 特殊化) ‘starting from a general concept’, but rather is ‘determined’ in the ‘general’ (ippansha 一般者) that encompasses all latent individuals (Nishida 1979a NKZ 5, 431). The latter is a ‘dialectical determination’ between ‘the individual and the environment’ or between one individual and another (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 8–11). In this context, the 1932 essay ‘I and Thou’ (Watakushi to Nanji 私と汝) can be regarded as Nishida’s first study of the relationship between humans living in society and the ‘historical world’ (rekishiteki sekai 歴史的世界) (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 9). Thus, Nishida deploys the first and second grammatical persons in this work. His concern here is not with the relationship between self and other, a subject which remains at the level of epistemology. Nishida’s inquiry focuses on how to signify the relation between society and the individual, that is, between society and the ‘personal self’ (jinkakuteki jiko 人格的自己). He claims that ‘the self-unification of our personal self [. . .] is endowed with the significance of society’ and that this ‘form of self-unification’ permits us to think of ‘the general from the individual’. For Nishida, this ‘self-unification’ or the ‘self-determination’ (jiko gentei 自己限定) of the ‘personal self’ is not independent of ‘social and historical determination’. Rather, they are one. With respect to ‘I and Thou’, Nishida advocates their ‘immediate unification’: each of them as personal selves should not be objectified

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mutually, but ‘be dialectically joined’ and ‘joined each other through absolute negation’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 9–10). Nishida had never thematized the personal self and the other by using the terms ‘I and Thou’ before the 1930s. It has been claimed that this was due to the influence of ‘discussions with his young disciples on the problems of nature and matter (busshitsu 物質)’, according to Marxist historical materialism.3 The article ‘I and Thou’ was the beginning of his reaction to, or reinterpretation of, Marxist ideas (Hattori 2004, 25). Nishida philosophy, originally founded on the ‘transcendent predicate plane’, sought to break the general concept in its ordinary meaning in order to transcend the horizon of the inner world. It follows that we can recognize a constant religious dimension to his philosophy.4 In the discourse of ‘I and Thou’ as well, Nishida argues that the structure of his own dialectic is aimed ultimately at the religious level. He preaches the importance of agape, which founds the personalities of respective ‘I and Thou’; they love their ‘neighbour as it is like’ themselves ‘after God’s agape, and in doing so each of them is the personal self’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 424–5). Nevertheless, he does not ignore the way in which human beings are endowed with bodies, living together and communicating with one another in society. The goal of this paper then is to better understand Nishida’s essay from the viewpoint of the relationship between ‘I and Thou’ at the daily social level. However, if we examine ‘I and Thou’ the problematic of ‘equality’ or ‘parity’ appears. In this work, Nishida advances the idea of the ‘absolute other’ (zettai no ta 絶対の他) (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 9).5 It seems that his conception of ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ does not take into consideration that which we could directly relate to ‘equality’ or ‘parity’. When it comes to contemporary real society, it may not be so easy to acknowledge the equality or the parity of the ‘self and other’ relationship. Everyday life is saturated with information on disparities in economic power, education, gender, racism, religious and geopolitical struggles. At a glance, we can recognize that there exists diversity in discrimination, in disparity. By comparison, it is also seemingly difficult to define criteria for the equality or parity of the ‘self and other’ relationship, which concerns a public (economic, political or legal) institution on the one hand, and a private life on the other hand. In this paper, I take notice of the problem of equality or parity for ‘I and Thou’. I suggest that Nishida’s conception of ‘I and Thou’ could be conceived of as an ideal relationality of ‘equality’ and ‘parity’ when it is situated within gender discourse.6 I therefore view it positively overall, although I further argue that the process of human relations needs to be included in the Nishidian dialectic. Indeed, this revision may thereby help to explain his dialectic more clearly at the everyday as well as profound-thinking level. The psychoanalyst, Jessica Benjamin, constructs a theory of intersubjectivity in the field where ‘psychoanalysis and feminism overlap each other’ (Benjamin 2018a, v).7 Her theory is situated in the lineage of thoughts based on the criticism of Freud’s view of women and the fusion of psychoanalysis and the feminist movement (Kitamura 2018, 187–99). The originality of her research of intersubjectivity and ‘two–person psychological psychoanalysis’ consists in claiming ‘mutual recognition’ for ‘creating a common basis’ to aim at overcoming the opposition of the two sexes that is known as the ‘gender war’ (Kitamura 2018, 208). I expect that, based on concrete examples, her discourse may offer a complementary explanation to Nishida’s demonstrations of the culmination in ‘I and Thou’ relationality, which themselves stays highly abstract and largely unintelligible. A comparison between the two scholars’ ideas will provide us with a rewarding reflection

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for attaining the goal of this paper (to understand the Nishidian relationship between ‘I and Thou’). Nishida’s philosophy is well known for its characteristic religious aspect by the scholars in the field of the studies of Japanese philosophy. His religious thinking is developed prominently in his last writing, ‘Logic of the Place and Religious Worldview’ (『場所の論理と宗教的世界観』 accomplished in 1945, year of his death)8. But even before this accomplishment, his philosophy was featured with the general ‘encompassing all latent individuals’ as well as the ‘transcendent predicative function’ which both permits ‘transcending the horizon of the inner world’. This character is a philosophical device for taking the irrational or the ‘nothing’ (mu 無) and the ‘absolute nothing’ (zettai mu 絶対無) into the philosophical scope. Hence Nishida’s philosophy can be considered as incorporated within the global philosophy of religion framework.

‘I AND THOU’ THEORY IN NISHIDA How can we characterize the relationship between persons, ‘I and Thou’ in Nishida? First, let us examine it through the context of his philosophy with respects to his 1932 essay, ‘I and Thou’.

Overcoming the independent individual Psychoanalysis and the theory of feminism (on which the Lacanians and the poststructuralists exercised an influence) (Benjamin 2018a, 140) criticize the modern ‘independent individual’ which originates in Cartesian cogito. Benjamin takes this position as well. However, she has advocated the above-mentioned concept of ‘intersubjectivity’ as well as some other concepts such as the ‘recognition’ of a concrete other (Benjamin 2018a) as necessary condition for any such ‘intersubjectivity’, and the ‘Third’ (Benjamin 2018b). It appears that this tendency in her thinking can also be located in Nishida’s thought. Indeed, arguing against the idea of the independent individual could be said to constitute the core problem of Nishida philosophy. As if he were in the 1930s anticipating the future current of Western contemporary thought, he states as follows. ‘I and Thou’ is founded on Nishidian philosophy in which not only the rational but also the possibility of ‘the irrational’ are integrated (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 3); the relationality of ‘I and Thou’ overcomes the transcendental philosophy of Kant (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 413) on one hand, and models itself upon the idea of Husserl’s interrelationship between noesis and noema. According to Nishida the individual (kobutsu 個物) is the irrational. In order to reach this perspective, he constructed his own logical structure which supposes ‘the general “encompasses” (tsutsumu 包む) the individual’. In this case, ‘the general’ is ‘our self-awakening determination (jikakuteki jiko gentei 自覚的限定) which cannot see itself as an object infinitely, and, moreover, objectifies itself in itself (自己に於て自己を対象化する)’. This is not the thinking which provides a logical frame for fixing a boundary to explain the individual. Rather, if anything, Nishida set out this so-called ‘self-awakening’, as a tenet which can support ‘the irrational’ for the purpose of reinterpreting and seizing anew the ‘significance of logical determination’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 3–4). This is the ‘significance’ which deepens itself infinitely.

Dialectic The above kind of individual therefore has the meaning of a ‘dialectical determination’ between the individual and the general (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 344). I note that Nishida

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conceived of a ‘true individual’ (shin no kobutsu 真の個物) as an important element of the ‘dialectical’ and mutual determination between the individual and the ‘environment’ (kankyō 環境). What then is the ‘true individual?’ With respects to the relation that is ‘the individual determined by the environment’, it is the ‘determination of the general of the being (u 有)’. In other words, it is the ‘rational relation’. However, the ‘true individual’ and the environment have an irrational relation (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 344–345). Nishida recognizes the ‘life’ in this relation. However, such ‘life’ is not comparable with the continuous ‘internal development’ of a Bergsonian ‘creative evolution’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 356). Rather, it is that which we can think as ‘real life,’ or ‘corporeal’ life. Here in Nishida’s context the body is not founded on ‘matter’ in the natural scientific sense, but rather in the sense of the one doing ‘practical action’ (jissen-teki kōi 実践的行為). Nishida’s conception here was therefore different from Bergsonian ‘internal continuity’. ‘Action’, a key concept for Nishida, is introduced here with reference to the body. The ‘actor’ is the ‘that which self-determinates dialectically’ in the sense that the environment and the individual are mutually determinative (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 360). I note that Nishida seeks to deepen this concept of the individual by considering the significance of human existence, which is always already a living, embodied, acting existence. The dialectic that Nishida attempts to form in conceptualizing the individual as the human being does not correspond to the Hegelian ‘dialectic of process’. Nishida states that for Hegel self-determination takes place by way of unfolding contradictions, but in consequence it is given priority to become the ‘Dasein (teiu 定有) as a unity’, or ‘a certain thing’ (Nishida 1979c NKZ12, 74). In other words, the ‘dialectic of process’ is characterized by the ‘subjective’ (shugoteki 主語的) and the ‘noematic’ (noemateki ノエマ的), rather than the ‘predicative’ (jutsugo-teki 述語的); Nishida places emphasis on the importance of the predicate to assume the irrational in overcoming the rational in his philosophy. He advocated the ‘placial dialectic’ (bashoteki benshōhō 場所的弁証法), which envelops the negation just as it is. To borrow his original expression, ‘one is many, many is one’ (Nishida 1979c NKZ 12, 84).

Personal self (jinkakuteki jiko 人格的自己): Self-Awakening (jikakuteki jiko 自覚) for ‘I and Thou’ The relationality of ‘I and Thou’ is conducted according to the structure of the ‘placial dialectic’, which is endowed with the character of the above-mentioned logic of ‘place’. Both ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ are the ‘self-awakened,’ ‘personal self,’ according to Nishida. We see (miru 見る) the absolutely other in the self, and conversely, we see the self in the absolutely other. If we adopt this view, we can consider the true personal self. If we merely think of seeing the self in the other, we will have no way to differentiate between myself (ware 我) and things (mono 物) (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 425). To ‘see’ in this passage signifies ‘intuition’ (chokkan 直観), which is the point of determination for the placial dialectic. In contrast, the Hegelian dialectical movement of negation-opposition-unification emphasizes ‘mediation’ (baikai 媒介). Such ‘mediation’ is of a higher order than intuition: the ‘reflection returning to the interior of itself’ or the ‘moment called “ego” which exists “in-itself’’’ (Hegel 1995, 19). Nishida defines ‘intuition’ as ‘the fact that the one thing becomes another and the one passes from one’s interior to the other’. He stresses that: ‘as long as it is conceivable that there exists

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something between them, mediating both, it is not intuition’. Therefore, according to Nishida, ‘true intuition’ is ‘something which includes dialectical movement’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 382). In this idea we can confirm the ‘placial’ perspective of seizing and ‘encompassing’ all at one stroke. What can we see if we take a closer look at Nishida’s assertion in the earlier citation, with respects to the mutual intuition between ‘self’ and ‘other?’ What kind of state of affairs does it show? Elsewhere, Nishida expresses this idea somewhat differently: ‘there is the other in the bottom of myself’, ‘I am the other through the bottom of myself’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 383). This state of thing designates the ‘self-awakening’, tenet of the logic of the ‘place’ and the ‘placial dialectic’. The basis of the ‘self-awakening’ was first conceptualized in Intuition and Reflection in Self-Awakening (1917). The initial ‘formula’ of this concept is ‘the self sees itself in itself’ (自己が自己に於て自己を見る), according which the self does not set an object outside opposing it, but sees it inside. In that period self-awakening for Nishida was just for one self, but did not suppose the other human being. In the 1930s, it came to be situated in a social context; in addition to the thing, the human being other than the self was ultimately considered an internal object. The following passage suggests that, ‘True self-awakening should be social, and founded on the spatial relation that exists between humans’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 391). In the relationship between I and Thou or self and other, we should understand that self-awakening is assumed not only by the self, but also the other. In a word, the other is the self, the Thou that faces the I is also I. ‘I and Thou’ is an extremely perplexed essay. In my understanding this is due to the complex explanations Nishida offers of the mutual self-awakening between the self and the other and at the same time the placial dialectic. To ‘see I in the absolutely other’ explains the self-awakening. This corresponds to the fact that ‘the other determines itself’ (placial) is simultaneously ‘I determine myself’ (placial). These three states compose the placial dialectic. It appears that for Nishida, it is through the self-awakening of such a self-other relation (not the independent self) that we can realize our ‘true personal self’. In the placial dialectic, the I and the Thou ‘recognizes the absolutely other in the bottom of their respective selves, mutually passing from their interiors to the other’. This means to intuit the other mutually; immediate self-awakening. Moreover, it means true ‘personal action’ (jinkakuteki kōi 人格的行為) (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 391). According to Nishida, our self can ‘become the self’ through the ‘recognition of the other’s personality (jinkaku 人格)’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 397). Of course, this is reciprocally the case for the self and other. Nishida’s dialectic does not aim at the autonomous establishment of the self, but rather seeks after the infinitely open relations of human beings as well as the ‘inter-corporeal-subjective self” (kan shutaiteki jiko 間主体性的自己).

COMMUNICATION TOWARDS EQUALITY Absolutely other, but equal I prefer to interpret Nishida’s relation of ‘I and Thou’ as ‘intercorporeal-subjectivity’ (間主体性) rather than ‘intersubjectivity’ (kanshukansei 間主観性). This is because Nishida emphasizes that individuals are persons endowed with life and bodies. It is not the individual regarded on an idealistic level and bound by mental activities such as thinking and intuition, but the individual as living being which always undertakes action through a body. Hence ‘I and Thou’ is ‘the absolutely other’. 9

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‘I and Thou’ do not remain at the level of the ‘general self’. The ‘individual self’ develops as a personality from each self. What this means is that both mutually see ‘the absolutely other’. According to Nishida ‘I and Thou’ become ‘those who “talk to each other”’ (hanashi au 話し合う). ‘I talk with Thou about the My self-determination as fact, and Thou talk with I about Thy self-determination as fact’. (私が[汝​と]私の自​己限定とし​ ての事実を​、汝は[私​と]汝の自​己限定とし​ての事実を​話し合う)​ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 405–406). I would like to attempt to interpret this difficult phrase as follows. I and Thou ‘talk with each other’ through respective self-awakening. This thing is nothing but to share the ‘fact’ (jijitsu 事実), which is one’s self-awakening, rather than to relate the ‘content of each one’s expression’.10 It would be best to understand such a ‘dialogue’ as something which transcends the ‘intellectual’ dimension and the kind of linguistic communication that is commonly employed in society (Uehara 2021, 38–42).11 Nishida speaks of ‘talking directly with each other’ (直に話し合う). In other words, we can think of this as communication without mediation12 (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6, 405–406). However, I cannot read an ‘asymmetrical’ relation between humans in the self-determination of I and Thou expressed in this symmetrical form. As expressions of the first and the second persons, both I and Thou are generalized, and therefore they ensure the exchangeable equality of human relationality. For instance, roles in the society (father, mother, student, professor, etc.) or differences in sexuality do not appear there. In human relationships in real society, problems of equality and parity are habitually brought into question.13 Yet Nishida does not at all inquire about them. As a result, the non-equality of real relationships, or their imbalance, is not explored, with all such differences flattened out. Ultimately, his philosophical theory of self and other is restricted to the ‘eminent’ level of the abstract and the universal.

Benjamin’s intersubjectivity: Towards a theorization Benjamin’s arguments often contain plentiful and concrete examples of complex personal relations and the psychologies of the persons concerned. Some of the fruits of her clinical research will help us to verify Nishida’s theory of ‘I and Thou’, by means of daily, real and concrete matters that bother various aspects of human relationships. Let us start by outlining her thought of intersubjectivity, as can be found in her 1998 book, Shadow of the Other.14 As noted earlier, Benjamin’s main concern is to ‘recognize the subjectivity of the other’. This idea is supported by a problem that is consistently explored through her work: how are we to know the consciousness of the other, as something fundamentally similar to our own consciousness, yet also ultimately independent, out of our reach and control. In her work, Benjamin considers the subjectivities of the psychoanalyst and the patient as well as their reciprocal ‘recognition’. She takes up this problem of ‘reciprocal recognition’ as clinical because she is familiar with the reversal phenomena of analysed patients acquiring an authoritative position of subjectivity to know and talk while the psychoanalyst as subject commits an error. She attempts to advance this ‘reversal’ on the basis of the Hegelian dialectic. (Benjamin 2018a, iv–v) If I understand her properly, Benjamin’s motive is that the ‘reversion’ in human relations, more concretely in the relationship of analysist and analysand, can function as a device for revealing unexpected exchangeability. As an analyst, she found, as it were, asymmetrical and unequal relations between herself and each of her patients through her work and in her work. This analysist–analysand relationship may be delimited to

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the social dimension in general. Benjamin’s thinking tends to start from concrete, daily and singular experiences. Her work thereby forms a remarkable contrast with Nishida philosophy. Benjamin, then, focuses on the ‘identification with the other’ (他者との同一化), with reference to the problems of reversion and recognition (to recognize or not recognize the other, to bridge the difference of two existences). She suggests that there are two kinds of identifications: the rejection of objectifying the other, and the concealment of the other inside the ‘complementary’ relationship. The structure of ‘complementarity’ composes the basis of the inner, mental understanding that corresponds to ‘reversible’ complementarity of polarities (e.g. subject and object, active and passive, observer and participant, knower and known). Benjamin is aware that an intersubjective viewpoint can ruin such reversible complementarity. Her response is to theorize a ‘third position’, which allows for maintaining this tension of polarities. As she points out, ‘gender coding’ is indispensable issue for such theorization (Benjamin 2018a, vii–viii).

The issue of gender As Benjamin explains, it was Freud, the pioneer of psychoanalysis, who advanced an objectivist structure, grounded on the opposition of ‘knowing subject’ or analyst to ‘object of knowledge’ or the analysand. Yet, in this ‘subject–object complementarity’, the analysand does not have the right to be the subject. Meanwhile, the analyst who does not accept his/her own participation as a subjectivity in the observation, keeps distance from analysand. Benjamin knows today’s critical tendency to Freudian objectivism in the field of psychoanalysis, and she suggests to resolve the problem of their ‘split’, conceiving of a third position that leads to a veritable observation. Her project is to develop her own theory of the ‘Third’, comparable with an ‘inner mental space’ for ‘recognition’ of the other, which is created through dialogue (Benjamin 2018a, viii–x). Her original theory, the ‘Third’, will be constructed in Beyond Doer and Done to: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third (2018b).15 Psychoanalysis values a constant reversion between two subjects: analyst and analysand. Or, in other words, the constant reunification of subjectivity and mutuality. Benjamin points out that psychoanalysis paid attention to the potentiality of intersubjectivity in the relationship of the mother–child. This in turn can be directly take part in the issue of feminism. The appreciation of the mother was made by feminism in reference to the psychoanalytic ‘communicative’ relation between subject and object. This was to refute the negligence of the subject of mother and classical maternal work, which is mental work for the sake of the child (2018a, x–xi). Benjamin analyses the significance of the neglected subject of the mother who takes on the indispensable maternal role. To this end, she explains on the basis of Kojève’s interpretation of the Hegelian dialectical relation between Master and Slave. Benjamin’s point is that the ‘split’ within subjectivity concerning the ‘desire’ for Master and Slave: to work and to enjoy the desire for work (2018a, xi). Master does not enjoy work (because he does not directly participate in work); his desire is to enjoy the ‘thing that Slave prepared for him’ and consequently Master’s desires were satisfied. By contrast, Slave does not enjoy his work because he ‘works only for Master and satisfy Master’s desires, but not for his own desires’ (Kojève 1997, 22–4).16 Benjamin asserts that both subjects are unable to completely possesses and enjoy their own desires. She explains that such a split in subjectivity can be overcome only if the

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mother enjoys herself as a subject of desire. Both of the subjects participating in the dialectical relation should recognize respectively his/her own desire and enjoy it. Only through this can one realize a true intersubjectivity and a third position. As I outlined earlier, Benjamin insists on a reconsideration of intersubjectivity by introducing methods such as the ‘reunification of subjectivity and mutuality’ and the viewpoint of ‘desire’. The thinking that she proceeded through her own analysis of the problem which psychanalysis has probed, tackles the core issue of gender. Benjamin has thereby sought to inquire into the ‘ambiguity’ of the binary such as ‘masculinity and femininity’ and ‘active and passive’ (Benjamin 2018a, xi–xii).17 Benjamin has proposed the construction of her own theory of intersubjectivity. An important part of this proposed theory is the idea of ‘desire’ therein. Let me explain her point here in slightly more detail. Benjamin suggests that ‘desire’ as the ‘immediate’ needs to become the ‘mediate’ in order to be mediation between object and activity. ‘Desire’ is latent in the ‘inner mental space’ from which it can develop as the immediate; it is natural and spontaneous. However, it should be liberated from the latent (the potential or oppression) to appear as a representation. As Benjamin asserts, it is necessary for the subject to recognize desire and to have joy for it. According to my interpretation, desire is an idea which permits the subject to participate in intersubjective relations in the true sense, through dissolution of his/her distance to the other. It seems that desire is a key device for constructing a foundation for the theory of intersubjectivity.

Recognition Bearing in mind the double-faced relationality of masculine domination and feminine obedience, Benjamin examines the idea of recognition in connection with the concept of subject and that of self which is irreducible to the subject. She claims that the concept of recognition has to include ‘assertion of self’ conducted by ‘separate subjectivity’. In her concept of ‘recognition’, we can find points that are comparable with Nishida’s ‘recognition of the other’s personality’, as an assurance of the realization of the self in the ‘inter-corporeal-subjective self’. The self is decisive at the moment of recognition for both Benjamin and Nishida. But for Benjamin the relation between recognition and selfinsistence are not always stable and peaceful (Benjamin 2018a, xiv–xv). Benjamin argues that there is a breakdown and recovery of recognition in the dialectical process; this is the dialectic of recognition and ‘negation’. She emphasizes that the moment of negation is crucial for the acceptance of both the difference and otherness in question. What then is the other? The other is a ‘fear’ and something ‘different from myself’ for the I which tends to pursue identification. Benjamin does not deny the moment of negation (as the opposition of identification for the I), but rather intends to maintain a couple of recognition and negation in a dialectical structure of intersubjectivity. To put it differently, the self and the other, both as subjectivities, tend to identify or negate (or destroy) their other’s difference; her strategy is not to promote the alternative of identification or negation, but to be aware of the double and contradictive character of subjectivity (Benjamin 2018a, xvi). The responsibility for subjectivity is nothing but to undertake the utmost difficulty of human, in the midst of the tension between difference and commonality. In my interpretation of Benjamin’s explanation, we cannot easily attain a harmonious unity as a ‘recognition of other’, which could relieve this tension. Indeed, this is a mental and emotional conflict that we are determined to take responsibility for. Benjamin

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states that she became aware of a social reality which is inseparable from discord and tension through her clinical experiences. And we should keep in mind that she tackles the problematic of intersubjectivity as a ‘woman’; both her reflection and her female existence are necessarily involved in feminism. In this respect her background differs from Nishida’s: he was a man, a renowned professor of philosophy, who was not engagé as a Marxist or communist like many intellectuals at that time. He constructed the theory of ‘I and Thou’ for the sake of scholarship. Benjamin advanced the idea of the ‘concrete other’, by which she means the ‘real’ other in a phenomenological sense, in contrast to the ‘abstract’ other; that which negates subject (such as woman for man). Furthermore, for her, the abstract other is that which expresses its unwished part or its negated relation with any other; in other words, the abstract other is a ‘split off’ other (in the psychoanalytic sense). The abstract other and the concrete other comprise foundational ideas for thinking of the ‘external other’ and ‘inner other’ in her work (Benjamin 2018a, 149). Let us recall ‘the absolutely other’ that Nishida asserted. As we have already seen, this is a mutual and inner recognition of I and Thou through reciprocal self-awakening, with each individual absolutely independent even if there is an inner passing from I to Thou or from Thou to I. This state attests to the realization of their respective personality. Nishida’s concern is to construct a contradictory personality (individuals are intuitively continuous, and immediately independent and other to each other) on the basis of I and Thou relations by means of the tenet of self-awakening. But we do not see how and why each individual is self-awakened. Nishida never keenly inquires about situations or contexts where personality is placed for self-awakening, that is for self-determination. It seems to me that this mutual self-awakening as the above-mentioned ‘communication without mediation’ is completely exempt from distant and difficult human relations and the persons who are faced with diverse difficulties in the manner that Benjamin considers. I would like to insist here upon the difficulty of the realization of the mutual self-awakening of I and Thou in society.

CONCLUSION From the foregoing we can state that these two scholars proposed similar concepts regarding the self-other relationality, but their ways of grasping reality were different. This is understandable if we consider how surely live in very different worlds. Benjamin’s recognition is involved in mental and emotional conflict, while Nishida’s self-awakening or self-determination includes structurally logical contradiction. They both attempt to move towards the equal communication of I and Thou as I, or subject and other as subject. For concluding remarks focusing on the question of the communication, let us summarize our consideration developed earlier. Benjamin’s reflection on each case commenced always from the state of concrete inequalities and asymmetries of human relationships which come to the relation of ‘subject’ and ‘object’ or ‘self’ and ‘other’. As we have seen, she indeed tackled the difficulties issued from gendered, maternal or psychoanalytic problems; hitherto, the predominant persons as a ‘subject’ were naturally determinate for the respective cases of man and woman, mother and child or analyst and patient. Benjamin then pointed out this unbalanced dualistic scheme to suggest its reform making the ‘under-dominant persons’ as ‘object’ or ‘other’ accessible to the position of ‘subject’ or ‘self’. But this

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reform cannot easily lead an unequal relationship to an equal one. Benjamin perfectly penetrated the difficulty for obtaining the equality filled with ‘harmonious unity’ at the place of a ‘mental and emotional conflict’. I understand that Benjamin’s reform requires a hard work for both ‘subject’ and ‘object’. The complete negligence or intentional transcendence of the asymmetric and conflictual relationships of every life in Nishida was compensated by Benjamin. According to me, the crucial point for Benjamin’s reform is the concept of ‘recognition’ as well as the theory of the ‘Third’, which connect directly in the dialectical structure of her own idea of intersubjectivity (the above-mentioned definition of ‘the Third’ is ‘comparable with an “inner mental space” for “recognition” of the other, which is created through dialogue’). Benjamin conceived the ‘concrete other’ – ‘abstract other’ and the ‘negation’ – ‘identification’ to validate the recognition in process. In my interpretation of her idea, this discrepancy between them cannot be cleared up, but rather it assures the deepening thinking of both the self and the other as a subject. This corresponds to Nishida’s ‘recognition of the other’s personality, as an assurance of the realization of the self in the inter-corporeal-subjective self’. The perspective of the ‘Third’ is also close to the communication place of ‘I and Thou’ in Nishida as far as we accept that he suggests a communication transcending the ‘intellectual dimension’ and the language or ‘talking directly with each other’. Benjamin’s psychoanalytic theory of the subjectivity can support Nishida’s ‘I–Thou’ relation of everyday dimension and develop to the transcending the language. Nishida’s ‘I–Thou’ communication is situated at the religious dimension in a broader sense: the human relationship in everyday life which we especially focused on and the relation between the Absolute and the finite being in a narrow sense. These both dimensions were treated in the same context of ‘I and Thou’, that is to say, ultimately, Nishida’s philosophical project is founded on the religious dimension, or rather the global philosophy of religion.

NOTES 1. The name of a logic developed in Nishida’s philosophy: basho no ronri (場所の論理), the logic of the place. Nishida reinterpreted the Aristotelian logic of the subject based on the definition of the substratum (kitai 基体) (that which becomes subject, but not predicate) as ‘what becomes predicate, but not subject’. Nishida’s logical form is expressed by ‘the subject is in the predicate’ (shugo ha jutsugo nioite aru 主語は述語に於てある) while in Aristotle’s judgement of subsumption ‘subject is predicate’. In doing so Nishida claims the immediacy of the relation between subject and predicate. 2. In this paper, all citations and quotations from original texts have been translated by the author. 3. This was the time when left-wing thoughts and movements were the keenest (Shimomura 1979, 471). 4. Bret Davis takes up the key term ‘place of absolute nothing’(zettaimu no basho 絶対無の場所) in Nishida‘s philosophy, and explains that it ‘ultimately has a religious meaning, regardless of the period or context’ (Davis 2012, 108). 5. Emmanuel Levinas is well known for his writing on the ‘absolutely other’ relations; for instance, such the ‘féminin’ (Levinas 2016, 79), the problematic which he and for which he was criticized by Simone de Beauvoir. In this case, Levinas manifests clearly his ‘alterity’

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which is different from the ‘dialectically reciprocal’ of master and slave in a Hegelian sense, as well as the non-recognition of ‘identical liberty’ to ‘the mine’ for the other (Levinas 2016, 80). Accordingly, I understand that Levinas insisted on the impossibility of equality within alterity―in particular regarding the issue of gender. 6. I use the Japanese translation of Scott’s book (Scott 2004), and here I translate myself the citation in English. It is after due recognition of the difficulty in elucidating ‘equality’ and ‘parity’ when it is situated within gender discourse that I take his ‘I and Thou’ as an ‘ideal’ relationship. Joan Wallach Scott, as a historian of gender, develops this question of the difficulty in detail. She cites, for example, Hana Havelková H’s idea that I summarize here. The ‘recognition of inequality was’ done ‘by discourses in different ‘historical contexts.’ But this ‘recognition of inequality’ should not be considered as the ‘appearance of the feminism;’ in other words, the ‘Western developed’ type of feminism. Countries outside the West (e.g. The Czech Republic) have their own history of feminism. (Scott 2004, 432–3) Scott provides an explanation to negate the existence of an universal definition of the ‘equality’ of ‘inequality.’ 7. I use the Japanese translation of Benjamin’s book, and here I translate myself the citation in English. 8. The translation of this article is available under the title of ‘The Logic of the Place of Nothingness and the Religious Worldview’ (in Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, translated by David A. Dilworth, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1987). 9. Put differently, the relation between I and Thou can be explained from the perspective of time and space like two sides of the same coin. In this case what Nishida has in mind is something like the Augustinian sense of time, as an ‘eternal now’ (eien no ima 永遠の今), a present that ‘includes past, present and future’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6: 363). From the perspective of time, I and Thou share their inner world. Yet, each of them also respectively maintains their independence by way of ‘spatial significance’ (Nishida 1979b NKZ 6: 402). However, this paper withholds a deeper examination of Nishida’s idea of time, in order to avoid further complication of the discussion. 10. What they share suggests the above-mentioned ‘place’ of the logic of ‘place,’ which is considered as the world that encompasses all individuals and from which each ‘monadological’ individual realizes itself through self-determination. 11. Elsewhere, Nishida expresses this state of ‘the absolutely other’ as follows: ‘I hear Thy call in this [absolutely] other, Thou hear My call in this [absolutely] other’ (私はこの他 に於て汝の呼声を、汝はこの他に於て私の呼声を聞く). In my 2021 article regarding communication between I and Thou, I argued the question of this ‘call’ in relation to the kind of expressions that circulate in society. 12. Taking into account Nishida’s relation of ‘I and Thou’ and Buber’s ‘Ich und Du’, Ueda Shizuteru takes up the Japanese ‘bow’ (ojigi おじぎ) as an interesting example of a salutation to explain the ‘self-understanding of the event of the encounter’ (出会いの出来事の自己了解). He explains as follows: I and Thou make their bows each other. This is ‘for each of them’ to bring oneself to nothing in the depth of their ‘betweenness’ (双方ともに「間」の深みに自分を無にすること), while there is neither the self nor the other. Then they rise from the nothing to face each other as ‘I and Thou’ (無から甦って、「私と汝」として向かい合う) (Ueda 2006, 116, 118–19). 13. Ueda also points out the non-equality of human relations in reality, but he accepts the ‘structure’ of Nishida’s ‘I and Thou’ itself (Ueda 2006, 133–4). 14. Here I introduce Benjamin’s thought in English by translating and interpreting some passages extracted from the Japanese version of her book, Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and gender in psychoanalysis. I do not use quotation marks except some

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cases in which the translator gives the expressions and terms in source language, since I neither cite nor quote Benjamin’s original text. 15. See, for example, the following passage on page 4: The ‘Third’ is ‘the position in which we implicitly recognize the other as a “like subject”, a being we can experience as an “other mind”’. ‘The Third refers to a position constituted through holding the tension of recognition between difference and sameness, taking the other to be a separate but equivalent centre of initiative and consciousness with whom nonetheless feeling and intentions can be shared.’ 16. Here by referring French version, I complete Benjamin’s explanation on desire in dialectical structure which was interpreted by Kojève. The cited expressions in French are translated by me. 17. With Benjamin, we should understand and reconsider contradiction and impasse in consequence of complementarity of ‘subject-object’ to sum up, but we do not aim to develop this problem in this paper.

REFERENCES Benjamin, Jessica (2018a), 『他者の影　ジェンダーの戦争はなぜ終わらないのか』 (Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis ), trans. Kitamura Fumi, Tokyo: Misuzu shobō. Benjamin, Jessica (2018b), Beyond Doer and Done to: Recognition Theory, Intersubjectivity and the Third, London and New York: Routledge. Davis, Bret (2012), 「二重なる〈絶対の他への内在的超越〉―西田の宗教哲学における他 者論―」 (Twofold Immanent Transcendence to the Absolute Other: The I-Thou Relation in Nishida’s Philosophy of Religion), 『日本哲学史研究』, Studies in Japanese Philosophy Vol. 9, Kyoto: Department of Japanese Philosophy Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University. Hattori, Kenji (2004), 「第一章　「京都学派·左派」像」 (Chapter I ‘The image of the Kyoto school Left wing’), 『京都学派の思想―種々の像と思想のポテンシャル』 (The Thought of the Kyoto school―the Potential for Diverse Images and Thoughts), Kyoto: Jinbun shoin. Hegel Georg, W. F. (1995), 『精神現象学』 (System der Wissenschaft) 上巻 (Vol. I), trans. Kaneko Takezō, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Kitamura, Fumi (2018), 「補論　精神分析と女性―ジェシカ·ベンジャミンの登場まで」 (Supplementary Explanation. Psychoanalysis and the Woman: until the appearance of Jessica Benjamin)/「解説」(Explanation) 『他者の影　ジェンダーの戦争はなぜ終わらないのか』 (Shadow of the Other: Intersubjectivity and Gender in Psychoanalysis ) of Benjamin Jessica, trans. Kitamura Fumi, Tokyo: Misuzu shobō. Kojève, Alexandre (1997), Introduction à la lecture de Hegel: Leçons sur la Phénoménologie de l’Esprit professées de 1933 à 1939 à l’École des Hautes Études réunies et publiées par Raymond Queneau, Paris: Éditions Gallimard. Levinas, Emanuel (2016), Le temps et l’autre, Paris: Quadrige Presses universitaires de France. Nishida, Kitarō (1979a), 「総説」 (General Remarks), 『西田幾多郎全集』 (The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō, NKZ) 5, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Nishida, Kitarō (1979b), 『無の自覚的限定』 (The Self-Awakening Determination of Nothing), 『西田幾多郎全集』 (The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō, NKZ) 6, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten.

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Nishida, Kitarō (1979c), 「私の立場から見たヘーゲルの弁証法」 (The Dialectic of Hegel Seen from My Standpoint) 『続思索と体験』 (The Sequel Thinking and Experience), 『西田幾多郎全集』 (The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō, NKZ) 12, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Scott, Wallach Joan (2004), 『ジェンダーと歴史学』 (Gender and the Politics of History), trans. Ogino Miho, Tokyo: Heibon sha. Shimomura, Toratarō (1979), 「後記」(Postscript), 『無の自覚的限定』 (The Self-Awakening Determination in Nothing), 『西田幾多郎全集』 (The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarō, NKZ) 6, Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Uehara, Mayuko (2021), ‘「高橋、西田、ボーヴォワール、レヴィナスにおける性差ある他 者性を問う」 (“Questioning Alterity in Gender Difference in Takahashi, Nishida, Beauvoir and Levinas”)’, in Leon Krings, Francesca Greco and Yukiko Kuwayama (eds), Transitions: Crossing Boundaries in Japanese Philosophy, Frontiers of Japanese Philosophy 10, Nagoya: Chisokudō. Ueda, Shizuteru (2006), 『私とは何か』 (What is the I?), Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho.

Chapter 14

The Nguni traditional ‘religious’ thoughts The Isintu philosophy of the Zulu/Ndebele people HERBERT MOYO

INTRODUCTION The subject of the philosophy of religion in African indigenous religions raises many questions, especially for Western philosophers of religion. Western philosophers of religion wonder if there is a philosophy or if there was any philosophy in Africa before the advent of Westerners in the form of missionaries and colonizers. Philosophers wonder if there were debates on philosophies that may be embedded in the culture1 of the Nguni. The Nguni are a group of Bantu people who mainly speak Nguni languages and currently reside mostly in Southern Africa (Snedegar 1998). The Nguni people are Zulu, Xhosa, Ndebele (Northern Ndebele, Southern Transvaal Ndebele & Sumayela Ndebele), Swati Hlubi, Phuthi, Bhaca, Lala and Nhlangwini. They predominantly live in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Swaziland. There are a few of the Nguni in Malawi and Zambia. In this chapter, I will use examples mainly from the Northern Ndebele even though I will continue to use the collective term, Nguni. The Ndebele have a way of life that respects living in community. This way of life considers a community to be composed of the living people in a given context, those who once lived but have gone back to the spirit world of the living dead and those yet to be born. The Ndebele refer to this way of life as Isintu which produces a character of Ubuntu in a person. John Mbiti (1970) has made the concept of Ubuntu popular in the academic world. Moyo writes, ‘Ubuntu is an ethical concept that shows adherence to Isintu which manifests itself through communalism, using the humanness of individuals who constitute a community . . . Ubuntu is an expression of Isintu. Isintu requires other human beings, hence communalism’ (2021, 125). The concept of communalism must be understood as subordinate to Isintu. Traditional African communalism is a way of life that values the community more than the individual. Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (I am because we are) is an African (Nguni) proverb that determines acceptable ethical communal behaviour. If I were to use direct translation to English this proverb would read as, ‘a person is a real person because of other people, one cannot be a real person alone.’ The life of the Nguni is premised on respect in a hierarchical manner from the young to the old, the living to the dead and the dead to the

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living as each exercise their roles in their realms (Harriet Ngubane 1977; Moyo 2019a; Setiloane 1986). The Zulu whose language and culture is 98 per cent similar to the Ndebele language say that Isintu is the totality of the Zulu people. Their being is Isintu (Moyo 2021, 125). The Ndebele see Isintu as their cosmology or as the sum total of their opinion concerning life such as origins, the nature of the universe, joy, traditional/cultural practices, fears, purpose of life, language, death, spiritualties and afterlife. This Nguni reality involves ancestors, diviners, witches, Sangomas, healers and spirit mediums. It is all this understanding or worldview that Western scholars have referred to as Religion. In fact, it is referred to as African Traditional Religion (Okon 2006, 4). Western scholars of the philosophy of religion in Africa should approach their research with the knowledge that Africans are not the ones who named their way of life a ‘religion’. This was named by Western theologians or some Africans who were trained in the West. The Nguni before the Western influence which came through colonialism and evangelization of Africa never called their way of life a religion. The term ‘African Traditional Religion’ comes from scholars who are mainly Christian theologians. If other traditional religions are not named Traditional Religion but have names such as Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, then the religion of the Nguni should also have a name instead of simply calling it a ‘traditional religion’. I call it Isintu religion. Culture is dynamic, the Nguni have acclimatized themselves to the concept of Inkolo, in the contemporary cultural setting. However when the Nguni, especially the Ndebele, meet challenges in life they refer back to the concept of Isintu instead of Inkolo. Moyo (2021) has argued elsewhere that the Inkolo influence is trying to kill Isintu. Western scholars of the philosophy of religion do need to have a certain level of understanding of the concept of Isintu to understand the philosophy of the Nguni. As a term, ‘religion’ is problematic in itself as it is translated to a functional word in Nguni languages. Religion is equivalent to the word Inkolo, which means ‘belief’. That is, ‘religion’ in the understanding of the Nguni has to do with believing or belief system. For example, Christians are referred to as Amakholwa, which means ‘believers’ when translated to English. On the other hand, the Isintu system does not require any believing to belong to it. People are born into this system and they live their life in the system through the systems that are inherent their culture. Therefore, philosophers of religion in a way impose a functional term (Religion) to Isintu which is understood from a Western worldview that is then translated to Inkolo. The Nguni do not have Inkolo, but have ‘Isintu-ism’. In the light of the above discussion, I will use Isintu in place of what would be generally referred to as African Traditional Religion. Those who have accepted the Western description of Isintu also referred to it as African Ancestor Religion or African Traditional Religions or African Indigenous Religion (see Mbiti 1970 and Awolalu 1976, 275). If there is a philosophy of religion among the Ndebele then it is embedded in Isintuism. This chapter examines the concept and philosophy of Isintu from the viewpoint of Africans. It presents the worldview, philosophical nature and foundation of Isintu. It also shows that Isintu is practised through living our lives as normal beings in community with sacrifices, offerings, singing, dancing and saying words to ancestors. In the original setting of Isintu, there is no talk about God or other deities. In Isintu we talk to ancestors as messengers to communicate with those beyond the reach of the living. Thus, Western philosophers of religion need to tread with care as their research can only make sense if it is done with a level of understanding of the African Ndebele understanding of Isintu. Western philosophers of religion should somehow wear the spectacles of the Nguni to understand the philosophy of Isintu-ism.

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THE CONCEPT OF RELIGION AMONG THE NDEBELE (NGUNI) In the introduction, I have pointed out that the concept of Religion is problematic among the Nguni. Africans in general and the Nguni in particular never worried about naming an aspect of their life in a particular way (Idowu 1973, 136). Western anthropologists, theologians and missionaries were keen to understand African life using the Western concepts of ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’. These terms’ frame of reference to understand the Nguni is wrong contextually. Religion is foreign and it was used by others to name the Isintu lifestyle. The concept of religion is a Western-imposed definition of Isintu. Westerntrained theologians who are the primary formal philosophers of religion in Africa have marketed this terminology to a point where it is used without thinking through its meaning and origins. In Africa the concept of African Traditional Religion was heralded by West African philosophers of religion such as Parrinder (1969, 1976), Idowu (1973) and Mbiti (1969) who created an authorized version of African religions as ‘African Traditional Religion’. If one refers to Africans’ traditional ways of life as ‘religion’ then the argument that Africans are incurably religious is true (Mbiti 1969; Platvoet and Rinsum 2003). However, Africans live their lives without creating distinctions between being religious and not being religious. It is not in an African’s worldview to compartmentalize life into religion and life or sacred and secular (profane). All of life is sacred. In fact, what Western philosophers of religion and theologians referred to as a religion is African culture. Culture is a way of life which is inclusive of everyday life. Those who referred to aspects of African ways of living as religion compared this with Western religions especially Christianity and Islam. In this way, they saw the religious aspects of African culture ‘as superstition, magic, worship of objects (fetishism, totemism, animism) and worship of the dead (ancestors)’ (Chidester 1992, 24 and Mndende 1994, 17). As noted in the introduction, religion is translated to Inkolo in all Nguni languages. The word Inkolo actually means a belief. This comes mainly from Christianity where Africans were evangelized, then they believed (bakholwa). This believing is associated with conversion. Amakholwa (believers) are those who have been converted to Christianity or Islam from Isintu. Those who have remained in Isintu are not referred to as Amakholwa. The concept of Amakholwa also applies to Islam among the Nguni in Southern Africa. The implication is that they do not have Inkolo since Inkolo is associated with conversion and believing. There is no conversion to Isintu, no books for rules and regulations, etc., one is born into this particular way of life and the way of life is both life and religion at the same time. It is also very difficult to even count the number of adherents to Isintu as almost all Africans including those who have become Amakholwa still practice some of the rituals of Isintu. Western-trained philosophers of religion may not have anything to study if they want to do a philosophy of religion as there is no religion so to speak, but a way of life. However, because of the contamination of the Nguni worldview by belief-based religions (Inkolo) today you can hear people saying Inkolo yama-Kristu or Inkolo ye-sintu, which can be translated to Christianity [the belief of Christians] or Isintu [the belief of Isintu]. Saying Inkolo yesintu is problematic as Inkolo in this context means believing and conversion which is not part of Isintu. If one was to write on the religion as is done with Abrahamic religions then one has to write about the lifestyle of the Nguni person. This understanding cuts across Southern Africa among the Nguni and other African tribes. If Isintu is accepted as a religion just like we have other traditional religions such as Christianity, Islam and

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Judaism then Western philosophers of religion can study it from the African perspective so to speak. The conceptual framework of ‘religion’ tends to create a separation between the profane and the sacred. The Nguni did not have those distinctions in life between everyday life and religious life. This concept of a holistic view of life cuts across many indigenous people in Africa. I can safely say that Africans do not separate their life between just everyday life and religion. If I can borrow from those that have accepted the title African Traditional Religion, I will say all of life as based on their worldview and cosmology is Isintu. Etin E. Okon describes a people’s worldview as ‘the complex of their beliefs and attitudes concerning the origin, nature, structure of the universe and the interaction of its beings . . .’ (2006, 4). Okon goes on to describe the cosmology as ‘the sum total of people’s opinion concerning life, happiness, fears, purpose of life, death and afterlife. It is the fundamental commonalities of a given culture such as folkways, mores, language, human productions and social structure’ (2006, 4). The above set of truths about Africans applies to the Nguni people and their Isintu. Isintu has a set of understandings (as a Western philosopher of religion you may call this a belief) concerning nature, the cosmos and life that calls for certain ritual observances around human life with several rites of passage performed in nature. Ideally everyone belongs to the community and therefore participates in the activities that constitute life in the community such as rituals, ceremonies and rites of passage which are handed over generation after generation through orality and practice.

