“Logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.”
–Spock, “Star Trek IV: The Undiscovered Country”
Coleman’s articles raise the issue of competing systems of belief and education. How do you study or even discuss a group that has a completely different system of truth validation? Is there a balance between relativism and absolutism? Coleman is, in a way, trying to justify studying a group that most scholars view as extreme and anti-rational. He argues that perhaps the greatest reason surrounding the negative view of such research is the geographical closeness of the group. The idea that this group is, in a loose sense, a cultural part of the home “world” of the anthropologist makes it a problematic object of study.
My issue with Coleman’s ideas, and thus the topic I want to discuss, stems from this passage:
“Stewart (2001:327) asks how one can reveal the mystical secrets of ‘their’ religion if one neither believes in those secrets nor in the mystical power of any faith. I confess that I do not feel this query gets at the heart of the problem. Why should we assume in rather liberal Protestant fashion that our own forms of inner mystical experience somehow give us access to theirs? Such an argument falls into the trap of assuming that we are all potentially seekers in our different ways after the same ineffable Truth (McCutcheon 1997).” (Coleman, “Abominations of Anthropology”, 42)
More important to Coleman is another perspective explored by Stewart, concerning whether it is “alright” to be initiated into a religion as long as you never really believe in it or renounce the beliefs at the end. Now I understand that these two questions/perspectives are different ways of approaching a similar problem, but while the second question may seem more relevant to Coleman the first question seems more important from a philosophical standpoint. Firstly, although I am not familiar with Stewart, I loosely interpret his question as asking whether or not a scholar can fully understand and thus explain a religion if he/she is not religious. (I use religion instead of mysticism, but substituting mysticism for religion would produce an equally valid argument.) Implicit within this position is the idea that there is something special about religious belief, a “secret” way of knowing something. It therefore seems valid to question whether an individual who is not an initiate into one of these “secrets” can represent the religion he/she is studying. (This seems to be a twist on the insider/outsider approach that people have been talking about.) I disagree that this is a slippery slope into extreme Absolutism. Positing that there is a mode of thought that is unique to religion does not imply that all religions share a common goal and are seeking the same Truth. For example, analogously, just because all philosophers use a special mode of thought, speculative, analytical inquiry, this does not mean that all philosophers are seeking the same Truth.
Jumping now to Coleman’s preferred question of whether it is ethically and psychologically acceptable to take on the role of an initiate, to become an actor, it seems that this question is inherently burdened with the ideas from the first question. (Can merely acting the parts, going through the motions without belief, really explain the religion to the scholar?) In order to discuss this second question on its own I want to bring in two more quotes. First, Coleman quotes Hastrup just before presenting Stewart’s two questions: “In anthropology, the claim to knowledge remains based in a personal experience.” (Coleman, “Abominations of Anthropology”, p. 42) And secondly, he says this in relation to his and by association secular academia’s perspective and the perspective of the pastor of Word of Life: “However, we simply cannot assume that engagement in ‘conversation’ implies common understanding of the rules and meanings of what is going on.” (Coleman, “Abominations of Anthropology”, p. 45) Because Coleman’s subjects are a part of his society, not a geographically distinct other, it is difficult to adopt the role of the initiate. This is partly due to the fact that the group in question is familiar with the various academic disciplines and has created its own method of argumentation in dealing with them. So, if the anthropologist’s claim to knowledge is personal experience, then this study radically changes the nature of the anthropologist’s experience. The systems of thought used by both parties must be questioned. The example that comes to mind for me is the arguments about miracles given by al-Ghazali and David Hume. While there is no historical connection between the two they both used the same premises of skepticism to prove opposite positions, Ghazali for and Hume against miracles. I bring this up because it raises the question of the role of belief. Can belief shape logic? If the anthropologist is an actor, one without belief in the tenets of the subject he/she is studying, does this shape the conclusions he/she will reach? Implicitly this is asking whether there is a component to religion that can only be understood by the practitioner, and this component then adds wisdom to logic. (Belief can make a Ghazali instead of a Hume?) It would seem then that the anthropologist can never fully understand/explain the essential nature of the religious group he/she is studying. But perhaps he/she can come closer to understanding it if, like Stewart suggests, he/she is a practitioner of another religion? But can the academic actually explain the essence of belief and faith?
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
reflections
“Education itself is but habit, for are there not people who forget or lose their education and others who keep it?” –Rousseau, “Emile”
Not coming from a Religious Studies background I was not sure what to expect from this class. Already having an MA in philosophy, I was looking for a department that would allow me to continue pursuing my previous research. I was initially attracted to the Religion department at U of T because of its interdisciplinary nature, because this meant I could continue to study philosophy outside of a philosophy department. So in a way I was hoping that this class would introduce me to the world of religious studies. I have to admit my utter despair after the first few classes, especially after reading Masuzawa. What I expected I am not sure, I just knew that this was not it. I spent those weeks questioning whether I should have come to a religion department, and how this discussion of methodology bore any relevance to my own work. I made my philosophy Professor laugh when I went into her office and complained about the concept of methodology. Her response of yes philosophy has its own internal method of logic was the best catalyst for my attempt to theorize about the class and to find a place within the discipline. In fact, I shifted my focus from “how does this relate to my research” to “what is the underlying logic and structure of this concept”. By shifting my focus I discovered that this approach to the weekly readings allowed me to construct a theoretical framework for the concept of “religion”. It was a reminder that what you learn is not necessarily contingent upon the classes you take but upon the questions you ask of those classes. Therefore, I found it fitting to begin with the quote from Rousseau. My initial frustration with the class forced me to create a new “habit” of scholarly enquiry.
Having already gone through one MA program, I came into the class with a grounded academic voice from my first graduate experience. I entered the program with a specific goal in mind, not to “start over” and create a new voice, but to add to the voice I had already begun to develop. More than anything, this class re-affirmed my commitment to philosophy and studying Sufism and Ibn al-‘Arabi as philosophy. I will always view my study of religion as contingent upon and subordinate to my study of philosophy, but the weekly writing exercises helped me to see how I can meaningfully articulate and use this. I would have to say that the two non-philosophy graduate courses I have taken thus far, one in my previous program and this class, have been the most influential on my academic persona. Both have shaped my interest in ethics. This class forced me to be creative in my approach, and as a result I found new arguments to strengthen my academic goals.
I found the blog entries to be useful and frustrating. It was useful because it allowed me to reflect on opinions/interpretations in the readings and about the readings that differed greatly from mine. One of the brilliant advantages of an interdisciplinary program is that it fosters dialogue between scholars from different fields, and thus enriches the perspectives of the individual scholars involved. The challenge has been to not just react, but to listen, understand, adapt, and respond. By actively engaging in the activities of reaction and response with a group who had very different academic backgrounds I was challenged to engage the material and argue in a manner very different than I was used to. The only thing that I would change about the enterprise would be to switch the groups half way through the semester. I found that as the semester progressed I began to write more in anticipation of the response I expected from my group than merely reflecting on the readings. It would have been interesting to mix the response groups in the middle to see how this would have shifted the dynamic of the discussions.
The use of specific terms to guide the weekly discussion was a useful way to allow each individual to grapple with a broadly construed concept within the context of his/her own research area. While the readings were for the most part contextually specific within a certain religion or approach (history, anthropology, etc.) this did not restrict the bounds of enquiry. The emphasis in class on our own writings and interpretations helped to foster this. This pedagogical method shifts the focus from analyzing the arguments and approaches of the readings to analyzing the students’ own arguments and approaches. This forced each student to question his/her own position and approach. One of the dangers of this approach is that students will be left wandering hopelessly in the realm of relativism. The prevalence of postmodern and deconstructionist theory within the university offers as many dangers as benefits. Yet within this model the Instructor must act as a safety net for the wandering student. That is why once again I am reminded of Rousseau’s “Emile”. Rousseau says:
“I am teaching my pupil an art the requirement of which demands much time and trouble, an art which your scholars certainly do not possess; it is the art of being ignorant; for the knowledge of any one who only thinks he knows, what he really does know is a very small matter.” (Rousseau, “Emile”)
Rousseau goes on to explain that this art of being ignorant is teaching Emile the tools for learning the sciences. Instead of being taught what he needs to know Emile is being taught how to learn first. Parallel to this I would say that the structure of this class taught us the art of being ignorant. It dismantled all the “knowledge” we brought, and made us investigate the broken architecture. At the end it did not give us new knowledge per se but tools that we can use to consciously re-build our knowledge.
