How to Do Comparative Religion?: Three Ways, Many Goals [Reprint 2012 ed.] 3110185725, 9783110185720, 9783110922608, 3110922606

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How to do Comparative Religion?

W G DE

Religion and Reason

General

Editor

Jacques Waardenburg, Lausanne Board of Advisers R. N. Bellah, Berkeley - M. Despland, Montreal — W. Dupre, Nijmegen S. N. Eisenstadt, Jerusalem — C. Geertz, Princeton — U. King, Bristol K. Rudolph, Marburg — L. E. Sullivan, Cambridge (USA)

Volume 44

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

How to do Comparative Religion? Three Ways, Many Goals

Edited by Rene Gothoni

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

© Printed on acid-frcc paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

ISBN-13: 978-3-11-018572-0 ISBN-10: 3-11-018572-5 Library of Congress — Cataloging-in-Publication

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Bibliothek

Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at < http://dnb.ddb.de >.

© Copyright 2005 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Berlin

Preface

Of everything that takes place at a given time one may ask what was before and what came after. This is, of course, also the case with the international workshop on Approaches in Comparative Religion Reconsidered held in Helsinki, Finland, 15 ,h -16 th November, 2002. Ever since the 1950s, when there was a shift of paradigm in Folkloristics from the so called historico-geographical method to the functional analysis based on systematic field research, Finnish scholars in comparative religion, most of which had their training in Folkloristics, have been engaged in a lively discussion on the various approaches and methods in comparative religion too, especially in the 1960s with the foundation of the first two chairs of Comparative Religion in Turku/Abo, one at the Donner Institute in 1962 (Helmer Ringgren)—now at the Swedish University of Abo Akademi—, the other at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Turku in 1963 (Lauri Honko). A third chair was founded at the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki in 1970 (Juha Pentikäinen) and a forth chair at the Faculty of Humanities also at the University of Helsinki in 2001 (Rene Gothoni). The discussions on methodological issues have been animated especially during the years before and immediately after the foundation of the chairs. It is therefore no surprise that the study conference of the International Association for the History of Religions held in Turku, Finland, in August 1973, was entitled 'Methodology of the Science of Religion' as it coincided with the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the chair at the University of Turku. The proceedings edited by Lauri Honko were published in 1979 by Mouton as volume 13 in the series Religion and Reason. An important result of the conference in Turku was that it stemmed a series of seminarial collaboration between Finnish and Italian scholars. In March 1984, Ugo Bianchi organized a seminar on 'Transition Rites: Cosmic, Social and Individual Order' in Rome (published in 1986 by «L'ERMA» di BRETSCHNEIDER - Roma in the series Storia delle religioni). In May 1985, Rene Gothoni and Juha Pentikäinen reciprocally co-chaired a seminar on 'Mythology and Cosmic Order' in Savonlinna, Finland (published in 1987 by the Finnish Literature Society as volume 32 in the series Studia Fennica). The collaboration with Ugo Bianchi continued until his death, the XVI th Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) in September 1990 in Rome being his grand final. In May 1990 Juha Pentikäinen organized the Regional Conference of IAHR on 'Circumpolar and Northern Religion' in Helsinki in commemor-

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ation of the 350th anniversary of the University of Helsinki. The proceedings were published by Mouton in 1996 as volume 36 in the series Religion and Society. Two workshops held in Imatra, Finland, stemmed from this conference; the first one in December 1993 and the second in June 1996. The proceedings edited by Juha Pentikäinen entitled Silent as Waters We Live were published by the Finnish Literature Society in 1999 as volume 6 in the series Studia Fennica Folkloristica. The immediate incentive of the present workshop on methodic issues organized jointly by the Department of Comparative Religion in Helsinki and the Finnish Society for the Study of Comparative Religion has been the debate on the relevant methods in comparative religion among younger scholars at the department. The discussion has taken place in seminars, in academic journals in the late 1990s, notably Teologinen Aikakauskirja and Tieteessä Tapahtuu, only to be intensified during the last two years before the foundation of the fourth chair in comparative religion at the University of Helsinki. Some of the arguments and perspectives have also been dealt with in books published by scholars at the department: Attitudes and Interpretations in Comparative Religion (by Rene Gothoni, Helsinki 2000), Att förstä inom humaniora (ed. by Rene Gothoni, Helsinki 2002), How Religion Works (by Ilkka Pyysiäinen, Leiden 2001), Styles and Positions. Ethnographic perspectives in comparative religion (ed. by Tuula Sakaranaho, Tom Sjöblom, Terhi Utriainen and Heikki Pesonen, Helsinki 2002). In January 2002, the Helsinki Department of Comparative Religion set up a committee to organize an international workshop on Approaches in Comparative Religion in order to bring new aspects to the ongoing discussions. The committee was chaired by professor Rene Gothoni, the other members being docent Ilkka Pyysiäinen, docent Tuula Sakaranaho and Mr Heikki Pesonen, Lie. Phil., as general secretary. The theoretical interests of the scholars at the department have for years been focused on three approaches in particular, namely the hermeneutic or aiming at understanding (Verstehen), explanatory, and the critical one. The committee therefore agreed to invite well-known scholars who would be in some sense representative of these approaches. My special thanks on behalf of the chairman of the committee are due to Professors Douglas Allen (University of Maine), Donald Wiebe (University of Toronto), and Rita M. Gross (University of Eau Claire, Wisconsin), who took the trouble to travel to Helsinki and take part in an at times heated debate regarding the relevant approaches in comparative religion. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to the members of the Committee for their excellent work and especially Heikki Pesonen, who took care of all the practical arrangements. The general feeling both during the workshop and after was that it was a success, and it was agreed upon to continue this kind of activity also in the future.

Preface

VII

The volume at hand is divided into three sections in accordance with the Plenary Sessions in order to reflect the paths taken in the discussion. The chairing persons in each session—Rene Gothoni, Ilkka Pyysiäinen, and Tuula Sakaranaho—have each one of them contributed an introduction to the respective section. Mr. Mika Lassander, Fil. Mag., assisted in converting the files into the final textual corpus. To all of them I am much obliged. Helsinki, August 2005

Rene Gothoni

Contents Preface

Understanding Religion Reni Gothoni Introduction Douglas Allen Major Contributions of Philosophical Phenomenology and Hermeneutics to the Study of Religion Teuvo Laitila Phenonomenology of Religion: Between 'Given' and Constructed Tom Sjöblom "Going, going, gone"—Or How I Fail to Gain Hermeneutic Understanding Terhi Utriainen Phenomenology as a Preliminary Method Douglas Allen Response

Explaining Religion Ilkka Pyysiäinen Introduction Donald Wiebe Beyond Thick Descriptions and Interpretive Sciences: Explaining Religious Meaning Nils G. Holm The Limits of Explaining in Religious Studies

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Contents

Veikko Anttonen Science/Religion Controversy—Are the Grounds of Naturalism Still Valid for Their Confrontation?

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Reni Gothoni Understanding the Other

99

Donald Wiebe Response

127

Critical Approaches in the Comparative Study of Religion Tuula Sakaranaho Introduction

143

Rita M. Gross Methodology—Tool or Trap? Comments from a Feminist Perspective

149

Elisa Heinämäki Research and Sexual Difference

167

Kimmo Ketola When is Methodology a Trap?

173

Teemu Taira Skyhooks and Toeholds in the Study of Religion

177

Rita M. Gross Response

187

Summary Kari Mikko Vesala and Heikki Pesonen Religion and Relations: The Social Dimension of Methodological Argumentation

193

Index of Authors

211

Index of Subjects

215

Understanding Religion

Introduction Rene Gothoni

The discussion in the plenary session at the end of our workshop Approaches in Comparative Religion Reconsidered culminated in arguments about which scientific project is "proper" as to the study of religions. Perhaps needless to say, the cognitivists regarded their way of approaching religion as an object of research, the only correct scientific scheme for explaining religion, the other being incompatible with it. The standpoint expressed turned out to be dogmatic and exclusive. The debate that followed was to be expected. Although the incompatibility of the different approaches was emphasized by Wiebe time and again, the result of the workshop seems to me to be an increased understanding of how the approaches differs from each other and wherein their limits lie. We should, I think, realize that at the center of the conflict is not really a difference about the methodic considerations, but rather about the kind of knowledge we aim to obtain through our scientific procedure. To explain causes, or to understand meanings; that is the question. In his essay "Major Contributions of Philosophical Phenomenology and Hermeneutics to the Study of Religion," Professor Douglas Allen provides us a well-balanced survey of phenomenology and hermeneutics in comparative religion weaving together the themes in terms of a complex, open-ended as well as situated methodological and hermeneutical context for understanding religious and other phenomena. He argues that the intentionality of consciousness is always historically, culturally and linguistically situated, wherefore the reductive explanations tend to destroy the intentional structure of religious meaning invariably pointing to the transcendent sacred. He suggests a method of phenomenological induction in which the essential structures and meanings are to be regarded as based on, but not found fully in, the empirical historical data. By reflecting on particular contingent and contextualized religious data, the phenomenologist, then, constructs the ideal religious structure, the pure case as it were, the exemplary universal meaning. The ideal structures are founded on the particular data, but they are not fully in each or any of the particular expressions. Moreover, he reflects on the hermeneutic circle, stating that the approach is open-ended insisting on dialectical relations between diverse textual and contextual perspectives, the

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aim of which is to establish part-whole relations as essential to understanding and the interpretation of meaning. Finally, he points out that phenomenologically, in other words historically, culturally and linguistically, we all experience a world of phenomena that is already "given." We are all thrown into and socialized in this world we have not constructed. This is part of our understanding too. This survey is commented by Dr Teuvo Laitila, Dr Tom Sjöblom and Dr Terhi Utriainen. Laitila conceives that the starting-point of Allan's method is the "constituted given." As the religious symbols and the sacred already exists, our problem is not to find them, but how to understand them. Sjöblom relates in some detail the divide between the explanatory and interpretive approaches. He is critical to the so-called "open-ended dynamic perspectivism," which he conceives of—following Searle—as some kind of "no point of view." He concludes: "I do not see how a phenomenological approach would be different from any other scientific approach. Analyzing and explaining relationships is not outside empirical research. Therefore, in this framework phenomenology would have to provide some concrete method or approach that would separate it from other approaches" (see below pp. 40-41). Here I can only add that the difference is not in method, but in approach in the sense that understanding comes before method and that understanding is not a linear cognitive process, proceeding step by step towards an elucidated understanding, but a holistic event of linguistic revelation, whereby our preunderstanding, prejudice or preconception suddenly becomes different increasing our understanding of the phenomena at hand. Understanding dictates the method, not the other way round! In her comments Utriainen quite rightly points out—following MerleauPonty—that we all are phenomenologists in the sense that every research starts with what she calls intuition, in other words a preunderstanding of what to include and what to exlude in our research. Then, regarding what is the object of phenomenology of religion, she argues that we should try to find the widest possible variation in how humans experience religion and thereafter try to describe what the religious experience of humans is. Finally she asks: Is phenomenology only a method? Her answer is: "Perhaps phenomenology is not only a methodological emphasis on description, but also a research attitude and epistemological standing, which allows...a position for a not-only-natural existence of the human being" (see below p. 48).

Major Contributions of Philosophical Phenomenology and Hermeneutics to the Study of Religion Douglas Allen

Introduction I shall attempt to present a number of the major contributions of philosophical phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics to the contemporary study of religion. This is a herculean task since phenomenology and hermeneutics have dominated much of twentieth-century philosophy, and various scholars in religion have asserted, often in an uncritical fashion, that phenomenology has defined much of the twentieth-century scholarly study of religion. Philosophical phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics are often related, as is evident in the hermeneutic phenomenology of key philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur. However, the tremendously diverse phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches have also developed huge literatures and fields of their own. Therefore, in formulating major contributions to the study of religion, I am necessarily forced to be selective and to delineate a series of complex undeveloped claims that require much greater analysis.1 Philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics present a nice contrast to the "explanatory," "critical," and other leading approaches to religion. 1

When I was first invited to give a presentation on philosophical hermeneutics (phenomenology, Verstehen, "Understanding," etc.) and the study of religion for the conference on Approaches in Comparative Religion, held in Helsinki in November 2002, I thought this an impossible task. The other two contrasting approaches, described as "Explanatory" and "Critical," also encompass huge fields and literatures. I was relieved when I was informed that I was not expected to provide a comprehensive formulation of the diverse, complex fields of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics, but rather to provide my own views of some of their contributions to the study of religion. Therefore, what follows, often in highly selective and undeveloped form, is some of my own phenomenological and hermeneutical orientation, dependent on the works of others but without the usual citations and documentation. In the following sections, I'll often refer to phenomenology, but many of my formulations encompass much of hermeneutic phenomenology and the hermeneutic tradition.

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Phenomenologists and hermeneutic scholars often present such contrasts by formulating contrasting dichotomies, such as understanding versus explanation and descriptive versus normative. Going back to Wilhelm Dilthey and others, various scholars claim that they are concerned with interpreting meaning and understanding the nature of religious and other "human" phenomena as opposed to scientific, reductionistic approaches that give causal and other explanations and do not grasp the irreducibly human and irreducibly religious dimension of the phenomena they investigate. Going back to Hume, Kant, and others, various scholars embrace a sharp descriptive versus normative dichotomy. They render explicit presuppositions, suspend value judgments, respect intentional experiences of the other, and attempt to describe the nature and meaning of phenomena of the other. They contrast this to explanatory and critical approaches that analyze religious and other phenomena in terms of normative standpoints and frameworks and provide standards of "objectivity" that do not do justice to the phenomena of the other. In recent decades, many of these clear-cut dichotomies have been increasingly challenged. We need to undermine or blur some of the contrasts. In terms of the above dichotomies, explanatory and critical approaches always involve understanding, and understanding is not possible without critical explanatory reflection. 2 In addition, there are no purely descriptive approaches, and it is impossible to do justice to the other as some purely descriptive, unconstructed, uninterpreted other. At the same time, there is some value in these relative contrasts. Phenomenologists and hermeneutic scholars, when interpreting religious and other meaning, are doing something of great value that is different from providing scientific, causal explanations. There is value in formulating approaches to the phenomena of the religious other that are self-critical in finding ways to allow other voices to be heard and that are informed by a history of dominant, critical, normative approaches and reductionistic explanations that ignore, silence, and misinterpret religious and other phenomena of others.

2

I have written at some length about why the clear-cut interpretation (Verstehen, phenomenology, hermeneutics) versus explanation (scientific, historical, psychological, and other causal reductionistic approaches) dichotomy, while it illustrates valuable differences, is often confusing and imposes an oversimplified and inadequate methodological framework. See, for example, Allen 2002, esp. 60n23, 2 4 8 254, 264 nn39-40, and 292-293.

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Background Phenomenology, with its claim of a distinctive phenomenological method or approach, has been one of the major areas of philosophy during the twentieth century. 3 Originally based in Germany and later in France, philosophical phenomenology takes many diverse forms, such as the "transcendental phenomenology" of founder Edmund Husserl; the "existential phenomenology" of Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty; and the "hermeneutic phenomenology" of Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur. Only a small minority of philosophical phenomenologists, such as Max Scheler and Paul Ricoeur, emphasize religious phenomena. The primary aim of philosophical phenomenology is to investigate and become directly aware of phenomena that appear in immediate experience, and thereby allow the phenomenologist to describe the essential structures of these phenomena. In doing so, phenomenology attempts to free itself from unexamined presuppositions, to avoid causal and other explanations, to utilize a method that allows it to describe that which appears and to intuit or decipher essential meanings. The following five characteristics, accepted by most philosophical phenomenologists, are particularly relevant for the phenomenology of religion. First, phenomenology claims to be a descriptive science or approach allowing for the direct intuition and description of phenomena as they appear in immediate experience. Second, phenomenology claims to oppose reductionism, freeing us from uncritical preconceptions of various reductionistic approaches and explanations and allowing us to deal faithfully with phenomena as phenomena. Third, phenomenology claims a doctrine of intentionality referring to the property of all consciousness as consciousness of something, as always directed toward an intentional object. Fourth, phenomenology adopts the phenomenological epochi, a method of "bracketing" necessary for suspending our judgments about what is objective and real so that we can become aware of the intentional phenomena of immediate experience and gain insight into their essential meanings. Fifth, phenomenology aims for the intuition of essences, often described as "eidetic vision" and "eidetic reduction," in which the phenomenologist intuits and describes the necessary and invariant features or essential structures of phenomena that allow us to recognize phenomena as phenomena of a certain kind. Husserl, in his phenomenological philosophical idealism with his focus on intentional consciousness and the post-Cartesian transcendental ego,

3

The following brief presentations on philosophical phenomenology and the phenomenology of religion are greatly dependent on my essay "Phenomenology of Religion" (Allen 1987). This essay has been revised and updated for the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion (2005).

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proposes that all phenomena are constituted by consciousness and that, in the intuition of essences, we can eliminate the particular, actual given datum and move on to the plane of "pure possibility." Most later phenomenologists who use a method of Wesensschau propose that historical phenomena have a kind of priority, that we must substitute for Husserl's imaginary variation an actual variation of historical data, and that particular phenomena are not constituted by us but are the source of our constitution and judgment. Phenomenology also developed as one of the major scholarly approaches within Religionswissenschaft. Phenomenology of religion within religious studies is often identified with the approaches and studies of such scholars of religions as W. Brede Kristensen, Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Friedrich Heiler, C. Jouco Bleeker, Mircea Eliade, and Ninian Smart. 4 The following characteristics define much of the phenomenology of religion: its identification as a descriptive, comparative, systematic discipline and approach; its claim that it uses an empirical approach and recognizes the historical nature of the data; its antireductionist claims regarding the irreducibly religious nature of religious phenomena, the interpretation of religious meaning avoiding reductionist explanations, and the autonomous nature of its discipline and approach; its adoption of philosophical phenomenological notions, or at least terminology, of intentionality and bracketing; its insistence on the value of empathy, sympathetic understanding, and sometimes religious commitment; and its claims to provide insight into essential structures and meanings. Most phenomenologists of religions share these characteristics, although key terms such as "descriptive nature" or "structure" or "essence" are used in radically different ways. Despite the frequent language by phenomenologists of religion about bracketing and sympathetic understanding, universal or essential structures, descriptive rather than normative concerns, and interpretation of meaning rather than explanation, it is possible to make the case that philosophical phenomenology has had a very modest impact on the phenomenology of religion. Certainly phenomenologists of religion within religious studies have utilized terms taken from Husserl and philosophical phenomenology. Bleeker claims that phenomenology of religion uses such terms as eidetic

4

In " T h e Contribution of the Phenomenology of Religion to the Study of the History of Religions" (Bleeker 1972, 39), C. Jouco Bleeker distinguishes three types of phenomenology of religion: the descriptive phenomenology that restricts itself to the systematization of religious phenomena; the typological phenomenology that formulates the different types of religion; and the specific sense of phenomenology that investigates the essential structures and meanings of religious phenomena. In terms of the more specific sense of phenomenology, phenomenology of religion has a double meaning: It is an independent science that creates scholarly monographs, and it is a scholarly method that utilizes such principles as the phenomenological epoche and eidetic vision.

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vision only in a figurative sense and warns that phenomenology of religion should avoid philosophical speculations and not meddle in difficult philosophical questions of methodology. He states that "phenomenology of religion is not a philosophical discipline, but a systematization of historical fact with the intent to understand their religious meaning" (Bleeker 1972, 39-41, 51). As one examines numerous studies in the phenomenology of religion formulating phenomenological typologies of religious phenomena, universal religious structures, and essential religious meanings, there often seems lacking a rigorous analysis of how the phenomenologist arrives at or verifies these conclusions. There seems little focus on key methodological concerns of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics.

A Challenge It is therefore somewhat surprising to learn how many scholars of religion, often critics of phenomenology of religion, submit that the phenomenological orientation or approach has dominated much of religious studies. In Beyond Phenomenology: Rethinking the Study of Religion (1999), Gavin Flood argues that the study of religion has been dominated by presuppositions, central concepts, and models of philosophical phenomenology, an impact identified almost exclusively with the transcendental phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. This Husserlian impact, inadequate for religious studies, includes a focus on consciousness as starting point of investigation; a claim that phenomenological bracketing and reductions allow for presuppositionless, value-free, completely objective descriptions and interpretations of meaning; a claim to intuit and describe decontextualized, nontemporal, ahistorical, universal, essential structures and meanings; the assumption of the post-Cartesian, decontextualized, detached, privileged, nonrelational, epistemic self or subject, the pure transcendental ego that individually enacts the eidetic vision and realizes given, pure, essential, foundational knowledge. By way of extreme contrast, Flood, influenced primarily by Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogical analysis and Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical and other philosophical analysis, proposes the following dialogical, narrativist, interactional, dynamic model for rethinking the study of religion: recognition of signs and language as the starting point of investigation; rejection of universalizing claims to pure objectivity with recognition that all perspectives and knowledge claims involve presuppositions, are value-laden and theory-laden, are relative, and include subjective dimensions of religious phenomena; critique of essentializing approaches as hegemonic, reflecting power relations

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of domination, silencing and devaluing other voices; recognition that self or subject is always embodied and embedded and not pure consciousness, is always relational and not pure isolated epistemic subject; rejection of the detached, passive, transcendental ego of phenomenology in favor of contextualized, limited, temporal, historical, active, interactive, constituted and constituting subject; recognition of complex, dynamic, contextualized, narrativist situatedness of both investigator and subject matter or object of investigation with dialogical, mutually interactive relations between the two perspectives; affirmation of open-ended, perspectival nature of all knowledge with emphasis on encounter and conversation, on multiple, often conflicting voices, and on nonclosure of interpretations and explanations. 5 Flood is correct: If philosophical phenomenology and its impact on the phenomenology of religion are so exclusively identified with this kind of Husserlian transcendental, essentializing, nonhistorical orientation, then religious studies must indeed look toward more promising models beyond phenomenology. However, among my serious reservations about Flood's study are the following concerns. First, Flood greatly exaggerates the impact that Husserlian transcendental phenomenology has had on the study of religion. Second, most of the critiques of phenomenology and the anti-phenomenological features Flood formulates can be found within later developments of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics. For example, the existential phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides a philosophical analysis of the perspectival limited nature of all knowledge, the rejection of the pure Cartesian ego and pure Husserlian transcendental ego with the insistence on the embodied nature of self and consciousness, and the rejection of both the naive realism of objectivism, positivism, and empiricism and the pure constructivism of idealism and subjectivism in favor of a dynamic view of knowledge in terms of a contextualized constituted given. For example, along with Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogical analysis, the major influence in shaping Flood's alternative to phenomenology is Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutical and other philosophical analysis. But for most of us in philosophy this focus on Ricoeur's analysis of symbolism, language, narrative, hermeneutical interpretation of meaning, etc., is usually included within a post-Husserlian, hermeneutical phenomenology. To provide one last example, Flood effectively uses Emmanuel Levinas as a radical alternative to phenomenology's focus on consciousness and the detached, privileged, epistemic self or subject, with Levinas's focus on ethics as first philosophy and his radical alterity in which we reverse the self-other relation

5

It should be evident how strongly Flood's key formulations have been influenced by similar claims by Gadamer and other leading hermeneutic philosophers.

Major Contributions of Philosophical Phenomenology and Hermeneutics

H

and privilege the perspective and needs of the other. However, within philosophy, Levinas is considered a philosophical phenomenologist, as well as a Jewish philosopher, and the above alternative positions are viewed as post-Husserlian developments within contemporary phenomenology. I would submit that an emphasis on the dynamic, relational, embodied and embedded, temporal and historical, relative and contextualized nature of self and of all knowledge, interpretation, and explanation can be developed both within and outside a tradition of the changing impact of philosophical phenomenology on the study of religion. This does not minimize the seriousness of issues, problems, and criticisms facing phenomenologists of religion, even those cognizant of the impact of developments in post-Husserlian philosophical phenomenology. For example, contemporary scholars in religious studies influenced by the methodology, central concepts, and models of philosophical phenomenology may affirm the historical, temporal, value-laden dimension of all religious phenomena and all scholarly approaches; the relative, contingent, dynamic, situated nature of all embodied subjects and perspectival knowledge; and so forth. But there is still a tendency in the phenomenological method and approach toward more synchronic analysis, toward descriptions and interpretations of general, essential structures and meanings. This invariably involves different levels of abstraction from the particular, concrete, historical contexts. How does one arrive at and verify such abstracted, at least partially decontextualized, knowledge claims? What is the relationship between such general structures and meanings and the concrete, temporal, and historical lived experiences and religious phenomena of actual fleshand-blood human beings? At the same time, I hesitate to endorse the extreme claims and excesses of much of contemporary postmodernism, deconstructionism, historicism, and cultural and other relativism shaping many approaches in religious studies. While agreeing with many of the critiques of essentializing, totalizing, hegemonic projects that defined much of philosophy, theology, and the science of religion, I would submit that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction with such an emphasis on the inviolability of particularity and difference. In this regard, a more self-reflexive and modest phenomenology of religion may have much to contribute to the future study of religion: aware of its presuppositions, its historical and contextualized situatedness and limited perspectival knowledge claims, but also not completely abandoning concerns about the commonality and solidarity of human beings and the value of unity as well as differences; attempting to formulate essential structures and meanings through rigorous methods of phenomenological induction and verification; and attempting to formulate new, dynamic, contextually-sensitive comparative projects involving creative encounter, contradiction, and also synthesis.

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Major Contributions Philosophical phenomenology was conceived as an attempt to formulate a rigorous method and provide the foundation for a rigorous science. In the influential philosophies of existential phenomenology, phenomenologists examine the personal, highly individualized subjectivity of existentialism and attempt to provide a critical method and a general structural analysis and basis for intersubjective objectivity. However, one of the major criticisms of philosophical phenomenology is that the phenomenological claim to uncover invariant structures, intuit essences, and interpret essential meanings is highly subjective, reflecting the personal perspective of the individual phenomenologist and providing no basis for critical, objective, intersubjective verification of knowledge claims. In many respects, philosophical hermeneutics is an attempt to provide phenomenology with a critical, comprehensive, interpretive framework allowing for more rigor and appropriate objectivity in understanding and in the interpretation of meaning. Critics, of course, also submit that hermeneutics and hermeneutical phenomenology remain vague and subjective and do not overcome objections raised by explanatory scientific approaches and critical philosophies. In this section, I first attempt to weave together, in rather undeveloped form, some of the major contributions of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics in terms of a complex, open-ended, situated methodological and hermeneutical context for understanding religious and other phenomena. I then delineate several major contributions of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics that are of value for studying religion: intentionality, phenomenological induction, the hermeneutical circle, and the constituted given.

1) The Methodological Context for Understanding Twentieth-century phenomenology and hermeneutics challenge major features of earlier essentialist, foundationalist, noncontextualized, philosophical approaches to understanding religious and other phenomena.6 We increasingly recognize the tremendous complexity, dialectical interactive relatedness, situated contextualism, and open-ended dynamic perspectivism involved in the description, interpretation, and understanding of religious and other phenomena.

6

Many of these features, challenging traditional philosophical approaches, are not restricted to philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics. Diverse formulations can be found, for example, in various philosophical writings in analytic philosophy, pragmatism, feminist philosophy, poststructuralist and deconstructivist approaches.

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This complex, open-ended, dynamic contextualism is reflected in the diverse mediated perspectives involved in interpretation and understanding. All interpretations of religious meaning are always situated. History and language are key to understanding. We must situate religious and other phenomena under investigation in terms of their historical and linguistic contexts. There are historical and linguistic contexts and perspectives expressed in the religious text or expression of the other. There are also historical and linguistic contexts and perspectives of scholars who attempt to interpret and understand texts or expressions of others. Hermeneutical interpretation and understanding involve the complex, open-ended, multi-layered mediation of these diverse perspectives, with relations of understanding established both through the fusion and connectedness of interpretive horizons but also through their differentiation and recognition of differences. In this mediation of perspectives and attempts at understanding, the scholar is always involved in a reconstruction and reinterpretation of texts and meanings. One can never do justice to the religious other as some fictitious, bare, given, uninterpreted other. Our creative interpretations always involve bringing new perspectives, new understandings, new meanings to light. This also means that there is no ahistorical nontemporal metaphysical foundation, no fixed closed system of meaning, no universal point of normative reference that allows us to evaluate whether an interpretation and understanding are absolutely objective or true. At the same time, philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics resist taking the above features and tendencies to move toward unlimited facile relativism and complete subjectivism when it comes to interpretation and understanding. The rejection of essentialized foundationalism, the recognition of complex mediated contexts and perspectives, and the claim that interpretation involves reconstruction and bringing new meanings to light do not free us from the need for critical reflection, rigorous analysis, and the need to verify one's interpretive claims with criteria adequate for intersubjective understanding. The interpreter does not have complete license when interpreting and understanding religious and other phenomena. Perspectives, texts, and contexts may be highly particularized, variable, flexible, and open-ended, but they are not infinitely malleable. History and language, involving the intentional structures of consciousness and intentional symbolic expression and structural relations and boundaries, disclose structures and limits that provide the basis for adequate or inadequate interpretations and understandings of religious and other phenomena. Philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics, with their primary emphasis on human experience, emphasize the need to recognize the complexity of the total human being and the total human mode of being in the world. They claim that much of traditional philosophy and the social and natural sciences reduce the complex total context of human phenomena and

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human understanding to narrow, one-sided, incomplete, reductionistic accounts. Religious and nonreligious beings experience and express their understanding of reality on many levels of experience and in diverse nonreductive ways, including emotive and imaginative meanings that cannot be understood fully in terms of conceptual rational analysis, and significant pre-understandings and prereflective phenomena key to structuring and informing meaningful experience. In our interpretations, we must recognize that language functions meaningfully on all levels of experience: from prereflective symbolic traces and ciphers that can serve as a foundation and catalyst for the construction of meaningful religious and other worlds of meaning; to complex, multivalent, mythic and other symbolic narrative constructions allowing for the transformation of discrete, particularized chaos into a meaningful, coherent, structured worldview; to highly abstract metaphysical and ontological accounts and philosophical anthropologies many reflective levels removed from particular immediate experience. Much of philosophical hermeneutics emphasizes the primacy of the human encounter, conversation, and dialogue in the construction of meaning, interpretation, and understanding. Dialogic relatedness is essential to interpreting and understanding religious and other human meaning. Meaningful understanding and the construction of new meaning emerge from the unique human dialogical interactions of diverse perspectives. This dialogue is openended and without closure with the necessity for respecting hermeneutical structures of understanding, the creation of relations of trust and mutual understanding, the recognition that our linguistic formulations never fully capture the intentional experiences of the other, and an appreciation for human hermeneutical and phenomenological encounters as allowing for an endless process of mutual self-transcendence. This emphasis on mutual self-transcendence points to a major claim of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics: the need to recognize, respect, and provide the interpretive context for the transcendence of the other. The other is always to some extent other. Meaningful intentional experience always points beyond itself. Religious symbolic expressions point beyond themselves to extra-linguistic realities and transcendent meanings that cannot be fully captured in our necessary but inadequate linguistic formulations. Religious and other symbolic expressions, in structuring and informing and expressing experiential understandings, disclose meaning and at the same time conceal meaning. Paradoxically, the dialectic of sacred, while uncovering and expressing meaning, is at the same time a dialectic of concealment and camouflage. Our symbolic expressions, enabling interpreters to understand meaning, are necessarily limiting, always pointing beyond themselves to inexhaustible possibilities for the uncovering and construction of new interpretations and meanings. This recognition of the situated limits of human interpretation and understanding need not lead to skepticism, a hermeneutic

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of suspicion, or despair. Instead it can lead to a hermeneutic of trust and an optimistic attitude about the potential of human beings for self-transcendence, for mutual understanding, and for creative meaningful experiences. This general orientation does not remove the many objections and challenges to philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics. To cite but a few common criticisms, hermeneutic scholars often make claims to the effect that all we have is interpretations of interpretations. Does this mean that we must give up serious philosophical and other scholarly concerns about objective knowledge, truth, and intersubjective verification of meaning? Hermeneutic scholars may emphasize dialogue, conversation, and respect for the perspective of the other. Does this mean that we must give up serious philosophical and other scholarly concerns and suspend normative judgments about whether the other is making false claims, is talking nonsense, is endorsing an unethical perspective, or is avoiding other aspects of critical reflection? Hermeneutic phenomenologists formulate general human modes of being and universal structures of interpretation and understanding. Doesn't this commit them to the kind of ontological and metaphysical orientation they claim to reject? Although not part of my essay, brief mention may be made of influential philosophical analyses offered by Jacques Derrida and other deconstructionists and postmodernists that challenge and develop some of the above orientation. Such Derridean antiessentialism can be viewed as either a rejection of earlier phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches to religion or an attempt at providing a more radical hermeneutics. It claims that earlier phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches incorporate metaphysical distinctions and categories, attempt to fix meanings, and restrict the interpretive process by not doing justice to the openness to the other, the emergence of differences, and the recognition that there is always meaning that transcends our closed interpretive framework.

2) Intentionality I have already referred in several places to the importance of the emphasis in philosophical phenomenology on the intentionality of consciousness. Here I'll only add a few brief observations on some of the significance of the focus on the intentional structure of experience for the study of religion. In order to identify, describe, and interpret the meaning of religious phenomena, scholars must be attentive to the intentional structure of their data. Religious experiences reveal structures of transcendence in which human beings intend a transcendent referent, a supernatural meta-empirical sacred meaning. Such intentionality is always historically, culturally, and linguistically situated. Religious language points beyond itself to intended sacred structures and meanings that transcend our normal spatial, temporal,

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historical, and conceptual categories and analysis. That is why religious expressions are highly symbolic, analogical, metaphorical, mythic, and allegorical. Reductive explanations tend to destroy the intentional structure of religious meaning invariably pointing to the transcendent sacred. At the same time, no intentional referent and meaning is unmediated. For meaningful religious experience and communication, the intended transcendent referent must be mediated and brought into an integral h u m a n relation with our limited spatial, temporal, historical, cultural world with its intended objects and meanings. This is why symbolism, in its complex and diverse structures and functions, is essential for revealing, constituting, and communicating religious intentional meaning. Religious symbolic expressions serve as indispensable mediating bridges. On the one hand, they always point beyond themselves to intended transcendent meanings. On the other hand, by necessarily using symbolic language drawn from our spatial, temporal, natural, historical world of experience, they mediate the transcendent referent, limit and incarnate the sacred, allow the disclosure of the transcendent as imminent, and render sacred meanings humanly accessible and relevant to particular existential situations. This specific religious intentionality ensures that the structures of religious experience and our interpretations and understandings will remain open-ended with no possible closure. The necessary structural conditions for religious experience, the construction of religious texts, and the formulation of scholarly interpretations ensure that meaningful h u m a n understandings necessarily reveal limited intentional perspectives. And such relative, situated, intentional, religious perspectives always point beyond themselves to structures of transcendence; to inexhaustible possibilities for revalorizing our symbolic expressions, for bursting open our self-imposed perspectival closures, and for new, creative, self-transcending experiences, interpretations, and understandings.

3) Phenomenological Induction A method of phenomenological induction may provide greater rigor to the controversial claims made by leading scholars of religion identified with the phenomenology of religion. As is well known, such scholars as Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, and Mircea Eliade provide interpretations of the Holy, the Sacred, and other essential phenomenological categories of religion based on claims about irreducible, universal, essential structures of religious experience and meaning. Critics typically accuse them of reading their own subjective meanings into the data, of sweeping uncritical generalizations, and of little concern for critical analysis and adequate criteria for verification of their findings.

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Philosophical phenomenology emphasizes the phenomenological method with its intuition of essences, often described as eidetic vision or eidetic reduction. Without going into the huge, diverse literature on the phenomenological method, let me only note that such phenomenological essences express the "whatness" of things; the necessary and invariant features that allow us to recognize phenomena as phenomena of a certain kind. Philosophical phenomenology focuses on the eidetic reduction and eidetic vision, the intuition of essences, the method of free variation, and other techniques for gaining insight into essential structures and meanings. The controversial phenomenological claim is that the phenomenologist can "read off" or uncover universal invariant structures and essential meanings that appear in the immediate, embodied "lived experience" of particular human beings. Phenomenologists of religion aim at intuiting, interpreting, and describing the phenomenological essence of religious phenomena, but there is considerable disagreement as to what constitutes an essential structure. In the sense closest to philosophical phenomenology, "essence" refers to deep or hidden structures, which are not apparent on the level of immediate experience and must be uncovered and decoded or interpreted through the phenomenological method. These essential structures express the necessary invariant features allowing us to distinguish religious from nonreligious phenomena and to grasp religious phenomena as phenomena of a certain kind. Critics of philosophical phenomenology, in general, and the phenomenology of religion, in particular, often challenge these claims to universal structures and essential meanings. Critics claim that phenomenologists are guilty of uncritical inductive generalizations. Other scholars do not find it possible to generalize from the particular religious data to the "profound," universal, invariant structures of religious experience. Phenomenologists, it is claimed, "read into" the specific religious data all kinds of universal structures and meanings; they arrive at their claims for essential structures and meanings by means of highly subjective, uncritical, inductive generalizations. My suggestion is that phenomenologists of religion may not "achieve" the "fulfilled eidetic intuition" of universal structures and meanings through some kind of empirical inductive inference, as seen in the classical formulations of John Stuart Mill and others, but rather by a method of phenomenological induction. 7 In formulating universal or essential religious structures— such as the sacred, sacred space, sacred time, essential structures and meanings of religious symbolisms, essential mythic structures and meanings —the phenomenologist arrives at such fulfilled eidetic intuitions through a kind of induction that can be related to the phenomenological Wesensschau.

7

My suggestion, presented very briefly, is similar to the analysis of induction found in Merleau-Ponty 1964.

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According to this method of phenomenological induction, essential structures and meanings are based on, but not found fully in, the empirical historical data. The phenomenologist of religion is engaged in a process of imaginative construction and idealization. By reflecting on particular, contingent, contextualized, religious data, the phenomenologist constructs the ideal religious structure, "the pure case," the exemplary universal meaning. Such ideal structures, pure cases, and universal meanings are founded on the particular data, but are not found fully in each or any of the particular expressions. Claims about the essential structures and meanings of a particular religious symbolism are not conclusions arising from an inductive process of generalization in which the ideal symbolic structure is expressed fully in each symbolic manifestation. Rather, such universal symbolic structures and meanings—like other "pure," idealized, exemplary, phenomenological structures and meanings—are actively constructed by the phenomenologist, founded on, but not fully in, the particular symbolic data. The phenomenologist of religion attempts to verify the ideal structures and meanings by showing how they illuminate the meaning and bring clarity to the particular, given, religious phenomena. There must be intersubjective criteria for testing the explanatory value of the phenomenological constructions. Such a phenomenological induction is not arbitrarily superimposed on the religious data but is largely derived from the particular given phenomena. The phenomenologist analyzes specific examples, subjects them to an "actual variation," begins to decipher structural similarities and differences, etc.8 What emerges is some sense of a hermeneutical foundation derived from the particular religious phenomena, a structural "web" of religious symbols and their intended meanings. Now by reflecting on this foundation, the phenomenologist is able, actively and creatively, to conceive an ideal structure, which then helps to illuminate the meaning of the particular manifestations. The phenomenologically constructed ideal structure and universal meaning are not sufficient for describing, interpreting, and understanding the actual experiences of religious and other human beings. Such constructed phenomenological essences are intuited and expressed on a high level of abstraction. To achieve adequate understanding of the existential life-world and particular phenomena of actual religious beings, the phenomenologist of religion must mediate and bring into relation diverse perspectives and complex contextualized levels of expression.

8

This is not to deny that the "given" particular example is already historically and linguistically structured, is informed by presuppositions and anticipatory preunderstandings, expresses multi-layered intentional structures, etc., and that some initial eidetic intuiting is necessary even to begin this process of phenomenological induction.

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4) The Hermeneutical Circle In previous sections, I have indicated various ways that philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics have attempted to formulate complex openended approaches for understanding religious phenomena and interpreting religious meaning by insisting on dialectical relations between diverse textual and contextual perspectives and between particular fact, example, or phenomenon and general phenomenological structures and meanings. As opposed to various traditional philosophical orientations, phenomenologists of religion and hermeneutic scholars of religion insist on the necessity for a phenomenological and hermeneutical tension in which the interpreter maintains the need for interacting, mutually defining dichotomies. Universal structures, phenomenological essences, meaningful wholes can only be meaningfully understood as dynamically constituted by particular perceptions and other particular religious phenomena of actual human beings. And as part of the same dialectical process of interpretation and understanding, particular religious data can only be understood in relation to other data and as integral parts of meaningfully structured wholes. Attempts to get at such complex and often paradoxical relations are sometimes formulated in terms of "the hermeneutical circle." 9 The hermeneutical circle is an attempt to establish part-whole relations as essential to understanding and the interpretation of meaning. This is not a "closed circle" or a "vicious circle." The root metaphor of circularity is used to describe an open-ended circular process that is seen as an alternative to the closures of naturalistic reductionism and metaphysical foundationalism. For Gadamer and some other hermeneutical scholars, the hermeneutical circle is not a specific "method," but rather the necessary precondition and universal framework for understanding and interpretation of meaning. In what follows, I'll focus on religious phenomena to suggest a brief formulation of how the hermeneutical circle may contribute to the study of religion. On the one hand, we begin with particular parts: particular texts, perceptions, acts, linguistic expressions, cultural and historical data, and so forth. This particular part is not some simple, bare given. What appears as a particular perception, act, or text is already structured and constituted in complex ways. What I identify, describe, and interpret as parts of a religious text are largely informed and shaped by the specific linguistic and historical 9

I shall not present the technical formulations of "the hermeneutical circle" in the vast and varied hermeneutical literature going back to Schleiermacher's writings and including the key philosophical reformulations found in Heidegger's ontological constructions, Gadamer's textual hermeneutics, and Ricoeur's attempts to address Habermas's criticisms by developing a "critical hermeneutics." Instead I shall simply delineate a number of suggestive points that may contribute to the study of religion.

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background; by the constraints and frameworks of religious and nonreligious traditions; by previous constructions and interpretations of the text by various authors and interpreters; by my existential mode of being in the world with it specific orientation, presuppositions, expectations, preunderstandings, and concealments that need to be disclosed; and so forth. It is only by starting with such complex, open-ended, dynamic, value-laden parts that the interpreter can begin to formulate and understand the meaning of invariant structures, essential relations, and meaningful wholes. On the other hand, the particular qua particular is unintelligible. Particular religious phenomena can only be interpreted and understood in relation and as phenomena of a certain kind. Meaning emerges through structural relations, and such religious meaning cannot be found in the discrete, separate parts. Not only do particulars constitute wholes, but the religious worldview, the religious system of structural relations, the religiously meaningful whole give meaning to particular religious data. One necessarily starts with particular phenomena in the religious text, already constituted and partially understood in particular ways, but the interpretation of meaning and greater understanding develop as one develops an understanding of textual relations, the narrative symbolic structure of the religious text as a whole, and the general framework for understanding diverse interactive textual and contextual perspectives and interpretations. This hermeneutical circle is textually and contextually situated and constrained, but it is dynamically open-ended. Neither parts nor wholes are fixed, static, or closed. Both parts and wholes are continually being constituted and reconstituted, interpreted and reinterpreted. Although religious traditions often constrain dynamic change and attempt to replicate the "same" hermeneutical circle, there are always possibilities for hermeneutic change, for introducing new particulars, for enlarging or restructuring wholes, for critically acknowledging that one's prior preunderstandings, existential orientation, and interpretive framework provide incorrect interpretations of religious phenomena. For example, through the hermeneutical encounter and dialogue, we may come to realize that our systematic, religious, textually and contextually constituted whole distorts the specific intentionality of the religious other. By examining other religious texts and interpretations, we may come to realize that our interpretations are too provincial, our understandings are too narrow, and we need to include new religious particulars interacting with new religious wholes in order to achieve greater understanding. To provide one other example, the introduction of new scientific, historical, and other contextual particulars often creates incoherence or crisis in the religious worldview and meaningful whole. This may force the religious other and the scholarly interpreter to revise their understanding of the hermeneutical relations between diverse parts and between parts and wholes.

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We can relate the hermeneutical circle for understanding to several of our earlier points about religious phenomena. Religious phenomena, as intentional symbolic expressions, always point beyond themselves to transcendent or sacred referential meanings. Religious language points to intended realities and meanings that cannot be captured in our limited linguistic formulations. As Eliade and other scholars of religion maintain, the limited, conditioned, religious phenomenon always points symbolically to transcendent structures, the sacred "archetype," the pure case, the paradigmatic exemplary model, the essential meaning. Particular religious data always intend larger sacred wholes. It is only possible, for example, to understand a particular symbolic manifestation as one of many structurally interrelated revalorizations of a religious, systematic, symbolic whole. At the same time, we recognize that interpretation of meaning and understanding of the religious phenomena of actual religious human beings, of particular religious acts and expressions, cannot be equated with such a formulation of ideal religious structures, exemplary meanings, and symbolic meaningful wholes. Real, lived, existentially accessible and meaningful, religious phenomena are always historically, culturally, and linguistically situated. For understanding religious experience and for interpreting religious texts, the ideal, exemplary, paradigmatic, abstract, universal, sacred structure and meaning must be limited, conditioned, relativized, embodied, situated in terms of a perspectival existential orientation. At the same time, this necessary dialectical movement toward existentially meaningful, situated concretization, particularization, fragmentation, and relativism is checked by its dialectical correlate in the hermeneutical circle. Particular religious acts, expressions, and texts disclose religious structures that reveal larger intersubjective worlds of religious meaning. Texts are not infinitely malleable and particular religious phenomena are always constrained in their movement toward endless particularization by forms, boundaries, relations, structures, and meaningful wholes necessary to understand the particular text and other religious phenomena.

5) The Constituted Given Finally, I have developed an analysis of the "constituted given" largely based on my understanding of writings by Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and others in some of the developments of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics. 10 The constituted given deepens an analysis of understanding

10

I first developed this analysis in my Allen 1978, esp. 187-190. I develop and apply this analysis in several later publications. This approach can also be found in other philosophers not associated with philosophical phenomenology or hermeneutics.

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religious phenomena and interpreting religious meaning, including previous analysis of the relation between particular and universal, facts or data and structures, and texts, contexts, and interpretations. Phenomenologically, as well as historically, culturally, and linguistically, we experience a world of phenomena that is already "given." We are thrown into and socialized in this world we have not constructed. Religious human beings and interpreters of religious meaning find a given world of religious phenomena, religious texts, religious structures, religious symbolic language, religious hierarchies and institutions. Human beings also experience a contextualized, situated, given world of linguistic, economic, political, social, aesthetic, and other relations and structures that interact with and shape the given religious structures and meanings. For example, I did not choose to be born and socialized in the most powerful capitalist country, but dominant U.S. multinational corporate capitalism largely defines and structures my experience of the givenness of hierarchical class and other power relations, the changing nature of work and job opportunities, gender and race relations, family and community relations, globalization, militarization, relations to nature, media dissemination of information, and the corporatization of educational institutions. These dynamic capitalist developments, that largely structure my given world of economic and political and cultural meaning, have a profound contextual influence on given religious phenomena, religious hierarchical relations of power, the formulation and interpretation of religious doctrines and texts. For example, no major Christian denomination in the U.S. will interpret Christianity as defining all capitalist "usury" as sinful and as teaching that it's as difficult for a wealthy capitalist to enter heaven as it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Phenomenologically, there is a deep initial sense of passivity in how I experience this given structured world not of my own creation, and this phenomenological experience of givenness commits us to a view of philosophical realism. There is a real religious world of language, history, culture, texts, symbols, structures, economic and other relations that exist independent of my particular experience. However, as we have repeatedly seen, this givenness is highly complex and does not consist of bare, uninterpreted, value-free, given facts or data. In other words, our phenomenological and hermeneutical realism should not be confused with formulations of "naive realism," classical empiricism, and positivist claims to objective given facts.

For example, this is how I interpret much of Marx's critique of idealism and earlier nondialectical materialism in his "Theses on Feuerbach," and similar philosophical approaches can be found in the critiques of classical empiricism and in reconstructed conceptions of experience by pragmatists and other twentieth-century philosophers.

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We experience a real, objective, given world of religious phenomena and meanings: the given religious world of the other, a linguistically and culturally and historically structured world of meaningful religious phenomena, a world of religious texts, contexts, and interpretations not of my creation. Other religious persons, cultures, traditions, and interpretations have constituted such given religious worlds of phenomena, structural relations, and essential meanings, and they are "given" to me. If we focus entirely on this initial, relatively passive, phenomenological reception of what is given, we cannot understand the real construction of religious phenomena and the real interpretation of religious meaning. What is experienced as phenomenologically remarkable is the sense that what is given is given for us. There must be an existential relation to what is experienced as given. What we perceive, what religious voices are heard or silenced, where we direct our attention, how we arrange the selected data, what are considered significant criteria for the interpretation of religious meaning are necessarily informed by our particular, situated, existential orientation. What is given is always experienced as given for us in order for us to constitute its meaning. Understanding of religious phenomena and interpretation of religious meaning only develop from the hermeneutical process of active reading, deciphering, interpreting, and constituting meaning emerging from what is initially experienced as an open-ended, dynamic, relational givenness. This sense of constituted given can be illustrated briefly by referring to fundamental, religious, symbolic structures that are "given" in experience to the religious person or the interpreter of religious phenomena. The passive reception of such given structures does not constitute the actual, meaningful experience of religious phenomena. Actual meaningful religious experience consists of what one does with such symbolic structures that provide an inexhaustible source for actualization, revalorization, and reconstitution of meaning. Religious symbols are not present initially as fully articulated, "fulfilled" meanings. They appear as prereflective "ciphers," experienced through vague intuitions and "empty intentionalities," that "key" into experience and provide possibilities for gradually experiencing fulfilled meanings and constituting a meaningfully-structured world of religious phenomena. The actual revalorization of religious symbols and symbolic structures by religious persons and interpreters of religious phenomena always consists in how we use such symbolism to structure and constitute a world of religious meaning. And how we constitute, structure, and interpret such a world of meaning depends largely on our specific, situated, existential, historical, cultural, linguistic, and other particular conditions. Therefore, we may use the phenomenological and hermeneutical analysis of the "constituted given" to gain greater understanding of the construction of religious meaning and the interpretation of religious texts. On the one

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hand, religious persons and scholarly interpreters of religious meaning experience a religious world of given structures and meanings already constituted and revealed to us. On the other hand, religious persons and scholarly interpreters of religious meaning experience a given world of meaning as open-ended, unfulfilled, as still to be constituted and given meaning by our active creative engagement. The structural givenness expresses the interpretive horizon within which we orient ourselves and constitute and reconstitute, interpret and reinterpret, specific meanings. In some contexts, such as those defined by new existential religious and nonreligious crises, mediated critical reflection on traditional and other religious givenness can lead to a radically decentering and the bursting open of given horizons; this can bring to light new possibilities for constituting radically different religious meanings and radically different interpretations of religious texts. What emerges is a radical intentionality of human consciousness: religious and other structures are given, but are always experienced as given for the perceiving consciousness. Such a conception of religious experience and religious interpretation of meaning involves a sense of organic mutuality and dynamic interaction between the religious consciousness and its intended world. In such a conception, the world of religious phenomena is always structurally given and at the same time dynamically alive and continually open to new valorizations and creative interpretations of meaning.

