Reconstructing âReligionâ from the Bottom Up
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This article claims to uncover the core problematics that have made the debate on defining and conceptualizing âreligionâ so difficult and argues that this makes it possible to move beyond radical deconstruction towards reconstructing the concept for scholarly purposes. The argument has four main steps. Step 1 consists of establishing the nature of the entity âreligionâ as a reified imaginative formation. Step 2 consists of identifying the basic dilemma with which scholars have been struggling: the fact that, on the one hand, definitions and conceptualizations do not seem to work unless they stay sufficiently close to commonly held prototypes, while yet, on the other hand, those prototypes are grounded in monotheistic, more specifically Christian, even more specifically Protestant, theological biases about âtrueâ religion. The first line of argument leads to crypto-theological definitions and conceptualizations, the second to a radical deconstruction of the very concept of âreligion.â Step 3 resolves the dilemma by identifying an unexamined assumption, or problematic âblind spot,â that the two lines of argument have in common: they both think that âreligionâ stands against âthe secular.â However, the historical record shows that these two defined themselves not just against one another but, simultaneously, against a third domain (referred to by such terms as âmagicâ or âsuperstitionâ). The structure is therefore not dualistic but triadic. Step 4 consists of replacing common assumptions about how âreligionâ emerged in the early modern period by an interpretation that explains not just its emergence but its logical necessity, at that time, for dealing with the crisis of comparison caused by colonialist expansion. âReligionâ emerged as the tertium comparationis â or, in technically more precise language, the âpre-comparative tertiumâ â that enabled comparison between familiar (monotheist, Christian, Protestant) forms of belief and modes of worship and unfamiliar ones (associated with âpaganâ superstition or magic). If we restore the term to its original function, this allows us to reconstruct âreligionâ as a scholarly concept that not just avoids but prevents any slippage back to Christian theology or ethnocentric bias.
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2
Warnock 1976: 13â71; cf. Warnock 1994: 1â16. Specifically about the imagination in Kant, see Böhme and Böhme 1983: 231â250; Gibbons 1994; and the particularly impressive analysis in Kneller 2007. For a historically more detailed while philosophically less precise overview of Enlightenment understandings of imagination, see Engell 1981; for a comprehensive discussion, see Brann 1991. The current neglect of the imagination as a key term in the study of religion is emphasized in Traut and Wilke 2015 and Hanegraaff 2016. To forestall some questions and potential misunderstandings about my argument on the following pages (e.g., concerning my understandings of such terms as âideasâ or âconcepts;â my assumptions about mental processes such as perception, projection, or reification; my dismissal of real definitions; as well as my understanding of methodological agnosticism), it may be useful to point out that my philosophical and methodological commitments are essentially Kantian (cf. Hanegraaff 2013a: 254).
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Reconstructing âReligionâ from the Bottom Up
In: NumenSearch for other papers by Wouter J. Hanegraaff in
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This article claims to uncover the core problematics that have made the debate on defining and conceptualizing âreligionâ so difficult and argues that this makes it possible to move beyond radical deconstruction towards reconstructing the concept for scholarly purposes. The argument has four main steps. Step 1 consists of establishing the nature of the entity âreligionâ as a reified imaginative formation. Step 2 consists of identifying the basic dilemma with which scholars have been struggling: the fact that, on the one hand, definitions and conceptualizations do not seem to work unless they stay sufficiently close to commonly held prototypes, while yet, on the other hand, those prototypes are grounded in monotheistic, more specifically Christian, even more specifically Protestant, theological biases about âtrueâ religion. The first line of argument leads to crypto-theological definitions and conceptualizations, the second to a radical deconstruction of the very concept of âreligion.â Step 3 resolves the dilemma by identifying an unexamined assumption, or problematic âblind spot,â that the two lines of argument have in common: they both think that âreligionâ stands against âthe secular.â However, the historical record shows that these two defined themselves not just against one another but, simultaneously, against a third domain (referred to by such terms as âmagicâ or âsuperstitionâ). The structure is therefore not dualistic but triadic. Step 4 consists of replacing common assumptions about how âreligionâ emerged in the early modern period by an interpretation that explains not just its emergence but its logical necessity, at that time, for dealing with the crisis of comparison caused by colonialist expansion. âReligionâ emerged as the tertium comparationis â or, in technically more precise language, the âpre-comparative tertiumâ â that enabled comparison between familiar (monotheist, Christian, Protestant) forms of belief and modes of worship and unfamiliar ones (associated with âpaganâ superstition or magic). If we restore the term to its original function, this allows us to reconstruct âreligionâ as a scholarly concept that not just avoids but prevents any slippage back to Christian theology or ethnocentric bias.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 960 | 180 | 19 |
| Full Text Views | 380 | 12 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 337 | 27 | 2 |
