Description
Can the study of religion be justified? Scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of research procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. Richard B. Miller identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, and then offers an alternative framework for thinking about the purposes of the discipline. Shadowing these various methodologies, he notes, is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that aspires to value-neutrality. This ideal fortifies a "regime of truth" that undercuts efforts to think normatively and teleologically about the field's purpose and value. Miller's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship.Why Study Religion? offers an account of humanistic inquiry that is held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility. Ordered to such purposes, Miller argues, scholars of religion can relax their commitment to matters of methodological procedure and advocate for the value of studying religion. The future of religious studies will depend on how well it can articulate its goals as a basis for motivating scholarship in the field.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsI. A Crisis of Rationale Chapter 1: On Justifying the Study of ReligionChapter 2: The Ethics of Religious StudiesII. A Regime of TruthChapter 3: Interpretation, Comparison, and the History of ReligionsChapter 4: Scientific Rationality and Causal ExplanationChapter 5: Existential Symbolism and Theological AnthropologyChapter 6: Embodied Practice and Materialistic PhenomenologyChapter 7: Genealogy, Ideology, and Critical TheoryChapter 8: Philosophy, Normativity, and MetacriticismIII. Purposes, Desires, and Critical HumanismChapter 9: Religious Studies and the Values of Critical Humanism1. The End of Religious Studies2. Acts and Moral Agency3. Critical Humanism4. Four Values5. Exemplary Works in the Study of Religion6. Critical Humanism and the Ethics of Religious StudiesEpilogue: Critical Humanism as a Vocation