Not coming from a Religious Studies background I was not sure what to expect from this class. Already having an MA in philosophy, I was looking for a department that would allow me to continue pursuing my previous research. I was initially attracted to the Religion department at U of T because of its interdisciplinary nature, because this meant I could continue to study philosophy outside of a philosophy department. So in a way I was hoping that this class would introduce me to the world of religious studies. I have to admit my utter despair after the first few classes, especially after reading Masuzawa. What I expected I am not sure, I just knew that this was not it. I spent those weeks questioning whether I should have come to a religion department, and how this discussion of methodology bore any relevance to my own work. I made my philosophy Professor laugh when I went into her office and complained about the concept of methodology. Her response of yes philosophy has its own internal method of logic was the best catalyst for my attempt to theorize about the class and to find a place within the discipline. In fact, I shifted my focus from “how does this relate to my research” to “what is the underlying logic and structure of this concept”. By shifting my focus I discovered that this approach to the weekly readings allowed me to construct a theoretical framework for the concept of “religion”. It was a reminder that what you learn is not necessarily contingent upon the classes you take but upon the questions you ask of those classes. Therefore, I found it fitting to begin with the quote from Rousseau. My initial frustration with the class forced me to create a new “habit” of scholarly enquiry.
Having already gone through one MA program, I came into the class with a grounded academic voice from my first graduate experience. I entered the program with a specific goal in mind, not to “start over” and create a new voice, but to add to the voice I had already begun to develop. More than anything, this class re-affirmed my commitment to philosophy and studying Sufism and Ibn al-‘Arabi as philosophy. I will always view my study of religion as contingent upon and subordinate to my study of philosophy, but the weekly writing exercises helped me to see how I can meaningfully articulate and use this. I would have to say that the two non-philosophy graduate courses I have taken thus far, one in my previous program and this class, have been the most influential on my academic persona. Both have shaped my interest in ethics. This class forced me to be creative in my approach, and as a result I found new arguments to strengthen my academic goals.
I found the blog entries to be useful and frustrating. It was useful because it allowed me to reflect on opinions/interpretations in the readings and about the readings that differed greatly from mine. One of the brilliant advantages of an interdisciplinary program is that it fosters dialogue between scholars from different fields, and thus enriches the perspectives of the individual scholars involved. The challenge has been to not just react, but to listen, understand, adapt, and respond. By actively engaging in the activities of reaction and response with a group who had very different academic backgrounds I was challenged to engage the material and argue in a manner very different than I was used to. The only thing that I would change about the enterprise would be to switch the groups half way through the semester. I found that as the semester progressed I began to write more in anticipation of the response I expected from my group than merely reflecting on the readings. It would have been interesting to mix the response groups in the middle to see how this would have shifted the dynamic of the discussions.
The use of specific terms to guide the weekly discussion was a useful way to allow each individual to grapple with a broadly construed concept within the context of his/her own research area. While the readings were for the most part contextually specific within a certain religion or approach (history, anthropology, etc.) this did not restrict the bounds of enquiry. The emphasis in class on our own writings and interpretations helped to foster this. This pedagogical method shifts the focus from analyzing the arguments and approaches of the readings to analyzing the students’ own arguments and approaches. This forced each student to question his/her own position and approach. One of the dangers of this approach is that students will be left wandering hopelessly in the realm of relativism. The prevalence of postmodern and deconstructionist theory within the university offers as many dangers as benefits. Yet within this model the Instructor must act as a safety net for the wandering student. That is why once again I am reminded of Rousseau’s “Emile”. Rousseau says:
“I am teaching my pupil an art the requirement of which demands much time and trouble, an art which your scholars certainly do not possess; it is the art of being ignorant; for the knowledge of any one who only thinks he knows, what he really does know is a very small matter.” (Rousseau, “Emile”)
Rousseau goes on to explain that this art of being ignorant is teaching Emile the tools for learning the sciences. Instead of being taught what he needs to know Emile is being taught how to learn first. Parallel to this I would say that the structure of this class taught us the art of being ignorant. It dismantled all the “knowledge” we brought, and made us investigate the broken architecture. At the end it did not give us new knowledge per se but tools that we can use to consciously re-build our knowledge.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Invented Tradition: The Opiate of the Marxist?
"Tradition:
1 a: an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom) b: a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable2: the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction3: cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions4: characteristic manner, method, or style" (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary)
I begin with this lexical definition of tradition because I want to make a distinction between the philosophical and the historical/anthropological. In my own work I mainly use tradition in the sense of 4, while the readings for this week are using it in the sense of 1-3. I am interested in the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics and creating/”inventing” a new school of thought within that tradition. Is this still inventing tradition in the sense Hobsbawm intends? He makes a distinction between tradition, which has ritual and symbolic function, and convention or routine, which has no significant ritual or symbolic routine. He says: “Such networks of convention and routine are not ‘invented traditions’ since their functions, and therefore their justification, are technical rather than ideological (in Marxian terms they belong to ‘base’ rather than ‘superstructure’.)” (Hobsbawm, p.3) This ‘base’ facilitates definable practical operations that are readily abandoned to adapt to changing practical needs. On the one hand I want to say that my ‘invention’ falls under the category of technical rather than ideological, after all scholars of philosophy, by and large, tend to think of themselves beyond ideology in the sense that they are logically objective and the ideology is inherent in the specific philosophy/philosopher of study rather than them. Yet on the other hand I know first hand that this is never really the case. Plenty of scholarship attacks various commentators for having a hidden political/ideological agenda. In fact the very discussion of the term ‘philosophy’ and what can or cannot fall under it is itself ideological. In most departments philosophy encompasses only thinkers who fall within the historical genealogy of the Greek intellectual tradition, thus all “non-Western” thought is excluded from the department. Now, it could be argued that this is merely a technical contention that is slowly changing. In current philosophy departments there is likely to be one or two classes on eastern philosophy; however, is the language of technicality hiding the political? In the space I have left I want to discuss the political implications of “invented tradition.”
The brief reference Hobsbawm made to Marxist thought in the passage I cited above is tantalizing enough to make me question the ideological foundation of Hobsbawm and his term ‘invented tradition’. Does this theory rest on a purely Marxist foundation? Is Hobsbawm trying to hide this? I found this sentence that introduces his discussion of political and nationalistic inventions of tradition to be rather startling. He says: “More interesting from our point of view, is the use of ancient materials to construct invented traditions of a novel type for quite novel purposes.” (Hobsbawm, p. 6) Now, this may just be a personal opinion, but I find his use of the word ‘novel’ to be unsettling. To me, again this may just be a personal idiosyncrasy, the adjective had connotations of lightness and amusement. My unease is not helped by the fact that he mentions the formation of Swiss nationalism in the aftermath of its association with Nazi abuses, but excludes the fact that the construction of invented traditions “of a novel type and for quite novel purposes” equally holds for the Nazi party and for various socialist regimes. There is a dark political side to this idea of invention that seems to be completely glossed over. This bothered me and reminded me of Milan Kundera’s novel “The Joke”. Among other things the novel explores the use and manipulation of folklore and tradition by the Soviet party in Czechoslovakia. Early in the novel one of the characters tells his friends:
“Capitalism had destroyed this old collective life. And so folk art had lost its foundation, its reason for being, its function. It would be useless to try to resurrect it while social conditions were such that man lived cut off from man, everyone for himself. But socialism would liberate people from the yoke of their isolation. They would live in a new collectivity. United by common interest. Their private and public lives would merge. They would be connected by a host of rituals. Some they would take from the past: harvest festivals, folk dances, customs bound up with their daily work. Others they would create anew: May Day, meetings, the Liberations anniversary, rallies. In all of these folk art would find its place. Here it would develop, change, and be renewed.” (Kundera, “The Joke”, p. 141)
Folkloric tradition can be reinvented to promote socialist values. This is the novel invention for novel purposes. Yet, at the end of the novel, the same character, tells the reader:
“…my life had been robbed of values that were to have provided its foundations, and that were in origin pure and innocent; yes, innocent: physical love, however devastated in Lucie’s life is innocent, just as the songs of my region are innocent, just as the cimbalom band is innocent… just as the word comrade, though for me it had a menacing ring, is as innocent as the word future and many other words. The fault lay elsewhere and was so great that its shadow had fallen far and wide, on the whole of the world of innocent things (and words), and was devastating them.” (Kundera, “The Joke”, p. 313)
The dark shadow of political ideology tainted the innocent nature of the folksong, etc. Should this be a warning for the scholar? Is it possible to preserve and study the innocent tradition? Can invention of tradition be innocent, this might be what Post is trying to argue, or will it always be tainted by political motivation? I wonder then how my reinvention/addition to the tradition of virtue ethics will evolve?