THE CHALLENGE OF THE ORALITY OF AFRICAN RELIGIONS In Isintu there are several reasons that demonstrate the advantages and the disadvantages of orality in African worldviews. If one is seeking to access African philosophy of Isintu one needs to delve into orality. Traditions that are passed on through orality have a tendency of being transformed depending on the orator. One then wonders: which version of the circulating oral traditions is authentic? Is the question which voice conveys the true or authentic teaching? Or, are these claims irrelevant, even in writing? It is difficult indeed to judge the authentic voice from the non-authentic voice on a particular issue especially for non-indigenous researchers in Isintu. The oral tradition is based on established proverbs, idioms, folklore, song and poetry that are passed on from one generation to the next. Such narratives that carry important principles and values are passed on word for word. In socialization one is groomed in the use of the exact words by the elderly. So the wording of proverbs and some folklore are exact from one generation to the other. The use of words has been trusted for generations. Western scholars of philosophy should also know that most of the texts that they are using as sources such as the Bible are also products of orality. One wonders about the authenticity of the originality of the views therein. In Zimbabwe, on the one hand, there are some Christian denominations that were formed in rebellion to written words in the form of the Bible and hymn books. They see written religious documents as improperly domesticating God. Some oral thoughts, on the other hand, have not changed since time immemorial among the Nguni such as proverbs (umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu). The saying translates as, ‘I am because we are’. There are many examples of such long-standing sayings and taboos and folklore. To document all of these would be a noble attempt that might be of use to conventional

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philosophers of religion. While some of these proverbs have been translated into English, however, the translations understandably lose the import of these proverbs. Therefore, writing books on Isintu can be a very difficult exercise. There is no one form of religious practice of Isintu that cuts across all people or a number of connected people. Each family unit has its own ways. Each family appeals through its family ancestors, for example, such that names of religious figures and places of worship vary from family to family within the same tribe. Would philosophers of religion do well to engage some of these ‘oral’ traditions? Philosophers of religion have rarely developed analytical tools to access, much less understand, oral traditions such as the folklore, taboos and proverbs that are the resources of Isintu thought.

SOURCES OF ISINTU THOUGHT AND PHILOSPHY To access the African philosophy of Isintu the Western philosopher of religion must go to the sources and vehicles of African philosophy. There are several sources and vehicles of African philosophy of Isintu. Isintu has no written literature, yet it is written everywhere for those who care to see and read. According to Awolalu, African lifestyles are ‘ . . . largely written in the peoples’ myths and folktales, in their songs and dances, in their liturgies and shrines and in their proverbs and pithy sayings’ (1976, 275). The mere fact that Isintu is ‘written’ via a textual analogue Western language does not necessarily mean that it is not written at all. As noted already, there are several sources of philosophy such as art, music, myths, poetry, rituals, idioms, proverbs and folklore (see Moyo 2021). Somewhat like texts, there are several examples of patterns whose shapes and shared meanings may be found across the African continent. The chevron demonstrates the concept of continuity, endlessness and perpetuity of life cycles. ‘Cosmologically the Ndebele believe that everything is cyclic, implying endlessness, continuity and perpetuity of cycles in nature including human life’ (Moyo 2021, 126). The chevron that depicts this philosophy is a basic shape for decorating huts and pottery products. Today, the chevron has found its way into decorating cloth materials, architecture and some decorations of government buildings (e.g. the tower at the Harare international airport). The circle is a basic shape that also explains the same phenomenon as the chevron. The circle has no beginning and has no ending. Human life, seasons and many other natural phenomena come in cycles that demonstrate endlessness and perpetuity. The Nguni then build their huts, their yards, cattle kraals, clay pots, musical drums and wooden stools in the form of a round. In other words the Ndebele have depicted the philosophy of nature into their lifestyle. If you see a Ndebele person and the artefacts that surround them then you will read their philosophy. The idea of the circle goes further into other aspects of life singing and dancing. African dance in a circle, the musical drum repeats the same rhythm many times in a cyclic manner and the songs are a repetition of the same phrase many times in a cyclic manner. This is where the philosophy is written. Songs, especially those related to rituals and special occasions are passed on from one generation to another through practice. As already noted, the words of some songs, especially those related to major life rituals, do not change and that is continuity. So too do proverbs, idioms and some folklore stories remain largely unchanged. All these are the sources of African wisdom and the meaning has remained the same over generations. Songs are a central part of the life of an African. Africans especially the Nguni use music in their

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fields while doing their work. Singing is also part and parcel of the events at shrines when they talk to the gods and ancestors, at home while preparing meals, by the fireside when telling folklore stories, when celebrating life events such as rites of passage, when mourning they sing and while travelling long journeys they also sing. Songs are part of many life events among the Nguni. There are certain truths that are easier said through song than using direct conversation. While singing here is a rhythmic clapping of hands or wooden pieces being against each other to produce a clapping rhythm. Some will be dancing trough cyclic steps and at times dancing in a circle. All this is a way of communicating African philosophy. Proverbs are yet another key resource for Isintu philosophy. A proverb, ‘ . . . carries within it, the wisdom and experience of the African people, usually of several ages gathered and summed up in one expression. They spring from the people and represent the voice of the people and express the interpretation of their belief, principles of life and conduct’ (Kanu 2017, 8). Proverbs offer guidance on how to live in community with others through these well-designed words that are said in the same manner using the same words. The proverbs carry the philosophy of life of the Isintu through value-laden words with moral principles that at times only understood by the wise as the statements are very philosophical in nature. John Mbiti argues that ‘It is in proverbs that we find the remains of the oldest forms of African religious and philosophical wisdom’ (1970, 86). Western philosophers of religion can use proverbs to engage African philosophy of religion. The epitome of Isintu philosophy is summed up in proverbs and the wording and application of proverbs are not changing, they are still pure and uncontaminated by contextual changes and Westernization. In Isintu the elderly pass on to the younger ones values, principles and philosophies of life through inganekwane (folklore). Inganekwane in most cases uses animals and trees as the main characters to explain or teach about a phenomenon. Some important folklore are not yet influenced by Westernization as the stories have continued from one generation to the next in their pure sense. As such, philosophers of religion should recognize that inganekwane is another central source of Isintu philosophy. Zani (1972) says that Africans are parable and story telling people. African stories carry the idea of African communitarian life with a clear demonstration of the inherent values, principles and morals as espoused in the culture and traditions of the people. Among the Nguni people story is used for teaching, advising, guiding, reconciling, entertaining and admonishing depending on context. Some stories are complex and they need some exegesis. In most settings stories were told in the evening while people were sitting around a fire or during work such as weeding in the fields. The inganekwane have mode of storytelling has been contaminated without necessarily contaminating the content. Historically the stories were told and preserved through oral history. However, in contemporary Africa, Inganekwane are now written in books, magazines and online sources. Story telling is now found on radio, television and on a variety of online sources. Maybe the Western philosopher of religion can enjoy using stories as a source of Isintu philosophy as these are now easily available in written sources.

CONTAMINATION AND ORIGINALITY OF AFRICAN RELIGIONS In the case where philosophers of religion might have the notion that they only want to deal with some pure, original and uncontaminated versions of the African Traditional

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Religion – ones that pre-exist significant exposure to and influence from other religious traditions – I will discuss the challenge of accessing such a religion except theorizing from books whose originality can also be questioned. Biblical scholars search for the original letters of St. Paul to no avail. There is no scholarly consensus that there is a pure, original version for the contents of the Christian New Testament, since the gospels circulated as oral traditions for many years and then later found their way to written sources. If philosophers of religion think that what is written is better than what comes from orally, then it would be useful to concede that there is no ‘pure’ source for religious thought. Another approach can be the possibility of trying to peel away what is obviously coming from other religions as one tries to go back to the original thought on a given religious thought. One may have to talk about the authentic as opposed to the pure Isintu-ism. As noted earlier on, this discussion may lead the reader to the sources of Zulu religious thought such as folklore, art and taboos. Going back to taboos, art and folklore may lead the philosopher of religion to possible Nguni thought before Abrahamic religious influence or contamination of Isintu. On the other hand Isintu is not static. It dynamically adapts to contemporary contextual realities. What can be seen as ‘contamination’ by other worldviews is in actual fact acceptable in Isintu. Western philosophers of religion should therefore guard themselves in producing research on African religions, due to the risk of practising philosophical colonialism or imperialism. In most parts of Africa, ‘The encounter between European and African cultures is better described as a forced acculturation. A word that describes a situation in which a highly developed society impose certain elements of its culture on the other, thereby forcing it to derail from its unique tract of cultural civilization; the observed result is an initial form of resistance and conflict that often leads to a situation of cultural disorder’ (Kanu 2017, 19). In as much as Isintu has been contaminated by Western culture through colonialism, the colonialist and missionaries to some extent came with a mindset of superiority that has undermined African culture and philosophy. For example, some missionaries thought that Africans did not know God and therefore they were empty vessels to be filled with ‘religion.’ I sense the same argument from some Western philosophers that there was no philosophy in Africa prior to the arrival of missionaries and colonizers. They may mean that African thinking, again, is viewed as empty vessels to be filled with ‘philosophy’. The colonial encounter also meant that the language of the colonizer was preferred over indigenous languages. ‘English has become a symbol of success and civilisation’ (Moyo 2013, 213). Further, learning and practising the principles and values of the colonizer meant that one was emancipated from barbarism only to access carrots dangled by the colonizer. This has some effects in the study of philosophy in Africa. First there was a colonial period when studying African philosophy was unimaginable and uncivilized. The second challenge is that people trying to do philosophy in Africa are doing so in foreign languages. African philosophy is done in English, and yet the sources of African philosophy are located in indigenous languages. Doing philosophy in the African setting by Western philosophers of religion will demonstrate, once again, the superiority of Western languages over African indigenous languages. African proverbs, idioms, songs, myths and folklore will be translated into English for philosophizing. These translations will likely distort the meaning of such sources. For example, I have done several translations of proverbs where the meaning and the diction is lost. I would suggest that philosophers of religion interested in doing Africa-related scholarship to invest in learning African languages to understand Isintu.

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ENCULTURATION OF ISINTU WITH ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS Isintu has deliberately transformed itself through accepting aspects of Christianity and Islam, which affects the Nguni philosophy. It should be noted that it is difficult to access and assess what can be termed religion, as highlighted earlier. If there is ‘religion’, it is informed and reformed by context, thought systems are contextual in many ways. When the context transforms, the religion also transforms itself to suit the new context. The Nguni religion as it exists in the contemporary context is a hybrid of Christianity and Islam. Philosophers of religion should also take note of the fact that Christianity and Islam must also be viewed as hybrids in their African context. The original texts that may be in Greek and Hebrew are as inaccessible to practitioners of Christianity in Africa as they are to practitioners in America or Europe. The majority of practitioners of Christianity are using the English and local indigenous languages (Zulu/Ndebele, Xhosa, Venda, Shona, etc.) to read the Christian Bible. One can imagine the differences between whatever may have been the reception of the original texts versus the local understandings of translated texts. ‘Religion’ is therefore informed by translated principles and values that are not pure but contextual. If pure religion means original traditional religion that has not been transformed by contextual developments, then perhaps there are no pure religions in Africa. So what might Western philosophers of religion looking for? If it is a pure religion that they are looking for, then they may as well know that there is no such thing in Africa. I wonder if there is a pure religion in the West so to speak even if theirs is written in books. Perhaps the philosopher of religion can surely access archived relatively original thoughts about the Abrahamic religions through written sources, which nevertheless went through many transformations as oral traditions. There is no pure ‘religion’. Kanu has noted the argument that ‘The Universalist school of African philosophy has also tried to make African philosophy unphilosophical as a result of the absence of the documentation of the ideas in African languages. They argue that since African ideas, expressed in their myths, folklores, proverbs etc., in African languages are not written down, they can’t be regarded as philosophy. The fundamental question to ask here is if philosophy is inextricably bound to writing’ (2017, 18). If so, then there is no African philosophy except the few ideas that have found their way into written sources. It is understandable that some African philosophers can claim that African philosophy is not philosophy just because it is not written. These philosophers have been influenced by Western understanding of philosophy and the sources of philosophy. Kanu is justifiably surprised that, ‘ . . . fellow Africans would categorize their philosophy as unphilosophical as a result of it not being in a written language. Yet they read the works of philosophers like Socrates who never put his work into writing and qualify them as philosophy. Philosophy is not only preserved through writing, it could be preserved as well through oral tradition. It is not the method of preservation that makes philosophy but the content’ (Kanu 2017, 19).

WAS THERE ANY PHILOSOPHIZING IN AFRICA THROUGH SOURCES OF PHILOSOPHY? I do insist that philosophers of religion, who are trained in the Euro-American style who want to practice more globally and critically do need to invest in understanding

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the background of what is now called African Traditional Religion(s). Euro-American philosophers of religion see philosophy from articulations and defences. The mere fact that such debates and articulations are not published in print or online does not entail their non-existence. Of note is that there is literature for such debates and defences in North and West Africa and not in Southern Africa. Therefore North and West African philosophy has found its way into literature while the philosophy from Southern Africa is still largely oral-based. One possible explanation for this is that in terms of independence from colonialism, North and West Africa gained their independence much earlier than countries in Southern Africa. Independence from colonialism meant cultural independence. These West and North Africans were now free to showcase their culture and worldviews through their educational institutions while those in Southern Africa were still gagged by colonial masters. Southern Africa is entering that space now as concepts of Indigenous Knowledge Systems are finding their way into university education. We now have established departments such as African philosophy, African Theology and African Indigenous Knowledge Systems. In African universities research and teaching in religion and theology should be based on Indigenous Knowledge Systems to bring out the wealth of principles and values (philosophies) imbedded in African knowledge systems. This call is seeking for the inclusion of African sources of philosophy into the education system so that philosophical debates from Southern Africa can also be accessed by the world. This is not about begging the debate, it is about bringing out the debates and defences to be accessed through literature as is happening in other parts of the globe such as East Asia, South Asia, West Asia, North Africa, West Africa and Europe. Of concern is that some Western philosophers err by still claiming that there is no philosophy of religion in precolonial Africa, because there is no evidence of things such as debates, defences, critiques and analyses. That these philosophers have simply not managed to access the sources and vehicles of philosophy does not support any claims of its absence. To demonstrate the existence of debates I will use the example of the use proverbs in Isintu. I am aware that the use of proverbs as an example might still be, a major point of contention in the field of African philosophy – whether ‘ethnophilosophy’ (the philosophical ideas present in some culture) is philosophy, or whether there is not really philosophy in Africa until there are other traditions of thought such as the colonial-Western worldview. If the presence of philosophy can be demonstrated by debates and defences then proverbs are an outcome of debates and defences. In the Nguni worldview we do have opposing proverbs that are results of varying points of view on an issue. You can call such differing points of view schools of thought in Nguni philosophy such as shown below.2 Udiwo lufuze imbiza, ‘A small clay pot resembles a big clay pot.’ This proverb means that a child resembles its parents especially the mother. This applies to the physically appearance as well as the character of the child. A child’s behaviour, values and principles are similar to those of its parents. On the other hand there is another proverb that says isikhuni sizala umlotha, ‘Firewood produces ashes or firewood gives birth to ashes.’ This proverb opposes ‘udiwo lufuze imbiza’ by arguing that it is possible for a parent to give birth to a child that does not resemble its parents. In discussions especial when people are trying to resolve social issues you can actual hear this kind of exchange of words through such opposing philosophies with people taking sides with a particular point of view. Induku enhle iganyulwa ezizweni, ‘A good knobkerrie is found from very far.’ This proverb is about marriage. The argument is that one can get a good spouse from very far

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away instead of getting one from the local community. The proponents of this point of view argue that it is better to get a spouse from another community or country because no one will be knowing the background of the person. In this way there is no pointing to the past of the person as locals will not be knowing anything about such a spouse. The opposing school of thought says ukhuni olungaziwayo aluthezwa, ‘You must not gather firewood from an unknown tree.’ This school of thought is of the view that it is not wise to get a spouse from an unknown family as you may not know the character of the person. The view is that it is better to get married to a person whose family background is already known as there will be no surprises in terms of the character of the spouse. This school of thought is linked to the one that says ‘udiwo lufuze imbiza’. When one is getting married the first question is: Who are the parents of the girl/boy? They usually judge the boy/girl by the character of the parents that they know. My last example is Imitha ngokuphindwa, ‘It gets pregnant when you do it again’. Or Ithunga ligcwala ngomphehlo: ‘When milking a cow the milk container gets full when you milk for the second time.’ These two proverbs mean that one should always try again or do what whatever they are doing to achieve. This also means that if you fail for the first time, do it the second time. If one is defeated go back and try again in order to succeed. The opposing school of thought says ukubona kanye yikubona kabili, ‘seeing once is seeing twice.’ This one is straightforward, the proponents are saying that once beaten do not try again. The debate and defences on these positions are usually apparent in community/family gatherings to deal with social issues.

CONCLUSION I have made several expositions about African philosophy and philosophy of religion in particular. The chapter discussed some key sources of traditional African religious thought such as proverbs, songs, folklore and art. These sources of Isintu philosophy are authentic and some of them have preserved the wording and meaning of the philosophy despite being surrounded by imperialistic Western religious and cultural worldviews that threaten to displace or obliterate Isintu worldviews and philosophies. Contemporary philosophers of religion should guard against being possible accomplices to imperialistic ideologies and practices by thinking that in Southern Africa there is no philosophy of religion just because they lack the skills and abilities to access the sources of African philosophies. Western scholars of philosophy would do well to invest in understanding the sources of Isintu philosophy by learning the language and the culture of the Nguni. There are several opportunities to do research in Isintu with the realization that philosophy can be done without Western philosophical sources. Doing otherwise will unfortunately locate such philosophers in the realm of colonizers who do away with anything African except that which boosts their economic imperialism. African philosophy continues to exist through the same traditional sources that are now enhanced by being registered amid literature of the academy.

NOTES 1. Traditionally, for the Nguni people there is no separation between sacred and profane. There is no distinction between religion and everyday life or culture. The Nguni live their lives and it is up to the philosopher of religion to make the distinctions informed by their scholarly

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definitions and categorizations of human behaviour into normal life and worship. In this sense a philosopher of religion, in order to understand the Nguni, should also be prepared to be a philosopher of culture. 2. It must be noted that I will be writing the proverbs in Ndebele/Zulu and then try to translate these to English. In the process of translation the meaning sort of gets lost. This is one of the major challenges of trying to access Isintu in that the writing world that claims absence of philosophy is not able to access original Ndebele/Zulu saying and proverbs but through translation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Awolalu, J. O. (1976), ‘Sin and Its Removal in African Traditional Religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 44 (2): 274–78. Chidester, D. (1992), Religions of South Africa, London: Routledge. Idowu, E. B. (1973), African Traditional Religion: A Definition, London: SCM Press. Kanu, I. A. (2017), ‘Sources of Igwebuike Philosophy: Towards a Socio-Cultural Foundation’, Journal of Religion and Human Relations, 9 (1): 1–23. Mbiti, John S. (1969), African Religions and Philosophy, London: Heinemann. Mbiti, John S. (1970), African Religions and Philosophy, Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers. Mndende, N. (1994), African Religion and Religion Education, Unpublished Master of Arts thesis, University of Cape Town. Moyo, Herbert (2013), ‘Religion and African Indigenous Knowledge Systems: Healing and Communal Reconstruction in African Communities’, Alternation Journal, 11: 207–36. Moyo, Herbert (2014), ‘Dual Observances of African Traditional Religion and Christianity: Implications for Pastoral Care in the Pluralistic Religious Worldview of the Ndebele People of Malabo in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 148: 115–32. Moyo, Herbert (2019), ‘The Ritualization of Death and Dying: The journey from the Living to the Living Dead in African Religions’, in Knepper, K. T., Bregman, L. and Gottschalk, M (eds), Death and Dying: An Exercise in Comparative Philosophy of Religion, 115–24, Switzerland: Springer. Moyo, Herbert (2021). ‘The Death of Isintu in Contemporary Technological Era: The Ethics of Sex Robots Among the Ndebele of Matabo’, in Okyere-Manu, B. D. (ed.), African Values, Ethics, and Technology: Questions, Issues, and Approaches, 123–35, Gewerbestrasse: Palgrave-Macmillan. Ngubane, H. (1977), Body and mind in Zulu medicine: An Anthropology of Health and Disease in Nyuswa-Zulu Thought and Practice, London: Academic. Okon, E. E. (2006), ‘Ekpu-Oro: Studies in Oron Cosmology and Cultural History’, African Journal of Religion, Culture and Society, 1 (1): 2–26. Parrinder, G. (1976), Africa’s Three Religions, London: Sheldon Press. Parrinder, G. (1969), Religion in Africa, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Platvoet, J. and van Rinsum, H. (2003), ‘Is Africa Incurably Religious?’, Exchange, 32 (2): 123–53. Snedegar, K. (1998), ‘First Fruits Celebrations Among the Nguni Peoples of Southern Africa: An Ethnoastronomical Interpretation’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 29 (23), S31–S38. Setiloane, G. (1986), Introduction to African Theology, Johannesburg: Skotaville Publishers. Zani, J. (1972), African Parables in 20 Africans Write on Communications in Africa, Uganda: Gaba.

Chapter 15

Approaching a Lakota philosophy of religion FRITZ DETWILER

INTRODUCTION Let’s begin this essay on Lakota philosophies of religion by asking a question that surely is on the minds of many readers: ‘Why should I, as a philosopher of religion in the Western tradition, pay attention to Native American philosophies of religion?’1My first response comes from a rune reportedly inscribed on a Viking ship – ‘Man [sic] knows little.’ While much of Western philosophy involves the search for ‘truth’, we are reminded that the religious traditions out of which it flows also emphasize humility as a virtue. In this vein, one answer would be that we don’t know everything. Gereon Kopf, a Buddhist philosopher, offers a more philosophically grounded response through his ‘multi-entry approach to the philosophy of religion’. (Kopf 2019, 34) Kopf (2019, 34) challenges one of the critical assumptions of much of Western philosophy that it provides a means to discover ‘Truth’. Western philosophy, as the search for truth, holds that ‘philosophical inquiry can and will find one correct way of answering, and then one correct answer, while [dismissing] alternative options [as] untenable and inconsistent’. But, he argues, aren’t such assumptions conditioned by the traditions and cultures that give rise to them? If they are, don’t Western philosophers have to show how their approach and conclusions transcend these limitations? If they are not, then why should they privilege their claims over those of other traditions? As a case in point, when Christian missionaries approached Native peoples, from the point of contact until very recently, they adopted two strategies. The first simply declared that Natives occupied a lower level in cultural, philosophic and religious evolution of humanity and, therefore, Euro-Americans should reject their worldviews as inferior. Closely related to this point, when attempting to give some credence to Native religion, missionaries merely translated Native concepts into Christian theological categories. The Lakota ‘Wakan Tanka’ became ‘supreme being’, which converted into the Lakota equivalent of the Christian ‘God’. This mischaracterization led to centuries of Western misunderstandings of Native cultures that were frequently used to justify the prohibition of rituals, removal to reservations and the adoption of assimilative strategies designed to eliminate their cultures. Ironically, it also led some Native ‘authorities’ to adopt Christian worldviews in interpreting their traditions to outsiders. Nicholas Black Elk, for example, had been a Catholic catechist for years before he met with Joseph Epes Brown, a fact that

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Brown (1982) failed to acknowledge in The Sacred Pipe, the book that resulted from their conversations. Given how influential the book became, it misled generations of people interested in Native religion. The second case in point occurred in the writings of the Swedish historian of religion Åke Hultkrantz. During the third quarter of the twentieth century, Hultkrantz (1981) was a highly recognized authority on Native religions. His Belief and Worship in Native North America became a classic. Despite how profoundly informed about Native cultures he believed himself to be, Hultkrantz repeatedly used the word ‘supernatural’ to describe Native concepts of a ‘high God’. The problem was that, in most Native traditions, the term is meaningless since it posits an ontological distinction between the natural and spiritual worlds. Native ontologies reject such a disjunction and hold that the natural, spiritual and human worlds exist on an ontological continuum in which all three realms are radically interconnected in a relational matrix. How do we move beyond such culturally biased interpretations of Native religions? Kopf’s multi-entry approach does not reject Western categories but expands our investigation into other traditions by giving them authority and weight. He writes that a multi-entry philosophy ‘render[s] a different approach, namely one that suggests that there are multiple equally pervasive and insightful ways of answering the same question[s of truth]’. (Kopf 2019, 34) The anthropologist Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (2015) approaches the same issue from a slightly different angle. Rather than holding the common position that we all view the same world from different perspectives, Viveiros de Castro argues that we all hold a ‘single view of different worlds’. (2015, 58). He claims we see reality in terms of the problem(s) through which a person views the world, their interest in solving it and the way in which they go about it. To fully understand the ‘other’, if that is possible, is to experience what it is like to live in their world, constituted by their point of view. (2015, 186) Viveiros de Castro believes that our perspectives are rooted in our interests, and those interests provide the basis for our assumptions. For example, an eagle interested in finding a place to raise its offspring sees a tree as a nesting place. A human with the same interest sees the tree as a source of lumber for a cabin. Because of their differing interests, the tree does not look the same to the eagle and the human. Thus, if Western philosophers of religion seek to discover ‘truth’, the kind of truth they find is already grounded in their interests and assumptions. The question, then, is whether there are multiple ways of understanding ‘truth’. For example, although there is much diversity within Western philosophy, many approaches emphasize rational cause and effect and scientific modes of thinking and materiality, whereas Lakota modes of thinking emphasize relational processes and life forces. So, where a Westerner sees a tree as a set of biological and chemical properties, a Lakota considers a person or being that has interests and moral worth. The difference in perspective here requires a fundamentally different way of interacting with the world and constitutes very different ways of defining ‘truth’. As we will explore later, ‘truth’ for traditional Lakota is primarily experiential, not rational; individual, not universal; and relative, not absolute. The argument here is that to be intellectually honest, Western philosophers of religion need to explore those religious formations that challenge their assumptions and methods. The purpose of this essay is to give Western philosophers of religion – particularly those philosophers who are friendly to other perspectives but who are not quite confident in how to approach them or who struggle to understand what the ‘landmines’ are – a path across the cultural threshold.

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WHY THE LAKOTA? Why the Lakota? First, the Lakota provide an excellent entry into a set of metaphysical, cosmological and ontological assumptions that many Native peoples hold. Second, much has been written and continues to be written about the Lakota, so source material is readily available. Third, an investigation of the Lakota reveals a complex and sophisticated approach to questions of truth and survival based on a relational paradigm. Several caveats are needed here to clarify the previous statements. First, while many Native peoples share the same philosophical assumptions, the specific ways those assumptions unfold are quite different in different traditions. That is, we cannot merely take the Lakota formulation and apply it to the Navajo, Tlingit or Cherokee. Second, the phrase ‘the Lakota’ is somewhat misleading. As used here, it refers to a group of seven divisions called Oceti Sakowin that are part of a large group of people commonly referred to as the Sioux. The term ‘Lakota’ refers to a particular dialect of Siouan languages that also includes Dakota, constituting four different divisions, and the Nakota which has three divisions (White Hat 2012, 15–16). Third, because of the nature of Lakota society, there is no single authority and therefore, the Lakota do not speak with one voice. Authority rests in people who others hold in high regard because of their character and their years of experience. Since one person’s experience is different from another, there are multiple Lakota viewpoints and interpretations. Returning to our question at the beginning, ‘Why should philosophers of religion trained in Euro-American traditions engage with Lakota philosophy of religion?’ A Lakota philosophy of religion can reveal to us the limitations of our perspectives and inspire in us the shared virtue of humility in the philosophy of religion. Second, it can help us gain wisdom and insight into our contemporary problems by providing alternative ways of looking at those problems.2

HUMILITY Humility arises naturally from Lakota epistemology and their understanding of the human condition. The Lakota accept the incomprehensibility of the universe. This is reflected in the commonly heard and used Lakota phrase ‘Wakan Tanka’, a term that has been grossly misinterpreted as ‘Great Spirit’ and represented by missionaries as a Lakota equivalent of the Christian ‘God’. The better translation is ‘great mysterious’. It does not reference a thing or being. Instead, it represents the entirety of the universe, its power or life force, its presence in all things, and the incapacity of humans to know it completely and with certainty. The Lakota grow in their knowledge of the mysterious through personal experience even as they learn the framework of the observations they make from their elders and the stories the elders tell as young Lakota grow up. These stories describe the particular potencies of the various non-humans they will encounter so that the children can recognize them when they encounter them. Yet their knowledge, while grounded in these narratives, is based on empirical observation. For example, wicasa wakan (medicine men) and wakinyan wakan (medicine women) gain their reputations because their diagnoses and remedies work. The test is practical. If transmitted knowledge does not seem to correspond to real experience and does not ‘work’, individuals will dismiss it. The dismissal is a personal choice. What works for one person may not work for another. And what works today may not work tomorrow. A second factor that contributes

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to humility is that the Lakota see the world as dynamic and fluid processes, continually changing and reshaping the relational matrix that constitutes their environment. Given this viewpoint, a traditional Lakota would not say, ‘This is true’. What she said would always be tempered by her awareness of her limitations and the range of experiences she has had. ‘It appears to me . . . ’ Thus, Lakota respect differing viewpoints. For this reason, there is a great variety of interpretations of ‘the way things are’. These differences account for apparent contradictions in scholarly materials about the Lakota. There is no single viewpoint. Lakota ground their epistemologies in more than experience, however. Recalling the earlier discussion of wisdom requires discernment. The problem is that ego prevents humans from transcending self-serving interests and blocks us from experiencing our connectedness to the world beyond us. Failure to grasp mitakuye oyasin, our relatedness to all things, precludes us from being moral persons and taking responsibility for the well-being of our extended human and non-human families. Two Lakota rituals address this problem directly: the Vision Quest, which we discuss later, and the Inipi rite, more commonly known as the Sweat Lodge. Both rites involve a period of intense introspection. The initial step here is to become brutally honest with ourselves about our strengths and weaknesses (Marshall 2009, 1). During both rites, the individual’s thinking mind gives way. As this is happening, one gradually transcends the limits of self and opens to the larger spiritual world – the world of power that transcends the individual, the world of non-human persons. Joseph Marshall discusses the importance of silence during this process. Silence quiets us, allows the deepest fears to emerge, and leads us past them to open us. (Marshall 2013, 1–38). Lawrence Gross adds, ‘Silence, then, is the great void, the great emptiness, out of which all possibilities arise.’(Gross 2016, 55). The possibilities that Vine Deloria, Jr. identifies emphasize the appearance of non-human persons. In his analysis of C. G. Jung’s dream theory Deloria argues that, contrary to Jungian and much of Western psychoanalysis, we move beyond internalization and projection to encounter non-human persons who come to us to establish relationships with us. These persons are real. They come to us from the world beyond our interior selves. They have observed us, taken stock of our character, decided whether or not to help us, change egos directed towards selfish interests and help people find their proper place and role in life (Deloria 2016, 169–70). Arthur Amiotte agrees. Dreams do not come from the mental state of the dreamer. They come from non-human persons seeking to communicate with humans. Through dreams and visions, non-human persons pierce the barrier between themselves and humans and open humans to the spiritual world (Amiotte 2009, 327). Inherent in all of this is the necessity to first, approach life with humility, recognizing one’s incompleteness and dependency on others, and second, approach life morally by accepting our responsibilities as moral persons and acting in accord with the moral worth of non-human persons by contributing to their well-being.

WISDOM Indigenous philosophies of religion reveal an exceptional understanding of relationships between humans and what in the West is called ‘nature’. A recent National Geographic article suggests that one of the problems Westerners have in accessing this knowledge is that Westerners gradually accept traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) when it supports

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scientific analysis but do not take the same information seriously when science cannot yet verify Indigenous knowledge. In particular, the lack of searching for this knowledge has left Westerners to mismanage ecological environments because they fail to understand the extent of the interdependency within those environments and how those environments can overcome imbalance when it occurs. The article describes how firehawks in northern Australia intentionally carry burning embers from one location to another and set fires in their habitat to clear out irritants that threaten their nesting places. Subsequently, the fire’s aftermath promotes the growth of plants which, in turn, attracts animals who live in symbiotic relationships with the hawks (Greshko 2018). From Lakota perspectives, we should not limit our appreciation of TEK to scientific inquiry about natural habitats. I suggest Lakota philosophies of religion also have much to offer Westerners in terms of their placement of morality at the centre of their philosophies of religion and their expansion of the concept of ‘environments’ to include relationships among all types of persons, human and non-human. From Native viewpoints, ‘nature’ is a significant source of moral knowledge both in terms of observed behaviours of plants and animals and locations or places in which those actions occur. ‘Wisdom’, writes the Western Apache author Keith Basso, ‘sits in places’; and, we might add, ‘in stories’. (Basso 1996, 61). The well-respected Lakota elder John Marshall III writes that ‘wisdom is not only the greatest of [the Lakota virtues], it is also the most difficult to achieve’. He continues, ‘Just as knowledge is derived from information, wisdom begins with knowledge, grows with experience, and is empowered by discernment.’ (Marshall 2005, 2–3). Discernment emerges from careful observation of those behaviours that do or do not contribute to the well-being of others. Wisdom arises from reflections on personal experiences and its bearers often communicate it through storytelling. Stories, particularly ones addressing a moral problem, do not have simple moralisms at the end, like so many Euro-American children’s tales. The emphasis is on the events in the story, the relationships between the actors, and the consequences when the actors fail to show respect or follow proper etiquette or protocols. The storytellers often tailor their narratives to some perceived moral failure on the part of a particular person or of a group. They do not interpret the tale for their audiences. Rather, the listeners are left to draw their own conclusions and apply them to their own experiences and to new situations in which moral decision-making confronts them. The same holds for other types of narratives. Lakota creatio stories, for example, focus on the particular character and potency of various non-human persons and the relationships that exist among them. There is no attempt to provide a ‘scientific’ account of creation. Their world is moral, not scientific, and the stories explore the way in which these persons and their relationships shape the present-day world. Additionally, there is no ‘God’ directing the flow of creation. The beings themselves, through their actions, cause the world to unfold. Carrying this idea into the present, the Lakota view it as a continuing creative process in which contemporary actors continue to create the world. The Lakota, like other Native peoples, typically did not express their collective insights in abstract rational analysis, although a growing number of Native philosophers are now doing so. To illustrate the traditional way of communicating wisdom through story, Basso tells the story of a young woman who demonstrates a lack of proper respect in a particular situation. The young woman is wearing her hair in curlers. As she is ready to leave for the community gathering, her mother admonishes her because her behaviour shows a lack of respect for the people attending the meeting. She ignores her mother’s counsel. Much

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later, an elder approaches her, and without referring to her prior inappropriate actions, tells her a story about an incident of inappropriate behaviour between two non-human persons that occurred at a specific place in the hills familiar to her. He does not directly relate it to her behaviour. She eventually discerns the point of the story. Years later, the girl recalled that, from that point onward, the place ‘stalked’ her, reminding her of the transgression and admonishing her to act in a proper way. (Basso 1996, 57). Joseph Marshall tells another type of story, one about the nature of a community, and how one should act in times of distress. A woman living in an area familiar to the Lakota became distraught when her husband returned one day with a second wife. Her anger built until she decided to leave her husband and return to her family in another village some distance away. During the long course of her journey, the weather turned for the worse and she was left cold and hungry. She sought shelter in a den. After a time, she could not stop shivering. She eventually fell asleep. When she awoke, several wolves were snuggled up beside her, keeping her warm. They continued to protect her from the cold and bring her rabbit and deer to eat. Gradually, she learned of their methods of communication and began to ‘talk’ with them. After a time, the wolves spotted her human village and led her to it. Her human family gave her the name ‘Woman Who Lived With Wolves’. She had a long life and often communicated with members of her wolf family. They would give her news and once warned her of an approaching enemy. When she died, the wolf family came to her burial and kept watch over her, intermittently singing the wolf mourning song. Marshall asks, why did they help her? ‘The answer was simple: They made her a part of their family.’ Wisdom here is knowing how to act and take responsibility for the well-being of others. Each time those who have heard the story see wolves, they will be reminded of their obligations to others. The Dakota scholar Vine Deloria, Jr. reminds us knowledge is primarily practical. (Deloria 1999, 13). It addresses the real everyday needs of Native communities. Perhaps the most important of these needs is sustainability – using their knowledge of plants and animals to provide for food, clothing and shelter. Native peoples are experts in ‘the characteristics of animal behavior, anatomy, feeding patterns, breeding and migration’. (Cajete 2000, 152). They are keenly aware of the flora available to them and how various plants, trees, and mosses contribute to each other’s well-being (Brown and Cousins 2001, 95). The composite of the beings among whom they live are their neighbours. Brown observes, ‘What interests them are the relationships among nonhuman persons and the connections that exist between them . . .. Through their attentiveness to their neighbors, they see relationships that are not apparent to outsiders.’ (Brown 1992, 7). The ‘three sisters’ provide a concrete example of the observations that have led Natives to their relational understanding of the world. Although taken from the Iroquois rather than the Lakota, it shows how close observation of the non-human world leads to better sustainability. The ‘three sisters’ are plants – corn or maize, beans and squash. Long ago, the Seneca received instructions to plant the three together. Daniel Richter (2001, 55) describes the symbiotic relationship among the three. ‘All three were planted in the same hills, and as they grew together, bean vines climbed the natural support of the cornstalks while the nitrogen-fixing nodules in their roots returned the favor by fertilizing the soil . . .. Once the squash vines began to spread, almost no weeding or other tending was necessary until the crops matured. By sweat-of-the-brow European plow-and-sickle standards, remarkably little work was involved.’ (2001) Richter notes that these relationships produced far higher yields per acre than Western European methods and required far less work.

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This last point helps us distinguish between Native and Euro-American conceptions of sustainability. The broader non-Native society frequently uses Native Americans as symbols for the environmental movement. While both parties are concerned about the well-being of the planet, their conceptions of ‘nature’ are quite different. The Western mind typically sees nature and humanity as ontologically separate. Nature is something ‘out there’. (Martin 1999, 135). It is a system of depersonalized objects to be managed. For the Lakota, as mentioned earlier, the environment consists of sets of relationships between and among persons, human and non-human. Sustainability, from this perspective, means caring for and protecting the interests and all the persons with whom they share a neighbourhood and who comprise their extended family. These are kinship relationships, and they entail obligations and responsibilities, not in a formal sense, but from a heart that cares deeply about their well-being. Recalling Viveiros de Castro’s perspectivism, the world as seen by the Lakota is different from the world seen by Euro-Americans. In part, this is because the problems they face and the interests they possess are different from those in the broader culture (i.e. sovereignty and land) and, in part, because they view the world not in terms of systems to be managed but as relationships to be nurtured. One is a world of persons; the other is a world of things. The challenging thing about Viveiros de Castro’s approach is his extension of perspectivism to non-human persons. Humans, birds, fish, deer and plants each share with humans similar problems – survival and the well-being of their species. But because each community of non-human persons views the world and the solution of its problems from their own particular perspective, how they see the problem and the strategies they employ to seek these ends differ widely. Thus, to be moral persons and treat others with respect, the Lakota, and other Indigenous peoples, must seek every opportunity to view the world from the perspective of the other. How can we understand their problems without doing so? It would be easy at this point to over-romanticize Native connections to the land. For Lakota, life is hard. Their existing reservations experience harsh winters and hot summers. Many Lakota stories, such as the one mentioned earlier, tell of the challenges their neighbourhoods present. In one of the most foundational Lakota narratives, White Buffalo Calf Woman takes pity on them during a time of extreme food shortages and gives them the gift of The Sacred Pipe. The pipe provides them the means of establishing proper relationships with the spiritual potencies of the powerful beings who surround them, thereby, opening ‘pipe-lines’ for receiving help. To survive, the Lakota need to learn the proper protocols and etiquette that allows them to interact with the non-human world in a way that respects the moral worth and interests of non-human persons.3 We will learn more about the hardships faced by the Lakota below in our discussion of ‘destiny’.

DESTINY Destiny, from Lakota perspectives, is the broad outline one’s life should take. (Deloria 1999, 57). It establishes the proper way an individual should walk her or his road in life in broad, unspecific terms (Deloria 2016, 163). It differs from fate in that individuals can ignore their destiny. Destiny is given at birth, but it is up to the individual to discover it, usually through dreams or visions or by heeding the counsel of their guardian spirit. One’s life may be in peril if they deny their destiny. If, for example, Wakinyan [Thunderbeing] appears in a dream, that person’s future is to become a heyoka [Contrary], one who lives

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in an anti-natural way, acting counter to accepted ways of being (Powers 1998, 188–9). The community highly respects such persons if they accept their destiny and perform their duties well. Wakinyan’s power is both destructive and restorative, much like the severe thunderstorms that announce its presence. One way a heyoka expresses their power is to act clownishly, disrupting ceremonies, for example, so that those present can experience the more profound creative force that surrounds them (Jahner 2009, 66). Rejecting this calling robs the community of one means of experiencing life’s creative power. Rejection can bring hardship to the individual to whom Wakinyan appears. While there are some similarities here to the Christian notions that God has a plan for every person, to fully appreciate the meaning of destiny within the Lakota tradition, we turn to a consideration of Lakota notions of personhood as they relate to humans.4 In addition to destiny, the benevolent Skan [Sky], the life force that causes motion, and the one who has responsibility for maintaining the order of the universe, gives to humans at the time of their birth four different elements or aspects of their being. Following Arthur Amiotte,5 Niya is life-breath. When it departs, we die. Second, Nagi’s role is complex. It is the capacity of the person to move between this world and the spirit world. As one’s moral guardian, it also functions as their conscience. Because Skan gives humans Nagi, they have within them an imparted sense of how things should be. Nagi can also leave the physical body without causing death. It is this aspect of the self that allows people to transcend their egos. The third element, Nagila, is the force of cosmic energy that binds the entire cosmos together. Nagila is the foundation for the Lakota expression miktakuye oyasin, ‘We are all related.’ Through Nagila, we are connected to everything. Because we are related, every action changes, for better or worse, the cosmic matrix with the most pressing effects on our kinship relations to those persons, human and non-human, who immediately surround us. Upon death, our Nagila travels to the spirit world. Here, there is no eternal damnation or heavenly reward. The moral character of the person is not lost. It continues to be a part of the matrix which is the universe. After death, we continue to make the world a better or worse place. The fourth aspect imparted by Skan is sicun [potency]. It is the power that makes us who we are as part of a species and as individuals. Skan is transferable. Potency is especially vital for humans. Humans, as a group, are inherently weak, lacking the necessary power to provide for ourselves adequately. Without the willingness of buffalo, corn and water to gift us with their potencies, we would starve. Sicun, then, comes as a gift from other persons and these giftings bring with them a moral responsibility to reciprocity (Garroutte 2003, 129). Just as they care for us, we must care for other beings by acknowledging their moral worth as persons and respecting their interests. The human condition, then, is one of dependence and humans are also prone to foolishness and frivolity. In their pre-emergent lives, the ancestors of the Lakota lived in a subterranean world where the Pte Oyate [Buffalo nation] protected them and provided for their needs much like a parent would care for their children.6 According to Lakota creation narratives, through a series of intrigues, Gnaski [Mischievousness] ridicules Ksa [Wisdom] by taking the form of Ksapela [Little Wisdom] and doing embarrassing things. By seeing Wisdom appear foolish, Gnaski causes the people to turn away from Ksa. Gnaski steps into the void and, through Ksapela, tricks the people by turning them towards unreflected pleasure and distraction or folly. Some Lakota are later able to recover wisdom through sober reflection by tapping into their inner connectedness and, by paying careful attention, learning from non-human persons. Since the potency of non-human persons is stronger than that of humans, they are far

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less susceptible to Gnaski’s seductions and, therefore, more in tune with the cosmic force within them and more respectful of their relatedness to other persons.7 The wisdom for Western philosophers of religion here is twofold. First is the moral responsibility to recognize the inherent moral worth of all beings by paying close attention to their interests, their unique ways of lifeways, and how they prefer to be treated. Second is to accept the limitations of being human and be constantly vigilant to the road that others open up to us as we attempt to fulfil our destiny. To illustrate this last point, I beg your indulgence in telling you the story of my path to understanding Lakota perspectives, to the limited degree I do. This narrative provides the foundation for the following discussion of some of the difficulties in engaging Lakota philosophies of religion and the problems or pitfalls in attempting to bridge the gap between Western philosophies of religion and those of the Lakota. We will return to this issue later in the essay.

