Reappraising Durkheim for the Study and Teaching of Religion Today.
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Reappraising Durkheim for the Study and Teaching of Religion Today is an occasion to critically analyze and reassess the work of this intellectual pioneer. It is also an effort to signal the continuing importance of Durkheim for today's graduate and advanced undergraduate classrooms. Reappraising Durkheim brings together ten new critical essays in which noted sociologists, psychologists, phenomenologists, philosophers, and historians of religion grapple with the questions Durkheim raised and the solutions he proposed. Taken together, the volume is a careful historical and multi-disciplinary study of Durkheim that will lead students to a better understanding of how to study religion. Reappraising Durkheim will be an excellent text for courses focusing on theory and method in the academic study of religion at both the graduate and advanced undergraduate level. It would therefore be appropriate for use in departments of religious studies, philosophy, sociology, and anthropology.
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1 online resource. :
9789004379152
Die Religionswissenschaft und das Christentum, Eine historische Untersuchung über das Verhältnis von Religionswissenschaft und Theologie.
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What are religious studies? What is theology? And what is their relationship to each other? In the light of such theoretical and methodological questions this historical inquiry asks what characterizes the study of Christianity within comparative religion-as distinguished from that of Christian theology? In the three main sections of the book representative texts from the history of comparative religion-including Schleiermacher and some other theological forerunners in the 19th century-are analyzed from a methodological and a material point of view. On this basis an answer is sought to the following questions: What has been the place of the study of Christianity within this discipline? On which methodological principles has it been based? And what kind of picture of Christianity has it presented?
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1 online resource. :
9789004378834
Religion and Reductionism, Essays on Eliade, Segal, and the Challenge of the Social Sciences for the Study of Religion.
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This volume on Religion and Reductionism grew out of a conference convened in November, 1990, where the participants were asked to respond to the conceptual and methodological problem of reductionism in the academic study of religion. The conference focused on the writings of Robert A. Segal and his defence of reductionism and criticism of Mircea Eliade's non-reductive interpretation of religion. At the Miami conference some of the most important and enduring questions were raised: (1) What is religion? (2) What is religion and/or religious meaning? (3) How should religion be studied and taught? (4) What are the possibilities and limits of social scientific analyses of religious phenomena? (5) What is reductionism? (6) What is anti-reductionism? These and other questions on religion and reductionism are widespread and invite serious consideration; they help to illuminate the basic issues that are at the core of any study of the world's major religions.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378841
Religion in the Making : The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion /
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This volume explores the ways in which religion became the object of scientific research in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most obvious is the development of an increasingly autonomous science of religion (with founding fathers like Max Müller and C.P. Tiele). However, within anthropology (Tylor, Frazer), sociology (Durkheim, Max Weber), and psychology (William James), religion also came to be seen as a separate entity to be studied comparatively. To capture this wide field this book focuses on the emergence of the discourse on religion in a broad academic context, among different disciplines. The emphasis is on general socio-historical developments, rather than on individual biographies. Part I deals with the institutionalization of science of religion in France, Britain, and the Netherlands. Part II focuses on boundary disputes between the emerging \'sciences of religion\'. Part III examines new conceptualizations of religion underlying the new endeavour (\'ritual\', \'magic\', \'survival\').
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Papers from a conference held May 22-24, 1997 at the University of Amsterdam. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004379039 :
0169-8834 ;
Representation in Religion, Studies in Honor of Moshe Barasch.
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The role of representation in religion is complex. While often perceived as essential, it is also associated in many traditions with the liability of idolatry and provokes iconoclasm. The essays in this volume examine the nuances of representation in religion and the debate concerning its place across a variety of traditions from the three Abrahamic faiths, to those of antiquity and the East. This volume consists of presentations made at an international conference held in honor of Moshe Barasch, art historian and cultural critic, who has done much to elucidate the light which representation and religion shed on each other. It pays tribute to Barasch by expanding the base of understanding and insight he has erected. It should be of interest to students of religion and of art history.
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1 online resource. :
9789004379121
The Sacred and its Scholars, Comparative Methodologies for the Study of Primary Religious Data.