Several Concluding Issues and Reflections Further reflection on the paper I presented in Helsinki has made me realize that there are many, key, underlying, philosophical issues relevant to my phenomenological and hermeneutical approach to religion. In this concluding section, I shall delineate, in suggestive and rather undeveloped ways, several of these key philosophical issues and reflections that may shed some light on different approaches and goals for comparative religion. First, throughout this essay, I have offered formulations combining "the religious person" and "the scholarly interpreter" of religious phenomena. In my view, in the phenomenological and hermeneutical projects, there is a necessary, integral relationship between the expressions, phenomena, or data of actual religious persons and the scholarly descriptions and interpretations of the religious phenomena. Nevertheless, there is a danger of conflating these two different levels of experience, interpretation, and meaning. It is true that religious phenomena of religious believers and practitioners always involve interpretation, but this is usually very different from scholarly interpretation. We may distinguish two different kinds of authority. On the one hand, there is a kind of experi-

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ential authority of the religious person who has the religious experience. My understanding of the religious meaning of the other is always mediated, approximate, and never certain. On the other hand, scholarly, critical, reflective interpretation has a different, more philosophical or scientific, kind of authority. The scholarly interpreter, with a larger historical, cultural, and textual understanding, with a more comprehensive hermeneutical framework for interpreting meaning, with a more adequate phenomenological method for penetrating deeper structures and meanings, and so forth, may uncover and interpret the meaning of phenomena of the other of which the other is unaware or may subject truth claims of the other to critical intersubjective criteria that go far beyond the experiential world of most religious persons. Second, in reflecting on the relations between the authority of the believer and the authority of the scholarly interpreter, we may formulate different conceptions of the nature, status, and function of hermeneutics and the phenomenology of religion. If philosophical phenomenology, for example, is defined in very narrow and limited ways so that it is restricted to an accurate description and interpretation of the meaning of the phenomena of the religious believer, as expressed by and accepted by the religious believer, then it is at most a useful preliminary method for critical philosophical and scientific reflection. If philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics, in their approaches to the description of phenomena and the interpretation of meaning, go far beyond the descriptions and conscious articulated meanings of religious persons, then they can serve both as significant scholarly disciplines in their own right and as useful methods for developed critical philosophy and for comparative and scientific reflection on religious phenomena. There is no reason why scholars must recognize and respect the legitimate boundaries of phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches to religion if they are engaged in other kinds of inquiry involving other kinds of understanding and explanation. Third, my formulations of the "constituted given" and other topics can be related to major philosophical approaches, including major approaches to the emergence and interpretation of meaning. For example, under the "constituted given" and elsewhere, I analyze actual meaning as consisting of "what one does" with symbolic structures or what is "given" and in "how one uses" such symbolism or givenness. This can be related to analyses of meaning in Heidegger and in the later Wittgenstein ("Wittgenstein II"). Meaning emerges from practice. Symbolic language can be viewed through the metaphor of a tool. It is something "given" to us that we actually use to constitute meaning. To provide a second example, my formulations of the "constituted given," as well as formulations of "phenomenological induction" and "hermeneutical circle," can be related to Sartrean and other views

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of philosophy and the constitution of meaning as an open-ended, dialectical, self-transcending "project." Fourth, many of my formulations point to the fact that much of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics has emphasized the prereflective, pre-understanding, the unconscious, the emotive, the imaginative, the nonconceptual dimensions of intentional experience. Western philosophers and other scholars, going back to ancient Greece, have always recognized nonrational dimensions of human experience, but they have usually been devalued or dismissed. The rational is the real, and it is only by focusing on our rational capacity that human beings develop and have access to reality. Through Socratic dialogue, scientific inquiry, and other means, we render explicit the nonrational, but we do this in order to eliminate, neutralize, and transcend it in our quest for truth, knowledge, meaning, and progress. In existentialism, phenomenology, existential and hermeneutical phenomenology, and much of hermeneutics, we find a very different approach to the nonrational and nonconceptual. A major focus is placed on the prereflective, the emotive, the imaginative, not to eliminate and transcend them, but instead to reflect seriously on them as essential for understanding and explaining the richness and totality of human phenomena. In understanding as fully as possible intentional embodied consciousness and its intended worlds of meaning, the dynamic and complex givenness of our world and the constitution of meaning, and multi-layered dialogical relations of self-other understanding, nonrational phenomena are not eliminated but continue to shape and contribute to our process of understanding. To note two examples from my essay, language is necessarily incapable of fully expressing its intended objects and meanings. It not only is contextually perspectival but also points to extra-linguistic meanings and realities. What eludes linguistic expression and conceptualization is not simply to be dismissed as meaningless. In addition, as part of the dialectic of linguistic expression, symbolic language is necessary for disclosing and constituting meaning, but at the same time that it discloses, it hides, conceals, or camouflages other meaning. Such observations do not reflect scholarly limitations and weaknesses. Although they render approaches to understanding and explanation much more complex and open-ended than previous approaches adopting narrow, fixed, exclusive, rational criteria, the expanded approaches may offer more adequate ways of understanding and explaining human experience, human meaning, and even more complex and fuller human rationality. In any case, since religion has always had a major focus on the nonrational, such phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches have an advantage of taking religious phenomena seriously and not so easily dismissing them as meaningless, irrational, and unscientific. Finally, several of my formulations, such as those focusing on antireductionist claims of philosophical phenomenology and the phenomenology of

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religion, may create a false impression of my position regarding philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics and the study of religion. I agree with Husserl and later phenomenologists in their critiques of scientism, psychologism, historicism, and other forms of reductionism. What must be critiqued and resisted is an imperialist attitude, a reductionistic hegemony, that claims that its form of reductionism is both necessary and sufficient and that all other approaches are false, meaningless, or have nothing to do with knowledge, truth, and reality. What is needed is a greater sense of methodological and disciplinary pluralism that incorporates, but is not limited to, the contributions of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics for the comparative study of religion. Eliade and other phenomenologists of religion are not justified in their so-called antireductionist claims that scholars must assume and respect the irreducibility of the sacred; that all reductionistic approaches analyzing the religious phenomena in nonreligious terms are necessarily false since they do not do justice to the irreducibly religious essence of religious phenomena. There are different kinds of reductionism, and phenomenology and hermeneutics are also reductionistic, as are all scholarly approaches. We must take seriously the contributions of naturalizing approaches, recent developments in cognitive science, and psychological and biological and other causal explanations. Human experience, intended worlds of meaning, religious and other phenomena are complex, diverse, contradictory, multidimensional, creative, and open-ended. What is needed is different kinds of description, different kinds of interpretation, different kinds of understanding and explanation. In such a pluralistic orientation, phenomenological or hermeneutical approaches must be open to, and will benefit from, the contributions of economic, psychological, historical, and cognitive scientific explanations, while at the same time presenting their specific phenomenological and hermeneutical analyses, insights, and understandings. Such a view of methodological and disciplinary pluralism should not be confused with many, fashionable, contemporary approaches often identified with some forms of postmodernism and many forms of unlimited cultural relativism, and sometimes including various phenomenological and hermeneutics positions. As should be evident throughout this essay, I in no way endorse a kind of uncritical facile relativism, a kind of "democratizing epistemology," in which all voices and positions are seen as equally good or at least as beyond scholarly evaluation. On phenomenological and hermeneutical grounds, it is imperative that the scholar attempts as fully as possible to render explicit one's own presuppositions, suspend one's own value judgments, empathize and hear the voice of the religious other, describe as accurately as possible the religious phenomena and intended meanings of the religious other. Nevertheless, even on phenomenological and hermeneutical grounds, the expressions of

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the o t h e r a r e n o t the final w o r d , absolute, a n d inviolable. T h e o t h e r m a y h a v e limited u n d e r s t a n d i n g , p r o v i d e false explanations, talk nonsense, a n d engage

in blatantly

unethical

behavior.

Without

a

universal

essential

foundation, w i t h o u t absolute fixed v a l u e s a n d points of reference, the task of the scholar in interpreting, u n d e r s t a n d i n g , a n d explaining m a y s e e m m u c h m o r e difficult, e v e n if m u c h m o r e a d e q u a t e . N e v e r t h e l e s s ,

philosophical

p h e n o m e n o l o g y a n d h e r m e n e u t i c s , as well as all other scholarly a p p r o a c h e s to religion, necessarily involve critical reflection, i n c l u d i n g scholarly interpretations, u n d e r s t a n d i n g s , a n d e x p l a n a t i o n s that m a y g o b e y o n d , a n d e v e n at times contradict, the e x p e r i e n c e d w o r l d a n d e x p r e s s e d position of the religious other.

References Allen, Douglas 1978 Structure and Creativity in Religion: Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade's Phenomenology and New Directions. Religion and Reason 14. The Hague, Paris, and New York: Mouton Publishers. 1987 "Phenomenology of Religion." Pages 272-285 in volume 11 of The Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Mircea Eliade. New York: Macmillan. 2002 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade. New York and London: Routledge. 2005 "Phenomenology of Religion." Pages 7086-7101 in volume 10 of the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Lindsay Jones. New York: Thomas Gale and Macmillan. Bleeker, C. Jouco 1972 "The Contribution of the Phenomenology of Religion to the Study of the History of Religions." Pages 35-54 in Problems and Methods of the History of Religions: Proceedings of the Study Conference Organized by the Italian Society for the History of Religions on the Occasions of the Tenth Anniversary of the Death of Raffaele Pettazzoni, Rome, 6th to 8th December 1969. Edited by Ugo Bianchi, C. Jouco Bleeker, and Alessandro Bausani. Studies in the History of Religions 19. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Flood, Gavin 1999 Beyond Phenomenology:

Rethinking the Study of Religion. London, New York: Cassell.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1964 "Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man." Pages 66-72 in The Primacy Perception. Edited by James M. Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

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Phenonomenology of Religion: Between 'Given' and Constructed Teuvo Laitila

As Professor Allen stated, it is strange that although we speak of phenomenology of religion we have made no substantial use either of philosophical phenomenology from Husserl to Sartre and Merleau-Ponty or of the closely related ideas of Kierkegaard, Jaspers, Heidegger and others. Obviously one reason for this is that, with the exception of Kierkegaard and Jaspers, these philosophers have not much to say about religion. Another reason is certainly the tendency of some major figures in phenomenology of religion either to deny that the discipline has anything to do with philosophy (for example, C. Jouco Bleeker, who thus commits himself to an anti-reflexive position) or to insist on a purely historical-cum-philological nature of phenomenology of religion (for example, Ugo Bianchi and Angelo Brelich, who both advocate a rigorously historical systematization of the data). However, philosophical tools are to some extent one thing but their application is quite different. We may like or dislike Sartre's world view, but it should not prevent us from making use of his reflection on human existence and its possibilities to grapple with that existence by verbal or other means. In my opinion, what Sartre has to say, for example, of humans always existing in one or another situation, is also relevant for the study of religion, with the correction that humans are interrelated rather than individually isolated beings as Sartre proposed. In my understanding, the starting-point, as formulated by Professor Allen, was that after early phenomenologists of religion were criticized by making claims of invariant religious 'essence' on a highly subjective basis, they resorted to philosophical hermeneutics to find a genuine methodological tool to back their views. Being in many cases textual scholars, they had no difficulties in accepting the presupposition that the subject they were studying was some sort of text, the production and decipherment of which was comparable to that which could be undertaken for written work. Later, although Professor Allen did not explicitly mention this, interpretive anthropology according to Clifford Geertz and others enlarged the notion of text to cover all kinds of cultural action and, thus, allowed the hermeneutic analysis not only of texts in the proper sense of the word, but also all aspects of human life, including religion.

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Let me start with phenomenology. In the Husserlian form it emphasized perception as such, and in the form of Merleau-Ponty, for example, it underlined the interaction of mind, body and, so to speak, the external world. In existentialism, which I would like to see as a branch emerging from Husserl's work, the stress was laid on human experience; much as in various kinds of phenomenologies of religions, from van der Leeuw to Waardenburg. Thus the basic questions, in my opinion, are: What kind of human experience are we allowed to term as religious? How do we arrive at such a knowledge of that experience, which (a) does justice to the experience (is not reductionistic), (b) makes sense to others, not having such experiences (that is, illuminates the experience with non-essentializing terms), and (c) is to some extent repeatable by others (that is, is a method rather than an intuition)? I consider the contributions of hermeneutics proposed by Professor Allen as tentative answers to these and other such kinds of questions. The first contribution Professor Allen mentioned was the emphasis on historical and linguistic contexts of the text and the contextual (or perhaps dialogical) position of the scholar. While reflection of the nature of the data may to a certain extent be self-evident in any scholarly pursuit, reflection of one's own presuppositions, which was a concern of Husserl, too, has never been underlined adequately enough. Due to the fact that we always see the data from one or the other perspective, any statement about religion or, in fact, of the meaning and value of religion, is both a statement about human beings attributing meanings and values to something that, as phenomenologists often put it, manifests itself, and a statement of theoretical or interpretive nature, that is, a new meaning arrived at on the basis of our presuppositions and the data we study. The former statement leads to the concept that religion is something general, intersubjective or communal, rather than purely individual; the latter statement emphasizes that a scholar's interpretation is not merely a subjective claim but something rooted in both religious and scientific history. This kind of view is in accordance with the insistence of the phenomenologists of religion that religion is something self-transcending, as both Husserl and Professor Allen have put it. However, the problem is the nature of this self-transcending. Does it mean that religion is something 'totally other' (which brings us back to an essentializing view)? Or does it mean, as Husserl and others have suggested, that the meaning which one attributes to one's experience transcends one's particular self in a way approximately similarly as Dürkheim argued that the law is an example of collective fact, not being reducible to any individual (in which case we seem to commit ourselves to some kind of reductionism)? We may also ask: How can we do justice to the other's firm belief that, for example, God exists somewhere 'out there' and, at the same time, interpret that belief in a way that says that it is not God that is 'out there' but the other's meaning system, of which belief in

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God out there is a part. Does not our confidence in our interpretation exclude the truth of the other's experience? The hermeneutic answer by Professor Allen, as I understand it, says that human interpretation is always limited and that in formulations like the one just mentioned, one essentializes one's own perspective, which is not acceptable by hermeneutic standards. In other words, we need a constant reevaluation of our perspective as Merleau-Ponty insisted. This brings me to the second contribution of hermeneutics mentioned by Professor Allen, namely, intentionality. In the example I proposed above there are two intentions, one referring to what was called, in a given context, God, and the other, referring to what was named, also in a given context, interpretation. The problem is not that people have different intentions but how to establish communication, or a dialogue, between various intentions. Here, of course, I presuppose that mediation of meaning, both in experience and in research, is possible. This is what all science and language presuppose about the world, but what some scientists are reluctant to concede in the case of religion, art and some other highly symbolic expression of human activity. How is mediation and communication possible? Professor Allen's third point, phenomenological induction, suggests some answers. Some phenomenologists of religion, such as Otto, van der Leeuw and Eliade used concepts like 'das Heilige,' 'power, 'real' or 'the authentic' to argue that there are similarities in the ways human beings experience certain situations, which we may term religious experiences and thus, both the mediation of religious meaning and its communication in interpretation is possible. Unlike many critics, I think that such an ontological argument is acceptable; there really are situations in which human beings of a given culture act in much the same way, which indicates that they at least experience the situation in a shared way, whether or not the experience for all is the same. However, I also think that this kind of sharing of experiences has some serious limits. My experience of, say, death, has helped me to understand the experience of my neighbor at the moment of the death of his nearest and dearest, but my experience, that is, the meanings and values I attribute to it, cannot be but the starting-point, not the end, of my interpretation of the experience of my neighbor. In other words, my 'eidetic vision' of the meaning of death is not the same as the phenomenon death as such, as a pure phenomenon, as Husserl would say. My claim seems to put me in the camp of those critics of phenomenology who say that phenomenologists of religion make uncritical generalizations or 'read into' data universal meanings which do not exist in real life or what Husserl called Lebenswelt. However, and this is the presupposition I see behind the third point, I believe in some sort of phenomenological induction, namely, that (a) meanings are collective, and shared, rather than individual, and unique, and (b) that somehow we may arrive from the individual, or

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particular, manifestation of various meanings to collective systems and ways of production of meanings. To achieve this, we need not only imagination but also comparison, morphological, historical and textual analysis of interdependence and interaction of various particular human experiences and their meanings. That is, what Professor Allen called induction though I prefer to call it comparison or dialogue with the other. The 'ideal structure' thus arrived at, as Professor Allen put it, is universal in the sense that it is nobody's particular meaning, but the common feature in various experiences. It is not universal in the meaning that it represents the ultimate one, absolute truth. Which brings me to the fourth contribution mentioned by Professor Allen, the hermeneutic circle. To put it briefly, following Gadamer and Ricoeur, by the 'hermeneutic circle' I mean that the meaning of a text is always contextual and never closed, fully interpreted or understood, even if it is said to be universal. This view presupposes that arriving at a meaning is a negotiating-process, or a dialogue or a set of dialectical relations, if you prefer these terms, and, as in everyday negotiations in families, in business, in politics, we sometimes feel both in our mind and our body a shared conviction that we understand each other, while at other times we feel that we are miles away from the other's view. In the first case I venture to say that we at least believe we are doing justice to the other's view, while in the second case we, as Professor Allen put it, more or less consciously distort the other's meaning. Thus, although Professor Allen disagreed, the hermeneutic circle is a vicious circle, not an automaton, which requires one's commitment to it as well as openness to accept that this time my understanding relative to this or that phenomenon did not increase. In any case, it is a process in which different meanings of particular experiences or texts so to speak create each other; since meanings do not exist independently, they are properties not of the experience but of the interpretation. In this light, I think it is possible to understand, for example, the category of the sacred as used by Mircea Eliade and referred to by Professor Allen. It is our theoretical tool of interpretation to illuminate the complex phenomenon called religion. However, what we need, is not to try and find clues of the sacred from the various experiences we term as religious experiences, but to develop a theory of the sacred as an interpretive method of particular experiences. I think Professor Allen had something like this in mind when stating that "particular religious...expressions cannot be equated with...a formulation of ideal religious structures" (see above p. 21). What would such a method look like? Professor Allen did not attempt to answer that question and neither do I. However, his fifth contribution, the constituted given, based on the reading of Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur and others, gives us a hint. The starting-point, as I understand it, is the phenomenological idea of the world as something 'given.' We do not experience anything in a

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vacuum or without having a plethora of previous interpretations, often called tradition or history, guiding our interpretation. Thus, what a scholar may call the sacred already exists. The problem is not how to find it, because it is given in the experience we analyze, but to understand, on the one hand, how one makes use of it when interpreting one's experience and why one uses just this or that kind of interpretation and, on the other hand, how to reconstruct the other's Lebenswelt in such a way that what is 'given' in it to one person becomes meaningful to me, that the other person's intention is perceived as a valid human choice, not as an erratic whim of a disturbed mind.

"Going, going, gone"—Or How I Fail to Gain Hermeneutic Understanding Tom Sjöblom

Prelude: The Non-existence of the Great Divide A fundamental and insuperable divide is supposed to exist between the explanatory and interpretive approaches in the study of religions. This Great Divide is not confined to the study of religions alone, but is thought to separate the natural and the human sciences in general. As pointed out by Douglas Allen in his article, this is an old dichotomy. It is so old that it seems to be more or less a matter of taste where we want to place its origins (see Toulmin 1993). Allen prefers Wilhelm Dilthey, David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Personally, I would go even further back in time and align myself with Donald Wiebe, who has argued that the roots of this dichotomy can be traced to the Presocratic philosophers of ancient Greece. At that point, however, and through the middle ages, the fight was not conceptualized as being between two modes of doing science, but between reproducing religious life as against describing and explaining it (Wiebe 1991). In my mind, the essential shift enabling this dichotomy to become prevalent in modern academia, was the dualistic ontology of Rene Descartes (1596-1650), who argued that the realms of matter and spirit are two totally incommensurable elements of reality (see Descartes 1998). Descartes is a diluvian figure here, because the methodological rules of modern science were built largely from the basis of his thinking (Niiniluoto 1980, 79). Indeed, one could argue that it was his way to view the material world as mechanistic and, thus, predictable that made possible experimental research in the natural sciences. Moreover, it was Cartesian dualism, which enabled later philosophers of science—like Dilthey—to argue that studying human beings is to study the human mind, and that this task is something totally different from the study of the material world. However, we know today that Descartes erred. Spirit and matter—or mind and body—do not exist and operate in separation from each other. Our mind is an embodied mind, and this fact is not a trivial thing, but central to our understanding of the workings of the mind (see Damasio 1994, 248; Clark 1997; Popper 2002, 452). While thinkers from different disciplines had suggested this before, from the modern perspective, the most influential factor in the process was

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the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin (1809-1882). From the Darwinian perspective, the spiritual realm of the Cartesian universe is not an independent realm at all. Instead, spirit is born from the material realm and can, therefore, be approached and discussed as part of it. This realization has been the motivating factor behind much of the modern human sciences (see Sharpe 1986, 47-48; Dennett 1995). In the words of the anthropologist Adam Kuper, we are all Darwinians, in this general sense of the term (Kuper 1994, 1). However, while Descartes' doctrine of dualism has been refuted, much of its underpinnings for modern science have remained on the agenda (see e.g. Edelman 1992, 4). The dichotomy between explanatory and interpretive approaches is one of these. Indeed, as pointed out by Douglas Allen in his article, this particular dichotomy has grown to become the identity-providing element for the unique nature of the human sciences—the symbol of the Great Divide. Thus, much of the ongoing debate between hermeneutical approaches, promoting interpretive strategies, and naturalistic approaches, dedicated to explanatory strategies, has focused on the supposedly different essence of these two modes of scientific thought. Is the dichotomy between explanatory and interpretive approaches a real one? According to Allen, it is not. He points out, in my opinion correctly that "explanatory and critical approaches always involve understanding, and understanding is not possible without critical explanatory reflection" (see above p. 6; see also Allen 1998, 248-254). Allen also argues that there is some value in formulating a difference between explanatory and interpretive approaches. There is a real difference in emphasis of what is thought to be important for our understanding of religion. According to him, explanatory approaches focus on matters of cause and function (e.g. how and why certain representations of gods have come into existence), while a hermeneutic approach is concerned with, what different religious representations, beliefs and acts mean to the adherents of that particular tradition. This shift of emphasis from methodological dichotomies to questions of what is being studied, is clearly an improvement in the on-going debate. It also has the consequence that it becomes necessary to discuss in more detail not only what meaning in general, and religious meaning in particular actually is, and how it is constructed, but also how meaning can be studied in a scientific way. This is what Allen endeavors to achieve in his contribution. The aim of this present article is to provide some critical comments on how well he succeeds in his task.

Meaning as Mutual Knowledge or as Probabilistic Assumptions Philosophers have long debated over what "meaning" is and many different answers have been suggested. According to Dorothy Holland and Naomi

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Quinn, at least five different approaches to "meaning" can be traced in the history of this debate. First, there is the view that the meaning of something is its referent in the world. Second, it has been argued that public markers, like words and money, are only public markers of our ideas and that they gain meaning only in relation to those ideas. Third, according to the socalled behavioristic approaches, meaning is the typical stimulus that gives rise to the expression, and the response the stimulus evokes. Fourth, it is suggested that one look for the meaning of a sign is in either its pragmatic use (following Wittgenstein) or its place in a larger system (the structuralist approach). Finally, there is the poststructuralist approach, which starts from the structuralist position, but denies that any stable sign systems exist and, therefore, meanings are deferred indefinitely (see Holland & Quinn 1997, 5). Douglas Allen describes the hermeneutic process of gaining understanding as an "open-ended dynamic perspectivism" (see above p. 12). This implies, and hermeneutic scholarship largely proves it, that we are here talking of "meaning" in the fifth sense of the term, i.e. as an indefinitely regressive kind of knowledge. This understanding of "meaning" has one fundamental difficulty built in to it: If acquiring meaning is an open-ended process, how can we know that the meaning we ascribe to an entity is the same as the meaning ascribed to the same entity by somebody else? This problem is what Stephen Schiffer has called the problem of mutual knowledge (Schiffer 1972, 30-42). The difficulty here is that the infinite checks necessary in the process of gaining mutual knowledge seem unrealistic and impossible to operate within a scientific context. It sounds unrealistic, because in ordinary lives people do not act like that. We do make decisions and act upon them. If we would be infinitely checking our facts, nothing could ever get done. Secondly, it is also a problem for scientific argumentation, because, by definition, it would be impossible to know when we have caught the meaning intended by our subjects. So even if a scholar were to restrict her description to what those she investigates really experience, there is no guarantee that she will succeed. In other words, there is a paradox here; mutual knowledge must be certain in order to exist, and since it can never be certain it can never exist (Sperber & Wilson 1995, 18-20). Naturally, we could argue, together with Hans-Georg Gadamer, that hermeneutic understanding does not aim at recreating some original experience or meaning. Instead, the aim is to create an understanding that with some probability could realistically be attributed to the subject of research (Gadamer 1975, 208). Indeed, as Schiffer points out, this is how people operate in everyday situations (Schiffer 1972, 32-33). Allen seems to align himself with Gadamer in this matter, so instead of "mutual knowledge"hypothesis, it might be better to talk about a mutual probabilistic assumptions hypothesis (Sperber & Wilson 1995, 20). This more realistic approach operates on the level of defining a class of potential contexts for interpreting the

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material under scrutiny. Therefore, hermeneutic approaches to culture tend to favor holistic approaches to religion, where understanding of religious phenomena are thought to be achieved by gaining as complete a description of the cultural context in question, as possible. This strategy often goes today by the title of "thick description," following the famous formulation of it by Clifford Geertz (1973, 3-30). If this is the case, it has at least two consequences for the hermeneutic project. First, in order to be able to sort out the potential contexts relevant for understanding the intentions of their subjects, hermeneutists must make choices and preferences where to start looking for them. For example, for Geertz thick description equates with the description of the social discourse, but excludes biology and psychology, from his description, because he believes that "meaning" is a public, not a mental, phenomenon (Geertz 1973, 3-13). Dorothy Holland and Naomi Quinn disagree totally with Geertz, and argue that "meaning" is foremost a cognitive phenomenon, and all descriptions of meaning should therefore take into account the mental processes that produce meaning in the minds of individuals (Holland & Quinn 1997, 5-11). In other words, like any other scholarly or scientific approach, hermeneutists must reduce their understanding of the subject to cover only some aspects of it. Note that, personally, I consider this an advantage and not a failure for the hermeneutic processing of information. Secondly, and following from the first point, the contexts of interpretation must be chosen so that they are open to intersubjective testing. This requires that interpretations should be constructed on the basis of empirical data and testable theories (see Waardenburg 1978). Allen is clearly aware of this and purports to achieve this through a method constructed around a process of interaction between describing empirical data and constructing universal structures, i.e. the cognizing process which goes by the name of "the hermeneutical circle" (see above pp. 19-21).

The Flight of Icarus The basis for Allen's "hermeneutical circle" is his "open-ended dynamic perspectivism." But what exactly is it? Perspectivism comes in many forms, but, according to John Searle, they all have in common according to them, that "we have no access to, we have no way of representing, and no means of coping with the real world except from a certain point of view, from a certain set of presuppositions, under a certain aspect, from a certain stance" (Searle 1999, 20). Allen's approach certainly seems to confine itself to this. However, there is nothing very original or new about this. Indeed, I have no doubt that the idea of us cognizing our environment from a point of view is

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obvious not only for me and the hermeneutists, but to most—if not all—of those doing scientific research. Our minds choose to perceive, remember, and operate with entities that have relevance to us in the tasks we perform (see e.g. Sperber & Wilson 1995; Turner 1996; Searle 1999, 20-21). Evidence from a variety of different disciplines working with the creations of the human mind agree today that a narrative drive is embedded in our mental representations of whatever happens around (see e.g. Mink 1978; Jameson 1981, 13; Bruner 1986, 1990, 2002; Lewin 1987, 30-46; Polkinghorne 1988; Schänk 1990; Carruthers 1990; 1998; Donald 1991; Rubin 1995, 8; de Rivera & Sarbin 1998; Turner 1996; Damasio 1999; Boyer 2001, 204; Abbott 2002, 1-3, Fauconnier & Turner 2002). I would go so far as to claim, that science as an institution, and as a way of approaching the world, is one of the most convincing pieces of evidence supporting the basic departure point of perspectivism. Because we know our environment from a point of view, we need falsifiable theories and empirical evidence in science. It is these two things that keep scientific knowledge and argumentation open for intersubjective discussion—despite the multiplicity of viewpoints. This is what gives science its nature and essence in comparison to other kinds of attitudes towards the world. Thus, as Searle points out, the basic departure point of perspectivism is not incompatible with either realism or the doctrine of epistemic objectivity, which argues that we have direct perceptual access to the real world (Searle 1999, 20). According to Searle, the mistake usually made in perspectivism is to argue that knowing reality directly as it is in itself requires that it be known from no point of view (Searle 1999, 21). For example, a scholar directly observes a performance of a religious ritual. He views it from his chosen point of view. That is to say, he has his own direct perspective to the reality of the religious ritual in question. This perspective might not be the same as of those participating in the ritual, but as a description of reality, it can still be as true as that provided by a ritual participant. The way to judge such scholarly perspectives on reality is to test them against what we know of that ritual from other independent sources. Again, this requires that the scientific argument be constructed so that it can be evaluated in this manner. In hermeneutics the situation is somewhat more complex. As pointed out above, the issue here is not whether the scholar describes and interprets a religious phenomenon correctly as such, but whether he describes and interprets the religious phenomenon correctly from the viewpoint of believers and participants involved in it. This requires a dialogue between the scholar and the believer, and even more it aims at learning to see and experience the world through the eyes of others. Allen clearly realizes the impossibility of this task, when he stresses the open-ended nature of his approach. Moreover, his approach also differs from many other types of perspectivism in that he seems to accept the existence of a reality beyond our individual perceptions.

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He writes: "[t]here is a real religious world of language, history, culture, texts, symbols, structures, economic and other relations that exist independent of my particular experience" (see above p. 22). Indeed, it is this independently existing empirically accessible data, which for Allen constitutes the basis for what I would term as gaining mutual probabilistic assumptions of how to experience the world. At this point Allen's argument becomes confusing. On the one hand, we have the empirical data existing independently of our experience; on the other hand, there are the individual experiences of the meaning of this data. How can we produce a scientific description of how other people experience the data we are working with? Well, the obvious answer here is that we could simply describe accurately, and word by word, how other people describe what a religious act or belief means to them, and how they experience this. This is what scholars do when they write ethnographic descriptions of cultures they study. In this case the role of the scholar is to function as an informer who simply provides his audience with information of cultures and phenomena of which they have no previous knowledge. It is a descriptive task only. From the viewpoint of perspectivism, the problem with this kind of scholarship is that if perceptions of reality are always from a point of view, there really cannot be a pure and simple description of other people's experiences. All descriptions are always interpreted descriptions. Furthermore, even if pure descriptions were possible, then one could ask whether we need scholars at all. Wouldn't members of other cultures and practitioners of different religions be in a much better position to describe their religious experiences than an outsider (even an informed one) foreign to their community? Clearly, a pure description of the religious experience is not what Allen has in mind here. He is after something more. He argues that whatever empirical evidence we have, and whatever theoretical frame we choose to operate with, the reality of religion keeps eluding us (see above p. 13). If he means by this that there exist some kind of transcendental meta-empirical reality, which by definition is outside of all our efforts to describe and understand it (see above p. 14), I would argue that this sounds like an impossible mission from the perspective of science. It is impossible simply because there would be no way for us to gain any kind of information concerning that reality. If he, on the other hand, argues that the religious reality he talks about is not so much a different reality as it is an emergent quality of the perceivable reality, when approached as a network of empirical data, including the network of ideal symbolic structures of relationships involved between different types of data (see above pp. 19-21), then I do not see how a phenomenological approach would be different from any other scientific approach. Analyzing and explaining relationships is not outside empirical research. Therefore, in this framework phenomenology would have to

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provide some concrete method or approach that would separate it from other approaches. In his paper, Allen does not provide us even with one concrete example of how such a method would look like. What Allen seems to be after is something different. His approach seems to be between these two approaches. According to him, "essential structures of meanings are based on, but not found fully in, the empirical historical data. The phenomenologist of religion is engaged in a process of imaginative construction and idealization. By reflecting on particular, contingent, contextualized, religious data, the phenomenologist constructs the ideal religious structure, 'the pure case,' the exemplary universal meaning" (see above p. 18). As I understand this, Allen seems to be arguing that there is a religious reality beyond the empirical reality. However, this meta-empirical sacred reality is not totally separate from the empirical reality, but can be somehow accessed through an interpretive bridgehead constructed from the empirical evidence available to the observer. In other words, the empirical evidence perceivable and accessible to everybody functions as a kind of common horizon enabling all further discussions of the sacred reality. As a kind of background ideology for methodological reflection, this principle sounds fine. However, Allen does not actually tell us how this principle works in practice. Neither does he give any means for evaluating the nature of the "ideal religious structure" beyond the given evidence. I believe he does not reveal the workings of his method because its nature makes it impossible to be revealed in the first place. Indeed, it seems contradictory to argue that empirical evidence is the way to the ultimate religious reality, and—at the same time—to hold the position that this same evidence can never really reveal the truth about religious meaning. The religious reality remains in the end mysterious and transcendental, and all efforts to gain understanding of it require a leap of faith in the form of irrefutable insight that what one imagines to be behind the empirical reality is the pure nature of religion. An inexplicable insight like this is like a shamanistic vision, where everything connects together revealing the greater meaning of things. As with a shamanistic vision, it is also highly idiosyncratic and, therefore, its validity as a process of interpretation cannot be evaluated through intersubjective scrutiny. This takes the whole approach outside science and into the realm of metaphysical speculation and revelation. The problem with Allen's suggestion lies in his efforts to keep the door of science open to all kinds of endeavors. His argument reminds me of the famous Greek tale of Icarus, who after receiving artificial wings from his father Daedalus, became so intoxicated by his ability to fly that he flew too close to the sun, burned his wings, crashed into the sea and drowned. What we learn from this story is that we can't have it all. Daedalus constructed the wings in order to enable his and his son's escape from the Labyrinth of King Minos. Daedalus himself kept this in mind and escaped safely. Icarus, on the

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other hand, tried to achieve something that he was not equipped to do; that is why he failed so miserably. This is also what scholars of religion should keep in mind. We do not have to know everything. An historical analysis of a religious tradition does not reveal everything there is to know of that religion, but it can reveal something of it. Similarly, a cognitive or a sociological analysis have their limits in what they can tell us of religion as a phenomenon, but this does not mean that what they tells us is irrelevant for our understanding of religion. Science has its limits. It may appear disappointing to realize that not everything what goes on around seems to operate within the same limits. Much remains a mystery for scientific analysis. However, that scientific analysis is limited to the empirical reality is what makes it such an effective tool in what it is constructed to do—to provide knowledge concerning that reality.

References Abbott, H. Porter 2002 The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Allen, Douglas 1998 Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade. New York: Garland Publishing. Boyer, Pascal 2001 Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books. Bruner, Jerome 1986 Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. 1990 Acts of Meaning. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. 2002 Making Stories. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Carruthers, Mary 1990 Book of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1998 The Craft of Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clark, Andy 1997 Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and the World Together Again. Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press. Damasio, Antonio R. 1994 Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. London: Papermac. 1999 The Feeling of What Happens. San Diego: Harvest. Dennett, Daniel C. 1995 Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

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De Rivera, Joseph, & Theodore R. Sarbin 1998 Believed-in Imaginings. Washington (D.C.): American Psychological Association. Descartes, Rene 1998 "Meditations on first philosophy." Pages 45-103 in R. Descartes, Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Translated by D. A. Cress. Fourth Edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company. Donald, Merlin 1991 Origins of the Modern Mind. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. Edelman, Gerald 1992 Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Fauconnier, Gilles, & Mark Turner 2002 The Way We Think. New York: Basic Books. Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1975 Wahreit und Methode. 4th edition. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Geertz, Clifford 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Holland, Dorothy, & Naomi Quinn 1997 A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jameson, Fredric 1981 The Political Inconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Ithaca: Cornell UniverPress. Kuper,sity Adam 1994 The Chosen Primate. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. Lewin, Brian 1987 Bones of Contention. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Mink, Louis 1978 "Narrative form as a cognitive instrument." Pages 129-149 in The Writing of History. Edited by Robert H. Canary & Henry Kozicki. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Niiniluoto, Ilkka Press. 1980 Johdatus tieteenftlosofiaan. Helsinki: Otava. Orye, Lieve 2001 "'It's about us': Religious studies in human science." Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 13: 355-373. Polkinghorne, Donald 1988 Narrative Knowing and the Human Sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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"Corrupt doctrine and doctrinal revival: On the nature and limits of the modes theory." Pages 173-194 in Theorizing Religions Past: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on 'Modes of Religiosity.' Edited by Harvey Whitehouse & Luther H. Martin. Walnut Creek (Calif.): AltaMira Press.

Rubin, David C. 1995 Memory in Oral Traditions.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Schank, Roger 1990

Tell Me a Story: Narrative

and Intelligence.

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(1995). Searle, John 1999 Mind, Language

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Shankland, David 2001

"Putting the science back." Anthropology

today 17(2): 1 - 2 .

Sharpe, Eric J. 1986

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Schiffer, Stephen R. 1972

Meaning.

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Sperber, Dan, & Deirdre Wilson 1995

Relevance:

Communication

& Cognition.

2nd edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

Toulmin, Stephen E. 1993 Cosmopolis: Turner,(1990). Mark 1996

The Hidden Agenda

of Modernity.

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The Literary Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Waardenburg, Jacques 1978

Reflections on the Study of Religion: Including an Essay on the Work of Gerardus van der Leeuw. Religion and Reason 15. The Hague: Mouton. Wiebe, Donald 1991 The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought. Montreal, Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.

Phenomenology as a Preliminary Method Terhi Utriainen

As an introductive remark to my comments I want to bring in mind that Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in his article "Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man" (where he sets himself the task of clarifying Husserl's middle position between idealist philosophy and naturalistic sciences), does not, in any direct sense, propose phenomenology as a method for human and social sciences. Instead he writes about their relationship and the contribution these sciences can be to philosophical phenomenology (and vice versa). According to Merleau-Ponty, Husserl's idea was that "Sciences of Man" provide phenomenology with data, because the philosopher who is interested in structures of human consciousness cannot work alone without descriptions of actual human life in different circumstances: without actual variation. My comments deal, first, with such aspects of phenomenology which are an inherent part of practically every research process—even if we wouldn't call us phenomenologists. According to Merleau-Ponty there is this bit of phenomenology in every scientific enterprise, and in this sense phenomenology might be called the preliminary method. Secondly, I shall ask: What is the object of phenomenology of religion? It should, of course, be the religious intention with no assumed ontology. But what is this in practice? Thirdly, I shall also raise the question if phenomenology is only a method, or if it is also a research attitude and epistemological position towards the nature of the object of research—which is not the "Holy other," but, instead, the religious intention of human subjects understood in a non-naturalizing way.

Phenomenology as the Preliminary Method In some sense we all do phenomenology at times —and so it is very often the method we start with. The place and role of intuition and imaginary variation can be found in the beginning of every research process, when the researcher limits the scope of her subject matter, i.e. when she distinguishes in her mind

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(with the help of research literature and observations by herself and by others) those phenomena that will become part of her study from others that will not be relevant in her case.—I think this is pretty much the same procedure which is sometimes (e.g. by Ilkka Pyysiäinen) called 'everyday intuition' of the researcher: we must both rely on it and test it when we decide which phenomena will be religious enough (relevant enough, fulfill our criteria) to become part of our study, against those which will not. Bracketing. It goes almost without saying that bracketing value judgments, as well as ontological commitments, is always needed at least in some phases of the research process. Even if we practice a combination of hermeneutical and critical research (which is a very common combination in today's academic study of religion), we must be careful about where we place our critical judgments in order to get any insight, critical or other. Variation—both imaginary and actual—is part of both comparative study and most qualitative research (be it ethnographical or literature-based), in the sense that once we have decided what will be our focus, we shall begin a systematic search of the variation of the phenomenon. Good research is sensitive to a wide range of nuances in the variation as well as to borderline cases—otherwise it is difficult to talk about a good description, which is focal to phenomenology. (We need hermeneutics, structuralism or some other methodological choices after this.)—In principle variation should be actual rather than imaginary, but in a heuristic sense also imaginary variation is sometimes needed. Moreover, in the case of, for example, ethnographical research, the heuristic "moment" doesn't come only once in the beginning of the research (in the hypothesis-forming-stage, or in the context of discovery), but the question has to be reformulated a number of times in the course of the process, and this involves both observations and imagination. Phenomenological reduction? We must decide on what is relevant within the variation we have observed and defined. We must see what are the uniting features in the variation. The difficulty is raised by the question: what do we mean by relevance? Do we mean relevant to one's own research-question and the theory behind it? Or, do we mean relevant to the 'religious other,' i.e. the religious persons, or texts, we are studying? Or, do we talk about relevance to the phenomenon's own 'inner structure'?—This is a boiling point in the study of religion, and I think a point of a lot of controversy and epistemological disagreement. Some researchers want to bind their criteria of relevance strictly to the theory that has worked as a starting point; others to the experiences and 'voices' of the religious other; and yet some also to the internal structure of the phenomenon. Perhaps most criticism has been targeted to the last position as an essentializing stance. It is, however, a basically phenomenological position, if and when the phenomenon is the religious intention.

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What is the Object of Phenomenology of Religion? If we take seriously the point that phenomenology aims at description, we should try to describe the religious intention. But, in practice, which of the following two things are we doing? Are we: 1) trying to find and describe the widest possible variation in the religious experience of humans (the variation of the religious intention)? And thus aim at building up typologies of it? 2) Or: are we trying to find and describe what the "religious experience" (religious intention) of humans is in the first place? And, thus, try to give a general account of its structure? 1) The task of describing the variation of religious intention presupposes that we already know—at least to some extent—what is religious in human life. Do we?—The best solution so far seems to be, to me, that we study the various modes of intending the transcendental/the transcendent/the supernatural. If we focus on the 'unconsciously' religious, it is impossible to start the research process without a theory-based intuition of the researcher (intuition of a well-read specialist), and without imaginary and actual variation. If, on the other hand, the focus is on the subject's self-understanding of the 'religious,' we have decided against the attempt to theorize religion as a universal phenomenon, and decided to concentrate on making detailed and contextualized case-studies. To do this we must have some intuition what we mean by transcendental or supernatural, of course. 2) The task of identifying and describing what is religious in the first place, is, inevitably, dependent on the discipline's history and self-understanding which has constructed "religion" as the object of study. Hermeneutics takes identifying the religious as an ongoing and circular task, since what we can get at is always a historical/cultural understanding. We can never get to universal essences or structures, but to "constituted givens." This makes research of religion a never-ending task, which is fine with me: we need to rework our understanding by giving phenomenological descriptions in every new situation. However, this position frustrates a more finaltruth-seeking scientific mind who tries to find a way out of the vicious circle by implanting religion (or at least the precondition of religion) to the natural constitution of the human animal.

Is Phenomenology Only a Method? Douglas Allen aims at formulating a modest and methodically operative phenomenology. (He calls it 'phenomenological induction' which is based on variation and where the researcher is open about her own constructive task.)

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I appreciate this task very much, although it is difficult to see where phenomenology—as phenomenology—ends and where something else begins. (In practice this is not always so very important.) Phenomenology can be found as a background philosophy of a lot of methods within the wide field of qualitative research (e.g. ethnosemantics, conversation analysis etc.) which aim at identifying the most central themes or structures (e.g. narrative structures) of the data and comparing within this variation and placing it in reflexive relations and wider contexts (the partwhole dynamics Douglas talks about). The data can, of course, just as well be theological writing or ethnographically collected data on religious experiences. Interpretation, contextualization and reflexivity did probably not initially spring from phenomenology, but they can be found both in hermeneutic and critical theories. They have, however, became indispensable additions to phenomenological description. The present generation of researchers is rather well aware of this. (E.g. discourse analysis is, at its best, a combination of these positions and interests: it aims at describing the phenomena plus analyzing the constructed nature of any "given"—as well as reminding us that also the "results" of any reduction, i.e. the essences/structures, are constructions.) If we think of the phenomenological interest on the more universal religious structures (structures of consciousness and intentionality), many researchers in the field of cognitivism claim the heritage of phenomenology. Here the aim is more or less to naturalize the 'homo religiosus' by implanting his religious intentions within a psychological and/or biological frame. To some phenomenologists (like Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emmanuel Levinas, and also to phenomenological sociologists like Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann) this undermines something constitutive to being human—be it the 'life world,' 'intersubjectivity,' 'situatedness,' 'historicity' or 'social realities.' My last point: Perhaps phenomenology is not only a methodological emphasis on description, but also a research attitude and epistemological standing, which allows (even if it does not necessarily dictate) a position for a not-only-natural existence of the human being. This attitude—which would stem from the middle-position between naturalism and idealism—would not see the religious structures of consciousness as dependent primarily and most importantly on organic functions and/or 'inner' information structures, but also, essentially, on historicity and situatedness, incompleteness, changeability, self-reflexivity, imagination, relatedness, dependency etc.— and also lived embodiment—of human life. Attempts to describe these aspects of human life and their relatedness to intended transcendencies can be done both with more emphasis on their culturally shared features and culture-specific or historically shaped features.

Response Douglas Allen

It is rare to receive so much constructive feedback on one's work as I have received from Teuvo Laitila, Tom Sjöblom, and Terhi Utriainen. In my view of philosophical phenomenology and hermeneutics, communication and understanding emerge from empathetic listening, dynamic encounter and interaction, and deep commitment to constructive dialogue with "the other." It is the dialogic other, whether expressed through previously constructed texts or through present lived experiences, that provides the basis for critical self-reflection and the emergence of new horizons of meaning. That is why I appreciate the contributions of Laitila, Sjöblom, and Utriainen as phenomenological and hermeneutical "others." My view of "self" is of social relational self. This is a rejection of dominant, Western, post-Cartesian formulations of "the self" as universal, essential, decontextualized, separate, autonomous, thinking ego or individual. There is no self without other. The other is a necessary part of my process of self-constitution. I become and develop as self only by externalizing myself in relating to what is other in a socially constructed world of meaning. The encounter with other serves as a catalyst and provides the basis for my own dialectical process of self-transcendence through complex, mediated relations of affirmation and negation. The valuable contributions of Lattila, Sjöblom, and Ultriainen as phenomenological and hermeneutical "others," as integrated into my larger social relational worlds of meaning, provide me with means for self-reflection, more adequate analysis, emergence of revised interpretations and new meanings, and my own process of self-transcendence. After examining and revising the essay I presented in Helsinki, I decided to add a section on "Several Concluding Issues and Reflections" (see above pp. 24-28). After reading the comments of my three respondents, I find that they address several of the issues and reflections I raise in my concluding section. Teuvo Laitila has a good background and personal interest in phenomenology of religion. As with my other respondents, I am forced to be selective in focusing on several significant challenges and issues. I shall not comment on many points of agreement. For example, Laitila is correct in asserting that a key problem "is not that people have different intentions but

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how to establish communication, or a dialogue, between various intentions" (see above p. 31). This is precisely the central project for such philosophers as Gadamer and Habermas. I also shall not comment on points where we may differ in our interpretations of some of Husserl, Sartre, and various features of philosophical phenomenology. Instead I'll focus on two major issues. First, under "basic questions," Laitila asks what kind of human experience can we classify as "religious." This is, indeed, one of the major phenomenological concerns. In the present methodological context of undermining essentialist and foundationalist normative positions, with the adoption of various forms of relativism, there is a tendency among some scholars to accept that "religious" means nothing other than whatever human beings consider "religious" (or "significant," "meaningful," "ultimate," "real," etc.) I usually find such uses of "religious" uncritical, subjective, unfalsifiable, and meaningless. Philosophical phenomenologists and phenomenologists of religion have gone to the oppose extreme with their goal of deciphering invariant universal structures and intuiting essential meanings. They present us with different claims as to universal, essential criteria for distinguishing the religious. In "Part Two: Eliade's Phenomenology: Key Methodological Notions" of my Structure and Creativity in Religion (1978), I present an entire chapter, "Distinguishing Religious Phenomena," in which I formulate Mircea Eliade's claim for "the dialectic of the sacred" as the universal structural criteria for determining what is religious. In Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade (2002), I expand this account of what counts as religious for Eliade in terms of the dialectic of the sacred as the universal structural process of sacralization. The problem is that different phenomenologists offer different phenomenological accounts of essential universal criteria for determining what is religious. Other scholars, including other phenomenologists, find it impossible to verify such bold phenomenological claims. There is value in phenomenologists proposing general criteria for distinguishing what is religious, but similar to my formulations under "phenomenological induction," phenomenologists must acknowledge that any decontextualized claims for essential or universal structures and meanings function on a very high level of abstraction. Such simplified abstractions by themselves are not sufficient to describe and interpret the meaning of complex, embodied, contextualized, actual religious experiences of real human beings. To some extent, such general criteria involve creative and imaginative constructions on the part of the phenomenologist. Whether they shed light on religious phenomena and are useful in contributing to our scholarly understanding and explanations must be tested by intersubjective criteria. In addition, phenomenologists must be more sensitive to the perspectival and contextual constraints to their approach and more modest in their claims. General structures and criteria for distinguishing what is religious in

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certain historical and cultural contexts may not have some essential, universal, nonhistorical, nontemporal, phenomenological status. There may not be one simple essence of what is "religious." Second, to many of Laitila's formulations, I respond with some confusion, questions for clarification, and points of disagreement. He raises questions regarding religion as self-transcendence and whether this means that religion is something "totally other"; and he questions how phenomenologists can do justice to experiences and phenomena of religious others, such as the belief that God exists somewhere "out there" or that one's religious position is the essential, absolute truth. Laitila suggests that my phenomenological and hermeneutical formulations necessarily fail to do justice and even deny or distort such positions of religious believers. Here and elsewhere, Laitila raises difficult issues and challenges for phenomenology and hermeneutics. I'll only offer two brief responses. First, as I emphasize in the concluding section of my essay, it is important to distinguish the religious person and the scholarly interpreter of religious phenomena with their very different levels of experience, interpretation, and authority. In certain respects, one would never expect the scholar to do "justice" fully to the experiences, interpretations, and truth claims of the religious believer qua believer and vice-versa. In addition, Laitila has combined normative, metaphysical, theological, and faith claims of religious believers about truth and reality with phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches, and this produces confusion, challenges, and questions. An essential part of phenomenological and hermeneutical approaches is to suspend one's own value judgments about whether religion is really wholly other, whether God is really out there, whether the other's experiential claims are really true. All of the religious claims Laitila raises can be approached phenomenologically, but he often poses these normative questions in ways that take us beyond the proper domain of phenomenology and hermeneutics. In my view, all scholarly approaches, including phenomenology and hermeneutics, involve critical reflection, analysis, and interpretation, but there are kinds of scholarly reflection that take us beyond phenomenology and hermeneutics. Tom Sjöblom has provided me with so much valuable feedback that I could easily formulate an entire essay interacting with his critique. He is a scholar very well read in many fields and able to interact insightfully with positions different from his own. I agree with Sjöblom's identification of Descartes as foundational and pivotal in providing clear-cut inadequate dichotomies, such as mind and body, spirit and matter, and the nonexistent interpretative versus explanatory Great Divide, as well as an inadequate mechanistic view of material world that gave rise to dominant views of science. Bacon and others, of course, also contributed to such conceptions of science.