A PERSONAL JOURNEY One feature of Native scholarship is that it gives importance to the contexts out of which it is written. Biography situates us, both within and outside the academy. Biography locates the experiences that guide our perceptions, the assumptions we make from them, and the inferences we draw from them. There is no academic objectivity or distance here. By including our biographies, we can become aware of influences of which we may not have been aware. In turn, this leads us to examine the degree to which our biases shape the questions we ask and how we seek the answers. This is my story, as I remember it! My scholarly interest in the Lakota grew out of several what I call serendipitous events; perhaps a destiny existed for me of which I was not aware. To begin, I have no Native ancestry according to Ancestry​.co​m. I was born and raised within a mainstream Christian church in the economically depressed hard-coal region of Pennsylvania. My grandmother taught Sunday School for over eighty years! My grandmother’s ‘assigned’ destiny was for me to become a minister. Although, from my early teenage years on, I had a serious interest in religion, what drew my attention was the serious questions religion poses about life, the universe and the nature of things. From my early childhood, I was driven by a strong sense of intellectual curiosity. I remember reflecting on the incomparable vastness of the heavens during nights in a meadow at church camp. At a slightly younger age, during vacation Bible school and Sunday School lessons, I began to wonder about my sanity. It became clear to me that the world they described in those settings was starkly different from the world I was experiencing. This eventually led to me formulating the key questions of my scholarly and professional life, ‘What is going on?’, ‘What is real?’ ‘How do I make sense out of the world?’ ‘How do I know reality if I find it?’ My search led me to major in religion and minor in philosophy at a small church-related college. As typical of the curriculum at the time, my inquiries came to be framed within almost exclusively Christian theological and Western philosophical perspectives. After college, I attended a United Methodist seminary. My ultimate goal was to go to graduate school and become a college professor. While I eventually reached my goal, serendipity began to shape my professional career. Not wanting to enter parish ministry, I was unsure of the next step in my life. I noticed a job advertisement on the seminary bulletin board for a position as a youth worker/youth minister at a Ho-Chunk (then ‘Winnebago’) settlement in Wisconsin. I applied and was accepted. The winning argument for hiring

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me, I later learned was, ‘Well, he is the only candidate we have and if we don’t take him, we may not get anybody.’ My time in Wisconsin was my first introduction to Native life. The people of the small settlement lived in poverty. There was constant movement between Wisconsin and the Ho-Chunk community in Nebraska. The community was divided along three different lines: those who were Christians (the group with which I mainly worked); those who were Ho-Chunk traditionalists and those who practised the peyote way of the Native American Church. The young people often came to my trailer after school to watch their favourite television programme, F-Troup. While visiting, they would look through my meagre collection of books. This proved to be significant to my growing understanding of contemporary Native life. In this context, I had a consciousness-raising experience. A group of elders wanted to transmit their cultural traditions to the young people. My job was just to set up and advertise the meeting times. Occasionally when the elders evidently needed additional information, they sent one of the young people to my trailer and asked to borrow Paul Radin’s (1970) classic ethnographic study The Winnebago Tribe. I observed that the traditional teachings being transmitted to the young people were, in part, conditioned by Radin’s interpretation of their culture. Since Radin was trained in Western observation, he was only drawn to those parts of the culture that were of interest to the broader white culture and the dash to preserve and collect particular parts of the traditions before the Native cultures disappeared through acculturation. My responsibilities also included communications between outside church groups who donated clothing and other resources to the Ho-Chunk. This part of the job troubled me. While recognizing the good intentions of the outsiders, some of the donations disrespected the Ho-Chunk by including soiled clothing. Others who sent monetary contributions seemed more interested in having a self-congratulatory letter of thanks on their bulletin boards at church than on taking the Ho-Chunk people and their culture seriously. I also became keenly aware of the responses of the settlement’s young people when outside church groups wanted to send their youth to visit the community. While the youth were generally respectful, I couldn’t help but notice their curiosity in meeting ‘real Indians’. The Ho-Chunk youth talked to me about their discomfort at being showcased without any substantive conversations occurring between the two groups. These experiences were my introduction to Native lifeways. After leaving that appointment, I entered graduate school in religious studies. The programme’s concentration was on American religion. Again, reflecting the times (1970s), there was nothing in the course of study relating to Native Americans. Serendipity took over! The chair of the department had a particular personal interest in minority religious traditions having spent part of his younger years in a Japanese internment camp in California and the non-Christian religions he witnessed there. Knowing I had worked with the Ho-Chunk, he provided the resources for a summer study programme in Native American religion at the University of Montana. The programme was directed by Joseph Epes Brown and Barre Toelken, two of the leading scholars in the field at that time. Returning to my graduate studies, I began to see possible connections between the Western and Native categories of interpretation. I found in Jonathan Edwards’ The Nature of True Virtue a suggestion of reciprocity that gave meaning to me as I struggled with the concept within Native American contexts. Both Edwards and Native Americans place it at the centre of being. H. Richard Niebuhr’s The Responsible Self and, notably, the ending essay on ‘The Center of Value’ along with Martin Buber’s I and Thou provided a ground

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for developing my understanding of a relational, dialogical self. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay ‘Nature’ collapsed the space between nature, the spirit world and humanity. Together they formed a surprising foundation for my future work, particularly in the area of Native American ethics. The final key during my graduate study was a course in cultural anthropology that introduced me to Clifford Geertz, Victor Turner and Jonathan Z. Smith. Turner and Smith helped me grasp the significance of ritual, but it was Geertz’s insistence on seeing things from ‘the native’s point of view’ that fundamentally altered my thinking and led me to the perspectivism I noted earlier. Serendipity continued! I presented a paper on Native American ontology and ethics at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion. The chair for the session was Sam D. Gill, recognized at that time, as a leading voice in the reformulation of the study of Native American sacred traditions. I had read several of Gill’s writings and was impressed by his perspectivism, seeing moccasins and pipes from the perspective of the user rather than that of the viewer as well as his work on the Navajo where he used Navajo categories of interpretation of personhood and prayer. Gill was enthusiastic about my paper and invited me to an organizational meeting of the Society for the Study of Native American Sacred Traditions (SSNART). Through the friendships and mentoring of the Native scholars in that organization as well as those in the AAR Native Traditions in the Americas group, I listened intently, read extensively, and gradually offered my thoughts. They were well received, and I was encouraged to continue my work.

THE LAKOTA AND PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION My journey continues into the present. It has taken the form of an intellectual puzzle. How do these pieces fit together? What are the grounding assumptions? What are the central concepts? How do they bring coherence to a life road that is so different from my Western training and background? I do not have all the answers. What I have learned to recognize are some of the difficulties and pitfalls along the path – the first we discussed earlier: the need to take these traditions seriously. There are two steps here: bracketing out Western assumptions of cultural and intellectual superiority; and recognizing that Indigenous approaches to philosophy of religion employ survival methodologies geared towards political and cultural sovereignty and protection, if not recovery, of their lands, language and traditions. Taking the Lakota ‘seriously’ recognizes that the Lakota do not derive knowledge entirely mainly from reason. It also arises from personal experience. For the Lakota and other Native peoples, these experiences often include communications from non-human persons and the particular potencies non-human persons gift humans. As Deloria notes, these beings are real. These persons have essential things to teach us because they have a better understanding of the environmental neighbourhood they share with us. The extension of personhood to other than human beings is one of the central ideas of Native philosophy. As persons, they have inherent moral worth equal to that of human persons and are, therefore, worthy of respect. As discussed earlier, given this status, we much recognize and accept that they have interests, protocols and etiquettes of engagement. The beauty and intricacy of the relational paradigm confront us the deeper we get into understanding this idea. They teach us how to behave appropriately and how to achieve harmony, wolakota. To extend our curiosity, what difference would it make in our thinking if we accept the Lakota ‘personhood’ as true?

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Survival methodologies seek frameworks for addressing the real-life problems of contemporary Native Americans.8 The issues include poverty and its attending issues, violence against women, lack of self-determination to govern themselves in ways consistent with their traditions rather than structures imposed by the government, protection of their lands from corporate or governmental exploitation and the need to increase support for educational opportunities that employ Lakota pedagogies. Western philosophers of religion must also recognize the authority of Native voices even those who may lack formal academic credentials. The project should be guided by mutual respect, a reciprocity that acknowledges that each side has something to contribute, and building relationships. Vine Deloria, Jr., suggests a starting point in which participants attempt to find a middle epistemological ground between the extreme emphasis on objectivity in the Western epistemology and the extreme subjectivity of Lakota epistemology (Deloria 1999, 47).

CONCEPTUAL PITFALLS Translations from one language to another are inherently difficult, especially at the conceptual level. The problem becomes more challenging when translators simply assume that they can uncritically apply the assumptions that ground their ideas onto the target cultures. That that has happened in Western interpretations of Native traditions is undeniable and, to the degree it remains unchecked, it contributes to the continued colonization of already marginalized peoples. The reflective Western philosopher of religion will critically examine their own categories before applying them to another culture if they wish to increase their understanding of the world. In doing so, they will come to recognize the complexity of underrecognized, and underappreciated nonWestern worldviews and the very real struggles Native people face in maintaining their lifeways and well-being; as well as the continuing damage such a failure does to them. We begin this critical process by considering the nature and structure of the Lakota language. Language is one of the essential keys to worldviews. It is not only an issue of vocabulary but of the structure of the language itself. Illustrating the relational nature of Lakota worldviews, Albert White Hat, Sr., begins his instructional materials with kinship terms. The dynamic character of Lakota language is found in a major contrast between the noun-based English language and the primarily verb-based Lakota language. As such, the Lakota language describes a world in constant motion, change and process. As the number of fluent Lakota speakers declines, some of the relational complexity and depth of the Lakota worldview also disappears. For example, above I defined ‘wolakota’ as ‘harmony’, a noun. From the Lakota perspective, wolakota is a much more dynamic term. The word encompasses the entirety of the processes by which one properly walks the road of life. It is expressed in twelve Lakota virtues,9 the performance of Lakota rituals, and the entire range of behaviour between human and non-human persons. More accurately, but much more awkwardly from an English-language viewpoint, wolakota is ‘the entire range of ‘behavioring’ between be-ings. Similarly, from what I understand Lakota perspectives, Fritz is not writing this essay. I am Fritz-‘ing’. While wolakota provides interpretive difficulty for Western thinkers, other concepts that Euro-American writers have employed, and continue to use, to interpret Lakota lifeways pose more significant problems since they profoundly reflect Western theological and moral implications. When referring to what Christians call the ‘divine’ the problematic

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terms are ‘God’ (or ‘gods’), ‘supernatural’, ‘Great Spirit’, ‘sacred’, and ‘Creator’. The moral concepts include ‘good and evil’, ‘sin’, ‘heaven and hell’, and ‘soul’. We should avoid some of these terms entirely while others require caution and qualification. Each one of the concepts requires extensive commentary but space here only permits some broad observations. The Christian concept ‘God’ posits an ontological separation between the creator, humanity and nature that does not exist in the Lakota ontological continuum. From Lakota perspectives, there is no ‘Supreme Being’ who stands outside the created world and directs it. For the Lakota, Inyan and darkness are pre-existent. Everything emerges from Inyan [Rock]. The ‘Creator’, a term commonly used by Natives, transforms the already existing world by initiating the processes by which the present world gradually takes shape. The terms ‘Grandfather’ and ‘Grandmother’ are appropriate substitutes for ‘creator’ since they embody the relational world of the Lakota. Takuskanskan, or simply Skan, the life force, gives direction to the world and has responsibility for maintaining order. Because of the continuum of being, the term ‘supernatural’ is not appropriate. If used, it should refer to those non-human persons who have extraordinary potencies who were present and active from the earlier stages of the creation processes and who continue to be present in the contemporary world. In the Lakota tradition, they are called ‘wakan’ persons. Writers often gloss wakan as ‘sacred’, but, as such, it better refers to particular potencies that are far superior to those of humans. Christian missionaries often employed ‘Great Spirit’ as a Native-sounding euphemism for ‘God’ as an English equivalent of the Lakota ‘Wakan Tanka’. There are two problems here. First, Wakan Tanka refers to two qualities of being but does not name a being, such as God. Wakan Tanka translates as ‘great mysterious’. Second, although chroniclers such as James R. Walker, a physician who worked at Pine Ridge during the end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century, use Wakan Tanka as a collective term for Lakota ‘gods’, Wakan Tanka is not an abstract collective term. Its qualities are always present in specific places, beings and events. Possibly reflecting Christian influences, Native writers such as Lame Deer do translate the term as Great Spirit (Deloria 2009, 154). The point of caution here is not to critique Lakota writers but to engage Western philosophers of religion in a substantive awareness of some critical differences between Western and Lakota worldviews and counter the misinterpretations that have plagued much of the literature. Moral concepts also are problematic, given the fluidity and contingency of the Lakota world. Moral absolutes do not exist. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ are relative terms that describe those actions that are respectively constructive or destructive to the interests of the people making those judgements. On a larger scale, good and evil refer to actions that affect the overall well-being of the ‘Sacred Hoop’, the name the Lakota give to their cosmos. Generally, the world tends towards beneficence, but the Lakota do identify a class of maleficent persons. While given names, these names also refer to the harmful qualities of the being. The most powerful of these are Iya (libertinism) and Gnaski (licentiousness) (Walker 1983, 216). On the positive side, Raymond DeMallie (1987, 29) claims that the wakan beings who are part of the creation narrative are predisposed to either good or destructive. Sicun or potency, the power that beings can transfer from one person to another is itself morally neutral. Its moral influence emerges in how it is applied. ‘Sin’ is another concept that was inconsistent with Lakota perspectives until Christian missionaries introduced it. The Lakota recognize that weakness is part of being human, and that to survive, individuals must overcome it. Vulnerability, however, comes not from

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moral weakness but from an individual’s tendency to place individual concerns above those of the group (Rice 1991, 73–4). Hardship and struggle are a condition of life. People make horrific mistakes. Life’s difficulties and human errors provide the individual with opportunities to grow in strength and knowledge and to positively contribute to the well-being of the group (Morrison 2002, 79). Should a person persist in destructive behaviour one of the worst punishments they would suffer would be ostracization – to find their tipi taken down and set outside the camp circle. In less extreme situations, the Lakota prefer compassion rather than condemnation to encourage a person to change their behaviour. This approach is a central principle of Lakota child-rearing. In a similar vein to ‘sin’, ‘salvation’, and ‘heaven and hell’ were foreign concepts. The Lakota do have a somewhat defined understanding of the afterlife but is neither a place of reward nor punishment. One element of the self does survive death and goes to the afterlife. Living persons may access it, usually from their ancestors. Ancestors can also impart it to babies so that the ancestors can pass their qualities to future generations (Powers: 134-5). However, the focus for the Lakota is not on the afterlife. It is always on enhancing this life through personal discipline and ritual engagement. As Julian Rice notes, ‘the primary spiritual concern is always creation rather than salvation’. (Rice: 65).

CONCLUSION In presenting my understanding of a possible Lakota philosophy of religion, I am not speaking for the Lakota. They are perfectly able to do that themselves. Any mischaracterization is my responsibility. What I hope to have accomplished is to provide an introduction to Lakota ways of thinking and being as expressed in some of their literature and to provide philosophers of religion with a pathway to become more critical and inclusive in their approach to non-Western perspectives. In so doing, however, I must raise one final word of caution. The term ‘religion’ is problematic. I prefer ‘lifeways’ since it reflects the totality of Lakota approaches to life. ‘Lifeways’ is also consistent with the Lakota idea that life is a pathway we walk and how we walk that path becomes to measure of our character. ‘Religion’ may suggest that there are parts of their lives that do not fall under that umbrella, and it may also somewhat diminish the centrality of morality, which defines the Lakota universe. Although Lakota traditionalists are quite sensitive to the appropriation of their traditions, Western philosophers of religion should not avoid exploring the richness and depth of Lakota knowledge. Native peoples and communities will judge such sojourns by the degree of respect, commitment and sensitivity outsiders exhibit to supporting Lakota interests and the well-being of the Lakota people. Such contributions can range from attempts to genuinely understand their traditions and communicate that to the broader culture to direct involvement in their struggles to preserve and advance the sustainability of their communities. However, the Lakota may exercise resistance and pushback if outsiders attempt to appropriate or decontextualize. Most Natives will have no issue with outsiders misunderstanding their traditions as long as they are making serious attempts to understand. The path to understanding beings by reading works by respected authors. For the Lakota, a good starting point would be selections from the bibliography of this chapter. Given all of the above, two problems, in particular, still occupy my attention. The first is the problem of romanticization. We noted earlier the hardship and discord that

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seems to be woven into the fabric of their creation narratives. But beyond that, given the Lakota emphasis on harmony, reciprocity and virtue, how do we account for the violence and brutality that is part of the Lakota history with other Indian nations, even before contact?10 [see Lakota America for a detailed study of Lakota history] And, after contact, what are the continuing effects of the violence perpetrated on the Lakota by a government whose policy was the extermination of their culture? The second surrounds the question of what constitutes ‘tradition’. Partly because of Lakota history, their migration north and west from the Mississippi Valley to the Northern Great Plains required them to frequently create new relationships with communities of flora, fauna, earth and sky. These changes would have required them to constantly ‘update’ their rituals and traditions by attuning them to their local non-human neighbours. The question of ‘where “tradition” rests’ is not simple. Pekka Hämäläinen (2019, 125) suggests that 1803 may mark the organizational beginning of the Lakota. This, he writes, ‘may have been the moment when Lakotas assumed their sacred form as seven oyates and became “allies against all others of mankind”’. Lakota traditions have adapted to new environments and continue to do so both among those living in Lakota communities and those who have moved away. While ‘traditional’ may be a problem for scholars to debate, there is a serious danger in reifying any particular time. Doing so has led to the broader culture identifying Indians with the fifteenth- to nineteenth-centuries and forgetting that they continue to exist in the present. I sometimes refer to Natives as ‘the forgotten minority’ since commentators rarely included then when discussing minorities in today’s culture. One response to the changes the Lakota continue to experience is that the Lakota view of a dynamic, changing and fluid cosmology helps to accommodate those changes. Another answer is that we are left in the unfortunate position of taking ‘our best guess’. The good news is that an entire generation of Lakota scholars now have academic respect and are writing from their perspectives. By engaging Lakota lifeways, philosophers of religion can contribute to bringing awareness to one constituent people of the forgotten minority.

NOTES 1. Philosophers of religion have not paid much attention to Native American traditions. A survey of twenty-six current philosophy of religion textbooks revealed no entries for ‘Native American’, ‘American Indian’ or ‘Black Elk’. A search of relevant journals produced few results with the exception of Parabola, which listed over 150 entries including a number of book reviews. Parabola has published an edited volume containing fifty-five articles. The journal with the second most entries is Numen, 174, but not exclusive to Native Americans. Third is the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion with twelve matches, mostly book reviews and not exclusively focused on Native Americans. For the Parabola see Hogan (2009). 2. I am grateful to Professor Timothy Knepper for these suggestions. 3. This point is somewhat complicated by the Lakota ‘buffalo drops’ where many more buffalo than were needed were forced over cliffs to kill them and with Lakota efforts to satisfy the insatiable French market for beaver pelts. 4. For further discussion of Lakota ontology, see Detwiler (1992). 5. Amiotte (1987, 81, 87). Scholars differ in their listing of the ‘souls’: Powers (1986, 135): sicun, tun, ni and nagi; Walker (1917, 82): nagi, niya, nagiya and sicun; Posthumus (2015, 82–107): nagi, niya, nagila and sicun. Posthumus contains the most extensive treatment.

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6. Pte is the female form of Buffalo. Consistent with Lakota gender roles, the protective oversight of the pre-emergence ancestors of the Lakota seems equal to mothering. 7. I am following Dooling’s account here. See Dooling (1992). 8. The Pine Ridge Reservation has a population of about 48,000 people. Unemployment is about 90 per cent, 92 per cent live below the poverty line, a housing shortage of 12,000 units, teen suicide is four times the national average, 75 per cent teen pregnancy, the shortest life expectancy in the Western hemisphere at 45 years, diabetes is 800 per cent higher than the US average, infant mortality is five times the national average, the dropout rate is over 70 per cent, and the nearest hospital with surgical facilities is 80 miles away. In the face of these statistics, the people of Pine Ridge are seeking solutions and maintain their proud cultural heritage as much as possible. Some community leaders are trying to draw on those traditions to help address the massive problems they face. Jacek Kropinski, prod., The Sioux of Pine Ridge Reservation, documentary. https://www​.youtube​.com​/watch​ ?v​=AYfpm4yG1sY 9. For a full treatment of each of the twelve virtues, see Marshall (2001). 10. For an extensive treatment of Lakota history see Hämäläinen (2019).

REFERENCES Amiotte, Arthur (1987), ‘The Lakota Sun Dance: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives’, in DeMallie, Raymond J. and Douglas R. Parks (eds), Sioux Indian Religion. Tradition and Innovation, 75–90, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Amiotte, Arthur (2009), ‘Our Other Selves: The Lakota Dream Experience’, in Linda Hogan (ed.), The Inner Journey: Views from Native Traditions, 326–34, Parabola Anthology Series, Sandpoint, ID: Morning Light Press. Basso, Keith H. (1996), Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language Among the Western Apache, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Black, Elk (1982), The Gift of the Sacred Pipe: Based on Black Elk’s Account of the Seven Rites of the Oglala Sioux, ed. and illustrated by Vera Louise Drysdale, as originally recorded and ed. Joseph Epes Brown, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Brown, Joseph Epes (1992), Animals of the Soul: Sacred Animals of the Oglala Sioux, Rockport, MA; Shaftesbury: Element. Brown, Joseph Epes and Emily Cousins (2001), Teaching Spirits: Understanding Native American Religious Traditions, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cajete, Gregory (2000), Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence, foreword by Leroy Little Bear, Santa Fe, NM: Clear Light Publishers. Deloria, Vine Jr. (1999), Spirit & Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Deloria, Vine Jr. (2006), The World We Used to Live in: Remembering the Powers of the Medicine Men, Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Deloria, Vine Jr. (2016), C. G. Jung and the Sioux Tradition: Dreams, Visions, Nature and the Primitive, New Orleans: Spring Journal Books. DeMallie, Raymond J. (1987), ‘Lakota Belief and Ritual in the Nineteenth Century’, in DeMallie, Raymond J. and Douglas R. Parks (eds), Sioux Indian Religion. Tradition and Innovation, 25–44, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Detwiler, Fritz (1992), ‘All My Relatives: Persons in Oglala Religion’, Religion, 22 (3): 235–46.

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Dooling, D. M., ed. (1992), The Sons of the Wind: The Sacred Stories of the Lakota, San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco. Garroutte, Eva Marie (2003), Real Indians: Identity and the Survival of Native America, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Greshko, Michael (2018), ‘Why These Birds Carry Flames in Their Beaks’, National Geographic, 8 January. Available online: https://www​.nationalgeographic​.com​/news​/2018​/01​/ wildfires​-birds​-animals​-australia/ (accessed 22 October 2021). Gross, Lawrence W. (2016), Anishinaabe Ways of Knowing and Being, Vitality of Indigenous Religions, New York: Routledge. Hämäläinen, Pekka (2019), Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power, The Lamar Series in Western History, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hogan, Linda, ed. (2009), The Inner Journey: Views from Native Traditions. Parabola Anthology Series, Sandpoint, ID: Morning Light Press. Hultkrantz, Åke (1981), Belief and Worship in Native North America, ed. with an intro. Christopher Vecsey, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Jahner, Elaine (2009), ‘The Spiritual Landscape’, in Linda Hogan (ed.), The Inner Journey: Views from Native Traditions, Parabola Anthology Series, Sandpoint, ID: Morning Light Press. Kopf, Gereon (2019), ‘Emptiness, Multiverses, and the Conception of a Multi-Entry Philosophy’, APA Newsletter: Asian and Asian-American Philosophers and Philosophies, 19 (1): 34–36. Marshall, Joseph M. III (2001), The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living, New York: Viking Compass. Marshall, Joseph M. III (2005), Walking with Grandfather: The Wisdom of Lakota Elders, Boulder, CO: Sounds True. Marshall, Joseph M. III (2009), The Power of Four: Leadership Lessons of Crazy Horse, New York: Sterling. Marshall, Joseph M. III (2013), Returning to the Lakota Way: Old Values to Save a Modern World, Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc. Martin, Calvin Luther (1999), The Way of the Human Being, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Morrison, Kenneth M. (2002), The Solidarity of Kin: Ethnohistory, Religious Studies, and the Algonkian-French Religious Encounter, SUNY Series in Native American Religions, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Posthumus, David C. (2015), Transmitting Sacred Knowledge: Aspects of Historical and Contemporary Oglala Lakota Belief and Ritual, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. Powers, William K (1986), Sacred Language: The Nature of Supernatural Discourse in Lakota, The Civilization of the American Indian Series, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Powers, William K (1998), Lakota Cosmos: Religion and the Reinvention of Culture, Kendall Park, NJ: Lakota Books. Radin, Paul (1970), The Winnebago Tribe, Landmarks in Anthropology, New York: Johnson Reprint. Rice, Julian (1991), Black Elk’s Story: Distinguishing Its Lakota Purpose, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Richter, Daniel K. (2001), Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America, Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo (2015), The Relative Native: Essays on Indigenous Conceptual World, Special Collections in Ethnographic Theory, Chicago: Hau Books.

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Walker, James R. (1917), The Sun Dance and Other Ceremonies of the Oglala Division of the Teton Dakota, New York: Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History. Walker, James R. (1983), Lakota Myth, ed. Elaine A. Jahner, New Introduction by Raymond J. DeMallie, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. White Hat, Sr., Albert (2012), Life’s Journey - Zuya: Oral Teachings from Rosebud, compiled and ed. John Cunningham, Salt Lake City, UT: The University of Utah Press.

Chapter 16

Yasukuni, Okinawa and Fukushima Philosophy of sacrifice in the nuclear age CHEUNG CHING-YUEN 1

INTRODUCTION Philosophy of religion can be understood as an academic field focusing on philosophical reflections on topics related to various religions. Indeed, religion and philosophy have been traditionally two closely related areas of inquiry. While philosophy is widely regarded as inquiry into universal knowledge, the study of religion pays attention to cultural and historical contexts. Philosophy of religion, in this sense, can be understood as a field that merges universal issues on one hand, with particular issues on the other. For example, let us investigate the phenomenon of ‘sacrifice’. To sacrifice, from a colloquial, dictionary definition, is ‘to give up something that is valuable to you in order to help another person’.2 In the context of religious studies, Phillips Stevens Jr. defines ‘sacrifice’ as ‘to indicate giving up something valuable, and this discussion will include all offerings from people to supernatural agencies. The practice of sacrifice is surely universal to religious ritual and is an expression of the classic sociological theory of religious concepts being projections of social ones, the theory given the most eloquent expression by Émile Durkheim’. (Murray 2016, 16). He continues: Scholars often preface their explanations with some form of classification. A widely applicable classification of sacrifice is based in the situation in which sacrifice seems called for: calendrical, usually corresponding to seasonal change, especially horticultural cycles, but which also includes the so-called ‘first fruits’ rituals found in all societies, including those of hunters and gatherers; and critical: sacrifice in response to some unforeseen crisis. Sacrifice at passages through stages in the life cycle has been classified as ‘critical,’ insofar as such life cycle events are regarded as ‘life crises’; in fact, such ceremonies may be markedly calendrical. Individual scholars have proposed other bases for classifying sacrifice, such as according to its apparent purpose. (Murray 2016) In this paper, I will reflect on the work of a contemporary Japanese scholar, Takahashi Tetsuya, who develops his philosophy of ‘sacrificial system’ in relation to the Yasukuni

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Shrine, military bases in Okinawa and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. By ‘sacrificial’, Takahashi (2014, 13) refers to the system in which the benefits accruing to some parties are made possible at the expense of others’ lives. I shall also discuss the possibility of a new way of doing philosophy of religion by means of doing pilgrimages to ‘sacrificial zones’. We can only fully understand the significance of philosophical issues by paying close attention to the particular actualities of history and daily life.

YASUKUNI AND ‘STATE RELIGION’ Retired in 2021 as a professor in transcultural studies at the University of Tokyo, Takahashi Tetsuya is a contemporary Japanese philosopher and the author of Ethics of Memory (1995), Problems of Postwar Responsibility (1999), Nation and Sacrifice (2005) and Sacrificial System (2012). ‘Sacrifice’ has been one of his life-long philosophical projects, but religion is also the main theme of one of his most important works, namely, Yasukuni Mondai [Problems of Yasukuni] (2005). Yasukuni Jinja is a shrine located in the very heart of Tokyo. According to its official website, ‘The origins of Yasukuni Jinja lie in a shrine called Shokonsha, which was established at Kudan in Tokyo in the second year of the Meiji era (1869) by the will of Emperor Meiji. In 1879, it was renamed Yasukuni Jinja. Yasukuni Jinja was established to commemorate and honour the achievements of those who dedicated their precious lives to their country. The name “Yasukuni”, bestowed by Emperor Meiji, means to preserve peace for the entire nation’.3 The shrine claims that it is a facility to commemorate those who sacrificed their lives in war affairs. In this sense, the divinities of the shrine include ‘class A war criminals’, who were sentenced to death after the World War II. Indeed, the word ‘sacrifice’ can be found in the Shrine’s own narrative: Currently, more than 2,466,000 divinities are enshrined here at Yasukuni Jinja. These are the souls of the many people who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation since 1853, during national crises such as the Boshin War, the Seinan War, the SinoJapanese and Russo-Japanese wars, World War I, the Manchurian Incident, the China Incident, and the Greater East Asian War (World War II). At Yasukuni Jinja, there are enshrined many people who sacrificed themselves in domestic conflicts such as the Boshin War, the Saga Uprising, and the Seinan War. Here at Yasukuni Jinja, these people, regardless of their rank, social standing, or gender, are considered to be subjects of completely equal respect and worship, because the purpose of the shrine is exclusively to commemorate those who sacrificed their lives for their nation. That is, the 2,466,000 divinities enshrined at Yasukuni Jinja all sacrificed their lives in the course of fulfilling their public duty to protect their motherland.4 I consider the shrine narrative to be using the term ‘sacrifice’ in a religious sense. Indeed, the shrine makes a clear statement: ‘The main difference between Yasukuni Jinja and memorial institutions for war dead in other countries is that Yasukuni Jinja is a religious institution that enshrines the spirits of those who died to protect their homeland.’5 Here, if the shrine is a religious institution (Shinto Shrine), then it goes without saying that an official visit of a Prime Minister to the shrine would violate the separation of religion and the state, as is written in Articles 20 and 89 of the Constitution of Japan.6 For Takahashi,

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what is at stake here is not only the unconstitutionality of such visits but also the rhetoric of ‘sacrifice’. Takahashi writes: The rhetoric of ‘sacrifice’ is the litmus test for the notion of the ‘nation as a religion.’ Take for example the words of Prime Minister Koizumi [Junichiro] during his first official visit to the Yasukuni Shrine on August 13 2001: ‘As I stand before the Souls of those people who died in war believing in the future of the country during those difficult times, I think again about how the peace and prosperity of Japan today is built on their precious sacrifice, and I come here to renew my yearly oath to peace.’ If the ‘peace and prosperity of Japan today’ are ‘built upon the precious sacrifice’ of Japan’s War dead, the rhetoric suggests that their ‘sacrifice’ was necessary to establish ‘peace and prosperity.’ The word sacrifice (gisei) means a live animal offered to a god in the course of a religious ritual, and by being killed, the animals go through a process of being ‘made sacred’ (sacri-fice, faire sacré). The way in which fallen soldiers have worshipped as gods (kami) at Yasukuni Shrine is a clear example of this. As long as the war dead have made ‘precious sacrifices’ for the state, the mechanism that honors ‘martyrdom’ for the state as a ‘secular god’ is maintained. (2008, 191) For many years, families of war casualties (e.g. Japanese with Buddhist or Christian backgrounds, as well as Korean people and Taiwanese indigenous people, etc.) requested the removal of their beloved one from the Yasukuni Shrine. The priest of the shrine rejects any possibility of removal by suggesting that the ‘war dead are worshipped in accordance with the wishes of emperor; enshrinement was carried out without the wishes of the bereaved families and therefore it cannot be undone’ (2008, 158). In this sense, Takahashi argues, Yasukuni Shrine is an institution that ignores the feelings and views of the bereaved relatives. It simply regards the people’s will as being the same as the emperor’s will. What seems to be regard for the feelings of the people who are honoured by enshrinement in Yasukuni Shrine actually occurs because the will of those people happens to be effectively the same as the will of the emperors. At any rate, Yasukuni Shrine forces on people the emotions that dying for the emperor and the country are honourable and dying in battle is a joy (2008, 159). Takahashi also challenges another narrative of the Yasukuni Shrine, which insists ‘the shrine has its origin in the traditional Japanese religious practice of commemorating the deceased eternally by enshrining them as objects of worship’.7 Against such claim, Takahashi notes (2005, 172) that in medieval and early modern Japan, Japanese people used to commemorate all the war dead including those from their own side and enemy side, as well as soldiers and non-soldiers. Because of the fact that Yasukuni only enshrines soldiers of the Japanese side (including Japanese as well as Koreans, Taiwanese and Okinawans who were forced to fight for Imperial Japan), Takahashi argues that the worshipping in Yasukuni is by no means a traditional Japanese religious practice. If Yasukuni is a place we should pay attention to, we should also understand the past and present of Okinawa, which Takahashi categorizes as another example of a ‘sacrificial system’.

OKINAWA AND MILITARY BASES While Japan colonised Taiwan from 1895 to 1945 and the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, Okinawa had a longer history of colonization. Historically speaking, Okinawa was

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formerly known as Ryukyu, as recorded in the Book of Sui (636 CE). The island had a strong connection to China, as Ryukyu Kingdom (1429–1879) used to have diplomatic relationships with the Ming and Qing dynasties. Indeed, Ryukyu Kingdom promoted Confucianism and tried to develop herself as ‘The Land of Propriety’. However, in 1609 Ryukyu was invaded by the Shimazu clan of Satsuma (currently Kagoshima Prefecture). After the Meiji Restoration, the kingdom was forced to become a prefecture of Japan under the so-called ‘Annexation of Ryukyu’ (1872–9). More tragically, many Okinawan people were sacrificed in the Battle of Okinawa. ‘The Battle of Okinawa’, notes Takahashi, ‘began with US military forces landing on the Kerama islands and Okinawa main island at the end of March and on 1 April 1945 respectively’ (2008, 121). Elsewhere, he explains the historical background as follows: Okinawa, along with Hokkaido and its indigenous population of Ainu, were the first targets of modern Japan’s colonial enterprise. They are usually distinguished from Korea and Taiwan and term ‘domestic colonies,’ but the simulation policy which Japan colonial government employed was known as forceful in these regions that the one imposed on Taiwan and Korea. In the closing days of the Pacific War, the Japanese Army embroiled, in the name of the ‘unity of a million civilians,’ non-combatant Okinawans in the savage battle against the American forces as they landed. All this was in the name of the ‘unity of army and civilians.’ As many as 100,000 Okinawan civilians lost their lives in the battle of Okinawa: some were executed for allegedly spying on the Japanese military; other were forced to commit mass suicide because surrendering and been taken as a prisoner of war were forbidden, and not a small number fell victim to the military actions of the Japanese Army, who were supposedly friendly troops. (2008, 173) Japanese people, no matter if they were combatants or civilians, were asked to fight to the death. The war ended on 15 August, when the emperor delivered a speech on the radio to announce that Japan will accept the Potsdam Declaration. After the World War II, Okinawa was occupied by the United States rather than Russia. Japan was certainly not against retaining this territory as part of US-occupied Japan. This can be traced back to a confidential document titled ‘Emperor of Japan’s Opinion Concerning the Future of the Ryukyu Islands’, a memorandum for GHQ General Douglas MacArthur written by William J. Sebald, dated 20 September 1947. It reads, Mr. Hidenari Terasaki, an adviser to the Emperor, called by appointment for the purpose of conveying to me the Emperor’s ideas concerning the future of Okinawa. Mr. Terasaki stated that the Emperor hopes that the United States will continue the military occupation of Okinawa and other islands of the Ryukyus. In the Emperor’s opinion, such occupation would benefit the United States and also provide protection for Japan. The Emperor feels that such a move would meet with widespread approval among the Japanese people who fear not only the menace of Russia, but after the Occupation has ended, the growth of rightist and leftist groups which might give rise to an ‘incident’ which Russia could use as a basis for interfering internally in Japan. The Emperor further feels that United States military occupation of Okinawa (and such other islands as may be required) should be based upon the fiction of a longterm lease – 25 to 50 years or more – with sovereignty retained in Japan. According

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to the Emperor, this method of occupation would convince the Japanese people that the United States has no permanent designs on the Ryukyu Islands, and other nations, particularly Soviet Russia and China, would thereby be stopped from demanding similar rights. As to procedure, Mr. Terasaki felt that the acquisition of ‘military base rights’ (of Okinawa and other islands in the Ryukyus) should be by bilateral treaty between the United States and Japan rather than form part of the Allied peace treaty with Japan. The latter method, according to Mr. Terasaki, would savor too much of a dictated peace and might in the future endanger the sympathetic understanding of the Japanese people.8 Regarding this historical document, Takahashi argues that the emperor’s political engagement is a clear violation of Article 1 of Japan’s Constitution, in which the emperor shall only be the ‘symbol’ of the State (2012, 172). More importantly, the emperor only considered the positions of the United States and Japan. Takahashi points out, ‘In fact, this memorandum mentions nothing about the will of Okinawan people. The Ryukyu Islands seems to be uninhabited islands only for the benefit of US and the protection of Japan.’ (2012, 173–4) Of course, Okinawa is not an uninhabited island. Since 1958, Okinawa civilians who had participated in the war were enshrined at Yasukuni under the category of ‘civilian military employees’. Takahashi notes, ‘As a result, the residents of Okinawa who were, as a matter of fact, victims of war waged by Japan, ended up being enshrined as collaborators of the Japanese forces’ (2012, 174). For Okinawans, their suffering is not only about the loss of lives, but more seriously, their islands were occupied by the United States until 1972. The ‘return’ of Okinawa from the United States to Japan did not free the island, which continues to host US military bases due to the US–Japan Security Alliance. Takahashi explains, ‘Under the post-war settlement, the emperor system was allowed to continue in the form of a constitutionally defined symbolic role of the emperor. In return, Japan’s military strength was constrained through the “no war” clause of Article 9, while Okinawa was offered up as a permanent military base serving US geopolitical and military strategy’ (2012, 163). In fact, Okinawa has functioned as one of the support bases for United States’s wars against Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. During the Cold War, the United States wanted to stock nuclear bombs in the Far East, but because of strong anti-nuclear sentiment in Japan, the only option was to store over a thousand atomic bombs in Okinawa. There have been many accidents related to military bases in Okinawa. For example, a CH–53 helicopter crashed into the campus of Okinawa International University in August 2012.9 According to a report on US military base issues in Okinawa, ‘70.6% of the land in Japan that is exclusive to U.S. military facilities are concentrated in Okinawa, which accounts for only 0.6% of the total land area of Japan’.10 All this is to say that Okinawa continues to sacrifice its people and land because it is regarded as the ‘frontier’ of Japan and the United States in the Far East. One possibility to demilitarize Okinawa is to free Okinawa from Japan and hence the US–Japan Security Alliance. However, the separation of Okinawa from Japan may face the challenge from Nichiryū Dōsoron, which literally means ‘the theory that Japan and Okinawa have a common ancestor’. A pioneer of this theory is Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962), who is regarded as the father of Japanese folklore studies. In 1910, he published The Legends of Tono, which focuses on the oral history of a remote area in

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Iwate Prefecture. He visited Taiwan in 1917, paying special attention to the culture of indigenous people living in the mountain area. In 1921, he visited Okinawa as a journalist for Asahi Shimbun. In Ocean Road, published a year before his death, recalls: Until now, I have not been aware for, there are so many problems that I could not get any answers. Among these, as an island country surrounded by four seas and lived independently, the ignorance of sea life is rather abnormal… For example, from which direction did the Japanese come from? Of the hundreds of big and small islands, it is not known on which island they landed first, and in which direction it moved next. Yanagita (1989, 17) Yanagita provides a reason to believe that ancestors of Japan came from the south through the path of the sea. Unlike roads on the land, ocean roads did not leave us any traces in the water. Oceanographically speaking, however, there is a Pacific Sea current called Kuroshio, which literally means the ‘black current’. One important route of this current is from Luzon, Taiwan to the Japanese archipelago. Obviously, this sea current brings many things from the south to the north (such as ocean rubbish one can find nowadays). According to Yanagita, the sea does not only bring things to Japan, but also people and their cultures. He believes that rice was brought to Japan from the south. In Ocean Road, he mentions four methods of rice farming (1989, 55): 1) Amamizu-ba: farming on small islands with rain water; 2) Shimizu-gakari: farming on terraced field with stream water; 3) Ike-gakari: farming on paddy field with water from a pond; 4) I-gakari: farming on large-scale paddy field with irrigation system. The more advanced types of farming methods can be found in many places in Japan, but in Okinawa only the primitive ways are possible due to its island landscape. It is unthinkable that people who knew a more sophisticated farming method would migrate to the south, where it was too risky to farm with rainwater. For Yanagita, ‘the import of rice should be regarded as the first chapter of the history of Japan.’ (1989, 296). His claim suggests something extra: if rice farming was imported to Japan from the south, then the Japanese emperor system (which has many rituals related to rice agriculture) would have its roots from the south as well. Yanagita doubts the theory, suggested by Egami Namio (1906–2002), that the Equestrian people who knew nothing about rice farming are the ancestor of Japan. He writes: I think that the southern races with rice farming customs arrived this island [Japan] through this sea current [Kuroshio]. Besides, the land next to Japan Sea is more suitable for rice farming. I want to explain clearly that nowadays there is a trend arguing that people from the continent through Korean peninsula crossed the strait and arrived Japan, and we have the same culture. However, I am clearly against this theory. Unless it is from the south, there is no way that rice could arrive Japan, and if there is no rice, there will be no Japanese nation (. . .) Among us [the Japanese], the imperial family valued the harvest of rice, and even if we might have been conducting in a less complicated way, we have the Oname ceremony [daijōsai] during Imperial Succession, there will be Niiname ceremony [shinjōsai] every year, with similar festivals in Shinto Shrines nationwide. Rice is the center of these ceremonies and festivals. The Imperial family led the people to conduct these ceremonies. It cannot be explained that the

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Equestrian people, who arrived in Japan later, would introduce these ceremonies in order to please the indigenous people in Japan. (Yanagita 2016, 379) By linking Okinawa and Japan with the ocean road, Yanagita provides a reason that Okinawa (by the time under US occupation) should be returned to Japan. While Yanagita only managed to visit Okinawa once, Ifa Fuyū (1876–1947) is another advocate for Nichiryū Dōsoron who was a native of Okinawa. In the ‘Preface’ of Okinawa Rekishi Monogatari (Okinawa History Narratives, 1948), he writes, ‘The civilization of Okinawa, thanks to the influence from our culture and Chinese culture, has become a kind of hybrid culture. In this sense, it is the cross-road of Japanese and Chinese civilizations’ (Ifa 1948, 2). More importantly, Ifa suggests one condition of the stability of Ryukyu Kingdom. In his own words, ‘due to the import of Confucianism, a peaceful thought is promoted’ (Ifa 1916, 11). Ifa also suggests the nation of Ryukyu has peaceful people because they respect others whom they are trading with. Ryukyu people also have an open-minded mentality. The end of the golden era of Ryukyu Kingdom is due to the invasion of Satsuma Han, who forced the Ryukyu people to pay heavy taxes and to live without dignity. Ifa is inspired by Shō Jōken (1617–76), who was appointed as the chief adviser for the Ryukyu Kingdom in 1666. Shō was an advocator of Nichiryū Dōsoron from a pragmatic perspective because realizing a common ancestor is one way to avoid conflicts. Ifa explains, ‘Even a small nation is annexed to a big nation, if the former is aware of the fact that they have the same ancestry as the latter and they all believe in the same god, it will reduce the pain [of the small nation] by half. This is what Shō tried to focus on’ (Ifa 1916, 82). Shō also promoted Japanese cultural activities such as flower arrangement and tea ceremony. According to Ifa (1948, 120), Shō’s intention was to prevent the people of Ryukyu from becoming tax slaves for the Satsuma Han. Shō’s thought was influential to Sai On (1682–1762). Sai’s family originates from China but migrated to Kume village. He studied in Qing Dynasty and returned to Ryukyu to become the general officer in 1728. As an official rather than a scholar, Sai was criticized as someone who ‘studied Zhuxi but not purely so’ (Ifa 1916, 191). However, I would suggest Sai is more than a thinker. He did not see Confucianism merely as a pure theory; rather, he worked hard to improve the quality of life for the Ryukyu people. Indeed, Sai’s major contribution to the Kingdom is his reformation of forest resource and farming system. Sai’s efforts to promote education were admired even by Satsuma officials. Ishida Masato (2018), a philosopher affiliated to the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, summaries Ifa’s thoughts as follows: Ifa often said that the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages were ‘sister languages’ (shimai-go), and also held that the people of Okinawa were ‘distant kin of the Japanese people’ (Nihon minzoku no toi wakare). Towards Japanese mainlanders, Ifa wished to appeal to commonality and equality so as to win their respect for Okinawans. As for the people of Okinawa, he wanted them to modernize and attain higher social and economic standards – in short, to ‘catch up with mainlanders’. Ishida (2018) also notices Ifa’s similar view on religious thoughts: Okinawans, after being slavishly devoted to Zhuxi’s doctrine for a few hundred years, have suddenly been introduced to a number of ways of thinking. They have now familiarized themselves with living Buddhism, with the teachings of Wang Yangming, Christianity, naturalism, and many other new ideas. Is this not a phenomenon that deserves celebration?

