Concluding Conference: Religion in the 21st Century

The concluding conference of Religion in the 21st Century is held in Copenhagen September 19th - 23rd 2007 (conference homepage here). I will be presenting a paper entitled 'Defining Religion: A Fresh Philosophical Approach'. It concerns one of the preliminary issues in my PhD project, namely the view that the discussion about defining religion is one that should be avoided. My main point is that this view (although widespread) is misguided.

Defining religion has traditionally been seen as an unfortunate return to theological essentialism, and is often replaced with a constructivist approach. However, both the constructivism and the reasons for choosing it over a more realist approach are highly problematic. To show this, it is necessary first to untangle various discussions in the theory of religious studies regarding methods, subject field and the relation to religious (anti-)realism. My main point here is that the problematic aspect of theology is not the essentialism per se (and this means that scholars of religion might be giving up on a realist attitude towards defining for wrong reasons). Furthermore, the common constructivism concerning 'religion' is not exactly unproblematic.

I hope my paper and presentation will provoke some interesting discussions about these fundamental questions in the philosophy of religion.

New philosophy of religion on the blog

The study of religions needs a new philosophy of religion. Classical philosophy of religion has focused too much on problems concerning theistic religions (e.g. the problem of evil, proofs of the existence of God, and free will). The method has typically been classical conceptual analysis (so-called speculative armchair philosophy) with very little interest in empirical findings. In recent years discussions about pluralism and a global perspective has been added, but departments of philosophy are still mainly doing philosophy of religion in the traditional manner (with a little X-phil added). This has contributed to the widespread view that philosophy of religion is quasi-theological and not directly relevant to the study of religions.

Whether or not this characterization is entirely fair, it is true that philosophy in the past has failed to show adequate attention to philosophical issues and fundamental questions in the study of religions. This blog and my PhD project (What is Religion?) aim to help fill this gap.