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In my writings, especially on self and self-other relations, I argue for the inadequacy of such a Cartesian orientation. It is clear in my essay that I endorse a view of embodied self and consciousness. I reject other related Cartesian dualisms such as active, constituting, self or mind versus passive, "objective," nature or material world. In addition, I submit that Descartes's basic rules of method, committing the scholar to a regressive method aiming at simple, absolute, certain starting points, contributed to an oversimplified and inadequate conception of science and philosophy evident in atomistic forms of positivism, logical positivism, naive empiricism, and naive realism. An especially significant illustration of this inadequate, atomistic Cartesian approach is the simple, separate, active, nondialectical, noninteractive, absolute starting point and foundation of the autonomous Cartesian ego. I also submit that many scientific and philosophical scholars, often unconsciously, adopt much of a Cartesian orientation even when they explicitly refute Descartes's metaphysical and epistemological claims. For example, in a manner very different from Sjöblom's response, a major position at the Helsinki conference, identified with "explaining religion," repeatedly articulated this kind of clear-cut dichotomy: explanation, scientific (relying on recent cognitive science), naturalistic, reductionistic, reason (identified with instrumental rationality), knowledge (rigorous, scientific, objective) versus interpretation of meaning (cultural, subjective, nonscientific), edifying and enchanting, having nothing to do with knowledge (rigorous analysis, reason, objective, scientific explanation). In this sense, most scholarly approaches in the humanities and liberal arts, including phenomenology and hermeneutics, are like roses in a vase or a box of chocolate. They are nice to have around and make life more pleasurable, but they have nothing to do with knowledge. They can be tolerated as we wait for the true scientific knowledge and explanation that will eliminate them as knowledge pretenders. We have seen numerous similar examples of earlier, dichotomous, postCartesian approaches. Even if one focuses only on recent developments in philosophy of science, the nature of science and scientific investigation and explanation, the nature of reason and knowledge, the relation between scientific theory and practice, and so forth, have been shown to be much more dynamic, complex, multidimensional, and open-ended than presented in the post-Cartesian dualistic view of reality. I found Sjöblom's delineation of Holland and Quinn's five different approaches to "meaning" very helpful. Sjöblom identifies my hermeneutic process of gaining understanding in terms of an "open-ended dynamic perspectivism" with the fifth, poststructuralist approach which starts from structuralism "but denies that any stable sign systems exist and, therefore, meanings are deferred indefinitely" (see above p. 37). I can accept this but only in the sense that no absolute, static, fixed sign systems exist, and,

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therefore, any sense of certain, final meaning is "deferred" (or, as I prefer to put it, rejected as an impossible goal). I reject "deferred" if this is intended to mean that we cannot arrive at adequate, significant, open-ended interpretations of meaning. My own position is even closer to the fourth approach to meaning: "the meaning of a sign is in either its pragmatic use (following Wittgenstein) or its place in a larger system (the structuralist approach)" (see above p. 37). In the concluding section of my essay, I suggest that my formulation of "constituted given" can be related to Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and other approaches to meaning as emerging from practice. Relevant to several of Sjöblom's later critiques and criticisms, I regard many recent pragmatic approaches to meaning as operating within a non-Cartesian anti-foundationalist framework, attempting to avoid inadequacies of both the naive realism of scientific and other objectivism (including some recent claims for cognitive science), positivism, and earlier empiricism and the "pure" constructivism of subjective idealism. My phenomenological and hermeneutical work is even closer to the second part of this fourth approach to meaning. For example, in Structure and Creativity in Religion (1978), in the chapter "Interpreting the Meaning of Religious Phenomena," I formulate Eliade's key hermeneutical notion as his framework of universal coherent structures of symbols allowing him to interpret the meaning of a particular phenomenon by situating it as a revalorization of a general, synchronic, structural symbolism. There is a methodological tension between more synchronic, static, ahistorical, structuralist approaches and more diachronic, dynamic, historically and contextually-sensitive, pragmatic approaches to meaning. I've tried to approach this not as a weakness but rather as a creative and even necessary dialectical tension. What follow, because of space limitations, are very brief responses to several of Sjöblom's remaining insights and disagreements. Not only do I reject the need for having access to "the same" meaning as intended by the other; I consider this an impossibility. If "mutual knowledge must be certain," then I reject this possibility, but in my non-Cartesian approach, a high degree of probability is not only possible but sufficient. All scholarly and scientific approaches, including phenomenology and hermeneutics, are selective, perspectival, and reductionistic, although it is important to sort out different kinds of reductionism and perspectivism. Sjöblom claims that there is nothing very original or new about my approach endorsing an open-ended dynamic perspectivism. I agree, but I would also note that most scholars in the history of philosophy, including many influential twentieth-century approaches and even many contemporary scholars endorsing "objective," "hard," natural scientific models, violate my perspectival formulations. I agree with Searle that perspectivism need not be

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viewed as "incompatible with either realism or the doctrine of epistemic objectivity" (see above p. 39). The key questions here regard the nature of such realism and the status of epistemic objectivity. As seen in my essay, I endorse philosophical realism, but a critical, interactive, dialectical realism and not inadequate naive realism. Humans do have access to a real "given" world of meaning. I also emphasize the need for evidence, analysis, and intersubjective testing to establish some perspectival, open-ended sense of objectivity that resists forms of uncritical subjectivism. Sjöblom devotes the final pages of his response showing that my "argument becomes confusing." There is also confusion for me both because Sjöblom sometimes defines the methodological issues in ways I reject and because he attributes to me an underlying position I reject. Sjöblom is correct that I do not endorse some scholarly task of "pure description" in which the scholar simply describes as accurately as possible what the religious person describes. Not only is such "pure" uninterpreted description impossible, but I reject this pure-impure distinction. In my approach, intentionality and worlds of meaning of believers, of scholarly interpreters, and of their mediated relations are complex and resist any fixed closure of meaning. While recognizing that I want to avoid extremes of normative metaphysical speculation and empirical, scientific, reductionistic analysis, Sjöblom then attributes to me a position that goes far beyond phenomenology and hermeneutics. In many ways, this is similar to questions raised by Laitila. Sjöblom claims that I am "arguing that there is a religious reality beyond the empirical reality" (see above p. 41), although "this meta-empirical sacred reality is not totally separate from the empirical reality" (p. 41). This "religious reality remains in the end mysterious and transcendental, and all efforts to gain understanding of it require a leap of faith in the form of irrefutable insight that what one imagines to be behind the empirical reality is the pure nature of religion" (p. 41). As Sjöblom correctly concludes, such an approach takes us outside science and into the realm of metaphysical speculation and revelation. The above reflect metaphysical and theological normative positions, as well as faith-based beliefs of religious persons, but they do not reflect my phenomenological and hermeneutical approach, even when some of the same words are given a very different phenomenological and hermeneutical interpretation. It is the religious believer who may have faith in some transcendent, ultimate, sacred reality, but the scholar is trying to describe, interpret, understand, and explain the intentionality, structure, meaning, function, and significance of such religious phenomena, not endorse them as true or real. Phenomenologically, the sacred is an intentional structure of human consciousness, a human mode of being in the world. Ideal religious structures can be analyzed as human imaginative constructions, but, phenomenologically, they are never by themselves sufficient to account for

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religious experience or religious phenomena. In short, phenomenology and hermeneutics are human approaches that attempt to interpret the meaning of religious and other human phenomena and that always involves empirical evidence, critical analysis, and intersubjective testing. Sjöblom also correctly notes that I never provide a concrete example of what my phenomenological method would look like. I have done this at great length, especially in several chapters of Structure and Creativity in Religion and in many other publications. Finally, as a fascinating concluding observation, Sjöblom ends his response with "the flight of Icarus" as a refutation of my position. I agree with every word in his concluding summary of the Icarus tale! It reflects my own position, including my appreciation for many scientific contributions to the study of religion outside the approaches of phenomenology and hermeneutics. Terhi Utriainen clearly has a major interest and excellent background in philosophical phenomenology. She has used my essay as a way of formulating her own position on phenomenology. This is a legitimate response, but since there is much less direct response to my essay and because of space limitations, I shall not provide the detailed responses I devoted to Laitila and Sjöblom. In addition, it should be clear that I have already responded to many of Utriainen's concerns, especially in several of my responses to Sjöblom. Utriainen entitles her piece "Phenomenology as a Preliminary Method," and I fully agree that phenomenology can serve such a preliminary function in other research approaches. Utriainen also points out that phenomenology is not self-sufficient. As I've maintained elsewhere, the phenomenologist of religion is dependent on the data provided by ethnological, historical, linguistic, sociological, and other scholarly approaches. In addition, as seen in above responses to both Laitila and Sjöblom, I maintain that after phenomenological and hermeneutical description, interpretation of meaning, and understanding are "achieved," there remain scientific explanatory accounts, critical normative issues, and other legitimate scholarly concerns that go beyond the proper limits of phenomenology and hermeneutics. At most, phenomenology and hermeneutics are necessary but not sufficient for understanding and explaining religious phenomena. On the one extreme, Utriainen points to aspects of phenomenology necessary for all research approaches. On the other extreme, one finds very narrow technical formulations of phenomenology. In my monograph, "the Phenomenology of Religion" (1987, 2005), I attempt to clarify meanings and remove confusion by delineating a list of widely different formulations of philosophical and nonphilosophical "phenomenology" and "phenomenology of religion." Utriainen maintains that the hermeneutical approach to the religious is "an ongoing circular task" in which we "can never get to universal essences

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or structures, but to 'constituted givens.' This makes research of religion a never-ending task, which is fine with me: we need to rework our understanding by giving phenomenological descriptions in every new situation. However, this position frustrates a more final-truth-seeking scientific mind who tries to find a way out of the vicious circle by implanting religion (or at least the precondition of religion) to the natural constitution of the human animal" (see above p. 47). As should be clear, I do not regard this "circle" as "vicious," but rather as dynamic, open-ended, creative, and necessary for understanding and the dialogic and mediated emergence of meaning. We can meaningfully uphold the importance of religious essences and structures, but as embodied and contextualized, not as fixed, absolute, ahistorical, eternal truths and meanings. Today, I would submit, most "scientific" approaches reject such finaltruth-seeking claims of many previous scientific orientations. Even if one could establish a necessary causal relation between our natural constitution and "the religious," there would still remain numerous significant questions of interpretation, understanding, and explanation for phenomenological, hermeneutical, and scientific investigation. Several of these remaining concerns are listed by Utriainen in her last point.

References Allen, Douglas 1978

1987 2002 2005

Structure and Creativity in Religion: Hermeneutics in Mircea Eliade's Phenomenology and New Directions. Religion and Reason 14. The Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton Publishers. "Phenomenology of Religion." Pages 2 7 2 - 2 8 5 in volume 11 of The Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Mircea Eliade. New York: Macmillan. Myth and Religion in Mircea Eliade. New York, London: Routledge. "Phenomenology of Religion." Pages 7086-7101 in volume 10 of the second edition of The Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Lindsay Jones. New York: Thomas Gale and Macmillan.

Explaining Religion

Introduction Ilkka Pyysiäinen

Given the strong and multifarious ideological load that the scientific study of religion carries with it, it is necessary first to say what explaining religion does not mean. It is not the same as criticizing religion; the aim is not to show that the 'believers' are mistaken in their beliefs, nor to 'explain religion away.' Explaining religion is not an ideological project targeted at destroying religion; it is not practiced because its proponents wish to construct a better religion by making people's 'worldviews' more 'scientific.' It is simply a scientific project of explaining religious thought, behavior, and experience in scientific terms. This happens in the context of science at large, without any agenda to revise the existing religious traditions. Donald Wiebe's contribution in this volume is a strong plea for this kind of science of religion. In the seminar in which the papers of this volume were first presented, Wiebe argued that explaining religion is incompatible with understanding religion from inside. I take this to mean that understanding a religion from within is a subjective experience with all the emotions that come with it; it is not a rational specification of the causal relationships or functional organizations that make a set of beliefs and practices possible. Scientific explanation, for its part, is precisely this. As such it presupposes that the scholar decouples the beliefs and practices in question from their existential connections, viewing them only as objects of scientific inquiry. The scholar in a way steps outside of religion and subjects beliefs and practices to a noncommitted scrutiny, like a physician studying a disease (without suggesting that religion is a disease!). I thus understand the explanatory and the Verstehen approaches to religion to be mutually exclusive in a (methodo)logical sense. Wiebe's claim should not be taken only in a psychological sense to mean that one who is a believer cannot study religion scientifically. There is no empirical data to support such a claim, because the question has—to the best of my knowledge—not been explored. Even if it were, this information would be only of psychological interest. Methodologically it is more interesting to know why believing and explaining religion are mutually incompatible as procedures, i.e. in what sense they preclude each other. Whether any given scholar is able to switch back and forth between these two alternatives, is another question.

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The methodological point is about the aims of the study of religion: either we consider the aim to be a deepening of our personal 'feeling for religion' (e.g. Gothoni 1995b, 47) and also to educate the general audience on the basis of this expert understanding (Wiebe's 'public intellectuals'), or we take it to be the scientific explanation of religious thought, experience, and behavior (see also Wiebe 1991, 1999, 2002). These are incompatible ideals in the sense that they lead to very different approaches and presuppose quite different kinds of methodologies. In the first alternative, the focus is on the person of the scholar and its maturation; Gothoni (1995a, b) for example lays a heavy emphasis on his own person and his ability to 'understand,' 'get involved,' and then to 'detach' himself from the engagement and to 'reflect' on what he had experienced. There is no other guarantee for the accuracy of interpretation than the scholar's own conviction. In the second alternative, the standard scientific procedure is followed: some materials are studied using some methods for systematizing the analysis, and theories are used to systematize and explain the observed regularities. The aim is not to construct general laws but to explain specific recurrent patterns of thought, experience, and behavior in the light of general laws and theories (see Halonen & Hintikka 1999). Adherents of the hermeneutical position often accuse the explanatory strategy for scientism and hostility towards religion. This is a misunderstanding that follows from the conception according to which the proper context of the study of religion is religious practice, not science. Thus, arguing for a more rigorous approach in the study of religion is understood as an attack against religion, although it is aimed at a specific kind of study of religion. Wiebe, for example, has made it clear that separating the study of religion from religious practice not only puts the study of religion on a scientific basis, but also liberates religious practice from the burden of demands for scientific rationality. In the background figures a more general view of science as an autonomous quest for knowledge and understanding for their own sake. Such purely theoretical 'interest of knowledge' can justify scientific practice perfectly well. This is not to deny that as individuals scholars may participate in whatever projects for making a better society; this is just not their task as scientists. Science is not always the best institution to be trusted in making moral choices and important decisions; most importantly, it is not the only institution that has a say with regard to societal and moral issues. There is also no direct link from scientific results to practical applications. Practical conclusions only follow when scientific results are viewed in a particular perspective that includes also non-scientific principles, preferences, and presuppositions. Scholars like Douglas Allen and Rita Gross, in contrast, argue that science (in the broad sense, including the humanities) should play an emancipatory role in the society. Scholars should be self-reflective and always ready to

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reevaluate their own theories, concepts, and methods in the light of novel demands and criticisms springing from current trends in a society. They emphasize the social and moral responsibility of scholars, as well as the fact that science is never an independent force in society. There is no pure science. Therefore, such strict approaches as that of Wiebe's lead to a 'silencing of other voices.' Scholars should both listen to these other voices in their scientific work, and also participate in public discussion on important issues. Although other voices must be heard as a corrective force within science, scholars should also actively criticize unwanted voices like racism, Christian fundamentalism, etc. Wiebe's position (and mine) is contrary to this. Although it is true that in fact scientific practice is often influenced by non-scientific factors, we should try to minimize such external influence. Likewise, it is true that scholars should be self-reflective; this just does not mean abandoning the basic principles of science. Within a scientific context, we discriminate between justified and unjustified criticism by employing such criteria as the following: * * * * *

Objectivity Criticality Self-correctivity Autonomy Progressiveness

Objectivity means that the scholar cannot uncritically project his or her own presuppositions onto objects of study. Although research is based on the interaction between the scholar and his or her objects of study, it must be possible to argue for the results irrespective of the person of the scholar. Science is critical in the sense that hypotheses cannot be accepted without testing them; nothing should be accepted on authority alone. In the last analysis, objectivity is a property of science as an institution: the community of scholars corrects the errors of individual scholars. Science is self-corrective in the sense that it is a process of trial and error. This process is autonomous in the sense that all corrections must come from inside the institution of science; scientific results cannot be altered on for example religious or political grounds. This is not to say that this never happens, but only that whenever it happens, it means a violation of the principles of science. Finally, science is progressive in the sense that scientific knowledge grows forever; there is no reason why all possible truths should at some point be realized (cf. Lovejoy 1964). This process consists of an approximation of truth where the problem-solving capacity of theories is connected with their truthlikeness, although truth is never completely realized (Niiniluoto 1984, 1987). Science aims at maximizing the equation of low a priori probability and high

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a posteriori probability; such results are at once true and informative (Niiniluoto & Tuomela 1973). This, I believe, is a good account of what it means, on a general level, to explain religion. I want especially to emphasize that these are general principles in the philosophy of science, not only jargon favored in some particular 'school' of 'cultured despisers' of religion (not to mention 'cognitivists'). As general principles they have much to offer for the scientific study of religion. I think that the debates about the proper ways of studying religion are partly about issues in which the ideal of scientific explanation outlined here cannot provide the means for distinguishing between the various parties. Many non-scientific issues are also involved and scholars form social bonds and develop academic avoidance behaviors on the basis of their personal relationship to religion and various societal issues, which are then masked as methodological choices. This is not to deny the reality of methodological disagreements; I only want to argue that the debates over them are difficult in part because we at once argue over many other issues as well. The point is not that the study of human behavior requires a completely different kind of methodology than the study of natural phenomena (see Bhaskar 1998), but rather that issues external to science intrude on our work perhaps more easily than in the natural sciences.

References Bhaskar, Roy 1998 The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Sciences. London: Routledge (1979).

Critique

of the Contemporary

Human

Gothoni, Rene 1995a "Becoming the pilgrim to be interviewed —My field research in retrospect." Pages 3 3 - 3 6 in Sunden's Role Theory—An Impetus to Contemporary Psychology of Religion. Edited by Nils G. Holm and J. A. Beizen. Religionsvetenskapliga skrifter 27. Abo: Abo Akademi. 1995b "Principles of studying religions." Temenos 31: 3 7 - 5 4 . Halonen, lipo, & Jaakko Hintikka 1999

"Unification —it's magnificent but is it explanation?" Synthese 120(1): 2 7 - 4 7 .

Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1964

The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press (1936).

Niiniluoto, Ilkka 1984 1987

Is science progressive? Synthese Library 177. Dordrecht: Reidel. Truthlikeness. Synthese Library 185. Dordrecht: Reidel.

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Introduction Niiniluoto, Ilkka, & Raimo Tuomela 1973

Theoretical

Concepts and Hypothetico-Inductive

Inference.

Dordrecht: Reidel.

Wiebe, Donald 1991

The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought. McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas 15. Montreal; McGill-Queen's University Press.

1999

The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict With Theology In the Academy. New York: St. Martin's Press. "Introduction: the study of religion." Pages xix-xxv in Religions of the World: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices. Edited by J. Gordon Melton & Martin Baumann. Santa Barbara: ABC Clio.

2002

Beyond Thick Descriptions and Interpretive Sciences: Explaining Religious Meaning Donald Wiebe

I think it can be held to have been demonstrated both that it was the nineteenth century's interest in achieving a scientific understanding of religion that secured for the study of religion academic status in the modern university, and that most twentieth-century scholars in the field failed to follow through on this nineteenth-century scientific agenda. 1 Afraid that the reductionism of the sciences might "explain religion away," it seems that students in the field throughout most of the twentieth century have retreated to a so-called hermeneutical approach to the study of religion as the proper avenue to understanding it. The understanding sought, however, was not simply an elucidation of matters that were obscure, but something special; a "scholarly" undertaking that would provide an uncommon kind of knowledge—an "understanding" that goes beyond the simple provision of a narrative account of the historical development of a particular religious tradition or aspect of it, or clarification of the role of religion in the life of an individual or of its function in society, or the illumination of the meaning of a religious text in the simple sense of knowing the meanings of the words employed or of being able to grasp the point of a particular concept or idea, and so on. Although a hermeneuticized "understanding" does not necessarily eschew the ordinary, it is amorphous and oracular in nature and has little to do with the broader scientific aim of providing sets of intersubjectively testable claims (statements) about religious experience, belief, practice, or behavior and simply rejects as inappropriate the scientific objective of providing an explanation of religious phenomena that are open to empirical testing. In effect, therefore, espousing "understanding" as the goal of the discipline, is equivalent to working within what has been appropriately called a "gnostic epistemology" that effectively pits the results of the "scholarly" study of religion against social scientific analyses of religious phenomena. 2 1

On this see Wiebe 1984.

2

I draw upon the work of Donald Bates (1995) here for the notion of a gnostic epistemology, which he invokes to account for a type of knowledge found in several ancient medical traditions. According to Bates, " w e might think of gnostic scholarship as self-consciously cultivating superior knowers, while epistemic scholarship

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That tension is clearly visible in Peter B. Clarke's and Peter Byrne's Religion Defined and Explained. According to them, scientific explanations are inappropriate in accounting for human actions and institutions because they are reductionistic. Therefore, "[i]n the case of human acts," they write, "there is no sharp distinction between describing and explaining" (Clarke & Byrne 1993, 44). Moreover, in their claim that religion as a human phenomenon can be explained they intimate that there is something more to the reality of religion than can be accounted for theoretically. Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, in their Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, similarly assert that a study of religion that takes its subject matter to be a purely cultural phenomenon ("having no supernatural aspect" [Stark & Finke 2001, 20]) is rationally unacceptable, although given the supernatural character of the subject matter does not exclude explaining it at the human level—at the level of "the relationship between human beings and what they experience as divine" (21). Are such views defensible? Can one really distinguish between supernatural and extra-cultural aspects of religion and the human and cultural as these scholars suggest? And are those who seek a bridging of the natural and the social sciences motivated simply by a desire to "explain religion away" as Stark and Finke maintain? Have they any justification for their claim, for example, that members of the North American Association for the Study of Religions are obsessed with ridding students of belief in the supernatural and that they therefore espouse atheism as the only possible rationale for Religious Studies? Or is it rather the case that Stark and Finke are constructing a not so "cryptic"apology for religion? While not engaged in arguing a positive case for belief in some transcendental religious realm they, nevertheless, seem to maintain that the "burden of proof" in such disputes falls on the skeptic, agnostic, and atheist rather than on the devotee espousing the belief, and they thereby suggest that religious belief is justified on the grounds that the skeptics have not provided a metaphysically conclusive argument against it. Were we able to provide a bridge between the physical and the cultural sciences, I suggest we would be in a position to answer these queries. What persuasive power such "scholarly" approaches to the study of religion wield, it seems to me, rests on the assumption that there is an order to life in the world that makes it meaningful—gives it significance—despite the demystification of the natural, material world that has been achieved by the physical and biological sciences. Although science may have disenchanted the material world in that it has been able to determine the causes that give rise to apparently mysterious and uncanny aspects of it, it is argued that the social sciences have been unable to provide equivalent accounts of the mysterious nature of the cultural realm—of meaning, for example. In this self-consciously search[es] for ways to justify knowledge" (4). An elaboration of this distinction as it applies to the study of religion can be found in Wiebe 2002.

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regard, argues Mark Schneider in his Culture and Enchantment, Weber overestimated the influence of science because he thought it would eventually provide us a causal account not only of the natural but also of the social and cultural world. According to Schneider, however, Weber failed to see that enchantment is a natural condition of human thought and that naturalistic scientific inquiry is unnatural, 3 and—given the natural preference humans have for seeing life as meaningful—that it is unlikely that a disenchantment of the social sciences will ever be achieved (Schneider 1993, 114-123). Interestingly, Schneider does not argue that a scientific, explanatory account of cultural phenomena is inconceivable or impossible—that is, that there is an unbridgeable chasm that separates the natural from the social and cultural sciences. He seems to maintain only that it is not presently within reach (although at times there is the hint that he may believe it never will be). His concession about the possibility of bridging the chasm between the natural and the social sciences, however, may prove more significant than he seems to think possible. I will argue here, then, that Schneider's estimation of the current status of the social sciences is too stingy, and that he is unduly pessimistic about its future development. An analysis and assessment of his argument about culture and enchantment will repay the effort expended, for his discussion of the issues not only presents a clear understanding of the Naturwissenschaften/Geisteswissenschaften debate, but, in my judgment, provides a set of parameters whereby we can assess the current state of affairs in Religious Studies and move toward the goal of achieving a scientific understanding of religion and other cultural realities. Against Weber, Schneider argues that the disenchantment of the world has not been fully achieved. Enchantment, he insists, is a natural condition of thought because people have a preference for seeing meaningful connections in the world rather than explanations of the objects and events in it. Indeed, according to Schneider, Weber himself recognized that disenchantment of the world actually fueled a demand for enchantment because it excluded an account of life in terms of "what it 'means' or 'feels like' to be us" (40), and in doing so, impoverished the world. He writes: "[M]uch of culture (particularly in its 'expressive' domain, where we articulate our experiences and feelings) is given over to structures considerably richer and less perspicuous than explanation" (40). And these "ineffably rich expressive phenomena," he continues, "[create] what we might think of as a structural mismatch for explanation" (41). And it is this, he claims, that encouraged "the conviction that the Geisteswissenschaften had aims, and required methods [of analysis], quite different from the study of nature" (41).

3

On this see R. N. McCauley's comments on the unnaturalness of science and the naturalness of religion as a product of the standard cognitive dispositions of human beings in his "Comparing the Cognitive Foundations of Religion and Science" (1998).

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Whether any particular field of inquiry is enchanted, Schneider argues, is a function of three factors: the tractability of its subject matter; the structure or organization of the inquiry; and the policing of its cognitive boundaries. The first concerns the nature of the subject matter of the field of inquiry which is referred to as its referential ecology. This pertains to the ease with which referential consensus about any subject matter (that is, the intersubjective availability of the subject matter or communal referential access to it) can be established, and the ease with which it gives itself to explanation. Cultural phenomena present referential problems because they are not purely physical objects but rather "meaningful" phenomena that do not even line up in any stable fashion with the physical dimensions of culture. A field of inquiry that causes significant referential difficulty, Schneider indicates, is likely to be enchanted. Further, reports on enchanted phenomena must be made in a particular epistemic register which marks the common sense distinctions we draw between the fictional and the factual or the imaginative and the functional. There are three registers: the naturalistic register requires empirical demonstration and involves the possibility of explanation; the non-naturalistic or edifying register that calls for warrants other than empirical (such as narrative coherence); and the ambiguous register that combines features of the other two. The second factor is the way inquiry into a particular subject is structured and organized: the issue here is whether there is the organizational capacity to manage the glut of often contradictory information—that is, to discriminate between more or less reputable reports produced by inquiry so as to be able to develop a coherent picture of the world. The natural sciences, Schneider argues, have been able to create boundaries between themselves and enchanted forms of inquiry and have been able to police them effectively, excluding "magical" objects of inquiry from consideration as imprudent paths to knowledge (namely, those having the properties of "occultness of operative principles, mercuriality of effects, and so on" [123]), as well as certain ways of interpreting the world. The final factor is the effective policing of cognitive boundaries and is closely tied to the social organization of the community of researchers and will be affected by such structural factors as role differentiation, equality, and autonomy in knowledge production. Although "the boundary between enchanted and disenchanted inquiry in the study of nature is complex both in its history and in the forces that have caused it to strengthen or weaken," writes Schneider, we have nevertheless been able to trace the disenchantment of the physical world in "[t]he transformation of the natural philosopher (a differentiated role performed by cosmopolitan but independent intellectuals largely in solitude) into the natural scientist (a differentiated role performed by insular and highly interdependent intellectuals collectively)" (141). Where such structural/organizational conditions of knowledge production do not exist, therefore, so Schneider intimates, enchantment continues.

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Given this analysis of the boundaries and conditions that characterize natural scientific inquiry, Schneider claims that "[t]hose of us who study culture operate in an enchanted milieu because we have not yet broadly accepted (or perhaps even developed) the craft intuitions that would discriminate between 'magical' and mundane objects of inquiry..." (2). Culture, that is, "consists of essentially slippery [epistemic] terrain [and] prevents all but the loosest organization of interpretive communities..." (143). Thus, he continues, social scientists today differ little from the virtuoso seventeenth-century natural philosophers like Joseph Glanville and John Aubrey who were unable to distinguish between apparitions and microbes (ix) and found themselves attracted by "Apparitions, Knockings, Blows Invisible, and Glances of Love and Malice" (1). Whereas the seventeenth-century virtuoso scholars—in holding the view "that unusual phenomena might express the intentions of another realm" (52) —are now thought of as naive for violating well-established criteria of phenomenality, asserts Schneider, the occult referential niches of the modern student of culture have not yet been so stigmatized, with the result that the study of culture still remains enchanted. Thus he writes: In interpretive inquiry today, enchantment results from encounters with strange intenders [that is, "intentional agents that work in peculiar and mysterious ways" (46)] just as it did from Aubrey's encounters with apparitions—provided they are discussed in the proper epistemic register. Most interpretive practices can be employed either for edifying or naturalistic ends, and only in the latter case do they become enchanting. As we have seen, interpreters find that some aspect of phenomena (which others might assume nonsemantic) carries meaning, a meaning that flows from intentional agents whose character and behavior we can apprehend only dimly. (52) Contemporary anthropology, Schneider then claims, is a clear instance of a loose organization of interpretative communities and he points to Clifford Geertz and Claude Levi Strauss as chief exemplars of scholars working on slippery epistemic terrain. Indeed, with them, he argues, enchantment reentered the academy, for although they appear to espouse naturalistic disciplinary ambitions, they nevertheless seem to find "strange intenders" that ultimately indicate their discourse to be in the natural or ambiguous epistemic register. Geertz, for example, appears to be involved in a scientific undertaking and yet his "thick description" treatment of the Balinese cock fight as revealing something peculiarly Balinese, describable in no other fashion, suggests the recognition of something mysterious and beyond explanation. And this makes his "cultural analysis" look more like an edifying reading than an explanatory scientific exercise. We see in Geertz, therefore, a methodological vacillation

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between naturalism and edification in which the meaning or significance of a cultural phenomenon is and is not referential. According to Schneider, therefore, it is quasi-referential, which means that "we are not to hector it with demands for empirical warrant..., [even though] its raison d'etre would be weakened if its 'fictive' nature were fully and publicly underscored" (79). However, neither can the empirical pretensions of such meaning or significance be emphasized for that would "arouse strong demands for [scientific] warrant" (80). Thus, as Schneider puts it, meaning of this kind is stuck in an ambiguous epistemic register and is, therefore, enchanted. Similar mysteries stalk Levi Strauss's "gestures in the direction of science and its reductive urge" (95) in his systematic study of myths because he also espouses the broader Orphic ambition of seeking, through myth, (that is, "beneath its linguistic surface and independent of its narrative logic" [90]), the "primordial message spoken by the world itself" (112). Yet Levi Strauss fails to make clear by which measure he is to be judged: although seeming to place himself in the naturalist camp, he suggests that his claims should be adjudicated by traditional hermeneutic standards. As Schneider judges it: Levi Strauss "seems to be expressing a virtuoso disinclination to probe systematically into—and thus perhaps disenchant—the mechanisms he implies are at work" (110-111). Therefore we are never clear with Levi Strauss as to whether his findings are meant to be science or edification, for, like Geertz, he adopts an epistemic register that both requires and ignores scientific/ naturalist warrant. Therefore, both Geertz and Levi Strauss, as well as other "ambiguous register" cultural analysts, claims Schneider, "flirt with an imaginative genre which, like literature on occasion, draws strategically on empirical evidence in search of realism, while at the same time establishing themselves in epistemic territory normally closed to this" (113). And such a blurring of the distinction between significance-discourse and anthropological investigation catapults Geertz and Levi Strauss into an enchanted realm. How does the academic study of religion stack up against this? Just a few years ago, in my paper to the "Symposium on methodology in the Study of Religion" held in Abo (1997), I suggested that it does not stack up very well at all (Wiebe 1999c); I was aware of Eric Sharpe's claim that evolutionary theory had allowed for the reconceptualization of the academic study of religion as a scientific undertaking to be clearly differentiated from theology. As I pointed out there, Sharpe had shown in his history of this new field of inquiry that "Darwinism" in the nineteenth century had relocated the focus of the study of religion from transcendental philosophy to "the altogether this-worldly categories of history, progress, development, and evolution" (Sharpe 1986, 24), and that it had provided a "guiding principle of method" that could account for the historical data of the religions in a theoretical way. As Sharpe put it, the Darwinian framework made possible "an attempt to view religion on the criterion provided by science, to judge its history, growth,

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and evolution as one would judge the history, growth, and evolution of an organism" (32). It is a fact, however, that this early recourse to evolutionary theory by students of religion fell into disrepute before the end of the second decade of the twentieth century because of its sloppy use of organismic metaphors and its attachment to simplistic notions of progress. As Steven Pinker puts it in his recent book The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, "Darwin's theory of evolution was commonly misinterpreted as an explanation of intellectual and moral progress rather than an explanation of how living things adapt to an ecological niche" (2002, 15). And it is also a fact that without an alternative theoretical framework, students of religion "reverted to type," by which I mean that they returned to earlier scholarly— that is, non-scientific—approaches to "accounting" for religion that would nevertheless find some merit within the academic setting. And for the most part those approaches, I have argued, are "crypto-theological," which is to say that they are largely religious, ethical, and political in intent. And I provided a series of brief analyses of the proposals for polymethodic humanistic approaches to the study of religion by Ninian Smart, Kieran Flanagan, Andre Droogers, Martin Prozesky, William Dean, and George Marsden to emphasize my purport, since in each of these "approaches" to religion, the field is opened up to the distorting influence of religious, ethical, and political agendas of "scholars" more concerned with their status as religious and moral leaders and "public intellectuals" than as academics and scientists.4 4

Many religion scholars taking this approach draw support from developments in critical social theory found in a wide variety of university departments and disciplines. The critical approach in the social sciences and humanities rejects the notion of an objective science capable of providing us with knowledge of the world free from personal and cultural bias, and argues that knowledge of that kind is something that must be opposed because it is little more than the instrument of power. Critical social theorists rather see what is emancipatory as knowledge, and consider commitment to human liberation rather than the search for knowledge as the proper aim of intellectual activity. For them, obtaining objective knowledge about states of affairs in the world is not possible, and the attempt to do so, is merely cover for power politics. As Ben Agger puts it in his Critical Social Theory: An Introduction (1998), the positivist approach to knowledge can only undermine "Utopian efficiency" (p. 24), and to avoid this, genuine scholarship (science) must seek insight, and be committed to bringing about social transformation. Agger admits that this view of social theory politicizes scholarship, but he insists that the critical theorist need not be ashamed of its political commitment because, according to him, the claim to value freedom of the so-called objective sciences is also a political stance. (He fails, however, to provide either argument or evidence in support of this counter-intuitive claim.) Clearly, therefore, the critical approach is incompatible with the approach to the study of religion I argue in this paper. In arguing that the critical theory is inadequate as science, I do not mean to suggest that those who seek "objective knowledge" can have no other interests but knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone. Nor do I suggest the "objective

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Connecting Darwin's notion of the evolution of species to that of the "social evolution" of religion from a primitive to a civilized form, however, is not the only way of applying Darwinian insights to the study of religion and other cultural phenomena. Although at the time of the Äbo conference I was unaware of Jane Ellen Harrison's paper on "The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion," written in commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin (and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species), the essay clearly maps out the possibility of a Darwinian explanation of religion in terms of the evolution of the mental capacities of human beings that underlie the emergence and persistence of religion. So sure was Harrison of her conviction, she wrote, that had she not "feared to mar [her] tribute to a great name by any shadow of exaggeration, she might well have titled her contribution "the creation by Darwinism of the scientific study of religions" (Harrison 1909, 494). Before Darwin, she continued, "[r]eligion was not generally regarded as a proper object for scientific study, with facts to be collected and theories to be deduced" (494). Rather, she pointed out, religion was conceived of as a matter of beliefs ready-made and complete by means of divine revelation, with no room for growth or development. But Darwin, she argues, made it possible to conceive of religion as a step in the evolution of human thought and so opened religion to scientific analysis in light of humankind's mental evolution. In support of that claim she quotes the following passage from The Origin of Species: "In the future I see open fields for far more important research. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation...of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation" (497). Harrison acknowledges that "[n]owhere...does Darwin definitely say that he regarded religion as a set of phenomena the development of which may be studied from the psychological standpoint" (497), but she nevertheless maintains that [w]ith these memorable words the door closes on the old and opens on the new horizon. The mental focus henceforth is not on the maintaining or refuting of an orthodoxy but on the genesis and evolution of a capacity, not on perfection but on a process. Continuous evolution leaves no gap for revelation sudden and complete. We have henceforth to ask, not when was religion revealed or what was the revelation, but how did religious phenomena arise and develop. (497) Thus, despite Darwin's piety, insists Harrison, "his heart went out towards the new methods in religious study" (497) which—interestingly—she saw as knowledge" is without social or cultural significance. However, I shall not elaborate those matters here. I have taken up that issue briefly in the concluding comments to my contribution to Secular Theories of Religion (Wiebe 1999b, 272-276).

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exemplified in the recent congresses of religion (for example, the 1908 Oxford Congress) that would eventually be organized under the auspices of the International Association for the History of Religions. 5 Indeed, in her eyes, Darwin "had himself, if half-unconsciously, inaugurated" (497) this new explanatory approach to understanding religion. Although not as exploitable at that time as was the organismic metaphor and social evolution route to accounting for cultural developments, I think the evolutionary psychology route to the explanation of religion espoused by Daniel Dennett and others provides, as I intimated in my Abo paper, a framework for a genuinely scientific study of religion. As Dennett puts it, Darwinism suggests the possibility that there exists a single design space "in which the offspring of both our bodies and our minds are united under one commodious set of R-and-D processes" (Dennett 1995, 189) within which "the central biological concept of function and the central philosophical concept of meaning can be explained and united" (185). Were that possible, of course, the traditional assumption of an unbridgeable chasm between the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteswissenschaften would be undermined and the social and cultural realm disenchanted; the notion that the study of mind and its products requires a disciplinary framework wholly different from the explanatory, "causal account," framework of our study of the physical world, would no longer come into play. 6 There can be no doubt, for example, that such an approach disenchants the subject matter of all cultural studies by improving the communal referential access to it and making referential consensus possible. In the case of religion, for example, the genesis and evolution of a particular capacity of the human mind is tractable in a way that revelations, intuitions, and insights that—in a fashion we know not how—insinuate themselves into the mind and life of the human community, are not. This is not to say, however,

5

Harrison's reference to the Oxford Congress is significant, for without congresses of this kind, and the national and international associations that support them, the scientific study of religion is not likely to have fully bloomed, let alone flourished. The reference to the North American Association for the Study of Religion earlier in the paper reveals the hostility—created by the fear of the possible disenchantment of religions and religion—toward a scientific study of religion that is characteristic not only of individual scholars but of powerful institutions like the American Academy of Religion and its satellite religious organizations, associations, and societies. On this see my The Politics of Religious Studies (1998).

6

On this matter see my "Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson" (1990). I call into question there both Pals's invocation of a Giddens-like double hermeneutic as distinctive of "humanistic" social science accounts of human behavior, and of Dawson's attempt to ground "humanistic religious explanations" in a triple hermeneutic involving extraordinary and supernatural realities.

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that such an approach will immediately subvert and eliminate virtuoso scholars in the field of Religious Studies, but it will go a long way within the scientific and academic community to stigmatize—in Schneider's sense of the term—such edifying discourse in the context of the modern research university. As Dennett puts it: all the achievements of human culture—language, art, religion, ethics, science itself—are themselves artifacts...of the same fundamental process. There is no special creation of language, and neither art nor religion has a literally divine inspiration. If there are no skyhooks needed to make a skylark, there are no skyhooks needed to make an ode to a nightingale. No meme is an island. (Dennett 1995,144) Dennett is well aware that cultural artifacts are the products of intention and that intentionality comes from minds, but he shows that this does not make cultural artifacts any the less artifactual. To do so, would be to make mind itself a mystery and the source of mystery, he writes, "by making a metaphysical principle of a fact of recent natural history" (205), for human minds are non-miraculous products of evolution, and, consequently, "in the requisite sense [are] artifacts, and all their powers must have an ultimately 'mechanical' explanation" (370). As Dennett explains, "[w]e are descended from macro[molecules] and made of macro[molecules], and nothing we can do is anything beyond the power of huge assemblies of macro[molecules] (assembled in space and time)" (370-371). In saying this, Dennett is not claiming that we see the full-blown agency of intentional action "with the representation of reasons, deliberation, reflection, and conscious decision" when we look "through the microscope of molecular biology." Yet he insists that it is only through that microscope that we get to see the birth of all such full-blown agency, for it is only in the first macro-molecules with sufficient complexity to be able to do things, as he points out, that we see "the only possible ground from which the seeds of intentional action could grow" (202). Nor does Dennett deny that there is a vast difference between human beings and all other species, but that difference is not, he argues, of an ontological character; human beings are still artifacts of nature, and human intentionality, although real, is still "an effect of millions of years of mindless algorithmic R and D instead of a gift from on high" (427). It is rather the case that human beings possess "an extra medium of design preservation and design communication" (338); a biological phenomenon we call culture. And even though other species have the rudiments of culture, human beings alone "have language, the primary medium of culture" (338) that opens up "new regions of Design Space that only [human beings] are privy to" (338). And Dennett goes on to acknowledge what all human beings already know, namely, that "we have already used our new exploration

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vehicles to transform not only our planet but the very process of design development that created us" (338).7 7

Dennett's position has been severely criticized by John Searle (1984, 1998), and though the debate between the two cannot be taken up here in any detail, some comment is necessary. Like Dennett, Searle understands consciousness to be a biological phenomenon, with brain processes giving rise to consciousness. But unlike Dennett, Searle's "biological naturalism" does not reduce consciousness to the level of the material; rather, he sees consciousness as "a higher level feature of the brain." For Searle, therefore, both consciousness and intentionality are "at one and the same time completely material and irreducibly mental" (1998, 69). And given that intentionality is the special aspect of mind by means of which human beings can relate to the world, it is a form of causation radically different from the physical and, therefore, requires an approach that distinguishes it from the explanatory approach of the natural sciences. The argument here is but a continuation of that elaborated earlier in his Minds, Brains, and Science (1984), namely, that there is a gap between brain and mind that requires explanation of the mind, and its products (culture), in a different fashion from that used to explain the physical world. As he puts it: The main step in the argument for a radical discontinuity between the social sciences and the natural sciences depends on the mental character of social phenomena... The radical discontinuity between the sociological and psychological disciplines on the one hand and the natural sciences on the other derives from the role of mind in these disciplines. (Searle 1984, 79) Although Searle acknowledges that the physical sciences demystified the natural world, and, analogously, recognizes that mind and consciousness are not beyond the reach of scientific investigation, he nevertheless makes of consciousness and intentionality peculiar (that is, completely material and irreducibly mental) phenomena that are scientifically inexplicable (that is, requiring special sciences not dependent upon the natural sciences). Mind—consciousness and intentionality—is, therefore, an inexplicably mystery for, as Searle puts it: [OJnce we have explained the causal basis of consciousness in terms of the firing of neurons in the thalamus and the various cortical layers, or, for that matter, in terms of quarks or muons, it seems [unlike the explanations of mitosis or meiosis, or digestion] we still have a phenomenon left over. In the case of consciousness, we have an irreducible subjective element left over after we have given a complete causal account of the neurobiological basis. (Searle 1998, 55) Dennett's response to Searle's views (in Minds, Brains, and Science) is to show how Searle's claims for the mysterious nature of the mind (Searle 1984, 14)—based as it is on the distinction between intrinsic (or original) and derived intentionality—is without justification, and that it blocks further scientific investigation of the mind. Dennett, to the contrary, argues that intentionality is not inexplicable, but rather that properly understanding the intentionality characteristic of robotic behavior reveals "that within its world of merely derived intentionality we can show the very distinction that inspired the contrast between original and derived intentionality in the first place" (Dennett 1995, 54). That is, "it shows that derived intentionality can be derived from derived intentionality [and]...how an illusion of intrinsic intentionality (metaphysically original intentionality) could arise" (ibid.).

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It would appear, therefore, that Harrison is not guilty of exaggeration in claiming for Darwin the status of founder of the scientific—explanatory— approach to the study of religion. Evolutionary psychology, as Jerome Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby put it in the Introduction to the essays in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, not only brings to light the information-processing mechanisms of which the mind is comprised, but that in doing so, it "supplies the necessary connection beA position similar to Searle's can be found in McGinn 1999. McGinn maintains that "[t]he mind is simply not a combinatorial product of the brain [so that] [t]he conscious state does not have an internal structure that is defined by its physical underpinnings" (58). Therefore he calls his position "mysterianism," because understanding consciousness simply cannot be a project within normal science (59). McGinn does not, however, think consciousness is an objective miracle, but rather that it remains a mystery because of the limitations of our cognitive capacities (70). Unlike Searle, however, McGinn does not seem to suggest that understanding mind or its products requires transcendence of the natural and behavioral sciences, for, as he puts it, "[w]hat we are pleased to call 'civilization' is basically biological overspill..." (42). (For a contrary opinion on McGinn see Pinker 1997, 560-565.) Roger Penrose, in Shadows of the Mind (1994), it seems to me, presented a view somewhat along the lines one finds in Searle and McGinn, based on the fact that mathematical understanding (e.g., Gödel's theorem) cannot always be reduced to computation. As he puts it, "[o]nce it is shown that certain types of mathematical understanding must elude computational skill, then it is established that we can do something non-computational with our minds" (51). Nevertheless, unlike McGinn, and Searle, Penrose accepts neither "mysterianism" nor some form of idealism, and he argues that consciousness can be understood only in association with physical objects like the brain (214). Although we do not presently have a scientific explanation of mind and consciousness in terms of our current knowledge of physics and biology, Penrose insists that " w e must search more deeply within the actual physical 'material' structures that constitute brains—and also more deeply into the very question of what a 'material' structure, at the quantum level of things actually is!" (350-351) for a proper account of the non-algorithmic physical action which consciousness seems to involve (214). Whether the fact that our current view of physics which accepts two kinds of physical law —one at the micro-level and one at the level of phenomena —constitutes reasonable grounds for explaining the supposed noncomputational behavior of human minds, however, is widely disputed by philosophers and scientists. Nevertheless, Penrose, though arguing for the "specialness" of mind here, does not, as Dennett correctly notes, sink to mystery-mongering (446) that places the mind (consciousness, intentionality) beyond the pale of scientific understanding. W e are no more at "the end of our cognitive rope" here, as Steven Pinker puts it, than we are in physics, given Richard Feynman's comment that '"If you think you understand quantum theory, you don't understand quantum theory'" (Pinker 2002, 239). Thus, even though "[o]ur intuitions about life and mind, like our intuitions about matter and space, may have run up against a strange world forged by our best science..., [w]e [nevertheless] have every reason to believe that consciousness and decision making arise from the electrochemical activity of neural networks in the brain" (239-240).

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tween evolutionary biology and the complex, irreducible social and cultural phenomena studied by anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and historians" (Barkow et al. 1992, 3). A proper understanding of mind and culture, therefore, as they point out, requires us to cross disciplinary boundaries, and they urge scientists to overcome their disciplinary xenophobia reflected in charges of "intellectual imperialism" and "reductionism," and push forward with integrating the natural, behavioral, and social sciences. In the long opening essay, "The Psychological Foundations of Culture," Tooby and Cosmides, mount a detailed critique of the "Standard Social Science Model" dominant in the study of cultural phenomena and argue the merits of an "Integrated Causal Model" that by locating the social scientists' object of study "inside the larger network of scientific knowledge" (Tooby & Cosmides 1992, 23) opens it to a causal account and so disenchants it; that is, the Integrated Causal Model shows that the assumption of the sui generis character of the cultural is unnecessary and the belief that understanding the cultural requires a special approach distinct from that of the natural sciences is unwarranted.8 8

This is what E. O. Wilson calls consilience (1998): " a 'jumping together' of knowledge by the linking of facts and fact-based theory across the disciplines to create a common groundwork of explanation" (8). Consilience, that is, assumes that the world is orderly and can be explained with a relatively small number of laws (4). Science, that is, is fundamentally reductionistic, and without reductionism consilience is impossible. And, like Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby, Wilson considers the Standard Social Science Model of inquiry fundamentally misdirected for it takes culture to be "an independent phenomenon irreducible to elements of biology and psychology, [and, consequently], the product of environment and historical antecedents" (188). He does not deny that social science is genuinely scientific "when pursued descriptively and analytically," but claims that "social theory is not yet true theory" (188) because the social sciences "have not yet crafted a web of causal explanation that successfully cuts down through the levels of organization from society to mind and brain" (189). Consilience, he maintains, has characterized the natural sciences virtually from the time of their emergence, and he claims—rightly so, in my judgment—that it is now accepted in evolutionary biology and the brain sciences. And these latter disciplines, he claims, offer a natural bridge to both the social sciences and the humanities. As he puts it: " T h e main thrust of the consilience world view...is that culture and hence the unique qualities of the human species will make complete sense only when linked in causal explanation to the natural sciences, [especially] [bjiology [which] is the most proximate and hence relevant of the scientific disciplines" (267). (On this score see also Steven Pinker's claims about the entanglement of the Standard Social Science Model with the doctrine of the blank slate theory of the human mind that still dominates much contemporary thinking both inside and outside the academy (2002, 16-17). Ilkka Pyysiäinen's recent (unpublished) paper, "What Is It like to be a Believer?/' presents a complex argument in support of such consilience, including even the explanation of religion. Along with Tooby and Cosmides, Pyysiäinen insist that our physical and biological nature is not irrelevant to understanding the culture we produce, even though this explanatory strategy cannot "explain what it is like to

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And cognitive archaeologist Steven Mithen has provided a persuasive causal account of the cultural in terms of the evolutionary development of the human mind in his The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion, and Science (Mithen 1996). Although I do not want to claim here that an indubitable case can be made for an approach to the study of culture that divides it into exclusively naturalistic and edifying endeavors, I suggest that the Darwinism of Harrison, Dennett, and the others lends a greater degree of plausibility to the "Integrated Causal Model" for the study of cultural phenomena than that attached to the view of the Geisteswissenschaften as special, autonomous, sciences. Even Schneider who, as I pointed out above, seems to want to make a case for the enchantment of cultural studies appears to acknowledge this, for late in the development of his argument he admits that dividing cultural studies in this fashion is achievable in principle, but not at the present time. Schneider admits, for example, that E. D. Hirsch's notion of intention makes a scientific study of culture possible because it provides a referential context that allows for a determinate theoretical aim, namely, the attainment of truth. As he puts it, "it suggests that everything about culture is in principle explicable, since all of it is borne by natural processes investigatable beneath the semantic level" (Schneider 1993, 155). Hirsch, claims Schneider, admits that knowing the intentional basis of sublime and ineffable cultural products does not reduce their sublimity or ineffability to something else, but rather leaves open the possibility for a literary interpretation of those cultural phenomena without making what they mean appropriate objects of knowledge, since it is impossible to get the physical dimensions of culture to line up with their apparent meanings. And this makes it clear that in the consideration of culture, there are legitimate goals besides the acquisition of knowledge and this, Schneider maintains, may suggest that there is some justification for the claim that we cannot fully "understand," or grasp (experience), culture by means of science alone. Schneider, however, also argues that "[t]his continued openness does not show naturalism as failing, as somehow coming up short with regard to culture; on the contrary, it might meet with complete success, but in the process have certain kinds of beliefs and experiences and to engage in certain kinds of behaviours..." (14). This is not a shortcoming of the explanatory strategy, however, because " h a v i n g " the experiences and beliefs of another "is not a question of explanation at all" (14). Nevertheless, Pyysiäinen maintains that speculation a b o u t describing—the subjective experience of the religious person is not irrelevant to the scientist's task, and he argues that " w e should direct our efforts to explaining religious experience from a second-person, heterophenomenological perspective, rather than only interpreting it" (15). Although I find much of Pyysiäinen's argument persuasive, I have some reservations about his claims regarding the need to know "what it feels like" to be religious as an element in the description of religion.

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reveals an aspect of culture it simply makes no sense to pursue in naturalistic terms" (159). Thus, even though the naturalistic and explanatory agenda of science may be complementary and compatible with the edifying practice of the interpreters of culture, the two practices are epistemically/cognitively incommensurable and cannot be blended. Thus, concludes Schneider: The study of intentions allows us to explain cultural artifacts according to naturalistic canons, thus disenchanting them, while edifying inquiry into their meaning would occur in a register that does not provoke enchantment in the first place. If the ambiguous middle ground—where strange phenomena are presently discovered by virtuoso practitioners of the interpretive 'sciences'—were to be abandoned, the study of culture would become disenchanted.9 (167) Nevertheless, as Schneider correctly points out, these two aims are often pursued in the same academic discipline and by the scholar who does not foreswear using the results of his or her scientific research to determine the (real) meaning of cultural objects. To separate the two aims, as Schneider puts it, for many scholars, is to force upon the field of cultural studies an aesthetically unappealing choice between "a banausic explanatory science and an ingenious but perhaps insubstantial hermeneutics" (203-204). Such scholars, therefore, are likely to believe that because naturalistic and edifying practices are commensurable, they can be blended, and they are likely, therefore, to blur methodological and procedural matters to achieve that blending. Thus, Schneider claims, "it is likely that virtuosi will endure, encouraging new efforts to occupy the space between science and edification— and enchanting us in the process" (204). There can be little doubt that the study of culture in general, (and the study of religion in particular) is currently dominated by virtuoso scholars who pursue knowledge and edification as if they were the same goal (or at least inseparable goals). But that the virtuosi will endure is clearly not beyond doubt, as Schneider himself has conceded. Unlike Schneider—for the reasons set out above—I think the recent developments in evolutionary psychology and the cognitive sciences provide every indication of disclosing those structures of mind and society that give rise to the "mercurial meanings" so beloved by the virtuosi. And in actively embracing the conceptual integration of the sciences—that is, in assuming the unity of the sciences—cultural and religious studies gain a degree of theoretical sophistication that has until recently eluded them. Within that framework the social and cultural sciences are no longer "loose congeries of independent insights," as Schneider suggests, but 9

Interesting possibilities in this regard are also suggested by Mark Turner's thesis of parable as the root of the human mind in his The Literary Mind (1996).

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rather constitute knowledge linked through "a parsimonious set of underlying principles" (169). As Dennett puts it with respect to Darwinism: "Life and all its glories are thus united under a single perspective" (Dennett 1995, 141). This does not "explain away" the phenomena, as the virtuosi claim, but it does demystify them by its commitment to a non-question begging form of thought that refuses to countenance what has been called a "brutely emergent teleology" (Smith 1992, 3). Thus, conceptually integrated with the natural and behavioral sciences, the study of religion can clarify its referential field and clearly place its subject matter into the naturalistic register, thereby assisting it in managing the massive amount of information involved. Furthermore, related to the other sciences, the study of religion takes on a new structure and organization (the creation of societies and journals, for example, dedicated to promoting the scientific study of religious phenomena) that can assist it in policing its cognitive boundaries, and can exclude consideration of enchanted phenomena. The conceptual integration of the study of religion with the natural and behavioral sciences, moreover, reinforces the demarcation of the academic study of religion from the religiotheological approaches to the meaning of religion that preceded it. Although in the Abo paper referred to above, I claimed that few students of religion have a cogent idea of what constitutes scientific knowledge of religion, and that we have been unable to frame a research program that can unify the field, I now think that was a rather pessimistic response to the overwhelming number of scholars in associations like the American Academy of Religion who claim academic status as students of religion but essentially take Religious Studies to be an edifying discourse. As in the nineteenth century, so now, Darwinism makes possible a scientific study of religion: a study of religion using only this-worldly categories provided by the development of evolutionary psychology and the cognitive sciences; a study of religion that goes beyond mere description to an explanatory account, not only of the emergence and development of religion, but also of its effect in and on the world. And the number of students in the field electing to work within such a framework has steadily increased over the past decade.10 If this re-founding of the scientific study of religion in the last decade of the twentieth century is to persist, however, students in the field will have to forego claims to autonomy and recognize the deep dependence of Religious Studies upon the natural and behavioral sciences. 10

Ilkka Pyysiäinen's recent How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion (2001) provides a marvellous account of recent developments in the academic or scientific study of religion, and it constitutes a helpful compendium of scholars working on religion from within such a scientific framework. Most of the scholars referred to in this work find their homes in departments of anthropology, archaeology, philosophy, and elsewhere in the university, but it is clear that they are beginning to have a major, positive, effect upon students in Religious Studies.

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References Agger, Ben 1998 Critical Social Theory: An Introduction. Boulder, Colo.: Westview. Barkow, Jerome, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby 1992 "Introduction: Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration." Pages 3-15 in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bates, Donald 1995 Knowledge and the Scholarly Medical Traditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clarke, Peter B„ & Peter Byrne 1993 Religion Defined and Explained. New York: St. Martin's Press. Dennett, Daniel C. 1995 Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Harrison, Jane Ellen 1909 "The Influence of Darwinism on the Study of Religion." Pages 494-511 in Darwin and Modern Science: Essays in Commemoration of the Centenary of the Birth of Charles Darwin and of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Publication of "The Origin of Species." Edited by Albert Charles Seward. Cambridge (U.K.): Cambridge University Press. McCauley, Robert Neil 1998 "Comparing the Cognitive Foundations of Religion and Science." Report # 37 (26 pages), Emory Cognition Project. Atlanta, Ga.: Department of Psychology, Emory University. McGinn, Colin 1999 The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World. New York: Basic Books. Mithen, Steven 1996 The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science. London: Thames and Hudson. Penrose, Roger 1994 Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. Oxford University Press.

