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Full Description
This book is a unique introduction to studying the philosophy of religion, drawing on a wide range of cultures and literary sources in an approach that is both methodologically innovative and expansive in its cross-cultural and multi-religious scope.
Employing his expertise in interdisciplinary and Wittgenstein-influenced methods, Mikel Burley draws on works of ethnography and narrative fiction, including Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, to critically engage with existing approaches to the philosophy of religion and advocate a radical, pluralist approach. Breaking away from the standard fixation on a narrow construal of theism, topics discussed include conceptions of compassion in Buddhist ethics, cannibalism in mortuary rituals, divine possession and animal sacrifice in Hindu Goddess worship and animism in indigenous traditions.
Original and engaging, Burley's synthesis of philosophical, anthropological and literary elements expands and diversifies the philosophy of religion, providing an essential introduction for anyone interested in studying the radical plurality of forms that religion takes in human life.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Introducing a Radical Pluralist Approach
Chapter Summaries
PART I: CRITIQUE AND METHODOLOGY
1. Religious Pluralisms
John Hick's Pluralistic Hypothesis
Reductive and Homogenizing Implications of Hick's Approach
John Cobb's Vision of Creative Transformation
Victoria Harrison's Internalist Pluralism
A Difficulty with the Internalist Picture
Working with Examples
Conceptual Schemes, Incomprehensibility and Respect
Concluding Remarks
2. Radical Plurality and Critical Description
Shortcomings of Contemporary Philosophy of Religion
Expansive Innovations and Residual Limitations
Description's Critical Potential
Defamiliarization and Cultural Critique in Anthropology
Thickening Description
3. Narrative Fiction and Philosophical Inquiry
Narrative Fiction and Competing Conceptions of Philosophical Reasoning
Philosophers and Dramatists
Narrative Fiction as Philosophy of Religion
Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman
Death and the King's Horseman as Philosophy of Religion
Concluding Remarks
PART II: EXEMPLIFYING A RADICAL PLURALIST APPROACH
4. 'Compassion beyond Our Imagination': Radical Plurality in Buddhist Ethics
Varieties of Buddhism and the Rhetoric of Compassion
Images of Familial Love and Abandonment
Bodily Sacrifice as Heroic Virtue
'Lamps of Their Precious Bodies'
Transgressive Compassion and Skilful Means
Concluding Remarks
5. 'Ways of Being Human': Cannibalism and Respecting the Dead
Eating Animals but Not Eating People?
Varieties of Cannibalism
Wari' Ways of Respecting the Dead
Concluding Remarks
6. 'Awe at the Terrible': Divine Possession, Blood Sacrifice and the Grotesque Body
Preamble: Studying Ritual Philosophically
The Grotesque
'Horrific Comedy' and the Formation of a Ritual Sound-World
Kamakhya, Desire and the Womb of the Goddess
Deodhas and Deities
Ritualized Transgression and the Performance of Divine Possession
Concluding Remarks
7. 'A Language in Which to Think of the World': Animism, Philosophy and Indigenous Traditions
The Concept of Animism: Origins, Decline and Revival
Animism, Indigeneity and the Philosophy of Religion
Beyond Literalism and Metaphor
Demythologizing the 'Ecologically Noble Savage'
Concluding Remarks
8. Conclusions: Loosening Up Our Lives
Attending to Heterogeneity and Thickening Description
Targeting Overgeneralizing Claims and Assumptions
Imagining Philosophy of Religion Differently
References
Index