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Nichiryū Dōsoron suggests there is a continuity between Okinawa and Japan, but in reality, is there any discontinuity? Gōda Masato, a professor at Meiji University who used to teach at Ryukyu University, writes: Taking the geography of Japan for example, Okinawa is indeed on the periphery – say, for instance, on a weather map, Okinawa is sometimes framed and treated separately. However, if you looked at a graphic that correctly shows the location of Okinawa, while it is on the periphery of Japan, you can see that it is also the center of Southeast Asia, China, and Japan. Which means, Okinawa is located on the border of several different regions. Then you realize that Okinawa – the edge of Japan – is actually in a location that allows for easy networking with other regions. In fact, Okinawa has a history of functioning like a network hub connecting Japan with the rest of Asia.11 Gōda’s point of departure is a bit similar to the position of Ishida, who argues that Okinawa is a kind of hybrid cultural hub. However, Gōda has a rather different position: the culture of Okinawa is essentially different to Japanese culture. Gōda mentions the work of Ifa Fuyū, who suggests Okinawa has a unique rhythm in music as well as in their way of life. Gōda writes: Humans are said to be rhythmic animals: leading a private life subconsciously under a rhythm – what time to get up, do what, what to eat for breakfast, and so forth – and involved in rhythms constructed by society, community, or any other group, as well as different natural changes. There are also intentionally trained rhythms and rhythms acquired through subconscious development. Diverse elements intermingle to make our bodies function at a certain rhythm. When people living in Tokyo visit Okinawa, they often feel that time flows differently in this land, and this can be attributed to Okinawa establishing its own rhythm while taking up influences of various rhythms through active networking with many regions. In contrast to the existing conception that a periphery is something trivial, if you just changed your point of view, you notice that it can develop a rich network of its own by being at the intersection of a number of regions and forming a center of its own. The unique pauses and rhythm of the Okinawan sanshin born in such an environment may bring a kind of lightheartedness, a relaxation when reflecting back on everyday life in bustling Tokyo. (2018) Here, Okinawa is not only unfamiliar to people in Tokyo, but also a place impossible for Japanese to comprehend. This impossibility could be due to the incommensurability of rhythms, but it can also be the difficulty for a deep understanding between Japanese and Okinawan, who have different cultures and languages As Nobel Prize winner Oe Kenzaburō notes (1970, 14): ‘I would like to go to Okinawa to know them in a deeper way, but I realize clearly that to know them in a deeper way means that they will gently but firmly reject me.’ Although Oe believes that it is not that Okinawa belongs to Japan, but that Japan belongs to Okinawa, it was not possible for him to achieve a deep understanding about Okinawa. Takahashi shows his sympathy to Okinawans who criticize Nichiryū Dōsoron. For example, he had dialogues with Chinin Usii (an anti-US military base activist born in Okinawa).12 He told her that having been born near Fukushima, he did not realize the Okinawa problem until a twelve-year-old Okinawan girl was raped by three US servicemen in 1995.13 Many Japanese may know nothing about the sacrificial system in Okinawa, but they would experience the sacrificial system in one of the most severe nuclear incidents in the history of mankind, that is, the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster in 2011.

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FUKUSHIMA AND NUCLEAR DISASTER In a lecture titled ‘What March 11 Means to Me: Nuclear Power and the Sacrificial System’, (delivered at the University of Chicago on 10 March 2012), Takahashi (2014) recalls his personal experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake as follows: A year ago, on March 11, at 2:46pm, the massive earthquake began. I had never experienced a quake lasting for such a long time in my life. I was in my condominium at the time, and I braced myself for the possibility that the building might collapse. For a brief moment, I even thought I might die. Then, while we were still reeling from the earthquake, the tsunami came. But this I experienced through the TV screen. Enormous seawalls were nothing compared to the power of the tsunami, and the coastal towns of the Pacific in the Tohoku region were swallowed by the waves accompanied by piercing cries. The thought came to me that this must be what is meant by ‘apocalyptic’ – this nightmarish scene – and that the shock that Americans felt on September 11, 2001, might have been something close to this, even though there is a difference between natural and human-made disasters. As we all know, the world was shocked not only by the destructive earthquake and tsunami but also the hydrogen explosions and meltdowns in the reactors of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Takahashi had just published Sacrificial System: Fukushima and Okinawa in January 2012, so in the lecture he introduced his definition of ‘sacrificial system’ to US audiences. According to Takahashi: What I mean by ‘sacrificial system’ is a system in which the benefits accruing to some parties are made possible at the expense of others’ lives – whether biological existence, health, daily routine, property, dignity, or hope . . .. Indeed, depending on how one defines ‘sacrifice,’ such systems may be ubiquitous. We humans, for example, consume vegetables and (non-human) animals, meaning that our existence is maintained on the basis of their ‘sacrifice.’ In this sense, humanity is part of a sacrificial system. What is at issue here, however, is sacrifice that entails serious human rights violations. Given the potential risk of severe accidents and the enforcement of labor conditions that inevitably expose workers to radiation, nuclear power plants threaten and violate fundamental human rights, such as the right to life and the right to the pursuit of happiness. This is why it is appropriate to pursue legal responsibility when a nuclear power plant accident occurs. Even if particular policies and practices are the result of formal democratic procedures, if they violate human rights, then it is only appropriate that criminal charges be made. The policies of Nazi Germany are a case in point. (2014) Sacrifice is, by this definition, a violation of human rights. No compensation can therefore make up for the violation of human rights. Takahashi continues, Residents were told that accidents ‘could never occur’ and it was on this basis that they entered into coexistence with the nuclear plants. It is for this reason that they feel deceived. However grand the subsidy, and however splendid the towns and villages built with it, if they become inhabitable due to a severe accident, then everything will have been lost. Moreover, as happened this time, human rights are violated even in those areas that received little to no financial benefit. Accordingly, we can never justify such a sacrificial system (2014).14

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In the case of towns near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, people were forced to leave their contaminated homeland. They were unable to grow rice in their family paddy fields. In a ‘Postscript’ written in 2014, Takahashi writes, ‘As I suggested at the time, after the nuclear disaster occurred, I began to think that nuclear power should be thought of as a “sacrificial system.” Sad to say, this realization has now grown into a firm conviction.’ He continues with an elaboration of his notion of ‘sacrifice’ as follows: The reason is none other than the following. Having caused a disaster of such proportions, the government of Japan, incapable of bringing the dangerous conditions on site under control, failing even to thoroughly investigate the causes of the disaster, driving over ten thousand people into refugee-like conditions without proper compensation, inflicting on children the dread of long-term health consequences from radiation exposure, behaves for all the world as if this had in fact been anticipated – as if the sacrifices had been calculated in the cost of doing business from the beginning – and has chosen to revert to nuclear restarts. That no brakes have been applied to the pronuclear policy despite these sacrifices is surely proof that what we have here is a system of sacrifice. (2014) Takahashi concludes that the ‘nuclear power generation as a sacrificial system will live on and spawn further sacrifices. Yet a system whereby some people profit from the sacrifice of others cannot be legitimated. We must never allow ourselves to forget that the Fukushima disaster entailed, in the worst-case scenario, the evacuation of 35 million people from the metropolitan region [i.e., Tokyo metropolitan and her and neighbouring prefectures]’ (2014). The worst-case scenario did not happen, but there were people who tried to return to their homeland. In 2014, there was a Japanese film titled Ieji (English title: Homeland). The synopsis of the film is as follows: Jiro has come home. His tiny farming village is now deserted because it lies in the badly contaminated Fukushima zone. Nonetheless, Jiro begins cultivating his land. An old school friend helps him and together they plant rice. ‘It’s like slow suicide’, says Jiro’s friend. Jiro’s half-brother, Soichi, who has evacuated with his family cannot believe that Jiro has moved back into the old home. Soichi’s step-mother, who is Jiro’s biological mother, had never got over Jiro leaving. Suffused with grief and poetry, the images in this film describe life after the nuclear catastrophe. They also tell us what it means to go home when home will never be the same again.15 In the film, Jiro says, ‘I came back because no one was here.’ Without a doubt, returning was a naïve decision; but at the same time, it shows Jiro’s guilty conscience. He could not see his hometown turning into a ghost town, so he decided to return to his hometown and grow rice there. The film ends happily with an appraisal of Jiro’s love of and brave return to his polluted homeland. In reality, however, it is nothing but wishful thinking. According to a report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR): Seven years after the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, actions for the reconstruction and revitalization of Fukushima are in full implementation process, with evacuation orders lifted for most of the areas. In March 2017, housing subsidies reportedly stopped to be provided to self-evacuees, who fled from areas other than the government-designated evacuation zones.

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Following the nuclear disaster, Japan raised the acceptable level of radiation for residents in Fukushima from 1 mSv/year to 20 mSv/year. The Universal Periodic Review mechanism of the Human Rights Council recommended that the Government of Japan return acceptable levels of exposure to those before Fukushima. The Special Rapporteur has raised concerns with the Government on both the situation confronting residents, including children and women of reproductive age, who may return to areas above 1 mSv/yr, as well as concerns regarding the exposure of workers involved in the remediation of the prefecture. The death of a remediation worker from lung cancer was recently recognized as resulting from exposure to radiation.16 In 2021, the Olympic Games were held after a year of postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Some towns near the Daiichi nuclear plants were able to live. However, the radiation level is still high in some areas.17 Following Takahashi, we have to say that returning to an unliveable place (e.g. Fukushima) with an unacceptable dose of radiation is a sacrifice. In fact, towns near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant could become a ‘national sacrifice zone’. To live in this zone is a clear violation of basic human rights that should never be glorified. As in the case of some religious leaders, some scholars believe the disaster is a ‘divine punishment’. For example, Takahashi mentioned the case of Roberto De Mattei, an Italian Roman Catholic Historian, who spoke on 16 March 2011 that ‘This [the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami] is the voice of God’s goodness. A divine punishment . . .. God punishes not only the sinful but also virtuous and innocent persons.’18 (2012, 110) We can say that no person should be deprived of life, but how can we remember the voices of the dead?

CONCLUSION Yasukuni, Okinawa and Fukushima may not be the most familiar topics in the field of philosophy of religion, but ‘sacrifice’ can be the keyword connecting philosophy of religion on one hand and contemporary issues on the other. By deciding to study something currently understudied, philosophers of religion make a ‘sacrifice’ to reshape their practical commitments. They ‘give up’ their usual topics of study in order to give the field a new identity.19 How can we remember the suffering of those who lost their lives in wars, military base accidents, nuclear incidents as well as other calamities and catastrophes? In some religious contexts, this remembering is called mourning. Takahashi offers a philosophical reflection on the phenomenon of mourning as follows: Mourning (tsuitō) is to follow the dead (otte) and feel pain (itamu); in other words, it is to feel sadness, and as the Chinese characters for the word ‘mourning’ (tsuitō) suggest, to feel pain at the death of the departed. Mourning and giving condolences (aitō) are ‘the work of grieving’ (hiai no sagyō). (2008, 154) If this is the case, to remember death is not a static way of recording the dead, but an active way of following the dead and feel the pain of others. Philosophizing on sacrifice, in this sense, is not merely a theoretical reflection about the notion of sacrifice, but a practical philosophy that allows us to visit the sacrifice sites. Pilgrimage, as explained by Ian Reader, ‘derives, via the French pèlerinage from the Latin terms peregrinus, ‘foreign’, and per ager, ‘going through the fields’ (Reader 2015, 20). While

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pilgrimage as a practice can be found in most religions, Reader also distinguishes between the uses of ‘secular pilgrimage’ and ‘non-religious pilgrimage’. Some examples are visits to war graves and memorials. He writes, ‘The sites of dreadful battles and mass loss of life, as well as war memorials commemorating the dead of such conflicts, are commonly visited by people paying homage to those who died and thinking about the meanings of their sacrifice’ (Reader 2015, 103–4, emphasis mine). Here, I would like to discuss the possibility of a new way of doing philosophy of religion by means of doing pilgrimages to ‘sacrificial zones.’ I have organized study tours for Hong Kong students to visit Yasukuni Shrine, Okinawa and Fukushima. Without visiting the shrine and its precincts, one may never realize the fact the Yasukuni Shrine has its own museum20 for the likely purpose of propaganda. In Okinawa, we were able to visit the sacred site Sefa Utaki, and learn about the problems near Marine Corps Air Station Futenma as well as Kadena Air Base. Two years after the Great East Japan Earthquake, I led some teachers and students to visit temporary shelters in Fukushima. My colleague Yamaguchi Kiyoko recorded some local voices in a temporary shelter: ‘They give us minimum living expense, but I cannot farm.’ ‘What do we want? Not compensation. We just want to live like before.’ ‘Please don’t forget us. Don’t forget Fukushima. Other Japanese “recovered” and have normal, happy life. That is good. But it’s really sad we are left alone and separated from the world.’ ‘In the first year, we kept crying. We could not stop. But in the second year, we “decided” not to cry anymore and look forward to future.’ ‘What do I want to tell to Hong Kong people? Tell them Fukushima has many nice places. I will not ask them to come as tourists; I know foreigners are scared of Fukushima. Our Fukushima is a beautiful place. My house has this old wooden beam, you might like it.’21 These voices might not have been reported by the media, and therefore can only be heard by listening to the local people. Gereon Kopf and I organized pilgrimages for American students to Buddhist temples and Shinto Shrines in Nara, Chan/Zen temples in Kyoto and Nanhua, O-henro temples in Shikoku, Buddhist and Taoist temples in Hong Kong, as well as tsunami-affected areas in Sendai. Students visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s A-Bomb sites, peace museums as well as monuments dedicated to war dead including Koreans and other nationalities. As Takahashi writes: The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, together with other damage inflicted on Japan during the war, resulted from Japanese aggression in Asia lasting over 70 years, starting in Korea. It is clearly inconsistent, therefore, to condemn the atomic bombs, whilst ignoring Japan’s responsibility for acts of aggression against Asian countries . . .. It is also not accurate to assert that Japan is the only victim in the world of atomic bombs for the hibakusha, victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, include people from more than 20 countries. To de-nationalize the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we must recall that the victims included several thousand Korean who were forcibly taken to Japan and who were erased from Japanese memory after the war. (2008, 105–6)

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On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan declared its surrender on 15 August. We may ask: is it true that nuclear bombs ended the World War II? Before visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American students generally thought that the atomic bombs had ended the war and reduced the number of casualties. However, after visiting the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima and the A-bomb Museum in Nagasaki, their perspectives began to shift. Since atomic bombs had never been used in war, it was necessary to test the power of the bomb on the actual battlefield. Both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki museums have exhibits of US military documents showing the proposed targets of the bombing, namely, Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki and Kyoto. One common characteristic of these cities is that they had not been bombed by conventional bombs, which allowed US military to assess the destructive power of nuclear bombs more effectively. For Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though there were many military facilities, there were also large civilian populations because they were not bombed. We can say that the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war test sacrificing innocent civilians. Another little-known fact in the United States is that the Soviet Union officially declared war on Japan on 9 August, and promptly occupied the Japanese-controlled Manchuria. As the European front had ended in May, the global focus was on the end of the war in the Pacific and the post-war recovery. The sudden entry of the Soviet Union into the war made US leaders fear that the Soviet Union would divide up its interests in Japan after its defeat. As a matter of fact, Japan was unable to resist the Soviet Union, which had a good chance of gaining control of Hokkaido and Northeast Japan. If Japan had not surrendered in time, it would have been in the same situation as the Korean peninsula after the war. Many of the American students were visiting Asia for the first time and were unfamiliar with the history of Japanese colonial expansion on the Korean peninsula; however, after arriving in Nagasaki, they were no longer ‘outsiders’. In Nagasaki, there is a place called Dejima, which was the only place Dutch people were allowed to enter Japan during the Tokugawa period (1607–1867 CE). Despite its many Westernized connection, the city of Nagasaki was fatally attacked and destroyed by an atomic bomb. We can never call this a ‘divine punishment’. The sacrifice of the people (including Japanese as well as foreigners) should never be forgotten. Practising pilgrimage is one way of doing philosophy of religion. We do not only visit sacred places or temples but also museums and catastrophe zones. By visiting these sites, we may be able to listen to the voices of war victims, disaster victims or disadvantaged groups. What Oe Kenzaburō has done with Hiroshima Notes is to search for the forgotten words and to keep the voices of the forgotten heard. As Jacky Tai Yuen-hung notes, Oe believes that the Hiroshima experience should be made known to the whole world as it shows the Hiroshima people confront with death in an – undaunted manner. In my opinion, this long struggle of the Hiroshima people reflects precisely their interruption with the ordinary life, i.e., the movement of breakthrough in Patočka’s terms. Through this interruption, they rework the solidarity of the community from within without being integrated into the any political parties or the State (Tai 2020, 235). By doing pilgrimages to Hiroshima, we can have not only a deeper understanding of the sacrificial system but also the opportunity to rediscover memories that are about to be forgotten or extinguished, and use our imagination to listen to the voices of the death. 22

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To end this chapter, I would like to quote Takahashi’s recent keynote speech delivered on 10 March 2021, the day before the tenth anniversary of Great East Japan Earthquake: I have heard in Onkalo [a spent nuclear fuel repository in Finland], there is an opinion that after 100 years, we should leave no records or traces of the site, let the next generation know nothing about the site, and to forget everything even the act of forgetting. Borrowing a term by Hannah Arendt, it is a complete ‘hole of oblivion.’ Why? If we keep records and memories, there may be a generation who will want to dig them up. The nuclear waste may be used by terrorists, or become the target of a terrorist attack. The responsible thing to do is to make it a complete ‘hole of oblivion.’ On the other hand, some countries, like the United States, are trying to leave a warning message in pilot facilities [of nuclear waste]. Both the United States and France have said that they want to build a site that can last for 1,000,000 years, not just 100,000 years. The United States was planning to build a geological disposal facility at Yucca Mountain in New Mexico, but the opposition was so strong that the Obama administration withdrew the plan. On the other hand, near Carlsbad, New Mexico, a nuclear waste isolation test facility was built and is in operation. According to their website, 170,000 containers of waste will be buried by 2019. Remarkably, scholars including linguists, archaeologists, anthropologists, science-fiction writers and more have been conducting research on how to leave a warning message for humans thousands and tens of thousands of years from now. They call it a long-term nuclear waste warning message, and this discipline is called nuclear semiotics. For the moment, the warning messages are written all over the facility in the six official languages of the United Nations and in the language of the Navaho people, but as I said earlier, it is doubtful whether these languages will exist in 10,000 or tens of thousands of years. That is where hieroglyphics and pictograms come in. As you can under the warning in Munch’s Scream . . .. Just as we look at the murals in the Lascaux Cave and say, ‘Oh, there were Cro-magnons who lived here 20,000 years ago’. Will human beings 20,000 years from now look at Munch’s Scream and understand that there is dangerous nuclear waste buried there? (Takahashi, forthcoming).23 In his speech, Takahashi explains four types of sacrifices in the nuclear industry: (1) sacrifice caused by severe accidents; (2) sacrifice caused by exposed labour inside nuclear power plants; (3) sacrifice caused by uranium mining sites; and (4) sacrifice caused by radioactive waste. In order to understand the problem and follow the pain, I hope we can make pilgrimages to Onkalo and Carlsbad as well as other sacrifice sites. These sites may have no direct relationship to a ‘sacred place’, but doing pilgrimages to ‘sacrificial zones’ should be considered as a new way of practising philosophy in the nuclear age.

NOTES 1. Cheung Ching-yuen is a native of Hong Kong. He is an associate professor in the Department of Area Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokyo. 2. https://dictionary​.cambridge​.org​/ja​/dictionary​/english​/sacrifice 3. https://www​.yasukuni​.or​.jp​/english​/about​/history​.html 4. https://www​.yasukuni​.or​.jp​/english​/about​/history​.html 5. https://www​.yasukuni​.or​.jp​/english​/about​/worshipping​.html

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6. See The Constitution of Japan. Available online: https://japan​.kantei​.go​.jp​/constitution​_and​ _government​_of​_japan​/constitution​_e​.html 7. https://www​.yasukuni​.or​.jp​/english​/about​/worshipping​.html 8. https://www​.archives​.pref​.okinawa​.jp​/uscar​_document​/5392 9. https://www​.okiu​.ac​.jp​/about​/fall​_incident 10. http://dc​-office​.org​/basedata​#p1 11. https://english-meiji.net/articles/229/ 12. https://www​.asahi​.com​/national​/intro​/TKY201205140442​.html 13. See also Takahashi (2012, 163). 14. Takahashi (2012). 15. https://www​.imdb​.com​/title​/tt2994962/ 16. https://www​.undocs​.org​/A​/73​/567 17. On 28 March 2021, 0.239 μSv/h is recorded on the platform of JR Namie Station. 18. Takahashi evokes also similar positions made by a Protestant priest and a Buddhist scholar. 19. I would like to thank Nathan Loewen for this point. 20. https://www​.yasukuni​.or​.jp​/english​/yushukan​/index​.html 21. Quoted in my essay, “Overcoming Homelessness: Fukushima and Hong Kong”. Available online: https://www​.philosophy​-world​-democracy​.org​/overcoming​-homelessness 22. In my article ‘In the Wake of 3.11 Earthquake: Philosophy of Disaster and Pilgrimage’, I explained the idea of philosophy of pilgrimage with insights borrowed from Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960), who is the author of Pilgrimages to the Ancient Temples in Nara. I argue that ‘pilgrimage is no mere traveling or a visit; it is an act to rescue and preserve memories from oblivion; as such, it should be regarded as a way of doing philosophy’. See Cheung (2017, 146). 23. This keynote speech (delivered in Japanese) is available online: https://www​.eaa​.c​.u​-tokyo​ .ac​.jp​/media​-library​/210310symposium/

REFERENCES Cheung, Ching-yuen (2017), ‘In the Wake of 3.11 Earthquake: Philosophy of Disaster and Pilgrimage’, in Michiko Yusa (ed.), The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy, 133–49, New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Gōda, Masato (2018), ‘Let’s start a philosophy that changes the pathetic to humorous’, https:// english-meiji.net/articles/229/. Ifa, Fuyū and Majikina Ankō (1916), Ryukyu no Go Ijin [Five Great Okinawans], Naha: Ozawa Shoten. Ifa, Fuyū (1948), Okinawa Rekishi Monogatari [Okinawa History Narratives], Honolulu, HI: Makalei Higashi Honganji. Ishida, Masato (2018), ‘Ifa Fuyū’s Search for Okinawan-Japanese Identity’, Religions, 9 (6): 188. Oe, Kenzaburō (1970), Okinawa Notes, Tokyo: Iwanami. Murray, Carrie Ann (2016), Diversity of Sacrifice: Form and Function of Sacrificial Practices in the Ancient World and Beyond, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Reader, Ian (2015), Pilgrimage: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Takahashi, Tetsuya (2005), Yasukuni Mondai [Problems of Yasukuni], Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō.

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Takahashi, Tetsuya (2012), Gisei no Shisutemu [Sacrificial System], Tokyo: Shūeisha. Takahashi, Tetsuya (2008), Can Philosophy Constitute Resistance?, Tokyo: The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy, Collection UTCP 5. Takahashi, Tetsuya (2014), ‘What March 11 Means to Me: Nuclear Power and the Sacrificial System’, The Asia-Pacific Journal 12, 19 (1). Available online: https://apjjf​.org/​-Takahashi​ -Tetsuya​/4114​/article​.pdf (accessed 25 August 2021). Takahashi, Tetsuya (forthcoming), ‘What do we ask of 3.11? ―In the midst of a pandemic’, Tokyo: East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts, The University of Tokyo. Tai Yuen-hung, Jacky (2020), ‘An Intercultural Reading of Patočka’s Concept of Sacrifice’, META Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy, 12 (1): 209–41. Watsuji, Tetsurō (2011), Pilgrimages to Ancient Temples in Nara, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Yanagita, Kunio (1989), Yanagita Kunio Zenshū [Complete Works of Yanagita Kunio], Vol. 1, Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. Yanagita, Kunio (2016), Kokyō Shicihjūnen [My Homeland Seventy Years], Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

Chapter 17

Technology and the spiritual From prayer bots to the singularity YVONNE FÖRSTER

INTRODUCTION The relation between religious practice and technology peaked when printing was invented and religious texts were circulated and translated into everyday languages and distributed among people. The twentieth century with its inventions in mass media and digital culture has had a rather little impact on religious practice. The narratives emerging from technological cultures however are expressions of religious and mythological cultures. Both technology and the spiritual realm are deeply intertwined. This essay will focus on religious or spiritual leitmotifs, or the recurrent themes, that characterize cultural narratives about technology. Technology is not neutral as it always shapes communication and social relations (McLuhan 2001, 7 ff.) and neither are its narratives. They influence the way technology is used, perceived and ethically evaluated.1 I will outline two different developments: one is a metaphysical narrative of technology as constituent of human cognition and social development. Technology thus is discussed in an ontological perspective. This is symptomatic for the Western and Christian tradition, that despite its dominance in developing and deploying technology is sceptic and pessimistic with regard to technology. The other is a pragmatic form of integration of technology in everyday life as well as in dominant religious practices characteristic for Buddhist, Daoist or Shinto and Islamic traditions. This approach easily incorporates technologies from artificial intelligence (AI) and robots into the system of commerce, care and even prayer and devotion. The tendency to ontologize technology as a force that constitutes human reality beyond our perception is not as influential as in the West. The essay aims at a tentative comparison between the idea of humanity being transcended by technology and the pragmatic integration of technology and their potential entanglements. It will be divided into three sections: the first one will be dedicated to Western narratives of technology, spanning literature, cinema and recent transhumanist narratives. The second part looks into Asian narratives (examples from Japanese and Chinese science fiction) and recent developments in technology. I do not attempt to offer an exhaustive view of the narratives on technology in either tradition. Rather I will describe a number of powerful leitmotifs relating technology and spirituality in order to understand cultural differences in conceptualizing technology. The third part is a tentative take on an alternative intercultural perspective regarding technology and its implication for future societies and spiritual developments.

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FROM FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER TO THE SINGULARITY – WESTERN NARRATIVES Early science fiction and myths of creation The Western relation to technology is strongly permeated by religious motifs, mainly ones of warning and punishment. One of the earliest narratives connected to technology is the myth of Prometheus, who was said to have created humans from clay and stealing fire from the gods to equip them with a means to survive.2 The myth of Prometheus is one of the early narratives about intelligence being used to defy the divine rules and resulting in divine punishment for introducing technology (fire) to humans to help them survive without animal instincts (Coeckelbergh 2020, 13ff.). Throughout the centuries, the motif of man playing god through creation is accompanied by warnings of doom, just as the paradise was lost to mankind after acquiring forbidden knowledge. Knowledge, creation and experimentation do come with dangers. The myth of Prometheus is one of the most influential narratives that do recognize the power of technology and its dangers: Prometheus introduced humanity to tecnh (techne) and taught humans how to use tools; in Greek mythology, Prometheus, human culture, and technology are closely connected. His gift to humanity, however, resulted in the punishment of both humans and Prometheus by Zeus. With the fall of the ancient Greek pantheon, the titan did not lose his significance. In the Promethean myth, fire stands at the beginning of technological development and, as a gift of the titan and a product of the gods, fire symbolically expresses its close relation to the transcendent. (Ornella 2009, 128) Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus (2013 [1818]) is a strong narrative that not only points back to the Greek mythos but also anticipates the future of man-made life and its possible hazards. Shelley’s novel is a signature piece of Romanticism, a literary era with a strong nostalgia for the past and equally vivid spirit of experimentation and the creation of life. Experiments with electricity as a life force by the Italian biophysicist Luigi Galvani (1737–98) and chemist and philosopher Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1810) inspired writers and philosophers alike. The image of electricity being the spark of life similar to Athena’s breath that brought Prometheus’ clay figures to life seemed to have become physical reality. This image is mirrored in the tragic figure of Frankenstein’s Monster. The creature has been put together by fragments of deceased bodies and brought to life through a galvanic experiment. The result was so terrifying that its creator, Victor Frankenstein ran from his creation. He can only perceive the creature as evil, tying every occurring death and murder to its existence. He does not know that the creature itself is of soft nature, educates itself and learns of love, fear and hate. Eventually the creature, deeply hurt by his creator but convinced of his own guilt and doom, vows to kill himself and vanishes forever. While the creature’s perspective is a version of enlightenment through education, the story of Frankenstein is one of guilt and fear of his creation eventually bringing doom over mankind. This perspective can be conceived of as a traditionally Christian one, since historically and even today there is partial pessimism towards science and technology in place (e.g. discrepancy of the ‘intelligent design’ theory and the in vitro fertilization method in the Catholic Church). Even if Christian culture per se today is not opposed to education and science, the concept of knowledge is ambivalent in the narrative, from the original sin to dystopias of technological futures: both protagonists in the novel eventually perish and become tragic martyrs for impossible

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goals: the creation of artificial life and its chances of being part of the human world. In the novel, the protagonist Viktor Frankenstein himself warns of the possibilities of scientific knowledge: ‘Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow.’ (Shelley 2013, 34) Written more than 200 years ago, it is not only a romanticist novel but also an early example of science fiction that keeps on inspiring narratives until today. E.T.A. Hoffmann’s short story Sandmann (1816), a tale noir of a female automaton, similar to today’s humanoid robots, follows a similar path. The protagonist Nathanael is seduced by the strange beauty of Olimpia, the alleged daughter of Professor Spalanzani. In the following he falls prey to dark moods and lunacy. Upon learning of the artificial nature of his love interest, he does not recover from his illusion but ultimately kills himself. Hoffmann’s story initiates a long filiation of female androids bringing doom over human, from Fritz Lang’s humanoid Maria in Metropolis (Germany 1927) to contemporary movies like Spike Jonz’ Her (USA 2013), Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (UK 2014), or Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (UK 2013).3 These narratives with their female protagonists as doom of the male ones recount the biblical scene of the original sin as well as they evoke pessimism of science and technology. Before looking at the recent science-fiction narratives, let me dwell on the religious motives a bit more in detail. Traditionally the creation of live is seen as a divine thing. Humans attempting to play god are being punished by their own creation or conscience. The gap between the divine and the human realm seems to be unbridgeable at least in the Christian narrative. In Greek mythology, there is still an intermingling of gods and man going on, but the idea of divine punishment for overstepping this line is already in place. Prometheus is tortured for eternity for bringing fire to the humans. Fire stands for the first or original technology, a means to survive other than the human body and its abilities. It keeps humans warm, makes food more digestible, keeps predators away and ultimately leads to the production of tools. As a source of light, it also stands for the acquisition of knowledge and the realm of logos. Thus, just like in the Christian narrative knowledge was stolen from the divine and this act was punished. Prometheus as the titan who betrayed divine rules had to suffer, Adam and Eva were thrown out of Eden for tasting the forbidden fruit. Looking into the story of Frankenstein both, the creator and his creature suffer for using knowledge: Frankenstein himself suffers from fear of the consequences of science, and the creature suffers from his newly acquired insights into human knowledge and values, because of his nature as non-human intelligence. Christianity is infamous for prohibiting books and hindering enlightenment during the middle ages with the Holy Inquisition and the Index Librorum Prohibitorum that was updated until 1962. But even an enlightened being such as Frankenstein’s creature seems doomed in spite of having acquired knowledge and reason. He educates himself but feels that he will never be recognized as a human or intelligent being, which drives him into desperation. Neither does E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nathanael, when he learns of the true (or rather artificial) nature of his beloved Olimpia: he eventually commits suicide. Both narratives take a sceptic stance towards enlightenment and the benefits of reason without pleading for irrationality. Even Fritz Lang’s android Maria, whose name evokes images of the Holy Mary, eventually burns at the stake. Regardless of its humane qualities, artificial life cannot become a part of humanity, it seems. But why is that so? The presence of Christian symbols and images points at the

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destruction of a divine order and hence the following doom. From a modern perspective one could say it is a lack of reason and of Urteilskraft that leads to doom: The sleep of reason produces monsters, as Francisco de Goya in his famous graphic image from around 1799 would have it. In the perspective of the narratives however, reason is no saving power, as I have argued. The examples of early science-fiction narratives have a different technological horizon than the contemporary world of AI and highly connected devices, but the narratives today are still very similar. Romanticism as a European artistic movement stretching from the end of the eighteenth century far into the nineteenth century saw industrialization and urbanization on the rise. Science had the world disenchanted, life was accelerated and new machines and architectures appeared. Early cinema came about with this process peaking, and the world being shaken by a world war. Human life was subjected to the rhythm of machines and man became part of the machine rather than being in control. Who could forget Charlie Chaplin’s struggle at the factory assembly line in Modern Times (USA 1936)? Early science-fiction plays out against the backdrop of machines, heavy iron monsters: steamy, dirty and utterly inhuman. This is not the world of contemporary science fiction. But it is bound to return to the movies in a surprising way, as we will see in the end of the following chapter.

Science-fiction narratives in the computer age and beyond: Cyborgs and singularities Today we might come to view this era in a nostalgic light: at least, technology was materialized and hence identifiable and ultimately destructible. Today’s reality and science fiction are all about hidden or vanishing technologies. Ubiquitous computing, a term coined by Mark Weiser in an article on the Computer for the 21st Century (1991) has become the guiding principle in computer design. The era of the computer as a huge chunk of hardware stands between the age of machines and our age of AI. Science fiction largely omitted the computer age and portrayed computer technology as an integrated AI from early on: be it Stanley Kubrick’s nearly omniscient board computer HAL in his movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (USA 1968) or the quasi-living structure of a spaceship in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (Soviet Union 1972, based on a novel under the same title by the Polish science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem from 1961). Even in Tarkovsky’s movie, which is more of a psychological reflection on the self and less about technology, the setting in a spaceship whose technological character merges with the struggles of the human mind, the image of an AI as a form of transcendence of the human mind is present. This movie might be one the most radical ones in portraying the inextricable intertwining of science, technology, reason, morality and psychological integrity or disintegration. Both movies contain religious motifs, such as the all-seeing, god-like eye (Hal), human evolution, birth and death, the transcendence of the human sphere (the space), the struggle with purpose and value of life and the limits of human reason and agency. Today, smart environments, wearables and highly connected and automated technologies are becoming the standard form of technology. Computers have not disappeared yet, but their materiality is becoming more and more ephemeral. The touchscreens, as movement-based interfaces famously introduced in Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (USA 2002) have become reality and the classic desktop computer becomes smaller by the day. Technology as hardware is vanishing from sight, just as the energy-consuming data hubs are hidden in the desert. Cloud computing is ephemeral only as image or metaphor,

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its reality consists of energy consuming very material data hubs. Already the fact that we think of computing as happening in a cloud, is interesting. It does not only suggest immateriality but also immunity to material destruction, ubiquity and transcendence. With the ubiquity of cloud computing questions of power, surveillance and privacy are being raised (e.g. Hu 2015). The image allows for an ironic twist: computation seems to happen where formerly angels and gods resided – in heaven or at least in a sphere beyond human perception. Interestingly, there seems to be no inquiry into this specific metaphorical dimension of cloud computing. Critical media and internet studies stress aspects of ubiquity, (in)visibility and transcendence (e.g. Elerding 2016). The fact that computational processes today constitute large parts of human reality and influence strongly human cognition leads to a deterministic view of technology as constituent of human cognition. Philosophers of technology and media such as Mark B.N. Hansen (2012) or Katherine N. Hayles (2012) hold that microtemporal computational processes engineer human cognition just as the invention of tools, use of symbols or printing has changed human culture, ways of thinking and remembering. The theory of technogenesis of consciousness (Hayles 2012) as it is discussed in media theory holds that human consciousness evolves with means other than human biology, namely microtemporal computational processes determining the cognitive nonconscious (Hayles 2017) and influencing human cognition beyond the level of awareness. The technologies in question are deemed intelligent, which leads to the idea that human intelligence today is permeated by AI. This line of thought leads directly into question of posthuman life, cyborgs, and eventually the overpowering of humanity through technology and the rise of a singularity (Kurzweil 2006; Bostrom 2014). The technogenesis of consciousness in its contemporary form in combination with intelligent technologies that vanish from view makes for a common uneasiness with regard to the future of human societies: invisible, highly connected and intelligent technologies influence human cognition and communication beyond any possible awareness (Hansen 2012). This sounds a lot like René Descartes’ malicious demon that infiltrates human minds and tricks them into believing in what does not exist. In science fiction, such matrix-like images of technology culminate in the vision of a singularity, which is a future AI that transcends human cognitive abilities and becomes the dominating life form. The theory of the singularity is based on Moore’s law of exponential growth of computing power in computers. As a theory of future technological development this is highly debated, because there is no necessity that future events need to develop the same way past ones did. Let me focus here on the impact on narratives in science-fiction and the respective religious motifs lingering in the background. In contemporary science fiction, the rise of a singularity is one of the dominant narratives. One of the first and most influential movies is Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (Japan 1995), based on a Manga by Masamune Shirow from 1989. In the animation movie, there are several interesting references. The plot merges the two central narratives: one is the rise of a singularity within the depths of the internet and the other one is the motif of the cyborg. Both are dominant narratives and from a philosophical perspective the most interesting ones. Cyborgs in this narrative are humans with mostly artificial bodies, whose humanity (the ghost) is preserved through a conglomerate of human brain cells within a biocapsule in the artificial brain. This topic brings forth questions of what is human and what is not, as the struggle of the protagonist, Major Kusanagi, shows. This is a topic that is ceaselessly repeated in contemporary science fiction today and has its roots in classical humanist thinking about the essence and nature

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of man. The second dominant aspect of the plot is the hacker aka the Puppet Master, an AI that hacks into these ghosts and manages to control them. Eventually the Puppet Master is identified as a ghost, who does not possess a biological brain, but has evolved from the internet and is identified as a threat to society. The portrayal of the incarnated Puppet Master, a general disembodied AI, in Ghost in Shell even reminds of images of the crucifixion of Christ. The tension between technology, artificial life and religion could not be made more obvious. The plot of Ghost in the Shell with questions about human/artificial life and the fear of a disembodied singularity (Puppet Master) fits perfectly in the Western narrative scheme on AI and the future of technology although it originates from Japan. Undoubtedly these topics are of global concern and in that case, there is no clear distinction to be made between Eastern and Western narratives. Still there are differences to be found that will be outlined in the next paragraphs. Transcendence (2014, USA) is the title of a Wally Pfister movie in which a singularity arises through the upload of a human mind to the internet. The singularity in this narrative transcends not only what is human it also transcends the dichotomy of silicon-based intelligent technology and nature. It is depicted as becoming elementary in the Greek sense of element depicted as a mist of nano-particles emanating from matter (Förster 2016). The uploaded mind of an assassinated researcher transforms biological matter and becomes a constituent of nature. During the evolution of this singularity the question is once again posed: Is this virtual existence the essence of the former human being or an altogether new form of being? The singularity however, transcends traditional dichotomies. This does not end in a posthuman utopia of cyborgs and entangled life forms. On the contrary, the plot adheres to the inherited scepticism of technology as the ultimate danger of technology (Heidegger 1977, 32).4 In order to prevent the singularity from transcending humanity, all technology gets switched off and disconnected from power and internet connection. Humanity goes back to a low-tech lifestyle in order to save its very essence of being human. The movie ends with a scene suggesting that the singularity has survived the power failure and become an elementary force in nature and thus ultimately persists as a condition of possibility of life. This twist however is only portrayed in a very short suggestive moment. The idea of the singularity becoming a new form of god or spiritual dimension is discussed in Transhuman and religious circles (Kurzweil 2006; O’Gieblyn 2017). The question of human life, its essence and relation with artificial life is the second central topos in contemporary science fiction.5 This question is deeply rooted in the history of Western philosophy, especially in classical humanism. What makes humans human and thus defines their status in the circle of life on earth is already central to Christian thought, since only humans were created in the image of god, so it is written in the bible (Solomon). The divine in humans, which sets them apart from all other creations according to Christian thought, is there likeness to god. Death and thus suffering belong to the side of the evil that has to be overcome. Renaissance humanism as a philosophical and secular movement reacted to Christian medieval dogmatism and strengthened rational thinking and scientific investigation. From humanism to enlightenment the idea that education and Bildung (formation) a more comprehensive notion than education) are conceived of as means to free the human mind from religious and philosophical dogma by strengthening virtue, science and rational thought as the cognitive ability that sets humans apart from animals. The similarity between Christian thought and humanism (in its various historical forms and philosophy of enlightenment) is the idea, that humans

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differ from all other life forms, which is the subject of critique in Posthumanism (Braidotti 2013, 31ff.; Ferrando 2019, 65 ff.). The fields of AI and humanoid robots challenge traditional ideas of humans as the only intelligent agents and blur the line between inanimate technology and biological life. In this atmosphere of cultural change and rapid technological advances the cultural discourse around human life, its value and essence gain new traction. With concepts like the technogenesis of human cognition, the echo of religious and mythological heritage becomes clear: Genesis is a concept that refers to creation. The narrative has a modern twist: it is not a transcendent god that creates human life. It is humans who create in the image of what is deemed to be human. This is in nuce what cultural evolution means: humans create their own niche and in doing so they change not only ways of life but also their ways of thinking and acting. In doing so they create new forms of life, be it a cyborg or a humanoid robot with an AI. Posthumanist thinkers welcome such a blurring of lines, but also from religious perspectives, this is not necessarily seen as negative (Herzfeld 2003; Kimura 2017; Ornella 2009). Cultural narratives however express a deep uneasiness with humans creating life, as we have seen at the beginning of this text. Intelligent technologies put a new twist to this: we are creating something in our own image: humanoid robots for example are intelligent machines with a human-like appearance. Posthumanism argues that this uneasiness or outright fear is a symptom of our humanist heritage, which gives human life a priority in terms of intelligence and value over other life forms. Within the posthumanist framework life is conceived of entangled, enmeshed and promiscuous in a positive way (e.g. Haraway 2016). Looking at research from evolutionary and developmental psychology it is obvious that the human mind is no island: its phylogenetic and ontogenetic becoming rests on the necessity of contact with other humans, cultural practices and the world in general as a place of contact (Förster 2020), resonance (Rosa 2019) and affordances (Gibson 1986; Gallagher 2005; Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1993). What is the reason that digital technologies are predominantly envisioned as evil, uncanny or at least dangerous (Förster 2016)? And why are there so few narratives that give this intimate relationship of humans and technology a positive twist?6 Most narratives stress dichotomies rather than utopias of entanglement. The strong, rational subject, an image inherited from enlightenment, is not yet ready to give in to the idea that it is neither strong nor self-sufficient in its rationality. Just like the various historical displacements from Copernicus to Kant, from Darwin to Freud at the time, digital technology today seems to be a sign of dark ages to come. The creator fears his creation, as it is vividly and with many hints to Christian thought depicted in Alex Garland’s movie Ex Machina (UK 2015). In this narrative, the humanoid robot Ava (interestingly female and by her name hinting at the biblical figure Eva, the first of her kind) is being tested for her intelligence by means of a setting similar to a Turing test (Turing 1950). Eventually the female android pits her human counterparts against each other, kills them and escapes her prison, which is a house in the middle of nowhere that hence becomes a death trap for the one survivor. The AI-based security system designed to keep humans’ safe turns against them just as their creation did. Ava eventually manages to escape the safe house and enters the human world. The audience is being kept guessing what will happen, when this more-than-human AI mingles with human society. This example shows how the motifs of either the singularity or a general AI are accompanied by an evaluation of human life, its differences from technological intelligence and its very essence. These reflections are mostly structured by humanist ideas: humans are defined in dichotic terms. Technology thus remains the other of human life.7

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In 2019 a Chinese movie was released that shows the complete opposite of the just depicted scenario: The Wandering Earth, based on a short story by Liu Cixin is all about heavy, iron-cast technology. The story is about the rotation of earth being brought to halt in order to avoid being consumed by the expanding sun. As a consequence, the earth has been turned mostly uninhabitable through tsunamis and extremely cold temperatures and most of the people live in subterranean communities because of the deadly circumstances on the surface. Earth needs to be propelled out of the gravitational system of the sun in order to not be destroyed. This brings the danger of colliding with other planets and as it happens, Jupiter threatens to collide with earth. The saving power here lies fully with the humans, their wit and technology. AI in this movie is portrayed as a cold, calculating force that is designed to preserve only the spaceship with probes of human DNA and plants instead of saving humanity. The human protagonist becomes aware of that and sacrifices himself and the spaceship in order to save earth. The humans and machines on earth do the rest. This narrative is in many aspects contrary to what we are used to in Western cinema. Even if AI also is not trusted, it is ultimately humanity that prevails by means of empathy and engineering skills. How do Asian narratives of technology differ from the Western ones? In the following I will use the text Singularity vs. Daoist Robots? by Yuk Hui on technology in China and look into a few examples from robotics and AI in Japan to draw a modest picture on Asian perspectives. This work will remain fragmentary and requires further elaboration.