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Pinker, Steven 1997 How the Mind Works. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2002 The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Viking. Pyysiäinen, Ilkka 2001 How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion. Cognition and Culture Book Series 1. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

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2004 "What Is It like to be a Believer? Understanding vs Explanation in the Study of Religion." Pages 1-27 in his Magic, Miracles, and Religion: A Scientist's Perspective. New York: Altamira Press. Schneider, Mark A. 1993 Culture and Enchantment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Searle, John 1984 Minds, Brains, and Science. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. 1998 Mind, Language, and Society: Philosophy in the Real World. New York: Basic Books. Sharpe, Eric J. 1986 Comparative Religion: A History. 2nd edition. London: Duckworth Press. Smith, Peter 1992 "Modest Reductions and the Unity of Science." Pages 19-43 in Reduction, Explanation and Realism. Edited by David Charles and Kathleen Lennon. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Stark, Rodney, & Roger Finke 2001 Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tooby, John, & Leda Cosmides 1992 "The Psychological Foundations of Culture." Pages 19-136 in Barkow et al. 1992. Turner, Mark 1996 The Literary Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wiebe, Donald 1984 "The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion." Studies in Religion 13: 401-422. Reprinted on pages 141-162 in Wiebe 1999a. 1990 "Disciplinary Axioms, Boundary Conditions, and the Academic Study of Religion: Comments on Pals and Dawson." Religion 20(1): 40-50. 1999a The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict With Theology in the Academy. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1999b "Why the Academic Study of Religion? Motive and Method in the Study of Religion." Reprinted from Religious Studies 24 (1988): 403-418 with a new concluding commentary (pages 272-279) on pages 261-279 in Secular Theories of Religion: A Selection of Recent Academic Perspectives. Edited by Mikael Rothstein and Tim Jensen. Copenhagen: Tusculanum Press. 1999c "Appropriating Religion: Understanding Religion as an Object of Science." Pages 253-272 in Approaching Religion. Part I. Edited by Tore Ahlbäck. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis XVII:1. Äbo: Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History. 2002 "'Understanding' in Religious Studies: A Gnostic Aberration in the Modern Study of Religion." Tujen Religious Studies 5: 15-56. Wilson, Edward Osborne 1998 Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

The Limits of Explaining in Religious Studies Nils G. Holm

The question of how one is to explain and understand a phenomenon like religion seems to be constantly relevant in religious studies. As far back in history as we can go, there have been notions about how gods and other supernatural beings have originated. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, a more scientific study of religion has gained impetus and the history, sociology and psychology of religion, respectively, have emerged as academic disciplines. Although we have in this way acquired scholarly research into religion and spirituality, the question still remains of how religion originated and of what can ultimately be explained with regard to spiritual phenomena. The problems involved in explaining religious phenomena in a scientific context must be connected with the fact that religion and spirituality often insist on their own explanatory models of origin. Activity and intentionality are thus normally ascribed to supernatural forces such as gods, spirits and other beings, something which from a strictly scientific perspective cannot be possible. The border line between the human, secular sphere and the supernatural can be drawn in very different ways. For a strictly religious person—perhaps with a fundamentalist orientation—the religious explanations are sufficient and should cover as far as possible all human activity. The opposite pole is represented by the scientist who only wants to see secular explanations and totally denies any value to the believer's perspective. That both of these explanatory models are emphasized and remain relevant today can be seen from the contribution of Donald Wiebe to this volume. The basic assumptions of science, with all its competences and limitations do not, in other words, seem to be something taken for granted in all religious studies today.

A Brief Comment on Religious Studies in the Nordic Countries In most Nordic scholarship in religious studies and theology today it is readily assumed that analysis and explanation must begin from a purely secular perspective. This applies to exegesis, where scholars try to place sacred texts

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within their historical period using archeology and other disciplines to understand the surrounding society and its constraints, or to using the methods of literary criticism to explore the genres and rhetorical forms that texts represent. In church history this historico-critical approach has long been the absolutely dominant perspective. It is also true of systematic theology, where attempts are similarly made to see totalities not only in historical theology, but also in modern conceptual models. Practical theology, too, makes wide use of historico-critical methods, but also tries to provide interpretations of theology for modern individuals. Furthermore, general religious studies in the Nordic countries deal widely with non-Christian religions, studying them from the perspectives of anthropology, psychology and sociology. If we examine our Nordic scholarly tradition in religious studies, it thus seems to be taken for granted that religion and spirituality should be studied from a purely scientific perspective. This insight emerged within our tradition in the course of the twentieth century, particularly during the latter part of the period. That one must nevertheless still wrestle with these questions is connected with the fact that many students of religion began as followers of Christianity (or some other faith) without possessing any external perspective on religion, be it their own or religion in general. It therefore requires a process of adaptation and maturation to begin to see religion from a worldly, purely human perspective. Teachers in religious studies often experience something of this process when they begin new courses at university level. The fact that our Nordic tradition in religious studies emphasizes the scientific dimension is strongly linked with the great theological debate that took place in Sweden in the middle of the last century. It was initiated by Ingemar Hedenius, professor of practical philosophy at the University of Uppsala, who in a number of publications strongly criticized Christianity and its claims to uniqueness. The ensuing discussion left deep marks, above all, on Swedish theology. It produced a strong emphasis on the idea that the study of religion should be subject to the same conditions as any other research in a scientific society. In the secularized Nordic countries this has hardly been an issue. In other parts of the world, however, with stronger religious traditions (including the U.S.A. and Canada), it seems a potential problem, as also appears from certain essays in the present collection.

Lessons from the Psychology of Religion The psychology of religion is an area of research with the task of providing psychological explanations for religious and spiritual phenomena. This means that one quite naturally looks for explanatory models in human mental

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processes. At quite an early stage, therefore, the psychology of religion came to have a rather critical attitude towards religion, while the latter in turn has regarded the psychology of religion with a certain suspicion. This relationship was also reinforced fairly clearly by the critical attitude towards religion of Sigmund Freud, something which has been long dominant in depth psychology (Wulff 1997, 258-285). When the psychology of religion was still relatively young at the beginning of the last century, a conference was held in Switzerland in 1909 where it was seriously debated whether it was necessary for a scholar of religion to be personally a believer in order to understand and explain religious phenomena. Those who believed that it was necessary saw no possibility of a nonbeliever fully understanding the essence of religion without this inside knowledge. The other camp argued that one should not mix personal faith with the study of religion. Just as one did not need to be a criminal to study criminality, one did not need to be religious to study religion was the argument forcefully advanced by, among others, J. H. Leuba. We may also note that it was Leuba's line which has generally prevailed in the psychology of religion (Holm 1996, 32-33).

My Own Research in the Psychology of Religion I have personally learned a great deal from the psychology of religion and the psychological study of religious phenomena. My main research has concerned the Pentecostal Movement and, in particular, glossolalia and the experience of baptism in the spirit. The believer speaking in tongues understands glossolalia as a gift of grace received directly from God through baptism in the spirit. It is thus a question of God endowing humans with an overflow of his holy spirit and, in recognition of this, one receives a gift of grace, often that of speaking in tongues (glossolalia). This speech is therefore directly understood as a gift from God and many believe that access is provided to the language of the angels or sometimes the ability is given to speak other living languages which one has normally not learned (xenolalia). Speaking in tongues is a very widespread phenomenon among Pentecostalists and people belonging to the charismatic revival all over the world. Today these individuals number hundreds of millions. Together with purely historical work on the origin and spread of the Pentecostal movement, I became interested at an early stage in glossolalia itself as a linguistic phenomenon. This led me to conduct fieldwork among Pentecostalists and to record hundreds of religious services. On my tapes I consequently found languages of various kinds which it was possible to transcribe. I could then compare these transcriptions with normal languages,

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above all with the mother tongue of the speakers, which in my examples was generally Swedish. The results of these linguistic comparisons showed that glossolalia was normally modeled on the speaker's mother tongue, but in phonologically simplified form. Sometimes various exotic sounds appeared from foreign languages, but for the most part it was a matter of simplified and rhythmic speech which in many cases resembled poetry. Rhyme, assonance and alliteration could be found (Holm 1976, 1987, 1991). From a purely linguistic perspective, then, glossolalia was based on the normal linguistic competence of the speaker. I was not able to demonstrate genuine extant languages in the context of glossolalia. My conclusion was that speaking in tongues is in a certain sense something quite natural for human beings. That we humans do not use this kind of abracadabra language more often is simply due to our social habits. We have learned to speak clearly and seldom have any need for speech outside ordinary linguistic usage. In certain cases, however, it can occur, as in connection with jazz or in children's games. But in the context of charismatic phenomena, abracadabra language occurs extensively. How is one to understand this? In addition to the purely linguistic analysis, it was also very important to study from a psychological perspective why glossolalia occurs among Pentecostalists and charismatics and what significance speaking in tongues acquires in these contexts. In other words, I had to carry out psychological analyses of the experience of speaking in tongues, or what is known as baptism in the spirit. To this end I interviewed dozens of individuals and carried out extensive fieldwork. My conclusion was that the experience of baptism in the spirit is something which has occurred throughout the history of the church in practically every century. It goes back to the first Whitsun in Jerusalem, when the disciples began to speak in tongues and Peter preached and explained its significance. This is regarded today as the moment when the Church was born. It is said in the Bible that several thousand people became believers in Christ on that day. For Pentecostalists this account in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles provides an example and creates a role. There is quite simply a desire to have the same kind of experience as the first disciples, who thereby acquired the power to initiate the Church's activity. Paul describes speaking in tongues as one of the gifts of grace in the first Epistle to the Corinthians and this is why speaking in tongues has acquired such a dominant position as a sign of baptism in the spirit. To understand and explain this process I used role psychology, particularly in the form developed by Hjalmar Sunden (Sunden 1966) in Sweden. Pentecostalists thus learn the biblical stories about speaking in tongues and baptism of the spirit, convert them into models for a true and genuine Christian life and subsequently pray actively to be baptized in the spirit. In

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most cases, speaking in tongues begins for an individual during intercession by some other person already possessing the gift of baptism in the spirit. What happens is that the socially inhibiting factors we normally possess are removed and one can enter into the role of being baptized in the spirit when unusual linguistic sounds issue from one's lips. This is normally an emotionally highly positive experience for people speaking in tongues. They have thus, according to their own accounts, become objects of God's particular attention and received the Holy Spirit in abundance, as evidenced by their speaking in tongues. They are thus valued Pentecostalists or charismatics (Holm 1976, 1987, 1991). I could explain in this way, with the help of linguistic and psychological insights, what happens to a person subject to glossolalia. I had thus provided with purely secular theories an explanation of how this entire phenomenon functions in people. The experience of the individual, however, is always something unique and related to a specific environment, which explanatory theories do not cover. What does such an insight mean to me then as a scientist?

Two Perspectives—One Phenomenon For the committed Pentecostalist scientific explanations are naturally something he or she is neither willing nor able to understand. They are often seen as contradicting their own experience of what has taken place. God as actor in this connection has apparently been eliminated. This is naturally regarded as wrong and misleading. For the scientist, on the other hand, it is cause for satisfaction that it has been possible to find at least predominantly natural explanations for spiritual phenomena such as speaking in tongues and baptism in the spirit, above all with reference to the human foundations and processes of religious behavior. What does it mean then that these two "explanations" emerge and how should one relate to them? In principle, it is a question of explanations on two entirely different planes. Science is quite justified in giving secular explanations to phenomena where possible, but must stop before individual experiences, with their depth and significance for the person in question. Science can thus provide all the external explanations for how an experience such as spiritual baptism with glossolalia occurs, but has no "direct" knowledge of the religious experience and cannot give a detailed account of what the person in question undergoes. The individual must always describe these experiences personally, often in words or in writing, and then the scientist can begin to analyze them, make comparisons and try to understand what is at stake. Individual

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experiences are always unique in themselves for each and every one of us. They can always only be analyzed and described in retrospect. In this context, it is sympathetic, hermeneu tic methods that are relevant (Illman 2004). What happens in individuals is that thoughts, words, actions and feelings come to acquire a symbolic content. Combinations, displacements, reductions and expansions occur in a manner that produces unique and radical experiences in the individual (Holm 1996,1997). The spiritual experience in itself, then, is legitimate. From a scientific perspective I have no possibility, far less any justification, for passing judgment on the experiences people undergo. The researcher must remain humble before the object of research and, in this respect, exercise a strict moral code, excluding condescension or condemnation (the exceptions are experiences that are destructive for the person in question or for others and can lead to criminality). Scientists are assumed to have training, research experience and ethical principles, which means that they must always understand religious experience, but the religious individual need not always understand the scientist. This is connected with the fact that the conceptual apparatus of the scientist is something not common to everyone and that it often takes a long time to learn the scientific trade. The interesting question is whether the experiential world of the religious person can be combined with strictly scientific explanatory models. There is a long and complex debate over questions of whether faith and knowledge can be combined. Viewed superficially, it seems that the two cannot occur simultaneously in individuals. If one has a clearly religious outlook, it seems to be difficult to limit oneself to scientific explanations. And if one has a scientific perspective one can hardly, at least simultaneously, have experiences in which supernatural powers are ascribed an active role. The explanatory models emerge, as it were, on two different planes. The scientific explanations try as far as possible to be rational, while individual experiences are the results of integrated experiences in the mind where beliefs, actions and emotions play a large role. It should be possible to assume mutual understanding and respect for each other's explanations. What one often forgets is that scientific methods and choices of theories and explanations are also the result of personal priorities set by individual scholars on the basis of their own personal history, education and life experience. It may be claimed, then, that these explanations are not based on reason alone. The position taken by science is clear. All human activity and experience, including religion and spirituality, are based on normal biological, psychological and sociological processes. As scholars, it is our task to map and explain all these relations. The spiritual experience itself we have to imagine. We cannot avoid noticing that people are interested in religion and have religious experiences regardless of how science stands with regard to

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the truth content of religion. After we have been given spiritual experiences in speech, writing or works of art, we can begin to analyze the nature of these experiences, seeking different dimensions, or finding similarities and differences between them. As practitioners of scientific method, we must, therefore, show understanding for the conceptual horizons of the spiritual person and for the latter's interpretive models. We must also be able, where possible, to integrate these decriptions and explanations into our models. The explanatory theories based, among other things, on natural science, psychology and sociology provide, as it were, the human foundation for the understanding of religiosity and spirituality. If, on the other hand, we want a more in-depth knowledge of the experiences as such in single individuals, of their significance and meaning-creating functions in a person's life, then systematically descriptive, sympathetic—or hermeneutical—methods must be used (cf. Wiebe 2004). Analysis of all the spiritual capital that religion creates and provides for the individual constitutes an important area of research, together with the purely biological, psychological and sociological explanations that can be provided (Hefner 2003). Certain elements in the picture of religiosity as a whole can often be given fairly comprehensive explanations, but it is then often a question of limited elements as processes which, to obtain a deeper perspective, must then be related to the phenomenon as a whole. But it is quite clear that all religion functions according to our biological, psychological and sociological preconditions. That all these conditions create experiences of the divine, which are vouched for in conversion, vocation, baptism in the spirit etc., are things which we should treat with great seriousness.

Conclusion Research into the psychology of religion today stands on fairly solid ground as far as methodology, theories and attitudes are concerned. It is secular explanatory models that apply and in accordance with which one must work for. It is the only method of obtaining reliable scientific insight. Religious representations of faith and experiential worlds of a spiritual nature are our object of study, which we must respect and try, as far as possible, to explain and understand. We can describe and understand the content of religious representations and the structure of experiential worlds, but with scientific methods we can never obtain a full account of what takes place in a person's inner consciousness. Only subsequently, and after processing the material, can we describe and analyze the experiences, to see what function and significance they acquire in the lives of individual people or how they create meaning in different contexts.

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All this should be a self-evident strategy in all religious studies. That this is not the case is still illustrated by a number of statements. The fact that a scholar like Donald Wiebe in his contribution to this book reports with enthusiasm that he has discovered an article from the beginning of the last century where evolutionism and its meaning for religious studies is presented as something enlightening and new is an indication of this. That religion as a phenomenon reverts to capacities possessed by human beings after millions of years of evolution should be something obvious to scholars today. And when many researchers in the field of cognitivism discover that religion goes back to skills in the human neurological system, it can point to the same thing—we are knocking at doors that are already open. I refer here to Pascal Boyer's discussion (Boyer 2001) of intuitive and counter-intuitive processes in humans, with religion being based on the latter. A number of like-minded thinkers can be found in different parts of the world today, not least in Finland (Anttonen 2004; Anttonen & Taira 2004; Pyysiäinen 2004; Whitehouse 2004). Discovering that religion follows cognitive patterns in the human brain is of course interesting, but this can be seen as something trivial if no completely new models are presented. Research claimed long ago that the cognitive has an important role in the process. When, moreover, there is a frequent reaction against previous research, with the insistence that this has been inaccurate and influenced by the "superstructure"—religious beliefs with their consequently "enchanted" research findings—in favor of "real" explanations for the origin of religion in cognitive theories, then the claims are somewhat exaggerated. Religion is a complex phenomenon, whose origins, history and—not least—experiential structures in the human mind must be studied with as many scientific methods as possible. Here we should take into account all possible perspectives, whether descriptive, sympathetic or explanatory. Science will nonetheless never achieve a full insight into the complex system formed by the experiential world of each individual, influenced as it is by intricate connections and aspirations on many planes.

References Anttonen, Veikko 2004 "Pathways to Knowledge in Comparative Religion: Clearing Ground for New Conceptual Resources." Pages 105-119 in Religion as a Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson. Numen Book Series 99. Edited by Timothy Light & Brian C. Wilson. Leiden, Boston: E. J. Brill. Anttonen, Veikko, & Teemu Taira 2004 "Uskontotiede uskonnollisuuden paikantajana." Pages 18-50 in Uskonnon paikka. Kirjoituksia uskontojen ja uskontotteorioiden rajoista. Edited by Outi Fingerroos, Minna Opas & Teemu Taira. Tietolipas 205. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura.

The Limits of Explaining in Religious Studies Boyer, Pascal 2001 Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Books.

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Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic

Hefner, Philip 2003 "Theology and Science: Engaging the Richness of Experience." Theology Science 1(1): 95-111.

and

Holm, Nils G. 1976 Tungotal och Andedop: En religionspsykologisk undersökning αν glossolali hos finlandssvenska pingstvänner. Diss. Psychologia religionum 5. Uppsala: Acta universitatis upsaliensis. 1987 "Sunden's role theory and glossolalia." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 26(3): 383-389. 1991 "Pentecostalism: Conversion and Charismata." The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 1(3): 135-151. 1996 "Religionspsykologin som vetenskapsomräde idag." Sphinx (Arsbok - Societas scientiarum fennica, ser. B; Helsinki): 31-43. 1997 Människans symboliska verklighetsbygge: En psykofenomenologisk Studie. Religionsvetenskapliga skrifter 40. Turku: Abo Akademi University Press. Illman, Ruth 2004 Gränser och gränsöverskridanden. Skildrade erfarenheter αν kulturella möten I internationells projektarbete. Diss. Turku: Abo Akademi University Press. Pyysiäinen, Ilkka 2004 "Utopian kartta." Pages 53-70 in Uskonnon paikka. Kirjoituksia uskontojen ja uskontoterioiden rajoista. Edited by Outi Fingerroos, Minna Opas & Teemu Taira. Tietolipas 205. Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura. Sunden, Hjalmar 1966 Die Religion und die Rollen: Eine psychologische Alfred Töpelmann.

Untersuchung der Frömmigkeit. Berlin:

Whitehouse, Harvey 2004 "Why Do We Need Cognitive Theories of Religion?" Pages 65-88 in Religion as a Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson. Numen Book Series 99. Edited by Timothy Light & Brian C. Wilson. Leiden, Boston: E. J. Brill. Wiebe, Donald 2004 "Can Science Fabricate Meaning? On Ritual, Religion and the Academic Study of Religion." Pages 89-103 in Religion as a Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson. Numen Book Series 99. Edited by Timothy Light & Brian C. Wilson. Leiden, Boston: E. J. Brill. Wulff, David M. 1997 Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary. New York etc.: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Science/Religion Controversy—Are the Grounds of Naturalism Still Valid for Their Confrontation? Veikko Anttonen

The emergence of the science of comparative religion in Western academic world in the second-half of the nineteenth century is a minor historical consequence of the changes that took place in the cultural life of Western societies. Although these cultural changes altered tremendously the mental and the material life of people in all societies of the world, the role of comparative religion has not played such a significant role in this change. It has received more than it has been able to give. The waves of heated discussions that swept over Europe concerning the development of the forms of life, the enigma of God both in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic religious orbit as well as in other, non-Western cultural traditions, and finally the position that humans have in the universe, have given a challenge for scholars to bring order into knowledge that revolves around the issue of religion. I agree with Donald Wiebe that we need to thank those nineteenth-century scholars and their paramount interest in questions of evolution that we have the study of religion, or comparative religion, or History of Religions, or Religious Studies or whatever name pleases you, in the modern university. The invention of religion as a universal category and the theory that there exists a common origin to all forms of religious life was the major cause for the emergence of the discipline. Without doubt Wiebe is right in joining forces with the present-day scholars of human cognition who place that common origin in the architecture of human mind. But I cannot help questioning some of the views Donald Wiebe puts forth in his presentation. Although we may take a critical eye on our own academic history, we also need to acknowledge the fact that scholars of comparative religion, especially in Europe, have accomplished a lot also during the twentieth century. We know a great deal about the phenomenon of religion, about the religious history of humankind, about the characteristic features that have contributed to the making of religious traditions in their cultural context and the fundamental cognitive and cultural mechanisms that determine the interplay between the mental and the material. Wiebe's statement that the scholars in the field have failed to follow through the nineteenth-century agenda, does not serve the purpose since

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Darwinian theory of evolution was not only a scientific theory, but also—as Ernest Gellner wrote —"a philosophy, a theodicy, a moral vision, a substitute for religion" (Gellner 1981, xvii-xviii). Scientific theories are not artefacts that spring up independently from the surrounding social matrix. We need to ask whether the string that connects the present-day evolutionary framework and the nineteenth-century Darwinian paradigm, necessitates the denial of the value of work that has been done between these two temporal poles? Does the cognitive turn thwart other major "turns" which have provided the necessary theoretical and methodological grounding to the science of comparative religion that has helped the discipline grow mature? Are we to rewrite the scholarly history of the discipline and delete from our records the work of the predecessors who in their time enthusiastically accepted the sociological turn in the 1920s, the phenomenological turn in the 1930s and the linguistic turn in the 1940s and early 1950s and which finally led to the emergence of interpretive anthropology in the 1960s and 1970s? Excluding the twentieth-century agendas is far more perplexing since we have all been educated into our academic profession by learning to place the science of comparative religion within the context of ethnography, cultural anthropology, sociology and psychology and especially here in Finland folklore studies. Placing too much emphasis on the science/religion-controversy leads automatically into an interpretation that the work of those twentiethcentury scholars who did not see any methodological and also ideological value in the tenets of evolution, is redundant. Nevertheless, I find Professor Wiebe's presentation constructive. He is pointing the way into a thorough clarification of the conceptual foundation on which the science of comparative religion rests in respect to the chasm between "Natur- und Geisteswissenschaften." I agree with his conclusion, but I find it impossible to accept the steps that he builds to reach it. Cognitive scholarship is not dependent on this worn-out confrontation in order to prosper and grow mature as a distinct approach in the scientific study of religion. In the book Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion (2002) that I have edited together with Ilkka Pyysiäinen, I have already made a comment to Don Wiebe's ideological agenda. Let me quote myself: Even though Wiebe gladly accepts the call to treat religion in cognitive evolutionary terms, there does not need to be an ideological tension in the emerging cognitive science of religion between scientific and humanistic approaches. The cognitive scholar, like any fellow-citizen, is free to locate him/herself at any of the ideological positions available in the academic or non-academic culture. From the perspective of cognitive methodology, all minds, scientific, theological and humanistic, are equal as objects in cognitive theorising. In cognitive scholarship the aim is to unravel the mechanisms that are operative in the human

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mind whenever people acquire and organise cultural knowledge — thus also religious knowledge—and make that knowledge accessible. (Anttonen 2002, 20) Cognitive scholars have proved that in our mind we do not possess a special cognitive domain for 'religion.' And we do not have a distinct domain to treat scientific materials. As Steven Mithen (1996) argues it is due to cognitive fluidity between walls that separate distinct cognitive domains that we are to thank that we have art, religion and science. The cognitive capacities that make them possible are the same. Wiebe's elucidation of the distinction between scientific and edifying scholarly endeavors proposed by Mark Schneider in his book Culture and Enchantment (1993) did not attract me as a tool on the basis of which we could give account on the chasm between the natural and social sciences. The distinction between naturalism and edification calls for further questions that need to be taken into consideration. Whether sciences and academic fields of study are disenchanted or enchanted, they are fundamentally social and cultural institutions. Although universities are bestowed some sort of sacrality in regard to their autonomy, independence and lack of direct outside control in knowledge production, in practice sacrilege is an everyday affair. Research and teaching is never purely scientific but also edifying. Research practice in humanities and social sciences takes place in the context of social, political, religious or other ideological value setting, and cannot avoid sharing the cultural premises, articulating, sustaining and reinforcing them, but just as well opposing them in the name of some hidden or overt higher or holier objective. This does not imply that scholars do not have serious research problems in their special branches. Of course we have. I take up this issue only to remind us that the line which separates pure science from edifying research practice is a thin one. One of the pioneers of the science/religion-debate in cultural anthropology is Bronislaw Malinowski. On the basis of his Trobriand ethnography he showed that the natives had a folk theory of attitudes pertaining to categories of behavior that correspond to our Western notions of science, religion and magic. Malinowski wrote: There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. Not are there, it must be added at once, any savage races lacking either in the scientific attitude or in science... On the one hand there are the traditional acts and observances, regarded by the natives as sacred, carried out with reverence and awe, hedged around with prohibitions and special rules of behaviour. Such acts are always associated with beliefs in supernatural forces, especially those of magic, or with ideas about beings, spirits, ghosts, ancestors, or gods. On the other hand...no art or craft however primitive could have been

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invented or maintained, no organized form of hunting, fishing, tilling, or search for food could be carried out without the careful observation of natural process and firm belief in its regularity, without the power of reasoning and without confidence in the power of reason; that is without the rudiments of science. (Malinowski 1948,17) Laura Nader who surveyed the three-corned constellation in the book Naked Science (1996) posits that "modern scientists practice more magical thinking in their highly experimental and dangerous research work than do the Trobrianders in their rough waters of the Western Pacific." Repatriating Malinowski's insights into the North American science culture, Nader got the following account from one informant: I have a deep personal and professional concern about the use of human ingenuity in the improvement of the human condition. It's clear that when a group of people think alike, most of their brains are redundant. Group thinking has become...so common in the "educated" parts of our society that it's almost funny... As far as I can tell, the educational process does little to enhance original thinking and a great deal to stop it... As a manager of research enterprise, I try to help create an environment in which creativity can flourish. (Nader 1996, 265) Now, what is the pedagogy of this short ethnographic excursion to science: no real distinction can be made between disenchanted and enchanted sciences. Edifying endeavors characterize the work of natural scientists as well as scholars of social and cultural sciences. Whether the epistemic terrain of an academic field of study is slippery or not, I do not see much value in clearing the conceptual ground of comparative religion with the help of Schneider's book. I do not think that every student of comparative religion has theological notions in the closet that from time to time make nasty noises. Even though Darwin made it possible, the present-day cognitive science of religion is a new approach which possesses much more refined tools by the help of which we can study people's ideas, beliefs and behavior, whether scientific, theological or religious. In the literal version of this comment I shall treat the issue of the Standard Social Science Model in the light of Durkheimian legacy in the study of religion. I draw my inspiration from an article that Tom Sjöblom kindly brought to my attention (see Gans 2000). In this article the findings of evolutionary anthropology are brought into fruitful interaction with Durkheim's radical attempt to derive all human thought from the single independent variable of the "social." The shortcomings of Durkheim's theory of religion does not exclude the fact that in cognitive scholarship we should not only pay

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attention to cognitive capacities that have evolved during the long chain of human evolution, but also to the interplay between these capacities and the evolution of forms of human societies. I am tempted to think that here the twentieth-century social-scientific scholarship on religion proves its usefulness.

References Anttonen, Veikko 2002 "Identifying the Generative Mechanisms of Religion: The Issue of Orgin Revisited. Pages 14-37 in Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion. Edited by Ilkka Pyysiäinen & Veikko Anttonen. New York, London: Continuum. Gans, Eric 2000 "The Sacred and the Social: Defining Durkheim's Anthropological Legacy." Anthropoetics: The Electronic Journal of Generative Anthropology 6(1) (Spring/ Summer): http://www.anthropoetics.ucla.edu/archive/anth0601.pdf. Gellner, Ernest 1981 "Introduction." Pages iff. in Edward E. Evans-Pritchard, Anthropological Thought. London: Faber and Faber.

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Malinowski, Bronislaw 1948 Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. With an Introduction by Robert Redfield. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Mithen, Steven 1996 The Prehistory of the Mind: A Search for the Origins of Art, Religion and Science. London: Thames and Hudson. Nader, Laura 1996 Naked Science: Anthropological York: Routledge.

Inquiry into Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge.

Schneider, Mark A. 1993 Culture and Enchantment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

New

Understanding the Other Rene Gothoni

The Kind of Knowledge and Quality Aimed at To explain is not the same as to understand, and vice versa. In the philosophical heremeneutics of today, the notion of "understanding" is not used in a general sense, as a synonym of "explaining," nor in a particular sense, as denoting a distinctive method of the Geisteswissenschaften. On the contrary, it refers to the scientific process of acquiring knowledge, universally applicable and equal to both Naturwissenschaften (The Sciences) and Geisteswissenschaften (The Arts or Humanities), because it is about interpretation, which is inevitably connected to the preconceptions of scholars and scientists alike. There are two ways of knowing the world, corresponding to the ancient Greek distinction between quantity (Greek poson) and quality (Greek poion). The first refers to ways of measuring. Quantity can be measured. We can answer univocally questions such as how many, how much, how big, how far, how near and how long. The Greek word iposon thus denotes "a certain amount" or "magnitude." This kind of mathematical knowledge that remains the same and is univocally either right or wrong regarding the subject matter can be taught, as in mathematics (mathemata), and it can be controlled and verified, as in the natural sciences. In his discussion of the distinction between quantity and quality, Aristotle points out that, apart from mathemata, which is "learnable," there is another mode of knowledge that does not concern theoretical knowledge, but is rather a matter of "practical experience" (phronesis). It stands for the insight we get as we live our everyday lives in given temporal and spatial conditions. Aristotle used the word "practical" because he was referring to the very praxis and experience of our lives, to the practical wisdom of living a good life, as it were (Categories 4b20; 8b25; 10a27). "Experience," then, does not refer to some kind of laboratorial experiment, or to something we have and which is therefore connected with a subject and with the subjectivization of interpretation, denoted in German by the word Erlebnis. In this context it expressly stands for something we undergo—Erfahrung is the German word—, so that subjectivity is overcome and drawn into an "event" (Geschehen) of meaning. The Greek word poion denotes that which is appropriate and tactful in terms of conduct and behavior, in other words the fact that one gets it right

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by hitting the nail on the head, so to speak. The tactfulness referred to is not simply a feeling or consciousness in terms of being aware, but it is, above all, a "mode of knowledge" and a "mode of being," in other words an ability to put knowledge into practice. It is a mode of being rather than consciousness (Grondin 2003, 21). Quality, then, is associated with phenomena such as hearing harmony in music, and sensing healthiness in health, sacredness on a pilgrimage and artistry in art. It is also associated with skills such as riding a bicycle, which presupposes knowing through experience how to maintain balance. You will not be able to ride a bicycle even though you know everything about how it is constructed if you do not know how to keep your balance. Balancing a bicycle is not something that can be taught in the same way as mathematics. It is a skill that is learned through practice and acquired at the very moment of realization of how to balance it (Schmidt 2000, 376-377). We might ask, and rightly so, whether the exactness or precision that we achieve when we apply models or principles of mathematics to studies on everyday life is ever as accurate as the ear of a musician, when he or she tunes his or her instrument, for example. Is it not rather the contrary, that there is another kind of exact knowledge that we arrive at not merely by applying and using strict research methods, rules or techniques, but only by "getting it right" (Treffen des Richtigen), as the mucisian does (Gadamer 1997a, 104)? To "get it right" presupposes a proper ability or mental faculty. Therefore the musician always tunes his or her instrument before beginning to play. Likewise the physician practices his or her skills in diagnostics, the artist in painting, the politician in political tactfulness, in order to achieve the aim of his or her vision (Gadamer 1997a, 100-110; 1993, 382). This is also the case in sensing the sense1 in going on a pilgrimage, which I will discuss in more detail later on. Quantity can be measured, taught and learned, but knowing or sensing quality presupposes discernment, insight and understanding, an ability that is often an inherited talent. We all have different talents. Some have an ear for music, others have not. Praxis hones natural talent into perfection and quality. Yet the fact remains that quality cannot be measured or taught. Learning depends solely on insight and understanding or discernment (Grondin 1999, 104). To measure our "understanding" of the quality of pilgrimage according to the criteria of methodical science (or technology) designed to measure quantity would be to miss the point entirely, to evade the truth as it were, or to lose the authentic sense of going on a pilgrimage, in other words the sense that 1

The main meaning of the word sense, from the Latin noun sensus and the verb sentire, is "to learn by experience, to undergo." Lewis (1967, 141) points out that "we have sensus of that which is erlebt."

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any pilgrim will agree is an authentic or identifying description of a pilgrimage to that given sacred center. We notice quality more easily when there is none. Our grandparents would have understood this without futher explanation. Quality meant "excellence," the best of its kind, and that was that. A Stradivarius violin had quality, a tinker's fiddle did not. Even someone who does not have a good ear for music will immediately notice the difference in quality between a virtuoso playing a Stradivarius and a tinker playing a fiddle. Even if the two were to play the same instrument, the difference would be recognizable because the musical skills and quality are different. In the academic world we still use the word "excellent" and "distinguished" to refer to scholarly quality that is unparalleled, implicitly consistent and without defect. Today, when there is great admiration of the progress in natural sciences, which is believed to be attributable only to methods and techniques, scholars in humanities and social sciences are also expected to apply similar methodical and analytical techniques in order to obtain "more scientific results." Funding authorities and foundations require a detailed account of the method to be used in the studies, as if the method would increase our knowledge in the humanities and social sciences in the same way as it does in natural sciences. They fail to realize that all methods are limited in that they lead us to a point in our research at which discernment is needed and that presupposes understanding! There is a total misconception of what kind of knowledge and quality is aimed at in the humanities and social sciences. Scholars are forced to meet the requirements of the funding bodies and to adopt uncritically scientific procedures from the natural sciences in order to sound "scientific": this is the precondition for getting funds for research. Quality, then, means that the planned research will give value for money according to the measurements of the funding bodies and their policies. This conception of quality is something totally different from the quality referred to by the Greek word poion, which denotes a quality determined not by its value for money, but exclusively by being excellent and unparalleled in terms of the subject matter or thing (die Sache) that is being discussed, analyzed or practiced.

Method as Discernment The distinction between the two ways of knowing the world in terms of quantity and quality has methodical consequences. The Greek word methodos (from metä odds; "along the path," in other words "means to an end"; in a philosophical context "pursuit of knowledge" or "to have a plan or system," "method" in that sense; in a rhetorical context "means of recognising" or

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"mode of treating the subject matter"; Liddell & Scott 1989) has, in the scholarly and scientific discourses of modern times, connotations of the measuring, research methods and techniques used in the natural sciences, which pursue the knowledge Aristotle called quantity (poson). Those who study the world from this perspective often assume that "truth" can be achieved only by means of following transparently presented rules of inquiry step by step, in other words methods, in which the observing scientist is totally detached from and subjectively completely independent of the criteria of measurement, the applied examples and paradigms. The results are considered to be verifiable with objective criteria and presented by means of law or regularities, preferably in univocal mathematical terms. The ideal aim is to reach the same kind of precision that is achievable in the exact sciences, independent of time and place according to the model used in mathematics. "Truth" within this perspective means "methodical truth." Science today is increasingly connected with technology, to the extent that many equate the two. In this the conception of method as quantity has been pushed to its limits. However, the meaning of the Greek word methodos is not limited or restricted to exact mathematical models. On the contrary, it refers to "following a path towards a goal" in a more general sense. The two ways of knowing the world, in terms of quantity and quality, are, as Aristotle realized, different in principle. Therefore the research procedure is also different, and presupposes different approaches, different abilities and skills. It is of utmost importance to realize this because if we believe that quality can be taught and learned in the same constrained sense as quantity, we are degrading it, and the more we try to control it the more defective and evasive it becomes. Professionalism in music is an illustrative case in point. Since the Sibelius Academy became a university-level institution, offering Bachelor's, Master's and doctoral degrees in a variety of academic programmes, professional musicians have found it hard to compete in quality with the best amateurs. The artistic director of the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival, Seppo Kimanen, has recently drawn attention to the fact that there is more quality in the teaching of music on the level of amateurs taking lessons from performing virtuosi than on the professional university level, where too much emphasis is laid on research and the intellectual analysis of music, and too little on the actual practice of improving playing skills on the instrument of choice (Kimanen 2004, 15). It is only through practice and more practice that one eventually becomes a virtuoso. It is somewhat ironic that it is only at the university level that one becomes a qualified professional musician, while in practice, many advanced amateurs play with the quality of a virtuoso the professional musician can only dream of. Academic standards of professionalism have made musicians studying at the Sibelius Academy too intellectual, and

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students are given too little time to actually practice their instruments. Kimanen has brought this highly inconvenient truth to public notice in pointing out that a musician's public performance mercilessly displays his or her level of quality. In performance every little technical and interpretive mistake suggests a qualitative defect. In music, the skill is all. Quality is easily recognizable when it is not there. A well-known anecdote may further elucidate my point. Brahms was once asked what, in his opinion, was the difference between the two Strauss brothers. "One of them plays as an artist, the other as an engineer," was his answer. This also reflects the difference between the playful amateur and the constrained professional. The former cultivates his or her instrument as an artist, the latter practices it like an engineer, running from one theory lesson to another in order to obtain the academic degree that qualifies him or her to teach in schools and institutes. Conformity produces engineers, not artists. Following a path towards a goal, in other words using a method, is, of course, also the research procedure in the humanities and social sciences. There are a variety of methods that focus on attaining knowledge in the quantity category, and also some that pursue qualitative understanding, which is the distinctive feature in the humanities. The pursuit of this type of knowledge follows a procedure that is somewhat different from the one used in the natural sciences. Progress is not only straightforward or rectilinear, measured according to univocally defined and systematic procedures and precise successive stages; on the contrary, every move from one stage to another presupposes a discovering insight, discernment, as it were. Navigation is a particularly apt metaphor for illustrating the procedure of acquiring qualitative knowledge. The captain of a sailing boat never sails exactly the same route twice because he or she has to consider the wind direction, the currents and many other conditions connected with both time and space: navigare necesse est. Reaching the goal safely requires practical experience of navigating on the sea. Experience here does not, of course, refer to the kind of experience (Erlebnis) we get when we sail with someone else navigating the boat, it rather means the knowledge we have attained after having navigated ourselves. We acquire this kind of knowledge only from what we have undergone, experienced in practice (Erfahrung), and it is this kind of knowledge that guarantees the quality, in other words that we arrive at our destination safely with our boat or airplane. When something goes wrong, the accident is sometimes concluded to be caused by the "human factor," which proves my point. There is indeed a "human factor" and that is connected to Erfahrung and understanding. The distinctive feature of the methodical procedure in the humanities and social sciences is best illustrated by the Greek word diadtkasia, which refers to the kind of understanding we call discernment (diakrisis) and characterizes a person who has the mental ability to distinguish the relevant path

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to knowing the world of quality from all other paths that lead him or her astray. Discernment (diakrisis) is required in order to be successful regarding the choice of method when collecting research material and sorting it out systematically. Diadikasia denotes a process involving a dialectic relation between subject matter, material and method. The progress is never straightforward or mechanical, and every single stage requires insight in order to "get it right," in other words to reach the goal. There is no alternative method, and success is therefore entirely dependent on the kind of understanding we call discernment. Thus discernment comes first and choice of method only later. There is no method of choosing a method other than discernment, and that cannot be taught, only understood during the process of practice, i.e. doing research. In the study of religions, field research and fieldwork provide the setting for obtaining practical experience of the aspect of religion in question. It has proved to be the most rewarding scientific procedure for understanding "foreign" religious customs and traditions. It is not enough to study the "foreign" concepts from the lexicon only. Field research provides insights into the language, culture and history of the phenomena, all of which are necessary parts of the whole.

Understanding as Knowledge of What the Matter is All About What, then, is understanding all about? The root of the epistemological discussion on the notion of "understanding" is in the continental philosophical tradition, and in the German word Verstehen. This originally took the form davor stehen, a verb literally meaning "standing in front of" and referring to the concrete situation of encountering something or someone in person, of acquiring knowledge through acquaintance, of having an experience or of being haunted by questions to which we anxiously want an answer. It thus denotes the ability, or the readiness, to embrace and assimilate the new experiences (Erfahrung) we undergo, but it also indicates a condition, an event during which that experience takes place (Kluge 1995, 861). The English word "understanding," from Old English understandan, also means "to stand under" or "to stand before." Prima facie this etymological clarification may seem trivial, but when we reflect upon what it really means "to stand under or before," we soon realize that it is to be in relation to the person or the thing we are standing in front of. The key word is relation, because in a relation there are always at least two parties: an I who stands in front of the other or thing, and the other or thing itself in relation to which the I stands. This means that the I enters into a dialogue of questions and answers, a dialogue that has no beginning and no end, which has been going

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on since the dawn of humankind and which will go on into the future (Schmidt 2000, 374, 377; Risser 2000b, 318). In the context of fieldwork, then, Verstehen refers to the process of entering into a dialogue of questions and answers, a dialectic procedure that is initiated by the perplexed exclamation je ne sais quoi and continued by anxiousness to learn to know what the matter at hand (die Sache) is all about. What is the thing, die Sache, in relation to which we stand? During my fieldwork among pilgrims on the Holy Mountain of Athos I have realized that the scientific procedure of aiming at increasing our understanding of pilgrimage as a religious phenomenon, for instance, is not really about distance and method or subject and object, but it is about the kind of knowledge we want to obtain. The interpretation of texts incorporates the classic distinction between the aims of finding in a text (1) what its author intended to say (intentio auctoris), (2) what the text says independently of the intentions of the author (intentio operis), in other words what the text says by virtue of its coherence and of its underlying sign system, and/or (3) what the readers (addressees) find in it by virtue of their own frames of reference and expectations (intentio lectoris) (Eco 1990, 50-52; Eco 1992, 1994). Philosophical hermeneutics has none of these aims. In the study of religions, the two parts of the relation in front of which we stand are the words as conceived of by the individual scholar, and the subject matter (die Sache) the words used or uttered are intended to elucidate: the scholar and the subject matter. We know from experience that we are never completely empty of preconceptions—tabula rasa. From the very start of the process of learning our mother tongue we have been beset by prejudices in the sense that we have not been engaged in an exhaustive evaluating dialogue about the prejudices we have inherited or have been socialized into, and which form the borders of our limited intellectual horizon. As Gadamer has indisputably demonstrated, there is no unmediated starting point outside the horizon in which every scholar and scientist is ensnared by preconceptions and prejudices. Given this empirical fact, the starting point of our theoretical and methodical discussions in science as well as in letters, and consequently also in the study of religions, is analogically the same whatever -ists we are, whether we are devotees, agnostics, atheists or believers of the omnipotence of the natural sciences. When two people discuss with each other and at some point "understand one another," they always do so with respect to something, in other words the subject matter being discussed. When we understand what someone wants to say to us, our understanding is confined neither to that person—psychologically for instance—nor to his or her "opinion" or "view": our primary interest is in finding out whether that way of looking at the subject has some validity for us, too. It is not really about what the "author

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intended" by his or her statement on the subject matter, it is the subject matter (die Sache) we want to understand more fully, because it concerns us. Therefore the more accounts or statements we read and hear about the subject matter, the more we increase our understanding of it, which really is that something that attracted our interest in the first place. This, mutatis mutandis, means that pilgrimage studies concern not only the intentions of the pilgrim going on his or her journey, but also and especially in what it means to do so in terms of what a pilgrimage is all about.

The Notion of "Understanding" as a Historically Conditioned "Linguistic Event" What, then, is the phenomenon of "understanding"? Gadamer conceives of Verstehen as a historically conditioned linguistic event, during which the interpreter's world and the world of the text or Sache he/she tries to interpret are fused in what he calls the "fusion of horizons" (Horizontverschmelzung). As cultures—language, customs, attitudes, values and norms, for example— change over history, the interpreter of an ancient or distant text from a past culture inevitably belongs to and is conditioned by his/her own different culture and time. Understanding is therefore always historically conditioned, because the interpreter is a "historically effective consciousness" (wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein). This means that consciousness is always affected by history and open to its effects. If this is the case, there can be no unmediated starting-point as argued by Descartes and claimed by Pyysiäinen in the introduction of this chapter, where he argues that "the scholar decouples the beliefs and practices in question from their existential connections, viewing them only as objects of scientific inquiry" (see above p. 59). No scholar is a tabula rasa, but is to various degrees saturated with prejudices regarding religion. To be open to the effects of history means to allow one's present horizon of understanding to be called into question through texts and works of art handed down and interpreted to us by tradition (Wright 1998, 828-829). Understanding therefore involves an interplay between past and present, a "fusion of horizons." The hermeneutic task is for the interpreter to expand the horizon of his/her own world so that it includes the horizon of the foreign text, as it were. The road to understanding begins with the recognition that "it is the other, who breaks my I-centeredness, by presenting me with something to understand" (Gadamer 1986, II, 9; Schmidt 2000, 359). Gadamer uses the concepts "preconception," "pre-understanding" and "prejudice" to refer to the starting-point of understanding, the unmethodizable discovery: je ne sais quoi (Grondin 1994, 109). The basic idea is that

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whatever our starting-point is, we always embark upon our scientific journey from within a horizon, the learning of a foreign language being an elucidating case in point. Our understanding of the foreign words and the culture they disclose are initially inevitably dictated by our preconceptions, which are historically conditioned. Understanding a text, for example, first involves a challenge, which puts us in relationship with the subject matter when the truth claimed by the text is at variance with what we as interpreters consider to be the truth about it. If we are willing to open up our horizon to accommodate that of the other, or when the challenge is so overwhelming that the opening up takes place in any case, we find ourselves "standing in front of" the subject matter, in other words encountering a question that questions our prejudgements: the thought occurs that the other might be right. From this situatedness, or davor stehen, a question-and-answer dialogue ensues in which we as interpreters not only question the truth claim of the text concerned, but also allow what we previously prejudged to be true to be put into question by the text. The fusion of horizons that ends the dialogue is a linguistically revealing event in the sense that we as interpreters thereafter understand differently. In his intellectual autobiography, Gadamer elucidates the breaking of the I-centeredness in himself when he read Theodor Lessing's Europe and Asia. For the first time in his experience the all-encompassing horizon into which he had grown through birth, education and schooling, and indeed the whole world around him, were relativized. Thus, for him, something like thinking began (Gadamer 1997b, 3-4). This confession is significant in two ways. First, it demonstrates that his horizon changed and expanded due to the cultural and historical distance experienced during the reading. Second, it confirms that, by being touched by the experience of the writer, he inadvertently found himself outside his own inherited horizon as an outsider, as it were. The wisdom of the East brought the entire European man muss mentality into question. To his own surprise, he found himself reflecting on Europe from an Asiatic point of view (Wright 2000, 345). We can never be sure that our interpretation is correct, because any verdict we give is historically conditioned and liable to revision by a later generation. At best, our interpretation might be authentic, in other words what we can do is to make the best reflective use of the pre-understanding or prejudice from which we inevitably begin. We therefore need to explore our own pre-understanding and all the relations to the world and to history that it involves. Our understanding of the past, or of a foreign culture, not only depends on, but also promotes, our self-understanding. This hermeneutic circle is described as the interplay of the movement of tradition and the movement of the interpreter. It is not a vicious circle, but a process of human under-

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standing. The prejudgments are inevitable and constitute the initial directedness of our whole ability to experience and to become more conscious of our particular hermeneutical situatedness. The anticipation of meaning, preconceptions and prejudgments (prejudice) are constitutive because we use them to project wholes out of the parts of the text or art work that we are interpreting. "Understanding" is not a "happening" that can be secured methodically and verified objectively. It is an "event" or experience that we undergo, which is one stage in a process that began in the past and continues into the future (Wright 1998, 829; Grondin 1999, 223-224). The sine qua non of a reliable, or to paraphrase Gadamer, an authentic anthropological interpretation is the knowledge of the language of the culture concerned, as well as of its customs and patterns. The reliability of the interpretation is in direct correlation with the degree of insight and understanding.

From Searching for the Truth to Increasing our Understanding Since the days of the Greek philosophers, increasing our understanding has been described using the metaphor of depth: the deeper and more penetrating our understanding is of something, the further we are from appearance and the closer to reality. Richard Rorty suggested that we should replace that metaphor with the metaphor of breadth: the more descriptions that are available and the more integration there is between these descriptions, the more extensive is our understanding of the object identified by any one of them (Rorty 2000, 24). The idea that natural science has a distinctive "method," one that makes physics a better paradigm of rationality than historiography or jurisprudence, for example, has proved to be an idee fixe. Likewise, the claim that the discourse of physics is somehow more in touch with reality than any other portion of culture is less than convincing. The distinction between appearance and reality encapsulates an antiquated view of getting closer to the way things "really" are. Rorty argues: "We understand matter better after Hobbes's corpuscles are supplemented by Dalton's atoms, and then by Bohr's. We understand the Mass better after Frazer, and better still after Freud. But if we follow out the implications of Gadamer's slogan—["Being that can be understood is language"]—, we shall resist the temptation to say that we now understand what either matter or the Mass really is. We shall be careful not to explicate the distinction between lesser and greater understanding with the help of a distinction between appearance and reality" (Rorty 2000, 24). Rorty is quite right in pointing out that the appearance-reality distinction is as inappropriate for describing the advances made between Priestley and Bohr as regarding the advances made in our understanding of the Iliad.

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The poem has no intrinsic nature any more than matter does. There is simply no reality to be found. Consequently, we need to replace the notion of "intrinsic nature" with that of "identifying description." This conclusion is of major significance as it bridges the gap between the nominalists and the idealists, in other words those who claim that all essences are nominal and all necessities de dido, on the one hand, and those who hold that truth is determined by coherence among beliefs rather than correspondence to the intrinsic nature of the object, on the other (Rorty 2000, 24). In the natural sciences, for example, the integration of macroscopic and microscopic vocabulary increases our understanding in the same way as a description of an Orthodox pilgrimage is enriched if put in the context of the study of religions. In neither case is there any ontological or epistemological significance in the differences, or any greater depth or closer approach to reality, but in both there is undeniably increased understanding. The process towards increased understanding requires us to replace the appearance-reality distinction with the distinction between the limited and the more extensive. This would mean that the text or the thing we are discussing (idie Sache) is conceived of as "something forever up for grabs, forever to be reimagined and redescribed in the course of an endless conversation" (Rorty 2000, 25). This conversational model measures success in terms of discourse understood, shared and communicated, rather than of problems solved, which, of course, may be a rewarding by-product. The strongest argument for this accentuation is that no matter how many medical problems we solve, or how we describe disease and death, we will all fall ill and die. As far as medical progress is concerned, we will doubtless applaud the triumphs, but at the same time we will ask ourselves the nagging question, what is it all for? The greater the gap in understanding between the patient and the physician, the greater the pain and suffering. Therefore, the more we succeed in narrowing that gap, the better we will understand the humane qualities cherished by the individual as the ultimate reasons for living.

The Movement from the Concept to the Word Philosophy has been concerned with concepts since its very beginning, with the attempt to give an account of the world not just in words but in the universality of the word, in concepts. This paved the way for the development of modern science with its emphasis on the mathematical, culminating in Hegel, who attempted to reconcile the truth of science and the truth of metaphysics through the unifying power of the concept. Classical logic distinguishes between univocal, analogical and equivocal terms. "Univocal" comes from the Late Latin univocus, denoting a word or

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expression having only one proper meaning, or capable of only one single interpretation; in other words it is unambiguous. "Equivocal," its antonym, denotes a word or expression embodying many meanings and capable of more than one interpretation; it is ambiguous (Barnes 1984, 3). The term "vertebrate" is an illustrative and perspicuous univocal term, because it can be attributed equally well to a man, a horse and a crocodile, the vertebral column being present in its whole in each of these species (Bianchi 1994, 921). Figure 1. The univocal concept Spine = common denominator

Man

Horse Crocodile

This way of defining and forming categories prevails in the natural sciences. Bronowski characterized science as searching for the "unity in hidden likenesses," given its aim to find a new unity in the variety of nature, a likeness between things that were not thought alike before (Bronowski 1977, 12). "Games" and "religion," as well as some other phenomena of human activity, are different, however. Bianchi argues: "The term religion (and religious) is better considered at this point of research as an analogical term which overshadows sets of concepts and realities having in common some typical characteristics or aspects, not always the same, sets separated, on the other hand, by differences which reach to the same depth as the similarities. This is a kind of family resemblance which is different from a strictly definable universal" (Bianchi 1994, 921). Understanding analogical concepts does not mean searching for the "unity in hidden likenesses," but rather implies an unfolding of the universe of beliefs concealed in the word encountered. When we enter into dialogue with the word, our aim is to let the word speak to us in all its linguisticality (Sprachlichkeit) so that it unveils the inner reality of the religious person. The difference between the settings can be illustrated as follows. Figure 2. The analogical concept The universe of beliefs concealed in the word

The Word The difference between searching for units and analyzing historical life was eloquently discovered by Heidegger, who began the project of philosophy he

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called the hermeneutics of facticity (Faktizität) in the 1920s. It was a response to the specific methodological crisis in philosophy regarding the question of "proper access to the subject matter when that access is provided by the theoretical orientation of modern science." At the center of the crisis was then the neo-Kantian attempt to apply its theoretical approach to historical life, an approach that determined it through concepts that reduced the experience of historical life into an abstraction. Heidegger was convinced that the failure of the approach to adequately articulate the real being of historical life—the very experiencing of life in its actuality—was due to the abstract language of conceptualization used within its theoretical orientation. He found his way out of this impasse by realizing that the "primary field of the subject matter calls for a mode of experience and interpretation in principle different from those which prevail in the concrete sciences themselves" (Heidegger 1985, 3; Risser 2000b, 312). Gadamer continued to elaborate Heidegger's line of thought and discovered that, in order to be able to articulate the very experiencing of life in its actuality, we need to demystify the concept and return to the word (i) for the sake of an alternative to the modern ideal of science, which has grown more dependent on technical progress, (ii) for the sake of a practical reasoning that makes communicative understanding possible, (iii) because concepts must speak so that we can find the words that reach the other which is the essential condition for living together as humans, (iv) because hermeneutical philosophy should serve a practical task. The movement from the concept to the word should, Gadamer argues, be thought of from the perspective of the hermeneutics of facticity, in which meaning arises as an event. This movement entails the event of language as the fulfilling of the concept, a fulfilling, bringing to fruition, relative to the place of the concept within the living virtuality of speech. It is a matter of turning the concept into an "authentic word," a word that says more (sagenderen), a becoming of the word as the becoming of language (Sprachwerdung) (Risser 2000b, 315-316). The methodical ingenuity of this return lies in his discovery that a concept conceived of as a science of logic determines and narrows the experience of language to conceptuality only, ignoring the hermeneutics of facticity in which meaning arises as a linguistic event, i.e. in words. Therefore the movement of the concept to the word should entail an experience of language that is not readily available, but which presupposes a struggle to experience the word as with poetry and translation. Thus the struggle with the language becomes the centerpiece of hermeneutical reflection on the question of language and the choice of the authentic word by which to communicate the understanding (Risser 2000b, 307-316; Schmidt 2000, 289).