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This volume of essays is devoted to a careful examination of the importance of methodology in the study of primary religious data. The essays focus on the \'Sacred\' as an ultimate object of descriptive analysis and critical scrutiny on the part of a select number of North American and European methodologists in the study and teaching of the history of religions and its allied disciplines. The central question to which the contributors respond are these: What is the Sacred? Is it a being or a concept of a being; is it a mental state or an objective reality or something else entirely? Can the Sacred be described as an empirical fact, or as a formal rule for religious inquiry? If the Sacred is a valid category in the study and teaching of religion, then what can be said about the antithesis of the sacred, namely the profane or the secular? This volume probes these questions with great care in order to justify a number of ways the Sacred can be construed as an indispensable notion for the study and teaching of religion.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378957
Man, Meaning, and Mystery : 100 Years of History of Religions in Norway. The Heritage of W. Brede Kristensen /
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At an international symposium in Norway, the 100 years' anniversary of the academic study of religion was celebrated. This volume contains the papers that were presented at this conference. A major part of the papers deals with the situation of this discipline around the turn of the last century, focussing especially on the work of the Dutch-Norwegian scholar W. Brede Kristensen (1867-1953) and on other founding fathers in the Scandinavian countries. Other contributors discuss methodological questions relating to the idea of a phenomenology of religion. Furthermore, an attempt is made to compare the study of religion at the end of the twentieth century with the situation a hundred years earlier, and to trace some of the lines of development. The book includes a bibliography of publications by W. Brede Kristensen.
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Consists chiefly of lectures given during an international symposium, held in Oslo Sept. 17-20, 1998. :
1 online resource. :
"William Brede Kristensen: a bibliography": pages [287]-294.
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047400264 :
0169-8834 ;
New Perspectives on Advaita Vedānta, Essays in Commemoration of Professor Richard De Smet, S.J..
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This volume is a collection of essays by leading scholars who treat various aspects of the Hindu thinker Śaṃkara (ca. 700 CE) and his system of Advaita Vedānta. Topics include the contemporary relevance of Śaṃkara for inter-religious dialogue and human rights as well as revised assessments of Śaṃkara's understanding of divine grace, the role of the gods, Buddhism, Śaṃkara's relation to later Advaita, and the unity of the Self. The introductory essay of this commemoration volume assesses the place and value of Richard De Smet's work in the context of twentieth century Śaṃkara scholarship. The contributors break new scholarly ground and offer fresh perspectives on Śaṃkara and Advaita Vedānta and help reassess traditional understandings of this great master of non-duality.
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1 online resource. :
9789004379114
Scripture and Knowledge, An Essay on Religious Epistemology.
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At the core of Scripture and Knowledge lies the problem of the nature of religious knowledge. The author argues that religion is a particular framework rather than a particular content or defined set of performances. He sees this framework as epistemological, that is, as one that furnishes believers with a conception of knowledge alternative to that of philosophical reasoning. The thesis on the epistemological nature of religion will be developed by the examination of the concept of scripture as a body of authoritative and even infallible texts. The concept of scripture is presented as one of the constitutive concepts of the epistemological framework of religion. The author argues that the various scriptures and their commentaries should be understood as the arena within which the epistemological process of religion takes place and the central epistemological means by which religious knowledge is made possible.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378919
What is Religion?, Origins, Definitions, and Explanations.
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What is Religion? consists of fourteen essays written by a selection of scholars who represent a wide spectrum of approaches to the acedamic study of religion. Each of the essays is an effort not only to take stock of the present controversy concerning appropriate methodologies for the study of religion, but also to take one giant step beyond that to formulate a precise definition of religion. Given the considerable confusion today about what it is exactly that religious studies scholars take to be their subject matter when they presume to professionally teachabout religion, this volume provides a much needed forum for leading scholars to debate and clarify what professors of religious studies understand as the central object or objects under their scrunity.
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1 online resource. :
9789004379046
The Future of the Study of Religion, Proceedings of Congress 2000.
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This volume brings together diverse voices from various fields within religious and theological studies for a conversation about the proper objects, goals, and methods for the study of religion in the twenty-first century. It approaches these questions by way of the most recent contemporary challenges, debates, and developments in the field, and provides a forum in which contending perspectives are tested and contested by their proponents and opponents. Contributors address topics such as: the connection between the 'normative' and the 'scientific' approaches to the study of religion, the meaning of religion in a context of globalization, the relation between religious studies and religious traditions, the viability of comparative and cultural studies of religious phenomena, and the future of gender studies in religion.