PRAYER BOTS, HUMANOIDS AND HARMONY: ASIAN PERSPECTIVES A pluralistic view on technology – China Yuk Hui is one of the few contemporary philosophers who reflect on technology without universalizing claims. In his book on The Question concerning Technology in China. An Essay in Cosmotechnics (2018) he argues for cultural differences in theorizing technology. Hui shows how China’s approach to technology rests on a very different world view and mythology. He compares the cultural framing of technology and its role in mythology as founding narratives of the respective cultures. I will make my entry into this comparative part by using his characterization of the Chinese perspective on technology. In general, he states that Chinese thinking and mythology is a much more relational way of conceiving human life than the Western logic of substances that prevails since Plato and Aristoteles. Hui describes the Chinese approach with recourse to Daoist concepts, as a relation between ‘‘dao’, or the ethereal life force that circulates all things (commonly referred to as the way), and ‘qi’, which means tool or utensil. Together, dao and qi – the soul and the machine, so to speak – constitute an inseparable unity.’ (Hui 2020)8 Both aspects need to be kept in harmony according to Hui.9 Even though Heidegger’s post-metaphysical and relational thinking has in parts an affinity with Chinese and Japanese thought, his essay Concerning the Question of Technology (1977) lays emphasis on technology as a tool or instrument, which would capture only one side of the Daoist approach, the qi. Then again, Heidegger also argues that the instrumental character of technology does not capture its essence (1977, 6). Technology in his view is fundamentally a way or logic of conceiving of the world: as Gestell (enframing) (1977, 19ff.). In the German concept one would grasp the idea of something that functions to hold up something else, like a stand that holds a hammock.

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In the English translation of enframing, which is also an artificial concept, one could hear the phenomenological meaning of frame as one constituent of seeing an image as an image (Husserl 2005 [1898–1925], 49 [46]). Both concepts are highly suggestive of what technology in his sense essentially is about: mediating a relation between humans and the world. Technology, according to Heidegger, makes the world appear and thus is connected to the Greek notion of truth, alētheia (Heidegger 1977, 12ff.), of bringing forth. But it does so in a style that puts a veil on every other possible way of appearance or bringing forth. It hides the world beyond the logic of being a tool or a standing reserve. In doing so, also humans conceive of each other within that logic, which is singled out as an ultimate danger. Interestingly Heidegger also sees the ‘saving power’ (Heidegger 1977, 28) in this ultimate danger: he calls upon the arts, which in Greek antiquity where synonymous with techné (τέχνη), which was an umbrella term for skilful creation and was applied to craftsmanship, art and science. Heidegger in fact summons art, as a form of skilful creation without instrumental character to save from the ubiquity of the logic of enframing. He did not think of the arts as a secular form of reflection or entertainment. Art in the Greek sense is thought of as a mediator between the present and the transcendent, between humans and gods. In keeping the relation with transcendence through artistic mediation alive, the dangers of technology can be kept at bay according to Heidegger (1977, 34). Looking back at Hui’s description of the Chinese view of technology we can see that also in Heidegger’s thinking relationality is central, but ultimately technology remains within the logic of instrumentality. In his thinking technology is not captured when defined as a tool or instrument. Rather, it is a way of seeing or understanding the world. But if this logic is described by its result or effect, we end up with the instrumental view of technology. What is it that makes Chinese thinking different? The Chinese idea of technology is more strongly related to forces or processes that transcend the human realm and concern the world or even the cosmos as a whole. Even though the founding myth in Daoism, as Hui points out, does not talk of gods, but of sages, who were regarded as gods only after their death play roles in the equipment of humans with techné, with skills to survive and strive (Hui 2018, 16). The concept of progress as the West has developed it in modernity and for the most part still adheres to it, has only come to play a role in China through the effort to emancipate the country from colonial pressure from the West after the Opioid wars (starting in 1839) (Hui 2018, 31). Before technology was seen within a moral obligation towards the coming generations: Throughout Chinese history, the understood unity of dao and qi constituted the morality and form of life proper to each successive epoch. This unity has both motivated and constrained the development of technology in China compared to the West, where technology has been driven by instrumental reason through which tools are fashioned as a means to overcome rather than to harmonize with nature.10 The attempt to overcome nature has strong roots in the essentialist culture of Western thinking, in religious attempts to overcome the body and its natural instincts or strives and ultimately mortality, which originally, before the ultimate sin, was not a human trait. The consequences of this vain goal have been summarized under the concept of the anthropocene and become more and more pressing with climate change and the pandemic. Modern China is in no way free of guilt in this development of planetary scale. Still, this fact alone is not enough to reflect on technology today as a global or universal phenomenon. The cultural differences remain as Hui’s work shows. The contemporary

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development of technology and digital cultures with their strong global impact tend to obscure the differences between cultures and belief systems. Let us again take a look at the movie The Wandering Earth. Now we are able to pin down what makes that movie so different or surprising within the broad field of science-fiction movies today. It is not a tale of the singularity transcending humanity, this is quite obvious. But what makes humans prevail in such a catastrophe of a cosmic scale? In the movie earth is on a collision course with Jupiter and all attempts to change that course have been fruitless so far. Eventually, earth is saved by a loving father (of the protagonist on earth) who commands a spaceship that he puts on collision course with Jupiter. The following explosion impacts the course of earth and thus prevents deadly collision. The commander of the spaceship defies order from earth as well and more importantly from the spaceship’s AI, which is programmed to secure its survival at all costs. The father figure is not related to the Christian idea of Jesus and his sacrifice. It represents the worldly idea of human obligation to care for future generations. The logic in this movie is based on techné, human skill and moral obligation. This morality is not a Kantian rule following morality, but the attempt to act in harmony with something greater than the here and now, it is an obligation towards successive epochs and generations to come. In the spirit of traditional Chinese thinking also the harmony of the whole is concerned: human affairs are never independent from cosmological states, which govern nature and culture (Liu 2008, 30ff.).

Robots and Japanese Shintoism Besides tales of a general AI, a future singularity it is robots that fuel visions of technological futures. As we have seen, Western narratives use robots, androids or cyborgs as media to negotiate the frontlines between human and non-human beings as well as between nature and culture. Many of them have been portrayed as female androids evoking the biblical myth of Eva seducing Adam and bringing doom over mankind: starting with E.T.A. Hoffmann’s automaton Olimpia (evoking also the Greek mythology), to Fritz Lang’s android Maria (evoking the mother of Jesus and medieval witch burning) to contemporary figures like the nameless woman of extraterrestrial or artificial origin in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (UK 2013), that seduces men to be swallowed by the void. She also dies by being burned and is as many sci-fi femme fatale figures embodied by Scarlett Johansson. And as already mentioned Alex Garland’s female android Ava, who kills her creators and vanishes into the human world, is another robot of doom, at least in the eyes of humans. Real-life robots are subject to similar fears but they also start to represent a new era of human–machine interaction. In robotics movement and design are key to functionality of the products. At Boston dynamics, for example, robots are designed to move, run and jump just like animals do. Autonomous movement has been and still is one of the major issues in robotics. Apart from their movement their design is not likened to living beings. The famous robot Sophia by Hanson Robotics Hong Kong is designed to look as human-like as possible and also to speak and act in a very human manner. Surprisingly this female android was received in the Arab world with enthusiasm. Saudi Arabia granted her the first artificial being-in-the-world citizenship. Looking at the far past of the Arab Empire there is the history of building sophisticated automated (ingenious) devices especially between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. The scholar and engineer Al-Jazari for example built a girl automaton that served drinks and also a peacock that moved through hydropower. His drawings of over fifty

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such devices survived in a book dating back to 1206 (https://history​-computer​.com​/ the​-history​-of​-the​-arabic​-automata/). Artificiality poses no problem today in the Muslim culture, but cyborgs and transhumanist body enhancements collide with the religious background because they would artificially prolong life which should not be decided by humans (Mavani 2014; Ghaly 2019). Japan is the hotspot of robot design today, especially when it comes to social and care robots as well as humanoid robots, even used in temples to give out blessings and read out religious texts. Hiroshi Ishiguro’s lab at Osaka University is famous for his life-like humanoids, two of them even modelled to his own appearance. Such extremely life-like robots often evoke feelings of uneasiness and seem uncanny to the human observer. This phenomenon was described as an uncanny valley by the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori (1985) in 1970. It is a theory that captures a design problem in robotics: humans can empathize with artificial creatures if they show some human-like traits like smile, speech or gestures. If they are too similar to actual humans this empathy collapses into a feeling of uncanniness, as it was described by Sigmund Freud (1961 [1919]). He developed a theory about the roots of fear tracing feelings of the uncanny back to familiarity and a kind of hominess. The German word heimlich unites two aspects of familiarity (heim-home) and the hidden (Geheimnis-secret). The hidden in Freud’s theory is charged with repressed feelings, traumas or cultural and religious taboos (1961 [1919] 3ff.). The ambivalence of the hidden or secret within familiar spaces leads to fear, just as the hidden machine nature evokes fear of the automaton. The concept of the uncanny also points to the source of fear lying in a transcendence (the hidden, invisible) folded into the daily life-world, just as E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Sandmann, which Freud interprets in his text, evokes fear of evil from ordinary situations. The uncanny valley is avoided if the robot design at least partially shows the artificial nature of humanoids. This is the case with the Buddhist robot preacher Mindar, who gives blessings and prayers for the visitors of a temple in Kyoto, less sophisticated models are not uncommon in Buddhist temples elsewhere. How can a holy act be fulfilled by a machine? – one might ask from a Western perspective. Well, Muslims use prayer bots in social networks to fulfil their daily duty of devotion. In the case of Japan there is already a great number of robots, from pet robots to receptionist robots in hotels and public buildings, as well as care robots and household helpers around. Looking at the Japanese mythology and early religious roots of Shintoism, the divide between nature and culture, human/ non-human, organic/inorganic is not substantialized. Nature is not the other of culture and thus artificial beings are not the radical other of human life, as it is mostly perceived in the West. In Shintoism, everything can be animated and be a god or spirit (kami).11 Also, Buddhism as the dominant religion in Asia does not hold a concept of human self as an exception in nature. Quite the contrary, the human self is deemed an illusion that is overcome in meditative practices. Both Shintoism and Buddhism do not give humans a special place within the whole sphere of worldly being. The state of enlightenment in Buddhism is a state of no self (Siderits 2010). That presumably is the reason why people in this tradition do not feel challenged by the presence of artificial beings.

CONCLUDING REMARKS ON PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION AND TECHNOLOGY The question concerning technology today seems to be a universal one. With highly distributed and connected information technologies that are ubiquitous and govern

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financial markets and informational, political and cultural processes on a planetary scale, one tends to think about technology as a universal sphere or problem. This does not do justice to the different histories, developments and cultural implications technology has in the different cultures. Hui for example argues that the modern notion of technology as a means to an end, which ultimately is progress even after insight into the consequences modern technology has had on a global scale. The instrumental view of technology seems so ubiquitous, but in fact it might be more of an exception. Phillipe Descola, a French anthropologist points in his work Beyond Nature and Culture (2014) to at least four significantly different formations of ontologies that shape cultures around the globe, which are related to myths and spiritual cultures: ‘(1) animism (where there is an assumption that many human and non-human beings have similar interiorities to one another, but are made up of very different stuff); (2); naturalism (where all beings are radically separated by their internal lives, albeit made of basically the same substance); (3) totemism (in which there is continuity between both interiority and physicality, across a very wide array of beings); (4) analogism (a sort of radical system of difference, in which each being has a uniquely constituted interior and physical existence)’ (122). The assumption that our Western view of the world, of our exclusive place as rational and moral beings within a larger natural context, is by far not the only way in which humans can understand themselves in relation to technology and the world. Hui spells this variety of possible conceptualization of human-world relations out along the lines of technological developments. Fundamental or original forms of technology, from fire to the invention of the wheel and understanding nature in order to farm the land are deeply inscribed in every myth and belief system. To understand the plurality of these narratives is one step beyond the hegemonial power of technology today exerted through the West and global co-operations. As the extensive first part of this article has shown, Western views and narratives of technology are still stuck in religious and anthropocentric structures. It is obvious that universalization of this way of thinking is more than problematic. The Chinese way of thinking in relations and taking into account bigger perspectives is definitely an interesting counterpart. But the social reality today in China shows how strong Western notions of progress and instrumentalization have already been incorporated. The question is, if a reflection on narratives of technology, its origins and future vision that uncovers philosophical and religious/spiritual aspects can lend the plurality of cultural takes on technology a certain drive against the universalizing attempts of Western tech culture. My attempt to achieve an intercultural understanding of technological cultures looks at the patchwork of narratives derived from mythology and religion as topoi or Leitmotifs that are incorporated in contemporary science-fiction and technological invention.12 Philosophy of religion plays a vital role in understanding narratives of technology and their sociocultural impact. This article had a much more modest goal: my aim was to show how strongly religious beliefs and images are intertwined with technological visions of the future. And it is not only utopic or dystopic narratives that are governed by very old belief systems about humans and their relations and entanglements with mythology and nature. It is technology itself that becomes a medium of future ways of living, values and beliefs, just like architecture designs the way life might unfold inside its walls or outside. This overflow of significance is digested through cultural narratives which themselves fuel new technological developments. If philosophy of technology teams up with a globally inclusive philosophy of religion, then there is a growing chance to develop a deeper understanding of the plurality of life

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forms and belief systems underneath the heavy blanket of a globalized digital culture. Breaking through the surface of a normalized, optimized and through over-aestheticization anaestheticized (Welsch 1997, 78ff.) global culture can be a way to not only understand cultural differences but to nourish them in order to strengthen also a diversification and democratization of technologies. If technology is only reflected under the Western paradigm of progress, optimization and dualist conceptuality (Hui 2018, 33), we have not come very far from colonial times. But this colonization is led by corporate interests, whose values are restricted to economic success. The potential of technologies beyond corporate interests is huge and can be used for emancipatory processes, which requires a knowledge about their non-material overflow of significance, value and vision.

NOTES 1. Yuk Hui (2018) speaks of cosmotechnics with regard to cultural conceptions of technology to argue that technology and its founding narratives shapes all cultures, and secondarily their respected religious traditions, and as such exhibit much more than just an instrumental function. The German media theorists Christoph Ernst and Jens Schröter (2021) argue in a similar vein when they discuss the aesthetics of tech-demos. The demonstration of new devices always includes a vision of future technologies and their cultural impact. 2. The Prometheus myth is comparable to Arnold Gehlen’s concept of man as Mängelwesen (deficient being, Gehlen 1988) in comparison to animals that are equipped with instincts and means to fend for themselves. 3. An interesting article on the omnipresence of Scarlett Johansson in these science-fiction movies has been written by Malcolm Matthews (2018). 4. ‘It is precisely in Enframing, which threatens to sweep man away into ordering as the supposed single way of revealing, and so thrusts man into the danger of the surrender of his free essence – it is precisely in this extreme danger that the innermost indestructible belongingness of man within granting may come to light, provided that we, for our part, begin to pay heed to the coming to presence of technology.’ (Heidegger 1977, 32). 5. Other topics in science fiction today are space travel (e.g. The Martian, USA 2015), utopian/dystopian scenarios of future societies (e.g. The Handmaid's Tale, USA 2017-), extraterrestrial life (Arrival, USA 2016) or virtualization/enhancement through avatars (e.g. Surrogates, USA 2009) or medical enhancements of human life (e.g. Ad Vitam, France 2018). I will not go into detail with these topics since that would exceed the scope and length of this article. 6. One of the rare examples here might be the movie Avatar (USA 2009) that describes a world discovered through the use of avatars, of surrogate embodiments of soldiers that is indeed a world of connection and participation. In the plot the colonial scheme of humans trying to get to the resources of the Planet Pandora to secure their own survival is turned into a tale of a nature as a complex intelligence superior to human individualism and egocentricity. 7. Series like Black Mirror or Westworld and movies like Her, Surrogates, both Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 and many others reflect the difference between artificial and human life in exactly this humanist style. Narratives that focus on enhanced human life usually depict societies that are deeply torn by class differences. Examples here are Gattaca, Altered Carbon, The Island, In Time or Ad Vitam which present highly

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dystopic futures. In most of these examples, relevant technologies are imagined as small, hidden or visually not present at all. The technology in question is ephemeral, while the consequences shake the human world or turn it into a dystopic, hierarchical place. 8. https://www​.noemamag​.com​/singularity​-vs​-daoist​-robots/ 9. Hui's interpretation of dao and qi is adapted to the question of technology. Usually, qi is not translated as a tool but as energy animating life, while the dao is an ontological principle, seen as transcendence and immanent principle of the cosmos. 10. https://www​.noemamag​.com​/singularity​-vs​-daoist​-robots/ 11. For a detailed description of Shintoism and Kami see Teeuwen, Scheid (2002). 12. This is a different approach than for example taken by Lewin (2012), who for once analyses only Western philosophical approaches and regards philosophy of religion as a conceptual framework that enters the discussion, where philosophy of technology runs into dead end streets. His intention is a critique of technology as a progress oriented process that is too complex to be structured or tamed by secular interventions from philosophy or sociology, but needs a fundamental reorientation in a religious sense because technology itself has been shaped by Christian thought.

REFERENCES Bostrom, N. (2014), Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Braidotti, R. (2013), The Posthuman, Cambridge: Polity. Coeckelbergh, M. (2020), AI Ethics, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Descola, P. (2014), Beyond Nature and Culture, trans. J. Lloyd, Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Ernst, C. and J. Schröter (2021), ‘Die Zukunft vorstellen – Technologie-Demonstrationen in der Geschichte digitaler Medien’, TG Technikgeschichte, 88 (1): 79–106. Ferrando, F. (2019), Philosophical Posthumanism. Theory in the New Humanities, London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Förster, Y. (2016), ‘Singularities and Superintelligence: Transcending the Human in Contemporary Cinema’, Trans-Humanities 9 (3), Ewha Institute for the Humanities (EIH), Seoul, 33–50. Förster, Y. (2020), ‘Aesthetics of the Past and the Future, Human Life within Changing Environments’, in Z. Somhegyi and M. Ryynänen (eds), Aesthetics in Dialogue, 237–50, Bern: Peter Lang. Freud, S. (1961 [1919]). ‘The Uncanny’, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XVII (1917–1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works, 217–56, London: Hogarth Press. Ghaly, M. (2019), ‘Islamic Ethical Perspectives on Human Genome Editing’, Issues in Science and Technology, 35 (3): 45–8. Gallagher, S. (2005), How the Body Shapes the Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gehlen, A. (1988), Man. His Nature and Place in the World, New York: Columbia University Press. Gibson, J. J. (1986 [1979]), The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

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Elerding, C. (2016), ‘The Materiality of the Digital: Petro-Enlightenment and the Aesthetics of Invisibility’, Postmodern Culture, 26 (2) Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/pmc.2016.0007 (accessed 14 August 2021). Hansen, M. B.N. (2012), ‘Engineering Preindividual Potentiality: Technics, Transindividuation, and 21st-Century Media’, SubStance, 41 (3): 32–59. Haraway, D (2016), Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chtulucene, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hayles, K. N. (2012), How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hayles, K.N. (2017), Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious, Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Heidegger, M. (1977), ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. W. Lovitt, 3–35, New York, London: Garland Publishing Inc. Herzfeld, N (2003), ‘Creating in Our Own Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Image of God’, Zygon. Journal of Religion and Science, 37 (2): 303–16. Hoffmann, E.T.A. (1816), ‘The Sandmann’, available online: https://germanstories​.vcu​.edu​/ hoffmann​/sand​_e​.html (accessed 12 July 2021). Hu, T.-H. (2015), A Prehistory of the Cloud, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hui, Y. (2018), The Question concerning Technology in China. An Essay in Cosmotechnics, Falmouth: Urbanomic Media Ltd. Hui, Y. (2020), ‘Singularity Vs. Daoist Robots. Is There Another Path Than Accelerated Western Modernization?’, Noema, 19 June. Available online: https://www​.noemamag​.com​/singularity​ -vs​-daoist​-robots/ (accessed 13 July 2021). Husserl, E. (2005), ‘Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898–1925)’, trans. J. B. Brough, in R. Bernet (ed.), Husserliana - Edmund Husserl Collected Works, 11, Dordrecht: Springer. Kimura, T. (2017), ‘Robotics and AI in the Sociology of Religion: A Human in Imago Roboticae’, Social Compass, 64 (1): 6–22. Kurzweil, R. (2006), The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. New York: Penguin Books. Lewin, D. (2012), Technology and the Philosophy of Religion, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Liu, J.L. (2008), An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy. From Ancient Philosophy to Chinese Buddhism, Malden; Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Mavani H. (2014), ‘Islam—God’s Deputy: Islam and Transhumanism’, in C. Mercer and D. F. Maher (eds), Transhumanism and the Body. Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and Its Successors, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Masahiro, M. (1985), The Buddha in the Robot. A Robot Engineer's Thought on Science and Religion, Tokyo: Kosei Publishing. Matthews, M. (2018), ‘Posthumanism and Miss Representation: Scarlett Johansson Is Getting Under the Skin of Men’, Journal of Posthuman Studies, 2 (2): 166–83. McLuhan, M. (2001 [1964]), Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, London, New York: Routledge. O'Gieblyn, M. (2017), ‘God in the Machine: My Strange Journey into Transhumanism’, The Guardian, 18 April. Available online: https://www​.theguardian​.com​/technology​/2017​/apr​/18​/ god​-in​-the​-machine​-my​-strange​-journey​-into​-transhumanism (accessed 14 August 2021).

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Ornella, A.D. (2009), ‘The Promethean Myth; An Argument for Methodological Atheism’, Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology, 3: 125–51. Rosa, H. (2019), Resonance: A Sociology of Our Relationship to the World, Cambridge: Polity Press. Shelley, M. W. (2013 [1818]), Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, North Charleston: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Siderits, M. (2010), ‘Buddhas as Zombies: A Buddhist Reduction of Subjectivity’, in M. Siderits, E. Thompson and D. Zahavi (eds), Self, No Self?: Perspectives From Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Teeuwen, Mark, and Bernhard Scheid (2002), ‘Tracing Shinto in the History of Kami Worship: Editors’ Introduction’, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 29 (3/4): 195–207. Turing, A.M. (1950), ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’, Mind, LIX (236): 433–60. Varela, F., E. Thompson and E. Rosch (1993), The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Weiser, M. (1991), ‘The Computer for the 21st Century’, Scientific American 265 (3), Special Issue: Communications, Computers and Networks: Work, Play and Strive in Cyberspace, 94–105. Welsch, W. (1997), Undoing Aesthetics (Theory, Culture & Society), trans. A. Inkpin, London: Sage. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick (UK, USA 1968)

FILMS AND SERIES Ad Vitam, Thomas Cailley, Manuel Schapira (France 2018) Altered Carbon, Laeta Kalogridis (USA 2018–20) Arrival, Denis Villeneuve (USA 2016) Avatar, James Cameron (USA 2009) Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker (UK 2011–19) Blade Runner 2049, Denis Villeneuve (USA 2017) Blade Runner, Ridley Scott (USA 1982) Ex Machina, Alex Garland (UK 2014) Gattaca, Andrew Niccol (USA 1997) Ghost in the Shell, Mamoru Oshii (Japan, UK 1995) Her, Spike Jonz (USA 2013) In Time, Andrew Niccol (USA 2011) Metropolis, Fritz Lang (Germany 1927) Minority Report, Steven Spielberg (USA 2002) Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin (USA 1936) Solaris, Andrei Tarkovsky (Soviet Union, 1972) Surrogates, Jonathan Mostow (USA 2009) The Handmaid’s Tale, Bruce Miller (USA 2017–) The Island, Michael Bay (USA 2005) The Martian, Ridley Scott (USA 2015) Transcendence, Wally Pfister (USA 2014) Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer (UK 2013) Wandering Earth, Frant Gwo (China 2019) Westworld, Lisa Joy, Jonathan Nolan (USA 2016–)

Chapter 18

Can you see the seer? Approaching consciousness from an Advaita Vedānta perspective VARUN KHANNA

INTRODUCTION The constant struggle to define consciousness has largely been due to its intangible nature. How can we describe something that we cannot perceive with our senses or instruments? We can know what it is like to perceive, and what it is like to have consciousness, but it has proven difficult over the millennia to pinpoint with a measure of certainty what consciousness actually is. Furthermore, the method by which we can study consciousness is elusive. Can there be a ‘science of consciousness’?1 By current empirical scientific standards, it is difficult to study consciousness objectively and holistically because either we do not know enough about the brain or there are seemingly nonphysical components to consciousness that are rendered subjective by the scientific method. But must the methods employed to study consciousness be borrowed from any of the natural scientific disciplines, like biology, chemistry or physics, or can it indeed be studied by the psychological or philosophical disciplines, with an independent epistemology and methodology? This chapter brings to light a popular Indian theory of consciousness by highlighting its history, epistemology, method and conclusion. The philosophical school within which this theory is proposed is Advaita Vedānta or the system of non-dualism. After briefly surveying the nature of the historical and recent trends of consciousness studies in Western schools of science and philosophy, I notice that there exists an equally diverse variety of approaches in the history of Indian philosophy. Advaita Vedānta is a currently living tradition textually rooted in (1) the Vedas, (2) the ‘prasthāna-trayī’ or the threefold canon of the tradition and (3) the commentaries on the canon by the chief systematizer of the Advaita Vedānta tradition, Śaṅkara (788–820 CE). I will proceed to examine some general concerns regarding Advaita Vedānta’s epistemology, with which the theory of consciousness is postulated. After these preliminary considerations, I will dive into a crucial manual of this tradition: Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka, ‘Distinction between the Seer and the Seen’, which offers an

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eponymous method of inquiry to ascertain what it can reveal about consciousness. As a part of a larger contemporary philosophical system, it is studied today in various Advaita Vedāntic institutions around the world, tied to a soteriological framework of mokṣa, liberation from the cycle of birth and death.

CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES TODAY In the last several centuries, Western philosophers have proposed many theories regarding consciousness, from Descartes (1596–1650) and Spinoza (1632–77) to Nagel (b. 1937) and Chalmers (b. 1966).2 The definition of ‘consciousness’ remains a challenge mainly because there are different worldviews that all use similar terms to mean different things. Humans may have some common experience of being conscious, but their definitions of consciousness and its origin are based on different philosophies. It may be argued that a sufficiently similar definition can allow us to begin performing research on consciousness, and while that research has certainly begun, the field of consciousness studies is still far from enough consensus. I begin by reviewing a few aspects of the selected contemporary theories, leading into the Advaita Vedāntic (also known as Advaitic or Vedāntic) approach to consciousness. When studying consciousness from a scientific perspective, there appear to be two general methods of approach. One is an empirical method, which asks questions of an empirical kind, seeking to locate consciousness to a specific place in the brain, or to identify consciousness as a product of brain activity. It asks questions like ‘What parts of the brain are associated with conscious experience?’ or ‘What does brain activity look like in different states of consciousness, like dream sleep and dreamless sleep?’ or ‘When does a conscious experience arise, in relation to the associated neurological change?’ This is a third-person objective method of study, and it can reveal physical changes and characteristics. But it is limited in that it is not able to examine causality between consciousness and changes in the brain, for example, or tell us anything about the underlying nature of consciousness. This method is still useful in understanding the brain and its relationship to our conscious experiences, like the seat of ‘fear’ in the brain but cannot tell us about the nature of fear itself. Another general method of approach to the study of consciousness in the scientific model is a first-person approach. This involves self-observation and is psychological in nature. Questions like ‘How does it feel to see the color blue?’ or ‘What is it like to have a nose?’ may be asked through this approach. This method seems to reach more into the subjective experience of being conscious but can at best only reveal qualities of being conscious, such as being happy, being sad or being curious, but not consciousness itself. Although useful in understanding the relationship between various stimuli and their associated feelings, or even the feeling of having various qualities, like joyfulness or tallness, it reaches its limit when one asks, ‘What is the nature of the one who is feeling these feelings?’ More recently, there have arisen fields that combine these two methods to explore the relationship of the brain and consciousness such as ‘neurotheology’, which studies the seat of ‘god’ in the brain by mapping the neurology of religious or spiritual experiences.3 In the Western philosophical world, several theories about the nature of and the properties of consciousness have been offered. For example, according to ‘substance dualism’, there are two distinct substances that cannot be reduced to any common existential ground: matter and consciousness.4 This means that consciousness is a

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nonphysical substance. According to ‘property dualism’, on the other hand, consciousness emerges as a property of complex physical systems, yet is itself nonphysical. But according to ‘functionalism’, consciousness is just a function of the brain and is not a separate substance. (Velmans 2009, Part I) There are even more ways to look at consciousness from the Indian perspective. According to Advaita Vedānta, the entire perceived world is an ‘illusion/appearance’ (māyā) and in fact only ‘consciousness’ (cit, caitanya, jñāna), which is of the nature of knowledge and luminosity exists; instead of being bodies with a consciousness, we are ‘consciousness’ itself, inhabiting an illusory body, due to false identification (adhyāsa) with the illusory world (saṃsāra).5 Realizing this, Advaita Vedānta claims, results in pure bliss (ānanda), which is a natural, abiding aspect of consciousness. As darkness recedes when a light is shined, Advaita says, so too ignorance recedes when knowledge is shined, and the resulting revelation is bliss (contrary to the humorous saying, ‘ignorance is bliss’).6 Yet, according to the Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism, ‘consciousness’ is merely a byproduct of the interaction between the mind and its objects, and is not substantially real, insofar as it exists only momentarily. The ‘illusion’ involved here is the idea of a ‘self’ at all, and is the cause of transcendental suffering, which can be removed if one gains clarity about the fact that the ‘self’ is nothing more than a series of interrelated processes rooted in momentary events.7 Clearly, there are many distinct worldviews that refer to the same underlying experience of consciousness in different ways. Yet, the common experience is that of ‘being conscious’ – as Descartes pointed out, one finds it very difficult to deny one’s own conscious existence. It follows that the study of consciousness is one of the most fundamental studies of humankind, yet its object is highly elusive to systematic inquiry. The current popular paradigm within the scientific world is that of physicalism, which assumes that only the physical world exists and that consciousness is some kind of product of brain activity, inseparable from the existence of the brain. But many theories of consciousness have come in and out of fashion, and as Max Velmans, says, ‘being out of current fashion does not mean they are entirely wrong’. It is fascinating that consciousness is at the forefront of scientific inquiry today, yet from a philosophical perspective the current methods of inquiry seem potentially incapable of encapsulating the object of their study. This is, in short, because within the current physicalist paradigm of science we are using physical methods to study consciousness, and these methods of inquiry can only reveal physical properties. If there is more to consciousness than electrical impulses and chemical interactions within the brain, then the scientific methods we are currently using to study consciousness may not be able to access that information.

A NOTE ABOUT ‘INDIAN PHILOSOPHY’ Despite using the term ‘Sanskritic’, ‘Indian’, or ‘Indic’ to describe the philosophical content of this paper, there are some historical points to be noted to ascertain the credibility of such terminology. A frequent criticism of Indian thought is that it is ‘religious’, and therefore divorced from the practice of what is today called ‘philosophy’.8 The portion of Indian thought that has philosophical value is deemed ‘Indian philosophy’, but cannot be considered simply as ‘philosophy’, because it is steeped in the Indian cultural context and is therefore not universally applicable. Taking a closer look at the history of the discipline

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of philosophy during the Enlightenment period reveals that the source of this charge lies in the Eurocentric equation of European strands of philosophical thinking with a universal category called ‘philosophy’, the theory described as ‘European Universalism’.9 It assumes that European philosophical thought is free from cultural context and influences, and thus is worthy of universal application. An unfortunate result of this history is the creation of the discipline of ‘Indian philosophy’, which is not only constantly engaged in a struggle to define itself against its Western interlocutors, but as a result of the delineation ‘Indian’, comes to be seen as a homogeneous branch of philosophy that happens to be rooted in the Indian socio-religious context.10 As such, there is little room for nuanced discussion of the nature and history of philosophical disagreement and debate in ancient, pre-modern and modern India and the innumerable varieties of positions held by Indian philosophers throughout the ages. This paper seeks to bring to light only one such line of argument regarding the nature of consciousness, from the perspective of Advaita Vedānta, or the non-dualistic school of Indian philosophical thought.

INTRO TO ADVAITA VEDĀNTA Vedānta means ‘end of the Vedas’. It is called as such because it is broadly the category assigned to philosophies that are based on the speculations of the Upaniṣads, widely considered to be the philosophical culmination (i.e. ‘ends’) of the Vedas. Advaita Vedānta is the sub-branch of Vedānta philosophy that concludes, based on its understanding of the Upaniṣads, that there is a non-dual (a–dvaita) substratum of the universe called Brahman.11 This Brahman is ‘real’ in that it is an eternal, immutable ontological and phenomenological basis for everything in existence.12 In fact, it is of the nature of existence/ truth, consciousness/knowledge, and bliss/infinitude. Later in the chapter, we will discuss in detail the logic of such a position, which is largely an exercise in epistemology. Advaita Vedānta’s non-duality has been interpreted as falling into various categories of philosophical inquiry, but in some way or another, it seems to elude each category. For example, it cannot be classified as substance non-dualism, for according to Advaita, Brahman cannot be defined as a substance.13 It cannot be classified as property non-dualism, for Brahman is not a property of anything, and it does not have any properties. Nor can it be classified as a kind of naturalism, for the world does not ‘arise’ from Brahman; after all, an illusion does not ‘arise’ from its substratum, the illusion has no independent existence at all. Could it be classified as a kind of monism? In popular culture Advaita is often identified as such, but Rambachan reminds us that ‘[n]umerical categories, such as the number one, gain meaning from the existence of other numbers. When reality is non-dual, we are constrained to use such categories with caution’. (2006, 67)14 The relationship between all things – substantial, phenomenal or otherwise – and Brahman is that of not-two-ness, not oneness. According to Advaita, nothing is beyond Brahman, and that is what makes Brahman infinite, while Brahman is beyond everything.

VEDAS Advaita Vedānta philosophy traces its history back to the Upaniṣads portions of the Vedas, dating back to approximately 1500–500 BCE, where a variety of declarations are made, in story format, about the nature of the self, existence and consciousness. These stories are mostly presented as dialogues between teacher and student and perform the critical

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function of rejecting the transcendental value of the ritual-centric view of life described in the chronologically earlier parts of the Vedas.15 The philosophical underpinnings of this critique rest on the idea that there is a self that continues from moment to moment, which is bound up in collections of finite matter. A performer of Vedic rituals seeks to perform his social, familial, and religious duty (dharma) in order to achieve material prosperity (artha) and with this prosperity enjoy the pleasures (kāma) of life. The Upaniṣads point out that there is no end to this cycle, and that the wealth and pleasure that a person gains in life will always be finite, leading to the suffering associated with separation from loved ones, finitude of achieved wealth and the limitation of that wealth to gain pleasure, which will also end. Life, too, is finite, and no matter how much activity one performs to gain more and more wealth or pleasure, even becoming king-like, one is sure to die at the end, leaving behind everything one had struggled hard to gain. In this way, the Upaniṣads indicate the futility of seeking these ends in the face of this transcendental suffering: ‘Why aim for something finite, when you could seek the infinite?’ They promise an infinitude free of suffering and full of eternal happiness, if only a person can recognize one’s own relationship with Brahman, a concept that eludes definition because of its infinite nature. According to Advaita Vedānta, it is not different from one’s own truest self, and thus also escapes definition, since it is not an object of cognition like other non-self objects. However, cognition of this infinite and eternal true self, which comes in the form of a special kind of truth statement, is considered possible and is the desired end of Advaita Vedānta. Knowledge of one’s own self-as-Brahman, which is also known as ātman, results in mokṣa, or release from the cycle of birth and death based on the illusory understanding that one is not infinite (and therefore subject to suffering) due to the association of one’s sense of self with the finite body and mind. Importantly, the Vedas (including the Upaniṣads) are believed by later philosophers to be of impersonal origin, that is, having divine – and not human – authorship.16 In other words, they are considered as revelatory. The authoritative nature of Vedic passages, therefore, is due to their perceived intrinsic divinity, which means that they are considered to be perfect, immutable, and revealing of truths (specifically, about dharma and Brahman) that cannot be known otherwise through ordinary perception and inference. Thus, the Vedas constituted an independent epistemological source for knowledge about dharma and Brahman that could not be contradicted by other means. Following the composition of the Vedas, in order to present a theory of dharma or Brahman, philosophers were required to refer to and comment upon Vedic passages to substantiate their claims. The Vedas thus became the keystone of authority for this and other schools in India.17

PRASTHĀNATRAYĪ Over time, the philosophy of Vedānta came to be more robust as well as standardized. There are three canonical textual sources that are considered the tripartite cornerstones of Vedānta, called the ‘prasthāna-trayī’. These are the Upaniṣads, the Brahma Sūtra and the Bhagavad Gītā. The word prasthāna means ‘point of departure’, and trayī means ‘tripartite’ or ‘three-fold’. Thus, these three textual sources are considered the threefold starting points upon which the philosophy of Vedānta is built. The Upaniṣads are also known as the śruti-prasthāna (revelatory starting point) or the upadeśa-prasthāna (starting point consisting of a direct teaching) because they form the

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basis for the philosophy of Vedānta by providing the base terminology of Brahman and ātman and indicating the possibility of infinite happiness and the cessation of suffering through knowledge of Brahman. The Brahma Sūtra, which is a text containing 555 aphoristic statements that comprise a set of overarching logical arguments about the nature of the Upaniṣadic doctrine of Brahman, is called the nyāya-prasthāna (logical starting point) or the tarka-prasthāna (starting point of reasoning). The Bhagavad Gītā, which is a well-known philosophical text of 700 verses, comprising eighteen chapters of the Sanskrit epic Mahābhārata, is a text that is taught through the character of Lord Krishna to the warrior Arjuna in the middle of a battlefield explaining the philosophy of Vedānta and practical spiritual guidelines for a person who wishes to achieve liberation from a life of transcendental suffering. As part of the canon of Vedānta, it is also known as the smṛti-prasthāna (starting point of received tradition) and sādhana-prasthāna (starting point of spiritual practice). These three form the canon of Vedāntic literature, and anyone who wishes to formally explain Vedānta philosophy should comment upon all three of these texts and rely upon them as sources of authority for their interpretation in the context of the Vedānta tradition, which is alive even today.18

ŚAṄKARA (C. 788–820 CE) The first known commentator on the entire prasthānatrayī was Śaṅkara, who systematized the philosophical school of Advaita Vedānta. According to Śaṅkara, the following are the salient features of Advaita with special reference to consciousness or jñāna. First, and perhaps most importantly, there is ultimately one reality without a second. That one reality is known as Brahman, and is identical with the ātman, another word for the principle underlying the individual self. Second, Brahman cannot be described in words. It is anirvacanīya, inexpressible, and as Śaṅkara explains, it is something that is ‘intimated (lakṣyate), not plainly expressed (natūcyate)’ (Lipner 1997, 313–14). Yet it is not completely unknowable, for it is of the nature of consciousness (jñāna) and reality (satya). Third, the perception of the dualism between ‘myself’ and the ‘other’ is based on avidyā, or ignorance of the reality and non-duality of Brahman. According to Śaṅkara, when an individual pursues enlightenment, then vidyā, knowledge of the non-dual nature of Brahman, dispels māyā, the illusion that enshrouds the individual ego, and liberates one from the bondage of saṁsāra, the illusory world, removing any notion of ‘myself’ and any ‘other’. The individual is left with only the perfect identity of Brahman and ātman.19 Śaṅkara’s influence on this canon’s interpretations gave birth to the systematized school of Advaita Vedānta, which even today occupies a central spot in Hindu philosophical discourse.

ADVAITA VEDĀNTA’S MAIN EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONCERNS In traditional Indian systems of philosophical thought (darśanas),20 a thorough understanding of epistemology was imperative,21 as an essential component of religious development was discussion and debate. Two debaters, both facing each other in a style known as pūrvapakṣa,22 would first establish the premises upon which to base their

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arguments. Then, having established what were considered the accepted means of valid knowledge (pramāṇa), they would argue.23 The question that an accepted pramāṇa is meant to answer is ‘How do we know?’ To the debaters, it was essential to agree on how they could know what they knew. Based upon these accepted pramāṇas, they would articulate their arguments. Often, the loser of the debate would accept the viewpoint of the victor as his own, for it was illogical to hold on to an argument that could be defeated. A classic example is the story of Śaṅkara’s debate with Maṇḍana Miśra from Vidyāraṇya’s hagiographical Śaṅkara-Dig-Vijaya, where the condition of the debate was that the loser would become the disciple of the victor. Ubhaya Bhāratī, Maṇḍana’s wife, was known to be a great scholar herself and was appointed as the adjudicator of the debate. After Śaṅkara defeated Maṇḍana, Ubhaya Bhāratī stepped in to say that he had not truly defeated Maṇḍana until he had defeated her too, since she constituted his other half. Since Śaṅkara was an ascetic, she asked him questions related to erotic knowledge. Śaṅkara, through his occult practice, entered the fresh corpse of a king and learned the secrets of eroticism through his amorous exploits with several women at the royal palace. Eventually, Śaṅkara defeated Ubhaya Bhāratī too. As a result of Śaṅkara’s victory in the debate, the story goes, Maṇḍana Miśra was initiated by Śaṅkara into his monastic order and renamed Sureśvara.24 Traditionally, pramāṇa is the instrument (karaṇa) of valid knowledge (pramā). To this end, Swāmī Satprakāshānanda provides an eloquent explanation of the word ‘pramāṇa’ in the darśana context: By ‘instrument (karaṇa)’ is meant the special cause which, being operative, produces a specific effect. In visual knowledge, for instance, the organ of vision and the mind [manas]25 both are operative; as such both are its causes; but the organ of vision and its operation constitute the special cause (karaṇa). In audition the organ of hearing being operative produces the knowledge, so this is its special cause (karaṇa). In perceiving an object by a particular sense-organ the mind is not the special cause (karaṇa) of the knowledge, because its operation is common to all cases of external perception. Thus, pramāṇa is the special means by which some kind of right knowledge (pramā) is attained. The implication is that each pramāṇa has a characteristic way of conveying knowledge and presents a distinct type of knowledge; and it is not in the nature of one pramāṇa to contradict another. (Satprakāshānanda 1965, 35) Advaita Vedānta accepts six types of pramāṇa. The first of these is called pratyakṣa, or direct perception. It is the fundamental basis for the next four pramāṇas, namely anumāna (inference), upamāna (comparison), arthāpatti (postulation) and anupalabdhi (non-apprehension) because these four all rely on some type of previous perception for their own ends. For example, in order to make the inference (anumāna) that there is fire on a mountain, when all one can see is smoke, one must rely on prior perception of smoke being invariably concomitant with fire, such as in a kitchen. Only on the basis of the previous perception is anumāna valid. For any direct perception to take place, there are four elements involved: the object (vastu), one of the five sense organs (indriyas), the ‘mind’ (manas), and the knowing self (ātman). Of this quartet, ātman is the only factor that is inherently luminous, being of the nature of cit (consciousness). The other three are within the realm of the ‘known’. The manas, an internal sense organ in this scheme of things, in connection with both the object and the external sense organ, serves as the location of ‘knowledge’, and this entire process is illuminated by the ātman. A direct perception, then, is when the ātman

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illuminates a connection between the world of objects and the manas using the sense organs. The manas is the location of the inner faculty called the ahaṁkāra, or the ego, where the notion of ‘I’ is located. Hence, the illumination of the connection between the notion of ‘I’ within the manas and the world of objects, through the senses, by the ātman, is called the process of direct perception in Advaita Vedānta.26 The most significant means of valid knowledge – at least for followers of Advaita Vedānta, known as Advaitins – is called śabda, or verbal testimony. Śabda operates on two levels of existence – the mundane, known as laukika śabda, and the suprasensible, known as alaukika śabda or pāramārthika śabda.27 Since a pramāṇa is supposed to deliver knowledge that is not contradicted by any other means of valid knowledge, it stands to reason that: (1) at the worldly level, any information that is testified to verbally by any trustworthy testifier (āpta) is valid knowledge, provided that it is not contradicted and has not also been obtained – though it may be obtainable – by any other pramāṇa; and (2) at the suprasensible level, is the only means of valid knowledge. It is the most important pramāṇa for the Advaitins, because śruti, or the Veda, is the only valid means by which to gain knowledge of Brahman, the supreme substratum of everything and the very essence of the self. It is noteworthy that Advaita maintains that all the means of knowledge except for alaukika śabda are based on ‘ignorance’ (avidyā). But it is also the case that so long as the suprasensible has not been realized by an individual, all the mundane means of knowledge are still valid. In other words, from the perspective of the absolute, everything other than knowledge of Brahman is illusory. Thus, anything based on this illusion – that is, anything at the worldly level – is called ‘ignorance’. But from the perspective of the worldly, knowledge of the world is, of course, ‘knowledge’. On the other hand, it is also important to note that while only alaukika śabda is considered a valid means of knowledge for knowing the self, over the centuries many Advaitins have attempted to provide independent reasoning to substantiate the Upaniṣadic declarations about the self as consciousness. As the world has moved towards a scientific and reasoning-centric model of investigation, these attempts have gained popularity and traction. It is widely considered appropriate in Indian philosophical disciplines, especially when establishing a point about the self, to substantiate it not only with a Vedic (śruti) quotation but also with logical argumentation (yukti). Although Śaṅkara provides yukti in most of his argument, he nevertheless considers śruti to be the final and most important means of knowing Brahman. But it is to one such attempt at yukti-based argumentation that we turn our attention now, known as the dṛg-dṛśya-viveka (‘distinguishing between the seer and the seen’) method of reasoning about the nature of the self as consciousness.

