Philosophy, Normativity, and Metacriticism

This chapter examines the Philosophical-Evaluative Method for studying religion. It is argued that this method offers conceptual clarity about key terms and assumptions that are regnant in theory and method in the study of religion and helps one see that correcting for the inarticulacy about the value of religious studies lies not in crafting a better methodology but by realizing how the field can account to broader, more comprehensive ideas about its place within the production of critical humanistic knowledge. With these ideas in hand, the chapter focuses on the work of Stephen S. Bush and Kevin Schilbrack. It examines their central claims that draw, respectively, from pragmatism and the philosophy of mind. The chapter concludes by pressing these scholars to speak about the ends of religious studies.

Rejoinder

Martin provides a rejoinder to the responses by Stephen Bush, Kevin Schilbrack, and Jason Blum, focusing on the theoretical difficulties following from the legacy of phenomenology of religion.

Transcendental Materialism as a Theoretical Orientation to the Study of Religion

Transcendental materialism is a philosophical perspective that uses German Idealism, Marxism, psychoanalysis and natural science to offer a materialist account of subjectivity and culture. This essay compares this philosophical framework with recent work in the study of religion (Manuel Vásquez) and philosophy of religion (Kevin Schilbrack and Thomas A. Lewis). While transcendental materialism has until now been unconcerned with religion, it offers parallels with this recent work. It differs, however, in its specific understanding of the material dimension of the dialectical relationship between abstraction/conceptuality and practice/embodiment.

Religion, Philosophy, Scholarship and the Muddles Thereof

For many centuries, the relations between philosophy and religion were very close—at times indistinguishable. That is not so in the modern secular academy, which houses philosophy along with the study of religion but without noticeable mutual relations between the two. Kevin Schilbrack has ably dealt with that situation in his latest publication ‘Philosophy and the Study of Religion’. Schilbrack’s diagnoses are acute and most scholars in the study of religion will consider them worth heeding—except, most likely, his calls for more metaphysical concerns based on ideas of ‘unmediated experience’. His arguments proceed from current philosophical positions and theories of situated cognition and his appeals are quite convincing. However, they do have one remarkable drawback as this critic sees it: That metaphysics move from the ontological realm to the epistemic (!). That is no mean feat, because as no one really seems to know what metaphysics are in this ‘post-metaphysic age’, Schilbrack’s proposal seems to indicate that metaphysics now become humanly approachable and intellectually tractable. As such, they could justifiably become an integral part of the study of religion—as could philosophy.