1 a: an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (as a religious practice or a social custom) b: a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable2: the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction3: cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions4: characteristic manner, method, or style
I begin with this lexical definition of tradition because I want to make a distinction between the philosophical and the historical/anthropological. In my own work I mainly use tradition in the sense of 4, while the readings for this week are using it in the sense of 1-3. I am interested in the philosophical tradition of virtue ethics and creating/”inventing” a new school of thought within that tradition. Is this still inventing tradition in the sense Hobsbawm intends? He makes a distinction between tradition, which has ritual and symbolic function, and convention or routine, which has no significant ritual or symbolic routine. He says: “Such networks of convention and routine are not ‘invented traditions’ since their functions, and therefore their justification, are technical rather than ideological (in Marxian terms they belong to ‘base’ rather than ‘superstructure’.)” (Hobsbawm, p.3) This ‘base’ facilitates definable practical operations that are readily abandoned to adapt to changing practical needs. On the one hand I want to say that my ‘invention’ falls under the category of technical rather than ideological, after all scholars of philosophy, by and large, tend to think of themselves beyond ideology in the sense that they are logically objective and the ideology is inherent in the specific philosophy/philosopher of study rather than them. Yet on the other hand I know first hand that this is never really the case. Plenty of scholarship attacks various commentators for having a hidden political/ideological agenda. In fact the very discussion of the term ‘philosophy’ and what can or cannot fall under it is itself ideological. In most departments philosophy encompasses only thinkers who fall within the historical genealogy of the Greek intellectual tradition, thus all “non-Western” thought is excluded from the department. Now, it could be argued that this is merely a technical contention that is slowly changing. In current philosophy departments there is likely to be one or two classes on eastern philosophy; however, is the language of technicality hiding the political? In the space I have left I want to discuss the political implications of “invented tradition.”
The brief reference Hobsbawm made to Marxist thought in the passage I cited above is tantalizing enough to make me question the ideological foundation of Hobsbawm and his term ‘invented tradition’. Does this theory rest on a purely Marxist foundation? Is Hobsbawm trying to hide this? I found this sentence that introduces his discussion of political and nationalistic inventions of tradition to be rather startling. He says: “More interesting from our point of view, is the use of ancient materials to construct invented traditions of a novel type for quite novel purposes.” (Hobsbawm, p. 6) Now, this may just be a personal opinion, but I find his use of the word ‘novel’ to be unsettling. To me, again this may just be a personal idiosyncrasy, the adjective had connotations of lightness and amusement. My unease is not helped by the fact that he mentions the formation of Swiss nationalism in the aftermath of its association with Nazi abuses, but excludes the fact that the construction of invented traditions “of a novel type and for quite novel purposes” equally holds for the Nazi party and for various socialist regimes. There is a dark political side to this idea of invention that seems to be completely glossed over. This bothered me and reminded me of Milan Kundera’s novel “The Joke”. Among other things the novel explores the use and manipulation of folklore and tradition by the Soviet party in Czechoslovakia. Early in the novel one of the characters tells his friends:
“Capitalism had destroyed this old collective life. And so folk art had lost its foundation, its reason for being, its function. It would be useless to try to resurrect it while social conditions were such that man lived cut off from man, everyone for himself. But socialism would liberate people from the yoke of their isolation. They would live in a new collectivity. United by common interest. Their private and public lives would merge. They would be connected by a host of rituals. Some they would take from the past: harvest festivals, folk dances, customs bound up with their daily work. Others they would create anew: May Day, meetings, the Liberations anniversary, rallies. In all of these folk art would find its place. Here it would develop, change, and be renewed.” (Kundera, “The Joke”, p. 141)
Folkloric tradition can be reinvented to promote socialist values. This is the novel invention for novel purposes. Yet, at the end of the novel, the same character, tells the reader:
“…my life had been robbed of values that were to have provided its foundations, and that were in origin pure and innocent; yes, innocent: physical love, however devastated in Lucie’s life is innocent, just as the songs of my region are innocent, just as the cimbalom band is innocent… just as the word comrade, though for me it had a menacing ring, is as innocent as the word future and many other words. The fault lay elsewhere and was so great that its shadow had fallen far and wide, on the whole of the world of innocent things (and words), and was devastating them.” (Kundera, “The Joke”, p. 313)
The dark shadow of political ideology tainted the innocent nature of the folksong, etc. Should this be a warning for the scholar? Is it possible to preserve and study the innocent tradition? Can invention of tradition be innocent, this might be what Post is trying to argue, or will it always be tainted by political motivation? I wonder then how my reinvention/addition to the tradition of virtue ethics will evolve?
Sunday, November 9, 2008
“Dune,” Zombies, and Emotion, Oh My!
Paul Atreides wins the hearts of the Fremen of Dune by shedding a tear for his dead father, an act of emotion that defied all rational instinct. (The Fremen lived in the heart of the desert, on a planet where water was more precious than individual life.) This act of emotional excess wins Paul the religious and political allegiance of the Fremen. Earlier in the book Paul undergoes the test of the Gom Jabber, the test to determine whether he is an animal or human. He must place his hand in a box that produces indescribable pain. If he is merely an animal he will instinctively pull out his hand and be killed by the poisoned Gom Jabber held at his neck. If he is human he will control his instinctual reaction, leave his hand in the box, and endure in order to live. How does this relate to the readings on emotion for this week? In the first example, Paul’s display of emotion serves as a tool for reaffirming his religious and political authority. Corrigan says: “Persons do not form judgments based solely on their understanding of social norms, but actually feel the pain of shame or remorse in their moral orientations.” (Corrigan, p. 22) Choices, especially moral choices, involve emotion as well as reason. Religious and political conviction can be just as much an emotional choice as a rational one. I will come back to this in a moment. In the second example Paul must assert rationality over emotion/instinct. It is the ability to reason past instinctual emotions that separates humans from animals. In the book this incident comes before his tears for his father. If we take the Gom Jabber incident to be indicative of his realization that rationality sets boundaries for and reigns in emotion, what can be considered theoretical understanding, then the act of him shedding tears for his dead father, using emotion to gain the further devotion and zeal of the Fremen, is the practical application of this understanding. In what follows I argue that the rational use and manipulation of emotion helps to create religious and moral individuals. (In this entry I will assume that religion, in its ideal form, is necessarily concerned with creating moral perfection.)
However, before application can be discussed, general theory must be understood. The key to understanding emotion versus reason, at least in the context of the readings, is the “dichotomy” between rhetoric and philosophy. Shuger says that: “Rhetoric differed from philosophy in being a popular and practical art, more concerned with right action than speculative inquiry, but both disciplines, in the still largely Christian cultures of the Renaissance, assumed and expounded the same Truth.” (Shuger, p. 120) So while rhetoric is used to stir people into action, appealing to the emotions, philosophy is the speculative abstraction of the tenants of rhetorical action. Simply put, while rhetorical spurs individuals to act of certain truth, philosophy is the intellectual abstraction of these truths. Now, let us assume that religion is equivalent with rhetoric. (Equivalent in the sense that if we define religion to be primarily concerned with morality, making individual’s act rightly, and rhetoric’s goal is to produce right action then both religion and rhetoric are tools used to create moral individuals.) Thus religion/rhetoric relies on appeal to emotion, while philosophy, strictly speaking, does not. If an individual, such as Paul or any philosopher, understands this relationship he/she can manipulate the emotions of the masses in order for them to act in a certain way.