DṚG DṚŚYA VIVEKA METHOD The canonical appearance of the dṛg-dṛśya-viveka method is in a dialogue between a teacher and student in the first two sections of the Kena Upaniṣad. Here, the student asks, ‘Willed by what power does the mind come to rest on its objects? Enjoined by what power is the breath breathed for the first time? Willed by what power do people speak this thing called speech? Indeed, what divinity is responsible for enjoining the eyes and ears to their tasks?’28 The student is not asking about biology, physiology or psychology, but rather about a more fundamental presence that allows biology, physiology and psychology to function. What follows is a discussion about what higher power these functions serve,

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and it is concluded that this power is none other than consciousness, or the self. The discussion in this text is of an esoteric and revelatory nature where much of the systematic analysis is elided.29 Following the Kena Upaniṣad, the main text that the Advaita tradition has produced to systematically elucidate the dṛg-dṛśya-viveka method is known both as Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka and as Vākya-Sudhā (‘The Nectar of the Teaching’). This text has been variously attributed to Śaṅkara and Vidyāraṇya (1296–1391 CE), among others. However, the presence of more nuanced and slightly variegated vocabulary suggests a later writing date, so it is more likely that Vidyāraṇya or someone even later composed it. In some versions, its length is thirty-one verses; in others, forty-six. It is a text whose authorship is disputed, whose length is disputed and even whose name is disputed, but its content is nevertheless a straightforward exercise in reasoning, with some presuppositions. It must be noted here that like many other older texts, this one too is part of the living curriculum of Advaita Vedānta today, both inside and outside of institutional frameworks. To give some examples, the Chinmaya Mission uses it in their curriculum of training for their two-year Advaita Vedānta course in Mumbai, the Ramakrishna Mission uses it in their study circles (and both Chinmaya Mission and Ramakrishna Mission have their own published translations/commentaries of the text), and several independent teachers use it (sometimes orally transmitted renderings, other times text-based) to teach their students as well. It is used at the basic and advanced levels, since concepts are discussed in the text at both those levels. Now on to the text. Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka seems to begin out of nowhere, jumping right into a discussion of three pairs of seer-seen relations. But this beginning is an acknowledgement of how we see ourselves by default, as a mixture of several layers of seers. The initial assertion is given in the first verse, and its defence follows in the remaining verses. It begins: Forms are the seen, and the eyes are the seer. These [eyes] are the seen, and the mind is the seer. The thoughts are the seen, and the witness is the seer. [The witness] is only the seer, never the seen.30 This first verse is the essence of the philosophy of the seer and the seen. The exercise is to examine concentric seer-seen relationships, culminating in the centremost circle, which is not related to anything else as the seen, but is always the seer. This seer is called the ātman (self), cit/caitanya (consciousness) and jñāna (knowledge/cognition), among other things. In Indian philosophical systems, an experience – say, for example, in the act of seeing – is broken down into three constituent parts. First, the ‘experiencer’, the locus of the cognition of the experience (i.e. the subject of experience). Second, the ‘experienced’, or the object of experience. And third, a relationship between the two, which we may call ‘experiencing’. In this context, the relationship is that of vision as seer-seen-seeing (dṛg-dṛśya-darśana). In other contexts, it is cognition as cognizer-cognized-cognizing (j ñātṛ-jñeya-jñāna). The general principle at play is the tripartite form of knowledge as knower-known-knowing (pramātṛ-prameya-pramāṇa). The presuppositions underpinning this method of philosophical inquiry are the following:

1. The dṛg (seer) and the dṛśya (seen) are different from each other. They have different properties. Out of confusion, a person may believe that the seer

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and the seen merge into one, but they will always be different, distinct in their characteristics. For example, a child playing a video game may control a character on the screen, and upon the character dying, may declare, ‘I’m dead!’ This declaration indicates a temporary merging of identity between the child and the character, though the child is the seer and the character is the seen, and no real merging ever took place, because of point #2.

2. The seer is aware (sentient, conscious, etc.), and the seen is inert. The seer has the ability to know. In a seer-seen pair, the seer has relative ability to know, and the seen has a borrowed ability to know. To take the previous example further, the video game character is insentient, but appears to move according to knowledge of the hazards and goals in its surroundings because of borrowed sentience from the child. A traditional example illustrating this is that the sun has the ability to produce light, and the moon reflects that light from the sun and appears to produce its own light. The moonlight is then reflected in a mirror in a person’s room and the mirror too appears to produce its own light, which is only reflected light off of the moon. In all of this, only the sun truly has the ability to produce light, but both the moon and the mirror, which are nonproducers of light, appear to gain that ability borrowed from the sun.



3. The seer can never become the seen, and the seen can never become the seer in a seer-seen pair. The eyes as the seer and the objects that they see can never switch sides while they are in a seer-seen relationship. To take the video game example even further, no matter how long the child stares at the screen, neither will the child actually become or merge with the character (despite repeated shouts of ‘I’m dead!’ or ‘I win!’), nor vice versa.



4. The seer cannot see itself nor can the seen see itself. In this context, ‘seeing’ is a verb often used for ‘knowing’. In other words, within one member of the seerseen relationship, there cannot be the duality of the seer and the seen. Either it is the seer or it is the seen within a particular pair of seer and seen. It cannot simultaneously be the seer and the seen. To finish with the video game example, neither does the child become their own object of seeing (the object is the character), nor does the character become its own subject.

Now applying these four presuppositions to each quarter of the first verse of Dṛg-DṛśyaViveka quoted above, we see how they come together to form the whole method of inquiry. First, ‘Forms are the seen, and the eyes are the seer.’ Here, the word ‘eyes’ does not refer to the spherical objects in our heads, but rather the sense of sight. The sense of sight is often used as a kind of synecdoche to refer to all the senses of perception. In traditional Indian modes of understanding the senses, a sense faculty resides in an apparatus (such as the physical eyes), exits through the apparatus to alight upon whatever its objects are and takes their form, only to bring that form back to the mind for processing. In this case, the sense of sight resides in the eyes, exits through them in order to take the shape and colour of the objects it perceives, and then returns visual data – in the form of the objects it just perceived – back to the mind for processing. The mind is what provides relative sentience to the eyes. Thus, in this line, the subtle ability through which we are able to see is the seer, and the objects it perceives are the seen. That sense faculty has the ability to know (i.e. is relatively sentient), and the objects it sees do not have the ability to know (in the

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seer-seen pair we are presently discussing). The object will never become the seer, nor the sense the seen. Neither can the object be both the seer and the seen simultaneously, nor can the sense of sight. Second, ‘These [eyes] are the seen, and the mind is the seer.’ This is a new seer-seen pair. When the sense of sight brings in the visual data it has gathered from its journey out to its objects, it returns this data to the mind, which interprets this data. The mind is able to know the eyes, but the eyes cannot know the mind. The eyes can be the seer with respect to objects, and the mind is the seer with respect to the eyes, but the eyes cannot be the seer with respect to the mind. The eyes have various properties such as sharpness, blindness, etc., which are known to the mind in addition to the visual data the eyes bring in. In the mind alone, there cannot be the knower/known duality with respect to the eyes. That is, the mind cannot be the known with respect to the eyes while it is also the knower for the eyes, since in order for the eyes to know the mind, they require the mind to share its relative sentience with them. From the perspective of the mind, the eyes are inert, while from the perspective of the eyes, the mind is sentient. Third, ‘The thoughts are the seen, and the witness is the seer.’ The mind (listed here as thoughts) performs four functions as it processes sense-data and data about the senses: it feels emotions, makes decisions, holds memories and claims ownership (as the ‘I’thought) over these functions. This mind, with all its configurations, is the seen, and the witness-consciousness (called the sākṣī, literally ‘with eyes’) is the seer. The mind cannot know the witness-consciousness, also simply known as consciousness, which is variously called ātman or the self. Reviewing the pairs we have seen: forms cannot know the eyes, eyes cannot know the mind and the mind cannot know consciousness. This is why in Vedāntic discourse the self is not knowable to the mind, since the mind is the locus of knowledge but is inert with respect to the self, which provides the mind with sentience for it to perform its tasks of knowing the senses and their objects. Two observations emerge at this stage in the analysis: (1) The seen are manifold, and the seer is one. For example, there are many colours and shapes, but only one sense – the sense of sight – is able to see all of them. There is only one mind, but it is able to see all of the senses. There is only one consciousness, but it is the witness to all of the various thoughts that occur in the mind. (2) The seer does not change according to the nature of the seen. The fact that there are different colours and shapes does not necessitate that the sense of sight transform itself to see all of them. The mind does not transform to know the different senses. Consciousness does not transform to witness the fluctuations of the mind. Thus, we observe that the seer is not affected by the properties of the seen. Fourth, ‘[The witness] is only the seer, never the seen.’ If, when forms are the seen the eyes are the seer, when eyes are the seen the mind is the seer, and when the mind is the seen consciousness is the seer, then when consciousness is the seen, who is the seer? Since consciousness is defined as the principle of sentience that provides the relative ability to know to all of its downstream targets, it follows that consciousness will not also be known by yet another seer. That is, consciousness can never be an object of knowledge, but is always the subject in any knower–known relationship. This consciousness, which is also known as ātman or the self, is the same as the Brahman in Upaniṣadic discourse, according to Advaita Vedānta. At this point, we encounter several objections: (1) If consciousness is not the object of knowledge, then how can we know it exists? There is no pramāṇa for it, no valid means of knowledge that will reveal it. Therefore, its existence must be called into question. In Sanskrit, aparokṣa knowledge is that which is known without becoming an object

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of knowledge.31 Advaita Vedānta claims that the ātman is known, but not as an object. This leads to a counter-objection, which is, if consciousness does become an object of knowledge, who would be the subject (seer) in that seer-seen pair? The senses and the mind are insentient by themselves, and neither can be the seer of consciousness. And there are no other instruments available to us to use to ‘see’ consciousness, thus consciousness is only ever the ‘seer’ in any seer-seen pair, and never the seen. (2) If consciousness exists, how can one know that there is not another consciousness, let us call it C2, that can know this consciousness, C1 (assuming we agree that inertness cannot know consciousness)? This objection is answered by pointing out that if there is a C2 that knows C1, then there must also be a C3 to know C2, and so on, infinitely. This objection runs into the problem of infinite regress, known in Sanskrit as anavasthādoṣa. (3) The objector may respond by saying, what if C1 knows C2, and C2 knows C1? Here, the knowledge of C2 depends on C1, and the knowledge of C1 depends on C2, which is another fallacy, known in Sanskrit as anyonyāśrayadoṣa, the problem of mutual dependence. The conclusion must remain the same. (4) What if there is a C1 that knows C2 that knows C3 that knows C4 that knows C1? This is also a type of mutual dependence but is known in Sanskrit as cakrikādoṣa, the problem of circular logic. Thus, the conclusion of the author of the Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka is apparently the simplest one – that there is only one consciousness, which is of the nature of knowledge, and is not known by another consciousness. It is Brahman. It lends its sentiency to the mind, which lends it to the eyes, which then appear to see objects. Here, an objector may say, ‘you did not answer my original question. If there is no knower of consciousness, as you say, what is the proof of consciousness’ existence? How can you know that consciousness is even there?’ But this objection is answered by the Advaitin by pointing out that the proof for the existence of the seer is in the fact of the seen. That there is a world of experience is demonstration enough that there must be an experiencer of that world, also known as consciousness.32 This consciousness, according to Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka, ‘does not arise (is not born), does not set (does not die), does not grow, nor does it decay. Illuminating all others by itself, it requires no other mediator to shine.’33

THE CONCEPT OF MOKṢA No Indian school of philosophy posits a line of inquiry without a goal. Why an interest in knowing about the nature of the self? Why consciousness? Because, according to Advaita Vedānta, as long as we identify with limited, finite bodies (physical or mental), the happiness we are able to achieve will always be finite as well, since no matter what we gain, it will end someday or we will die. Advaita promises infinite happiness for the person who realizes that we are not in fact any of the limited components of who we think we are. Realizing that the true nature of one’s ātman is Brahman, that is infinite, eternal, immortal consciousness, a person is freed from the bondage of limitation and becomes (or more precisely, realizes that one always was) limitless. This realization is known as mokṣa, or absolute liberation. However, ‘infinite happiness’ sounds rather dull if it is simply the result of knowing oneself to be infinite and immortal, for immortality can bring boredom. There are many examples in literature and popular culture of boredom caused by immortality.34 Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka does not stop at claiming the identity of the self with consciousness (i.e. Brahman), it also considers the aspects of Brahman relevant to the question ‘why should I be interested in this

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kind of self-realization?’ The text states: ‘There are five constituent aspects [of everything]. It exists; it is luminous; it is beloved; [its] form; and [its] name. The first three are aspects belonging to Brahman, and the latter two are aspects belonging to the world.’35 If Brahman had existence and luminosity alone as its two explicit aspects, realizing it as the true self would not be an attractive goal to reach. Thus, the author of the Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka draws upon the Upaniṣadic conception of Brahman as being not only sat (existence) and cit (consciousness) but also ānanda (bliss) to present a third aspect in its teaching: priya or the aspect of beloved-ness. Why is it beloved? Because, according to the Advaita tradition, the self is the most beloved thing of all. Our love for all things is ever-changing, but not for ourselves. And that love for ourselves manifests in the form of desiring to continue to exist. It is uncaused and unending and indicates the bliss inherent in the self. Knowledge of Brahman therefore includes a blissful experience, since infinitude, which belongs to the self alone, according to Advaita Vedānta, means that ‘I’,36 the most beloved, shall never cease to exist, knowledge of which is the cause of unending bliss. Through the activities of study, reflection and meditation, coming to know my self as consciousness and not any other component becomes the subject of spiritual practice and is elaborated upon by many texts in the Advaita Vedānta tradition.37

CONCLUSION While the above analysis is far from expressing the full extent of the rich history of innovation, discussion, and debate surrounding Advaita Vedānta’s dṛg-dṛśya-viveka method of investigating consciousness, it is sufficient as a recapitulation of the main points therein. Indeed, the text Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka is but the tip of the iceberg, considered an ‘introductory text’ in traditional Advaita study.38 While it does not offer a ‘science of consciousness’ as such, it nevertheless offers a pathway into the study of one of the most elusive subjects of inquiry in the world today: Who are we, really? Why are we here? These questions are tackled by exploring the possibility that I may not be who I think I am by default, but rather something infinite, eternal and of the nature of knowledge. And if I am infinite, then so is everyone else, hence the conclusion must be that I and everyone else are one, which leads to a sense of freedom from the bondage of the cycle of desire, gain and loss, since I have nothing to gain and nothing to lose. Recognizing and internalizing this idea becomes the goal of the practice of Advaita. This, finally, is the cause of unending infinite happiness. Such a perspective stands in radical opposition to a society that values individual prosperity above all else, to the detriment of humanity and the environment as a whole. Utilizing the dṛg-dṛśya-viveka method to analyze the layers of the self and seeing the self as the self-in-all – without any limitations – can provide Advaitins with a platform to engage in a global-critical conversation about the relationship between consciousness, the self and happiness.

NOTES 1. Here by ‘science’ is meant the word as it is defined in the Oxford Dictionary: ‘The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.’ 2. For a comprehensive look at the theories of consciousness proposed by Western philosophers over the centuries, cf. Velmans (2009, Part I).

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3. For an introduction to and explanation of the field of neurotheology, see Sayadmansour (2014). 4. A contemporary exponent of the version of Cartesian dualism in Christian philosophy of religion is Richard Swinburne (2020). 5. For a modern exposition of Advaita Vedānta, cf. Rambachan (2006). 6. For an analysis of the concept of luminosity, see Chapple 2008. For a detailed analysis of consciousness in Advaita Vedānta, see Indich (1995). 7. The founder of the Mādhyamaka school of Mahāyāna Buddhism is Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 CE). For a comprehensive look at Mādhyamaka philosophy and Nāgārjuna’s historical and philosophical context, cf. Westerhoff (2009). 8. For a detailed analysis of ‘the concept of philosophy in India’, see Matilal (2020). For an in-depth study on the content of the ‘philosophical’ in ‘Indian philosophy’, see Ganeri (2020). 9. cf. Masuzawa (2005) for a seminal description of the causes and effects of European Universalism, and the birth of the term ‘world religions’. For a concise but detailed analysis of European Universalism, cf. Wallerstein (2006). 10. See the first two chapters of King (1999), ‘India and the History of Philosophy’ and ‘Can Philosophy be Indian?’ for an eloquent context-specific analysis of European Universalism, its influence in the creation of ‘Indian philosophy’, and the problematic nature of such a delineation. 11. For a precise philosophical introduction to the concept of Brahman, cf. Ganeri (2019). 12. ‘Reality’, for Advaita Vedānta, is defined as that which persists in all three times – past, present and future. The only thing that fits that description, according to Advaita, is Brahman, and therefore Brahman is the only thing that is considered ‘real’. 13. In other Indian philosophical schools such as Nyāya, Brahman may be considered a substance (dravya), but according to Advaita Vedānta, it is not. An instance of a substance is an object, but an instance of Brahman is a subject. The subjective nature of Brahman prevents it, according to Advaita, from being classified as merely a substance. For a detailed study of the metaphysics of Advaita Vedānta, see Ram-Prasad (2002). 14. Indich also corroborates this view when he says, ‘one should be cautioned against treating Advaita as a variety of monism if, by this label, one wishes to refer to a philosophical theory which maintains that all plurality or multiplicity can be explained in terms of one principle of objective being. Advaitins are quick to point out that, contrary to such a monistic position, the reality they uphold “does not require variety or multiplicity . . . in order to be affirmed.”’ (1995, 3–4) 15. For a detailed overview of the Vedas and Upaniṣads, see Gupta (2012, 17–52) and Witzel (2003). 16. To understand more about this belief, see section 3 in Deshpande (2020). 17. For a discussion on how the epistemic authority of the Vedas factors into the use of ‘reason’ by ancient Indian philosophers, see Chakrabarti (2020, 22–4). 18. As recently as 2007, a new commentary on the prasthāna-trayī, known as the Svāminārāyaṇabhāṣyam, was authored by Bhadreshdas Swami of the BAPS Swaminarayan order and released as a new philosophical branch within the umbrella of Vedānta. In 2017, it was acknowledged as such by the Śrī Kāśī Vidvat Parishad, the ‘Council of Scholars of Kashi’ (Kashi is also known as Varanasi or Banaras). At the World Sanskrit Conference of 2018 in Vancouver, it was accepted by the group of scholars gathered at a plenary session through collective verbal acknowledgement as a legitimate commentary and an independent branch of Vedāntic philosophy.

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19. For a well-articulated account of the salient features of Advaita Vedānta according to Śaṅkara, see Lipner (1989, 168). 20. The traditional Indian systems of philosophical thought are also called darśanas (literally, ‘visions’ or ‘perspectives’), the core sūtras (aphoristic texts) of which were written between the fifth-century BCE and the fourth century CE, are: Sāṁkhya (fifth to second century BCE), Yoga (second century BCE to fourth century CE), Vaiśeṣika (second century BCE), Nyāya (second century CE), Pūrva Mīmāṁsā (third to first century BCE), and Uttara Mīmāṁsā, also known as Vedānta (first to fourth century CE). 21. For a general study of classical Indian epistemology, see Phillips (2019). For a very detailed study of the same, see Perrett (2001), Volume 1. 22. Pūrvapakṣa is a style of debate in which two opponents confront each other, and before positing their own views or rebuttals, are required to give a thorough recapitulation of the opponent’s (pūrva-) view (-pakṣa) to prove their own understanding of it. Only then, based on the previously agreed epistemological premises (pramāṇa), may they provide an argument. 23. B.K. Matilal writes, ‘The Nyāyasūtra classification of debate was more systematic and hence carried more authority in philosophical circles . . .. It notes three kinds of debate, vāda, jalpa, vitaṇḍā . . . [The first kind] must have the following characteristics: (1) There should be a thesis and a counter-thesis mutually opposing each other . . . (2) Proving, i.e., establishing, and disproving either of the theses, should be based upon evidence (pramāṇa) and argument (tarka). (3) Each side should mention the standard five steps in the demonstration of one’s reasoning . . . (4) The reasoning should not entail contradiction with any tenet, or accepted doctrine.’ (1985, 12). 24. A retelling and analysis of this story can be found in Mukhopadhyay (2020, 31–3). This story is interesting because on the one hand it reveals that it was possible for a woman to be a recognized scholar of Vedic exegesis and a worthy opponent in debate, but on the other hand Ubhaya Bhāratī is defeated by Śaṅkara and literally disappears, retreating to her ‘heavenly abode’ as an avatar of Goddess Sarasvatī. Her story is thereafter lost to the annals of history, and is seldom told in the retelling of Śaṅkara’s victory over Maṇḍana Miśra. According to Mukhopadhyay, ‘it is impossible to find out any feminist message from this narrative.’ (33) I am grateful to my colleague Agnieszka Rostalska for her suggestion to include this story here, and for the reference to Mukhopadhyay. 25. The definition of ‘manas’, according to Christopher Bartley in his Indian Philosophy A-Z, is ‘Manas (mind or inner sense): according to Nyaya-Vaisheshika, the soul or self (ātman) is a non-conscious principle of continuity. It becomes conscious whenever it is associated with thoughts, feelings and acts of will belonging to a particular embodied life. It is a matter of natural fact that sensory receptors (indriya) transmit a range of information about the objective environment to a physical faculty called manas which operates as a central processor coordinating that information and selecting what is relevant. In conjunction with the principle of identity or soul, the manas is instrumental in the conversion of some stimuli into feelings, the translation of some items of cognitive input into conscious thoughts with practical applications (storing some as memories), and the transformation of some affective responses into acts of will. Thoughts, feelings and intentions thus become temporary properties attaching to the soul-principle and a subject of knowing, agency and experience is created. Intelligence, feelings, memories and volitions are generated in the psycho-somatic complex whose unity over time is guaranteed by the enduring presence of the principle of identity’. (2005, 86). 26. There is great discussion on the topics of pramāṇa, but for simplicity this discussion must be limited here. For a detailed account of each pramāṇa and a lucid discussion of how Advaita Vedānta describes perception, etc., cf. Satprakāshānanda 1965. For a more

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concise yet still articulate description of each pramāṇa from the Advaitic perspective, cf. Rambachan (1991, 23–9). 27. It should be recognized that while alaukika śabda, or Vedic verbal testimony, is considered the most important means of knowing Brahman, the Vedas were not always historically available to women and members of dominated castes to study. The philosophy of nonduality that follows in the next section, therefore, must be understood against the test of its practical application in the world. Unfortunately, communities that have formed around this philosophy are largely dominated by dominant-caste men. Furthermore, the inequality of eligibility to study the Vedas and membership in the communities that surround them is often justified using the language of karma, stating that due to deeds performed in supposed past lives, a person holds a certain status in this life. Thus, despite the ostensibly egalitarian message of Advaita, whether the philosophy in its practised form can live up to its ideal remains to be seen, as its practitioners reimagine the relationship between Vedic authority, tradition and emerging definitions of equality and justice. For a critical analysis of Advaita Vedānta with respect to issues of gender and caste, cf. Rambachan (2015), Chapters 5 and 9. The seminal work analysing the nature, history, influence, and inequality of caste is Ambedkar (1936). For an articulate critical analysis of the paradoxical alliance between karma and caste, see Matilal (1989). 28. Kena Upaniṣad, verse 1. Translation is my own. 29. For a brief discussion about the Kena Upaniṣad’s approach to dṛg-dṛśya-viveka, cf. Rambachan (2015, 54–6), ‘The Method of Distinguishing Knower and Known.’ 30. Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka, verse 1: rūpaṁ dṛśyaṁ locanaṁ dṛk tad dṛśyaṁ dṛk tu mānasam | dṛśyā dhīvṛttayaḥ sākṣī dṛg eva na tu dṛśyate || Translation is my own. 31. The Sanskrit definition of aparokṣa is avedyatve sati bhāsamānatvam, which means, ‘despite not being an object of knowledge, being known’. 32. For an explanation of the above objections and responses, see Tejomayananda (2010, 2–7). 33. Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka, verse 5: nodeti nāstamety eṣā na vṛddhiṁ yāti na kṣayam | svayaṁ vibhāty athānyāni bhāsayet sādhanaṁ vinā || Translation is my own. 34. One popular example is the manga series One Punch Man. The story follows Saitama, a young hero who is so powerful that he can defeat any opponent with just a single punch. He is effectively invincible and therefore immortal. His emotional state is not that of happiness at his invincibility, however; it is ennui. 35. Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka verse 20: asti bhāti priyaṁ rūpaṁ nama cety aṁśapañcakam | ādyadvayaṁ brahmarūpaṁ jagadrūpaṁ tato dvayam || Translation is my own. 36. It is understood here that consciousness is Brahman, which includes all three aspects listed in the verse above – existence, luminosity and beloved-ness. 37. For an excellent explanation of the Advaitic understanding of spiritual practice, cf. Rambachan (2006). 38. Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka is known as a prakaraṇa-grantha, which means introductory text, or a text (-grantha) which supplies a topical analysis (prakaraṇa-) within a particular method or school of thought.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ambedkar, B. R. (1936), Annihilation of Caste, Self-Published. https://ccnmtl​.columbia​.edu​/ projects​/mmt​/ambedkar​/web​/readings​/aoc​_print​_2004​.pdf. Bartley, Christopher J. (2005), Indian Philosophy A–Z, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Chakrabarti, Arindam (2020), ‘Rationality and Indian Philosophy’, in Jonardon Ganeri (ed.), Indian Philosophy: A Reader, 17–35. New York: Routledge. Chapple, Christopher Key (2008), Yoga and the Luminous: Patañjali’s Spiritual Path to Freedom, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Deshpande, Madhav (2020), ‘Language and Testimony in Classical Indian Philosophy’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2020 Edition). Available Online: https://plato​.stanford​.edu​/archives​/sum2020​/entries​/language​-india/ (accessed 28 August 2021). Ganeri, Jonardon (2019), ‘The Upaniṣadic Episteme’, in Signe Cohen (ed.), The Upaniṣads: A Complete Guide, 173–81, London: Routledge. Ganeri, Jonardon, ed. (2020), Indian Philosophy: A Reader, New York: Routledge. Gupta, Bina (2012), An Introduction to Indian Philosophy: Perspectives on Reality, Knowledge, and Freedom, New York: Routledge. Indich, William M. (1995), Consciousness in Advaita Vedānta, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. King, Richard (1999), Indian Philosophy: An Introduction to Hindu and Buddhist Thought, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lipner, Julius J. (1989), ‘Śaṃkara on Metaphor with Reference to Gita 13.12-18’, in Roy W. Perrett (ed.), Indian Philosophy of Religion, 167–81, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Lipner, Julius J. (1997), ‘Śaṅkara on Satyaṃ Jñānam Anantaṃ Brahma’, in Purushottama Bilimoria and Jitendranath Mohanty (eds), Relativism, Suffering, and Beyond: Essays in Memory of Bimal K. Matilal, 301–18, Delhi: Oxford University Press. Masuzawa, Tomoko (2005), The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism Was Preserved In the Language of Pluralism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Matilal, Bimal K. (1985), Logic, Language, and Reality: An Introduction to Indian Philosophical Studies, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Matilal, Bimal K. (1989), ‘Caste, Karma, and the Gītā’, in Roy W. Perrett (ed.), Indian Philosophy of Religion, 195–201, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Matilal, Bimal K. (2020), ‘On the Concept of Philosophy in India’, in Jonardon Ganeri (ed.), Indian Philosophy: A Reader, 7–16, New York: Routledge. Mukhopadhyay, Anway (2020), The Authority of Female Speech in Indian Goddess Traditions: Devi and Womansplaining, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Perrett, Roy W., ed. (2001), Indian Philosophy: A Collection of Readings, 5 volume set, New York, Oxon: Routledge. Phillips, Stephen (2019), ‘Epistemology in Classical Indian Philosophy’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato​ .stanford​.edu​/archives​/spr2019​/entries​/epistemology​-india/. Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi (2002), Advaita Epistemology and Metaphysics: An Outline of Indian Non-Realism, London: RoutledgeCurzon. Rambachan, Anantanand (1991), Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Śaṅkara, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Rambachan, Anantanand (2006), The Advaita Worldview: God, World, and Humanity, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Rambachan, Anantanand (2015), A Hindu Theology of Liberation: Not-Two is Not One, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Sayadmansour, Alireza (2014), ‘Neurotheology: The Relationship Between Brain and Religion’, Iranian Journal of Neurology, 13 (1): 52–5. Satprakāshānanda, Swāmī (1965), Methods of Knowledge, London: Allen & Unwin.

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Tejomayānanda, Swami (2010), Dṛg Dṛśya Viveka by Ādi Śaṅkarācārya: Commentary by Swami Tejomayananda, Mumbai: Central Chinmaya Mission Trust. Velmans, Max (2009), Understanding Consciousness, 2nd edn, London: Routledge. Wallerstein, Immanuel (2006), European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power, New York: The New Press. Westerhoff, Jan (2009), Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka: A Philosophical Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Witzel, Michael (2003), ‘Vedas and Upaniṣads’, in Gavin Flood (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism, 68–101, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Chapter 19

The danger in diversifying philosophy of religion KEVIN SCHILBRACK

INTRODUCTION Since its emergence as an academic discipline, philosophy of religion has kept itself relatively limited in its scope. Traditionally, philosophers of religion focused not on all kinds of religious philosophy or all kinds of religious phenomena but, overwhelmingly, only on theistic topics such as the attributes of God, proofs of God’s existence, the problem of evil and the possibility of miracles. Over the past forty years or so, many philosophers have come to focus – even more narrowly – on Christian theistic topics such as atonement, resurrection and incarnation. Only rarely has the discipline been treated as the philosophical study of religions in all their variety. Today, however, a growing number of scholars are working to shift the discipline from its traditionally narrow focus to a new cross-cultural, global, or postcolonial engagement with the full breadth of religious beliefs, practices, experiences and institutions.1 The present volume, Diversifying Philosophy of Religion, is an especially rich contribution to that shift. When one reviews the growing efforts to develop a diversified philosophy of religion, including the contributions to this volume, one can see that there is no general agreement yet about what that revised discipline should look like. The aspiration, clearly, is a philosophical discipline that excludes no religions. This would be a discipline that uses philosophical tools to study not only classical forms of theism, and not only ‘world’ religions, but also indigenous religions, heretical voices, religions that have never been named, new religious movements and religious aspects of secularity – the full range of religious phenomena in human history and cultures. In this epilogue chapter, however, I argue that diversifying philosophy of religion cannot mean simply adding these previously overlooked religious phenomena back in.2 Diversification also raises meta-questions that in the past hovered in the background of traditional philosophy of religion but should now become explicit aspects of the discipline. There are three meta-questions that are, I expect, unavoidable for any postcolonial version of the discipline. First, the ‘boundary of religion’ question: as the discipline seeks to expand beyond theism to consider other religious philosophies, one must decide where to draw the boundary of what beliefs, experiences, practices and institutions should and should not count as religious. Second, the ‘philosophy of the body’ question: as the discipline seeks to expand beyond texts to consider embodied religious practices,

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one must identify what philosophy can say about the non-textual aspects of religions that is not already covered by other disciplines. And third, the ‘normativity’ question: as the discipline expands its scope globally, one must decide whether to continue the traditional philosophical practice of evaluating religious phenomena. This third question is especially tricky. On the one hand, philosophy of religion has traditionally not simply been Eurocentric or Christocentric, but has also participated in the colonialist and White supremacist cultures in which it grew (see An and Craig 2021). A yes answer to this third question threatens to perpetuate this. On the other hand, normative evaluation of religions has been the contribution of philosophy of religion that makes it distinctive. Other disciplines in the academic study of religion often explicitly exclude evaluation from what they do. In fact, many today argue that evaluating religions is a theological project that does not belong in the academy at all. However, if the answer to the normativity question is no and evaluation is not included, then it is not clear what it means to say that the now-diversified discipline is still a form of philosophy. The danger of diversifying philosophy of religion is that it may remove from the study of religions the normative thinking that has traditionally been the contribution of philosophy. The aim of this chapter, then, is to sketch the shape of a diversified philosophy of religion by identifying and answering the three meta-questions, arguing for a yes answer to the normativity question.

WHAT ‘DIVERSIFYING’ MEANS To diversify philosophy of religion is at least to expand the discipline’s data from theism to the full range of religious philosophies. Before we look at the three meta-questions, I want to examine that shift. I begin with two brief examples of traditional philosophy of religion. In his 1748 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume included a chapter on the reasonability of believing stories of miraculous events. Hume argues that when one reads in scripture or hears from a preacher about the occurrence of some wondrous event – that a man walked on water, that blindness or leprosy was removed by the touch of a hand or that a dead body has come back to life – one should weigh the relative probability of two possibilities. On one side of the scale, there is the possibility that the unprecedented event did occur and that despite the gathered evidence of previous human experience, it is not always true that heavy objects sink, that mere touch cannot remove diseases, that dead bodies do not reanimate. On the other side of this scale, however, there is the possibility that, either accidentally or willfully, the person giving us the report is not telling the truth. When one sees the choice in this way, Hume argues, the probability that the miracle happened is never going to outweigh the probability that the story is not reliable, so the hearer should not believe it. As he says in a famous sentence, ‘no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish’ (1975 [1777], 115–6). Hume’s essay has been reprinted in scores of philosophy of religion anthologies, and it has generated many responses about the reasonability of stories of miracles, especially about the fallibility of what are taken at a certain time to be the laws of nature and what it would mean to violate them. Because his argument is not that reports of miracles recount something that is not possible ontologically but rather that the reports are not credible epistemically, his work serves as a nice entrée to

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the emerging field of social epistemology that considers when it is and when it is not reasonable to believe the testimony of others. Here is the second example. Anselm’s 1078 Proslogion is written as a prayer to God that states that because only that than which none greater can be conceived is deserving of worship, God must not only have attributes such as love or knowledge, greater than any other, but that God must also exist in a manner unlike ordinary realities. God’s existence must be understood not as dependent on the contingencies of what happens, so God would not have been brought into existence by certain conditions, nor could God die. God must be the kind of reality that cannot be thought not to exist. That God is a reality that exists necessarily, that is, under all conditions, is the logical implication from the concept of ‘greatest being’. Anselm did not write to persuade atheists, but he did write to secure theistic faith (the original title of the piece was ‘faith seeking understanding’). Since Immanuel Kant, the Proslogion has been read as a statement of an ontological argument, that is, an argument that God exists based not on an inference from this-worldly evidence but rather on the kind of existence God is said to have. In Anselm’s lifetime, the French monk Gaunilo responded to the Proslogion that it cannot be correct that when one traces the logical implications of ‘greatest being’, it follows that God exists necessarily, because if that reasoning were sound, then one could conceive of an island than which no greater island could be conceived and that perfect island would also exist. Kant then gave an account of the flaw that Gaunilo was identifying: that one should not treat existence as a predicate. Like Hume’s argument about miracle reports, Anselm’s meditation on God’s manner of existence continues to generate contemporary discussion. The point of the version of the argument presented here is this: though existence is not a predicate, and so it is true that one cannot define something into existence, the mode of how something exists is a predicate and if something is defined as existing necessarily (i.e., under all conditions or in all possible worlds), then the discussion about whether it exists does not depend on figuring out whether the proper conditions obtain but on whether the reality in question was coherent, which is to say, whether it was possible. If it is possible, then it would simultaneously be actual. These two paradigmatic examples of philosophy of religion embody the discipline’s traditional focus on theism. They also embody the discipline’s traditional focus on religious beliefs as opposed to religious practices, experiences or institutions. I would argue that debates like these are not of interest only to Christians or even only to theists. The nature of the greatest conceivable being and the credibility of miracle reports are issues that matter to many non-Christian theistic communities, and analogous issues arise for many non-theistic religious communities. Certainly, questions about social epistemology and about modality are relevant to many religious communities whether or not they include belief in God. Nevertheless, diversifying philosophy of religion means going beyond the traditional focus on theistic belief to consider other kinds of religious philosophy that Hume and Anselm never considered. The central concern of his essay, however, is the fact that philosophy of religion traditionally also had a normative agenda. Both Hume and Anselm, and likewise Kant and Gaunilo, aimed at convincing their readers to come to a judgement about the reasonability or unreasonability of certain religious beliefs. Hume wants to undermine the appeal to miracle stories; his opponents want to defend the inferences that lead from miracles to the supernatural. Anselm wants to lend support to the commitment that God is real by showing that God is the kind of being that must exist; his opponents are sceptical that mere reasoning can have those kinds of results. These philosophers are not

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simply describing ‘what Christians believe’ – so to speak, in the third person. Their goal is not understanding or explaining the beliefs they study. Instead, Hume and Anselm are speaking in the first person about what they believe. They are evaluating the soundness of the arguments they study, and giving reasons for their judgements. They are also asking their readers qua philosophers to answer in the first person: What do you say about this? Traditional philosophy of religion has been a normative discipline in that it seeks to come to at least tentative conclusions about what is true, good, real, beautiful or just. In this evaluative focus, traditional philosophy of religion has been like philosophy in general and therefore part of a liberal arts education.

DIVERSE RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHIES Whether or not a postcolonial philosophy of religion continues the traditional evaluative approach, diversifying philosophy of religion means including religious philosophies in addition to the theism that concerned Anselm and Hume. This is an exciting and dramatic change. Following Anselm, many philosophers of religion have held that a Supreme Being must have the attributes that make a being worthy of worship. If so, then perhaps we can know that God must be all-powerful, loving without fail, knowing everything that can be known, and existing necessarily. Debates about which attributes are worthy of worship have been a central part of traditional philosophy of religion and a diversified philosophy of religion would continue to include these debates. But many have pointed out the gap between philosophical views of what God must be like and the way God is understood by non-philosophers, in prayers and in scripture. A diversified philosophy of religion will include alternative, unorthodox and ‘neoclassical’ philosophies of God. For example, it would include ‘open’ theistic philosophies that argue that God is not eternal but temporal and therefore open to a future that God does not control or know in advance, and ‘process’ theistic philosophies that argue that God is not impassive but affected by the actions of the creatures that make up the world. It would also include ‘panentheistic’ philosophies that argue that God, being infinite, cannot be understood as separate from the created world and the world can therefore be seen analogously as the body of God.3 A diversified philosophy of religion should also give due attention to the numerous religious philosophies whose focus is not a superhuman being that watches over people, responds to prayers or offerings, or has thoughts or emotions at all (Heehs 2019). In some cases, these will be religious philosophies about a particular feature of reality taken as the guiding star for successful living. For example, Theravāda Buddhists have sought to act ‘in the hope of Nirvana’ (King 1964). In ancient China, ‘heaven’ (Tian) could refer metonymically to God (Shangdi),4 but could also refer to the objective moral law, fate, or (as in Xunzi) the uninvolved source of the patterns in the world with which the wise put themselves in accord. South Asian conceptions of how the law of karma operates are another example. In other cases, these will be ‘pantheistic’ teachings that focus on all-pervading realities such as the Stoic idea of Logos, the Daoist Way, Baruch Spinoza’s natura naturans or Paul Tillich’s ground of being. Some of these pantheistic philosophies describe a supervening oneness to the things of the world and the divinity that unites them; others describe the material universe as divine in its non-unified multiplicity.5 Examples of the former include Plotinus’s The One and Śaṅkara’s Brahman. Examples

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of the latter include the Buddhist teaching that all things arise conditioned by each other and therefore lack independent existence (pratītyasamutpāda) and the Daoist teaching that the source of all things is ‘primal energy’ (yuanqi) or what is ‘spontaneously so’ (ziran). These religious philosophies refer not to a Supreme Being, but to the general character of each particular person, place and thing in the world. It was precisely to include views like these in the academic study of regions that Clifford Geertz proposed a definition of ‘religion’ not in terms of a supernatural agent or agents but instead in terms of ‘conceptions of a general order of existence’ (1973, 90). Religious philosophies that fit this category are well represented in this volume. Often overlooked in philosophy of religion is the family of Chinese religious philosophies that focus on the ‘great ultimate’ (taiji), referred to in the Book of Changes and then, as Leah Kalmanson (Chapter 7) shows, developed by Song-era Ruists as a metaphysical reality. These Neo-Confucian debates about the great ultimate turned on whether it was, as in Zhu Xi, a supreme organizing principle, or rather, as in Zhou Dunyi, no ultimate thing at all but rather an energy-rich field of limitless possibility. In both cases, however, the religious philosophy they developed was not simply speculation out of curiosity about abstract truths but instead – as with most metaphysical theories in the west as well – an aspect of spiritual exercises designed to cultivate living in according to the nature of things (cf. Hadot 1995). Another example in this volume is the tradition of non-dual (Advaita) Vedānta according to which liberating spiritual practice aims not towards improving one’s connection with a being that has consciousness but rather towards realizing one’s connection to consciousness as such. As Varun Khanna (Chapter 18) shows in his analysis of the Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka text and the spiritual discipline it makes possible, for the non-dualist Vedānta school, overcoming suffering and achieving bliss requires knowledge of the identity of one’s true self, understood as the infinite and immutable substratum of everything that exists. Another example is Nishida Kitarō’s Buddhist-inspired idea of nothingness (mu). Nothingness for Nishida is not a transcendent or otherworldly reality but is imagined as the inclusive ‘place’ (basho) that undergirds both the acting subject and their environment. Recognition of this character of the world undermines the sense that the individual person is an independent entity, an assumption that encourages egoism, and leads instead to the dialectical unification between people that Uehara Mayuko (Chapter 13) calls an ‘inter-corporeal-subjective self’. A diversified philosophy of religion should also give due attention to the fact that many – perhaps most – religious communities have not understood the divine as singular. Some people have felt the presence of spiritual beings in natural phenomena like the movement of the sun or the regeneration of the spring, and some in threats like storms, disease and death. Some hold that they interact with spiritual beings in dreams and visions, in the arrival of unexpected feelings of love or fury, or in an experience of possession or ‘riding’ of their mind or body. In some cases, the spiritual beings are said to be deceased loved ones. In other cases, they are presences or energies with no name. Some communities have named and sorted those powers, and they organize them conceptually as a family of deities as in Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian, Yoruba and other pantheons. Although philosophers of religion are increasingly giving attention to ‘panentheistic’ and ‘pantheistic’ views like those mentioned earlier, they have given very little attention this wide variety of ‘polytheistic’ beliefs, practices, experiences and communities. Religious practices that represent this category are also well represented in this volume. One sees this in the Nguni way of life that centres on families serving their respective ancestors, what Herbert Moyo calls ‘the Isintu system’ or ‘Isintuism’ (Chapter 14).

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Another example is found in the Lakota tales of thunder spirits (wakinyan) and other non-human persons described by Fritz Detwiler (Chapter 15). Shinto provides another example in the spiritual beings (kami), often understood as nature spirits residing in sites like waterfalls, but which also includes divinities like the god of war and the patron god of poetry, the ancestors of royal families, and, as Cheung Ching-yuen shows, revered war dead (Chapter 16). If advances in technology were to lead to the ‘singularity’, that is, a turning point in history at which artificial intelligence so vastly surpasses human abilities that machines come to run the world (as Yvonne Förster describes in Chapter 17), this could provide a new reality taken as divine. Science-fiction movies often imagine this superhuman intelligence as a single mind and as a threat to human beings, but, as in the movie Her, one can imagine human relationships with advanced artificial intelligences that are multiple and beneficial (cf. Reed 2018). As Lisa Landoe Hedrick (Chapter 6) shows, philosophical engagement with the religious belief in spirits in plants and animals (so-called ‘animism’) or in material objects (so-called ‘fetishism’) need not be simply the rejection of these views but instead must include a philosophical interpretation of what the speakers mean when they say that something is a person.

