The Western Construction of Religion

Myths, Knowledge, and Ideology
Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-0-8018-7320-1
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 260 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 233 mm, Gewicht: 499 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Dubuisson, Daniel

Weitere Mitwirkende

Sayers, William

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religion & Wissenschaft

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Religion, the West, and the History of Religions
Part I. The West and Religion
Chapter 1. A Central Concept
Chapter 2. A Paprdoxical Subject
Chapter 3. An Uncertain Anthropological Calling
Part II. Order and History
Chapter 4. Christianity and the West
Chapter 5. Continuities
Part III. The Genealogy of a Western Science
Chapter 6. The History of Religions in the Nineteenth Century
Chapter 7. Three Twentieth-Century Debates
Part IV. From Religions to Cosmographic Formations
Chapter 8. The West, Religion, and Science
Chapter 9. Prolegomena
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Dubuisson, Daniel
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.

Sayers, William
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.