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Understanding, therefore, is not a method in the language of the natural sciences nor is it a subjective experience. It is rather a lingustic event happening in the realm of language, an intellectual grasp that enables us to see things more clearly when an obscure passage of a text or certain religious behavior becomes clear, for example, and we are able to integrate a particular meaning into a larger frame. Understanding comes first. It is the sine qua non of how we pose our questions. After we have posed them, we go about answering them. No problem falls from heaven! Something attracts us and awakens our interest, and that is really what comes first. Understanding is not something that takes place at the end of our research about an object. It stands at the beginning and it governs the whole process of questioning, step by step. Understanding is something we need before we apply methods to our research data. A new task arises. We need to work our way back along the path from the concept to the word, not to give up conceptual thinking, but to restore it to its intuitive potential. It is a matter of reopening this path, so that thinking speaks once again. This means a return to an initial experience still mirrored in Plato's thinking, an experience in which logos remains tied to ethos, the inversion of the theoretical into the practical. Gadamer argues for an interpretive movement from the concept to the word that will continually gain access to the subject matter without having to rely on conceptual determination! Such a movement of phenomenological insight occurs as an enactment (Vollzug) of the very being of factual life, an actualization of the way an I have itself (Risser 2000b, 311; Grondin 1999, 229). Behind the interpretation is its living reality. Therefore, the project of phenomenology should entail changing the meaning of the concept from the neo-Kantian determination as an explanatory instrument to being the subject matter (die Sache) of philosophy itself as a means to understanding. The concept is the subject matter in humanities. It is a matter of language and the interpretation of language, the exchange of words, a dialogue in which the thing meant becomes more and more present. Meaning arises as an event in which pieces fall into place, as a fusion of horizons of lexical and experiential knowledge derived from personal experience or observation. Understanding is the becoming familiar with something, the movement of recovering the way in which the world is.

There is No Specific Scientific Understanding and No Unmediated Point Outside In view of this development in philosophy, the claim of the cognitivists that explaining religion is simply a matter of explaining religious thought,

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behavior and experience in scientific terms, in other words by means of concepts only, seems reactionary, because concepts merely operate on an abstract level and do not speak the way words do on the level of Erfahrung. It is in relation to Erfahrung that understanding happens to us as a linguistic event, in other words as an insight into the word that provides us with an authentic expression of the subject matter. Therefore, it is indeed grandiose and misleading to claim that the study of religions needs to change, and to restrict itself to the cognitivist approach in order to justify itself philosophically or epistemologically. When Wiebe uses expressions such as "scientific understanding" and "explaining religious meaning" I am perplexed. As Gadamer indisputably clarified in his Truth and Method, there is no specific scientific understanding that differs from any ordinary understanding of a subject matter, and religious meanings cannot be explained as phenomena are explained in the methodical or technical sciences, they can only be understood linguistically the way we understand any subject matter, die Sache. To transpose descriptions to another level of abstraction by means of concepts and models, as is done in music, does not make the scientific procedure more scientific, nor does it explain the religious meaning of the subject matter. It simply invites us to adopt another kind of academic jargon—preferably not purely academic in the ironic sense—and thereby leads our attention astray from the initial task, which is to understand the subject matter that first attracted our interest. The idea that a scholar in the study of religions should be able to "decouple[] the beliefs and practices in question from their existential connections, viewing them only as objects of scientific inquiry/ and that he or she should be able to 'step[] outside religion and subject[] beliefs and practices to a noncommitted scrutiny, like a physician studying a disease" — see Pyysiäinen's introduction (above p. 59)—is equally contrary to the empirical finding of davor stehen in fieldwork. Every scholar, in fact, stands in front of religion in an "existential" and "preconceptual" sense, as religion has spoken to him or her to the extent that he or she became a scholar in the study of religions in the first place.2 The preconceptions of a scholar and a devotee are different, even opposite, but they are all still preconceptions in 2

It is a total misconception to think that physicians study diseases from a noncommitted perspective. I recall the statement of a well-known psychiatrist in Finland, Kalle Achte, who in an interview on his 75 th birthday said that only when he became ill himself did he really understand how difficult illness may be and how best to deal with it. It was not the noncommitted psychiatrist who solved the problem, but a psychiatrist with personal experience of coping in the best possible way with what was troubling him. Neither can we equate studying with reference to physicians and diseases to the study of religions: physicians are seeking cures, whereas we are seeking increased understanding of the religion foreign to us.

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the Gadamerian sense, and need to be encountered and clarified. Both the committed and the noncommitted stand in front of the uttered word of the subject matter the word speaks about, and both inevitably aim at an interpretation of the word that expresses a subject matter that requires understanding. The committed and noncommitted undoubtedly understand differently, but the phenomenon of understanding as a linguistic event happening to both of them is the same and Gadamer claims that the phenomenon of understanding is universal. As human beings we are always in relation to the subject we are studying. For example, if our aim is to understand devout pilgrims, the Being that we seek to understand is not the pilgrim as a human being, but the language of the pilgrim and the subject matter he or she speaks about; in other words we need to have an "agreement" or "understanding" about what a pilgrimage is all about. It makes no difference if the scholar's motive is religious, atheistic or scientific, the fact that "religion speaks" to him or her is in the relationship — read dialogue—we as humans have to the subject we are studying. We really need to get away from objectivist naivete and nullify the illusion of a truth—at best a methodical truth—that is separate from the standpoint of the one doing the understanding. Are we really aiming at merely playing with concepts and models, carrying on scholarly discourses exclusively on an abstract academic level with no profound empirical rooting? The formation of the human consciousness and its knowledge-seeking activities primarily involve being part of traditions originating from the historicity of being, and of continuing to apply in the present the continuum of meanings transmitted from the past. It is not possible to completely withdraw or disengage oneself from this historical process, and therefore the past can never be solely an object of research and interpretation. Consequently, we can quite rightly call into question the claim of the cognitivists adopted from the natural sciences that scientific thinking should methodologically be kept at a distance (Verfremdung) from the subject of research in order to make it an object. On the contrary, Gadamer argues with his emphasis on linguistic and historical belongingness (Zugehörigkeit). At least in the humanities, he stresses, as researchers we always belong to the same human reality from which we are supposed to distance ourselves. We are, without exception, from the very start linguistically part of what we call an object. There is no neutral, impartial station of observation outside language. Distancing religion as an object of research, then, is totally impossible, and aiming at it is even undesirable, because in understanding it is precisely the entering into a dialogue of questions and answers—which is not the same as commitment— that provides us with "new" knowledge of the quality of the religious thought, behavior and experience we aim at understanding (Tontti 2002, 57). We rather need to ask ourselves the question why, if religion does not concern us, we care about it. We could equally well be studying something

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else. Why did we become scholars in the study of religions in the first place and continue to the present day? Whether we address this question or not, we can never, in fact, approach religion as an object, because both our initial interest in the subject matter and the meaning our scientific project gives to us as human beings already put us in a relation with the subject matter (die Sache), and this affects the way we both understand and approach what we study, as well as how we respond to our findings. It is specifically the hold that our scientific project has on us that needs methodological clarification. After this theoretical expose of recent findings in philosophical hermeneutics, I now return to my concrete research in practice, in other words my field research. The theoretical considerations of Gadamer interest me mainly in as far as they are useful in my empirical work. I have found his ideas on understanding as a phenomenon involving the interpretation of texts and traditions a useful addition to the many theoretical "tools" discussed by anthropologists, whose tradition of carrying out fieldwork persists as a major force in studies of humanity. There is no denying that there is a plurality of legitimate research activities in the study of religions, and it is evident that scholars in our discipline enjoy the plurality, which they consider a strength in that it provides fruitful thought-provoking tension between the representatives of the various approaches.

How Preconceptions Determine the Interpretation: An Example How, then, can Holy Mountain struck a critical Holy Mountain.

we understand what it means to go on a pilgrimage to the of Athos in Greece, for instance? In 1977, Philip Sherrard chord regarding the increasing numbers of men visiting the He argued:

At least ninety per cent of the visitors to Athos today [1977] are not pilgrims. They are tourists, however much they may like to think they are not... They do not walk the long, steep, often relentless paths, so that inner change, for the production of which walking is an essential element, cannot take place in them. (Sherrard 1977,102; my italics) I have objected to the notion that walking, although sometimes necessary, should be considered the decisive factor in producing inner change, and the criterion for deciding who is to be regarded as a pious pilgrim. My argument is that Sherrard's conception of "pilgrim" and "pilgrimage" is Roman Catholic, which is misleading in the Greek Orthodox context (Gothoni 1993, 134-135). The pilgrim, or to paraphrase Gadamer, the religious Being that can be understood, is in the language. What it means to go on a pilgrimage can be understood only from the words used by the pilgrim concerned.

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The Latin word for "pilgrim/' peregrinus, connotes the aspect of traveling, the journey. This is natural, since the journey to Jerusalem was long and demanding. From the lexicon we know that peregrinus principally refers to one who is walking (in an alien land; from peregre "abroad," from perger "being abroad," from per "through" and agr-, ager "land," "field." Originally, peregrinus meant a foreigner who lived outside the territory of Rome (ager Romanus), and traveled or walked around; in other words, someone who passed through life as if in exile from a heavenly homeland, or in search of some higher goal, such as truth. A pilgrimage, then, simply means the "journey of a pilgrim," especially a journey to a shrine or sacred place. Its wider meaning is the course of life on earth. The Greek word for "pilgrim," proskynitis, meaning "worshipper," from the verb proskynio, "I kneel and worship," has an entirely different connotation. Greeks go to shrines and sacred places to kiss the icons, to venerate the relics, to discuss personal matters with their spiritual fathers, to make confession, and above all for the Holy Communion. As shrines are everywhere, the Greeks have never had much interest in traveling to Jerusalem. In 1900, for example, there were six thousand Russian pilgrims in Jerusalem, but only thirteen Greek pilgrims (Stavrou 1963, 156). From the lexical meanings, then, we know that peregrinus principally refers to one who is walking (in an alien land), whereas proskynitis denotes one who kneels down in front of an icon, for example. Let us compare the connotations of these two words. Peregrinus is more closely connected with the New Testament and the practice of identifying oneself with Christ, reenacting His Passion and thereby purifying oneself, in other words imitatio Christi. Proskynitis, on the other hand, is more closely connected with the Old Testament and the reliving of the Fall, with the recitation of the Kyrie eleison (Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner) being the manifest sign of the renewed relationship between the Lord and the humble servant. Both the Latin and the Greek words are translated into English as "pilgrim." This indicates that they have something in common and that they partly overlap, although both, as we have seen, also have quite specific and separate connotations. Now when we ask what "being" a pilgrim on the Holy Mountain of Athos implies, the interpretation "to walk" and "to kneel down" does not satisfy us, and the answer is not to be found in the lexicon. We need to become a pilgrim—the davor stehen in pilgrimage studies—and surrender ourselves to the way of life of an Athonite proskynitis. Only then can we realize that the word proskynitis implies much more than is to be read in the lexicon. Eventually we increase our understanding by looking at the phenomenon of pilgrimage, first from the viewpoint of a proskynitis, then from the viewpoint of a peregrinus, and finally by withdrawing ourselves to the point of detachment in order to compare and scrutinize the similarities and the differences of the viewpoints

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and connotations with reference to our own field experiences. We arrive at what I would call the authentic meaning of the word proskynitis as the "meaning arise as an [linguistic] event" (Risser 2000b, 315), which in the Athonite case includes a specific worldview and a specific attitude towards God. In what way, then, does a pious proskynitis differ from a pious foreigner pilgrim? Every visitor becomes aware of this distinction as he enters the church in any of the ruling monasteries, because the first question you are asked as you stand in front of (davor stehen) the guest-master monk is: "Are you Orthodox?" Your answer to this question has quite specific consequences. During the services, when the Greek and the converted Orthodox men enter the nave, the foreigners—Roman Catholics and Protestants—are requested to remain in the esonarthex of the church. To be Orthodox is to be allowed to enter the nave, and after the confession, to be allowed to take part in the Holy Communion, in fact to be part of the monastic community and experience, as the monks do, the presence of God. This is what it means to be a proskynitis. The Greeks, who—when asked—call themselves proskynitis, make their pilgrimage according to the Orthodox tradition. This involves making the sign of the cross when entering the church and before kissing the icons, the veneration of the relics, the sincere praying for the Lord's mercy, confessing one's sins to one's spiritual father or the monk who is looking after the guests, and finally participating in Holy Communion. Foreigners, on the other hand, who are seldom allowed to enter the nave of the church, are thereby deprived of these "rituals" and of the communal feeling of togetherness. Thus, and also in many cases by being ignorant of the Orthodox tradition, foreigners make their own style of pilgrimage, which may have some features of the Roman Catholic tradition, for example. For them, walking is an essential element, because they do not speak Greek, have no friends or relatives on Mount Athos, and are deprived of taking part in the services in the nave. They are also eager to visit as many places as possible. They therefore rush from monastery to monastery. Their pilgrimage implies walking, but it also involves a spirituality that is different, and seemingly more individualistic than collective. As we now realize, Sherrard's interpretation of the pilgrimage movement to the Holy Mountain of Athos was not authentic in the Greek Orthodox context, it was rather a projection of his preconception of pilgrimage as conceived of by the Roman Catholics. The Roman Catholic preconception of pilgrimage is also manifest in how non-Greek or foreigner pilgrims prepare themselves for their journey. The outward difference is clear. They are usually well prepared with huge rucksacks and mountaineering boots for climbing Mount Athos, whereas the Greeks come more or less as they are, with old bags and suitcases that are most uncomfortable to carry. Foreigners aim to visit as many ruling monasteries as possible, wishing in fact to make the complete tour, whereas the Greeks visit only one or two, usually where they have their spiritual father

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or some other monk who is either a relative or a friend (of a friend or of a relative). For the Greeks, then, a pilgrimage to Mount Athos provides the means of getting away from society and its social pressures, of distancing themselves from mundane worries, and of surrendering to the monastic habit for eight days or so to experience, as the monks do, the presence of God. No walking is needed for the inner change to take place, as it is experienced in the services. This was well elucidated by an observant Swedish teacher, who said to me: Imagine, I wake up in the morning and realize that my wife and love of my life for twenty-five years is a woman in her late forties. A good wife and mother, but my passionate love for her is just not there any more. Everyday life is mere drudgery. My once adoring children are now independent grown-ups, and to work for the family seems useless. There is an emptiness there, as after a loss, a bewildering feeling of having lost the way. I am both physically and spiritually emptied of enthusiasm. The enthusiasm is just not there any more. On Athos I feel something, although vaguely and diffusely, the chanting of Kyrie eleison gives consolation and hope in my hour of need. (Anonymous 1996, 7)

Fieldwork is the "davor stehen" in Pilgrimage Studies Modern pilgrimage study is not only research, it also involves the handing down of the tradition of going on a pilgrimage. We do not see it only in terms of progress and verified results. It offers a newly discovered experience of pilgrimage whenever the past resounds with a new voice. It is carried along by the historical movement of life itself, and cannot be understood teleologically in terms of the object into which it is inquiring. Such an "object in itself" in the sense of existing as an object of consciousness, external to or independent of the mind, clearly does not exist at all. It is precisely this that distinguishes the human sciences from the natural sciences. Whereas the object of the natural sciences can, in principle, be described as what would be known given a perfect knowledge of nature, it is totally senseless to speak of a perfect knowledge of pilgrimage, and for this reason it is not possible to speak of an "object in itself" towards which the research is directed (see Gadamer 2003, 284-285). How are we to put ourselves in a situation propitious to "understanding"? A pilgrimage scholar can enter the field and become a pilgrim among pilgrims, in other words encounter (davor stehen) the pilgrim's experiences in person.

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Examining chromosomes and studying the culture of fellow humans are two entirely different scholarly enterprises due to the difference in subject matter. For the former we need a microscope through which we can observe and register chromosomes, the thread-like structures found in all living cells that carry hereditary information in the form of genes. We sit conveniently behind our optical research instrument and the chromosomes are on plates in front of our lens. The observations are objective and scientific. They can be checked by scholars carrying out the same methodical procedure due to the fact that the structure, or chemical patterns, and location of the chromosomes are predictable. The study of our fellow pilgrims is different in that the distinctive feature of our work is not restricted to registering and testing an object—an instrumental (binocular) approach, so to speak—, nor can it be reduced to an abstraction by conceptualizing religious phenomena in terms of logical propositions: this scientific procedure has failed to adequately articulate the real being of historical life, which has everything to do with the very experiencing of life in its actuality (Risser 2000b, 312). Pilgrimage studies allow, and in fact require, participant observation, including free and guided interviews, self-observation, self-analysis and reflection in terms of confrontation with one's own preconceptions and prejudices regarding the phenomenon of pilgrimage. All this takes place during the actual, tangible everyday reality of a pilgrimage, which is the anthropological method of field research—field work en route, as it were—, where each scholar is his/her own empirical research instrument. This distinctiveness of fieldwork is concerned more with epistemological than method(olog)ical questions. Studying the culture of our fellow humans requires more than standing aloof on a mountain slope and registering through a pair of binoculars the hordes of pilgrims heading for the Holy Mountain of Athos, for instance. Counting the number of pilgrims on the road, recording their dress and equipment, age, fitness and style of walking, deducing their nationality only on the basis of observation, and so forth, would be quite feasible from afar, but irrelevant if we wish to know what it means to go on a pilgrimage, in other words the religious universe as it is experienced in words by the pilgrim. We need not view pilgrims from a distance for the simple reason that we are able to get closer to the object or rather the subject of our study, and that makes a difference in terms of the dialectic between subject matter and method or scientific procedure. We cannot become a chromosome among chromosomes and take part in their activities, but we can join the group of pilgrims and become a pilgrim among pilgrims in search of the authentic word for or sense of going on a pilgrimage: in other words we share a common interest in and tradition of the subject matter we are studying. Nevertheless, we are perplexed— je ne sais quoi—and want to understand

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what kind of activity pilgrimage is all about, because we are thrown into a tradition that we want to understand better, and a life we want to make meaningful. This is to become human through culture. Field research is a very human endeavor because we are not only counting numbers, scrutinizing structures and analyzing functions, in other words recording statistics and quantitative averages. What we are concentrating on is men's and women's sense or understanding of the humane quality or meaningfulness in going on a pilgrimage. We could, and indeed should, ask what it is like to be a pilgrim. In this we need to abandon the pre-programmed and detached standpoint of our inherited or methodically adopted horizon—to break our I-centeredness, as it were—to become involved with and to surrender to the religious frame of reference concerned, and to accept the possibility that the God pilgrims speak about really might exist, at least in their existential reality (see Turnbull 1992, 273). The more insight the scholar doing field research has, the more understanding there is, and this is decisive to the authenticity of the interpretation. One fundamental difference between chromosome studies and pilgrimage studies, then, is in the testing. Whereas in the former it is possible to be detached, in the latter, where the aim is to understand fellow humans, testing the "truth," or rather "increasing our understanding" of our humanness, requires temporal involvement, surrendering to the belief system concerned and making that belief system our own (for the time of the study). This implies unreserved participation, suspension of disbelief or controlled subjectivity, as it were (see Coleridge 1817, 6; Turnbull 1992, 273-274). To look at pilgrims only from afar would be negligent, given that there are opportunities to live the everyday life of a pilgrim by walking miles in his or her shoes, experiencing what he or she experiences, discussing each other's ordeals, and learning to know this specific form of human culture by personally experiencing the trials and rewards of pilgrimage, in other words by davor stehen, which is the sine qua non of understanding (Verstehen). The critical evaluation of results implies a close reading of other scholars' field studies on the matter, the meticulous comparing of analogical cases, and an examination of the contrasting classifications and categories of the specific form of culture —or intra-cultural understanding (emic)—with those of the scholarly community—or inter-cultural understanding (.etic) (Pike 1954, 8-11; Gothoni 1981, 30-33). The validity and authenticity of the conclusions are confirmed by re-entering the field several times, and by considering the two sets of categories {emic!etic) in relation to each other and to one's own understanding in the process of searching for the authentic word. The evaluation of the results is thus analogical to riding a bicycle. By repeating the fieldwork procedure—riding on a pilgrim's mule, as it were — scholars are able to confirm the authenticity of the interpretations of previous scholars.

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The Uniqueness of Humans It is, of course, self-evident that the human mind and human culture with its patterns of behavior, artefacts, languages and social institutions are, to a certain extent biological in origin, but we cannot ignore the fact that cultural phenomena are learned and transmitted through generations for the purpose of the survival of the community. However much we learn about our brain, our genes and our evolutionary history, we will not thereby learn fully and satisfactorily what it means to be human. This is because humans are not like other natural creatures. The uniqueness of humans is aptly argued in Aristotle's work Politics (1253al0): "...and man alone of the animals possesses speech (logos)." Human beings are unique among organisms in that they have the ability to express their innermost feelings in words, deeds and art. These reflect the imagination and plasticity of the human mind in search of a meaningful relation to its existence. Humanities and social sciences are needed, because humans are inevitably interested in understanding what it is to be human. Apart from being biological beings, humans are also conscious beings in the quest for the meaning of existence. Understanding humans requires not only the methodological tools of natural science and technology, but above all the hermeneutics of understanding as it is used in the humanities and social sciences. "By insisting that humans can be understood in purely naturalistic terms, scientists give up on the attempt to understand them as subjective beings—as both natural and social—and are compelled to view them simply as objects" (see Malik 2000,18-19). The classical definition of man (Greek änthropos) in ancient Greek is not, as often conceived of in the West, a living being endowed with reason (Latin animal rationale), but "the being that has language (Gr. logos)" (Gadamer 2003, 474; cf. Gadamer 1993, 404). Whatever man—read humankind—experiences, the experience enters his awareness, his thinking, and the I structures whatever is understood in words, the language. This seems to be the meaning of Gadamer's much quoted and debated italicized sentence: Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache ("Being that can be understood is language"; Gadamer 1986,1, 478; Palmer 2000). "Being" refers both to that which I am conscious of, and the appearing of the stream of consciousness to itself. This distinction seems to correspond to the meanings of the Latin reflectio, which denotes both active thinking or reflection, and the passive notion of something being reflected in one's mind. What can be understood in both of these processes is the language that gives expression to the thoughts.

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How to Enter into Dialogue The lines of thought elaborated by Gadamer in his study Truth and Method, and in a number of other articles, outdates the entire Naturwissenschaften/ Geisteswissenschaften debate as well as the discussion of objectivity/subjectivity and reductionism. The crucial question that engages many scholars of our time now concerns how one can enter into the dialogue or discourse. In his discussion on how the academic study of religion became differentiated from theology, Wiebe distinguishes between scholars with a religious intent and those with an academic and scientific intent. In this case, the academic and scientific intent, in fact, is an atheist intent. To me, both intents are limited within a horizon, as argued by Gadamer, and therefore equally problematic. There is no point outside religious or atheist intent. To enter the debate from the misoneistic angle of "explaining religion away" seems absurd, as the aim in pilgrimage studies is neither to "explain pilgrimage away" nor to "explain pilgrimage from within." The crucial question is rather how to understand the word pilgrimage as the individual pilgrim conceives of it as part of a religious universe. First we need to encounter our own preconception(s) of the phenomenon known as pilgrimage, and then to listen attentively to how the pilgrims themselves verbally express what they are doing and what that means to them. "Understanding" has nothing to do with either "explaining from within" or with "explaining away," but it expressly concerns explaining the meanings and wider connotations of the words used by the devoted pilgrim. It is not a matter of "believing" versus "explaining," but of understanding what the pilgrims really are talking about when they talk about their pilgrimage, in other words of understanding their words! This is what humanities is all about, it is about understanding words. Language precedes us. It speaks to us. It is not simply a tool or system of signs, it discloses our world. Without language we would have no world. Therefore, in using language we are always and already enclosed within a community of language users. There is no private language. We mature into a language community. In other words, we join a linguistic tradition by inheriting a set of prejudices when we learn a language through enculturation and socialization into the language community, i.e. society. There is an intersubjectivity in language, as all speaking is speaking with somebody. The horizon of the other is constituted by listening to what the other has to say; if understanding is to occur we must be able to listen to the other (Schmidt 2000, 361, 366). To increase understanding presupposes the attitude that the Other may be right! There are a number of fundamental questions to be addressed. What kind of knowledge do we really aim at obtaining through our so-called scientific procedure? For what is this knowledge useful? What is the benefit of it? In

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medical research there is always the practical aspect of healing. In juridical research there is the practical aspect of justice. What could be the practical aspect of the study of religions? Surely we do not want to be criticized for being purely academic, completely out of touch with the reality of the devotees. We do not want to be accused of pursuing only academic interests at a time when all efforts are needed to understand the Other in order to establish and maintain peaceful coexistence between cultures, which ultimately is of common interest to all nations. We cannot ignore all this, but what is the answer? To know is not always the same as to understand. To understand is to know more. To understand is of common interest!

References Anonymous 1996 Fieldwork diary. Kept in the author's private library. Aristotle 1973 The Categories. Edited and translated by Harold P. Cooke and Hugh Tredennick. Loeb Classical Library 325. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. 1959 Politics. Translated by Harris Rackham. Loeb Classical Library 264. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press. Barnes, Jonathan 1984 The Complete Works of Aristotle. Volume 1. Bollingen Series LXXI/2. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bianchi, Ugo 1994 "Concluding Remarks: The History of Religions Today." Pages 919-921 in The Notion of "Religion" in Comparative Research. Selected Proceedings of the XVIth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, Rome, 3rd-8'h September, 1990. Roma: «L'Erma» di BRETSCHNEIDER. Bronowski, Jacob 1977 A Sense of the Future. Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 1817 Biographia Literaria. Volume II. Edited with his aesthetical essays by John T. Shawcross. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Eco, Umberto 1990 The Limits of Interpretation. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1992 Interpretation and Overinterpretation. (With R. Rorty, J. Culler and C. Brooke-Rose). Edited by Stefan Collini. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1994 Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.

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Hermeneutik. Volumes I—II. Wahrheit 1 - 2 . Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck.

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"Culture and the W o r d . " Translated by Dennis Schmidt. Pages 1 1 - 2 3 in Hermeneutics and the Poetic Motion. S U N Y Binghamton: Center for Research in Translation.

1993 Über die Verborgenheit der Gesundheit. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. 1997a " V o m Wort zum Begriff: Die Aufgabe der Hermeneutik als Philosophie." Pages 1 0 0 - 1 1 0 in Gadamer Lesebuch. Edited by Jean Grondin. Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck. 1997b "Reflections on my Philosophical Journey." Translated by Richard E. Palmer. Pages 3 - 6 3 in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn. Chicago, La Salle: Open Court. 2000 "Subjectivity and intersubjectivity, subject and person." Continental Philosophy Review 33(3) (Special issue: Hans-Georg Gadamer Centennial Celebration): 275-287. 2003 Truth and Method. Second, revised Edition. New York: Continuum. 2004 A Century of Philosophy: Hans-Georg Gadamer in Conversation with Riccardo Dottori. New York, London: Continuum. Gothoni, Rene 1981 "Emic, Etic and Ethics. Some remarks on studying a 'foreign religion.'" Pages 2 9 - 4 1 in Proceedings of the Nordic South Asia Conference, held in Helsinki, June 10-12, 1980. Edited by Asko Parpola. Studia Orientalia 50. Helsinki: Finnish Oriental Society. 1993

Paradise within Reach: Monasticism University Press.

1994

Tales and Truth: Pilgrimage University Press.

Grondin, Jean 1994 Introduction Press. 1999

2003

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Helsinki: Helsinki

Past and Present.

Helsinki: Helsinki

New Haven, London: Yale University

"Understanding as a Dialogue: Gadamer." Pages 2 2 2 - 2 3 0 in The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy. General Editor Simon Glendinning. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. The Philosophy of Gadamer. Chesham: Acumen.

Heidegger, Martin 1985 History of the Concept of Time. Translated by Theodore Kisiel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kimanen, Seppo 2004 Soittaminen on taitoa ja hiljaista tietoa. Rondo, klassisen musiikin erikoislehti 3. Helsinki: Suomen Musiikinopettajien Liitto. Kluge, Friedrich 1995

Etymologisches

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erweiterte Auflage. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Lewis, Clive S. 1967 Studies in Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Liddell, Henry George, & Robert Scott 1989 A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malik, Kenan 2000 "Hey scientists, we're special, so get used to it." The Times Higher Supplement (October 20): 7.

Education

Palmer, Richard E. 2000 "Gadamer's recent work on language and philosophy: On 'Zur Phänomenologie von Ritual und Sprache.'" Continental Philosophy Review 33(3): 381-393. Pike, Kenneth 1954 Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behaviour. Volume I. Glendale (Calif.): Summer Institute of Linguistics. Risser, James 2000a "Introduction." Continental Philosophy Review 33(3) (Special issue: Hans-Georg Gadamer Centennial Celebration): 239-243. 2000b "From concept to word: On the radicality of Philosophical hermeneutics." Continental Philosophy Review 33(3) (Special issue: Hans-Georg Gadamer Centennial Celebration): 309-325. Rorty, Richard 2000 "Being that can be understood is language. Richard Rorty on H.-G. Gadamer." London Review of Books (16 March): 23-25. Schmidt, Lawrence K. 2000 "Respecting the other: The hermeneutic virtue." Continental Philosophy Review 33(3) (Special issue: Hans-Georg Gadamer Centennial Celebration): 359-379. Sherrard, Philip 1977 "The Paths of Athos." Eastern Churches Review IX(l-2): 100-107. Stavrou, Theofanis George 1963 Russian Interest in Palestine 1882-1914: A Study of Religious Enterprise. Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies.

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Tontti, Jarkko 2002 "Sinne ja takaisin—Hermeneuttisen filosofian seikkailut 1900-luvulla." Niin & Näin 3: 52-63. Turnbull, Colin 1992 "Postscript: Anthropology as Pilgrimage, Anthropologist as Pilgrim." Pages 257-274 in Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage. Edited by E. Alan Morinis. Contributions to the Study of Anthropology 7. Westport (Conn.), London: Greenwood Press. Wright, Kathleen 1998 "Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900-)." Pages 827-831 in Routledge Encyclopedia Philosophy. General Editor Edward Craig. London, New York: Routledge.

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2000 "The fusion of horizons: Hans-Georg Gadamer and Wang Fu-Chih." Continental Philosophy Review 33(3) (Special issue: Hans-Georg Gadamer Centennial Celebration): 345-358.

Response Donald Wiebe Religious Studies: Many Methods, One Overriding Goal As Rene Gothoni points out in the Preface to this volume of essays, the discussion at the Workshop on "Approaches to Comparative Religion Reconsidered" on appropriate methodological approaches to the academic study of religion generated heated debate, some of which is captured here in the responses to the papers of the invited guests and the replies of the speakers to those responses. Despite the heat, Gothoni also claims success for the Workshop and I think rightly so, although not, unfortunately, in the sense that agreement was achieved as to the general shape of the study of religion most appropriate in the context of the modern research university. As the subtitle of this volume attests—"[How to Do Comparative Religion:] Three Ways, Many Goals"—the debates between and among the critical theorists, hermeneuticists, and scientists that characterized the discussion of religion in Finland prior to and during the Workshop is likely to persist (not only in Finland, of course, but also elsewhere in the world, and particularly in Canada and the United States as Nils Holm points out in his essay on "The Limits of Explaining in Religious Studies" [p. 84]). I very much appreciate having been invited to participate in the Workshop: I had hoped to be able to show that a scientific knowledge of religious phenomena—that is "public knowledge" of "public facts" in the sense of publically testable propositional statements about intersubjectively available religious facts—is possible and epistemically "superior to" hermeneutical and critical theoretical claims, without simply denigrating the contributions of hermeneuticists and critical theorists. Veikko Anttonen, however, believes that my paper slights the very considerable accomplishments of twentiethcentury students of religion, and especially those in Europe. Nils Holm also seems to suggest that the stronger religious traditions in Canada and the United States may well be responsible for my inability to see the strong scientific bent of the study of religion in the Nordic countries and the valuable contributions it has made to our understanding of religion (see above p. 84). No such slight was intended, although I can understand that it might appear so, given that (slight?) hyperbole of the opening sentence of my paper. The hyperbole, as Holm suggests, may well be inspired by my judgment about "the failure of nerve" in the study of religion seen in the adoption of a religious,

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rather than scientific, agenda for the academic study of religion early in the twentieth century (Wiebe 1984), or by my anxiety over the negative impact of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) on the field of Religious Studies (Wiebe 2000). I am not, however, oblivious to the European contributions to the field. I have acknowledged, for example, the truth of Heikki Räisänen's claim about the contributions of Glaubenswissenschaftler—scholars working from the point of view of the religious insider—to Religionswissenschaft. As Räisänen rightly points out, "[s]trong disagreement on the issue [of] 'theology vs comparative religion' [in biblical studies, for example,] does not prevent far-reaching agreement in everyday exegesis" (Räisänen 1998, 116). Despite my negative assessment of the influence of the AAR on religious studies worldwide, moreover, I have also acknowledged that developments in Religious Studies in the U.S. have made solid scientific contributions to the field. With the vast increase in the number of departments of Religious Studies since the middle of the twentieth century, (more than 1,200), and the explosive growth in the number of scholars doing research in the field (well over 15,000), there has been a concomitant increase in the volume of research and an expansion of the field's boundaries. As I put it in my paper to the Korean Association for Religious Studies: "With increased numbers has come the development of specializations that have enriched the field by encouraging a depth of knowledge in a wide range of religious issues and themes. As well, the concern for academic legitimation within the university community has actually stimulated growth in methodological reflection about the field" (Wiebe 2000, 2). In my judgment, however, there has been no fundamental change in the religio-theological self-definition of the field of Religious Studies in the American Academy from that which characterized it in the premodern American college (see Wiebe 1999a). Similarly, in my judgment, the recognition of the overlap of specific methods and skills between secular and religious students of biblical texts does not justify the broader claim that Räisänen (drawing on Sigurd Hjelde's Die Religionswissenschaft und das Christentum: Eine Historische Untersuchung über das Verhältnis von Religionswissenschaft und Theologie [1994]) seems to make, namely, that many New Testament theologies can be seen as studies in comparative religion because they are in full harmony with the "empiricist" approach to comparative religion (Räisänen 1998, 124), and that it might, therefore, be more appropriate "to think of the study of religion as a continuous scale where all shades of grey are present" (118). Construing such "overlaps" in method, and interpreting a limited congruence in research results as indicative of an essential identity of methodological framework between the Glaubenswissenschaftler and the Religionswissenschaftler, is precisely the kind of thinking that, in my judgment, constitutes a failure to follow through on the scientific agenda for the field, namely, to a causal, explanatory account of religion—that is, to a theoretical account of the empirical data and the discoveries of the philologists

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and historians of religion, and of the phenomenological descriptions of belief, practice, and behavior of religious persons and communities. And general, non-scientific "accounts" of religion, (despite their credible empirical, descriptive, and historical methodologies), simply do not constitute a second, theoretical stage in the Religious Studies enterprise. A fully scientific study of religion cannot, I believe, rest content with purely descriptivist accounts of religious phenomena, and I think it is my single-minded focus on the importance of the theoretical agenda in my contribution to the Workshop that makes it appear as if I find the contributions of the twentieth-century students of religion to be of little or no value. My emphasis on the importance of Darwinian theory for the study of religion, according to Professor Anttonen, also slights the work of many other scholars in the field (folklorists, ethnographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists) and devalues other major developments in the field such as the turn to sociology in the 1920s, the rise of phenomenology of religion in the 1930s, the linguistic turn in the 1940s and 1950s, and the emergence of interpretive anthropology in the 1960s and 1970s. Again, no slight is intended, although limitation of such scholarship is implied. I do not see any of these schools as having supplied a plausible overall explanatory framework that can provide a coherent account of the wealth of data on religion generated by these lines of research. This suggests to me that a revision of the discipline is not inappropriate, and the criticism of the work of our predecessors implicit in my paper is not a rejection of the results of their research but rather an attempt to find a framework within which it all makes coherent sense. My concern here is that the social scientific explanations of religious phenomena not be disconnected or dissociated from the larger network of scientific knowledge. Or, to put it positively—following Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby (1992)—I believe it essential to a proper understanding of the social sciences that we recognize that there is a "necessary connection between evolutionary biology and the complex, irreducible social and cultural phenomena studied by anthropologists, sociologists, economists, and historians" (see above pp. 76-77). To push the matter a little further, along with Tooby and Cosmides I find the notion of culture as sui generis (and therefore requiring a different kind of explanation from those of natural phenomena) unjustifiable because it necessitates a radical distinction between the natural and the social sciences that can only be viewed as mysterious. (Ilkka Pyysiäinen makes the same point in his paper in this volume as well by noting the methodological incommensurability between explanatory and Verstehen approaches to the study of religion. Consequently, it is essential for the scientific student of religion to recognize, as Tooby and Cosmides put it, that "culture [including religion] is the manufactured product of evolved psychological mechanisms situated in individuals living in groups" (24). A revision of our field,

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therefore, requires what I would call a critical reappropriation—vis-a-vis a new theoretical framework—of the work of our forebears. My assumption in the Workshop presentation (not, I think, without initial plausibility as I argue in the essays in my The Politics of Religious Studies [1999a]) is that the weaknesses of the developments referred to by Anttonen are greater than their strengths because they depend on the assumption that culture (and therefore religion) is a sui generis phenomenon, and, consequently, that they fail "to causally locate their objects of study inside the larger network of scientific knowledge" (Tooby & Cosmides 1992, 23). My espousal of Darwinism (i.e., modern evolutionary theory) was motivated by the desire to overcome the demarcation between the natural and the social sciences upon which many students of religion trade, seeing the difference between them as grounds for an argument for the sui generis nature of religion. And the cognitive sciences that work within such a Darwinian framework, I further argued, finally presents the possibility of constructing a genuinely scientific framework for the generation of a theoretically grounded account of religion at the individual level and the level of the group/community. Drawing on Ernest Gellner's critical remarks about Darwinism as a philosophy, a theodicy, and a moral vision, Anttonen maintains that my proposal for considering evolutionary theory as a framework for the scientific study of religion is essentially an ideology. Although he finds my Workshop paper constructive in that its rejection of the Natur-ZGeisteswissenschaften distinction clarifies the conceptual foundation on which the science of comparative religion rests, he nevertheless finds that a worn-out confrontation and therefore an insufficient basis upon which to invoke a cognitivist approach to the study of religion. I fail however to see the force of the argument he provides to justify that view, (and particularly so in light of the proposals presented by the other Workshop papers and the criticisms of my proposal, explicit and implicit in the papers by Nils Holm and Rene Gothoni). Although the cognitive capacities that make possible the cognitive domains of art, religion, and science are the same, this, surely, does not signify that those spheres "operate" or "function" in the same way. Nor does it guarantee, so far as I can see, that scientific and humanistic approaches to understanding the world are epistemologically isomorphic. This does not, of course, prevent individuals from participating in humanistic endeavors and in projects for improving society; it simply means that this cannot be an aspect of their work as scientists. Consequently, it seems to me that Anttonen fails to take seriously the obvious differences between the naturalism of the sciences and the edifying practices of the hermeneuticists of culture (that is, between what I called, following Schneider, the scientist and the virtuoso scholar) and, therefore, between disenchanted and enchanted discourses. And as I shall show below in my responses to Holm and Gothoni, students of religion do seek a

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form of knowledge of religion that goes beyond description, analysis, and theoretical explanation. Consequently, Anttonen's short ethnographic excursion into science leaves me unpersuaded of his latter claim, for in my judgment, he fails to recognize the massive difference that characterizes modern science (and the peculiar character of the institutions that house and promote it), from the "rudiments of science" characteristic of premodern cultures. A further comment on Professor Anttonen's reference to my "ideological agenda" is necessary; that is, on my concern with recent attempts to blend scientific and humanistic approaches to the study of religions. I do not agree with Anttonen that the scholar, like any other citizen, is free to locate her/himself at any ideological position within the academy. Where the scholar locates him/herself in the non-academic culture is not my concern; but it is a matter of importance to the scientific (academic, university) community if the scholar wishes to import the ideological concerns of the non-academic world into the framework of our scholarly and scientific enterprises. (Such concerns clearly dominate the AAR and, as it seems to me, are also coming to dominate the agenda of the International Association for the History of Religions.) Following Robert Nisbet (1997), I would argue that the failure to exclude such ideological intrusion into the academic arena also constitutes a failure to recognize the fundamental mission of the research university which is the discovery and dissemination of knowledge to students and to society. To argue for the inclusion of the legal rights of citizenship off campus as a constituent element of the epistemological framework of the university, as Nisbet puts it, would effectively constitute the transformation of "the university into a kind of political engine. Or, for that matter, an economic engine. Or a humanitarian and therapeutic engine" (Nisbet 1997, 200). However, the university simply cannot serve all the economic, social, political, religious, and other needs of society without destroying itself; without undermining its peculiar purpose-designed character "of being able to engage in dispassionate scholarship, and...rigorous, honest teaching" (232). As Nisbet puts it: "If the limits of the university are to be as wide as those of modern society and culture, then there is really no need for the university at all" (232). Nisbet, therefore, in my judgment, is wholly right to argue that the price-tag for protecting the university as a peculiar purposedesigned institution is "keeping the university as far as possible out of politics, out of economic enterprise, and, generally, out of the areas of society where partisan feelings are endemic, out of areas of society where passionate moralism is of the essence" (Nisbet 1997, 199). Unlike Professor Anttonen (and Professors Douglas Allen and Rita Gross), I do not believe this is an ideological position but rather a methodological one—it does not involve party prix politics, but rather founds a new enterprise (on the politics of founding see the preface to my The Politics of Religious Studies [1999a]) and this distinguishes it from ideology.

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Nils Holm maintains that from the time of Ingemar Hedenius's work in philosophy at the University of Uppsala it has been understood "that the study of religion should be subject to the same conditions as any other research in a scientific society" (see above p. 84). And such scientific approaches to "understanding" and "explaining" religion and spirituality have been part and parcel of Nordic scholarship since the middle of the nineteenth century. This is evident, he claims, not only in textual (biblical) and historical scholarship but also in systematic and pastoral theology. Consequently, he is—it appears—baffled by my criticism of the unscientific character of the field of Religious Studies. Since the time of Leuba, he points out, scholars have rejected the notion that one needs to be religious in order to understand religion, and a natural scientific approach to religion has been in force. And his own work on Pentacostalism and glossolalia, he points out, has been carried on within such a scientific understanding. Thus he writes: "If we examine our Nordic scholarly tradition in religious studies, it thus seems to be taken for granted that religion and spirituality should be studied from a purely scientific perspective" (p. 84). He acknowledges that some scholars have had difficulty in following such a route because of their careers as committed Christians (p. 84), but he also points out that those religious commitments can be, and have been, transcended—his own scholarly understanding of glossolalia in terms of "role theory psychology" which furnishes us with a purely naturalistic explanation of "what happens to a person subject to glossolalia" being a case in point (p. 87). In light of this account of "religion scholarship" Holm argues that my criticisms and proposals for the scientific study of religion are dated and therefore trivial. I am, apparently, knocking on a door that has long been open (p. 90). His summary conclusion, however, subverts his claim, for according to Holm our "approach" to religion must be "polymethodic" and not simply scientific. Science in his view, in effect, is severely limited. According to him it leaves the question of the origin of religion unanswered (p. 83); it cannot answer the question as to whether spiritual phenomena can be ultimately explained (p. 83); it seems unaware that it competes with religious explanations of religious phenomena (which Holm, it appears, thinks must be engaged) (p. 83); it unacceptably denies value to the devotee's perspective (p. 83); explanatory theories are unable to account for the religious experience of the individual (p. 87) which shows that "[t]he spiritual experience in itself...is legitimate" (p. 88) and therefore beyond judgment by the scientist despite the fact that "all religion functions according to our biological, psychological and sociological preconditions" (p. 89). Moreover, he argues, we have to recognize that scientific methods and the choice of theoretical options are not "neutral" but rather rest on the personal histories and priorities of the scholars promulgating them (p. 88), and recognition is demanded of the scientist regarding the impossibility of entering a person's

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inner consciousness (p. 89). According to him, therefore—his comments on the nature of the scientific study of religion in the Nordic countries notwithstanding—concessions must be drawn from the would-be scientific student of religion, including humility before the object of research which implies the requirement that the scientist assume respect for the devotee's explanation (p. 88) of her/his own experience (which further implies that one must engage the issue as to whether faith and knowledge can be combined [p. 88]) and recognize that the best that science can do is provide "the human foundation for the understanding of religiosity and spirituality" (p. 89), which, again, implies that there are other than human foundations that must be considered. Unless that is done, claims Holm, no full knowledge/insight into any spiritual reality can be obtained. As Holm summarizes all of this: "[W]e should take into account all possible perspectives, whether descriptive, sympathetic, or explanatory" and recognize that science "will nonetheless never achieve a full insight into the complex system formed by the experiential world of each individual, influenced as it is by intricate connections and aspirations on many planes" (p. 90). I find the juxtaposition of these two sets of claims simply breathtaking; they amount to an affirmation of both a scientific and a better than scientific approach to understanding religion, without a clear analysis of how the "more than scientific" approach enables the researcher to justify the claims to knowledge emanating from the latter. On the scientific level, therefore, this leaves Holm a mysterian for he claims, as it seems to me, that a full-orbed understanding of religion resides beyond any possibility of scientific explanation. He may not be saying that one needs to be religious to understand religion, but his position does seem to imply that a more-than-scientific (deeper-than-scientific) approach will be necessary for gaining understanding of religious phenomena. That is clearly to espouse a demarcation between the natural sciences and the social sciences, at least in so far as the study of religion is a social science, a position it seems to me that Holm initially denies taking up. And it is clearly a stumbling-block to the establishment of a scientifically respectable Religious Studies for it leaves open the possibility of conflicting explanatory accounts of religious phenomena. The extrascientific form of explanation Holm permits provides no guarantee of the quality of the scholar's claims except the scholar's private judgment (a point Pyysiäinen makes in his essay above). In "Understanding the Other," Rene Gothoni attempts to set out an entirely different kind of framework for the academic study of religion to that presented in my Workshop paper. Based on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gothoni's framework is defined essentially by a notion of "understanding" that precludes what Ilkka Pyysiäinen (in his essay in this volume) calls the "decoupling" of the religious phenomena under scrutiny "from their existential connections, [and] viewing them only as objects of scientific

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inquiry" (p. 59). Gothoni insists that such decoupling cannot be countenanced by the student of religion because it is only in the perception of the existential import of religious experience and belief for the devotee that we really understand the devotee (and, therefore, religion). In that limited sense of "understanding" religion—that is, in the sense that the "understanding" of religion must provide a refined, detailed, and sensitive account of the psychological and social reality of religion—I am in agreement with Gothoni. But Gothoni's reaction to Pyysiäinen, and his response to me, suggests considerably more than this. According to Gothoni, "the empirical finding of davor stehen in fieldwork" (p. 113)—although those findings in the fieldwork of practitioners seem to indicate only a deepened personal feeling for religion on the part of the scholar so engaged—reveals that we are all religious because we all face questions of existential import and therefore are, willy nilly, religious. As Gothoni puts it: "Every scholar, in fact, stands in front of religion in an 'existential' and 'preconceptual' sense, as religion has spoken to him or her to the extent that he or she became a scholar in the study of religions in the first place" (p. 113). But Gothoni here unjustifiably assumes that "interest" in religion can only mean an existential/religious interest, even if it is claimed by the student of religion to be only an academic and epistemic interest. This is how Gothoni puts it: "We rather need to ask ourselves the question why, if religion does not concern us, we care about it. We could equally well be studying something else. Why did we become scholars in the study of religions in the first place and continue to the present day? Whether we address this question or not, we can never, in fact, approach religion as an object, because both our initial interest in the subject matter and the meaning our scientific project gives to us as human beings already put us in a relation with the subject matter (die Sache), and this affects the way we both understand and approach what we study, as well as how we respond to our findings. It is specifically the hold that our scientific project has on us that needs methodological clarification" (pp. 114-115). Gothoni's claim that the "hold" the so-called scientific project has on the student of religion is really the hold of an ultimately religious reality (that is, die Sache) that is expressed in religious belief and practice is pure assertion and in my judgment reveals Gothoni's own religious commitments to some knowledge of ultimate religious reality. Religion is a (social) object and a peculiar one at that; and it is quite understandably an object of scientific interest as are similarly strange phenomena such as astrology and magic. Seeing religious phenomena as objects of research implies neither hatred nor disrespect for religion and religions as Gothoni maintains. On this score, again, I think Pyysiäinen is on the mark when he insists that this "is a misunderstanding that follows from the conception according to which the proper context of the study of religion is religious practice, not science" (p. 60). In seeing the method of understanding as rooted in davor stehen, then,

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Gothoni has mistaken the Verstehen approach as being directed to something more than mere description of the religious phenomena; he sees it as involving an existential relationship to the "transcendent reality of religion/' even if not a positive commitment to it, and that is in effect to have adopted a religious approach to the understanding of religion since it implies that no person can step outside of religion and subject its beliefs and practices to critical scrutiny. I do not wish here to undertake a critique of the Gadamerian philosophy upon which Gothoni builds his argument. What I wish to show, however, is that whatever the value the Gadamerian philosophy may have, the way it is invoked on behalf of a hermeneutic approach to the study of religion here entangles it in unhelpful ambiguity if not outright contradiction. I shall start by responding to Gothoni's perplexity over my use of the expressions "scientific understanding" and "explaining religious meaning" (in the title and introductory paragraphs of my Workshop paper) (p. 65). I suspect that his bewilderment derives from his ideological commitments since it is grammatically and philosophically clear, I think, that by "scientific understanding" I mean both a common sense level familiarity with the meaning of human (in this case, religious) discourse and practice and the understanding of a human phenomenon gained by virtue of a (causal) explanation of it, and that by "explaining religious meaning" I mean supplying a general causal account of the cultural production and import of (religious) "meanings" and "values" that are to be found in particular societies. The introductory paragraphs of my paper also make it obvious that I recognize the need for explication (for clarification of the things that need to be explained by way of analysis) and also, therefore, for a prior descriptive or phenomenological understanding of such meanings and values in the sense of grasping the point of the notions, concepts, and ideas of religious belief and practice in and through which they are expressed before pressing on for an explanation of them. For Gothoni, however, these methodological remarks do not make sense; they do not demarcate a discipline for the study of religious phenomena that differentiates it from religious discourse itself. Indeed, he sees this kind of approach to understanding religion as destructive of it. As he puts it: "In [Wiebe's] discussion on how the academic study of religion became differentiated from theology, [he] distinguishes between scholars with a religious intent and those with an academic and scientific intent. In this case, the academic and scientific intent, in fact, is an atheist intent" (p. 122). Yet no such ontological commitment is made, nor need be espoused; the scientific study of religion, that is, like the other natural and social sciences, espouses a "methodological atheism," and does not, as Gothoni maintains, "explain away" pilgrimage (the focus of his research program) or any other religious fact from a "misoneistic angle" (p. 122); that is, out of an unreasonable intolerance of religion. (I, once again, agree on this point with

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Pyysiäinen when he notes that science is not hostile to religion. This is not to say, however, that scientific research may not impinge negatively upon certain religious beliefs and practices.) On the basis of these two un-elaborated critical remarks, Gothoni dismisses my proposal for a more scientific method in the study of religion and proposes an alternative approach on the basis of what he calls a "theoretical expose of recent findings in philosophical hermeneutics" (p. 115)—a proposal that seems to have much in common with Holm's recommendation in that it rests on "understanding" rather than "explaining" religion (or in Holm's framework, rather than resting on merely explaining religion). Gothoni, however, would eschew the suggestion in Holm's position that "understanding" is something peculiar to the social sciences alone and distinguishes the social science from the natural sciences. Gothoni, that is, claims that "understanding" is a scientific process of acquiring knowledge that is common to both types of science (p. 99). His Gadamerian elaboration of that notion in my judgment undermines this claim, and his inability to show how understanding relates to explanation in Religious Studies reveals a conception of understanding as distinctive of the social sciences and humanities. This only becomes clear, however, on seeing that Gothoni invokes two conceptions of "understanding" and not one. In so far as Gothoni claims (in his account of how to arrive at the meaning of pilgrimage) that "understanding" has "nothing to do with either 'explaining from within' or with 'explaining away' —[one might have expected him to say here 'explaining from without' which is not the same as 'explaining away']—but...expressly concerns explaining the meanings and wider connotations of the words used by the [devotee]" (p. 122), I am in full agreement with him. Indeed, I believe I espoused essentially such a position in the first few pages of my Workshop paper. Unlike Gothoni, however, I insisted that the academic study of religion cannot rest content with a mere descriptive account of the discourse of the religious devotee; that the academic study of religion must proceed to explain what has been understood. But on this score Gothoni disagrees. "It is not a matter of 'believing' versus 'explaining,'" he writes, "but of understanding what the pilgrims really are talking about when they talk about their pilgrimage, in other words of understanding their words! This is what humanities is all about, it is about understanding words" (p. 122). For Gothoni, therefore, the task of the academic student of religion remains at the purely descriptive level which either fails to provide a full account of why religion exists and how it functions in society and for the individual, or implies that religion itself, when fully understood in his sense of the term (that is, when described/translated/interpreted), provides the answers to those questions (which, of course, is to have "explained religion from within"). For Gothoni, then, understanding is really considerably more than the simple understanding of words; it is more like (somehow)

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grasping the essence of the phenomenon concerned—perhaps by a phenomenological eidetic vision or a Clifford Geertzian comprehensive description that claims to be an explanation. As I will show, for Gothoni, understanding involves a special kind of dialogical/dialectical capacity on the part of the humanist or social scientist that is able to furnish her/him with "another kind of exact knowledge" (p. 100)—which is how Gothoni phrases it—different from that which characterizes the other, natural, sciences. Gothoni elaborates his understanding of "understanding" in terms of types of knowledge, namely quantitative and qualitative—i.e., "knowledge that" (which is obtained by virtue of "strict research methods, rules or techniques" [p. 100]) and "knowledge how" which requires a dialogical involvement of the scholar. As he puts it: "There is no neutral, impartial station of observation outside language. Distancing religion as an object of research, then, is totally impossible, and aiming at it is even undesirable, because in understanding it is precisely the entering into a dialogue of questions and answers—which is not the same as commitment—that provides us with 'new' knowledge of the quality of the religious thought, behavior and experience we aim at understanding" (p. 114). (The caveat regarding commitment, it must be noted, rings hollow for Gothoni insists that scholars can never approach religion as an object because of their initial "interest" in the subject matter in the sense of the "hold" the subject matter [die Sache] has on us.) As I have already noted, according to him, "[e]very scholar, in fact, stands in front of religion in an 'existential' and 'pre-conceptual' sense, as religion has spoken to him or her to the extent that he or she became a scholar in the study of religions in the first place" (p. 113). What we have from Gothoni, then, is an account of "understanding" that, despite his claims to the contrary, makes it a special method wholly peculiar to the social sciences, undergirding the achievement of a special kind of knowledge that is neither empirical nor theoretical; it depends upon "a proper ability or mental faculty" for sensing quality (p. 100) that seems to amount to "an inherited talent" (p. 100) and involves not only a special mode of thought but also a mode of being (p. 100). And, according to Gothoni, funding agencies in our universities simply fail to see the radically different character and quality of knowledge that is being aimed at in the humanities and social sciences (pp. 101 and 103). And this "knowledge," just like that espoused by Holm, transcends the scientific knowledge sought, according to Gothoni, by those who would counsel the universities to fund scientific research on religious phenomena that is not predicated on the assumption that "explanations" of such phenomena are possible only by those who understand it from within. (I have given a more comprehensive critique of this gnostic kind of notion of "understanding" in Wiebe 2002.) I will conclude my remarks on the critique by Gothoni by providing brief answers to the two fundamental questions he puts to the reader in the final

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paragraph of his paper. In response to the first of the questions — "What kind of knowledge [of religion] do we really aim at obtaining through our socalled scientific procedure?" (p. 122)—I say: scientifically acceptable knowledge of a descriptive and explanatory/theoretical kind (of the same order we seek about all other aspects of the natural and psycho-social world); nothing less, and nothing more. (Elaboration of this answer can be found in Wiebe 1985 and 1988 among other essays.) Gothoni's second (set of) question(s) comes with what might be called a mini homily. The questions read: "For what is this knowledge [of religion] useful? What is the benefit of it?...What could be the practical aspect of the study of religions" (pp. 122-123); and the homily runs as follows: "Surely we do not want to be criticized for being purely academic, completely out of touch with the reality of the devotees. We do not want to be accused of pursuing only academic interests at a time when all efforts are needed to understand the Other in order to establish and maintain peaceful coexistence between cultures, which ultimately is of common interest to all nations" (p. 123). I am tempted to answer the second (set of) question(s) by posing other questions in return: "Must all knowledge be useful? Is all knowledge useful? Why must our knowledge of religion have a practical aspect to it? Why should the practical aspect of our knowledge—if there is such benefit—be the concern of the academic student of religion?" Gothoni's phrasing of his questions suggests a failure to recognize that the scientific enterprise is essentially a search for "knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone." (This cultural value, I argue in my The Irony of Theology [1991], first emerged with the presocratic philosophers and re-emerged in the European Enlightenment.) I do not mean to imply by this that scientific knowledge of religion cannot have a practical aspect to it, but only that practical applications of such knowledge are not the point of the scientific enterprise. Consequently, students of religion, qua scientists, should not fear the critics Gothoni envisages in his homily. My answer to Gothoni's second (set of) question(s), therefore, is that they are fundamentally irrelevant to our primary scientific/ disciplinary objective which is knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone. Indeed, his question(s) and homily betray his confusion of the task of the scholar-scientist of religion with that of the devotee and/or public intellectual. In summary, I wish to express my thanks for the careful and critical attention Professors Anttonen, Holm, and Gothoni have given to the argument of my Workshop presentation—both at the conference itself and in the essays in this volume. I very much appreciate Anttonen's advice that as our methodological reflections bear upon the work of our predecessors, we show a sensitivity to their contribution to the growth and development of our discipline; that we not throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. I also acknowledge the sound advice of Holm and Gothoni that we

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remain sensitive to alternative methodological possibilities in our attempt to "comprehend" religion even though I have found the particular alternatives they have suggested in this volume unconvincing. What I have called Holm's mysterianism—the claim that science will never be able to explain religion—is in my judgment inconsistent with the ideals of science Holm claims were established for the social sciences by the work of Ingemar Hedenius, and it lacks here a proper justification. Indeed, I think it amounts to a rejection of science. And Gothoni's Gadamerianism—if I may call it that—makes "understanding" a kind of gnostic enterprise suitable only for the student of religion as (religious) virtuoso (or public intellectual) rather than as scholar-scientist. Despite the positive contributions their critiques make to our understanding of the methodological problems in the academic study of religion, therefore, in my estimation they fall wide of the mark because, in one respect or another, they fail to fully understand the nature of modern science and the primary objectives of the modern research university.