A FIRST META-QUESTION: THE BOUNDARY OF RELIGION As I mentioned at the outset, diversifying philosophy of religion raises meta-questions that have not usually been part of the discipline. The first of these is generated as philosophers expand their object of study beyond theism, namely: how far should one expand? The ‘boundary of religion’ question asks: which phenomena should we count as religious phenomena? This question was often pushed into the background by the discipline’s traditional focus on the rationality of belief in God, but including it as an explicit part of the discipline will connect philosophy of religion with other disciplines in the academic study of religions that are also seeking an answer. And this meta-question is not easy. If we take three of the examples from the preceding section – the Supreme Being ‘than which nothing greater could be conceived’ in Anselm’s prayer, the dependent co-origination described in the Samyutta Nikaya, and divinized Japanese soldiers at the Yasakuni shrine – it is not obvious what, if anything, these three have anything in common. Some of those diversifying philosophy of religion have defined ‘religion’ by using the category of ‘ultimate reality’ (e.g. Neville 2013). That term is useful since both the divine person of theism and non-person-like realities such as Brahman or the Dao can be interpreted as ultimate in the metaphysical sense that everything else that exists is said to depend on them. But a large swath of the practices widely taken as religious today do not focus on a reality that is metaphysically fundamental. Some scholars have therefore proposed understanding ‘ultimate reality’ not in the metaphysical sense but instead in the existential sense of one’s ultimate concern, as that which provides the primary values that guide one’s life.6 Defining ‘religion’ functionally in this way, however, creates at least two problems for a diversified philosophy of religion. First, this approach opens the door to treating as religious the devotion that people have to things they recognize as this-worldly human creations (such as money, nations, racism, one’s kids, sports teams and celebrities). On an existentialist approach, love of work (Chen 2022) or being politically correct (McWhorter 2021) could be one’s religion, and no human being would fail to be religious. Second, most spiritual beings are not understood as ultimate in either sense of the term.

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A divine spirit residing in a waterfall, a deceased ancestor who continues to provide guidance for a family, hungry ghosts driven by their insatiable desires – such beings are not taken as the object of one’s highest concern or as the source of all that exists.7 Some scholars have argued that the problem here is that ‘religion’ simply does not name a coherent category. They hold that ‘religion’ is merely a concept imposed by Christian missionaries and European colonizers on social phenomena that do not resemble each other, a hodgepodge collection of beliefs, practices, experiences and institutions with no order. If they are right, then there is something incoherent or even violent about a diversified philosophy of religion (and about the academic study of religion in general).8 This is not my view. I think that the phrase ‘a religion’ can accurately name a form of life that exists in history and in cultures around the world, even before that phrase was invented. I judge that the definition of ‘religion’ that will best accommodate a diversified philosophy of religion (and the academic study of religion in general) will be a polythetic one.9 A polythetic approach defines a concept in terms of multiple features, with the result that there will be prototypical cases that possess all of those features, legitimate cases that have most of them and borderline cases that have few. I also judge that the best polythetic definition of ‘religion’ will include not only functional features (such as providing rites of passage or ethical values) but also a substantive feature that treats the object of religious belief as unlike other realities. Some scholars have distinguished the substantive feature as belief in realities that are ‘superhuman’ or ‘supernatural;’ I use the term ‘superempirical’ to refer to realities that are considered both unavailable to the senses and (unlike nations or money, for instance) not the product of what is available to the senses. I would argue that the Christian God, the Buddhist principle of emptiness and Shinto kami are all superempirical realities in this sense. One can see that there are different ways to answer the question about the boundary of ‘religion’. Some draw that boundary in terms of belief in a metaphysically ultimate reality, others in terms of an existentially ultimate concern. Some non realist theorists claim that the term ‘religion’ manufactures its referent, and other realist theorists claim that the term corresponds to a social structure whose existence does not depend on the concept. Some realists prefer the clarity of a monothetic definition of ‘religion’ to the fuzziness of a polythetic definition. However one answers, this boundary question should increasingly become an explicit part of postcolonial philosophy of religion.

A SECOND META-QUESTION: THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE BODY Diversifying philosophy of religion also raises a second meta-question, a question that has so far received very little attention from philosophers of religion. The first question arose as philosophers expand their object of study beyond theism to include other kinds of religious philosophy, and that ‘boundary’ question concerns what we should consider religious. The second question arises as philosophers expand their object of study beyond texts to include non-textual aspects of religious forms of life such as practices, embodiment and material culture. The study of these aspects of religion is largely uncharted territory for philosophy of religion. There is a dividing line to be found on this point. Traditional philosophy of religion was text-based: Anselm wrote that God cannot be imagined not to exist, and Gaunilo wrote a response. William Clifford published ‘The Ethics of Belief’ in a journal in 1877,

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and William James published ‘The Will to Believe’ in a different journal a generation later. The study of Kierkegaard, Jantzen and Wolterstorff is the study of books. A diversified philosophy of religion might expand to include Kongzi’s Lunyu and Laozi’s Daodejing, Śaṅkara’s commentary on the Brahma Sūtras and Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, Spinoza’s ‘God or nature’ and Tanabe’s metanoetics, and such a shift would be utterly transformative for the discipline. It would vastly increase what was understood as philosophy of religion. But the discipline would still be text-focused. How can the discipline also grow even further to include non-textual elements of religions? What makes this meta-question difficult is that it is not clear what philosophy should contribute to the study of religious practices, embodiment and material culture.10 Rituals such as pilgrimage, fasting or circumcision; forms of comportment such as downcast eyes, taking up as much space as one can, or a prideful mien; material objects like a cathedral, singing bowls or a painted icon – these phenomena are not true or false. They are not premises in an argument. As Talal Asad (1993, ch. 1) argued in his critique of Clifford Geertz, even to assume that religious practices aim at ‘saying something’ is already to push them back into the model of texts. For this reason, many of those who seek to diversify philosophy of religion may consider the cross-cultural study of religious philosophical texts to be ambitious enough as an aim for the discipline. Ultimately, however, I think that a diversified philosophy of religion should go beyond texts to include non-textual elements. There is an implicit mind/body dualism operating in the assumptions that the subject matter of philosophy of religion stops with the ideas that have been expressly spelt out in writing, that rituals are mechanical actions or (at best) vehicles for thought done by others, and that the study of material culture is the province of anthropology of religion. As a postcolonial philosophy of religion comes to participate in the study of embodied religious performances, it will be better able to engage both (1) those communities previously ignored whose religious lives do not include books and (2) those communities previously included whose religious lives include much more than books. What, then, can philosophy of religion contribute to the study of practices, embodiment and material culture? One way that some philosophers of religion have included these non-textual aspects is by seeing them as tools in the deployment of social power.11 Embodied religious participation can produce differentiated social identities as participants have their bodies ‘inscribed’ in ways that create and reinforce social status. In this way, the non-textual aspects of religion are involved in establishing, perpetuating or resisting social control. Insofar as this approach focuses on how bodies are treated – on how, to cite Michel Foucault, bodies in ceremonies are ‘forced to emit signs’12 – we might think of this as the philosophical study of the religious body-as-object. In addition to this recognition of the role of religious materiality in oppression, marginalization and resistance, philosophers should also recognize the religious body-as-subject. In addition to being a physical object in the world, the body is the seat of one’s experiences and consciousness. Religions are forms of life and participation in them can train embodied subjects in their capacities of perception and thinking. Indeed, religious communities often say that coming to see the world rightly is the primary benefit of participation.13 Going on a pilgrimage can shape how the pilgrim comes to see the world. Prostration before certain people or images can also have this effect, as can body modification, harmonized singing, rites of passage, celibacy, vision quests and fasting. The same is true of the clothes that one is required or forbidden to wear, and the architecture that draws one’s eyes upward or closes off access to the opposite gender. A religious

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practice can enable one to perceive the world in ways that one otherwise could not, and it can inhibit one from perceiving it in other ways. The crucial point here is that religious communities teach embodied modes of sensibility that are value-laden. One is led to see a certain land as precious, a certain person as holy, a certain deference as obligatory. The very reality of a ‘beyond’ or a transcendent realm is taught through physical actions.14 Moreover, the values taught are not fantasy. A religious form of life typically teaches its participants to recognize opportunities in the world to act in ways that the community considers virtuous. For the members of one religious community, such opportunities exist when one is offered food that one should decline. For another, such opportunities are created in one’s city when it comes to include orphans and widows who need succour. For another, they appear when one’s parents die and one can show them proper respect through one’s mourning and their funeral. Of course, human values do not exist without humans, but these value-laden situations exist not merely in one’s mind but also ‘out there’ in the religiously defined world. Consider this analogy. Just as those who are experts at chess might be able to see the value-laden possibility of checkmating one’s opponent in three irresistible moves, even though the person playing cannot see it, the values taught by a religion can also exist there in one’s world visible only to those who are trained to see them. Those opportunities for virtuous action may not be apparent to those who have not participated in the relevant form of life, or to those who have not participated enough and are still novices. Nevertheless, the opportunities are real, not imaginary. In this way, the philosophical study of the body-as-subject can connect the non-textual aspects of religion not only to social forces but also to constructive issues in ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. The religious philosophies that people adopt – only in some cases expounded and defended in texts – are scaffolded and enabled by embodied training in perception.

A THIRD META-QUESTION: NORMATIVITY As we saw in Anselm and Hume, traditional philosophers of religion have typically been judgmental, arguing that certain religious beliefs are unreasonable, confused, unwarranted and so on, and that alternative beliefs are better. In fact, normative evaluation like this has been the distinctive task of philosophy of religion, a task that other disciplines in the academic study of religion have explicitly excluded as part of what they do. But diversifying philosophy of religion across cultures raises the question whether this traditional understanding of the discipline should continue. Recognizing not only the history of racism and supersessionism towards the religions of others but also the ongoing discrepancy of power and coloniality of our thinking, should philosophers of religion continue to include evaluation as one of their tasks? Call this ‘the question of normativity’. The contributors to this volume disagree in their answers to this meta-question.15 Philosophy of religion has often belittled the religious beliefs, practices, experiences and institutions of non-European and non-Christian forms of life and some of the contributors therefore propose a break from the traditional approach. Consider these three. First, in his chapter on religion of the Lakota, Fritz Detwiler expresses a concern that philosophy involves a search for ‘the’ truth or that philosophers might come to a conclusion that they consider true for all people and dismiss alternative options. Given that no philosopher can transcend the social and cultural conditions that give rise to their perspective, he asks, how can one legitimately privilege one’s own cultural viewpoint

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over others? Detwiler proposes that truth (a term he puts in scare quotes) is primarily experiential not rational, individual not universal and relative not absolute.16 As a result, there are multiple true ways to understand the world. Those who practice a diversified philosophy of religion while adopting this relativist stance would set aside the search for truth and in its place adopt an epistemic humility. The task of philosophy of religion would then be to understand what is ‘true’ for a given cultural perspective, but not what is true simpliciter or true for all perspectives. Second, in her chapter re-envisioning philosophy of religion from a feminist perspective, Morny Joy also expresses a concern about the way that philosophers of religion have used evaluation as a weapon to denigrate certain groups of people. Joy points out that the philosophical ideal of making judgements from a position that is ‘objective’ – free from personal commitments and passions – is not in fact neutral. It is in fact a gendered ideal, and it facilitates the denigration of women and of non-Western peoples whose ways of thinking are taken to be to be closer to the body, emotion and the earth. In the place of traditional philosophy of religion and its claim to uphold ‘superior knowledge’, Joy proposes a revised discipline that would not be principally concerned with ‘proofs and truths’. Instead, one would investigate religions and philosophies in terms of whether they are compatible with an affirmation of life in this world. Unlike Detwiler’s relativist stance, this version of philosophy of religion would still be evaluative. However, the evaluations would be focused not on adjudicating the nature of things in the abstract but rather on the practical issues of sustainability and justice. It would replace dispassionate analysis with a concern about how ideas are lived, taking into consideration the inequity of social conditions, the struggle between economic interests and political policies that affect the quality of human life. Third, in his chapter that connects diversifying philosophy of religion to the work of ethnography, Mikel Burley draws attention to the often-overlooked fact that philosophical evaluations of religious phenomena are useless, or worse, until the philosopher grasps what the religious community in question is actually saying or doing. As he puts it (borrowing a nice phrase from D. Z. Phillips), philosophers must first ‘do conceptual justice’ to the phenomena they study. And this is not easy, not only because the religious forms of life in question are ‘other’ but also because they have so often been framed by negative assumptions that the religions of non-Christians or non-Caucasians are primitive, legalistic, superstitious, bloodthirsty, under the sway of base emotions and so on. These prejudices are all the more apparent in discussions of the religious phenomena such as possession and animal sacrifice on which Burley deliberately focuses. A path forward is for philosophers to practice ‘thick description’, that is, an account that provides not merely a description of religious people’s words or movements, but also a contextually sensitive interpretation of how those claims and practices play a role in a life that makes sense. Thick description by philosophers has a double value as it does conceptual justice to the described phenomena while disrupting the describers’ own prejudices. Burley does not close the door to a further step in which a philosopher of religion goes on to evaluate the described religious phenomena, but his proposal is that non-evaluative but self-critical description is a properly philosophical project that provides a healthy model for philosophers of religion who want to diversify the discipline.17 On the other side of this discussion, there are those in this volume who insist on the centrality of evaluation to a postcolonial philosophy of religion. Consider these three. First, Timothy Knepper (Chapter 3) proposes that philosophy of religion make its central object of study not ‘everything’ in religion but instead religious reason-giving.

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The focus would be on the metaphysical, moral, epistemological and other arguments offered for religious forms of life. The other aspects of a religion – the institutions that train people to develop and teach those reasons, the practices that discipline people to live their life in accord with those reasons, the experiences that are said to justify those reasons, and so on – would be included not for their own sake, but rather as they play a role in religious philosophizing. As he seeks to diversify the discipline, Knepper often refers to the ‘historical acts’ of reason-giving precisely because he does not think that one can understand someone’s reasons deracinated from their cultural-historical settings, their social-ideological uses and their personal motivations. The philosophical study of religious reason-giving therefore begins with a thick description who is making the claim, who the audience is, who its opponents are, how such a claim was arrived at, under what conditions it might be amended or relinquished and so on. However, once one has grasped the religious reason-giving in its context, philosophy of religion would also include the work of assessing the validity and the soundness of those religious reasons. Asking and answering this evaluative question distinguishes philosophy of religion from social scientific approaches that exclude from their task the evaluating of a religious community’s arguments, and it locates philosophy of religion firmly in the humanities. Second, Sonia Sikka (Chapter 5) argues that the failure to recognize the worldviews of non-Western people as philosophy is not merely ‘Eurocentric’ or ‘narrow’ but is also racist. Indian, Chinese, African and other non-Western forms of life are typically categorized as ‘religions’, and this may be accurate, but it does not follow that these religions do not also offer philosophies. Insofar as these forms of life constitute comprehensive worldviews (and, I would add, to the extent that they have had to wrestle with rival views), they are not simply social practices asserted as proper but also include justifications in the form of reasoned reflection about the nature of things, moral principles and how the mind comes to knowledge. Sikka asks: why are ancient and classical Indian ideas about mind, self and identity, for instance, so often relegated to religious studies and ancient European ideas about the mind, self and identity classified as philosophy? Sikka’s approach to diversifying philosophy of religion is in tension with Burley’s proposal, above. Burley’s goal is to do conceptual justice to forms of life often treated with disdain by European thinkers, and he calls for a non-evaluative thick description of their practices and ideas as ways that human beings can sensibly live their lives. But Sikka critiques the suggestion that scholars stop with thick description and not proceed into a philosophical engagement that takes seriously what the religious other argues is true, real, good and just. Citing Burley, Sikka argues: ‘studying indigenous worldviews as part of the ‘messy variety’ of religion, rather than engaging with them as dialogical partners in a philosophical conversation, means they continue to be excluded from reasoned debates about the true and the good.’ Sikka’s point might be put this way: overcoming the racism and coloniality that we see in traditional philosophers of religion-like Kant and Hegel requires scholars to let themselves be challenged by the reasoned reflection of non-Western peoples. Jacob Sherman (Chapter 1) argues, like Sikka, that to deprovincialize philosophy of religion, it is crucial to treat non-Western religious thinkers as philosophers. As he writes, ‘The claims of a Dignāga or a Bhartṛhari need to be tested, evaluated, and debated, just as we need to test, evaluate, debate, and refine the claims of Searle, Taylor, Heidegger, Saussure, and so forth, to say nothing of Maimonides, Augustine, Mulla Sadra, and others.’ What Sherman calls ‘the postcolonial revaluation of emic epistemologies’ is a shift to the appreciation that those whose ideas were previously dismissed might have something one might learn. Like Burley, Sherman points out that to see alternative

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ideas as possibly right also means seeing one’s own ways of reaching the truth as possibly wrong. A postcolonial philosophy of religion cannot assume that Western ways of understanding reality are beyond question. But Sherman also raises an important issue not explicitly covered in the other essays. In the twentieth century, the dominant European philosophical movements, both analytic and continental, made a ‘linguistic turn’ that treated language as fundamental to how people perceive and conceptualize the world. Some drew the conclusion that what one took as reality was determined by the concepts in one’s language. From this perspective, what one took as a religious reality was not a response to something in the world but a product of a certain way of speaking. Sherman opposes this ‘linguistification of the sacred.’ Treating religious claims as if they were merely reports about someone’s conceptual scheme anthropologizes them and closes off the possibility that they describe the world accurately. As Sherman notes, however, the linguistic turn is today under critique and a revival of realist metaphysics is growing in both analytic and continental philosophy. A postcolonial philosophy of religion that is open to epistemologies from around the world could become central to that philosophical project. Philosophers of religion have served as what David Chidester (2014) calls ‘imperial theorists’, rationalizing the imperialist and colonialist projects of European states to control people and resources in the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Those who know this history are right to be wary of, if not exhausted by, philosophers’ evaluation of other people’s religions. Detwiler is therefore right that philosophers of religion should cultivate humility and recognize the extent to which what can be justified is culturally relative. Joy is right that allegedly dispassionate objectivity can serve as a mask for self-interest, and that the work of philosophy is not independent of social justice. And Burley is right that philosophers should not rush to evaluation or assume that it is the discipline’s only task, since the work of understanding the religions of others is both logically prior and exceedingly difficult. In many cross-cultural situations, one’s grasp of religious forms of life is still distorted to the point that evaluation is imprudent. Despite these caveats, I side in the end with those who argue that a postcolonial philosophy of religion should also include cross-cultural evaluation. I judge that a relativist stance towards justification is correct, but a relativist stance about truth is incoherent, and so we can take the scare quotes off the word ‘truth’. I also think that one cannot evaluate what contributes to justice or sustainability without also evaluating what is real and true, and so philosophy of religion will continue its interest in ‘proofs and truths’. And passing judgement on arguments is not the whole of philosophy or the only way to be a philosopher, and philosophers should not rush to get to that point, but the task of evaluation should not be dropped from the discipline as a whole. The danger of diversifying philosophy of religion is that in a desire not to treat other people’s religions with disregard, philosophers will retreat from the task that is their distinctive contribution to the multi disciplinary field of religious studies, namely, the evaluation of the truth of religious beliefs, the morality of religious practices, the veridicality of religious experiences and the justice of religious institutions. It is not clear that a discipline without evaluation would still be philosophy. As Sherman says, ‘Philosophy of religion cannot eschew the evaluation of diverse, culturally indexed claims altogether without ceasing to be philosophy in any substantive sense.’ Even more importantly, however, it is misguided to think that respect for other people’s cultures means that one does not evaluate them. Philosophical evaluation of a religious belief, practice, experience or institution means weighing the reasons that are (or can be given)

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for it, but it does not mean that one criticizes or rejects them. Evaluation, like criticism, can be either positive or negative. To respect a religion that one does not practice entails being open to the possibility that one will discover that the religious belief, practice, experience or institution is plausible, healthy, attractive or beneficial – open, in other words, to the possibility that one’s own ways of thinking, feeling and acting will be transformed by the contact. As Sikka says, a postcolonial philosophy of religion should not exclude indigenous worldviews from reasoned debates about the true and the good, but instead engage with them as dialogical partners in a philosophical conversation. In other words, respect requires evaluation.

NOTES 1. In addition to the books listed in the introduction to this volume, three examples of ongoing collective endeavours on this topic are the Global Philosophy of Religion Project at the University of Birmingham (https://www​.global​-philosophy​.org), the Global Critical Philosophy of Religion group (https://globalcritical​.as​.ua​.edu), and the Logic and Religion Association (https://www​.logicandreligion​.com​/lara). There are also several new book series related to this topic, including Expanding Philosophy of Religion (Bloomsbury), Philosophy across Borders (Oxford University Press), and Cambridge Elements in Global Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge University Press). 2. I agree with Sonia Sikka and Ashwani Kumar Peetush when they write, ‘philosophy of religion cannot be made more inclusive simply by inserting a wider number of “religions” into the category slots of the subject as currently constituted. The shapes of the slots themselves need to be altered to fit varieties of beliefs and practices configured differently than Christianity’ (2021, 2), and this chapter aims to clarify what else is needed. 3. Philosophical attention to alternative conceptions of God is growing (e.g. Diller and Kasher 2013; Buckareff and Nagasawa 2016). 4. For a comparison of ancient Chinese and ancient Hebrew theism (or henotheism) that corrects the exaggeration that the Zhou or Kongzi had a purely immanent, naturalistic, or atheistic world view, see Clark (2005). 5. I get this distinction from Rubenstein (2018), who calls them the ‘unitive’ and the ‘immanent’ definitions of pantheism, respectively. 6. For example, when asked to describe Chinese religions in terms of ‘ultimate reality’, Livia Kohn and James Miller (2001) balked. They pointed out that the Chinese have no such term and proposed that, for the Chinese, the metaphysical sense of the term would be senseless (2001, 11, 13). They therefore focused instead on the anthropological sense of what people experience as ultimate. 7. In his contribution to the present volume, Timothy Knepper (Chapter 15) defends ‘ultimacy’ as a cross-cultural category, and he makes the important step of not restricting ‘ultimacy’ to its existential or anthropological (‘Tillichian’) sense, but also includes substantive ontological senses of the term so that religions would be distinguished from other forms of culture by their reference to a particular kind of reality. 8. For a quick overview of this debate, see Schilbrack (2022). 9. For a defence of a realist social ontology of ‘religion,’ see Schilbrack (2017), and for a discussion of three kinds of polythetic definitions of ‘religion,’ see Schilbrack (2022). 10. Mikel Burley has long sought to philosophize about religions as embodied forms of life and, as he says several times in his chapter (Chapter 16), ‘it is not immediately clear what to do, philosophically’ with ritual sacrifices and spirit possessions.

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11. For an excellent overview of the emergence of this vision of religion-as-power and its relation to the earlier phenomenological focus on experience and the hermeneutical focus on meaning, see Bush (2014). 12. The full sentence from Foucault is this: ‘But the body is also directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it; they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs’ (1977, 25). 13. The role of religious practice in training, guiding, and transforming participants is described in the chapters by Kalmanson (Chapter 5), Smith (Chapter 13) and Komjathy (Chapter 17). 14. For a tremendous discussion of the role of the body in the human capacity to imagine another world, see Benavides (2021). 15. I do not mean to suggest that my focus on this one issue does justice to the whole or even to the most important parts of their papers. 16. Detwiler says that this is the Lakota view of truth, but I will treat it as his. 17. Burley and I have debated this crucial issue; see Burley 2020, 2021; Schilbrack 2021.

REFERENCES An, Yountae and Eleanor Craig, eds (2021), Beyond Man: Race, Coloniality, and Philosophy of Religion, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Asad, Talal (1993), Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press. Benavides, Gustavo (2021), ‘On the Physiology of Transcendence’, in Robert A. Yelle and Jenny Ponzo (eds), Interpreting and Explaining Transcendence: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Beyond, 25–122, Berlin: De Gruyter. Buckareff, Andrei A. and Yujin Nagasawa, eds (2016), Alternate Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burley, Mikel (2020), A Radical, Pluralist Philosophy of Religion: Cross-cultural, Multireligious, Interdisciplinary, London: Bloomsbury. Burley, Mikel (2021), ‘Philosophy of Religion in a Radically Pluralist Spirit: A Reply to Responses’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 89 (2): 739–48. Bush, Stephen S. (2014), Alternate Visions of Religion: Experience, Meaning, and Power, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chen, Carolyn (2022), Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chidester, David (2014), Empire of Religion: Imperialism and Comparative Religion, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Clark, Kelly James (2005), ‘The Gods of Abraham, Isaiah, and Confucius’, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, 5 (1): 109–36. Diller, Jeanine and Kasher, Asa, eds (2013), Models of God and Alternate Ultimate Realities, Dordrecht: Springer. Foucault, Michel (1977 [1975]), Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Translated by Alan Sheridan, New York: Random House. Geertz, Clifford (1973), The Interpretation of Cultures, New York: Basic Books. Hadot, Pierre (1995), Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, Translated by Michael Chase. Maldon: Blackwell.

THE DANGER OF DIVERSIFYING

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Heehs, Peter (2019), Spirituality Without God: A Global History of Thought and Practice, London: Bloomsbury. Hume, David (1975 [1777]), Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, Oxford: Clarendon Press. King, Winston (1964), In the Hope of Nibbana: An Essay on Theravada Buddhist Ethics, Oxford: Open Court. Kohn, Livia and Miller, James. 2001. ‘Ultimate Reality: Chinese Religion’, in Robert C. Neville, eds, Ultimate Realities. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. McWhorter, John (2021), Woke Racism: How a New Religion has Betrayed Black America, New York: Portfolio/Penguin. Neville, Robert Cummings (2013), Ultimates, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Reed, Randy (2018), ‘A New Pantheon: Artificial Intelligence and Her’, Journal of Religion and Film, 22 (2), https://digitalcommons​.unomaha​.edu​/jrf​/vol22​/iss2​/5/. Rubenstein, Mary-Jane (2018), Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters, New York: Columbia University Press. Schilbrack, Kevin (2017), ‘A Realist Social Ontology of Religion’, Religion, 47 (2): 161–178. Schilbrack, Kevin (2021), ‘Critique vs. Evaluation in Post-colonial Philosophy of Religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 89 (2): 713–20. Schilbrack, Kevin (2022), ‘The Concept of Religion’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato​.stanford​.edu​/archives​/sum2022​/entries​/concept​ -religion/. Sikka, Sonia, and Ashwani Kumar Peetush, eds (2021), Asian Philosophies and the Idea of Religion, London: Routledge.

312

INDEX

a priori  13, 27–8, 36, 56, 102 Abhinavagupta  147 Abraham  178, 187 Abrahamic religions  64 n.3, 81, 87, 95, 122, 178, 182–3, 220, 224–5 Absolute  36, 46–8, 110, 113–14, 214, 286 absolute, vs. relative  24, 230, 286, 306 “absolute other,” zettai no ta 絶対の他  206–10, 213–14, 214–15 n.5, 215 n.11 academia  2, 7, 11, 25, 69, 128, 136, 141–2, 194, 199–201 and hegemony and normativity  81, 83, 87–9, 94, 107, 128, 156, 160, 183, 203, 220, 224–6, 230, 237–8, 282, 284–6, 293 n.22, 293 n.23, 298–300, 304, 307–8 Adi Granth  161 Adler, Joseph  114–15 Advaita Vedānta  15, 48, 88, 150, 279–94, 301 Africa  2, 6, 14, 41–3, 50 n.7, 81, 83–4, 91, 122, 218–21, 223–7, 308 Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy  83. See also Park, P. African Indigenous Knowledge Systems  226 African philosophy  14–15, 221–7 African Traditional Religion  219–21 African worldviews  87, 221 After Appropriation  3, 66. See also Morny afterlife  62, 66–8, 219, 221, 236, 242 agape  206 Ainu, (indigenous population)  250 Alcoff, Linda  11 alētheia  271 Alston, William  16 n.7 alteriority  201, 203 n.15 Althusser, Louis  4 Amakholwa  219–20 Amane, Nishi  110 American Academy of Religion  2, 5, 12, 23, 239 Ames, Roger T.  119 n.2, 156

Amiotte, Arthur  232, 236 Amos, Book of  164–5 analytic philosophy  1–2, 7–10, 16 n.8, 16 n.9, 28–30, 62, 66, 86–7, 95–6, 128, 141, 146, 308 analytic philosophy of religion  10 analytic theology  1, 7–8, 10–12 Analytic Theology  7. See also Crisp, Rea anātman, anattā, non-self  88, 113, 149, 283 ancestors  98, 107, 109, 111, 126–7, 219– 20, 222–3, 226, 236, 242, 244 n.6, 251–3, 301–2 Anderson, Pamela Sue  9, 12, 67–8, 71, 73–7, 78 n.10, 78 n.11, 123 animism  89, 94, 100–4, 220, 274, 302 Anselm of Canterbury  153, 299–303, 305 anthropology  3–4, 12, 24, 83, 94, 100, 104, 123, 178–80, 202 n.8, 239, 304 Antigone  76 anti-Semitism  85–6, 90–1 Appalachia  199, 203 n.13 appeal, supreme  163–72 Appiah, Kwame Anthony  124, 142 n.2 appropriation  28, 66, 69–70, 81, 87, 180, 242 Aquinas, Thomas  3, 81, 87, 90 Arabic  50 n.11, 58, 138, 178 Arcadi, James M.  11 Arendt, Hannah  195, 260 argument  3, 9–11, 15 n.3, 29, 34, 37–8, 55–8, 60, 64 n.6, 65 n.14, 66, 68, 74, 81, 87–9, 94–6, 99, 116, 127–8, 136, 139–41, 166, 183, 194, 284–6, 293 n.23, 299–300, 304, 308 Aristotle  81, 147, 167–8, 195, 214 n.1, 270 Arjuna  154, 284 artificial intelligence  263–5, 267–8, 271–3, 275–6 n.7, 302 Asad, Talal  96–8, 304 Asia  2, 6, 41, 43, 81, 91, 162–3, 226, 254, 258–9, 273, 308 Assam  14, 177–8, 182, 184–5

314

assimilation  37 n.3, 66, 69–70, 84–6 atheism, non-theistic  56, 62, 299, 309 n.4 ātman, self  88, 113, 181, 283–7, 289–90, 293 n.25 atomic bomb  259 atonement  35, 95, 297 attitude, sovereign  163–8, 172 Augustine  31, 81, 90, 307 Austin, J. L.  180 authority  14, 25–6, 28, 35, 98, 105 n.3, 154, 167, 230–1, 240, 286 scriptural  168–9, 171, 283–4, 292 n.17, 293 n.23, 294 n.27 Available Light  179–80. See also Geertz Awolalu, J. Omosade  222 Axial Age, axiality  14, 163–6, 168–73, 173 n.7, 187 Azande  179 babaláwo, father-of-secrets  55, 59–60 Badiou, Alan  4 Bakhtin, Mikhail  188–9 Balibar, Etienne  4, 85 Basso, Keith H.  233–4 Baudrillard, Jean  4 belief  8, 13, 15, 16 n.6, 24, 30, 32, 34, 37 n.4, 47, 54, 56, 60, 64 n.12, 68, 75, 82, 86–8, 90–1, 94–104, 114, 135–6, 141, 148, 162, 169–71, 182–3, 188, 190, 194, 199, 219–21, 223, 271–2, 274–5, 297, 299–305, 309, 309 n.2 belief, Inkolo  219–20 Belief and Worship in Native North America. See also Hultkrantz believers  95, 97, 162, 169, 219 believers, Amakholwa  219–20 Bell, Catherine  98–9, 103–4 bell hooks  76, 78 n.9 Bellah, Robert  156 Benatar, David  50–1 n.11 Benjamin, Jessica  135, 137, 206–7, 210–14, 216 n.17 Berger, Peter L.  35, 50 n.8, 157 n.2 Bernasconi, Robert  6, 13, 16 n.6, 82–4, 91 Berthrong, John H  157 n.2, 3 Beyond Doer and Done to  211. See also Benjamin Beyond Man  5. See also Craig, Yountae Beyond Nature and Culture  274. See also Descola Bhabha, Homi K.  25–6, 50 n.6

INDEX

Bhagavad Gītā  147, 283–4 bhakti  16 n.8, 34 Bhartṛhari  30–1, 307 Bhāviveka  157 n.7 Bible  34, 160–1, 164, 166–7, 199–200, 221, 224–5, 237, 268–9, 272 Big Bang  62, 65 n.15 bigotry  4, 82, 85, 90–1 Bilimoria, Purushottama  2–5, 7, 12, 15 n.1, 44, 65 n.14 Bird-David, Nurit  13, 101–3, 105 n.6, 105 n.7 bliss, ānanda  281–4, 290–1, 301 Bloch, Maurice  100 Bodhidharma  138 Bolívar, Simón  43 Book of Changes, Yijing 易經  112–14, 116, 301 Book of Rights, Liji 禮記  115 Book of Sui  250 Bourdieu, Pierre  196–7, 202 n.7 Brahma Sūtra  283–4, 304 Brahman  31, 47, 62, 165, 170, 181, 281–4, 286, 289–91, 292 n.11, 292 n.12, 292 n.13, 294 n.27, 294 n.36, 300, 302 Braun, Willi  99 Brigg, Morgan  48, 51 n.14 Brown, Joseph Epes  229–30, 234, 238 Buber, Martin  106 n.7, 215 n.12, 238–9 Buddha, Śākyamuni  109 “buddha-dharma,” fofa 佛法  109 buddhas  108–9, 126–7, 170 Buddhism  12, 24–5, 37 n.3, 50–1 n.11, 109–16, 118, 121, 123–4, 127–8, 135, 149–51, 156, 170, 219, 253, 263, 273, 281, 300–1, 303 Huayan  121 Mādhyamaka  88, 281, 292 n.7 Mahāyāna  30, 113, 157 n.7, 281, 292 n.7 Śrāvaka  157 n.7 Theravāda Buddhism  25, 300 Tiantai  121, 127 Yogācāra  157 n.7 Zen, Chan  114, 121, 124, 126, 258 Buddhists  30, 109, 154, 249, 258, 273, 301 Burley, Mikel  14, 89–90, 177, 181–2, 189, 306–8, 309 n.10, 310 n.17 Burns, Elizabeth  8–9 Butler, Judith  76

INDEX

Campany, Robert F.  108 “Capri Seminar”  1. See also Derrida Caputo, John D.  4 categories  3, 6, 12–14, 24, 27, 30, 33, 41, 55, 57–62, 69, 76, 82, 108–9, 111, 148–53, 155–6, 229–30, 238–40, 282 Catholic  97, 107–8, 153–4, 202 n.9, 229–30, 257, 264 causality  102–3, 151, 167, 280 cause  31, 42, 48–9, 58, 65 n.15, 75, 128–9, 168, 230, 233, 236, 256, 260, 281, 285, 290–1, 292 n.9 Chakrabarty, Dipesh  12, 25–6, 31–3, 43–4, 50 n.3 Chalmers, David  128, 280 Cheng Hao  117 Chengguan  126–7 Cheung, Ching-Yuen  14, 138, 143 n.12, 261 n.22, 302 chevron  222 Chidester, David  220, 308 Chinese  5, 58, 98, 129–34, 178, 253, 257, 262, 270, 274 Chinese philosophy  12, 107–12, 116–17, 119, 150, 163, 170, 270–2, 301, 307, 309 n.4 Ching, Julia  117–18 Chinmaya Mission  287 Christianity  1–3, 8–11, 13, 15 n.1, 16 n.7, 33, 37 n.1, 41, 45, 56, 63, 65 n.16, 67–9, 73, 81, 83–4, 86–7, 89–91, 94–5, 98, 101, 103, 107–8, 119, 122, 137–8, 146–7, 153, 160, 162, 168, 177, 182, 199–200, 202 n.10, 202 n.11, 202–3 n.12, 203 n.16, 219–21, 224–5, 229, 231, 236–8, 240–1, 249, 253, 263–5, 268–9, 272, 276 n.12, 292 n.4, 297, 299–300, 303, 309 n.2 Churchland, Paul  141 circular logic, cakrikādoṣa  290 classic  169–70 Clayton, John  181 Clifford, William  303–4 climate change  48–9, 51 n.15, 89, 271 Clooney, Francis X. S. J.  77 n.3, 147, 150, 152–4, 157 n.2, 173 n.2, 173 n.9 cloud computing  266 Coakley, Sarah  9–11, 16 n.9 cogito  5, 45, 207 cognition, jñāna  281, 284, 287 coherence  5, 25, 41, 74, 95, 97–9, 239

 315

colonialism  13, 23, 25–6, 41–7, 49, 50 n.9, 71, 134, 219, 224, 226, 300–1, 303 Japanese  250, 259 communalism  218–19, 221, 223, 226–7 community  8, 25, 27, 36, 41, 43–4, 48–9, 50 n.3, 51 n.14, 69, 72, 82, 84–5, 87, 89, 91, 97–8, 101, 108, 122–3, 125, 140, 160–5, 169–73, 179, 194, 196–9, 202 n.9, 202–3 n.12, 218–19, 221, 223, 227, 233–6, 238, 242–3, 244 n.8, 254, 259, 270, 294 n.27, 299, 301, 304–7 comparative categories  55, 59, 149–53, 155–6 comparative philosophy  3–4, 13–14, 16 n.4, 54–5, 61, 65 n.14, 69, 123–4, 146–56, 160, 162–3, 167 comparative religion  69, 147, 149–55, 157 n.3 Comparative Religious Ideas Project  147, 149–52, 157 n.2, 157 n.3 comparison  13, 48, 55, 58–9, 61, 64 n.13, 65 n.14, 146–56, 156–57 n.1, 157 n.2, 157 n.3, 263, 285 concept, dialectical formation of  166, 168 Confucianism  64 n.3, 109–11, 149–50, 154, 156, 219, 250, 253 consciousness, cit, caitanya  279–82, 284–7, 289–91, 291 n.2, 292 n.6, 294 n.36, 301 Constitution of Japan  248, 251 continental philosophy  1–4, 7–8, 29–30, 41, 86–7, 95–6, 156, 308 Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion  66–7. See also Morny conversion  25, 85–6, 220 Cornille, Catherine  152–4 cosmopolitan  121–5, 128, 134, 142 n.2, 143 n.6, 160, 163, 169 cosmos  62–3, 65 n.15, 72, 102, 107, 111–14, 116–18, 221, 236, 241, 271, 276 n.9 Craig, Eleanor  5, 10, 50 n.10, 123, 298 creatio ex nihilo  13, 116 Crisp, Olivier  7 critical theory  3 Crockett, Clayton  4, 8 cross-cultural dialogue  41, 43, 47–8 cross-cultural philosophy  4, 7, 9–10, 15, 47–8, 54–5, 109, 172, 200, 297, 304, 308, 309 n.7 culture, Okinawan vs. Japanese  254

316

Dallmayr, Fred  69 dao  62, 108–13, 118–19, 270–1, 276 n.9, 300–2 Daodejing  111–13, 169–70, 304 Daoism  109–11, 113, 116, 149–50, 156, 271 darśana  48, 58, 284–5, 293 n.20 Dasein  208 Davidson, Donald  30, 37 n.5, 97 Daxue 大學  115 de Beauvoir, Simone  78 n.11, 214 n.5 de Castro, Eduardo Viveiros  230, 235 de Certeau, Michel  196 de Lara, Philippe  179 de Mattei, Roberto  257 death  32, 35–6, 48–9, 62, 66–8, 73, 77, 87, 109, 164, 167, 185, 194, 199, 219, 221, 234, 236, 242, 248–50, 252, 255, 257–9, 264, 266, 268–9, 271, 280, 283, 290, 299, 301, 305 Death and the Displacement of Beauty  67, 73. See also Jantzen decentering  96–7, 121, 203 n.15 deconstruction  4, 28, 71–3 Deleuze, Gilles  126 Deloria, Vine Jr.  232, 234–5, 239, 241 DeMallie, Raymond  241 demarcation  58, 108 demonization  85–7 Deodhanī (festival)  184–90 deprovincializing  23–38, 307 Derrida, Jacques  1, 4, 31, 50 n.6, 59, 64 n.9, 64 n.10 Descartes, René, Cartesian  12, 45–6, 78 n.8, 102–3, 166, 207, 267, 280–1, 292 n.4 Descola, Phillipe  274 desire  73, 75–6, 86, 113, 126, 164, 188, 211–12, 291, 303 Desire and Nothingness  125. See also Heisig destiny  15 n.3, 58, 235–7 Detwiler, Fritz  14, 302, 305–6, 308, 310 n.16 Deutsch, Eliot  69 devaru, superpersons  102–3 developmentalism  101–3 dharma  28, 58, 108–10, 113, 126, 283 Dharmākara  170 Dharmakīrti  30 dialectic  14, 57, 60, 127, 141, 162, 166, 168–9, 205–12, 214, 214–15 n.5, 216 n.16, 301

INDEX

dialogue  12–13, 16 n.8, 33, 36, 40–1, 43, 47, 69, 81, 123–6, 129, 134, 136, 138, 142, 210–11, 214, 282–3, 286 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion  146. See also Hume digital culture  263, 269, 272, 275 Dignāga  30–1, 307 dīn  58 diversifying  7–12, 15, 124, 297–300, 302–8 diversity  1–2, 7, 28, 34–6, 43, 48, 54, 60, 68, 98, 109, 125, 152, 181–2, 190, 206, 230 doctrine  28, 36, 81, 87–8, 90–1, 94–6, 98–9, 101, 110, 117, 119, 149, 194, 199, 253, 284, 293 n.23 Dōgen Kigen  126–7, 138, 143, 304 domestic violence  73 dominion  89 Dotson, Kristie  7, 11 Dṛg-Dṛśya-Viveka  15, 279–80, 286–91, 294 n.29, 294 n.30, 294 n.33, 294 n.35, 294 n.38, 301 dualism  97, 102, 125–6, 140, 280–2, 284, 292 n.4, 304 DuJardin, Troy  4 Durkheim, Émile  247 Dussel, Enrique  5, 45–6, 50 n.3 Eckel, M. David  4–5, 157 n.2, 7 Eco, Umberto  59, 64 n.4 Edwards, Jonathan  238–9 Egypt  83, 301 Eliade, Mircea  99, 156 embodiment, or the body  101, 125, 189, 194, 196, 198, 200, 208–9, 236, 265, 271, 273, 281, 283, 298, 301, 303–5 Emerson, Ralph Waldo  239 emic-etic  12, 23–37, 37 n.2, 307 Emperor, of Japan  250–1 emptiness, śūnyatā  113–16, 118–19, 232, 303 The Ends of Philosophy of Religion  60–1. See also Knepper Enlightenment  8, 27–8, 31, 34, 41–3, 56, 104, 268–9, 282 enlightenment, state of  264–5, 268, 273 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding  298. See also Hume environment  89, 102, 138, 205, 207–8, 232–3, 235, 239, 243, 266, 291, 301 epistemic justice  11, 64 n.10, 73–4, 76–7

INDEX

epistemology  6, 13, 23–5, 101–3, 201, 205, 231, 240, 279, 282, 284, 293, 298–9, 305 equality  41–2, 49, 127–8, 140, 205–6, 209–10, 214, 214–15 n.5, 215 n.6, 253, 294 n.27 Eshleman, Andrew  123 ẹsin  58 Estermann, Josef  51 n.14 ethics  84, 89–90, 109–10, 128, 140–1, 187, 189, 239, 305 Ethics of Memory  248. See also Takahashi ethnocentrism  4, 7, 26–7, 71, 97–8 ethnography  178–83, 190, 306 ethnophilosophy  226 Eurocentrism  3, 12–13, 25, 41, 43–9, 50 n.7, 66, 71, 82, 109, 282, 298, 307 European Universalism  43, 96, 103, 282, 292 n.9, 292 n.10 evangelization  202 n.10, 219–20 Evans-Pritchard, E. E.  179 An Evening of Philosophical Conversation  110. See also Inoue evil, problem of  15 n.3, 63, 66–8, 72–3, 81, 87, 95, 166–7, 183, 241, 268, 297 existence, sat  289–91, 294 n.36 Explorations in Women’s Rights and Religions  66. See also Morny expression, dōtoku  126–8, 141 expressivism  188 Eze, Emmanuel Chuckwidi  6–7, 10 faith  15 n.3, 23–4, 36, 46, 81, 88, 128, 152–4, 163–4, 172, 177, 183, 187, 199, 200, 299 family  107, 109, 222, 227, 234–5, 252, 303 Fanon, Frantz  50 n.4 fate  235, 300 fear  134, 171, 199, 212, 264, 265, 268–9, 273, 280 Fear and Trembling  178, 187. See also Kierkegaard feminist philosophy  3, 8–9, 12, 26–7, 66–77, 123, 167, 293 n.24, 306 A Feminist Philosophy of Religion  68, 74. See also Anderson “feminist standpoint”  75 Ferrer, Jorge N.  27 fieldwork  14, 177–9 Fitzgerald, Anthony  103