Now this action that is spawned can be either good or bad, however since the philosopher would be an individual who has reached Truth through abstraction and speculation, it is generally believed by philosophers that he/she will act rightly. (For a detailed argument for this and for the relationship between religion and philosophy see al-Farabi’s “One Religion” and/or Plato’s “Republic.”) Leaving political implications aside, I want to deal now with issues of morality. So far I have been implying that moral action relies on emotion. I want to construct this argument further by analyzing the concept of philosophical zombies. I have to acknowledge my debit to Dale Jacquette for his brilliant article “Zombie Gladiators” in “The Undead And Philosophy,” who first brought this argument to my attention. Let us assume that there are zombies living among us. They look exactly like us, behave exactly like us, except they have no consciousness. In short while they exhibit emotion they feel none (and feel nothing for that matter). Perhaps they have a small marking somewhere on their body that distinguishes them as zombies, in order not to be bogged down in details let us willingly suspend our disbelief and assume society has an infallible way of marking them. Because these zombies are undead society has permitted them to be killed in sport and to be used for scientific experimentation. However, because they look and act like humans, they have meaningful personal relationships and they present reactions to pain and loss. Is what society allows to be done to them morally wrong?
Appealing to reason the argument might be constructed like this: If something exhibits signs of pain then it is wrong to kill it because it might, in fact, be like us. Therefore, it is wrong to kill zombies. Yet how many people act morally merely due to rationality? What about this argument: Imagine that your brother/sister/lover/child was born with a marking similar to the one that distinguishes zombies. He/she is mistakenly taken and killed. Did his/her death look any different from a zombie death? Is there anyway of proving that he/she was not a zombie? Why would the appeal to emotion work better then the appeal to reason? Does this signify that, although rationality is superior to pure emotion, most moral arguments have to be constructed with an appeal to emotion because most individuals have not refined their intellect? What is the significance between sinner/saved, imperfect/perfect in relation to religious rhetoric and morality?
However, before application can be discussed, general theory must be understood. The key to understanding emotion versus reason, at least in the context of the readings, is the “dichotomy” between rhetoric and philosophy. Shuger says that: “Rhetoric differed from philosophy in being a popular and practical art, more concerned with right action than speculative inquiry, but both disciplines, in the still largely Christian cultures of the Renaissance, assumed and expounded the same Truth.” (Shuger, p. 120) So while rhetoric is used to stir people into action, appealing to the emotions, philosophy is the speculative abstraction of the tenants of rhetorical action. Simply put, while rhetorical spurs individuals to act of certain truth, philosophy is the intellectual abstraction of these truths. Now, let us assume that religion is equivalent with rhetoric. (Equivalent in the sense that if we define religion to be primarily concerned with morality, making individual’s act rightly, and rhetoric’s goal is to produce right action then both religion and rhetoric are tools used to create moral individuals.) Thus religion/rhetoric relies on appeal to emotion, while philosophy, strictly speaking, does not. If an individual, such as Paul or any philosopher, understands this relationship he/she can manipulate the emotions of the masses in order for them to act in a certain way.
Now this action that is spawned can be either good or bad, however since the philosopher would be an individual who has reached Truth through abstraction and speculation, it is generally believed by philosophers that he/she will act rightly. (For a detailed argument for this and for the relationship between religion and philosophy see al-Farabi’s “One Religion” and/or Plato’s “Republic.”) Leaving political implications aside, I want to deal now with issues of morality. So far I have been implying that moral action relies on emotion. I want to construct this argument further by analyzing the concept of philosophical zombies. I have to acknowledge my debit to Dale Jacquette for his brilliant article “Zombie Gladiators” in “The Undead And Philosophy,” who first brought this argument to my attention. Let us assume that there are zombies living among us. They look exactly like us, behave exactly like us, except they have no consciousness. In short while they exhibit emotion they feel none (and feel nothing for that matter). Perhaps they have a small marking somewhere on their body that distinguishes them as zombies, in order not to be bogged down in details let us willingly suspend our disbelief and assume society has an infallible way of marking them. Because these zombies are undead society has permitted them to be killed in sport and to be used for scientific experimentation. However, because they look and act like humans, they have meaningful personal relationships and they present reactions to pain and loss. Is what society allows to be done to them morally wrong?
Appealing to reason the argument might be constructed like this: If something exhibits signs of pain then it is wrong to kill it because it might, in fact, be like us. Therefore, it is wrong to kill zombies. Yet how many people act morally merely due to rationality? What about this argument: Imagine that your brother/sister/lover/child was born with a marking similar to the one that distinguishes zombies. He/she is mistakenly taken and killed. Did his/her death look any different from a zombie death? Is there anyway of proving that he/she was not a zombie? Why would the appeal to emotion work better then the appeal to reason? Does this signify that, although rationality is superior to pure emotion, most moral arguments have to be constructed with an appeal to emotion because most individuals have not refined their intellect? What is the significance between sinner/saved, imperfect/perfect in relation to religious rhetoric and morality?
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Ritual and Virtue Ethics
When I first started the readings for this week I was perplexed because I had no idea what to say about the topic or how to critique the articles, then I got to Mahmood’s article. I want to engage the topic of ritual as it relates to virtue ethics. I was amazed that Mahmood never mentioned the term “virtue ethics.” She dances around the topic, mentioning Aristotle’s habitus (pp. 11-13), but she never directly confronts it, which is rather disappointing because it would be a helpful insight in analyzing her findings. In what follows I will explore virtue ethics and its relation to ritual/performance in the context of Mahmood’s article.
It is important to start by clarifying what I mean by virtue ethics. Virtue ethics, which has Platonic and Aristotelian roots in the west and Confucian roots in the east, is concerned with producing “perfect” individuals, individuals who intuitively, or to use Mahmood’s term, spontaneously, do the good. For the purposes of this discussion I will define virtue as the capacity to not only know and do what is right/good but also to feel what is right/good, to do the right thing for the right reasons. Mahmood says of her subjects that: “In interviews with me, mosque participants identified the act of prayer as a key site for purposefully molding their intentions, emotions, and desires in accord with orthodox standards of Islamic piety.” (p. 2) She further says that these women are intent on initiating religious transformation in a society where they see religious devotion performed from cultural habit rather than actual devotion. Thus, they seek to cultivate an ideal virtuous self who spontaneously acts rightly with inherent “natural” religious conviction.
There are many branches of virtue ethics, each with its own specific theory as to how this is achieved and what it entails, so for the sake of brevity I will only employ the theory of al-Farabi. Al-Farabi, known as “The Second Teacher” (second only to Aristotle), is considered the first Islamic political philosopher and greatly influenced all philosophical thought that followed him. I choose to use his theory because it raises many questions inherent to the position of the women interviewed by Mahmood; most importantly: Is virtue primarily a habit? Can ritual/habit produce a state of being? And, does religion produce actual virtue or mere habit?
In the remainder of this entry I want to focus on how virtue is acquired by analyzing the three questions presented in the previous paragraph. The first question that asks if virtue is primarily a habit, deals with the central core of virtue ethics. If virtue is solely the habit of doing the right thing, then it is possible for someone to be virtuous, do what is right, without actually believing it is right or feeling that that is the only thing to do. For example, the women in Mahmood’s study expressed the distinction between those who perform the religious rituals out of cultural habit and those who perform them out of religious conviction. The first group consists of individuals who do the right thing, out of habit and social conformity, but who internally would rather do something else or feel a compulsion to do what is morally wrong. The second group is made up of individuals who strive to do the right thing with the right state of mind. Thus, virtue cannot be mere habit. Al-Farabi explains that: “The traits of the soul by which a human being does good things and noble actions are virtues.” (al-Farabi, “Selected Aphorisms,” p. 12) Virtue is a trait, not a habit. It is a part of the individual’s being, not just a custom that he/she adopts.
