The Western Construction of Religion

by Dubuisson, Daniel; Sayers, William

• ISBN13: 9780801887567
• ISBN10: 0801887569
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-27
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

In this book, anthropologist and historian of religion Daniel Dubuisson contests Mircea Eliade's theory of the existence of a universal Homo Religiosus and argues that "religion" as a discrete concept is a Western construct, an invention of nineteenth-century scholars who created it as a field of scientific study. Before that time, there was little attempt to step outside religious experience and objectify it. In fact, the difference between "secular" and "religious" as understood in the West is meaningless in many non-Western cultures. While Dubuisson still regards the study of beliefs and belief-systems as legitimate, he argues that the word "religion" is too fraught with ideology and too Western in its associated meanings to be useful. Instead, he proposes the term "cosmographic formation," which would speak to a more universal human response to the congeries of experience we call Being, the Sacred, or God. Challenging readers to examine notions of what religion is, this book is sure to generate disagreement and controversy. The Western Construction of Religion not only provides a critical assessment of the whole history of "religion" as it is understood in the West but also offers better ways of constructing the study of this central part of human experience.

Author Biography

Daniel Dubuisson is director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CNRS, in Lille and author of many books in French and English, including Twentieth Century Mythologies and Impostures et pseudo-science: L'oeuvre de Mircea Eliade. William Sayers has translated Jacques Stiker's A History of Disability and Adam Rayski's The Choice of the Jews under Vichy: Between Submission and Resistance.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Religion, the West, and the History of Religions

The West and Religion

A Central Concept The Mirror of the West Singular Universes Religioand Religion Texts, Corpora, and Hypertext Cosmographical Issues

A Paprdoxical Subject Religions or Religious Phenomena? History or Histories?

An Uncertain Anthropological Calling A Nebula of Definitions An Absence of Criteria Imprecise and Shifting Boundaries Arbitrary Typologies A Scattering of Monographs Arbitrary, Narcissistic Objectivization

Order and History

Christianity and the West A Unique History Interiorization and Universalization Autonomy and Imperialism

Continuities A General Topic A Major Paradigm Exemplary Theses

The Genealogy of a Western Science

The History of Religions in the Nineteenth Century Ubiquitous Prejudices Myths and Science A Science of Its Time

Three Twentieth-Century Debates The Sociological Explanation "Historians" and Phenomenologists The Invention of Homo religiosus

From Religions to Cosmographic Formations

The West, Religion, and Science

Prolegomena

Notes

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.