References Barkow, Jerome H., Leda Cosmides & John Tooby 1992 "Introduction: Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration." Pages 3-15 in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nisbet, Robert A. 1997 [1971], The Degradation of the Academic Dogma. New Brunswick (N.J.): Transaction Publishers. Räisänen, Heikki 1998 "Comparative Religion, Theology, and New Testament Exegesis." Studia Theologica 52: 116-129. Tooby, John, & Leda Cosmides 1992 "The Psychological Foundations of Culture." Pages 19-136 in The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Edited by Jerome H. Barkow, Leda Cosmides & John Tooby. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wiebe, Donald 1984 "The Failure of Nerve in the Academic Study of Religion." Studies in Religion 13: 401-422. Reprinted on pages 141-162 in Wiebe 1999a. 1985 "A Positive Episteme for the Study of Religion." Scottish Journal for Religious Studies 6: 196-202. 1991 The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought. Montreal, Kingston: McGillQueen's University Press.

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1994 "A 'New Era of Promise' for Religious Studies?" Pages 93-112 in Aspects of Religion: Essays in Honour of Ninian Smart. Edited by Peter Masefield & Donald Wiebe. New York: Peter Lang Press. 1997 "Dissolving Rationality: The Anti-Science Phenomenon and its Implications for the Study of Religion." Pages 167-183 in Rationality in the Study of Religion. Edited by Jeppe S. Jensen & Luther H. Martin. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. 1999a The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict With Theology In the Academy. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1999b "Why the Academic Study of Religion? Motive and Method in the Study of Religion." Reprinted from Religious Studies 24 (1988): 403-418 with a new concluding commentary (pages 272-279) on pages 261-279 in Secular Theories of Religion: A Selection of Recent Academic Perspectives. Edited by Mikael Rothstein and Tim Jensen. Copenhagen: Tusculanum Press. 1999c "Appropriating Religion: Understanding Religion as an Object of Science." Pages 253-272 in Approaching Religion. Part I. Edited by Tore Ahlbäck. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis XVII: 1. Abo: Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History. 2000 "American Influence on the Shape of Things to Come: Religious Studies in the Twenty-First Century." Journal of the Korean Association for the History of Religions 20: 1-24. 2002 "'Understanding' in Religious Studies: A Gnostic Aberration in the Modern Study of Religion." Tujen Religious Studies 6:15-56.

Critical Approaches in the Comparative Study of Religion

Introduction Tuula Sakaranaho

In comparative religion, there is no such field as critical studies as a coherent methodological approach, which could be traced back in the history of this academic field. As against this, however, one can pinpoint different critical approaches in the study of religions and suggest what could be the main lines of reasoning in these approaches. In sum, a critical approach in comparative religion aims at revealing the entanglement of religion with social and cultural power structures, and it thereby pursues, among other things, to display discriminatory practices against social actors, whether or not legitimated in terms of religious rhetoric (cf. Sjöblom et al. 2001). In order to accomplish this end, it is necessary in a critical approach to pay heed to at least three principles, pointed out by Stephen W. Littlejohn (1992, 238), which will be discussed below in detail. First, a critical approach aims to understand the lived experiences of social actors in context. In this sense, a critical approach shares the same interest with those aiming at understanding religion. However, a critical approach goes beyond merely understanding the experiences of social actors, to study how their experiences are moulded and governed by different kinds of power structures. With regard to the focus of discriminatory power structures, it does not then come as a surprise that critical studies often deal with rather disadvantaged groups in society, such as women and minorities. For instance, feminist studies have long since brought to light the effects of the marginalization of women within and by different religious traditions, and thereby has contributed in enriching comparative religion, both with respect to producing new theory and bringing into light the religious experiences of women. (See Falk & Gross 1980; Buchanan 1987; Sharma 1987; O'Connor 1995; King 1997; Warne 2001; Kinsley 2002; Vuola 2002.) In feminist approach, which, in the second wave of feminist movement, was heavily influenced by Marxism, the Marxist critique of religion was somewhat reiterated but from a gender perspective. Thus, religions were seen as oppressive for women for the reason that religions were founded and led by men. Roughly speaking, religions were seen as male-dominated and misogynist traditions. Therefore, it was argued, men operated as gatekeepers of religions and women were left in marginal positions as statists of religion who are invisible on the religious stage (see King 1997; Kinsley 2002).

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However, there is also another approach in feminist studies of religions which, instead of seeing religions merely as patriarchal traditions, pursues to explore the role of religions in the empowerment of women. More often than not religions have offered and can offer women alternative roles and forward their self-realization in society. (See Moghadam 1994; Joy & NeumaierDargyay 1995; King 1995, 1997; Sakaranaho 1998; see also Cooey et al. 1991.) Second, critical studies explore social conditions and reveal power structures, which often remain hidden or unacknowledged. In this respect, the studies produced more or less in parallel in different European countries, such as the late Frankfurt school personified in Jürgen Habermas in Germany, discursive critique of Michel Foucault in France, or cultural studies in Britain, are the best known examples. What we can learn from these studies is that it is pivotal to examine how institutions of knowledge generate power with respect to religions, and how knowledge can thereby be used as a source of social control. (See Siebert 1985; Pals 1996, 124-157; Nye 2003, see also Taira, in this book, pp. 177-186.) The critical perspective of knowledge as power has been discussed in comparative religion also in relation to its own production of knowledge (see Castelli 2001). In this sense, the paper by Rita Gross is very illustrative. In her paper, Gross recalls her painful experiences as a young scholar who wanted to study women and religion, but whose ideas were hampered by the narrow views of her supervisors. As her paper shows, some thirty years ago, it was not legitimate to study women; since women were seen to be marginal in religion, they were also seen as insignificant for academic research. What this example shows is that, if religions are socially and culturally constructed, so is the study of religions. In other words, the study of religions is a human enterprise, which is undertaken by people who are the products of a particular time and place; there is no scholarship outside the social realm. It is for this reason that the study of religions easily turns to an ideological battlefield, as pointed out by Pyysiäinen previously in this book. Consequently, it is important to explicate different approaches in comparative religion, which is exactly the purpose of the present volume. This explication of different projects is even more important for the reasons that they carry a load of meta-theoretical assumptions that are rarely articulated. Consequently, misunderstandings can easily arise as to how the other scholars see, or do not see, religion. Religion is a very sensitive matter, not only for religious actors in general, but also for scholars of religion. Third, critical approaches pursue to infuse theory and action. In this sense, critical approaches aim at reaching emancipatory goals by means of scientific inquiry. As mentioned above, it is common to critical approaches to see religion as psychologically, socially, culturally, and, at times, also politically embedded. In consequence, it is important to study religion in context. In

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itself this can be done in different ways. For instance, one can study religions from outside, as in the explanatory approach, or from inside, as in the approach promoting understanding. In my view, both of these positions are possible in a critical approach. Thus, one can, for instance, aim to explain how certain social processes and structures affect religion at a given time and place, in order to develop a theory on general mechanisms which take place within a social system. In addition to this theoretical orientation, however, critical approaches are very often connected to some sort of a theoretical or practical commitment not just to explain, or even understand, but rather to change the prevailing conditions. This is characteristic of the above-mentioned feminist studies, but this is often the case also with research on such globally essential issues as environment, religious freedom, and human rights (see Bokser-Liwerant 2002). Admittedly enough, this kind of research, which is directly motivated by external factors, is very much at odds with the approach proposed by Donald Wiebe, but would find a resonance in the approach advocated by Douglas Allen. In comparative religion, it should be legitimate to raise questions from theoretical, but also from empirical frameworks, depending on the interest of a particular research. Indeed, it does not lessen one's commitment to the criteria of a scientific study of religion even if a comparative religionist in his or her research would also be committed to important social issues.

References Bokser-Liwerant, Judit 2002 "Globalization and Collective Identities." Social Compass 49(2): 253-271. Buchanan, Constance H. 1987 "Women's studies." Pages 433-440 in volume 15 of The Encyclopedia of Religion. Edited by Mircea Eliade. New York: Macmillan; London: Collier Macmillan. Castelli, Elizabeth A. 2001 "Women, Gender, Religion: Troubling Categories and Transforming Knowledge." Pages 3-25 in Women, Gender, Religion: A Reader. Edited by Elizabeth A. Castelli & Rosamond C. Rodman. New York: Palgrave. Cooey, Paula M., Willian R. Eaking & Jay B. McDaniel (eds.) 1991 After Patriarchy: Feminist Transformations of the World Religions. New York: Orbis Books. Falk, Nancy Auer, & Rita M. Gross (eds.) 1980 Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives in Non-Western Harper & Row.

Cultures. San Francisco:

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Joy, Momy, & Eva K. Neumaier-Dargyay 1995 Gender, Genre and Religion: Feminist Reflections. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. King, Ursula (ed.) 1995 Religion and Gender. Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell. 1997 "Religion and Gender." Pages 647-666 in A New Handbook of Living Edited by John R. Hinnells. London: Penguin Books.

Religions.

Kinsley, David 2002 "Introduction." Pages 1-15 in Methodology in Religious Studies: The Interface with Women's Studies. Edited by Arvind Sharma. Albany: State University of New York Press. Littlejohn, Stephen W. 1992 Theories of Human Communication. Publishing Company.

Fourth edition. Belmont (Calif.): Wadsworth

Moghadam, Valentine M. (ed.) 1994 Identity, Politics b Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms Perspective. Boulder, San Francisco, Oxford: Westview Press.

in

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Nye, Malory 2003 Religion: The Basics. London: Routledge. O'Connor, June 1995 "The Epistemological Significance of Feminist Research in Religion." Pages 45-63 in Religion and Gender. Edited by Ursula King. Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell. Pals, Daniel L. 1996 Seven Theories of Religion. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sakaranaho, Tuula 1998 The Complex Other: A Rhetorical Approach to Women, Islam and Ideologies in Turkey. Comparative Religion 3. University of Helsinki: Department of Comparative Religion. Sharma, Arvind 1987 Women in World Religions. Albany: State University of New York Press. Siebert, Rudolf J. 1985 The Critical Theory of Religion: The Frankfurt School. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers. Sjöblom, Tom, Kimmo Ketola, Heikki Pesonen & Tuula Sakaranaho 2001 "Uskontotiede" (Comparative Religion). Pages 126-148 in Teologia: Johdatus tutkimukseen (Theology: An Introduction to Research). Edited by Petri Luomanen. Helsinki: Edita.

Introduction Vuola, Elina 2002 Limits of liberation: Feminist Theology and the Ethics of Poverty and London: Sheffield Academic Press.

147 Reproduction.

Warne, Randi R. 2001 "(En)gendering Religious Studies." Pages 147-156 in Feminism in the Study of Religion: A Reader. Edited by Darlene M. Juschka. London, New York: Continuum.

Methodology—Tool or Trap? Comments from a Feminist Perspective Rita M. Gross

Questions about how best to study and understand religion have fascinated me from my earliest days in the study of religion. Like many in this field, I was first drawn to the study of religion as part of a quest to understand how life and the world work. That goal is still part of my motivation to study religion. In fact, I do not see how it could be otherwise, as much among those whose views about religion lead them to "care against" religion in their studies as among those who "care for" (Doniger 1988, 18) religion in their studies. (I am leaving out of my considerations in this article those who do not study religion, but only care for it. That option is simply not viable for someone involved in religious studies.) Therefore, today my major concerns in method and theory in the study of religion turn around the "insider-outsider" problem and the question of what purpose the study of religion fulfills in a religiously plural world. However, along the way, very early along the way, I was forced by circumstances to deal with another methodological issue —an issue which has taken up a great deal of thought and energy in my career. From the beginning of my study of religion, two facts puzzled and irritated me. Religions routinely said terrible things about women and discriminated severely against them, at least in the textual and public dimensions of religions almost always studied by scholars of religion in pre-feminist days, but other than that, women and gender were largely ignored by scholars of religion. In addition, those who studied religion were almost universally men.1 These facts did not seem noteworthy to my male colleagues and I suppose the fact that I am a woman is responsible for my being unable to ignore them as easily as they did. I would prefer to live in a world in which 1

When I began my study of religion at the University of Chicago in 1965, there were about 400 students in the Divinity School, twelve of whom were women. Six of the twelve women had entered with the class of 1965, and the professors were concerned about what they could do with "so many" women who wanted to study religion. Some of them confessed to changing the content of some of their lectures because women were present.

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these facts did not occur because then feminist concerns would have been unnecessary, but I do not live in such a world. Usually women raised the issue of the need to study women and men often resisted such study and punished those who insisted on its importance. This experience made utterly apparent an important conclusion I have reached about the "outsider-insider" problem: there is no neutral place from which one can objectively study religion. Everyone has an agenda and those who claim they are outsiders to religion are insiders to and advocates of some other belief about religion. The key distinction is not between "insiders" and "outsiders" but between two kinds of insiders—scholar-practitioners and apologists. Scholar-practitioners may be "inside" some religion, but they are also "inside" the critical methods required by academic study. The other kind of "insider," rightly resisted by scholars of religion, is a highly partisan advocate of one particular religion. But can scholars of religion also become partisan advocates of their favorite method or theory? In addition to the more abstract issues usually discussed in the context of "insider-outsider" issues, I want to emphasize a dimension that is often overlooked: personal histories and personal experiences have a role in determining what subject matter and methodologies are "chosen" by the scholar. We cannot stand outside time and space to choose, unaffected by our life circumstances, what subject matter and methodology we deign to take up. The fact that I would be forever excluded from the class of "men" in a world made up largely of men who, as scholars, were comfortable both ignoring the real religious lives of women and not reflecting critically on the demeaning things said about women in various religious traditions launched me professionally in a direction I would never have chosen, had I not inherited these scholarly norms. Admitting and reflecting upon the way in which our life situations affect scholarship does not mean, as someone wrote in a relatively recent article attacking my work,2 that such reflection is license randomly to conclude whatever one wants to conclude. Scholarly standards of research and argumentation still hold; they simply are applied to a wider field of vision. It is not the case that androcentric scholars who had always ignored gender in their work were objective, whereas I and other feminist scholars were partisan in insisting that gender be studied. "Objectivity" or "neutrality" often mean nothing more profound than following the conventions one has inherited. "We" are always tangled up with our methods, whether we want to believe that or not, whether or not we approve of that entanglement. Denying this entanglement does not undo it. That is why methodological reflection is always foundational to our work as scholars of religion and why that work is never completed. But methodological reflection "facing outward," asking 2

Young 1999. My response follows her comments in the same issue of the journal.

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how best to look at data is not enough. Self-conscious, introspective methodological reflection looking inward, asking why I choose certain subjects and methods over others, is also necessary.

Gender Studies as a Test Case In this paper, I want to engage in reflection on the construction of methodology, more than on methodology itself. I will use the example of the emergence of gender studies and feminist thought within religious studies, and resistance to the emergence of those disciplines, to discuss how new methodological practices emerge and what can go wrong in that process. In this study, I want to focus on methodological issues regarding gender and religion, not so much to review the arguments themselves, which are reasonably well known by now, but to focus more on why scholars initially proposed, and then accepted or rejected arguments about doing serious scholarship on gender and religion. Thus, scholars who ignore gender in their analyses and scholars who insist on including gender in their analyses are my primary "data," rather than any specific set of gender practices. While I could argue that scholarship which takes gender into account is "better" than scholarship which does not, in this context I am more interested in the scholars themselves. Scholarship about women and gender, feminist analyses of religion, and the sheer presence of women scholars in the field have all been resisted, sometimes quite fiercely, by established scholars in the field. The earliest feminist analyses of religion were made in the late 1960's and some of the classical essays had already been published by the mid-1970's. By the early 1980's there was no excuse for any scholar of religion not to be familiar with women studies and feminism. 3 Early feminist scholarship in religion was provocative and original. One could easily make the case that, though we haven't gotten the credit (or the blame) for it, feminism presented the first postmodern analyses, in that we argued very strongly that the social and cultural contexts of the researcher does matter. From the beginning, we understood that gender mattered to us in ways that it doesn't seem to matter to male scholars, both because the gender norms of our own cultural world affected us very negatively, and because, as women, we identified with the women researched by scholars of religion and shud-

3

Though many books and articles could be cited, two important and comprehensive books were published in 1979 and 1980. For feminist theology, the important early collection is Christ & Plaskow 1979. The first edition of Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives was published in 1980. This has remained one of the standard sources for descriptive accounts of women and religion. The current edition is Falk & Gross 2001.

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dered in a way that men did not shudder when men (or women) were the research subject. People are quite invested in their gender identities; scholars of religion are no exception and that investment does affect scholarship. Why was the field so invested in simply not seeing gender as either data or an issue? Why have those who insist on seeing gender often fared so poorly in the academic job market? Before continuing this critical investigation of method, I want to clarify my use of the terms "feminism," "women studies," and "gender studies" because I think that confusion about these crucial terms is often at the heart of opposition to "feminism." Thus far, in keeping with much current usage, I have used the term "feminism" as something of a generic term. But this usage conflates anything concerning "gender" with "feminism," which I contend is a mistake. "Women studies" and "gender studies" are fundamentally descriptive disciplines; their content is the myriad practices concerning gender difference found in most religious contexts. They do nothing more. By themselves, such disciplines do not make any evaluation of practices surrounding gender discovered by scholars of religion. By contrast, critical evaluations of ways gender is marked and how such gender differentiation affects peoples' lives is the work of feminism.4 In other words, describing what religions do with gender is the work of women studies or gender studies; expressing dissatisfaction with or approval of what is found or suggesting alternative gender arrangements is the work of feminism. I insist on this distinction because it makes clear that women studies or gender studies are the work of all scholars of religions, not just those who consider themselves feminists. By honoring this distinction, gender studies can be de-politicized, can be taken from the arena of the contentious and perhaps personally threatening realm of gender politics and placed in the realm of "information," part of what we need to know about to grasp fully a specific religious context. The more we remember and honor this distinction, the more we separate information about gender practices from personal beliefs about gender, the less excuse there is for ignoring gender in our theoretical or descriptive work. This distinction is especially critical for those who consider themselves scholars of religion, not theologians. However, I would be the first to concede that this distinction is often not honored by many who call themselves "feminists," which considerably muddies the water, in my view. 4

Because many people are unclear about what feminism entails, short, simple definitions remain essential. I define feminism in two ways. "Feminism" seeks "freedom from the prison of gender roles," and "feminism" involves "radical practice of the cohumanity of women and men." The essential point of both definitions is that women are fully, equally human. They are not a separate quasi-species about which men have opinions and for whom they make the rules, which is the clear, though unstated, implication of almost all pre-feminist talk about women and gender.

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Concerning "gender studies" and "women studies/' I have recently advocated that the time is ripe for "women studies" to be seen as part of "gender studies" (Gross 2004b) and for gender studies to become a much more serious dimension of religious studies than it is currently. I make this claim because it is more accurate to regard gender, not women, as the main topic requiring investigation. More importantly, I make this claim because when we focus on "women studies" alone, it is too easy for men to ignore their own genderedness, to conflate women with gender, and to continue to be oblivious of the need to include gender in their research agendas. Because of our situation in a historically male dominated society, women can never really forget about gender; men should be in the same position of never really being able to forget gender, given that they are as gendered as we are. It is time for women to stop having to carry the whole burden of human genderedness.

What is Methodology for? I will set this exploration in the larger context of discussing how scholars of religion should approach questions of method altogether, trying to demonstrate that methodological rigidity and certainty is usually an impediment rather than an aid to scholarship. What needs first order critical reflection are the assumptions and methods we bring to the study of religion, not religion itself or any specific religion, because the assumptions we bring to the study of religion deeply affect our critical evaluations of religion itself or any specific religion. What is methodology for? Clearly, it is not an end in itself. A method should help us understand religion or some religious phenomenon accurately. Therefore, methodologies should be worn very lightly. If another method is proposed that better explains the material being discussed, switch, don't fight! Besides, any good scholar will probably use several different methodologies, depending on what she is trying to explain and the audience to whom she is directing her comments. I write and speak to a number of different audiences about a number of rather different topics and my comments and tactics are always material and audience specific. Phenomenological methods work somewhat well to explain how a religious phenomenon feels to an insider, though there are limits to what a scholar imagining what it would feel like to be an insider can do. The phenomenologist may only be imagining how they think Buddhists, for example, experience religion, rather than representing Buddhists accurately; for that task, real insiders might have something to offer. But, that limit aside, the phenomenological method is terrible at ascertaining histories that could be accepted by a critically

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trained historian, would not uncover oppressive aspects of the religion under discussion, and cannot take into account many of the economic, social, and psychological factors that help explain religious phenomena. Nevertheless, an explanation of religion that has no place for empathetic description of the religion's claims and worldview is simply shortchanging those who want to understand the religion. Part of understanding a religion includes understanding the cogency it holds for its followers. This aspect of understanding religion is especially important to the humanistic and liberative mission of those of us who teach religion widely in a public context. The most critical and liberating thing to be said about methodology is that it is a tool. Therefore, it should suit the task at hand. Sometimes we need a hammer and sometimes we need a screwdriver. Flexibility and an openended, somewhat skeptical attitude toward methodological absolutism serve the scholar well. Unfortunately, methodology seems often to become a trap instead. People become fixated on the virtues of a specific method and can no longer see that it does not work well for all purposes. Methodological orthodoxies develop and orthodoxy is usually lethal to productive inquiry.5 Methodology often turns from tool to trap because aspects of a scholar's personal interest and identity become tangled up with supposedly neutral scholarly methods. This is especially likely to happen if one isn't even aware that such entanglement is occurring. If one looks closely at methodological arguments, one can see that often they become ideological or political statements as well. Arguments over method often contain a covert theory or philosophy of religion. Beliefs about religion are at stake, no matter how neutral their proponents claim to be. And beliefs about religion bear a striking resemblance to religious beliefs; they are held to be overarching and irrefutable explanations, which means that they function as "theologies" in the worldviews of scholars of religion, even though those scholars may eschew theology in its more literal and traditional sense. Such doctrinal adherence to an already accepted methodology is usually what bars further advances in the field.

5

An example of the politics of research far removed from religious studies involves the Atkins diet, which suggests that a diet far different from the high carbohydrate, low fat diet recommended by the medical establishment for years is actually healthier in some ways and helps people lose weight relatively easily. Proponents of this diet claim that a high carbohydrate diet actually causes obesity. For thirty years no research was done on this diet despite much anecdotal evidence of its effectiveness and anyone contemplating such research quickly gave it up because they would lose all standing respectability in their professions. See Taubes 2002, 34, 45, and 47.

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Gender Studies and Received Methodologies Such was the case with both gender studies and feminism in the study of religion. Early feminist suggestions, however sensible they may have been, were strenuously rejected because they challenged certain deeply held presuppositions about what should be studied and how it should be studied. To established scholars of that time, to study religion meant to study the religious lives and thoughts of men; it did not seem necessary or even possible to study the religious lives and thoughts of women. It was not especially that scholars set out self-consciously to study only men and religion; they simply did not perceive women as subject matter, mainly because of the androcentric model of humanity that guided their research (Gross 1993, 291304). Nevertheless that unconscious model was deeply imbedded in scholars' worldviews, patterns of awareness and consciousnesses; it was a fixed ideological trap rather than an open-ended guideline concerning how to do research on religion and think about religion. In addition to being part of a deeply held worldview that saw men as normal human beings and women as deviations from that norm, the androcentric model of humanity had significant personal implications for many scholars of religion. Early feminist scholarship challenged who should be allowed to study religion, which some experienced as a professional threat. But many already established scholars felt a deeper threat. Their model of humanity also contained an implicit political code concerning how women and men should interact, and that code dictated male agency and female passivity. If women's religious lives, including women's agency, became a legitimate topic of scholarship, and women engaged professionally in the study of religion, what would that mean for the personal life of the already established (male) scholar, especially concerning his relationships with women? The methodological challenges of early feminist scholars encountered ideological and political resistance, not merely methodological resistance. In fact, one cannot make a good methodological argument against what early feminist scholars of religion wanted to do, which is to include women and gender in the data base studied by scholars of religion. Instead, the ideological and political subtext of an established method ruled the day, indicating how easily method slides from being a tool to being a trap. Mutual entrenchment rather than mutual enlightenment followed, so that today we are in the unworkable situation that gender is most frequently studied by women while many men go about their studies as if feminist scholarship had never occurred and pretend that gender does not pertain to them or their subject material. What is the case for "gender" being an important category in religious studies? Abstract methodological and theoretical discussions about the

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nature of religion and how best to study it are so interesting and satisfying. Why do these pesky feminists always have to bring up such an unpleasant and contested topic? For scholars of religion, as opposed to theologians, the answer should be simple. Religions, our subject matter, do pay a great deal of attention to gender. In fact, in most religious contexts, gender probably affects a person's options and possibilities, as well as the quality of his or her life, more than any other aspect of the religion. Only a methodology that excluded significant segments of the population from its data base could be blind to something that makes so much difference in so many lives. A religious context that does not pay significant attention to gender, that is genuinely gender neutral and gender inclusive, is far rarer than a religious context in which multiple gender norms, restrictions, and privileges come into play. Furthermore, most religious situations that are primarily gender neutral and gender inclusive are also modern and have been influenced by the second wave of feminism, if not the first wave of feminism. Therefore, "traditional" religious situations, less influenced by modernity but typically more preferred by scholars of religion, by definition, require attention to gender. It is hard to understand how we would get accurate descriptions of religious situations in which, for the participants—the subjects of our inquiry— gender determines a great deal if we ignore or suppress the data about gender. It is even stranger when scholars pretend that their descriptions nevertheless apply to the entire context. How could theory built on such descriptions accurately tell us much about religion? If religions place a great deal of emphasis on gender—and in both their practices and their theories they do—then the study of religions would also need to take gender into account. By taking gender into account, I mean presenting both accurate and complete descriptions of gender practices and norms in a religious setting, and some theoretical account for why gender is constructed as it is, both in specific contexts and in meta-theory or methodology. That gender could have been so largely ignored for so long, and still is by many of the most "successful" practitioners of our discipline, tells us more about the values driving scholarship on religion than it tells us about religion or any specific religion. There is no neutral place from which to do scholarship on religion and those who prefer to ignore gender are no more neutral than those who insist on pointing out that gender matters in most situations. It is also important to remember that pointing out that gender matters is merely part of data of gender studies. Making judgments about how the importance of gender is played out is a separate step, a separate task that in some cases may not be the business of the scholar of religion at all. As already stated, the first order of critical analysis involves evaluating the ways in which gender matters to scholars of religion, not evaluating what religions themselves do with gender. Nevertheless, one of the reasons gender may be

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ignored by many scholars is that many religious practices surrounding gender seem very unpleasant, even to non-feminist scholars. They tend to make female scholars angry or frustrated and male scholars uncomfortable, perhaps as much in anticipation of the reactions of women in their own group—scholars of religion—as due to any personal feelings of anxiety or grief occasioned by these gender practices. However, that religious gender practices may be unsavory is not a good excuse for ignoring them. Scholars of religion do not expect religions always to have positive or beneficial effects for those who participate in them. In classic pre-feminist scholarship on religion, the subject being studied was assumed to be a man or the male members of the community, though this assumption was implicit rather than explicit. No one declared that they had no interest in what women might be doing or thinking, but the result would not have been different if they had made such a declaration. When questioned as to why there was not more information about women in their accounts, these scholars usually answered that there was nothing to study— that women were not interested or involved in religion. One of the more vicious jabs that some colleagues inflicted upon those of us who taught courses on " w o m e n and religion" went something like " H o w are you going to make a whole course out of that?" I myself heard that taunt many times. However, the source of both this conclusion and this taunt is not in the subject matter but in the minds and values of the scholars. This is equally the case for the most famous phenomenological descriptions of religion and for varied "reductionistic" explanations of religion. Both operated with an enlightenment idea of a generic, universal subject, a subject who would reach the same conclusions and behave the same way because of universally valid laws that reason discovered. But that subject was also always a male, which is why feminists called this construct the "androcentric" model of humanity. One could ask why scholars so universally and unreflectively adopted this androcentric model of humanity. My hypothesis is that, though many whose basic assumptions about the world were formed by the worldview of the European enlightenment thought that they were rejecting older religious models of the world, they adopted a great deal more of the Christian-based model of the world than they realized. Insofar as religious studies methodology bases itself on these enlightenment ideas, I would argue that many of its assumptions are more remnants of the Christian worldview and less products of independent rational thought than many scholars realize. As someone who has not only rejected the Christian outlook but seriously trained in one of its religious alternatives for about half my life, I am constantly struck by how much many scholars of religion owe to Christian outlooks even while they vigorously protest their caring against religion. I regard the androcentric model of humanity as a holdover from previous models of reality that was adopted uncritically even though it had nothing in common with many of

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the values of the European enlightenment. Christianity, in the lead of monotheistic religions in this case, is very androcentric and also misogynist. It not only views men as the normal human being but also expresses a great deal of scorn and hostility for women. Enlightenment thinkers did not break free of this aspect of their Christian heritage, which makes somewhat hollow their claims about their adherence to rationality, equality, and liberty. One of the most famous "universal" generic models, prevalent in religious studies at the same time as early feminist criticisms of methodology were first being proposed, was Eliade's homo religiosus. In Eliade's model of religion and his methods for studying religion, there simply was no place for women as religious subjects to be studied as religious human beings in their own right. A glance at the table of contents of his Patterns in Comparative Religion shows this very clearly. "Woman" (not "women") appears as one of the hierophanies experienced by homo religiosus, alongside the sky, the sun, the moon, water, stones, the earth, etc. (Eliade 1963). His only other significant discussions of women or gender occurs in his work on initiation, in which he solves the problem of sex differentiation in initiation rituals by proposing that men's initiations are cultural events, while women's initiations are in the realm of nature rather than culture because they are triggered by natural events such as menstruation or childbirth (Eliade 1958, 41-47, especially 47). That women's ritualization of these "natural" events is a cultural phenomenon was not noticed, nor was it noticed that physical maturation of boys, which prompted their initiations was a "natural" event. Instead, women are noticed only when they deviate from patterns that have come to be expected as normal for men, and it is women's "deviance" not patterns of male behavior that require explanation. There is no hint of recognition that gender plays a significant role in determining how one will experience a religious phenomenon in Eliade's work. Being more empirical and less based on abstract models than phenomenological accounts of religion, one might expect that various "reductionistic" explanations of religion would be more aware of the significance of gender in religious practice. However, by and large, the same androcentrism prevails. In account after account, gender is not noticed or theorized as a significant category and, for the most part, all we learn about women is how they appear to men or affect men's lives. They enter the picture for certain purposes on certain occasions but disappear most of the time. What are the women doing when they're not interacting with men, which can be most of the time in many settings? What do women think about their lives? For the most part, these are non-questions in older explanations of religion. To ignore gender so completely while discussing women in such an androcentric manner is clearly inadequate, at least if the purpose of scholarship is to understand humans and religion, not men and religion. It is not completely surprising that such models of humanity were once common-

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place; scholars make mistakes and academic fashions come and go. Much more surprising is the fact that, once the androcentric inadequacy of such a model of humanity and the scholarship based on it was pointed out, those who suffered were those who had pointed out the problems in established methodology, not those who continued to do scholarship as if these discoveries had never been made. The illogic with which the discovery of the need to study women and gender was rejected is astonishing, even thirtyfour years after it was first voiced to me, in 1968. With exasperation in his voice, one of my graduate school mentors said, "You're intelligent! Surely you understand that the generic masculine covers and includes the feminine, making it unnecessary to study women." But the data do not support such a claim. The generic masculine could "cover and include" the feminine only in a religious situation in which there was no gender differentiation, but gender differentiation is universal in religions. How can the study of men's religious lives and thoughts "cover and include" women's religious lives and thoughts if women are routinely treated differently from men by the rules of the religion under discussion? There seems to be no contest between these two positions from the point of view of logic, and I know of no methodologically sound argument demonstrating that gender does not need to be described and theorized. Nevertheless, those who ignored gender in their scholarship fared much better by every measure of academic success than those who pointed out the importance of gender analysis. Most of the scholars who steered the field of religious studies in the direction of taking gender seriously have never held prestigious or influential academic positions. This is shocking, given that their work is widely used by professors in such departments and, according to a relatively recent report on religious studies training in the United States, a large percentage of scholars regard the development of women studies and feminism as the major new development in the field of religious studies in the last thirty years (Hart 1991). Upon reflection it is also clear that the androcentric results obtained by most pre-feminist scholarship are not the fault of either the phenomenological method or the explanatory method. There is no reason either method must be used in an androcentric manner or could not be employed to study women as subjects in their own right, making their thoughts, activities, and relationships with men, their communities and the world the focus of one's research. So something other than the data actually present in religions and the standard research methods for looking at data "out there" are responsible for both the prevailing androcentrism of most scholarship and widespread unwillingness to consider the merits of gender studies and critical feminist analyses of religion and religions. Clearly, this is an instance of methodology becoming a trap rather than a tool. The dimension of methodological inquiry that is introspective and asks

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"Why am I interested in or resistant to these data and conclusions?" was insufficiently employed. Any historian analyzing early feminist critiques of religious studies methodology will not fail to notice that those critiquing androcentric research methods were women and those replying that the generic masculine covered and included the feminine, making it unnecessary to include women in one's data base, were men. In those days before postmodernism, it would have been academic suicide to suggest that gender politics had something to do with the unwillingness of our mentors, all of whom happened to be men, to acknowledge that religious studies had used thoroughly androcentric methods and that androcentrism was inadequate and problematic. Postmodernism had not yet become the academic convention of the day and we were all graduate students and young scholars standing up against established scholars as best we could, knowing that our academic futures were on the line. With these comments we have crossed a line that scholars do not like to cross —a line that separates abstract reasoning from personal self-interest and defensiveness. Countless times I have heard colleagues, almost always male, speak disparagingly and derisively of women studies and feminism, and popular culture commonly blames feminism for everything from a shortage of nurses in North America to economic downturns. It is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish cheap belittling humor from hostility in these comments. However, it is very difficult to untangle any substantive arguments from these comments. It is equally difficult to defend oneself from these "below the belt" non-arguments. In academia, one commonly hears uncertainty as to whether women studies or gender studies really are legitimate and serious academic enterprises, which is then used to justify not promoting or hiring those who practice them and discouraging graduate students from studying women or gender until they are more established. All these hesitations seem to turn on unwillingness to regard women as fully within the human realm, whether as subjects in the religions one researches or as colleagues in one's discipline, which is why the definitions of feminism proposed earlier are so important. Equally important, many men seem to regard women studies or gender studies as being irrelevant to them. Gender strikes many men as someone else's issue, as foreign to their interests and the "real" subject matter of the discipline. Calling what we do women studies rather than gender studies could foster this impression, which is why I now emphasize that "gender studies" is a more appropriate focus. Nothing trivializes the attempt to take women seriously as subject matter for research than the impression that "gender" does not really apply to men, who are somehow seen as "normal" rather than gender specific. Men seem to prefer to see themselves as generic human beings rather than males and to see women as limited by their gender. If that were the case, one could question whether studying gender was any-

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thing but a non-essential diversion, a potentially interesting footnote. But maleness is just as much a specific condition as femaleness. It is not normal to be male and aberrant to be female, despite the legacy of generations of androcentric scholarship and patriarchal theology. One also hears more emotional reasons for dismissing or distancing oneself from gender studies. It is commonly assumed that "male bashing" is a staple of gender studies. "I just don't want to deal with a bunch of angry women complaining about what men have done to women!" is a common reaction. However, most of the female scholars I know who study gender and religion are not especially angry and I have also discovered, as a woman with some scholarly standing, that it is not possible to be mild enough to pacify all men. Behaviors and speech patterns that would be accepted without comment if done by men often are evaluated as "strident" if performed by a woman. As for the "male bashing" content of gender studies, much of the data about relations between the sexes throughout history, especially in religion, is not edifying or uplifted. However, those of us who study gender did not invent these data; we simply notice them, bringing into view what others prefer to pass over. Ignoring and refusing to see certain data do not dispose of them. In view of these realities about the politics of studying gender, which are rarely discussed in an academic forum, it is worthwhile to ask questions about reflexivity in the study of gender. Will women study different things from men and will they see the same data differently? These questions need to be answered differently, depending on context. If we could work in a genuinely gender-free, gender-neutral, and gender-inclusive academic environment, I seriously doubt that women and men would pick sex specific subject matter or see the same data differently. For them to do so would require sex-specific traits that were essential—something found in the minds of all men but no women and vice versa. There is little reason to believe in gender essentialism, however. But in a highly charged academic environment, such as the one I worked in early in my career, it is not surprising that women and men might see things differently. Furthermore, in such an environment, it is crucial that personal preferences and habitual thought patterns be openly admitted and investigated, even though scholars often like to hide behind a mask of neutrality that they do not actually possess. There is no question that my being female in the highly sexist environment of the field of religious studies and University of Chicago Divinity School steered me in the direction of women studies, against my will and better judgment. When I began to study women specifically, I soon discovered the shock of my life. Much of the denigration of women present in the literature I read was the result, not of the religions being studied, but of androcentrism on the part of scholars. It was (male) scholars who thought men were the only interesting and worthwhile members of the religion or culture under discussion, not

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the members of that religion! While there is a great deal of male dominance in many religious contexts, studying even a male dominated religion using an androcentric model of humanity seriously distorts that religion, something that I have discovered time after time with every religious context that I have investigated somewhat seriously. I had been upset that religions seemed to denigrate women so much, but I became much more upset that scholars were so completely androcentric in their methodology, and, worse yet, that they didn't even realize there was a problem with regarding men as the normal human beings and women as a deviation from that norm. Nor did they wish to have their androcentrism pointed out to them. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that I, a woman, sometimes saw things in the materials I was studying that men who had studied them many times had not seen. In fact, I was initially pushed in the direction of studying women and religion because one of my doctoral advisers, Mircea Eliade, told me I was seeing things about Australian aboriginal religion that he had not seen and he attributed my seeing to my gender. I have no idea whether he attributed my ability to see to gender essentialism or to historical conditions, though I attribute it to historical conditions. If I hadn't been working in such an androcentric, male-dominated environment, I doubt I would ever have wanted to focus much of my scholarly career on gender studies. Much later, another notable example of my seeing things differently occurred. It was reported to me that a well-known Buddhalogist said about my book Buddhism After Patriarchy, "Her interpretations of these texts are obviously correct. We've all read these texts many times. How come we never saw what she's seen?" I guess it just didn't occur to (male) scholars working from within an androcentric model of humanity that the texts could be interpreted in less patriarchal ways. What does this all mean for scholars and scholarship? Do we now assume that women have some special ability that most men don't have? Do we cultivate women scholars to peer into the hidden corners that men can't see? For the most part, I don't think so. The only situation I can think of in which being female would be a necessary part of the job description would be doing fieldwork in cultural contexts with a high degree of sexual segregation. In comparative studies in religion, that would be a fairly common situation, justifying a continuing stream of women scholars on sheerly practical grounds. Of course, I want to see women in the field of religious studies, as a matter of fairness and equity. And we need women scholars to go places where men are not allowed, just as we need the reverse situation. I believe that it required women to see through the mistakes of androcentrism, given the historical circumstances in which those critiques were first made. But I don't want to see us develop an ideology that claims men think men's thoughts and women think women's thoughts. I don't want to see gender be a women's specialty while men go about their scholarship as if

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gender didn't exist. For that to happen, all scholars need to be introspective and self-conscious about their methodological choices, exploring not just the methodology but their reasons for preferring this method to that method, this subject matter to that subject matter. Without such introspection, methodology easily slips from tool to trap.

Wider Implications about Methodology The critical lesson in the above narrative is that methodologies need to be worn lightly and shed easily. They should be tools, not ideologies, so that when materials turn up that simply can't be dealt with using old methodologies, they are not clung to. Better to let familiar androcentric research methods and models of humanity go than to continue to have no theoretical or methodological tools for handling data about women as human beings in their own right who are more than objects that appear in men's universes. We have also learned that scholars need to be introspective regarding their methodological choices. Personal self-interest probably had something to do with established scholars' resistance to something as eminently sensible as early feminists' interest in what religion means to women, how women are affected by religion, and what women do and believe religiously. As I survey the world of religious studies, I am struck by how little of the general principles articulated above have been taken in by scholars of religion. Gender studies and feminist thought in religion have some standing in religious studies today, but generally, scholars still hold whatever methodology they favor with the same tenacity as before, and, while it is now more common for theologians to state openly their working bases, those in the academic study of religion usually do not. When I read anthologies on method, I am struck by the dogmatism that often prevails. As I said earlier, most people who argue about methodology have strong opinions about religion, its source, and its value for human life. They have beliefs about religion which look suspiciously like religious beliefs. Religion should be studied sui generis; no, it should be reduced to economic, social, and psychological causes. Religion cannot adequately be studied by insiders or believers; no, scholars must submit their conclusions to the judgment of the people being represented. What amuses me about these debates, besides the seriousness with which people take these positions, is that all of these positions have some merit and are useful in some scholarly contexts. Why are we so interested in finding the "one true faith"? My facetious use of the phrase "one truth faith" points to what I think is the problem underlying many of these debates. Earlier in this paper, I suggested that scholars of religion were not as liberated from Christian

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understandings and as affirming of the values of the European enlightenment as they thought they were. I used as evidence their retention of the androcentric model of humanity, which has much more in common with classical theism than with the European enlightenment. I would argue that most of the methodological arguments current today likewise depend much more on Christian or monotheistic models than their advocates realize. In one way or another, many current methodological controversies depend on a model of religion which posits that religions claim to have a transcendent source. But why make this claim about religion? Christianity and other monotheisms do claim that religion comes from a transcendent source. Is that why so many who argue about method in the study of religion assume that religions in general claim a transcendent origin, a claim which then colors all their other conclusions about religion? What if some religions don't claim to have a transcendent source? Buddhism doesn't claim to have a transcendent source, and Taoism and Confucianism probably don't either. In fact, explicit denial of another level of being or reality transcendent to the world we can experience is central to Mahayana Buddhism, if not to all forms of Buddhism. However, this conclusion, so fundamental to Buddhism, is often misunderstood and glossed over by scholars of religion, which means its radical implications for discussions of method and theory in the study of religion are inaccessible. The situation may well be similar to the one discussed in the first part of this paper. Androcentric methods couldn't see women properly. Models of religion that assume religions claim transcendence as their basis may well be just as incomplete. And just as women were basically invisible in androcentric methods, and thus could not be conceptualized as anything except objects in men's universes, so religions that do not base themselves on claims of transcendence may be beneath the radar of theories of religion woven on the presupposition that claims of transcendence characterize religion. So what would happen if a religion that didn't posit transcendent, nonhistorical entities as its source were the model against which scholars spun their theories and methodologies? Would arguments about religion's uniqueness versus the need to explain religion as the product of mundane causes be so divisive? Would insiders and outsiders come up with such different versions of the same material? I contend that much current methodological discussion is still trying to prove that religion couldn't have validity because the claim to be a trans-historical phenomenon with a transcendent source is nonsense. But what if some religions aren't claiming to be transcendent phenomena? What if the model of religion that has prevailed in Western academic studies of religion from the beginnings of that discipline is partial, incomplete, and not accurate for some religions? Would that not change considerably the whole methodological discussion common among scholars of religion?

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Clearly, in this context, I cannot really make the above argument in anything approaching an adequate fashion. However, I am more interested in reactions to the suggestion than anything else at this point. Remember that my primary interest is in how scholars of religion use methodology, whether as a tool or a trap. Is there a reaction of out and out rejection because the suggestion seems outlandish, the way it seemed extreme to call for the study of gender and women some thirty years ago? Or is the reaction one of loose, relaxed curiosity that neither accepts nor rejects the proposal? One reaction indicates still using methodology as a covert belief system about religion, using methodology as a trap rather than a tool. The other indicates some awareness that methodologies fit best when they are loosefitting and easy to remove. They work better as tools because then they can serve the purpose of exploring hidden corners and new options in the study of religion. What else would they be good for? If I were to follow my other main recommendation for the use of methodology, I would need to ask why I might come up with these ideas and find them more than random thoughts not worth pursuing. Anyone analyzing my work would probably say, "Oh that's because she's been a Buddhist practitioner for thirty years and has let it influence her scholarship." I have no problem admitting that because I am well aware of how much some of what I'm saying sounds like advice from a Buddhist meditation manual. Under conventional views, it's okay to let the ideas and values of the European enlightenment influence one's scholarship, but any other influence is "prejudicial," which, seemingly would give other scholars license to dismiss my suggestions without examining them, just as the calls to study women as subjects in their own right were simply dismissed without being examined in an earlier time. But the source of an argument does not affect its validity or relevance. Furthermore, quite frankly, one effect of many years of Buddhist practice on my worldview is that I am much less ideological, that I trust theory much less, and the more rigidly held the theory, the less I trust it. Such intellectual flexibility and non-dogmatism is not especially an attitude I try to maintain; it simply is almost as natural to me as breathing. And I would argue, could demonstrate in another context, that such flexibility of mind offers scholars a great deal and helps the advancement of knowledge and understanding a great deal more than its opposite. Theoreticians and scholars of religion who operate with a Buddhist outlook are not taken especially seriously in the academic study of religion, precisely because of who we are. This brings us back to outsider-insider issues, to the possibility that the hyphenated word "scholar-practitioner" is not an oxymoron but is a name for one kind of participant in the discipline of religious studies (Gross 2004a). In some contexts in our world, some people simply cannot fathom that possibility or see its relevance for religious

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studies. But then, not too long ago, women in the field of religion, especially those of us who wanted to look directly into religions' norms and practices surrounding gender were equally suspect.

References Christ, Carol P., & Judith Plaskow (eds.) 1979 WomanSpirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion. New York: Harper and Row. Doniger, Wendy 1988 Other People's Myths. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eliade, Mircea 1958 Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth. New York: Harper and Row. 1963 Patterns in Comparative Religion: A Study of the Element of the Sacred in the History of Religious Phenomena. Cleveland, New York: World Publishing Company. Falk, Nancy Auer, & Rita M. Gross (eds.) 2001 Unspoken Worlds: Women's Religious Lives. Belmont (Calif.): Wadsworth Learning (first edition 1980). Gross, Rita M. 1993 Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism. Albany: State University of New York Press. 2004a "Religious Identity, Scholarship, and Teaching Religion." Pages 113-132 in Identity and the Politics of Scholarship in the Study of Religion. Edited by Jose Cabezon & Sheila Greeve Davaney. London, New York: Routledge. 2004b "Where have we been? Where do we need to go?: Women's studies and gender in religion and feminist theology." Pages 17-27 in Gender, Religion, and Diversity: CrossCultural Perspectives. Edited by Ursula King & Tina Beattie. London: Continuum. Hart, Ray L. 1991 "Religious and Theological Studies in American Higher Education." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58(4): 715-827. Taubes, Gary 2002 "What If Fat Doesn't Make You Fat?" New York Times Magazine (July 7): 22-27. Young, Kathryn 1999 "Having your Cake and Eating it too." Journal of the American Academy of Religion 67(1) (March): 167-184.