This leads to the second question concerning whether or not ritual/habit can produce a state of being. In the second footnote of the article Mahmood discusses the impact ritual has on the self, the distinction between the private and public, and the Enlightenment idea of the self articulated by Rousseau. She says: “This view of the unique privatized subject whose essence cannot be captured in the social conventions of a given society seems to resonate with the conception of ritual action as necessarily devoid of ‘authentic, individual’ emotions.” (Mahmood, p. 20) I want to contrast this with a quote from al-Farabi. He says:
“It is not possible for a human being to be endowed by nature from the outset possessing virtue… But it is possible for one to be endowed by nature disposed for virtuous or vicious actions in that such actions are easier for him than other actions… That natural disposition is not said to be a virtue, just as the natural disposition for the actions of an art is not said to be an art.” (al-Farabi, “Selected Aphorisms,” p. 17)
The position that Mahmood was articulating posits that the true self of the individual is separate from the public self that the individual displays, therefore, since ritual is a part of the public self, it never has any authenticity with regard to the true/essential self. Within this framework ritual or habit could never produce a state of being, it could only shape the public self. It could shape one of the modes of being, but not produce an actual state. In contrast, al-Farabi suggests that some individuals are born with a natural capacity for virtue. It is a disposition that he/she is born with, similar to the disposition to become a painter or a doctor. However, having this disposition does not mean the individual is that. Just as an individual has to learn how to be a painter or a doctor, he/she also has to learn how to become virtuous. This learning entails adopting good habits and cultivating a proper mind-set, thereby producing a virtuous state of being. I think it is fairly obvious that the women Mahmood studied are working within a Farabian framework rather than an Enlightenment one.
This leads us the final question concerning whether religion/religious rituals produce actual virtue or mere habit. If virtue has to be cultivated, and only some individuals are born with a disposition for virtue, then can only those with a natural disposition for virtue become virtuous? What would the women Mahmood interviewed say about this position? Regarding politics al-Farabi claimed that only the king/leader has to be virtuous, the subjects merely have to habitually do what is good. This is because, while the king can chastise the people who err, if the king errs he/she will lead the people into error. Does this have any impact on Mahmood’s study? The answer to the question concerning virtue and habit is it produces both. Should the emphasis then be on the individual rather than ritual?
It is important to start by clarifying what I mean by virtue ethics. Virtue ethics, which has Platonic and Aristotelian roots in the west and Confucian roots in the east, is concerned with producing “perfect” individuals, individuals who intuitively, or to use Mahmood’s term, spontaneously, do the good. For the purposes of this discussion I will define virtue as the capacity to not only know and do what is right/good but also to feel what is right/good, to do the right thing for the right reasons. Mahmood says of her subjects that: “In interviews with me, mosque participants identified the act of prayer as a key site for purposefully molding their intentions, emotions, and desires in accord with orthodox standards of Islamic piety.” (p. 2) She further says that these women are intent on initiating religious transformation in a society where they see religious devotion performed from cultural habit rather than actual devotion. Thus, they seek to cultivate an ideal virtuous self who spontaneously acts rightly with inherent “natural” religious conviction.
There are many branches of virtue ethics, each with its own specific theory as to how this is achieved and what it entails, so for the sake of brevity I will only employ the theory of al-Farabi. Al-Farabi, known as “The Second Teacher” (second only to Aristotle), is considered the first Islamic political philosopher and greatly influenced all philosophical thought that followed him. I choose to use his theory because it raises many questions inherent to the position of the women interviewed by Mahmood; most importantly: Is virtue primarily a habit? Can ritual/habit produce a state of being? And, does religion produce actual virtue or mere habit?
In the remainder of this entry I want to focus on how virtue is acquired by analyzing the three questions presented in the previous paragraph. The first question that asks if virtue is primarily a habit, deals with the central core of virtue ethics. If virtue is solely the habit of doing the right thing, then it is possible for someone to be virtuous, do what is right, without actually believing it is right or feeling that that is the only thing to do. For example, the women in Mahmood’s study expressed the distinction between those who perform the religious rituals out of cultural habit and those who perform them out of religious conviction. The first group consists of individuals who do the right thing, out of habit and social conformity, but who internally would rather do something else or feel a compulsion to do what is morally wrong. The second group is made up of individuals who strive to do the right thing with the right state of mind. Thus, virtue cannot be mere habit. Al-Farabi explains that: “The traits of the soul by which a human being does good things and noble actions are virtues.” (al-Farabi, “Selected Aphorisms,” p. 12) Virtue is a trait, not a habit. It is a part of the individual’s being, not just a custom that he/she adopts.
This leads to the second question concerning whether or not ritual/habit can produce a state of being. In the second footnote of the article Mahmood discusses the impact ritual has on the self, the distinction between the private and public, and the Enlightenment idea of the self articulated by Rousseau. She says: “This view of the unique privatized subject whose essence cannot be captured in the social conventions of a given society seems to resonate with the conception of ritual action as necessarily devoid of ‘authentic, individual’ emotions.” (Mahmood, p. 20) I want to contrast this with a quote from al-Farabi. He says:
“It is not possible for a human being to be endowed by nature from the outset possessing virtue… But it is possible for one to be endowed by nature disposed for virtuous or vicious actions in that such actions are easier for him than other actions… That natural disposition is not said to be a virtue, just as the natural disposition for the actions of an art is not said to be an art.” (al-Farabi, “Selected Aphorisms,” p. 17)
The position that Mahmood was articulating posits that the true self of the individual is separate from the public self that the individual displays, therefore, since ritual is a part of the public self, it never has any authenticity with regard to the true/essential self. Within this framework ritual or habit could never produce a state of being, it could only shape the public self. It could shape one of the modes of being, but not produce an actual state. In contrast, al-Farabi suggests that some individuals are born with a natural capacity for virtue. It is a disposition that he/she is born with, similar to the disposition to become a painter or a doctor. However, having this disposition does not mean the individual is that. Just as an individual has to learn how to be a painter or a doctor, he/she also has to learn how to become virtuous. This learning entails adopting good habits and cultivating a proper mind-set, thereby producing a virtuous state of being. I think it is fairly obvious that the women Mahmood studied are working within a Farabian framework rather than an Enlightenment one.
This leads us the final question concerning whether religion/religious rituals produce actual virtue or mere habit. If virtue has to be cultivated, and only some individuals are born with a disposition for virtue, then can only those with a natural disposition for virtue become virtuous? What would the women Mahmood interviewed say about this position? Regarding politics al-Farabi claimed that only the king/leader has to be virtuous, the subjects merely have to habitually do what is good. This is because, while the king can chastise the people who err, if the king errs he/she will lead the people into error. Does this have any impact on Mahmood’s study? The answer to the question concerning virtue and habit is it produces both. Should the emphasis then be on the individual rather than ritual?
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Comparative Scholarship and Politics
“In myth, as in life, knowledge of difference is the key to… politics.”
Doniger, p. 32
There are two topics that stood out in Doniger’s book, which I want to discuss, namely, comparative scholarship and academia as a political playground. These points intersect so the overall view is that comparative scholarship is a type of political activism.
Although Doniger is constructing her comparative method in the context of myth, any good liberal studies student will find her method familiar territory. She explains in defense of the comparative endeavor that:
“Indeed, one of the arguments in favor of the comparative method is that even methods that pretend to be culturally specific are in fact comparative, when you take into account the fact that the scholar studying the one Other culture will always be making implicit judgments based upon implicit comparisons between the Other culture and the scholar’s own.” (Doniger, p. 35)
I take culture to mean not merely different geographical groups, but also different historical periods and situations, as well as different genders. Interpreted in this way (which seems to be in line with the attitudes in Doniger’s book) the individual is, although not necessarily explicitly or even consciously, always interpreting his/her field of inquiry in comparison to his/her own experiences/beliefs. This should be qualified by Doniger’s position that knowledge is acquired through the experience of difference. Sameness is equivalent to identity, and therefore does not produce any new knowledge outside of the premise of equivalence. It is by exploring, again either consciously or unconsciously, how the subject is different (from us) that we gain scholarly knowledge. Doniger goes on (p. 36) construct the comparative enterprise as a triangle, and I want to go on to say that any academic enterprise is a rotating coin, one side the subject of study and the other the individual’s own subjectivity.
This position shapes how the comparative approach is defined. Doniger cautions against falling into the traps of universalism or similitude, where inevitably one voice is engulfed by the other, the familiar silences the distinctness of the unfamiliar. She explains that: “The key to the game of cross-cultural comparison lies in selecting the sorts of questions that might transcend any particular culture. (Doniger, p. 40) These questions must engage difference; they must look through the microscope and the telescope. The microscope looks at how it is a human experience, and how these compared experiences, are unique. The telescope explores how this uniqueness is an interpretation of a larger worldview. Asking the questions, shaped along these lines, of both units of comparison emphasize that while both are concerned with similar questions surrounding human existence, each has a different, yet equally valid, answer.