 317

Flew, Antony  7 Flood, Gavin  27 folklore  148, 221–5, 227, 251 Förster, Yvonne  15, 302 Foucault, Michel  4, 50 n.6, 198, 202 n.7, 304, 310 n.12 The Foundations of Violence  67. See also Jantzen fourth-person ontology  13, 124–7, 138, 140–2, 142 n.4, 143 n.14 Framarin, Christopher G.  16 n.8, 77 n.3 Frankenberry, Nancy  9, 97, 105 n.3 Frankenstein  264–5 Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus  264. See also Shelley Frazer, James G.  103–4, 178, 188 Fredriksen, Paula  157 n.2 Freire, Paulo  195 Freud, Sigmund  67, 149, 206, 211, 269, 273 Fukushima, nuclear disaster  255–7 The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion  4. See also Crockett, Putt, Robbins The Future of the Body  197. See also Murphy The Future of the Philosophy of Religion  4. See also Eckel, Speight, DuJardin Gallien, Claire  44 Galvani, Luigi  264 Gandhi, Mohandas K. (Mahatma)  42–3 Ganeri, Jonardon  7–8, 292 n.8, 292 n.11 Garfield, Jay L.  7, 10–11, 49 n.2, 88 Gaunilo of Marmoutiers  299, 303 The Gay Science  35. See also Nietzsche GCPR, “Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion” project  1, 10, 12, 15, 200–1, 309 Geertz, Clifford  96–8, 179–81, 239, 301, 304 gender  2, 9, 28, 74, 76–7, 123, 206, 211–13, 214–15 n.5, 215 n.6, 248, 294 n.27, 304, 306 Geneologies of Religion  96–7. See also Asad Gestell, enframing  15, 270–1, 275 n.4 Gill, Sam D.  239 global-critical philosophy of religion  1, 23, 31, 34, 36–7, 40–1, 48–9, 54–5, 59, 64 n.3, 64 n.11, 94, 104, 123–4, 173, 178, 190, 200–1, 291, 302–4, 309 n.3

318

globalization  1–2, 6, 8, 12, 40–2, 45–6, 48, 54, 59, 71, 78 n.5, 81–2, 88, 91, 94, 121, 128, 274–5 Gnaski, mischievous  236, 241 God  11, 15, 16 n.9, 28, 31–3, 35, 46, 48, 56, 62, 65 n.16, 67, 72, 74, 75, 77, 95, 107–8, 118, 147, 149, 161–2, 165–8, 170, 172, 178, 183, 185, 187, 199–200, 202 n.10, 206, 219, 221, 224, 229–31, 233, 236, 240–1, 249, 257, 264–9, 273, 280, 297, 299, 300 attributes of  15 n.3, 62, 66, 72, 74, 81, 118, 297, 299–300 existence of  15 n.3, 46, 62, 66, 68, 81, 87, 95, 128, 297, 299 Gōda, Masato  254 Goddess, the  14, 177–8, 182, 184–6, 188–9 goddesses  178, 185–6, 189 Gödel, Kurt  128 The Golden Bough  103–4, 178, 188. See also Frazer Gombrich, Richard F.  25, 37 n.3 Goodchild, Philip  3 Goodman, Felicitas  197, 200, 202 n.7 Goodman, Nelson  29 Gospel of Mark  199 Graham, Mary  48, 51 n.14 Graham, William A.  161, 173 n.3 Gramsci, Antonio  195 Great Ultimate, taiji 太極  112–17, 301 Greek philosophy  76, 81, 83, 87, 118, 163, 168, 195 Gross, Lawrence  231 Guatarri, Felix  126 Guha, Ranajit  31–2 guidance  161–2, 164, 168–72, 185, 223, 303 Gutiérrez, Gustavo  2, 195 Habermas, Jürgen  28, 37 n.4, 169, 173 n.7 habitus  196–7, 200, 202 n.7 Hackett, Jeremiah  3 Hadot, Pierre  118, 198, 202 n.7, 301 Hall, David  19 n.2, 156 Hallowel, A. Irwing  101 Hämäläinen, Pekka  243 Han Dynasty  112 Han, Satsuma  253 Hansen, Mark B. N.  267 Haq, Nomanul  157 n.2 Harding, Sandra  74–5

INDEX

harmony  63, 112, 117, 125, 151, 239–40, 242–3, 270, 272 Hayles, Katherine N.  267 health  63, 109, 255–6 heart-mind  113–14, 116–17 heaven  28, 32, 50 n.8, 164, 170, 236–7, 241–2, 267, 293 n.24, 300 Hebrew Scriptures  163–7, 170, 173 n.6, 225 Hedley, Douglas  187 Hedrick, Lisa L.  13, 302 Hegel, Georg W. F.  6–8, 12, 46–7, 76, 78 n.11, 82–4, 110, 146–7, 163, 208, 210–11, 214–15 n.5, 307 Heidegger, Martin  6, 31, 195, 268, 270–1, 275 n.4, 307 Heisig, James  125 hell  50 n.8, 241–2 hermeneutics  4, 16 n.8, 89, 184, 189, 310 n.11 heyoka, contrary  235–6 Hick, John  177, 187, 190 Hind Swaraj  42–3. See also Gandhi Hinduism, Hindus  10, 30–1, 37 n.1, 47, 81, 83, 85–6, 91 n.3, 149–51, 153–6, 157 n.2, 157 n.7, 178, 181–3, 185, 284 Hiroshima  259 Hiroshima Notes  259. See also Oe Hoffman, E. T. A.  265, 272–3 Hokkaido  250, 259 Hollywood, Amy  33 holy  28, 99, 273, 305 Holy Inquisition  265 Holy Mary  265 Holy Spirit  199–200, 202 n.10 Holy Terrors  97. See also Lincoln home tradition  152–4 Hon, Tze-Ki  113–14, 116 How We Think They Think  100. See also Bloch Hu Yuan  113–14 Hui, Yuk  270–1, 274, 275 n.1, 276 n.9 Hultkrantz, Åke  230 human  9, 13–14, 27–8, 30, 32–4, 36, 41, 43–4, 48–9, 50 n.3, 57, 60, 62, 68, 73–5, 77, 83–4, 86, 88–9, 91, 94, 97, 99–102, 104, 114–16, 127–8, 150–1, 155, 160–3, 167, 180, 183, 187–9, 195–8, 200–1, 206, 208–10, 212–14, 218, 221–2, 230–7, 239–43, 263–74, 297–8, 302, 305–7

INDEX

Human flourishing  33, 77, 201 human rights  125, 255–7 humanism  44, 47, 71, 111, 268 Hume, David  6, 57, 88, 95, 146–7, 298–300, 305 Hypatia  9 “I”  46, 48, 286, 289, 291 I and Thou  238–9. See also Buber “I and Thou”  105 n.7, 205–10, 213–14, 215 n.6, 215 n.9, 215 n.11–13, 238–9 Ibn Sina  90 identity  128–9, 137–8, 257, 284, 287–8 n.1, 290, 263 n.25, 301, 307 Idowu, E. Bọlaji  220 Ifá  55, 58–60 Ifa, Fuyū  253–4 illusion  134, 265, 273 illusion, māyā  281–2, 284, 286, 288, 290 Imitha ngokuphindwa, “It gets pregnant when you do it again”  227. See also proverbs immortality  62, 72–4, 151, 164, 290, 294 n.34 imperialism, imperialist  6–7, 23, 25, 27, 43–4, 78 n.5, 97, 100, 224, 227, 308 impermanence, anitya  113–14, 118 incarnation  77, 95, 150–1, 297 India  12–14, 31, 42, 47–8, 50 n.10, 50–1 n.11, 51 n.13, 51 n.14, 67, 70–1, 83–5, 88, 101, 108–9, 163, 178, 181–2, 184–7, 279, 281–90, 292 n.8, 292 n.10, 394 n.13, 292 n.17, 293 n.20, 293 n.21, 293 n.25, 307 Indian philosophy  12, 47–8, 88, 181, 281– 2, 284–8, 290, 292 n.8, 293 n.20, 307 Indians, American Indians  238, 243 indigenous  15, 43, 46, 48, 51 n.12, 51 n.14, 81, 85–7, 89–91, 101–3, 108–10, 135, 142 n.4, 185, 188, 202 n.9, 218–19, 221, 224–6, 232–3, 235, 239, 249–50, 252–3, 297, 307, 309 individual  7, 28, 62, 85–8, 101–2, 114, 122, 125, 127, 135–6, 161, 163, 168–9, 171–2, 180, 183–4, 194–8, 205, 207–10, 213, 218, 230–2, 235–6, 241–2, 284, 286, 301 Induku enhle iganyulwa ezizweni, “A good knobkerrie is found from very far”  226–7. See also proverbs

 319

ineffability  61–2, 65 n.15 infinite regress, anavasthādoṣa  290 inganekwame, folklore  223 Ingold, Tim  103, 202 n.9 Inipi  232 Inoue, Enryō  110, 128 insularity  5, 7, 8, 13, 182, 184, 190 integral practice  197, 202 n.7 inter-corporeal-subjectivity  14, 209, 212, 214, 301 intersectionality  77, 78 n.7 intersubjectivity  125–6, 138, 206–7, 209–14, 215–16 n.14, 301 Intuition and Reflection in SelfAwakening  209. See also Nishida Inyan  241 Irigaray, Lucy  75 Irvine, Andrew  2–5, 12 Ishmael  169. See also Quinn Isikhuni sizala umlotha, “Firewood produces ashes or firewood gives birth to ashes”  226. See also proverbs Isintu, Isintuism  14, 218–27, 228 n.2, 301–2 ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness)  189–90 Islam  37 n.1, 81, 84–5, 87, 90, 95, 97, 108, 137–8, 150–1, 154, 156, 157 n.2, 219–21, 225, 263, 273 Islamophobia  84–7, 90–1 Īśvara  58 Ithunga ligcwala ngomphehlo, “When milking a cow the milk container gets full when you milk for the second time”  227. See also proverbs Iwao, Kōyama  125 Iyer, K. A. Subramania  31 Jainism  10 James, William  304 Janicaud, Dominic  1 Jantzen, Grace  9, 12, 67–8, 70–3, 76–7, 304 Japan  15, 107, 109–11, 142 n.4, 207, 248–60, 268, 270, 273, 302 Jaspers, Karl  156, 163 Jesus of Nazareth  98, 167, 202 n.10, 272 jiao, 教  58 Job  167 Jōken, Shō  253 Joseon dynasty Korea  107 Josephson-Storm, Jason  108–10 Journal of Analytic Theology  12

320

The Journey to the West (Xiyouqi)  134 Joy, Morny  3–5, 9–10, 12, 123, 306, 308 Judaism  81, 87, 95, 108, 146, 150–1, 156, 157 n.2, 219–21 Jung, Carl G.  124, 232 justice  55, 59–60, 64 n.10, 71, 73–4, 76–7, 143 n.5, 165, 171, 178, 181, 184, 189–90, 195, 274, 294 n.27, 306–8, 310 n.15 Kalmanson, Leah  13, 301, 310 n.13 Kāmākhyā (temple)  14, 178, 182, 185–6, 189–90 Kamalaśīla  30 Kanaris, Jim  4, 77 n.1, 123 Kant, Immanuel  3, 6, 83–4, 90, 95, 110, 147, 207, 269, 272, 299–300, 307 Kanu, Ikechukwu A.  225 karma  63, 109, 151, 294 n.27, 300 Kessler, Gary E.  3, 69 Khanna, Varun  15, 301 Kierkegaard, Søren  178, 187, 304 kinesthetics  196, 200–1 King, Martin Luther, Jr.  43 King, Richard  30–1, 35, 87–9, 292 n.10 King, Winston  300 Kitarō, Nishida  14, 126–7, 205–16, 301 Knepper, Timothy D.  12, 123, 181, 202 n.5, 243 n.2, 306–7, 309 n.7 Kohn, Livia  157 n.2 Komjathy, Louis  14, 310 n.13 Kongzi  108–9, 119 n.1, 304, 309 Kopf, Gereon  13, 65 n.14, 229–30, 258 Kripal, Jeffrey J.  148, 200 Kripke, Saul  30, 64 n.5 Krishna (Lord)  190, 284 Ksa, Wisdom  236 Ksapela, Little Wisdom  236 Kyoto School philosophy  121, 126 LaDuke, Winona  89 Lakota philosophy  14, 55, 58–9, 64 n.3, 140, 229–44, 302, 305–6, 310 n.16 Lame Deer  241 Landoe Hedrick, Lisa  13, 302 Larson, Gerald J.  69 Latin America  43, 51 n.13, 51 n.14 Latour, Bruno  104 Lauwers, Anna S.  85 Le Doeuff, Michèle  74–6, 78 n.8 Lebenswelt  134–5, 137 Lectures on Philosophy of Religion  84, 146. See also Hegel

INDEX

Lefebvre, Henri  4 The Legends of Tono  251–2. See also Yanagita Leibnitz, Gottfried W.  87 leitmotiefs  263, 274 Lepore, Ernest  29 Levinas, Emmanuel  214–15 n.5 Leviticus, Book of  164 Lewis, David  30 Lewis, Thomas A.  5, 36, 177 li 理  116–17 liberation, mokṣa  280, 283–4, 290–1 life cycle  222–3, 247, 268, 280, 283, 291 lifeways  81, 237–8, 240, 242–3 Lincoln, Bruce  97–8 Lindbeck, George  36 lineage  83, 85, 108–10, 112, 116, 163, 206 lineage of the ‘way’ daojia 到家  108–9 linguistic turn  28–30, 36, 308 linguistification of the sacred  28, 169, 308 literacy  160, 163, 168–9 Liu, JeeLoo  113 Locke, John  88, 90 Loewen, Nathan  64 n.10, 203 n.14, 261 n.19 logic  14, 29, 38, 46, 50 n.10, 102–3, 110, 128, 148, 152, 157 n.3, 172, 205, 208–9, 214 n.1, 215 n.10, 270–2, 282, 290, 309 n.1 Logic of the Place and Religious Worldview  207. See also Nishida Long, Eugene T.  3, 15 n.3, 68–9 Lu Xiangshan  117 luminosity  281, 291, 292 n.6, 294 n.36 Lunyu 論語  109, 172, 304 Lyotard, Francois  121–2, 124 Macaulay, Thomas B.  47, 50 n.11 McCutcheon, Russell  34, 37, 99 MacIntyre, Alasdair  7, 37–8 n.6, 179 Mahābhārata  284 Maimonides  31, 90, 307 Malinowski, Bronisław  24, 178–9 manas, mind  285–6, 293 n.25 Manasā, goddess  184–6 Maṇḍana Miśra  285, 293 n.24 Marshall, Joseph M. III  232–4 Marx, Karl H.  25, 195, 206, 213 Masato, Gōda  254 Masato, Ishida  253 Masuzawa, Tomoko  96, 108, 292 n.9 Matter and Consciousness  141. See also Churchland

INDEX

Mbiti, John  218–20, 223 The Meaning and End of Religion  56. See also Smith W. C. Mecca  58 meditation  13, 27, 114–15, 118, 126, 291, 299 Meiji Era  248, 250 Meister, Chad  5, 68 Mendieta, Eduardo  86 Mengzi  107 metaphysics  6, 10, 28–30, 37 n.1, 84, 89, 107, 111–13, 116, 125, 127, 160, 189, 231, 263, 292 n.13, 301–2, 305, 307–8 meta-reflection  194, 199–200 Mills, Charles  11 Mīmāṃsā, Mīmāṃsāka  157 n.7, 160, 173 n.2, 293 n.20 mind  40, 42, 45, 68, 77, 96, 103–4, 110, 113–18, 124–5, 127–8, 135, 146, 154, 161–2, 169–70, 180, 232, 266–9, 281, 283, 285–90, 301–2, 304, 305, 307 Ming Dynasty  117–18, 250 Minh Ha, Trinh T.  124 miracles  68, 162, 200, 297–9 missionaries  25, 37 n.3, 107, 218, 220, 224, 229, 231, 241, 303 mitakuye oyasin  232 modality, thetic, athetic  136–40 modernism  4, 6, 77, 94, 101–4, 105 n.4 Modood, Tariq  84–5 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade  67, 70–1, 78 n.5 monotheism  32, 45, 75, 95, 122, 140, 150, 164 Moore, Peter  199 Moore’s law of exponential growth and computing  267 Mori, Masahiro  273 mourning  185, 223, 234, 257, 305 movement, as drive or campaign  24–5, 36, 42–4, 48, 51 n.12, 70, 107, 109, 189–90, 202 n.10, 206, 208–9, 235, 266, 268, 297, 308 movement, as motion or activity  46, 180, 185, 196–8, 272, 301, 306 Moyo, Herbert  14, 301–2 Mulla Sadra  31, 307 multi-entry approach  13, 121–42, 229–30 multilogue  121, 123–5, 140–2 Murmu  31–2 Murphy, Michael  197, 202 n.7

 321

museums, memorial  258–9 Mutai, Risaku  127–9, 143 n.5 Mu’tazilites  55, 59–60, 64 n.3, 128 mutual dependance, anyonyāśeayadoṣa  290 myopia  94–6. See also parochialism myth, mythology  28, 41, 43–4, 76, 169, 177, 182, 185–6, 222, 224–5, 263–5, 269–74, 275 n.2 Nāgārjuna  147, 292 n.7 Nagasaki  259 Nagatomo, Shigenori  138 Nagel, Thomas  128, 280 Nagi  236 Nagila  236 Namio, Egami  252 narrative  9, 13–14, 26–8, 32, 83, 87, 89, 90, 101, 121–2, 124–5, 171, 180–1, 187, 221, 231, 233, 235–7, 241–3, 248–9, 263–70, 272, 274, 275 n.1, 275 n.7, 293 n.24 Nation and Sacrifice  248. See also Takahashi naturalism  26, 34, 37 n.1, 37 n.5, 99, 111, 119 n.6, 162, 253, 274, 282 nature  47, 82, 89–90, 101, 206, 221–2, 232, 235, 239, 268, 271–4, 275 n.6, 298, 304 The Nature of True Virtue  238. See also Edwards Nayaka  13, 101–3 Ndebele  218–20, 222, 225, 228 n.2. See also Zulu, Nguni necrophilia  67, 73 neo-Confucianism  111–17 Nepal  181–4 neurotheology  280, 292 n.3 Neville, Robert C.  13–14, 16 n.4, 64 n.8, 302 New Animist  89, 94, 100–2, 104 New Essays in Philosophical Theology  7–8. See also Flew, MacIntyre New Testament  168, 199, 224 New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion  9. See also Anderson Nguni  14, 218–27, 227–28 n.1, 301. See also Isintu, Isintuism Nguni worldview  219–21, 226 Nichiryū Dōsoron  251, 253, 254 Nicholas Black Elk  229 Niebuhr, H. Richard  238–9 Nietzsche, Friedrich W.  35, 67, 82–4, 124

322

nihilism  113, 118 Nishida, Kitarō  14, 126–9, 143 n.7, 205–14, 214 n.1, 214 n.4, 215 n.9, 215 n.11–13, 301 Niya, life-breath  236 Nongbri, Brent  97 non-human  86, 89, 187, 231–6, 239–41, 243, 255, 265, 272–4, 302 normativity  12, 23–4, 36, 298, 305–9 nothingness  113, 116, 207, 214 n.4, 301 nuclear waste  260 Nyāya, Naiyāyika  55, 59, 64 n.3, 88, 128, 292 n.13, 293 n.20, 293 n.25 Obeyesekere, Gananath  25, 37 n.3 object  29–30, 40, 45, 47, 101–2, 112, 114, 125–6, 135–8, 185, 201, 207, 209, 211–14, 216 n.17, 220, 235, 249, 281, 283, 285–90, 292 n.13, 298, 302–4 Ocean Road  252. See also Yanagita Oceti Sakowin  231 Ochs, Peter  23 Oe Kenzaburō  254, 259 Ojibwe  89, 101–3 Okinawa  249–51, 253, 254 Okinawa History Narratives, Okinawa Rekishi Monogatari  253. See also Ifa Okon, Etin E.  221 On Religion  146. See also Schleiermacher On, Sai  253 ontologies of realization  198 ontology  13, 30, 88, 101–3, 124, 140–2, 194, 201, 239, 243 n.4, 309 orality  161, 173 n.3, 168, 221–6 order  13, 25–6, 44–5, 57, 77, 96–7, 101, 107, 114–17, 170–2, 183, 208, 224, 241, 265–6, 272, 285, 301, 303 Orientalism  2, 70, 77–8 n.4, 124. See also Said Orientalism and Religion  30–1. See also King, R. “the other”  70, 134, 136–41, 150, 153, 156, 206, 208–12, 214, 214–15 n.5, 215 n.12, 216 n.15, 235, 273 “othering,” of women  71 Outline of a Theory of Practice  196–7. See also Bourdieu “own-being,” svabhāva  113 Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion  95. See also Wainwright

INDEX

pandemic  142, 257, 271 Panentheism  300–1 Pantheism  300–1, 309 n.5 pantheon  264, 301 parity  25, 37, 76, 206, 210, 215 n.6 Park, Eugene Sun  88 Park, Peter K. J.  6, 13, 83–4 parochialism  4, 13, 82, 89, 91, 94–6 Parrinder, Geoffrey  220 Pascal, Blaise  128 Paśupatināth (temple)  183 Paul the Apostole, Saint Paul  224 Peirce, Charles S.  149, 157 n.3, 157 n.4, 157 n.6 Penner, Hans H.  97, 105 n.3 Pentecostal Christianity  199–200, 202 n.10, 202 n.11 Perry Expedition  110 person  13, 26–7, 34, 44–6, 68, 72, 88, 98, 100–3, 115, 118, 121–7, 135, 138–42, 142 n.4, 151, 154, 164, 167–8, 196–7, 200, 202 n.10, 205–10, 212–14, 218, 227, 230–42, 247, 257, 280, 283–4, 287–8, 290, 294 n.27, 298–302, 305–7 personal identity  88, 151, 301, 307 personality  197–8, 209–10, 212–14 personhood  13, 101–3, 236, 239 perspectives  1–5, 12, 14–15, 25–7, 31, 33–5, 40–2, 44, 54, 61, 74–5, 89, 96, 100, 123, 125, 141, 148, 155–6, 162, 173, 181, 185, 190, 207–9, 214, 215 n.9, 220–1, 230–1, 233, 235, 237, 240–3, 253, 259, 262, 269–70, 273–4, 280–2, 286, 289, 293 n.20, 305–6 perspectivism  235, 239 phenomenology  1, 3–4, 8, 13, 35, 41, 88, 99, 117, 184–5, 189, 213, 253, 257, 271, 273, 282, 310 n.11 Phenomenology and the Theological Turn  1. See also Janicaud phenomenon, phenomena  14–15, 34–5, 42, 44, 48, 50 n.4, 55–6, 86, 90, 95–6, 104, 112, 141, 160, 168, 172, 178, 181, 184, 187–9, 195–6, 210, 222–3, 247, 297–8, 301–6 Phillips, D. Z.  190, 306 Phillips, Stephen H.  293 n.21 Phillips, Stevens Jr.  247 “philosophical imaginary”  74–5

INDEX

Philosophical Investigations  180. See also Wittgenstein philosophy  1–15, 26–8, 36, 37 n.1, 37 n.5, 40, 45–6, 59, 69–70, 72, 75–7, 81–4, 87–91, 107–11, 117–18, 121–3, 125–8, 134, 155–6, 160, 166, 173, 182, 190, 198, 200, 218, 221, 224–5, 227, 229–30, 247, 268, 281–2, 297–8, 300, 307 Philosophy and the Study of Religions  5. See also Schilbrack philosophy of mind  142 n.2, 279–81 philosophy of praxis  14, 194–201, 202 n.5, 202 n.8 philosophy of religion  1–15, 23, 27, 33–4, 36, 40–5, 47–9, 54–63, 64 n.3, 64 n.11, 64 n.12, 64 n.13, 65 n.14, 66–8, 71–4, 76–7, 81–4, 86–7, 89–91, 94–6, 99–100, 107–11, 113, 117–18, 121–5, 141, 146, 157 n.3, 163, 177–8, 181–2, 184–5, 187, 189–90, 193, 196, 200–1, 202 n.8, 218–20, 226–7, 229, 239, 247–8, 257–9, 274, 276 n.12, 297–309, 309 n.2 Philosophy of Religion for a New Century  3, 10. See also Long philosophy of science  58, 64 n.7 Piaget, Jean  129, 135 pilgrimage  58, 138, 181–2, 248, 257–60, 261 n.22, 304 A Place of Springs  73. See also Jantzen “placial dialectic,” bashoteki benshohō 場所的弁証法  14, 208–9 Plantinga, Alvin  8, 16 n.7, 146 Plato  62, 118, 147, 167–8, 270 Plotinus  147, 300 political philosophy  89–91 polytheism  12, 47, 56, 138–40 polythetic definition of “religion”  301 pope, papal  91, 98 post-colonial philosophy  3, 47–8, 300, 303–4, 306, 308–9 Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion  2–3. See also Bilimoria, Irvine postcolonialism  2–3, 12, 23–7, 30–1, 36–7, 40–51, 70–1, 94, 121–5, 297, 300, 304, 306–9 posthumanism  268–9 post-modern philosophy  4, 25–6, 28, 43–4, 121 postures  198, 202 n.7

 323

power  3, 5, 23, 25, 31, 41, 43, 57, 72, 75, 77, 83–6, 90–1, 96, 99, 101, 114–15, 124–5, 128, 140, 160–1, 164–9, 171–2, 188, 199–201, 231–3, 235–6, 241, 255–6, 259–60, 264, 266, 271–2, 274, 286–7, 294 n.34, 296, 300–1, 304–5, 310 n.11, 310 n.12 Prabhu, Joseph  11, 25 practice  3, 5–14, 16 n.6, 16 n.8, 24, 26–30, 32, 34–8 n.6, 42, 48, 55–6, 58, 60, 63, 64 n.11, 64 n.13, 68, 73, 76, 88, 91, 97–100, 103–4, 107, 109, 111, 113–16, 118–19, 121, 124–5, 135–6, 138, 142, 146, 148, 154, 156–7 n.1, 161–2, 171, 179, 181, 183–4, 187–90, 194–201, 202 n.7, 202 n.9, 202–3 n.12, 219–22, 227, 247, 249, 255, 258, 263, 269, 273, 281, 284–5, 291, 294 n.37, 297, 299, 301–9, 310 n.13 The Practice of Everyday Life  196. See also de Certeau pramā, valid knowledge  285 pramāṇa, means of valid knowledge  285–7, 289–90, 293 n.22, 293 n.23, 293–4 n.26 prasthāna-trayī  283–4 pratītyasamutpād, dependent coorigination  300–2 pratyakṣa, sense-perception  30, 285 praxis  14, 194–201 four dimensions of  198, 200 key theorists  202 of philosophy  201, 202 prayer  34, 57, 239, 263, 270, 273, 299–300, 302 Price, Henry H.  11 Primitive Culture  100–1. See also Tylor Problems of Postwar Responsibility  248. See also Takahashi Problems of Yasukuni, Yasukuni Mondai  248. See also Takahashi profane  220–1, 227–8 n.1 Prometheus  264–5, 275 n.2 Proslogion  299. See also Anselm Protestant  25, 95, 153, 177, 202 n.10, 261 n.18 proverbs  14, 221–7, 228 n.2 psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic  75, 206–7, 210–11, 213–14, 232 pūrvapakṣa  284–5, 293 n.22

324

Putnam, Hilary  29, 64 n.5 Putt, Keith B.  4, 8 qi  112–19, 270–1, 276 n.9, 300–1 Qing Dynasty  250, 253 The Question Concerning Technology in China  270. See also Hui Quinn, Daniel  169 Qur’an  58, 161, 162 n.3 race  2, 5–6, 74, 76–7, 82–6, 123 racism  6, 13, 31, 74, 81–91, 134, 206, 302, 305, 307 Radcliffe-Brown, A. R.  24 A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion  89. See also Burley Radin, Paul  238 Rām Kṛṣṇa Dās, Paramhaṃsa  183–4 Ramakrishna Mission  287 Raposa, Michael L.  157 n.3 rationality  3, 9–10, 14, 23–4, 26–7, 31, 33, 36, 44–5, 67–8, 71–2, 95, 108, 163, 173, 269, 302 Rea, Michael  7 Reader, Ian  257–8 realism  9, 23, 29–30 lived religiosity  200–1 reason  3, 23–4, 27, 34, 36–7, 37 n.6, 54, 63, 68, 72, 74–5, 81, 83–4, 90, 96, 108, 118, 163, 239, 265–6, 271, 292 n.17 rebirth  109 recognition  76–7, 78 n.10, 78 n.11, 100, 135, 138, 140, 206–7, 209–15 n.5, 215 n.6, 216 n.15, 301 Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion  4. See also Kanaris reformed epistemology  8 relativism  29, 97, 105, 113, 118 release  63, 283 religion  4–6, 10, 12–15, 16 n.6, 27–30, 34–7, 40, 45, 54–63, 63–4 n.2, 64 n.6, 64 n.12, 66–70, 72, 74, 77, 81–91, 94–9, 101–4, 105 n.3, 107–11, 122–3, 137, 141, 146–9, 156–7 n.1, 160, 163–4, 168–9, 172–3, 177–8, 181–4, 187, 189–90, 201, 218–21, 224–5, 227–8 n.1, 237, 242, 247–9, 268, 274, 297–8, 301–9, 309 n.2, 309 n.7, 309 n.9, 310 n.11 Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone  84. See also Bernasconi

INDEX

religiosity  177, 181–2, 189, 194, 196, 202 n.9, 203 n.16 religious reason-giving  37, 54–5, 59–62, 64 n.12, 181, 306–7 Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’  188. See also Wittgenstein Rescher, Nicholas  37 n.5 The Responsible Self  238–9. See also Niebuhr Rethinking Philosophy of Religion  3. See also Goodchild revelation  14, 108, 118–19, 162, 170, 281 “reversing the gaze”  201 Revisioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion  68. See also Anderson Ricci, Matheo  107 rice farming  252 Rice, Julian  241–2 Richter, Daniel K.  234 Ricoeur, Paul  78 n.11, 180 Ritter, Johann W.  264 ritual  27–8, 34–5, 43, 60, 64 n.12, 88, 98, 107–9, 150, 160, 162, 164, 169, 177–8, 182, 184, 186–9, 194, 220–2, 229, 232, 239–40, 242–3, 247–9, 252, 282–3, 304, 309 n.10 commemorating the dead  249 Robbins, Jeffrey W.  4, 8 Roberts, Tyler T.  36, 99, 105 n.12 robots  263, 265, 269–70, 272–3 romanticize, romanticism  35, 89, 113–14, 235, 242, 264–6 Rosenlee, Lisa Li-Hsian  6–7, 10 Rostalska, Agnieszka  7, 293 n.24 Roth, Harold  27 Rue, Loyal  123 Ruism, Ruists  55, 59, 109–19, 301 Runzo, Joseph  123 Ryle, Gilbert  180–1 Ryukyu Kingdom  251, 253 śabda, testimony  286, 294 n.27 sacred  28, 41, 44–6, 89, 99, 161, 169, 177, 181–2, 220–1, 227–8 n.1, 239, 241, 243, 249, 258–60, 308 Sacred Pipe  229–30, 235. See also Brown sacrifice  14, 58, 138, 164–6, 178, 185, 187, 247–51, 255–60, 272 animal  178, 185–7, 189–90, 219, 300–1, 303, 306, 309 n.10 Sacrificial System  248, 255. See also Takahashi

INDEX

sacrificial system  248–9, 255–6 Sai On  253 Said, Edward  2, 25, 50 n.6, 70, 77–8 n.4, 124 salvation  63, 147, 151, 187, 199–200, 202–3 n.12, 242 Sāṃkhya  147, 150, 293 n.20 Sāṃkhya Sūtra  147 saṃsāra  63, 281, 284 Sandmann  265, 273. See also Hoffmann Śaṅkara, Ādi  147, 170–1, 181, 279, 284–7, 293 n.19, 293 n.24, 300, 304 Śaṅkara-Dig-Vijaya  285. See also Vidyāraṇya Sanskrit  50 n.11, 58, 160, 170, 281, 284, 292 n.18 Santal rebellion  31–3 Sartre, Jean-Paul  124, 135, 137, 195 Satprakāshānanda, Swāmī  285, 293–4 n.26 Saussure, Ferdinand  31, 64 n.4, 307 Schilbrack, Kevin  5–7, 14–15, 56, 64 n.12, 182, 190, 309 n.8, 309 n.9, 310 n.17 Schleiermacher, Friedrich  28, 146–7 “scholarly lineage,” rujia 儒家  108–9 scholar-practitioners  201 Schwitzgebel, Eric  5–6, 10 science fiction  260, 263–8, 272, 274, 275 n.3, 275 n.5, 302 scripturalizing  14, 160, 163 Searle, John  29, 31, 307 secularity, secular  3, 5, 16 n.9, 23–4, 27, 32–7, 37 n.4, 41, 43, 45, 47, 59, 67, 88, 90, 96, 99, 111, 146, 154, 203, 220–1, 227 n.1, 249, 258, 268, 271, 276 n.12, 297 seer  286–90 Sefa Utaki (sacred site)  258 self, selves  14, 27, 47–8, 65 n.16, 88, 101–2, 113–19, 126, 134–41, 149–51, 161–2, 164–5, 170, 197–8, 202, 205–10, 212–14, 215 n.6, 232, 236, 238–9, 242, 266, 273, 281, 283–7, 289–91, 293 n.25, 301, 307 self-cultivation  114, 116, 119 selfhood  72, 88, 150 “senseless violence”  203 n.14 sentient, sentiency  170, 288–90 Shadow of the Other  210. See also Benjamin Shamanism, shamanistic  10, 178, 185, 188–9 Sharma, Arvind  15 n.2, 123 Shelley, Mary  264–5

 325

Sherman, Jacob  12, 307–8 Sheth, Falguni  86 Shin’ichi, Hisamatsu  124 Shinran Shonin  128 Shinto, Shintoism  248, 252, 258, 263, 272–3, 276 n.11, 302–3 Shō, Jōken  253 Shōbōgenzō dōtoku  126–7, 304 shrines, Shino  247, 258 Sicun, potency  236, 241 Siderits, Mark  88, 273 sign-function  55–7, 59–60 signification  55 Sikhism  123 Sikka, Sonia  13, 307, 309, 309 n.2 silencing  71–2 sin  63, 165, 241–2, 257, 264–5, 271 singing  219, 222–3, 234, 304 singularity  267–9, 272 Sioux  231 Śiva  183–5 Skan, sky  236, 241 Smart, Ninian  123, 177 Smith, David L.  86 Smith, Jonathan Z.  99, 200, 239 Smith, Steven G.  14, 310 n.13 Smith, Wilfred C.  5, 56, 160, 162 snake-handling  199–200 society  31–2, 36, 46, 76, 96, 100, 179, 190, 195–6, 205–6, 210, 213, 215 n.11, 224, 235, 254, 268–9, 291 Society for the Study of Native American Sacred Traditions (SSNART)  239 Society of Christian Philosophers  1, 8, 11 Socrates  16 n.8, 124, 225 somatic  27, 196–7, 200–1 Sommer, Deborah  111, 116 Song, Bin  157 n.5 Song Dynasty  13, 55, 59–60, 107–19, 301 soul  62, 87–8, 101, 103, 113, 194, 241, 248–9, 270, 293 n.25 sovereignty  42–3, 48, 235, 239 Soviet Union  251, 259, 266, 278 specification  150–2 Speight, C. Allen  4 Spinoza, Baruch  160–1, 280, 300, 304 Spirit, Geist  45–8 spirits  26, 32, 98, 111, 248, 302 spiritual  10, 35, 37, 41, 47, 59, 88, 101, 111–19, 154, 161, 163, 165–6, 171, 182–3, 185, 194–5, 202 n.7, 202 n.10, 219, 230, 232, 235, 263,

326

268, 274, 280, 284, 291, 294 n.37, 301–2 spiritual exercises  118, 198, 202 n.7, 301 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty  25, 49 n.3, 67, 70–1, 124 Stalnaker, Aaron  149, 157 n.5 “standpoint theory”  74–5 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy  6 statecraft  109, 111 Stengers, Isabelle  104 Stoicism  62, 118, 300 storytelling  121–2, 124–5, 129–34, 223, 233–4 Stout, Jeffrey  34 strangeness  74, 189, 201 Struhl, Karsten  7 subaltern  26, 44, 124 subject  5, 10, 15, 24–8, 41, 44, 49, 49 n.3, 81, 86–9, 97, 99–102, 108, 111, 125–6, 147–56, 157 n.3, 205, 211–14, 214 n.1, 216 n.15, 216 n.17, 269, 287–91, 292 n.13, 293 n.25, 301, 304–5, 309 n.2 subject matter  124–5, 147–8, 152, 156–7, 162, 304 subjecthood  5, 32, 72, 100 subjectivity  2, 10, 13–14, 26, 32, 45, 101–4, 124–6, 166, 196–8, 200–1, 208–14, 240, 280, 301 suffering  58, 72, 86, 167, 183, 251, 257, 268, 283–4, 301 suffering, duḥkha  50–1 n.11, 113, 281, 283–4 superstition  32, 89, 104, 172, 220 The Supplemental Records of the Transmission of the Lamp (Xu chuangdeng lu)  126 supremacy  73, 83–7, 298 Swaraj  42–3 Swinburne, Richard  72, 292 n.4 symbols  27–8, 45, 101, 104, 169, 184–5, 224, 251, 264–7 “systems of symbols”  96–7 Tai Yuen-hung, Jacky  259 taiji, 太極 Great Ultimate  58, 112, 116, 301 Taiwan  249–52 Takahashi, Tetsuya  14, 247–51, 254–8, 260, 261 n.18 Taking Back Philosophy  7, 88. See also Van Norden Tanabe, Hajime  129, 304

INDEX

Tantra, Tantric  178, 185–6 Taylor, Charles  30–1, 34–5, 37 n.5, 307 teachings, fa 法  108–9 techné  271–2 techniques of self  198, 202 n.7 techniques of transformation  197–8, 202 n.7 technogenesis  267, 269 technology  263–75, 275 n.1, 275 n.4, 275–6 n.7, 276 n.9, 276 n.12, 302. See also techné TEK, traditional ecological knowledge  232–3 temple  14, 161, 178, 180–3, 185–6, 189–90, 258, 273 Ten Wolf-Encounter-Pictures, 十遇狼図  129–38 tetsugaku  110 Thakur  31–2 theism  3, 5–8, 11, 13–14, 15 n.3, 23–4, 34, 36, 37 n.1, 56, 68, 74, 81, 87, 95–6, 107–8, 146, 166–7, 177, 182, 190, 203 n.16, 297–300, 302–3, 309 n.4 theodicy  66, 72, 77, 183 A Theology of Liberation  2. See also Gutiérrez thick description  24, 60–1, 177–81, 184, 189–90, 306–7 Thistleton, Anthony  16 n.5 Thompson, Evan  128, 142 n.2, 269 thought experiment  72, 143 n.10 three sisters  234 “thusness,” Sk. tathātā, Jp. shin’nyo 真如, taboo  221–2, 224, 273 Tian, 天  58, 107, 112, 165, 300 Tillich, Paul  62, 65 n.16, 300, 309 n.7 topoi  28, 36, 70, 274 Toward a Political Philosophy of Race  86. See also Mendieta tradition  27–8, 37–8 n.6, 48, 109, 122–3, 135–6, 141, 152–4, 160, 166–8, 170–1, 198, 221, 225, 243, 279, 284, 294 n.27 transformative practice  68, 74, 107, 117–18, 197–8 Trinity  95 truth  12, 25, 29, 31, 36, 46, 61, 76–7, 87, 97–8, 104 n.1, 110, 124, 127, 142, 143 n.10, 149–50, 152–5, 162 n.3, 164–5, 170–1, 195, 229–31, 271, 282–3, 298, 301, 305–8, 310 n.16 Turing, Alan M.  269

INDEX

Turing test  269 Turner, James T.  11 Turner, Victor  239 Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion  68. See also Long Tyāgīnāth Aghorī Bābā, Yogīrāj Dr.  183–4 Tylor, Edward B.  4, 100–3 Ubhaya Bhāratī  285, 293 n.24 Ubuntu  218 Udiwo lufuze imbiza, “A small clay pot resembles a big pot”  226. See also proverbs Uehara, Mayuko  14, 301 Ukhuni olungaziwayo aluthezwa, “You must not gather firewood from an unknown tree”  227. See also proverbs Ukubona kanye yikubona kabili, “Seeing once is seeing twice”  227. See also proverbs ultimate end  62 ultimate origin  62–3 Ultimate reality  61–3, 99, 309 n.6, 149–50, 155, 156–7 n.1, 163, 171, 194, 302–3, 309 n.6 Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, “I am because we are”  218. See also proverbs United Nations High Comissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)  256 Universalist school  225 universe  31, 48, 98, 107, 112, 114, 116–17, 167, 219, 221, 231, 236–7, 282, 300 Upaniṣads  164, 170–1, 282–4, 286, 289, 291, 292 n.15 Kena Upaniṣad  286–7, 294 n.28, 294 n.29 Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad  164–5, 172 US Military  251, 254, 258 US-Japan security alliance  251 Vaiśeṣika  157 n.7, 293 n.20 Vaiṣṇava, Vaiṣṇavism  183 Vākyapadīya  31 Vākya-Sudhā, The Nectar of the Teaching  287. See also Dṛg-DṛśyaViveka Van der Leeuw, Gerardus  6 van Gulick  29 Van Norden, Bryan W.  7–10, 49 n.2, 88 Vattimo, Gianni  1 Vedanta Deśika  150

 327

Vedānta, Vedāntins  15, 48, 150, 157 n.7, 170, 279–91, 292 n.5, 292 n.6, 292 n.12, 292 n.13, 292 n.18, 293 n.19, 293 n.20, 293 n.26, 294 n.27, 301 Vedas  161, 164, 279, 282–3, 286, 292 n.15, 294 n.27 Vedic religion  160, 164, 187, 283, 286, 293 n.24, 294 n.27 Velmans, Max  281 Vidyāraṇya  285, 287 Vietnam War  43, 251 virtue  58, 228, 231, 233, 240, 243, 244 n.9, 268 vulnerability  46, 49, 68, 77, 85, 146–9, 152, 156 Wainwright, William J.  95–6 Wakan Tanka  229, 231, 241 wakinyan, Thunderbeing  235–6 wakinyan wakan  231 Walker, James R.  241 Wallulis  3 Wang Bi  119 n.3, 147 Wang Yanming  117, 253 Warring States Period  109, 112 way of life  46, 48, 101, 118, 194, 201, 218–20, 254, 301 “the weird”  200 Weiser, Mark  266 Westphal, Merold  4, 8–11 White Buffalo Calf Woman  235 White Hat, Sr, Albert  240 White, Lynn  89 Why Philosophy Matters for the Study of Religion & Vice Versa  5. See also Lewis, T. wicaša wakan, holy men  55, 59–60, 231 Wierzbicka, Anna  64 n.5, 6 Wildman, Wesley  4, 15 n.1, 94, 123, 151–2, 157 n.2 Williamson, Timothy  29–30 Winch, Peter  179 The Winnebago Tribe  140. See also Radin wisdom  41, 48–9, 89, 110, 167, 195, 222–3, 231–7 Wittgenstein, Ludwig  28–9, 58, 103–4, 105 n.9, 105 n.10, 178, 180, 188 wóčhekiye  58 wolakota, harmony  239–40 Wolterstorff, Nicholas  16 n.7, 304 workshop  1–3, 69–70

328

world  2, 5, 7–8, 10, 25–6, 29, 36, 47, 55, 67, 72–3, 77, 89, 97, 100, 102–3, 109, 114, 126, 141, 154, 160, 162–4, 177–8, 180–2, 187–9, 195, 201, 226, 232, 234, 236–7, 240–1, 265–6, 270–2, 284, 286, 301–2, 304–6, 308 World War II  11, 24, 41–3, 67, 248, 250, 258–9 worldview  78 n.5, 88–90, 105 n.2, 161, 195, 199–200, 202 n.9, 219–21, 224, 226–7, 229, 240–1, 270 wuji 無極  115–16 Wynter, Sylvia  5 xinxue  116–17 Yakyong, Jeong, (Dasan)  107 Yanagita, Kunio  251–3 Yandell, Keith E.  10–11, 16 n.8 yang 陽  112, 114, 116

INDEX

Yasukuni Jinja shrine  248–9 “yearning”  76, 78 n.10 Yeğenoğlu, Meyda  43–4 YHWH  162 yin 陰  112, 114, 116 yoga, yogīs  150, 154, 182–4, 293 n.20 Yorùbá  55, 58–60, 64 n.3, 301 Yountae, An  5, 10, 50 n.10, 123, 298 Yuen-hung, Jacky Tai  259 Zahavi, Dan  88 Zani, J  223 Zhou Dunyi  115–16, 301 Zhu Xi, Chu Hsi  111, 114–17, 147, 253, 301 Zhuang Zhou, Zhuangzi  23–4, 109, 147 Zoroastrianism  219 Zulu  218–19, 224–5, 228 n.2. See also Ndebele, Nguni

329

330