Research and Sexual Difference Elisa Heinämäki

Women's studies was my first academic love. After doing courses in comparative religion and philosophy, it was women's studies lectures and seminars that helped me to make some sense of it all. There, for the first time, I got the idea of what it could be to think in the proper sense of the word. I learned to distinguish words or concepts from things in the world. (This distinction, of course, was to become problematized again...) I realized that a thing can be approached from different perspectives, and that the perspective really matters. Also I saw some real passion in thinking, some true engagement in teaching. In my comment, I will concentrate on questions regarding the relations between scientific research and sexual difference, thus returning to questions that have fascinated me for years and that don't seem to leave me alone although I have so wished from time to time. Before continuing, a short notice on vocabulary. Professor Gross uses the word gender. For reasons I can specify if someone wants me to, I have recourse to the concept of sexual difference. This term will in fact be implicitly clarified in my presentation. For the time being, it should suffice to say that with the term sexual difference, I refer to the fact of cultural differentiation according to which human beings, their emotions and behavior—and a large part of their world of meanings—fall into two classes, masculine and feminine. The audience is free to equate the term with that of gender, if the latter is more familiar or more to their taste.—The term women's studies I use because I'm used to it and because that is what it's called here, not as a statement as to the preferable subject or object of study. As regards scientific research and sexual difference, the following—in my hearing—are the essential claims and assumptions in Professor Gross' paper. First, there is the argument: In religious phenomena, as cultural and social phenomena, sexual difference is a constantly reoccurring structure. Religions are a different thing to women and to men, because in them, women and men are given different possibilities of being. Thus, when studying religious phenomena, this difference should also, by right, be studied. Any study on religion should also be a study on sexual difference. Secondly, there is the surprised observation: Self-evident as the previous is, it has not been integrated into the study of religion as it should. Men don't seem to be interested in these questions, and when women are, their questions are often

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overlooked as unimportant. An explanation to this is given with the concept of androcentrism, meaning the assumptions according to which men represent the whole of humanity, assumptions which in a hidden way direct scientific study. These assumptions do not work only at the level of abstract conceptions. Their nature is highly charged, due to the fact that they have become entwined with men's identities. Letting go of them would mean accepting the questioning of men's social position in academia. Thirdly, there is a dream. Whereas sexual difference should always be observed in the object of study, in the academic world it shouldn't matter. Embedded in this ideal is the assumption: it is possible for the sexual difference not to matter in scientific knowledge. It is something extraneous to knowledge. While I agree with these insights to a large extent, I would like to add certain specifications. At least partly these are due to differences in culture and generation. However, I would also like to present the more serious argument, that some of the questions would profit from posing them at a slightly different level. I will comment the first of the above points very briefly, before going in a bit more detail into the second and third questions, those of why and in what way sexual difference matters in the practices of studying and of doing scientific research, and whether it matters as regards knowledge as such. Should all research be research on sexual difference? Is any question also a question of this difference? This has puzzled me since my first acquaintance with women's studies, especially when confronting views that named this question even the question of questions, the most fundamental question, at least to our age. Now, having ruminated on this over and over again, I would suggest the following. When studying human phenomena, it is most advisable to sharpen one's eyes onto the differences between sexes: the ways in which power is distributed between them, the possibilities available to and strategies used by each one of them, briefly, the ways in which it is different to be a man or a woman, as well as how these ways reinforce or challenge each other. These I see as very useful preliminary questions in any study on human culture. One shouldn't, however, close the possibility that this set of questions may not be the key to the phenomenon in case—some other considerations may prove more fruitful. From a slightly different angle: a question can be a question of sexual difference on different levels and different depths. I refer to my own study as an example. I study the thinking of a French twentieth-century writer and philosopher, Georges Bataille, in the context of secularization and of eclipse and re-evaluation of Christian anthropology. Now, with my background in women's studies, it is clear to me that the problematic subject that emerges in his thinking is a masculine subject, suffering from symptoms of a historically privileged yet in many ways delimiting masculine subjectivity. A preconception of the import of sexual difference thus guides my study. Yet the masculinity of a certain

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conception of subject is not the central focus of my study (an option that would lead me to concentrate on the construction and meaning of the masculinity of the said subject). This sort of thing has already been made, with fascinating and convincing results, to a number of thinkers and thought systems. Rather than to prove in detail that Mister Bataille is to be added in the collection of thinkers with male bias, I find it more interesting to explore how Western thinking at one stage sought certain immanent transcendence without God. Nevertheless, in my exploration I don't want to forget that the twilight of gods is very much the twilight of Man. Let us now move on to the second question, that of academic resistance to the insights provided by women's studies, and of sexual difference in the scientific practice and community—of which the said resistance is a part. Here I notice a certain difference between my experiences and those of Professor Gross. The university I entered already had a specific institute for women's studies. While insights provided by women's studies were something new and exciting, I have never experienced a taboo on research questions concerning women or sexual difference. I would guess that nowadays a fair amount of master's theses done in religious studies are inspired by women's studies. Despite this, university as a community of study and research is not sexually neutral—here my experience converges with that of Professor Gross. This non-neutrality is something that is, to me, quite evident, yet something extremely hard to pin down in a situation where the most glaring inequities are far gone. It is also almost embarrassing to talk about, given how equal we all are. Yet: why do I get the impression that women worry so much more about their studies, why do they feel insecure, get depressed and so on? Why does the option of taking up scientific research still seem more problematic to women? Is it really the case, like a distinguished male professor stated in an overheard conversation, that only the toughest women survive in the post-graduate academic world? We could try to account for these phenomena with the concept of androcentrism. It would mean that despite appearances, on some deep level of academic unconscious, male-privileging opinions and representations continue to have an upper hand, helping men to keep up their self-esteem and causing women to have to fight over recognition. I don't think this is mistaken. But still questions remain: why are these so deep-seated? Why does it matter so much? Aren't ideas and representations something we can leave aside, once we've become aware of them and found them problematic? Should we simply accuse men because they stubbornly stick to their inherited privileges? What this really comes down to is, I think, the question of the nature of sexual difference. A Finnish philosopher, Sara Heinämaa, has suggested that this phenomenon should primarily be seen not in terms of the culture versus

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nature dichotomy. The question is not: essence or construction? Drawing from phenomenological insights, she says that sexual difference should be seen in terms of style. It is a differentiation in the style of being. If one wants to preserve a contact with the more usual terms of the debate, style could be defined as an open-ended and mutable essence, more of a kind of family resemblance than a strict category. To borrow a concept from Professor Allen's paper, recognizable styles can be situated at the level of constituted givens, embodied features of culture, that can in principle be worked on and changed. Style is what keeps together various ways of being, doing and relating to others. It is a certain unity of gestures, manners, language etc., a unity that can be sensed through variations, and it only exists in its countless repetitions. Most importantly, there is no being without a style. To be something is to be somehow, to be in a certain way, to relate to things and to other beings in certain manners. Whilst there is no being without style, without the how, there is no more being that is anyhow—to whom all manners of being would be available. Style is always a certain differentiation. As to us human beings, one central differentiation is that to masculine and feminine ways of doing and being (a differentiation which by no means coincides with biological division into men and women and which doesn't mean, that everybody would be either/or). These culturally specific styles, I would say, can have somewhat different contents and emphases in different contexts. There are contexts where they are passionately deconstructed, and this may be the direction where we are going. But in the university, I would claim it still is the case that masculine style has the upper hand. Those whose styles of being and doing—in this case, most importantly of arguing, socializing, thinking and writing— are more masculine, are likely to have it easier, because the context supports these styles and gives less occasions of self-suspicion. The place of those who are what they are in more feminine ways is less obvious. It is often held dangerous to give the concepts of masculinity and femininity any content. This is considered reinforcing stereotypes, which is usually damaging to women. At this risk, I present a few traits I regard as essential, in order to give my presentation more content. And I want to emphasize, the following are not meant to be psychological descriptions and definitely not diagnosis. They are not inner states but dispositions visible on a bodily and intersubjective level, dispositions that have parallels and support in cultural representations. What is masculine? Assumption of authority combined with what I would call hidden self-centeredness. It seems to be a specific masculine ability to treat authorities with irreverence and at the same time assume it to oneself. This can be done by appropriating others' thoughts for one's purposes, without necessarily giving those others the credit. In the language in which this is done, the self is hidden, yet one gets

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the credit of passing as someone who knows.—What is feminine, then? An interrogative mode as opposed to affirmative. An obvious worry of faithfulness towards the objects of study, towards methodologies used, or towards oneself, one's ownmost experience. Open self-centeredness in the form of taking things personally and talking about one's own experience. Which, as we all know, is not the way to proceed in order to gain the position of a knowing subject. If the phenomenon of sexual difference is conceptualized at the level of style, I think it is easier to understand the problems many women face. If one's style is very feminine, it is no wonder one faces difficulties in making one's voice heard—no wonder, even, if one is scared mute. The concept also allows us to understand, why it is not so easy to change things. Style is not something that is added on an inner self. Style is who we are. We cannot just leave it aside for the benefit of a more authentic, more human encounter. The change is not impossible, however. Styles can communicate, they can become more flexible; they can learn from each other. But this requires an effort from all parties. The last of the points I brought out in Professor Gross' presentation was the dream of sexually neutral knowledge, and the idea that sexual difference is something extraneous to scientific knowledge per se. Based on the idea that sexual difference should be regarded as differentiation of style, I would say: knowledge—that only exists in thinking, arguing, writing—always has a style, but no particular style as such establishes something as true knowledge—nor prevents it from being such. This means, for instance, that we should not be deceived—to be intimidated—to regard something a good work or a good argument by virtue of the authoritative tone alone. And this means, that those women who so wish can learn to be good scholars in the feminine, and maybe also develop feminine or no longer so feminine modes of irreverence.

When is Methodology a Trap? Kimmo Ketola

First of all, I want to make it clear that I thoroughly agree with some of the main points raised in Professor Gross's paper. If I understood correctly, the main argument put forward is that 1) method should be a research tool rather than an ideology. I could not agree more wholeheartedly. I also agree with her assessment that this is easier said than done. "Methodological orthodoxies develop," as she puts it. Furthermore, one could hardly disagree with Gross when she deplores the situation by saying that "orthodoxy is usually lethal to productive inquiry." Indeed it is! The second key point advanced by Gross, and with which I agree, is that 2) one should conceptually distinguish the descriptive and normative approaches to religious materials that are found in feminist scholarship. To quote Gross: "describing what religions do with gender is the work of women studies or gender studies; expressing dissatisfaction with or approval of what is found or suggesting alternative gender arrangements is the work of feminism" (see above p. 152). This is in line with academic study of religion, which insists that one cannot evaluate one religion in terms of another religion, or any ideology for that matter. This is a good strategy, although, given her premises, I do not know how that separation can really be argued for, since she also wants to maintain that "there is no neutral place from which one can objectively study religion" (p. 150). But I don't want to go into that now. Thirdly, she argues that 3) both the phenomenological and the explanatory methods can be employed to make women's religiosity the focus of one's research. I agree completely. In fact, a number of interesting questions concerning the exercise of power and the structures of authority in religion can be raised through such a focus. There is evidently a lot of uncharted territory to be explored in the study of religion.

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Fourthly, there is a strong plea in her paper for 4) a deeper questioning of the prevailing model of religion in academic study. I also sympathize with the aim of dismantling our inherited concept of religion. As she puts the question: "What if the model of religion that has prevailed in Western academic studies of religion from the beginnings of that discipline is partial, incomplete, and not accurate for some religions?" (p. 164) This issue is of course of fundamental importance to our discipline and in urgent need of some serious rethinking. Such questioning is very welcome—from whatever source it comes from. However, what I am going to do now, is not to dwell further on our points of agreement, which I think are substantial, but rather move on to the points in which I disagree with her. In fact, I am quite suspicious of the way she argues for these points. I am therefore going to put forward some criticisms of the broader structure of her argument. Since space here is rather limited, I will limit myself to one single issue that has to do with the first point of agreement I mentioned. The questions I want to approach are: When and how do methodologies actually develop into "traps"? How can we most effectively identify what she calls "methodological rigidity"? Again I must emphasize that I agree on the conclusion that methodological rigidity is "an impediment rather than an aid to scholarship" (p. 153). However, it seems to me that what we understand by the concept may be quite different. What she seems to mean is that methodological rigidity takes place whenever scholars hold onto their chosen methods for personal reasons. What I want to argue is that, further than this, there are characteristic forms of argument, or characteristic epistemologies, which make methodologies rigid independent of who, and for whatever personal reason, is holding on to them. What I mean by 'rigid methodology' is simply a case when method is closed in such a way as to disallow outside criticism. If one cannot meaningfully discuss the merits and dismerits of a particular methodology with its adherents, it generally follows that it cannot be changed, amended or discarded and is therefore legitimately called "rigid." That is to say, when a methodological line of reasoning develops into a closed system which is beyond rational discussion or criticism, it is, according to my definition, rigid, and thereby also unscholarly or unscientific, whether anyone actually holds on to it "rigidly" or not. It is from this point of view that certain doubts arose in my mind regarding what Gross herself has to say in her paper. She states that one cannot make a good methodological argument against what early feminist scholars of religion wanted to do, which is to include women and gender in the data base studied by scholars of religion, (p. 155)

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The statement looks innocent enough, especially if the latter part of the sentence is true. Two things require comment, however. First, is this really all that the early feminist scholars wanted to do? In other words, could it be the case that the so called "established scholars" are really resisting some other features of critical feminist scholarship than the simple inclusion of the purely descriptive project of gender study into the standard scholarly repertoire of methods? If it turns out to be the case that the project of descriptive gender studies was never the real issue, or the only issue, the claim in the first part of the sentence is more easily falsified. Secondly, irrespective of whether or not descriptive gender studies has been the real issue, the first part of the sentence is still rather dangerous in that it in fact rules out all rational criticism. It is all the more dangerous if it is extended to mean that there simply cannot be any meaningful methodological argument against any sort of feminist scholarship. It is instructive to see what happens when one rules out the very possibility of rational methodological counter-arguments. First of all, it tends to invite ad hominem arguments. For instance, Gross argues that since the blame lies not in the data nor in the standard research methods for looking at data, something other than these are responsible for the widespread unwillingness to consider the merits of gender studies and critical feminist analyses of religion. In other words, since there really cannot be any rational counterargument against feminist methodologies, the opposition can only come from personal, irrational sources. Gross makes the hypothesis that "[pjersonal self-interest probably had something to do with established scholars' resistance to something as eminently sensible as early feminists' interest in what religion means to women..." (p. 163). Other than personal selfinterest, Gross lists such motives as personal defensiveness, feelings of threat, ideological and political resistance, the felt unpleasantness of the religious practices surrounding gender and even some sort of crypto-Christianity. As one can see, from the statement that one's own position cannot be rationally opposed, there is only a short step to giving oneself a license to infer as to the psychological make up of the critic. From the single fact that someone is resistant to feminist methodology, one is prone to make inferences about the faulty personal character of the critic. Once this step is made, that is to say, once the opposition is attributed to the character of the opponent (rather than to a rationally held opinion), one is of course permitted to ignore anything the critic actually says. Thus there follows the intellectual stagnation of such discourse. Furthermore, once the blame is placed on the character of the critic, the only cure that can be proposed for the situation is naturally ideological reeducation, or consciousness raising. Now, all these types of argument—the ruling out of rational criticism of one's position, ad hominem attacks on the character of the critic, and counsels

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of self-inspection offered for the critic—are all indicative of methodological rigidity. There is really no legitimate place in such discourse to raise any sort of criticism. Indeed, Gross herself states that she is only interested in the types of reaction her paper provokes. She does not seem to leave any legitimate space for criticisms to be made. To conclude, then, what I want to say is that if—and this is a big if—my assessment of her position is correct, then it means that she herself is offering us a very rigid form of methodology. This conclusion, if true, in turn falsifies her statement that there simply cannot be any good methodological criticism against "something as eminently sensible" as what feminist scholars want to do. There indeed is: the proposed methodological line of reasoning is inadmissible in scholarly terms. The epistemological approach is more characteristic of religious and ideological discourse than strictly academic. Thus there arises a great temptation to launch inadmissible forms of counterarguments, such as—to paraphrase Gross—'feminist scholars of religion themselves may not be as liberated from Christian understandings and as affirming of the values of European enlightenment as they thought they were' (cf. above pp. 163-164) —although, strictly speaking, these sorts of arguments do not belong to scholarly discussion.

Skyhooks and Toeholds in the Study of Religion1 Teemu Taira

Rita M. Gross writes about methodological traps and tools. Methods are traps when people become fixated on the specific method and cannot study what it hides, and tools when they are constructed self-reflectively and used open-mindedly. I talk about this distinction not by calling them traps and tools but skyhooks and toeholds by following Richard Rorty.2 Basically I am in agreement with Gross about the importance of critical studies concerning gender in religion but I may disagree on what kind of model we construct for the critical study of religion. Before going into that I want to defend the 'toehold' model against Wiebe's exclusive model even though Wiebe is correctly claiming that we need theorizing in the study of religion.

Skyhooks If I am getting it right, the main difference between Donald Wiebe and Rita Gross is that Gross is more on the side of critical theory where the connection between science and society is important and Wiebe is seeing these kinds of views as leading us to practicing non-objective science. In his paper, Wiebe needs only one endnote to illuminate his understanding of critical theory for being non-science. I am not trying to present deep going counterarguments in this presentation but there are many possibilities to outline answers to Wiebe and I will pick up two. 1 2

I would like to thank all the participants of the seminar for their comments and especially Donald Wiebe for challenging my ideas. In his book Objectivity, Relativism and Truth, Rorty (1991, 14) uses the word skyhook as indicating an attempt to rise above historical contingencies, to 'language-independent determinate reality.' I will use skyhook as a metaphor of trust to science outside power relations (historical contingencies) and toehold as a metaphor of an attitude which takes self-reflective account on (a) what effects the scholarly work might have in the world and (b) what kind of tools scholars are using. Clearly this is not completely identical with Daniel Dennett's writings about 'skyhooks and cranes' which are probably better known than Rorty's 'skyhooks and toeholds.' Because for many scholars Rorty is like a red cloth for a bull, I want to stress that although I make use of Rorty, I do not share his views in general.

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Firstly, we can suggest that scientific knowledge is always connected to power relations. Furthermore, scientific knowledge is sometimes an instrument of control. Because knowledge can make people to act, knowledge —as a social or political force—becomes part of the situation which is under study. Different studies made by Adorno, Horkheimer, Foucault etc. might work as examples of how institutions of knowledge generate social power. They suggest that we should see our work as having different kinds of effects; we should not see the limits of our work in traditional theory but in theory which theorizes the relation between science and non-science. Secondly, we might say that we have so much cultural knowledge, cultural prejudice—concerning gender, for example—that by trying to reflect on how they affect our study is only making our studies more objective and more rational. Sandra Harding might work as an example of this standpoint. To make a long and difficult story short and too simple, Sandra Harding wants to challenge and change our understanding of 'objectivity' and in this sense Wiebe is an advocate of weak objectivity and Gross might be seen as an advocate of strong objectivity, even though it sounds counter-intuitive. Or, we might say that when Wiebe is sticking in the enlightenment tradition, Gross is closer to Horkheimer & Adorno (1973) who want to 'enlighten the enlightenment' and not to reject it—for example by suggesting that we get a fuller picture of religions when we take gender into account. These two models are for those who feel that they have to defend critical theory as science. But, instead of defending science or critical theory we can understand science as open playground where arguments, thoughts and even values encounter and interact—and respect it in that form, without monotheism or monopoly of one theory with hidden values. I am not saying that so-called skyhook-theories, which claim to be outside power relations, are wrong, unuseful or uninteresting. All I am saying is that we need more toeholds for theorizing than all-encompassing skyhook-theory. This does not mean that the study of religion as intellectual work is the same as every other cultural practice or that it can abandon cognitive control and rigor. This means that the study of religion is a form of cultural production where authority does not equal dogma but a possibility to respond, a possibility to challenge, a possibility to map our reality (see Grossberg 1992, 19). So, when Rita Gross asks "what purpose the study of religion fulfills" (p. 149), I answer from my limited perspective in the words of Michel Foucault (2000b, 450) that one purpose of critical study might be "to describe that which is while making it appear as something that might not be, or that might not be as it is," 3 that is, describing religions, showing how religions are constructed 3

" I would say also, about the work of the intellectual, that it is fruitful in a certain way to describe that which is while making it appear as something that might not be, or that might not be as it is." Zygmunt Bauman has pointed out in the same

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from heterogeneous bits and parts and connections, and sometimes even showing h o w things might be otherwise.

Toeholds and Contexts N o w it has become clear that I am drifting into the camp of critical study. Let me start this toehold-part with an example. When I asked from my students 'How the identities of a researcher might affect on the study of religion?' all students answered that it is important to see h o w your gender and your religion might affect how you do your research. To my surprise, nobody suggested that in addition to gender and religion, such things as class and race might be important too. This example shows that sensitivity to gender has grown. Teachers, lecturers, researchers and professors have done a good job. But, if nobody can notice other factors, such as race or class, I think there is something wrong in the picture. My suggestion is that instead of stressing the gender only, we should be contextsensitive—whatever the effective contexts might be in addition to gender: class, race, religion and also choosing a theory, choosing method, where we publish, h o w w e write and to w h o m we write. It is all about decisions. It is all about decisions which are not done individually or taken in absolute void or not even in context but contexts themselves are produced by cultural decisions—gender has become a context that matters. Another aspect of this point is that every decision is also exclusion: every decision precludes a series of possibilities (Zizek 2000, 19). Focussing mainly on gender we are sometimes excluding other contexts. The real task is not to choose gender beforehand or doing the impossible by choosing all contexts but to find relevant contexts, contexts that matter in our study (how we study, what we study). Gender is often important as Rita Gross among others has shown us. Even though, it does not have to be the prototype of contemporary critical study of religion.

manner that critical theory (in a broad sense) is "the kind of theorizing which accepts that, first, 'things are not necessarily what they seem to be', and second, that 'the world may be different from what it is'" (Bauman & Tester 2001, 33). However, it is true that Foucault is writing about the work of intellectual and according to Wiebe, this position should be kept away from the work of scientific scholars of religion. However, Foucault —and I suppose we can add Rita M. Gross and also Douglas Allen to this list—is not making the distinction and that is why it is possible to read this as concerning anybody who is working in the academic framework whether he or she considers him/herself as intellectual or scientist. Personally, I do not see the utility of the distinction made so strongly by Wiebe and I think the distinction is mainly rhetorical.

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Gross says that she could argue that "scholarship which takes gender into account is 'better' than scholarship which does not" (p. 151). In this context, I want to keep the words of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in mind: "The question...is not whether the status of women, or those at the bottom, is better or worse, but the type of organization from which that status results" (Deleuze & Guattari 1998, 210). That is why I would like to see the study of religion connected to cultural studies, which would mean analyzing religious and cultural practices in relations of power and relations of force. Gender studies or critical race studies would be only subsets of broader umbrella-term critical and contextual cultural studies, which is not highlighting gender or race or class but choosing relevant contexts contextually and trying to make sense of the organization that produces relations in religions. This position is also made by some feminists who see the focussing on one context (identity or gender) too restricted and criticize its inability to handle with multiple identities and power relations effective in religions.4 One important question is, then, how the contexts are chosen and constructed. What is the 'image of context' a scholar is leaning on?5 The image of context utilized by Gross seems to be (1) gender in religion, or (2) relation between religion and gender system. In the first case, context is (implicitly) conceptualized as internal relations of religion where scholar focusses on gender in religion. In the second case, context consists of the elements surrounding and traversing religion and now scholar approaches cultural gender system and religion in relation. This might go little off the target, but my idea, differing from Gross, is that we should think the study of religion as a science of relationships, where religion gets its identity in the relations with other discursive and material contexts. (3) Thus, religions might be seen as crossroads of multiple practices and multiple effects, including gender system but not limited to it. In this case, context is a rhizome without a center. Gender and religion are nodes in the rhizome.

4

5

Black feminist bell hooks works as an example of this standpoint. This argument should be read as a statement in the construction of the project. It does not mean that everybody should take every possible context into account in one's research. There is no space to explicate my ideas concerning the problem of context and contextuality. Suffice to say that I am following mostly Lawrence Grossberg's 'radical contextualism' which is strongly related to the 'rhizome model of context' articulated by Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari (1998). On the general problematic of contextualism, books by Roy Dilley (1999) and Urpo Kovala (2001) are good starting points for understanding contemporary trends of contextualism in anthropology, philosophy, literary studies and cultural studies. As far as I know, there are no accounts to the problem of context in the study of religion but the problems are basically the same as in anthropology and cultural studies.

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The third image of context does not exclude hermeneutical or phenomenological approaches but it claims that intentionality stressed by Douglas Allen, while being important context or anchor for constructing meanings is far from a sufficient context for the study of religion. The tracing of intentional experiences or structures of intentionality never fully captures the complexities of linguistic formulations of believers. That is why we need approaches which focus on (a) the possibility of systematically distorted communication (theories on ideology formulated by many Marxist and postmarxist theoreticians), (b) play of discourses and their relation to nondiscursive (discourse theories formulated by Foucault and others) and (c) deconstruction (for example Derrida's 'double reading'). Probably everyone can continue the list by his or her favorite branch of critical theory. According to my opinion, studies on intentions should be read through a critical eye by asking what is done by understanding intentions. David Chidester presents a great example of explicit suggestion how to use knowledge gained from the study of religion. British theologian Frederick Dennison Maurice wrote in 1847 that knowledge was useful for a nation "engaged in trading with other countries, or in conquering them, or in keeping possession of them" (Chidester 2000, 423). In this example the study of religion is seen useful both to one nation's control over others (state power) and for spreading and intensifying trade (economic power, capitalism). Unfortunately, many scholars will read this example as a thing of the past. But currently the work of scholars may continue this tradition implicitly. In this third model we will not stick to the first or second model but map the relations between our focus that is religion, and gender, race, class, economic, political or some other contexts. We do not have to choose gender as our context beforehand but we choose relevant contexts and relevant methods for our study according to our questions. And these decisions are never done individually or in a scientific void but in a complex discursive and material space where we have to or should think the effects of our decisions. This all means that this critical-contextual approach is more an ethos than a method. Critical study can be understood as toeholding ethos that must be connected to using theoretical and methodological tools. In this model, gender is not given relevant context, but it may become as such depending on your project. Not all connections are equal or equally important. In this sense it is sometimes frustrating to hear questions like 'what about gender relations?' by feminists, 'what about class relations?' by Marxists, 'what about race?' by race theorists, if those questions are made without knowing what the actual questions, anchors and relevant contexts in the study are. It is possible to say that this kind of critical and contextual study of religion have no method of its own. But it has commitments or toeholds which lead us to choose proper method and proper theory to questions at hand and connect it to the tradition of the study of religion. Thus, according to this

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view, religion might be best seen as an abstraction of wider cultural dynamic. Therefore, we should not make strong statements about androcentrism of religion by looking at theologies, claiming for example that monotheistic religions are essentially more exclusive, more androcentric or more misogynist but by looking at religious practices—understood as a way of thinking and acting at once—in relation to other cultural processes (see Gross 1999 and her article above). Even though it is always possible to say that it is not possible to take all contexts into account or that one wants to focus on this context instead of that context, I believe that the problem arises precisely when one ends up with statements about the essential misogynism of monotheistic religions. According to my opinion, no religion is essentially misogynist or androcentric and when they are such in some specific historical situation, I believe it is a question of religion's connection to broader gender system, male dominance, mode of production, hegemonic struggles and so on, not a question of religion as such. My idea is that more often religion should be analyzed in the midst of relations and networks of social forces which give it its identity and therefore also constitutes gender and other hierarchies in religions. This is not a ready-made method, but an image of thought, an image of how to approach religion and how to construct methodology. It does not give an answer beforehand to the question 'What is your theory or what is your method?' Instead, it answers: "Tell me what your question is, and I will tell you what theory I think might be a useful starting place" (Grossberg 2000, 45). In practice, sociology of religion and anthropology of religion are often useful partners in developing this position and putting it into practice. Before going into the last section and leaving skyhooks and toeholds aside, let me notice that the title 'Skyhooks and toeholds in the study of religion' comes from the highly controversial philosopher Richard Rorty (1991, 14) who once wrote that "We should not try to do the impossible: we should not look for skyhooks, but only for toeholds." In this case I agree with Rorty and I think this summarizes nicely my point, that is, seeing the study of religion and all science as part of social formation, and doing it with a context-sensitive and power-sensitive ethos—whatever its methods are. All this should be done in connection to the tradition of the study of religion by rethinking and rewriting its past and future again and again.

'Critical' as Billboard, 'Critique' as Problematization There is (at least) one more important question left. Ilkka Pyysiäinen once asked in some seminar that after all, what is critique in critical study. Then I

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answered that it is only a term used for communicating with those who find themselves doing study of religion in the camps of technical and practical interest of knowledge. To give a little bit more communicative answer, I would say that it is a way of studying religion which aims at moving power relations by describing and analyzing, deconstructing and reconstructing multiple contexts of religions. It is not dependent on a certain method. As Zygmunt Bauman points out, doing critical theory "does not determine the substance of your theory. Substantially, critical theories may and do differ widely" (Bauman & Tester 2001, 33). But it is fair to say that some methods are more appropriate to the critical study of religion. For example, such 'methods' or 'theoretical camps' as deconstruction, feminism, post-marxism, poststructuralism, cultural studies, postcolonialism and some branches of postmodernism are often suitable for the purposes of critical study and when used in the study of religion, they are often connected to ethnography. As Lawrence Grossberg has noticed, "either extreme—theory without sufficient empirical work, empirical work with no adequate theorizing— abandon the project of cultural studies [and the study of religion, I would like to add] and I want to object to both" (Wright 2001,145). So far so good, but what I shall try to say is what critical study is not. Let me use the example presented by John Phillips: There are many books, for both general and specifically academic markets, that might easily be described as non-critical. What this means is that they present knowledge that does not require any complicated questions about its status or role as knowledge. Books that tell you how to develop certain skills and that provide an appropriate level of awareness require little more than clear presentations of methods and facts. For instance, successful organic gardening would require an awareness of the appropriate techniques and materials necessary for practising good gardening. And it would depend to an extent on knowing how to cultivate an ecosystem in tune with the seasons, how to produce fertilizers from natural waste and knowing about the cyclic nature of the soil's fertility. This knowledge can be given without a lot of philosophizing about the ethical preference for organic gardening over gardening that makes use of chemical pesticides. (Phillips 2000, 2) Phillips clearly suggests that for the study, in order to be critical, it has to reflect and question its status as knowledge and tackle with ethical or ethicopolitical preferences. Other kinds of studies are not critical. In this sense, critical study is self-reflective. It tries to be conscious of the social and discursive nature of knowledge-producing practice and sees the whole practice tangled up in complex power relations where no one can be completely

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innocent or purely apolitical. This is the guideline for keeping the feet of scholars on the ground. This attitude, I believe, is becoming more common in the study of religion as well. If we read for example one of the best recent and analytic contributions to the field, Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, we find the following quotes: In actuality, the social-scientific study of ritual is no less vested in its interests than theological study of ritual; the difference lies not in whether it is invested but in where the investment is located. (Grimes 2000, 263) (...) the central challenge presented to discourse theory is to find some way to retain a critical stance towards the object level of discourse (the data of religion) while remaining reflexively self-critical about the meta-level of discourse (the study of the data of religion). (...) So we must reject the notion that science mirrors the world, and even bear in mind that scholarly products are of the same substance as the cultural phenomena we study: they are both, finally, discourse. (Murphy 2000, 405, 407) However these questions might be answered, it is clear that a critical academic study of religion must be self-reflexive and self-critical of the political implications of its theory and practice. (Chidester 2000, 432) To take a stance in this complex world without recognizing that it is problematic is either religious, narrow-minded or naive. Yet to refuse to take any stand at all puts us out of business, it renders us silent. (Gill 2000, 458) But, is it still possible to say that basically every good study is critical in some sense because knower knows how s/he knows by knowing what theories and methods are used in the study (see Ang 1996, 36)? Another problem for defining critique and critical is that the terms are so deeply based on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. When Foucault was asked 'What are the contemporary tasks of a critique?/ he answered 'What do you mean by that word? Only Kantian can give a general meaning to the word 'critique.' 6 6

"— Quelles sont les täches de la critique aujourd'hui? —Qu'entendez-vous par ce mot? Seul un kantien peut attribuer un sens general au mot «critique»" (Foucault 1994, 815). The interview continues with a question about foundational critique. Foucault answers that he means by that a critique of the effects of dogmatism in knowledge and the effects of knowledge in dogmatism. " — Hier, vous avez dit que votre pensee est fondamentalement critique. Que signifie un travail critique?—Je dirais: c'est une tentative de devoiler le plus possible, c'est-a-dire le plus profondement et generalement, tous les effets de dogmatisme lies au savoir, et tous les effets de savoir lies au dogmatisme" (Foucault 1994, 815-816).

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If we accept these views, we might better not talk about critical study in a strict sense but only as an ethos or a billboard in our communication system, to be our guide and to lead our way in a certain direction without a pre-ordered endpoint. If speaking about critique as only a billboard, critique cannot mean criticizing religions or some form of domination from a fixed ethico-political, theoretical or methodological position. Ethical and political positions and answers are formed contextually when the form of critique is more problematization with the tools and the toeholds I have suggested than giving complete and correct ethical or political answers based on a transcendental or quasi-transcendental foundation (for example on some explicit ethical principle). In this case, I think I differ slightly from Gross. As Foucault (2000a, 114) says, problematization is not a methodical examination which ends up rejecting all but one valid, just and definitive solution. It has more to do with questioning, posing problems and making people feel obliged to respond although the answers may never be complete. While I do think that multiple approaches in the study of religion are possible and even desirable, the point made out by Gross among others, I believe that with this kind of critical and contextual approach the study of religion makes a difference. Or at least it is supposed to make a difference.

References Ang, Ien 1996 Living Room Wars: Rethinking Media Audiences for a Postmodern Routledge.

World. London:

Bauman, Zygmunt, & Keith Tester 2001 Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman. Cambridge: Polity Press. Braun, Willi & Russell T. McCutcheon (eds.) 2000 Guide to the Study of Religion. London: Cassell. Chidester, David 2000 "Colonialism." Pages 423-437 in Braun & McCutcheon 2000. Deleuze, Gilles, & Felix Guattari 1998 A Thousand Plateaus: Minnesota Press.

Capitalism

and Schizophrenia.

Dilley, Roy (ed.) 1999 The Problem of Context. New York: Berghahn Books. Foucault, Michel 1994 Dits et ecrits 1954-1988. II. Paris: Editions Gallimard.

Minneapolis: University of

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2000a Ethics. Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, volume 1. Edited by James D. Faubion. London: Penguin. 2000b Aesthetics. Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, volume 2. Edited by James D. Faubion. London: Penguin. Gill, Sam D. 2000 "Play." Pages 451-462 in Braun & McCutcheon 2000. Grimes, Ronald R. 2000 "Ritual." Pages 259-270 in Braun & McCutcheon 2000. Gross, Rita M. 1999 "Religious Diversity: Some Implications for Monotheism." Cross-Currents 49(3), Fall 1999. Grossberg, Lawrence 1992 We Gotta Get Out of This Place: Popular Conservatism and Postmodern Culture. New York: Routledge. 2000 "Contexts of Cultural Studies?" Pages 27-49 in Inescapable Horizon: Culture and Context. Edited by Sirpa Leppänen & Joel Kuortti. Jyväskylä: Research Unit for Contemporary Culture. Horkheimer, Max, & Theodor Adorno 1973

Dialectic of Enlightenment. Translated by John Cumming. London: Allen Lane.

Kovala, Urpo 2001 Anchorages of Meaning: The Consequences of Contextualist Meaning Production. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Approaches

to Literary

Murphy, Tim 2000 "Discourse." Pages 396-408 in Braun & McCutcheon 2000. Phillips, John 2000 Contested Knowledge: A Guide to Critical Theory. London: Zed Books. Rorty, Richard 1991 Objectivity, Relativism and Truth. Philosophical Papers, volume 1. New York: Cambridge University Press. Wright, Handel Kashope 2001 "'What's Going On?' Larry Grossberg on the Status Quo of Cultural Studies: An Interview." Cultural Values 5(2): 133-162. Zizek, Slavoj 2000 The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology. London: Verso.

Response Rita Μ . G r o s s

Though the aspects of my paper that dealt with women studies and feminism received the most attention from the respondents, I want to emphasize that my paper really is not about feminism or women studies. It is about methodology and uses the emergence of women studies and reactions to that event as a lens through which to reflect on methodology, especially on how the unconscious assumptions and views about reality under-girding the methodology prevent scholars from seeing data that moves beneath the radar of their methods, so to speak. I think that women studies in religion and critical feminist perspectives are well enough established by now that little is served by arguing about the validity of those approaches any more. There are those who ignore or resist the perspectives even today, but I, for one, am no longer devoting primary energy to making a case for the validity of women studies or critical feminist stances. I think that by now they are generally accepted as part of the postmodern, post-colonial wave of insights into the relationship between knowledge and power. These various disciplines explore how a small group of people who possess the power to determine what counts as important knowledge can write whole groups of people out of history and science, as if they never existed or never produced knowledge. Such scholarship is, of necessity, somewhat "messier" than scholarship that proceeds by enlightenment ideals of objectivity, but it is also considerably more accurate, in my view. Thus I find Teemu Taira's comments about the "weak objectivity" of the more enlightenment-driven modes of scholarship, in contrast to the "strong objectivity" of critical feminists, post-modernists, post-colonialists and others quite interesting. The response by which I am most puzzled is that by Kimmo Ketola in comments that seem to me to disallow that whole investigation into the relationship between knowledge and power with the claim that investigating the self-interests of scholars is somehow "off limits" and not scholarly or scientific because it consists only of "ad hominem" arguments. On the contrary, I would argue that it is possible to engage in rational discussion of how power warps or limits knowledge. Certainly there can be rational counter-arguments to a claim that a group's power has had something to do with its unwillingness or inability to "see" certain data. Such arguments and

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counter-arguments are quite routine in some scholarship that deals with politically sensitive topics. Nor is it off limits to suggest that certain investigators miss certain data because they have no interest in seeing it. This kind of scrutiny is done in every other facet of post-modern and post-colonial investigation, so why should it be disallowed in the case of early women studies scholarship and critical feminist thought? I cannot help wondering if the same comments would be made if the methodological example I use had dealt with class, race, or colonialism rather than gender. Furthermore, I argued extensively that methodological self-reflection must always involve investigating on what basis I know what I think I know and pushing to make hidden assumptions clearer. Therefore, I am quite surprised by the comment that explorations of the power dimensions of scholarship makes my method "very rigid," especially given my repeated admonitions that methodologies should be "worn lightly and shed easily." As Elisa Heinämäki points out in her response, the academy has changed greatly since the late 1960's and early 1970's when I first began to do women studies and critical feminist thought. For those who did not experience the resistance and ridicule we received, it is probably difficult to imagine the academy being so unacademic, and it is important that such history not be lost. There is tremendous pressure to suppress awareness of how much more limited were women's options only a generation ago—let alone a hundred years ago. Historical scholarship shows that women have made breakthroughs many times in the past, only for those discoveries to be lost in a generation or two, requiring them to be rediscovered by later generations. Indeed, this was the case for women of my generation. The first wave of feminism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been written out of most accounts of history. As a result, we thought women had not previously tried to live independent and professional lives or explored the issues we were exploring, an assumption that turned out to be quite inaccurate. We also had to spend a good amount of time and energy "rediscovering the wheel," exploring anew issues that earlier women had already discussed quite thoroughly. Given a strong anti-feminist backlash, especially in North America, and the assumption made by many young women that feminism is irrelevant to them, many of us worry that history will be repeated and, in another fifty years or so, women will again have to invent feminism. My main concern with Heinämäki's paper circles around the question of gender essentialism. The masculine and feminine styles she delineates are, of course, well known. The danger in this kind of commentary lies in the tendency for generalizations about men's and women's behavior to become male and female essences to which people are then forced or encouraged to conform. I think Heinämäki is away of this tendency and attempts to avoid turning generalizations into essences.

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There is only one point about Teemu Taira's response that I would like to make. I do not claim that monotheistic religions are essentially misogynist. I do not think that monotheistic religions are essentially misogynist because that would mean that they are doomed always to be misogynist, which I certainly hope is not the case. I am very reluctant to claim any kind of essences for anything, and certainly wouldn't try to prove that monotheistic religions are essentially misogynist. They are historically and phenomenologically misogynist, which is a very different statement. In both cases where I made comments about monotheistic religions, the main point I was making was that theorists of religion were not as free of culturally familiar forms of religion as they thought they were, and therefore, not as neutral and scientific as they thought they were. I suggested that one of the reasons androcentric habits of research and thinking may have carried over from previous ways of looking into religion into the history and phenomenology of religions is that, regarding gender, scholars of religion did not break free of the received religious paradigm when they rejected most other aspects of that paradigm for the rationalism and universalism of the European enlightenment paradigm. This was one of my main examples of how conservative methodological thought can be, as well as an example of how unexamined and unconscious presuppositions can severely limit scholarship. In the concluding point of my paper as well as this response, I want to move from looking backwards into the past development of methodology of religious studies to the future by suggesting another way in which familiar models of religion may be limiting the imagination of contemporary scholars of religion. I want to suggest that for most European and North American scholars of religion, the unconscious model that pops into their heads when they hear the word "religion" is of a monotheistic religion claiming a transcendent source. Most theories used by contemporary scholars of religion are cast, in one way or another, against that model of religion. But what if the claim of a transcendent source is a parochial, though culturally familiar, mode of religious behavior? I suggested that if other religions, those that don't claim a transcendent source, were the basis for theorizing, some of the most divisive issues in the study of religion today would be less severe. In the responses to my paper, I would have liked to see more discussion of that claim, rather than another discussion of the merits of women studies and feminist thought. Are European and North American comparative studies of religion based on a Western, monotheistic model? Do many issues still hotly debated in the comparative studies of religion turn on an inadequate and incomplete model of religion, one that assumes religions would claim to have a transcendent source? What central questions would emerge in the comparative study of religion if other, non-monotheistic religions were just as prominent in the minds of scholars of religion as are the culturally familiar religions claiming a monotheistic deity as their transcendent source?

Summary

Religion and Relations The Social Dimension of Methodological Argumentation Kari Mikko Vesala and Heikki Pesonen

Introduction Methodology is about ways and principles of conducting research. However, when scholars debate the subject, the question of how to do research is not necessarily the only issue that emerges. The social identity of the researcher and the role of the research institution in society may well come into the discussion. Our aim in this essay is to present a viewpoint that we hope will assist the reader to recognize and appreciate the profoundness of the social aspect embodied in the methodological argumentation presented on previous pages in this volume. In his preface to this book, Rene Gothoni attributes the occasional intensification of interest in methodological discussion to significant events in academic institutions, such as the establishment of new chairs. This line of thinking connects methodological discussion to practical social relations between academic actors, as this was a question of possible changes in policy line occurring along with the appointment of a new government. Indeed, methodological debate on distinct approaches could also be seen as competition in terms of space, hegemony and dominance in the arenas of academic institutions. This is not to suggest that participation in such debates is instrumental only in this way: they have many functions. Social competition does not exclude sincere interest in exploring methodological questions as such, nor genuine belief in the benefits of the approaches promoted. Generating debate is one of the aims in academic conferences and symposia. Lauri Honko, for example, refers to this aim when justifying the procedures followed in a conference organized by the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR), which was held in 1973 in Turku. He writes: "Instead of more or less passive listening to papers being read, the conference was dominated by energetic discussion. What in fact resulted was a five-day continuous methodological debate, in which different research traditions and theoretical approaches were in constant confrontation" (Honko 1979, xvi). In a similar vein, Gothoni considers the heated debates on the relevant approaches in comparative religion in the Helsinki 2002 symposium

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an indicator of its success. The whole symposium was organized around the idea of getting together representatives of three distinct approaches — one emphasizing understanding, one explanation, and one critical reflection— which are traditionally seen as major trends in the methodologies of the social sciences, and are at odds because they appear to represent different kinds of interests of knowledge for doing research (Habermas 1971; Ketola et al. 1999). Hence it is not at all surprising that debate—including heated debate—ensued. Why is debate sought after, why is it desirable in academic meetings? Donald Wiebe, in his response to his commentators, agrees with Gothoni on the presence of heated debate in the symposium, but regrets that no consensus was reached concerning "the general shape of the study of religion most appropriate in the context of the modern research university" (see above p. 127). Could it be that the rationale behind debate is to reach agreement on the most appropriate approaches or, instead, to solve methodological disagreements and find consensus? Of course, many things can be agreed upon in symposia—if nothing, then at least the decision to publish the proceedings. Some conferences or symposia attract adherents of the same approach, who would be happy with sharing and expressing unified views on the most appropriate ways of conducting research. From a more general perspective, the growth of a consensual paradigm is fundamental for the development of normal science (Kuhn 1962). On the other hand, many associate attempts to create a broad consensus with 'methodological imperialism' (see, for example, Honko 1979, xxviii-xxix). In fact, the existence of alternative or competing views could also be seen as a guarantee of the critical reflection and dialogue needed in the construction of an image of objective science that is capable of self-corrective development towards truthful knowledge. As Veikko Anttonen points out in his comment on Wiebe's paper, sciences and academic fields are social and cultural institutions. In this context debate on scientific issues could be considered "normal" or "natural" processes reflecting the social nature of human actors. The academic or scientific context, of course, contributes to the special features of the debates, and scientific methodology is one relevant topic of discussion. In this essay we discuss the different levels of argumentation that are intertwined around the methodological debates reported in this volume.

The Argumentative Point of View In his rhetorical approach to social psychology, Michael Billig (1996) builds on Protagoras' maxim that for every argument it is possible to find a reasoned counter-argument. Billig views the human being as a creature capable of

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generating and inventing arguments and counter-arguments. He claims that many of the mainstream social-psychological theories ignore this argumentative aspect and concentrate on the rules, roles or scripts that supposedly guide the conduct of human actors. This kind of emphasis results in a onesided image that conceals the controversial aspect of social life and human thinking. People not only follow rules or scripts, or fulfill roles, they also argue about the rules and the roles, and about following or not following them. Billig suggests that social reality is essentially argumentative. Taking stands on controversial issues and defending and justifying these stands are everyday activities in social interaction. Many institutional settings, such as legal proceedings, politics and trade, are witness to the argumentative nature of social relations and affairs. There are social and cultural systems and arrangements that are based on the generation and regulation of argumentation. Furthermore, people are not only engaged in public argumentative discussion and talk: controversies also shape the form and content of thought and thinking—which Billig sees as being social by nature. For example, when people deliberate on different matters, they ponder alternative standpoints and weigh arguments and counter-arguments in their minds (and perhaps try to find or invent new ones). It is our objective here to examine the argumentation displayed on the pages of these proceedings as material that tells us something about how— in the context of this symposium—the social reality of academia is being constructed. We do not present extensive analysis on the level of single arguments and counter-arguments, but rather attempt to point out some of the major controversies that arise.1 We use the word controversy to refer to an argumentative dimension (or dimensions) around which single arguments and counter-arguments are organized. This organization includes opposing or competing argumentative positions that can be taken by actors participating in the controversy. Controversies may, of course, overlap so that some statements or comments refer to more than one, and may in themselves become the topic under discussion. For example, in his comment on Donald Wiebe, Veikko Anttonen suggests that Wiebe's argumentation is part of a science/religion controversy, even though this is not made explicit by Wiebe himself. In his reply Wiebe 1

It would be a separate matter to analyze the assumptions concerning the argumentative nature of the human being and the social reality that are implied or indicated in the (meta-)theories of religion that are evident in the text. It would be a question of whether the argumentative viewpoint was being utilized or applied in the conceptual and theoretical description and analysis of religion and religious phenomena, and in the corresponding ontological propositions. However, our data is not very amenable to such an endeavor, since the discussions in the articles do not focus much on particular theories of religion.

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claims that the position he is arguing from is purely methodological. This kind of argumentation about the label given to the ongoing controversy shows that it is possible to recognize or distinguish between different levels and meta-levels: beside the arguments concerning a particular topic are arguments about arguments, and arguments about argumentation itself, which includes the actors involved and the relations between them. All this implies, among other things, that arguments are always objects of potential attempts at redefinition. Redefinitions can be used as a means of defending one's own position or fighting off opposing positions. The use of these kinds of "rhetorical" devices may be one reason for the occasional heat that is generated in academic debate. However, heated discussions over controversial issues, no matter how inspiring or uninspiring, reflect only one of the interesting functions of argumentation. For example, the interaction between participants is organized around controversies, which also define the relations between the participants in one important way: they divide the actors into opposing camps (which was also the experience of many of those who were present at the Helsinki symposium). By analyzing the debate on controversial issues it is also possible to recognize the rhetorical resources, such as values and cultural premises that are available to the representatives of the opposing camps. In this essay we will outline some of the controversies that we consider distinctive to this volume. We will also make a brief diversion in comparing the proceedings of the Helsinki symposium and the Turku conference of 1973. The most salient point that we are trying to make is the one that is conveyed in our title: taking a closer look at the argumentative level of the methodological discussion in the study of religions also reveals something about the profoundly social nature of scientific debate.

The Reductionism/Antireductionism Controversy The title of this volume "How to do Comparative Religion—Three Ways, Many Goals" promises discussions on the methodological issues behind three different approaches to contemporary comparative religion. Indeed, methodological topics are covered in the pages of this book. The argumentation, to a large degree, concerns the problem of reductionism. One of the most fundamental methodological debates in comparative religion has been centered around the so-called reductionistic and antireductionistic controversy, which has been one of the factors distinguishing the explanatory and hermeneutical (or understanding) approaches (Pulkkinen 1997; Anttonen 1996; Idinopulos & Yonan 1994). In the following we will discuss some of the aspects of this controversy as constructed in the discussions that comprise this book.

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Ilkka Pyysiäinen in his introduction to the section "Explaining Religion" sees the aim of the explanatory approach to be "a rational specification of the causal relationships or functional organizations that make a set of beliefs and practices possible" (p. 59). He also argues that the scholar's task is to decouple religion from its existential connection in order to view it only as an object "of scientific inquiry" (p. 59). The scholar "steps outside of religion" and examines it like "a physician studying a disease" (p. 59). Donald Wiebe, for his part, considers it essential for "the scientific student of religion to recognize" that religion is "the manufactured product of evolved psychological mechanisms situated in individuals living in groups" (p. 129). It is possible to crystallize the outlooks of Wiebe and Pyysiäinen in two main arguments. Firstly, they consider it the task of the scholar to examine religion from the outside, religion is distinctly "an object of study." Thus, they construct an explicit boundary between the scholar and religion. Secondly, they argue that religion can be (or should be) reduced to a product of the human mind, thus promoting the idea that it is a mundane product that can be studied according to the principles, methods and means applied from the natural sciences. These comments represent a reductionistic approach that is profoundly at odds with the antireductionistic views of Douglas Allen and Teuvo Laitila, for example. Allen and Laitila emphasize the necessity for comparative religion to do justice to the religious experience of the adherents of the various traditions and to see the "irreducibly religious nature of religious phenomena" (p. 8), as Allen puts it. In this argumentative context, and in contrast to Wiebe's and Pyysiäinen's argumentation, religion is seen as a complex and autonomous phenomenon that can never be completely explained by science. However, the argumentative contrast between the explanatory and the hermeneutical approaches is not as sharp as one might imagine from the above comments. Allen, for example, also highlights the reductive character of the hermeneutical approach. In his answer to the comment made by Tom Sjöblom, he states that all scientific approaches, including the phenomenological and the hermeneutical, are more or less reductionistic. He therefore considers it important to "sort out different kinds of reductionism" (p. 53), and as far as the hermeneutical or understanding approach to religion is concerned, the kind of reductionism to be opposed is the one that would "tend to destroy the intentional structure of religious meaning invariably pointing to the transcendent sacred" (p. 16). In spite of Allen's and Sjöblom's notions of the reductionistic features of all scholarly approaches, the dividing line between explaining and understanding is quite explicit in the above debate. Representatives of explanatory research separate themselves from religion, examine it from the outside and reduce it to a product of the human mind. Representatives of the understanding approach, for their part, emphasize the irreducible character of

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religious phenomena and the importance of understanding the human religious experience as a way towards understanding the whole phenomenon of religion. Discussions at this level of argumentation clearly deal with issues that are typical of debate within the scientific community: the argumentation is about starting points, aims and methods of scientific research. Methodological perspectives other than reductionism and antireductionism are also discussed in this volume. For instance in her comment on Allen's paper Terhi Utriainen outlines some possible starting points for a phenomenological method, and Rene Gothoni highlights the differences between the two kinds of methods for attaining knowledge in the social sciences, which he labels quantitative and qualitative. It appears, however, that the debates in this book are not focussed on questions of method as much as one might expect in a volume supposedly addressing fundamental methodological issues in comparative religion. It seems, then, that the essential points of the argumentation lie—at least partly—somewhere else. In order to illustrate our point, we will move to another level of argumentation embodied in the discussion on reductionism and antireductionism, a level that could be referred to as "arguing about the status or role of the presenters of arguments." This level is apparent in the debates in which scholars discuss the proper ways to study religion. Donald Wiebe outlines one of the main turns in the development of comparative religion as follows: [a]fraid that the reductionism of the sciences might "explain religion away," it seems that students in the field throughout most of the twentieth century have retreated to a so-called hermeneutical approach to the study of religion as the proper avenue to understanding it. The understanding sought, however, was not simply an elucidation of matters that were obscure, but something special; a "scholarly" undertaking that would provide an uncommon kind of knowledge, (p. 65) Wiebe supposes, then, that students of religion have begun to use the hermeneutical approach because they have been afraid of the reductionism of the evolutionary approach. It is interesting that Wiebe refers here to scholars, that is, individuals, who have "retreated" to a certain kind of approach that is not, as he states throughout his paper, a scientific approach. Douglas Allen follows the same line of argumentation in suggesting that representatives of the explanatory approach articulate a clear-cut dichotomy between explanation and understanding, in which understanding is labeled subjective, nonscientific and edifying, for example, and as "having nothing to do with knowledge." Allen concludes ironically that "[t]they [phenomenology and hermeneutics] can be tolerated as we wait for the true scientific knowledge and explanation that will eliminate them as knowledge pretenders" (p. 52). Wiebe appears to subscribe to this interpretation by predicting that the

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explanatory approach—with its roots in evolutionary psychology—will, little by little, eliminate (or stigmatize) edifying discourse and virtuoso scholars in the field of Religious Studies. It seems, then, that the future nightmare of Allen and the future dream of Wiehe is a form of comparative religion that has been cleansed of (unscientific) actors, namely those promoting hermeneutical and phenomenological approaches. Rita M. Gross takes issue with the actors presenting the arguments when she claims that both phenomenological descriptions and reductionistic explanations have operated with an enlightenment idea of a generic, universal subject, a subject who would reach the same conclusions and behave the same way because of universally valid laws that reason discovered. But that subject was also always a male, which is why feminists called this construct the "androcentric" model of humanity, (p. 157) Hence she distances herself from both of the approaches outlined above by accusing their representatives of holding androcentric views. As she sees it, (male) representatives of the phenomenological and explanatory approaches have done (and are still doing) research that does not take into account the importance of gender in the process of acquiring knowledge about religion. This represents failure because religions "do pay a great deal of attention to gender" (p. 156). Furthermore she seems to suggest that research that takes gender into account is "better" than research that does not. Kimmo Ketola highlights some of the problems of Gross' argumentation in his comment on Gross' paper, claiming that her allegations of androcentrism among (male) scholars make her argumentation (or "methodology") closed to any rational criticism. This puts her methodological viewpoints beyond the reach of scholarly discussion. This argumentation about the status of actors presenting arguments concerns not only the methodology in comparative religion but also the criteria for categorizing actors as scientists, and evaluating them on the basis of these criteria. There are thus clear implications here concerning the processes of constructing social identities within academia, for example, and the power-relations relevant to these identities in the academic arena. Consequently, the issue that is discussed here is related not so much to the question of how to "do" comparative religion, but rather to that of who has the right to "do" it. At the same time as arguing about the presenters of the arguments, these writers also delineate the boundaries of the discipline by defining the right (or wrong) ways to study religion, i.e. the proper role performance of a scholar (Goffman 1959). One of the key elements in these discussions concerns the relationship between science and religion in the methodological choices that scholars make in the study of religion.