I now want to briefly shift gears to the political, although as the idea of the implied spider will show, this is not so much a shift in thought as a change in angle. Doniger’s implied spider may or may not be (is and is not?) the creation of the scholar. The set of questions that guide the comparative enterprise create a web, this is not just a web for myth, for any comparison unearths a web. The web is the mysterious connectedness between the units of comparison that exists outside of history. Doniger explains that: “Indeed, if we think there is no spider, there is no spider; only our belief makes it (like Tinker Bell) real… And if we think there is a spider, there is a spider.” (Doniger, p. 61) A belief in a spider, a design behind the web, is contingent upon the scholar’s acceptance of the web. The web and spider exist only if the scholar allows them to. This means that new webs can be constructed and deconstructed. How does this relate to politics? On pp. 101-107 Doniger discusses political readings and reinterpretations of myths, for example, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as interpreted by the Nazis and then by Coppola in “Apocalypse Now” shows how different interpretations give the myth different connotations for a modern audience. And an examination of the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day shows that participants could equally be celebrating Guy as heroic, or celebrating his capture and death. Are the webs of the comparative enterprise equally politically malleable? Masuzawa’s book showed us that the Religious Studies discipline began with a Christian centric agenda. It created a specific web, but slowly scholars deconstructed it and created new webs and spiders. If the comparative method holds the power to create these webs does it then hold the power to shape how its subjects are viewed? If the scholar who uses the coin rather than the triangle is also creating webs, then does he/she also hold the power to shape how his/her subject is viewed? If the answer is yes, then can scholars shape and re-shape political attitudes?
Doniger, p. 32
There are two topics that stood out in Doniger’s book, which I want to discuss, namely, comparative scholarship and academia as a political playground. These points intersect so the overall view is that comparative scholarship is a type of political activism.
Although Doniger is constructing her comparative method in the context of myth, any good liberal studies student will find her method familiar territory. She explains in defense of the comparative endeavor that:
“Indeed, one of the arguments in favor of the comparative method is that even methods that pretend to be culturally specific are in fact comparative, when you take into account the fact that the scholar studying the one Other culture will always be making implicit judgments based upon implicit comparisons between the Other culture and the scholar’s own.” (Doniger, p. 35)
I take culture to mean not merely different geographical groups, but also different historical periods and situations, as well as different genders. Interpreted in this way (which seems to be in line with the attitudes in Doniger’s book) the individual is, although not necessarily explicitly or even consciously, always interpreting his/her field of inquiry in comparison to his/her own experiences/beliefs. This should be qualified by Doniger’s position that knowledge is acquired through the experience of difference. Sameness is equivalent to identity, and therefore does not produce any new knowledge outside of the premise of equivalence. It is by exploring, again either consciously or unconsciously, how the subject is different (from us) that we gain scholarly knowledge. Doniger goes on (p. 36) construct the comparative enterprise as a triangle, and I want to go on to say that any academic enterprise is a rotating coin, one side the subject of study and the other the individual’s own subjectivity.
This position shapes how the comparative approach is defined. Doniger cautions against falling into the traps of universalism or similitude, where inevitably one voice is engulfed by the other, the familiar silences the distinctness of the unfamiliar. She explains that: “The key to the game of cross-cultural comparison lies in selecting the sorts of questions that might transcend any particular culture. (Doniger, p. 40) These questions must engage difference; they must look through the microscope and the telescope. The microscope looks at how it is a human experience, and how these compared experiences, are unique. The telescope explores how this uniqueness is an interpretation of a larger worldview. Asking the questions, shaped along these lines, of both units of comparison emphasize that while both are concerned with similar questions surrounding human existence, each has a different, yet equally valid, answer.
I now want to briefly shift gears to the political, although as the idea of the implied spider will show, this is not so much a shift in thought as a change in angle. Doniger’s implied spider may or may not be (is and is not?) the creation of the scholar. The set of questions that guide the comparative enterprise create a web, this is not just a web for myth, for any comparison unearths a web. The web is the mysterious connectedness between the units of comparison that exists outside of history. Doniger explains that: “Indeed, if we think there is no spider, there is no spider; only our belief makes it (like Tinker Bell) real… And if we think there is a spider, there is a spider.” (Doniger, p. 61) A belief in a spider, a design behind the web, is contingent upon the scholar’s acceptance of the web. The web and spider exist only if the scholar allows them to. This means that new webs can be constructed and deconstructed. How does this relate to politics? On pp. 101-107 Doniger discusses political readings and reinterpretations of myths, for example, Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as interpreted by the Nazis and then by Coppola in “Apocalypse Now” shows how different interpretations give the myth different connotations for a modern audience. And an examination of the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day shows that participants could equally be celebrating Guy as heroic, or celebrating his capture and death. Are the webs of the comparative enterprise equally politically malleable? Masuzawa’s book showed us that the Religious Studies discipline began with a Christian centric agenda. It created a specific web, but slowly scholars deconstructed it and created new webs and spiders. If the comparative method holds the power to create these webs does it then hold the power to shape how its subjects are viewed? If the scholar who uses the coin rather than the triangle is also creating webs, then does he/she also hold the power to shape how his/her subject is viewed? If the answer is yes, then can scholars shape and re-shape political attitudes?
Sunday, October 12, 2008
phenolomenology and gender
“Philosophy is not the reflection of a pre-existing truth, but, like art, the act of bringing truth into being.”( Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Preface p. xx.)
Is there an inherent distinction between the sexes that makes male and female perceptions of the world definitively different/separate to the extent that there are two “worlds”? Kinsley, p 7-9, seems to suggest this in his discussion of the different sets of religious interpretation/meaning given to symbols by men and women. Can the study of religion, or the study of anything for that matter, be done outside of gender perspective? I think a brief digression into phenomenology will show that these separate “worlds” of Kingsley are not inherent within the world, but due to human constructions imposed upon the world, therefore there might be a pre-sexualized/genderized realm of shared experience.
I began with the quote by Merleau-Ponty, because it reveals a side to phenomenology that I found obscured in Young’s article. Philosophy “paints” a picture of the world, that is, it shows the world, as the individual perceives it. This perceiving that Merleau-Ponty is talking about is pre-sexualized perception, He is largely concerned with what he terms a pre-reflective perception, perception before it is categorized and objectified. This is the world before it is appraised. It is from this perspective of experience before categorization that phenomenology stems. Young, then is missing the point of phenomenology so to speak when she says:
“The early phenomenologists now seem hopelessly androcentric with their use of the generic ‘he’ and their universalizing language that never asks whether the experiences of men might differ significantly from those of women, and so on. Moreover, because ‘essences’ have been determined by male phenomenologists on the basis of male experiences alone (whether intentionally or not), women have had good reason for criticizing this kind of scholarship.” (Young, p 31)
Before addressing this quote it is important to mention the problems with Young’s classification of phenomenologist. To begin with, she lumps all philosophical phenomenologists into one vague group, only offhandedly mentioning the differentiation among them. This is problematic, for her proceeding discussion of the phenomenologist terminology suffers, being overly general and lacking substance. Finally, she begins by separating philosophical phenomenologists from phenomenologists of religion, but in the body of her article it becomes hard to distinguish which group she is making claims about. Thus, in the quote above I am unclear if she is talking about one group specifically or both in general. This being the case, I will discuss the passage in relation to the phenomenologist philosophers.