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1 online resource. :
9789047404125
Geschichte und Probleme der Religionswissenschaft.
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This book contains a collection of 18 articles written by the author in the last 30 years on methodological, terminological and historical problems concerning the field of his discipline at Leipzig University, namely Religious Studies. Some articles are rewritten, others only revised or complemented. Much influenced at this University in considering the field of Religious Studies as an area based primary on history and philology, independent of theology and philosophy, this work focuses a.o. on terms like Myth, Mythology, Demythologizing, and Syncretism; on subjects like Mohammed, the relation between Jews, Christians and Muslims; and on leading figures of the discipline in past and present. An introductory essay provides the autobiographical considerations, necessary for a good understanding of the collection. Das Buch enthält 18 Aufsätze des Autors aus den letzten 30 Jahren, die sich mit wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen, methodologischen und terminologischen Problemen der Religionswissenschaft (Rw) beschäftigen. Mehrere von ihnen sind neubearbeitet, andere wenigstens durchgesehen und ergänzt worden. Da der Verfasser das Fach fast 25 Jahre an der Universität Leipzig (früher DDR) vertreten hat, ehe er nach den USA und dann nach Marburg berufen wurde, waren seine Möglichkeiten begrenzt, sich zu grundlegenden und aktuellen Fragen seiner Disziplin zu äußern, und wenn, dann in Zeitschriften, die nicht so verbreitet sind, daß sie international beachtet werden konnten. Seine Ausbildung in Leipzig mit einer der ältesten Traditionen der deutschen Rw und die damalige Situation bestimmen daher die Mehrzahl seiner Arbeiten in bemerkenswerter Weise, indem sie versuchen der Rw ein eigenständiges Profil zu geben, und zwar auf der Grundlage einer streng historisch-philologischen, nichttheologischen Position, die vor allem auch ihre ideologiekritische Seite mit einschließt. Einige Beiträge widmen sich außerdem terminologischen Themen (Mythos, Entmythologisierung, Synkretismus, Entwicklung, Sekte), andere historischen (Mohammed, Verhältnis von Juden, Christen und Muslimen, Frühes Christentum) und wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen (H. Haas, J. Wach, W. Baetke, Eliade, Religionsgeschichtliche Schule). Der einleitende Essay gibt autobiographische Reflexionen wieder, die zum Verständnis der Sammlung nötig sind. Das Buch greift grundlegende Probleme der Rw auf, die bis heute diese Disziplin begleiten, auch wenn verständlicherweise neue Fragestellungen aufgekommen sind, von denen der Verfasser z.B. die der Religion-Umwelt-Beziehung (der älteren Religionsgeographie) aufgreift.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378766
The study of religion under the impact of fascism /
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The study of religion under the spell of fascism has not received due attention. One reason for the noticeable lack of interest was the political involvement of many historians of religions. Among those who had good reason to leave the era of fascism untouched, we find prominent figures in the field. Another obstacle to examining the past impartially has been the connection with religious and other worldviews which render historical accounts in the study of religion an intricate matter. The articles in this volume provide evidence of the great complexity of the problems involved. Laying the groundwork in many cases, they shed new light on a dark and poorly-lit era of the academic study of religion in Europe.
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Includes index.
Papers presented at an international symposium on "The Study of religion under the Impact of National Socialist and Fascist Ideologies in Europe" held 16-18 July 2004 at the University of Tübingen--Pref. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047423065 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Near East : Collected Papers of the International Symposium "Alevism in Turkey and Comparable Syncretistic Religious Communities in the Ne...
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This volume deals with Islamic sects in the Near East such as the Alevis (Turkey), Druzes (Libanon), Alawis (Syria), Ahl-i Haqq (Iran, Iraq) and Shabak (Iraq), which have in common a syncretistic system of belief with a strong Shi'ite influence, as well as secrecy and endogamy. The contributions in this volume focus on the present situation of these communities, their relation to mainstream Islam, their involvement in national and ethnic politics, aspects of faith and rituals, the relevance of sacred texts, modes of religious and social transformation, and the recent revival of Alevism. In view of the new visibility of these formerly "hidden" sects and their increasing social and political importance, this volume provides important information for all scholars interested in the religious and political situation of the region.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004378988 :
0169-8834 ;