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The Science/Religion Controversy As mentioned in the introductory section of this essay, Veikko Anttonen highlights the science/religion controversy in his comment to Donald Wiebe. He criticizes Wiebe for understating the long research tradition in comparative religion, and argues that he is "stuck" in the worn-out science/religion confrontation in his argumentation. In Anttonen's view, there is no need to refer to this controversy in the establishment of the cognitive approach within the discipline of comparative religion. As we illustrate below, the science/ religion controversy is not a rhetorical resource used only by Wiebe, and could be seen as one of the main argumentative dimensions structuring the debates in this book. It is possible to pin this down to cover the assumptions or premises directing research procedures. Rita M. Gross in particular raises this issue in stating that a close look at the methodological arguments in comparative religion reveals a set of beliefs about religion that are not usually explicated by scholars utilizing certain theories or methods: these beliefs can function as ideologies or "theologies" in the worldviews of students of religion. This fundamental aspect of the science/religion controversy can be pinpointed to the question of what kinds of assumptions are believed to be true assumptions. Many of the presentations in this book portray science as a mediator of true knowledge that leans on true beliefs about reality. Religious beliefs, for their part, are seen as the antithesis of scientific beliefs. This juxtaposition is more or less visible in several of the discussions: Nils G. Holm, for example, argues that [f]or a strictly religious person—perhaps with a fundamentalist orientation—the religious explanations are sufficient and should cover as far as possible all human activity. The opposite pole is represented by the scientist who only wants to see secular explanations and totally denies any value to the believer's perspective, (p. 83) Holm is accordingly claiming that a science, at one extreme, builds on secular starting points that totally debar religious explanations. Another illustrative example is to be found in the debate between Tom Sjöblom and Douglas Allen, in which Sjöblom asserts that Allen apparently accepts the existence of a religious reality "beyond the empirical reality." He also claims that Allen's view about the irreducible character of religious phenomena and ways of acquiring knowledge of it seem to take his "approach outside science and into the realm of metaphysical speculation and revelation" (p. 41). Allen defends himself replying that the scholar does not commit himself or herself to the truth claims of religion, but rather suspends "one's own value judgments about whether religion is really wholly other, whether God is really out there, whether the other's experiential claims are really true" (p. 51).

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This kind of dispute depicts religion and science as competing ontological systems with incompatible worldviews. This controversy enables the scholar to separate her/himself from an element of social reality defined as religion, either in refusing to commit to the truth claims that religion poses, or in postulating these claims as untrue (either "methodologically" or "ontologically"): the emphasis is on the view according to which science leans only on true assumptions. The science/religion controversy is recognizable at both individual and institutional levels. On the individual level the argumentation is usually focused on claims about the ("possible," "hidden" or "obvious") religiosity or "atheist" position of the scholar, while on the institutional level the same kinds of claims are attributed to departments, research traditions, academic associations (such as IAHR) or the scientific community at large. This kind of argumentation is endemic in this volume, and features especially in the debate between representatives of the explanatory and hermeneutical approaches. Ilkka Pyysiäinen, for example, sees two kinds of (methodological) aims in the study of religion. The first is the deepening of one's personal religious conviction, and the second is the scientific explanation of religion. As mentioned above, Pyysiäinen clearly locates himself in the second category whereas—according to him—Gothoni is an example of a scholar belonging to the first category. Gothoni does not directly concur with this opinion, but rather separates himself as a scholar from both religious and "atheist" intents, which he sees as "limited in horizon." Furthermore, he seems to suggest that Donald Wiebe (and other representatives of the explanatory approach) stand for an "atheist intent." This focus on the role of the researcher in terms of religious or antireligious commitment is also clearly visible in Donald Wiebe's thinking. He accuses both Nils G. Holm and Gothoni of mixing religious (or "mysterious") elements with scientific research. Gothoni's claim that the "hold" the so-called scientific project has on the student of religion is really the hold of an ultimately religious reality (that is, die Sache) that is expressed in religious belief and practice is pure assertion and in my judgment reveals Gothoni's own religious commitments to some knowledge of ultimate religious reality, (p. 134) Wiebe argues, then, that certain (methodological) viewpoints professed by Gothoni about the starting points of research in the study of religion expose him as a believer. This clearly indicates Wiebe's supposition that individual and personal preferences or characteristics have a great biasing influence on the scientific work that scholars do. Furthermore, such a rhetorical digging into the religious motive of a colleague shows the weight that is laid on the division between science and religion.

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All in all, we could say that the argumentation in this book focuses not only on different methodological issues, such as questions about reductionism and antireductionism, or on the justification and criticism of various research approaches, but also on the question of the relationship between science/scholars and religion/devotees. Evidently, the fairly widely shared view seems to be that there is a distinction and there should be. However, there are clear differences of emphasis in the ways in which this distinction is underlined or formulated. At one extreme are the scholars who advocate clear-cut detachment between religion and believers. Their focus on the (natural) scientific perspective does not seem to embody the possibility of social relationships with the object of study, such as commitment, shared interests, and empathetic points of view. At the other extreme are the scholars who emphasize that, in spite of the fundamental institutional difference, it is essential to enter into a deep (or at least a respectful) relationship with religion and its adherents. Consequently, it seems that the ways in which the distinction between science and religion is being made also constructs a division between students of religion. This, in turn, means that the separation from religion is not only methodological in that it is seen as an object of study, but also social in that it is perceived of as a social institution that incorporates certain social roles. Thus, scientific divisions are profoundly intertwined with social divisions.

Were Things Different in Turku in 1973? Methodological questions have been the main topic in at least three international conferences or symposia on comparative religion held in Finland. The first one, organized by the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) was held in Turku in 1973 (Honko 1979), and was a relatively large event with 50 acknowledged scholars taking an active part as speakers. The second one was a regional IAHR symposium held in 1997, also in Turku (Ahlbäck 1999), and the third one was the 2002 symposium held in Helsinki, on which this book is based. All three naturally had their own particular methodological emphasis. The 1973 conference is of special relevance here because it was similar in form and focus to the Helsinki symposium: to systematically generate discussion and debate on different methodological approaches. In the following therefore, in the light of the above analysis we will make some comparisons between the debates that featured in the 1973 Turku conference and the discussions and controversies that are reported in this volume. The proceedings of the Turku conference are divided into three parts: "Oral and Written Documentation of Religious Tradition," "The Future of

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the Phenomenology of Religion" and "Religion as Expressive Culture." All three contain methodological discussions, but the methodological controversies are especially visible in part two, in which the scholars discuss the relationship between the phenomenology of religion and other current approaches. In this context, the debate on reductionistic and antireductionistic interpretations and explanations is also in the background, even though these exact concepts are not necessarily used. An illustrative example of the antireductionistic point of view comes from Edmund Perry, who states in his commentary to Ake Hultkrantz and Svein Bjerke that [w]e need a method of enquiry, a science, which can and will cope with religion religiously, that is, with religion as religion, not with religion as an aspect of culture, or as a social or psychological phenomenon. (Perry 1979, 287) By appealing especially to the viewpoint of Rafael Pettazzoni, Perry, like Douglas Allen in the current volume, argues for the necessity to study religion in its own terms. A similar antireductionist view is presented by C. J. Bleeker, who stresses in his commentary that "a religio-historical explanation should never be a reduction of religion to non-religious factors, either anthropological, or psychological, or sociological" (Bleeker 1979,175). As Lauri Honko puts it in his introduction to the proceedings, the methodological argumentation of the conference mainly revolved around three "disciplinary clusters," namely the history of religions, the phenomenology of religion, and the anthropology of religion. He also mentioned the use of psychological and sociological theories and concepts, especially within anthropology. Honko himself seemed to favor anthropological approaches, because he emphasizes the importance of contextual approach, which he considered an essential element in cultural and social anthropology (Honko 1979, xxii). All in all, as can be seen from Honko's introduction and from the texts in the volume as a whole, the discussions are largely carried out in the context of different academic disciplines, such as history, linguistics and anthropology, and thus the argumentation concerns the dividing lines between disciplines as academic institutions. Honko also contributes to the debate on reductionism and antireductionism. The last part of his introduction is very illuminating and crystallizes both his personal views and one important dimension of the discussions that featured in the conference. Therefore we find it worthy of more extensive quotation: The situation can be seen as in some ways typical of a science which depends for its existence on an interdisciplinary spirit and polymethodological liberalism. Although this situation undoubtedly has

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its good sides (intellectual flexibility, interaction between different schools of research, freedom from methodological imperialism), it does seem—on conferences at least—inevitably to lead to a sort of 'defensive' methodology. Since the scholars present have little in common except the fact that they are investigating religion, concentration on religion comes to the fore. But at what cost? Astonishingly enough, at the cost of concentration on man, or on society, and even on culture as a whole. Consequently we are left with the question whether the science of religion could in future afford to progressively redefine its boundaries so as to include not only religious systems, and their internal, central, i.e. 'religious' phenomena, but also the relations of religious systems to other social, cultural and economic systems. This is a crucial question; for there are many uses for religious traditions, every individual belongs to other systems as well as religious ones, and every religious community is involved in a wider process of social development. The history of the academic study of religions to date has shown that this form of scholarship in itself cannot provide information about the 'otherworldly' —god, etc.—except in an indirect manner. It is the empirical investigation of religious traditions, of man and his community, which alone can open the road, not to the 'otherworldly,' but to those realities of which the concept of the 'otherworldly' is an inherent part. It is the task of the academic study of religions to describe, understand, and explain that part: not in isolation or independence, however, but in its context, against the background of cultural symbol systems and socio-economic structures. (Honko 1979, xxviii-xxix) Honko, accordingly, appears to take a stand against the many antireductionistic views evident in the conference, and which are represented in the book by the above quotation from Perry, for example. Honko considers the prevailing problem in comparative religion to be its concentration on the assumed religious, i.e. otherworldly, core of religion at the cost of man, society and "culture as a whole." He therefore thinks it is necessary for the science of religion also to give attention to "the relations of religious systems to other social, cultural and economic systems." However, he does not appear to stand directly for any particular (explanatory) approach, but rather emphasizes on a general level that the focus of research should also be on the human, social, or cultural side of the religion. As a matter of fact, the contextual approach that he promotes is not limited to causal explanation. As is evident from the views put forward by Honko and many other scholars participating in the 1973 conference, the argumentation they were debating apparently mostly remained on the methodological level. They

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argued about the similarities and differences in various approaches, their validity in promoting a particular kind of knowledge, and new kinds of methodological possibilities in the field of comparative religion, among other things. The personal religious preferences of any one researcher were not under scrutiny as in the current volume, and the science/religion controversy as a whole also appears to be absent. An illustrative example of the differences in argumentation of these two volumes is the way in which Honko refers to personal theory. Part of any methodology remains unformulated, and implicit. Every discipline, indeed every scholar, holds certain fundamental assumptions which have not been expressed explicitly but which profoundly influence the strategy of research and its scientific conclusions. [...] Often scientific debate is concerned with special theories, but it can be very valuable to compare the same speaker's opinions on a variety of topics. A certain consistency can then be traced, which does not originate in the research problems under investigation but in the scholar himself. What is involved here is as it were a methodological 'stance' or personal bias, which can often be better labelled by reference to some key expressions or favorite concept than by the stricter and more demanding term 'theory'. The key expression for one person may be 'historical investigation', for a second 'tradition', for a third 'empiricism', for a fourth 'context', and so on. Personal theory usually includes a number of favorite concepts, which can partly be read between the lines. (Honko 1979, xxi-xxii) It is interesting to see how Honko connects the implicit fundamental personal assumptions of a scientist strictly to individual methodological tastes, which thus consist of different "favorite" theoretical concepts. There is no reference whatsoever to the religious or ideological influences that might affect the methodological choices of scholars, as is the case with some of the argumentation in the current volume. Another distinctive feature of the 1973 volume is the apparent stress on methodological pluralism. The variety of historical, anthropological, phenomenological, ecological and other approaches represented at the 1973 conference does not suggest the dominance of hermeneutical approaches in the comparative religion of the time, as Wiebe claims in his presentation, or of any other single approach. As Honko states in his introduction: Father Wilhelm Schmidt, Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw and Mircea Eliade no longer rule (if they ever did). There is no theory or method in existence which can predominate over the others, within comparative religion at any rate. (Honko 1979, xxiii)

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One of the prominent argumentative positions in the 2002 symposium was that of the promoters of the explanatory approach, who claimed superiority for evolutionary theory—which was not all that visible in the 1973 conference. One of the rare arguments for it was presented by Svein Bjerke, who focused on causalities and evolutionary change. However, he did not claim that the evolutionary approach was the only proper research theory, and rather emphasized that various approaches (the phenomenological, the historical, the ecological) were all valid ways of gaining knowledge about religion (Bjerke 1979, 248). The general principle of methodological pluralism was thus not questioned even in this case.

Concluding Remarks Our aim in this essay was to show that one distinctive feature of the debates presented in the present volume is the science/religion controversy, and that this controversy is associated with processes of defining and constructing the role of the science and the scientist in relation to a certain part or aspect of social reality outside of the academic institution, namely religion. There is nothing unusual in this observation as such. For example, there is ongoing debate in the social sciences about the relationships between research/ scholars and the surrounding society. The issues under discussion include how the researcher should operate and participate in society, and how scientific institutions serve society or try to influence it. They also feature in the third part of the current volume, in which the focus is particularly on the role of feminist studies in the study of religion. The presentations by Rita M. Gross and Elisa Heinämäki clearly illustrate some of the basic assumptions behind this approach. On a more general level, the problems of the critical approach are outlined by Tuula Sakaranaho and Teemu Taira, who emphasize the profoundly social role of the scientific enterprise. Religion may well be like any other social phenomenon. Therefore, since it is the object of study in comparative religion, it would seem only natural that the relation to society emerges in the shape of the science/religion controversy, for example. As we have attempted to show above, we found this controversy pivotal in this volume, although it was not an issue in the 1973 conference even though both were equally focused on the study of religion. What made the difference? Of course there is no definitive answer to that, but one might wonder whether it could have something to do with the presence of the theory of evolution. On the one hand, the science/religion controversy is rooted in the conflict between the Darwinian Theory and creationism, which has been one of the major disputes in the emergence of the modern world view. On the other hand, the theory of evolution had a

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central role in the methodological argumentation in the 2002 symposium, in which it was used as a basic rhetorical device in the defense of an explanatory position. The presence of this ideological element might thus have something to do with the fact that the science/religion controversy turned out to be so prominent. All this was accompanied by pronounced argumentation about distinctions, inclusions and exclusions regarding categories of academic actors. In this essay we have employed the argumentative viewpoint (Billig 1996), assuming the validity of Protagoras' maxim as a starting point for understanding social reality. This starting point implies that for every argument it is possible to find a justified counter-argument. These arguments and counter-arguments are not absolute entities or facts floating somewhere out there, they are constructed in human interaction and thinking. Let us return once more to the opening presentation by Donald Wiebe. The approach that he is promoting is introduced as a representative of progress and a development of science, unlike mainstream twentieth-century comparative religion which is portrayed as hanging on to old unscientific premises. The argument is accessible, especially in that it appeals to evolutionary theory, which is widely accepted as one of the cornerstones of the modern scientific world view. However, Veikko Anttonen presents a counter-argument in which he turns Wiebe's argument upside down. As indicated above, Anttonen claims that Wiebe is stuck in a worn-out controversy, and is not in touch with the versatility of the real contribution of comparative religion. He also seems to suggest that Wiebe is hankering after ancient ideals of academic autonomy, which should not be taken too literally in present-day reality. In other words, argument is reconstructed into counter-argument by replacing progress with backwardness. Given our analytical frame of reference, it does not pay off to try to take a stand in this controversy. Both of the arguments can be defended, and can be viewed as different perspectives on different aspects of the subject matter. However, we are not proposing an extreme relativistic position either: it is, of course, quite possible to weigh opposing arguments against each other and to judge one as more convincing or plausible than another. Consensus is just as much a part of social reality as argumentation. What we do suggest, however, is that the search for consensus—or for the "true stand"—is not necessarily the most interesting or valid way to approach argumentation. The argumentation presented in this volume is not exhausted by our analysis. Rita M. Gross, for example, took up the question of implicit assumptions in various definitions of religion. For one reason or another, this issue was not one of controversy in the symposium. The initiative was justified, however, because there do indeed exist different understandings of the nature of religion and how it should be defined. At one extreme is the view according to which religion consists of (empirically unjustified) beliefs in

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supernatural or otherworldly realities, in which case the emphasis is on the peculiar nature of these beliefs. At the other extreme, religion is viewed as a particular kind of frame within which to experience and interpret life and the meaning of it, so that the emphasis is not on the ontological nature of the beliefs involved, but on the nature of the experience enabled by such a frame. Our analysis did not focus on assumptions at this level, but the relevance of such differences is obvious. The outstanding distinctions between the methodological positions displayed in the 2002 symposium also imply different understandings of the nature of the phenomenon under investigation.

References Ahlbäck, Tore (ed.) 1999 Approaching Religion. Part I. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis XVII:1. Äbo: Donner Institute for Research in Religious and Cultural History. Anttonen, Veikko 1996 Ihmisen ja maan rajat: 'Pyhä' kulttuurisena kategoriana. Helsinki: SKS. Billig, Michael 1996 Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology. Cambridge (U.K.): Cambridge University Press. Bjerke, Svein 1979 "Ecology of Religion, Evolutionism and Comparative Religion." Pages 237-248 in Honko 1979. Bleeker, C. Jouco 1979 "Commentary." Pages 173-177 in Honko 1979. Goffman, Erving 1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday Anchor Books. Habermas, Jürgen 1971 Knowledge and Human Interests. Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press. Honko, Lauri (ed.) 1979 Science of Religion: Studies in Methodology. Proceedings of the Study Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions, Held in Turku, Finland August 27-31, 1973. Religion and Reason 13. The Hague: Mouton. Idinopulos, Thomas, & Edward A. Yonan (eds.) 1994 Religion and Rednctionism: Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the Challenge of the Social Sciences for the Study ofReligioji. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

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Ketola, Kimmo, Heikki Pesonen, Tuula Sakaranaho & Tom Sjöblom 1999 "Uskontojen tutkimus - historiaa, kysymyksiä, lähestymistapoja." Pages 9 - 3 1 in Uskonnot maailmassa. Edited by Katja Hyry & Juha Pentikäinen. Porvoo: WSOY. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Perry, Edmund 1979 "Commentary." Pages 285-290 in Honko 1979. Pulkkinen, Risto 1997 "Reduktionismi ja antireduktionismi." Pages 95-113 in Uskontotieteen ikuisuuskysymyksiä. Edited by Heikki Pesonen. Uskontotiede 1. Helsinki: Uskontotieteen laitos.

Index of Authors

Contributions to this volume are indicated by "it.". Italicized page numbers refer to bibliographical references. References to footnotes only are indicated by "n". Abbott, H. Porter 39, 42 Achte, Kalle 113η Adorno, Theodor W. 178, 186 Agger, Ben 71n, 81 Ahlbäck, Tore 202, 208 Allen, Douglas VI, 3, 5ff., 6n, 7n, 21n, 28, 29-32, 35-41, 42,47, 49ff„ 56, 60, 131, 145, 170, 179n, 181, 197-200, 203 Ang, Ien 184, 185 Anttonen, Veikki 90, 95, 97,127,129-131, 138,193ff., 194-196, 200, 207,208 Aristotle 99,102,121, 123 Aubrey, John 69 Bacon, Roger 51 Bakhtin, Mikhail 9, 10 Barkow, Jerome 76, 77, 81, 129, 139 Barnes, Jonathan 110, 123 Bataille, Georges 168, 169 Bates, Donald 65n, 81 Bauman, Zygmunt 178-179n, 183, 185 Berger, Peter 48 Bianchi, Ugo V, 29, 110, 123 Billig, Michael 194, 195, 207, 208 Bjerke, Svein 203, 206, 208 Bleeker, C. Jouco 8, 9, 28, 29, 203, 208 Bohr, Aage 108 Boyer, Pascal 39, 42, 90, 91 Brelich, Angelo 29 Bronowski, Jacob 110, 123 Bruner, Jerome 39, 42 Byrne, Peter 66, 81 Carruthers, Mary 39, 42 Chidester, David 181, 184, 185 Christ, Carol P. 151n, 166 Clark, Andy 35, 42 Clarke, Peter B. 66, 81

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 120,123 Cosmides, Leda 76, 77, 81, 82,129,130, 139 Dalton, John 108 Damasio, Antonio R. 35, 39, 42 Darwin, Charles 36, 71-73, 76, 94, 96, 129, 206 Dean, William 71 Deleuze, Gilles 180,185 Dennett, Daniel C. 36, 42, 73, 74, 75-76n, 78, 80, 81,177n De Rivera, Joseph 43 Derrida, Jacques 15, 181 Descartes, Rene 35, 36, 43, 51, 52, 106 Dilley, Roy 180n, 185 Dilthey, Wilhelm 6, 35 Donald, Merlin 39, 43 Doniger, Wendy 149, 166 Droogers, Andre 71 Dürkheim, Emile 30, 96 Eco, Umberto 105, 123 Edelman, Gerald 36, 43 Eliade, Mircea 8,16, 21, 27, 31, 32, 50, 53, 158,162, 166, 205 Falk, Nancy Auer 143, 145, 151n, 166 Fauconnier, Gilles 39, 43 Feynman, Richard 76n Finke, Roger 66, 82 Flanagan, Kieran 71 Flood, Gavin 9, 10, 28 Foucault, Michel 144,178, 179n, 181,184, 185, 185-186 Frazer, James 108 Freud, Sigmund 85,108

212

Index of Authors

Gadamer, Hans-Georg 10η, 19, 32, 37, 43, 50,100,105-108,111-115,118, 121,122, 324,133,135,136,139 Gans, Eric 96, 97 Geertz, Clifford 29, 38, 43, 69, 70, 137 Gellner, Ernest 94, 97,130 Gill, Sam D. 184,186 Glanville, Joseph 69 Gödel, Kurt 76n Goffman, Erving 199, 208 Gothöni, Rene V-VII, 3ff., 60, 62, 99ff., 115,120,124,127,130,133-139, 193,194,198, 201 Grimes, Ronald R. 184,186 Grondin, Jean 100, 106, 108,112,124 Gross, Rita Μ. VI, 149ff., 151n, 153,155, 165, 166, 167, 169,171, 173-180, 182,185, 186, 187ff., 199, 200, 206, 207 Grossberg, Lawrence 180n, 182, 183,186 Guattari, Felix 180, 185 Habermas, Jürgen 19η, 50, 144,194, 208 Harding, Sandra 178 Harrison, Jane Ellen 72, 73n, 76, 78, 81 Hart, Ray L. 159, 166 Hedenius, Ingemar 84,132, 139 Hefner, Philip 89, 91 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 109 Heidegger, Martin 5, 7, 19n, 25, 29, 53, 110, 111, 124 Heiler, Friedrich 8 Heinämaa, Sara 169 Heinämäki, Elisa 167ff., 188, 206 Hirsch, Eric D., Jr. 78 Hjelde, Sigurd 128 Hobbes, Thomas 108 Holland, Dorothy 36-38, 43, 52 Holm, Nils G. 83ff., 85-88, 91,127,130, 132,133,136-139, 200, 201 Honko, Lauri V, 193,194, 202-205, 208 Horkheimer, Max 178,186 Hultkrantz, Äke 203 Hume, David 6, 35 Husserl, Edmund 7-11, 27, 29-31, 45, 50 Idinopulos, Thomas 196, 208 Illman, Ruth 88, 91 Jameson, Fredric 39, 43

Jaspers, Karl 29 Kant, Immanuel 6, 35, 184 Ketola, Kimmo 146, 173ff„ 187, 194, 199, 209 Kierkegaard, Seren 29 Kimanen, Seppo 102, 103, 324 Kluge, Friedrich 104, 324 Kovala, Urpo 180n, 186 Kristensen, W. Brede 8 Kuhn, Thomas S. 194, 209 Kuper, Adam 36,43 Laitila, Teuvo 4, 29ff., 49-51, 54, 55,197 Lessing, Theodor 107 Leuba, James Henry 85,132 Levi Strauss, Claude 69, 70,103 Levinas, Emmanuel 10, 11, 48 Lewin, Brian 39, 43 Lewis, Clive S. 100η, 324 Liddell, Henry George 102,125 Luckmann, Thomas 48 Malik, Kenan 121, 125 Malinowski, Bronislaw 95, 96, 97 Marsden, George 71 Marx, Karl 22n Maurice, Frederick Dennison 181 McCauley, Robert Ν. 67n, 81 McGinn, Colin 76n, 81 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 4, 7, 10,17n, 21, 28, 29-32, 45, 48 Mill, John Stuart 17 Mink, Louis 39,43 Mithen, Steven 78, 81, 95, 97 Murphy, Tim 184, 186 Nader, Laura 96, 97 Niiniluoto, Ilkka 35, 43, 61, 62, 62-63 Nisbet, Robert A. 131, 339 Orye, Lieve 43 Otto, Rudolf 8,16, 31, 205 Palmer, Richard E. 121, 325 Penrose, Roger 76n, 81 Pentikäinen, Juha V, VI Perry, Edmund 203, 204, 209 Pesonen, Heikki VI, 146,193ff., Pettazzoni, Rafael 203

209

Index of Subjects Phillips, John 183,186 Pike, Kenneth 120,125 Pinker, Steven 71, 76-77n, 81 Plaskow, Judith 151n, 166 Plato 112 Polkinghorne, Donald 39, 43 Popper, Karl 35, 44 Priestley, Priestley 108 Protagoras 194,207 Prozesky, Martin 71 Pulkkinen, Risto 206, 209 Pyysiäinen, Ilkka VI, VII, 44, 49, 59ff., 77-78n, 80n, 81, 90, 91, 94, 97, 106, 113,129,133,134,136,144,182, 197, 201

213

Smart, Ninian 8,71 Smith, Peter 80, 82 Sperber, Dan 37, 39, 44 Stark, Rodney 66, 82 Stavrou, Theofanis George 116,125 Sunden, Hjalmar 86, 91 Taira, Teemu 90, 144, 177ff., 187,189, 206 Taubes, Gary 154n, 166 Tester, Keith 179n, 183, 185 Tontti, Jarkko 114,125 Tooby, John 76, 77, 81, 82,129, 130, 139 Toulmin, Stephen E. 35, 44 Turnbull, Colin 120,125 Turner, Mark 39,43, 44, 79n, 82

Quinn, Naomi 37, 38, 43, 52 Räisänen, Heikki 128, 139 Ricoeur, Paul 5, 7, 9, 10,19n, 21, 32 Ringgren, Helmer V Risser, James 105, 111, 112,117, 119, 125 Rorty, Richard 108,109, 125,177,182, 186 Rubin, David C. 39,44 Sakaranaho, Tuula VI, VII, 143ff., 206, 209 Sarbin, Theodore R. 39, 43 Sartre, Jean-Paul 7, 26, 29, 50 Schank, Roger 39, 44 Scheler, Max 7 Schiffer, Stephen R. 37, 44 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 19η Schmidt, Lawrence Κ. 100, 105,106, 111, 122, 125 Schmidt, Wilhelm 205 Scott, Robert 102, 125 Searle, John 4, 38, 39, 44, 53, 75-76n, 82 Shankland, David 44 Sharpe, Eric J. 36, 44, 70, 82 Sherrard, Philip 115,117,125 Sjöblom, Tom VI, 4, 35ff., 49, 51-55, 96, 143,146,197, 200, 209

Utriainen, Terhi VI, 4, 45ff., 49, 55, 56, 198 van der Leeuw, Gerardus 8, 16, 30, 31, 205 Vesala, Kari Mikko 93ff. Waardenburg, Jacques 30, 38, 44 Weber, Max 67 Whitehouse, Harvey 44, 90, 91 Wiebe, Donald VI, 3, 35, 44, 59-61, 63, 65ff., 82, 83, 89, 90, 91, 93-95, 113, 122,127ff., 139-140, 145, 177, 178, 179n, 194, 195,197-201, 205, 207 Wilson, Deirdre 37, 39, 44 Wilson, Edward Ο. 77n, 82 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 25, 37, 53 Wright, Handel Kashope 183, 186 Wright, Kathleen 106-108, 125 Wulff, David M. 85,91 Yonan, Edward A. 196, 208 Young, Kathryn 150n, 166 Zizek, Slavoj 179, 186

Index of Subject abstract 14, 2 1 , 1 1 3 , 150, 155; ~ conceptions 168; ~ language 111; - levels 114; ~ models 158; ~ reasoning 160 abstraction 5 0 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 9 , 1 8 2 ; levels o f 1 1 , 1 8 , 50, 113 American Academy of Religion 80, 128 analogical concept 110 androcentric 158, 159,162, 182,199; model of humanity 155,157-159, 162-164, 199; ~ research methods/ habits 1 6 0 , 1 6 3 , 1 6 4 , 1 8 9 ; scholars/scholarship 1 5 0 , 1 6 1 androcentrism 158-162, 1 6 8 , 1 6 9 , 1 8 2 , 1 9 9 anthropology 69, 84, 203; Christian 168; cultural - 9 4 , 9 5 ; evolutionary ~ 96; interpretive - 29, 94,129; - of religion 182, 203; social - 203 antireductionist 8, 26, 2 7 , 1 9 6 , 197, 203, 204 appearance/reality distinction 1 0 8 , 1 0 9 Athos 1 0 5 , 1 1 5 - 1 1 9 authentic 101, 113; ~ interpretation 107, 108; ~ meaning 117; ~ word 111, 119, 120; concept of the - 31 bracketing 7 - 9 , 46 Buddhism 1 6 2 , 1 6 4 Cartesian dualism 35, 36, 52 Christian anthropology 168 cognitive 4, 38, 42, 68, 78-80, 90, 93-95, 97, 130, 178; ~ (cognitivist) approach to the study of religion 113,130, 200; - (cognitivist) domain for religion 113, 130, 200; - methodology 94; ~ scholars/ scholarship 94-96; ~ science(s) 27, 52, 53, 79, 80, 130; - science of religion 94, 96; ~ scientific explanations 27; ~ theories 90, 94

cognitivism 48, 90 cognitivists 3, 62, 1 1 2 , 1 1 4 comparative religion V, VI, 5, 24, 93, 94, 9 6 , 1 2 7 , 1 2 8 , 1 3 0 , 1 4 3 - 1 4 5 , 158,167, 193,196-200, 202, 204-207; study of ~ 27, 46,141ff„ 1 6 2 , 1 8 9 concept 9 , 1 1 , 30, 61, 104, 109ff., 135; analogical ~ 110; - of function 73; - of meaning 73; - of philosophy 52; - of religion 30, 31, 174; - of sexual difference 167; - of science 5 1 , 5 2 ; u n i v o c a l - 110 conception 15, 60; ~ of (religious) experience 22n, 24; - of method 102; of pilgrimage 115; - of quality 101; ~ of understanding 136 conceptual: ~ analysis of religion 14, 16, 195n; - apparatus of scientists 88; - foundation/ground of comparative religion 96, 130; horizons 89; - integration of the sciences 50; ~ models 84 conceptualization: - of the study of religion 50; linguistic - 26 consciousness 7 - 1 0 , 1 3 , 52, 75-76n, 100, 1 0 6 , 1 1 4 , 1 7 5 ; historically effective ~ 106; inner ~ 8 9 , 1 3 3 ; intentional ~ 7, 26; intentional structures of 13, 54; intentionality of - 3 , 1 5 , 24; patterns of ~ 155; perceiving - 24; religious ~ 24; religious structures of - 48; stream of - 121; structures of - 45, 48, 54 constituted given 4 , 1 0 , 12, 21ff„ 23, 25, 32, 47, 53, 5 6 , 1 7 0 contextual 19, 20, 22, 30, 5 0 , 1 8 0 , 1 8 5 , 203, 204 contextualism 1 2 , 1 3 , 1 8 0 n contextualization 48 contextualized situatedness 11 contrasting dichotomies 6 constructivism 10, 53

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Index of Subjects

critical: approach 6, 36, 7In, 84, 141 ff., 206; —contextual approach 181; ~ evaluations 152,153; ~ theory/ theorists 48,127,177,178,181,183 crypto-theological 71 cultural: analysis 69; - prejudice 178 culture versus nature dichotomy 169 Darwinism 70, 72, 73, 78, 80,130 davor stehen 104,107,113, 116-120,134 deconstructionism 11 depth psychology 85 description 4, 7, 9, 11,12, 24, 25, 27, 3740, 45-48, 80, 101,108, 109,113, 131, 135, 137, 154,156, 170; hermeneutical - 55; identifying ~ 109; objective - 9; phenomenological ~ 47, 48, 56,129, 157,199; "pure" 40, 54; "thick" ~ 38, 65ff. descriptive 6-8, 40, 89, 90,129,133, 135, 136,138,152,173,175; ~ vs. normative 6, 8, 173 dialectical movement 21 dialogic relatedness 14 dialogical analysis 9, 10 dialogue 14,15, 20, 31, 32, 39, 49, 50, 104, 105, 107,110,112, 114,122ff„ 137, 194; Socratic- 26 dualism, Cartesian 35, 36, 52 eidetic: ~ reduction 7, 17; - vision 7-9, 17, 31, 137 emic/etic 120 empathy 8 empirical approach 8 empiricism 10, 53, 209; classical - 22; naive - 52 epistemology 27, 65 epoch0 7, 8n Erfahrung 99,103, 104, 113 Erlebnis 99,103 essence 8, 18,19, 36, 39, 109,170,188, 189; intuition of ~ 7, 8, 12,17; phenomenological ~ 17-19, 137; religious - 27, 29, 51, 56, 85; universal ~ 47, 55 event 4, 67, 99, 104,107,108, 111, 112, 158; ~ of language/linguistic ~ 4, 106,111-114,117; - of meaning 99, 111, 112,117; natural ~s 158

evolutionary: biology 77, 129; - psychology 73, 76, 79, 80,199; ~ theory 36, 70-72, 94, 130, 206, 207 existential: phenomenology 7,10,12, 26; ~ relation 23,125 existentialism 12, 26, 30 experience: - of givenness 22, 23; immediate ~ 14, 17; intentional ~ 6,14, 15, 25, 181; levels of ~ 14, 17, 24, 51; lived ~ 11,17, 49, 143; meaningful ~ 14—16, 23; practical 99,103,104; religious ~ 4,15-18, 21, 23-25, 30-32, 40, 47, 48, 55, 60, 65, 87, 88,114, 132,134,137,143, 197,198; spiritual ~ 88, 89, 132; structures of ~ 16, 17 explaining: ~ meaning 65ff., 113, 135; religion 3, 52, 57ff„ 112, 122,136, 139,164, 197; ~ religion away 65, 66,122, 198; - religion from within 136; ~ religious phenomena 55, 83, 85,154; - and understanding 6, 25-28, 36, 50, 54-56, 85, 99, 122, 132, 135,136, 145,194, 197, 198, 204; limits of - 83ff., 127 explanatory: ~ accounts 55, 67, 80,128, 133; ~ agenda 79; - approach VI, 4-6,12, 35, 36, 59, 73, 75n, 76,129, 145,196-199, 201, 204, 206; exercise 69; ~ framework 73, 129; -GreatDivide 51; - instruments 112; - method 159, 173; - models 83, 84, 88, 89; - perspective 90,133; ~ position 207; - reflection 6, 36; science 79; - strategies 36, 60, 7778n; - theories 87,89,132; - value 18 feminism 151-153, 156,159, 160, 173, 183, 187, 188 feminist 149ff., 156,157, 163,175, 180, 181, 187, 199; - analysis of religion 151, 159,175; - approach 143; critique/criticism 158,160; methodology 175; - movement 143; - philosophy 12n; scholars/scholarship 150,151,155, 173-176; ~ studies 143n, 144,145, 206; - theology 151n; - thought 151,163,188,189

Index of Subjects field research V, 104,115, 119,120 fusion of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung) 13,106,107, 112 Geisteswissenschaften 67, 73, 78, 94, 99,122, 130 gender studies 151-153,155,156,159163,173,175,180 "getting it right" (Treffen des Richtigen) 100 given/givenness 22-26, 29ff„ 32, 48,54; constituted given 4,10,12, 21ff„ 23, 25, 32, 47, 53, 56,170 glossolalia 85-87, 132 gnostic epistemology 65 Heilige, das 31 hermeneutic phenomenology 5, 7,10, 26 hermeneutic tradition 5n hermeneutical circle 3, 12,19ff., 25, 32, 38, 107 hermeneutics 3, 5ff., 12, 15, 21n, 25-27, 30, 31, 39, 46, 47, 51-55, 79,121, 198; critical - 19n; ~ of facticity 111; philosophical - 5, 9, 10,12-15, 19, 21, 25-29, 49, 105, 115, 136; textual ~ 19n historically effective consciousness 106 historicism 11, 27 homo religiosus 48, 158 ideological agenda 94, 131 induction, phenomenological 3, 11,12, 16ff., 25, 31, 32, 47, 50 insider 150, 153, 163,164; -/outsider 149, 150,165; religious - 128,150 Integrated Causal Model 77, 78 intentional consciousness 7, 26 intentionality 7, 8, 12,15ff., 31, 48, 54, 74, 75-76n, 83, 181; ~ of consciousness 3, 15, 24 International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) V, 73,131,193, 202 interpretation of meaning 4, 6, 8-10, 12, 13, 15,19-25, 50, 52, 53, 55 interpretive: approach 4, 35, 36; horizon 13, 24 intersubjective 12, 13, 15,18, 21, 25, 30, 38, 39, 41, 50, 54, 55, 65, 68,127,170

217

intersubjectivity 48, 122 intuition 4, 7, 17, 23, 30, 45^17, 69, 73; eidetic - 17; - of essences 7, 8,12, 17 logic, classical 109 Marxist critique of religion 143 meaning: abstract - 21; analyses of - 25; approaches to - 25, 45, 53, 80; collective-s 31; constitution of ~ 16,23,24,26; construction of ~ 14, 181; essential ~s 11,17,18,21,23, 50; eternal ~s 56; event of - 99, 111, 112, 117; exemplary - 21; ideal - 18,21; intended - 18,21, 26, 27; interpreting/interpretation of - 4, 6, 8-10, 12,13, 15, 19-25, 50, 52, 53, 55; - of religion 30, 31; mercurial ~s 79; - as a mutual knowledge 36ff.; new ~s 13,14, 30, 49; phenomenological ~ 18,19; production of - 32, 38; religious 3, 6, 8, 9 , 1 3 , 1 4 , 1 6 , 1 9 - 2 5 , 31, 36, 41, 65, 113,135, 197; sacred - 15, 16, 21; subjective - 16; symbolic 18; textual - 32, 65; universal -s 3,17, 18, 21, 31, 41, 50; worlds of 14, 26, 27, 49, 54,167 method(s): androcentric - 160, 162-164; explanatory - 159,173; feminist critique of - 158, 160; hermeneutical - 88, 89; historico-critical - 84; historico-geographical ~ V; ~ as discernment lOlff.; - in comparative religion V, VI, 199; - of field research 119; - of literary criticism 84; - of phenomenological induction 3,11,16-18; - of the Geisteswissenschaften/humanities 99,101, 103; - of understanding 134, 137; - of Wesensschau 8; phenomenological - 4, 7, 11, 17, 25, 45, 153,159, 173,198; preliminary 25, 45ff„ 55; scholarly - 8n, 154; scientific - 88-90,132,136,194 methodical truth 102, 114 methodological: - absolutism 154; atheism 66, 135; - choice 46, 62, 163,199, 205; - context 12, 50; -

218

Index of Subjects

controversies 164, 203; ~ debate 193,194,196; - framework 6n; imperialism 194, 204; ~ orthodoxies 154, 173; - pluralism 27, 205, 206; ~ reflection 150, 151; ~ rigidity 153, 174,176; - traps 149ff., 159,163,165,173ff„ 188 methodology V, 9,11, 70, 89, 94,151, 153ff., 157,159,163,175,187,193ff„ 199 mind 30, 32, 35, 38, 39, 51, 52, 73, 74, 7679, 88, 90, 93-95,118,121,161,197 modes: - of being 13,15,20,54,100,137; ~ of experience 111; - of knowledge 99,100; ~ of thought 36,137 model(s): androcentric ~ of humanity 155,157-159,162-164,199; conceptual - 84; conversational 109; explanatory - 83, 84, 86, 88, 89; interpretive ~ 89; ~ of phenomenology 9,11; ~ of religion 158, 164,174,189; rhizome ~ of context 180n; scientific ~ 53; universal generic - 158; cf. Integrative Causal Model; Standard Social Science Model Naturwissenschaften 67, 73, 99,122 neutrality 150,161 Nordic tradition of scholarship 83ff., 127, 132,133 normative 6, 8,13,17, 50, 51, 54, 55,173 object 67, 109, 119,121, 196; cultural - 79; intentional - 7,16, 22; ~ of consciousness 118; ~ of inquiry 59, 68, 69,106,113,118,133,197; of investigation 10; - in itself 118; - of phenomenology of religion 4, 45, 47ff.; - of research 3, 8, 112, 114,133,134, 137; ~ of study 47, 61, 72, 77, 89,119,130,167,168, 171, 197, 202, 206; religion as an ~ 3, 114, 115,134,137; subject and 105, 114 objective 7, 9,12,13, 23, 52, 65, 95,108, 111, 138,139,150,173,178,194; ~ criteria 102; - facts 22; - knowledge 15, 52, 78; - models 53

objectivity 6, 9, 12, 39, 54, 61, 122,150, 177n, 178,187 objectivism 10, 53 open-ended 3, 4,10, 12-14,16, 19, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27, 37-39, 52-54, 56,154, 155,170 Pentecostal movement 85-87 peregrinus 116 perspectivism 4,12, 37-40, 52, 53 phenomenological: - categories 16; induction 3,11,12,16ff„ 25, 31, 32, 47, 50; - method(s) 4, 7, 11,17, 25, 45,153,159, 173,198; - reduction 9, 27,46, 53,197 phenomenologists 4, 6-8,11,12,15,17, 19, 27, 29-31, 45, 48, 50, 51 phenomenology 4, 5ff., 55,112; hermeneutic ~ 5, 7,10, 26; methods of 9,11; - as a descriptive science 7; - as a preliminary method 45ff., 55; - as a method 4, 7, 45, 47ff.; - as a research attitude 4, 45, 48; transcendental - 7, 9,10; typological - 8n; cf. philosophical phenomenology; phenomenology of religion phenomenology of religion 7-11,16, 25, 26, 29,45ff., 49,55,129,189, 203; critics of ~ 9; object of - 4, 45, 47ff. philosophical hermeneutics 5, 9 , 1 0 , 1 2 15,19, 21, 25-29, 49, 105, 115,136 philosophical phenomenology 5ff., 49, 50, 55; critics of - 10, 17, 31; existential ~ 7,10, 12, 26 pilgrimage 100, 101,105, 106,109,114120,122,135,136 pluralism: disciplinary ~ 27; methodological ~ 27, 205, 206 polymethodic 71,132 positivism 10, 52, 53 postmodernism 11,15, 27, 151, 160, 183, 187, 188 power structures 143,144 practical experience 99,103,104 preconception 4, 7, 99,105-108, 113, 115ff., 117,119,122,134, 137,138 progressiveness 61 proskynitis 116, 117 prejudice 4,105-108,119, 122,178

Index of Subjects preliminary method 25, 45ff., 55 presuppositions 6, 7, 9,11, 18n, 20, 27, 29-31, 38, 60, 61,155,164,189 preunderstanding 18n, 20 psychology 38, 72, 77n, 84, 89, 94; depth - 85; evolutionary - 73, 76, 79, 80, 199; ~ of religion 83, 84ff., 89; role (theory) ~ 86, 132; social ~ 194 pure case 3, 18, 21, 41 quality 99-104 quantity 99-103 reductionism 7,19, 27, 30, 53, 65, 77,122, 196-198, 202, 203; -/antireductionism controversy 196ff. reductive explanations 3,16 reflexivity 48, 161 relativism 11, 13, 21, 27, 50, 177n religious: ~ acts 21, 36, 40; - approach 135; - behavior 59, 60, 87,112,114, 137,189; - beings 14,18, 21, 22, 115,158; - beliefs 36, 40, 66, 90, 134-136,154, 163, 200, 201; believers 24, 25, 51, 54; - commitment 8,132,134, 201; ~ communication 16; - communities 129, 204; ~ consciousness 24; ~ contexts 152,156, 162; - conviction 201; ~ data 3,17-21, 41; - discourse 135, 176; ~ doctrines 22; - essence 17, 27, 29, 51, 56, 85; - experience 4, 15-18, 21, 23-25, 30-32, 40, 47, 48, 50, 55, 59, 60, 65, 87, 88, 114, 132, 134,137, 143, 197,198; ~ explanations 83, 132, 200; expressions 14,16, 21, 32; - facts 127,135; - freedom 145; ~ hierarchies 22; - history 93; ~ insider 128, 150; ~ institutions 22; intent(ion) 16, 4 5 ^ 8 , 1 2 2 , 1 3 5 , 201; - interpretations 24; - knowledge 95; - language 15,21,22,40; - life 93,150,155,159; - meaning 3, 6, 8, 9 , 1 3 , 1 4 , 1 6 , 1 9 - 2 5 , 31, 36, 41, 65, 113,135,197; ~ models of the world 157; - needs 131; - "other" 6,13, 20, 27, 28, 46, 51; - persons 23-25, 46, 51, 54, 83, 88,110,129,

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200; - phenomena 3, 6-9,11-13, 15,17-25, 27, 38, 39, 46, 50, 51, 5355, 65, 72, 80, 83-85,105, 119,127, 129,132-135,137,153,154,158, 167,197,198, 200, 204; - pluralism 149; - power relations 22; ~ practice 60,134-136,157,158,175, 180, 182, 201; - practitioners 24; reality 41, 54, 134, 200, 201; ~ ritual 39; - situations 156, 159; ~ structure 3, 17,18, 21-24, 32, 41, 48, 54, 56; - subjects 158; - symbolisms 17,18; - symbols 4, 23; ~ systems 204; - texts 13, 16, 19-24, 46, 65; - thought 59, 60,112, 114, 137,155,159; - traditions 20, 23, 42, 59, 65, 84, 93, 104,127,143, 150, 202, 204; - universe 119, 122; wholes 20, 21; - worldview 20; universal - structures 9 Religious Studies 8-11, 66, 67, 72, 74, 79, 80, 83ff„ 90, 93,128,129,132,133, 136,149,151,153, 155,157-163, 165,169, 189,199 Religionswissenschaft 8,128 rhetorical approach 194 role (theory) psychology 86,132 Sache, die 101,105, 106, 109,112, 113,115, 134,137, 201 sacred structures and meanings 15, 21 scholarly approach 8,11, 27, 28, 51, 52, 55,197 science/religion-controversy 93ff., 195, 199ff. scientific: ~ analysis 54, 65, 72; approaches 4, 6,12, 38, 40, 53, 56, 59, 77, 94,130-132,197,198; explanation 6, 27,52, 55, 59, 60, 62, 66, 87,129,133, 201; ~ inquiry 26, 59, 67,106, 113,133, 144, 197; intent 135; - investigation 52, 56, 59, 60, 62, 73, 75n; - knowledge 39, 52, 61, 77, 80,127, 129, 130, 137, 168,171,178,198; - methods 8890, 132,136,194; - modes of thought 36; ~ objectivism 53; procedure 3, 60,101,104,105,113, 119,122,138; - project 3,59,115, 134,201; - scheme 3; - study of

220

Index of Subjects

religion 59, 73n, 80, 83, 94,129, 130, 132, 133, 135,145; - theory and practice 52; ~ understanding 76n, 112ff., 132,135; ~ understanding of religion 65, 67, 113,135 scientists 31, 60, 69, 71, 76n, 77, 88, 96, 99, 121,127,130,138,199 scholarly interpreter 20, 24, 25, 51, 54 secular perspective 83 self 10, 11, 30, 49, 52,170, 171; epistemic ~ 9, 10; -/other relation 10, 26, 49, 52; universal - 49 self-correctivity 61 sexual difference 167-171 Sibelius Academy 102 situation 29, 31, 47, 56,104, 153,178,182; everyday ~ 37; existential ~ 16; life - 150; religious ~ 156, 159 social control 144 social psychology 194 Socratic dialogue 26 Standard Social Science Model 77, 96 structure: essential ~s 3, 7-9,11,16-18, 41; given - s 22, 24; hermeneutical ~s 14; hidden-s 17; ideal ~s 18, 2 1 , 3 2 , 4 0 , 4 1 , 5 4 ; inner - 46; intentional ~s 13, 15, 16, 54, 197; invariant - s 12, 17, 20, 50; narrative ~s 48; phenomenological - 18, 19; power - 143,144; religious - s 3, 9, 17, 18, 21, 22, 32, 41, 48, 54, 56; sacred ~s and meanings 15, 21; of consciousness 45, 48, 54; - of intentionality 48; - of interpretation 15; - of religious experience 16; - of religious meaning 3, 16; of religious phenomena 54; ~ of transcendence 15, 16; symbolic ~s 18, 20, 23, 25, 40; transcendent 21; universal ~s 8, 9, 15,17-19, 38, 47, 48, 50, 53 subject matter 10, 45, 66, 68, 73, 80, 99, 101,102,104-107,111-115,119, 134, 137, 150, 155-157, 160, 161, 163, 207 subjective experience 59, 78n, 112 subjectivity 99, 120,122,168; - of existentialism 12 suspend judgment 6, 7, 15,17, 27, 51, 200

symbolic: expressions 13, 14, 16, 21, 31; -language 16,22,25,26; - structures 1 8 , 2 0 , 2 3 , 2 5 , 4 0 , 5 3 symbolism 10,16-18, 23, 25, 53 symbols, religious 4,18, 22, 23, 40 sympathetic understanding 8 textual 3,19, 20, 25, 32, 65,132,149 thick description 38, 65ff., 69 totally other 30,51 tradition 33, 36,106, 107,114, 115, 118, 120, 197, 205; cultural - 93; hermeneutic - 5n; patriarchal ~s 144; philosophical - 104; religious ~(s) 20, 23, 42, 59, 65, 84, 93,104, 127, 143,150, 202, 204; research - s 193, 200, 201 transcendental phenomenology 7, 9, 10 typological phenomenology 8n understanding VI, Iff., 21, 65, 99ff.; communicative - 111; context for - 3, 12ff.; hermeneutic - 35ff.; hermen e u t i c s o f - 121; intersubjective 13; intra/inter-cultural - 120; methods of - 134,137; objectivity in - 12; scientific ~ of religion 65, 67,113,135; sympathetic - 8; textual - 107; - and explaining 6, 25-28, 36, 50, 54-56, 85, 99, 122, 132, 135,136,145,194, 197, 198, 204; - and interpretation 4, 12-16, 18,19, 23, 28, 55, 56,115; - as knowledge 104ff.; - as linguistic event 4, 106ff„ 108, 112-114; - of religion 42, 73, 89, 127,133-136, 143, 154; - religion from inside 59, 85; - religious phenomena 12, 13, 19, 21, 23, 38, 55, 89; universal 114 universal: particular/- 22; religion as a phenomenon/category 47, 93; criteria 50; - essences 47, 55; framework for understanding 19; - meaning 3, 18, 31, 32, 41; models 158; - self 49; - structures 8, 9, 15-19, 21, 32, 38, 47, 48, 50, 53 universalism 189

Index of Subjects Verstehen VI, 5η, 6n, 59,104-106,120,129, 135; cf. u n d e r s t a n d i n g

221

Wesensschau 8 , 1 7 worldview 14, 20, 59, 117, 154, 155, 157, 165, 200, 201