Young’s picture, I would argue, is outright wrong. First, I think the accusation of using “he” for the generic human is rather petty. Secondly, to say that these philosophers never questioned whether female experience might differ from male is insulting and untrue. (It is interesting to note that she only mentions Simone De Beauvoir in a footnote. I hardly think Beauvoir would have been silent about this topic in her conversations with Merleau-Ponty and Sartre!) For example, Sartre in “Being And Nothingness” directly addresses the question of sex/gender and sexuality. He says:
“Man, it is said, is a sexual being because he possesses a sex. And if the reverse were true? If sex were only the instrument and, so to speak, the image of a fundamental sexuality? If man possessed a sex only because he is originally and fundamentally a sexual being as a being who exists in the world in relation with other men?” (Sartre “Being And Nothingness,” p. 499)
Sartre is asking whether an individual’s sexuality is based on his/her gender, or if the individual possesses a gender due to his/her being a sexual being, that sexuality is more encompassing than specific gender. An individual’s gender is a contingent part of his/her facticity. This means that there will be different experiences based on gender, but sexuality is not an accident based on gender. Thus, phenomenologists such as Sartre, contra Young, do acknowledge this difference, but may not explicitly explore it in detail because they are dealing with experience in a more abstract context. Can this abstract discussion of experience be gender neutral? Boyarin, when discussing Irigaray, affirms this perspective:
“Different attitudes of the body in sexual intercourse (on enclosing, the other being enclosed), the capacity to menstruate, gestate, and lactate, all of these form a sort of material base for a subjectivity that is different from that of men but do not prescript what that subjectivity will consist of or how it will be lived.” (Boyarin, p 130)
There are different experiences based on biological difference, however this does not imply that these different subjectivities are inherently determined by biology. Thus it is valid to study how this (female) subjectivity has been constructed and lived within a specific historical period, but it is invalid to suggest that this (female) subjectivity is a completely separate entity. Are scholars continuing this oppression as “other” by creating Women’s Studies?
Is there an inherent distinction between the sexes that makes male and female perceptions of the world definitively different/separate to the extent that there are two “worlds”? Kinsley, p 7-9, seems to suggest this in his discussion of the different sets of religious interpretation/meaning given to symbols by men and women. Can the study of religion, or the study of anything for that matter, be done outside of gender perspective? I think a brief digression into phenomenology will show that these separate “worlds” of Kingsley are not inherent within the world, but due to human constructions imposed upon the world, therefore there might be a pre-sexualized/genderized realm of shared experience.
I began with the quote by Merleau-Ponty, because it reveals a side to phenomenology that I found obscured in Young’s article. Philosophy “paints” a picture of the world, that is, it shows the world, as the individual perceives it. This perceiving that Merleau-Ponty is talking about is pre-sexualized perception, He is largely concerned with what he terms a pre-reflective perception, perception before it is categorized and objectified. This is the world before it is appraised. It is from this perspective of experience before categorization that phenomenology stems. Young, then is missing the point of phenomenology so to speak when she says:
“The early phenomenologists now seem hopelessly androcentric with their use of the generic ‘he’ and their universalizing language that never asks whether the experiences of men might differ significantly from those of women, and so on. Moreover, because ‘essences’ have been determined by male phenomenologists on the basis of male experiences alone (whether intentionally or not), women have had good reason for criticizing this kind of scholarship.” (Young, p 31)
Before addressing this quote it is important to mention the problems with Young’s classification of phenomenologist. To begin with, she lumps all philosophical phenomenologists into one vague group, only offhandedly mentioning the differentiation among them. This is problematic, for her proceeding discussion of the phenomenologist terminology suffers, being overly general and lacking substance. Finally, she begins by separating philosophical phenomenologists from phenomenologists of religion, but in the body of her article it becomes hard to distinguish which group she is making claims about. Thus, in the quote above I am unclear if she is talking about one group specifically or both in general. This being the case, I will discuss the passage in relation to the phenomenologist philosophers.
Young’s picture, I would argue, is outright wrong. First, I think the accusation of using “he” for the generic human is rather petty. Secondly, to say that these philosophers never questioned whether female experience might differ from male is insulting and untrue. (It is interesting to note that she only mentions Simone De Beauvoir in a footnote. I hardly think Beauvoir would have been silent about this topic in her conversations with Merleau-Ponty and Sartre!) For example, Sartre in “Being And Nothingness” directly addresses the question of sex/gender and sexuality. He says:
“Man, it is said, is a sexual being because he possesses a sex. And if the reverse were true? If sex were only the instrument and, so to speak, the image of a fundamental sexuality? If man possessed a sex only because he is originally and fundamentally a sexual being as a being who exists in the world in relation with other men?” (Sartre “Being And Nothingness,” p. 499)
Sartre is asking whether an individual’s sexuality is based on his/her gender, or if the individual possesses a gender due to his/her being a sexual being, that sexuality is more encompassing than specific gender. An individual’s gender is a contingent part of his/her facticity. This means that there will be different experiences based on gender, but sexuality is not an accident based on gender. Thus, phenomenologists such as Sartre, contra Young, do acknowledge this difference, but may not explicitly explore it in detail because they are dealing with experience in a more abstract context. Can this abstract discussion of experience be gender neutral? Boyarin, when discussing Irigaray, affirms this perspective:
“Different attitudes of the body in sexual intercourse (on enclosing, the other being enclosed), the capacity to menstruate, gestate, and lactate, all of these form a sort of material base for a subjectivity that is different from that of men but do not prescript what that subjectivity will consist of or how it will be lived.” (Boyarin, p 130)
There are different experiences based on biological difference, however this does not imply that these different subjectivities are inherently determined by biology. Thus it is valid to study how this (female) subjectivity has been constructed and lived within a specific historical period, but it is invalid to suggest that this (female) subjectivity is a completely separate entity. Are scholars continuing this oppression as “other” by creating Women’s Studies?
Sunday, October 5, 2008
philosophical frustrations
These chapters by Clark, if anything, left me incessantly cursing postmodernism. As a student of philosophy I enjoy the intellectual games that postmodernism provides, but not being a postmodernist myself I cringe at all mention of postmodernist theory. The problem I have with postmodern theory, as presented by Clark, is the emphasis on literary theory. (Not that I have anything against literary theory, but I have been taught to make a clear distinction between the work I do and literary theory and history.) This literary perspective culminates in the discussion of text and context. What is a text? Does it need to be read within a historical context? Is there a transcendent means to the text? Can we discover the author’s intention and true meaning? They are important ideas to discuss, but not necessarily explicitly relevant to philosophical discussion; it is interesting look at how philosophical theory is applied, but would be anachronistic to apply it to earlier philosophy. This is not to say that philosophers do not interpret their predecessors, for example, Kant’s critique of empiricism, and Deleuze’s critiques of Hume, Spinoza and Kant, but one could not apply Deleuze’s philosophical method to Hegel’s concepts in an attempt to understand Hegel.
Postmodern philosophy seeks to understand the way the world is, that is, it seeks to be prescriptive rather than proscriptive. Therefore, it rejects the transcendent and finds meaning only in the immanent. Looking at critiques of contextualism Clark summarizes Derrida, “To believe that the reader must locate one particular and exclusive context in order to understand a text, Derrida concludes, is itself a ‘metaphysical assumption.’” (p. 142) There is no transcendent being to a text, or anything for that matter. Assuming that there is a true context within which to understand a text, is to assume that transcendent being. There is no Truth with a capital T. Put another way; there is no meaning only meaningfulness. In a way philosophers such as Derrida and Deleuze are merely describing what they saw occurring in philosophical scholarship. Scholars of philosophy constantly battle with each other about interpretations. In this battle, where concepts are constantly re-defined and re-interpreted, no Truth emerges. The lasting value of this enterprise is the meanings that are formed. How could a scholar apply this literary theory that Clark espouses, which is derived from a particular school of philosophy, to a different philosophical school? Or does this only apply to historians of ancient Christian studies?
I think the best way to sum up my frustration with postmodern theory is to look at the infamous postmodern generator. Here we have a program that randomly generates essays using the recursive grammar of postmodern dialogue. Some critics of postmodernism take this as a proof of its falsity. Can you find “meaning” in the essay generated? If language is an arbitrary system of essentially meaningless signs then are all texts no better than one of these essays? This is a fun rebuttal to make against postmodernism, but I think it misses the point of the original philosophy. Postmodernism does not declare that there is no meaning. We can have meaning without transcendence. But this meaning is multifarious. It is not a theory of the proper way to read or analyze a text, but a theory of what occurs when reading a text. There are as many texts as readers; there are as many Platos or Derridas as there are readers of Plato and Derrida. That is why we continue to have scholarly debates about these things.
I think reading the chapters for this week highlighted the difficulty I am having in understanding this concept of methodology and its application to my work. Clark was addressing history and literary theory in relation to ancient Christian Studies. She was using as methodology philosophers in the discipline I am working within. That does not work for me. I can understand the relation of reader, author and text in terms of postmodern theory, in terms of structuralism, conceptualism, etc., but this is a dialogue for literary theory.
Postmodern philosophy seeks to understand the way the world is, that is, it seeks to be prescriptive rather than proscriptive. Therefore, it rejects the transcendent and finds meaning only in the immanent. Looking at critiques of contextualism Clark summarizes Derrida, “To believe that the reader must locate one particular and exclusive context in order to understand a text, Derrida concludes, is itself a ‘metaphysical assumption.’” (p. 142) There is no transcendent being to a text, or anything for that matter. Assuming that there is a true context within which to understand a text, is to assume that transcendent being. There is no Truth with a capital T. Put another way; there is no meaning only meaningfulness. In a way philosophers such as Derrida and Deleuze are merely describing what they saw occurring in philosophical scholarship. Scholars of philosophy constantly battle with each other about interpretations. In this battle, where concepts are constantly re-defined and re-interpreted, no Truth emerges. The lasting value of this enterprise is the meanings that are formed. How could a scholar apply this literary theory that Clark espouses, which is derived from a particular school of philosophy, to a different philosophical school? Or does this only apply to historians of ancient Christian studies?
I think the best way to sum up my frustration with postmodern theory is to look at the infamous postmodern generator. Here we have a program that randomly generates essays using the recursive grammar of postmodern dialogue. Some critics of postmodernism take this as a proof of its falsity. Can you find “meaning” in the essay generated? If language is an arbitrary system of essentially meaningless signs then are all texts no better than one of these essays? This is a fun rebuttal to make against postmodernism, but I think it misses the point of the original philosophy. Postmodernism does not declare that there is no meaning. We can have meaning without transcendence. But this meaning is multifarious. It is not a theory of the proper way to read or analyze a text, but a theory of what occurs when reading a text. There are as many texts as readers; there are as many Platos or Derridas as there are readers of Plato and Derrida. That is why we continue to have scholarly debates about these things.
I think reading the chapters for this week highlighted the difficulty I am having in understanding this concept of methodology and its application to my work. Clark was addressing history and literary theory in relation to ancient Christian Studies. She was using as methodology philosophers in the discipline I am working within. That does not work for me. I can understand the relation of reader, author and text in terms of postmodern theory, in terms of structuralism, conceptualism, etc., but this is a dialogue for literary theory.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
grant proposal
The goal of my research is to investigate the philosophical development of the al-Insan al-Kamil, the Perfect Individual, leading to its conceptualization within Ibn al-’Arabi’s thought. Although the long-term goal of my research is to forward the development of the al-Insan al-Kamil as a philosophical concept, this large project has to begin with a basic understanding of what the al-Insan al-Kamil is and where it originated. Thus, my research at this stage will be focused solely on the conceptual origins leading up to its solidification in the thought of Ibn al-’Arabi.
Little to no Western scholarship has focused on the topic of the al-Insan al-Kamil, yet it is acknowledged as one of the key elements in the thought of Ibn al-‘Arabi, one of the most influential Sufi thinkers. What does exist on the topic consists of paragraphs and footnotes, or at the very most, a chapter or two interspersed in major scholarly works. For instance in, the foremost North American Ibn al-‘Arabi scholar, William Chittick’s recently published book he explains: “The underlying theme of Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings is not, as many would have it, wahdat al-wujud, ‘the Oneness of Being,’ but rather the achievement of human perfection.” ( Chittick, p 49) But despite saying this Chittick has produced no substantial scholarship on this concept, choosing only to discuss it in footnotes and brief paragraphs.
An example of a more substantial discussion is Toshihiko Izutsu’s "A Comparative Study of The Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism", which devotes one part of the three part work to the thought of Ibn al-‘Arabi. He tells us: “Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy is, in brief, a theoretical description of the entire world of being and existence as it is reflected in the eye of the Perfect Man.” (Izutsu, p 14) And unlike most other scholars he devotes nearly fifty pages of the two hundred and seventy-two to a discussion of the concept. But if this concept is such a vital component of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s system why has it received such little treatment by current scholarship?
One exception to this brevity is Masataka Takeshita’s published doctoral dissertation, "Ibn ‘Arabi’s Theory of the Perfect Man and its Place in the History of Islamic Thought", which he claims is a historical examination of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s concept:
I limit myself to one of Ibn ‘Arabi’s most celebrated theories, that is, the theory of the Perfect Man, I try to examine Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought in historical perspective. Although he is in many ways an original figure in the intellectual history of Islam, his thought is, nevertheless, firmly rooted in Islamic traditions. (Takeshita, p 4)
This is a critical step in the development of Ibn ‘Arabi scholarship. However, William Chittick, in a book review, criticizes this work for being overly ambitious and falling short of actually analyzing the concept itself. This being a caution to future scholars, my research will be more analytic and smaller in scope.
My project is divided into two parts. The first part will analyze how Greek Aristotelian and NeoPlatonic thought influenced the concept of individual/human perfection in Islamic philosophy. Already having a background in philosophy, this allows me to situate Ibn al-‘Arabi within the discipline of philosophy and to draw on the body of my academic knowledge. The second part will analyze how the idea of human perfection within the body of Islamic philosophy is linked to Ibn al-‘Arabi’s concept of the al-Insan al-Kamil.
My previous research MA in philosophy at Brock University analyzed the concept of the al-Insan al-Kamil within Ibn al-‘Arabi’s thought. Having no formal background in Sufism or Ibn al-‘Arabi it centered on analyzing various questions within the concept pertaining to the philosophy of the self, such as: what type of being does the Perfect Individual have, who can be a Perfect Individual, how does the Perfect Individual behave. Thus, while I have a strong background in the philosophical questions pertaining to this concept, I lack the background in Islamic studies, specifically in the broader historical development of Islamic and Sufi thought and in the Arabic language. The purpose of this second MA in Religion at the University of Toronto is to full those lacks so I can continue my larger research goals. Therefore I am focusing on acquiring a strong reading knowledge of Arabic and a solid understanding of the development of philosophical/religious thought in Classical Islamic philosophy and early Sufism. Taking classes on Arabic, classical Islamic philosophy, and mystical Persian Poetry this academic year is fulfilling this. The final research project outlined above, undertaken in the second year of my MA will be the culmination of my previous research and the research done at the University of Toronto, and will be the foundation for more extensive research at the PhD level and at the post-doctoral level.
Little to no Western scholarship has focused on the topic of the al-Insan al-Kamil, yet it is acknowledged as one of the key elements in the thought of Ibn al-‘Arabi, one of the most influential Sufi thinkers. What does exist on the topic consists of paragraphs and footnotes, or at the very most, a chapter or two interspersed in major scholarly works. For instance in, the foremost North American Ibn al-‘Arabi scholar, William Chittick’s recently published book he explains: “The underlying theme of Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings is not, as many would have it, wahdat al-wujud, ‘the Oneness of Being,’ but rather the achievement of human perfection.” ( Chittick, p 49) But despite saying this Chittick has produced no substantial scholarship on this concept, choosing only to discuss it in footnotes and brief paragraphs.
An example of a more substantial discussion is Toshihiko Izutsu’s "A Comparative Study of The Key Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism", which devotes one part of the three part work to the thought of Ibn al-‘Arabi. He tells us: “Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy is, in brief, a theoretical description of the entire world of being and existence as it is reflected in the eye of the Perfect Man.” (Izutsu, p 14) And unlike most other scholars he devotes nearly fifty pages of the two hundred and seventy-two to a discussion of the concept. But if this concept is such a vital component of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s system why has it received such little treatment by current scholarship?
One exception to this brevity is Masataka Takeshita’s published doctoral dissertation, "Ibn ‘Arabi’s Theory of the Perfect Man and its Place in the History of Islamic Thought", which he claims is a historical examination of Ibn al-‘Arabi’s concept:
I limit myself to one of Ibn ‘Arabi’s most celebrated theories, that is, the theory of the Perfect Man, I try to examine Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought in historical perspective. Although he is in many ways an original figure in the intellectual history of Islam, his thought is, nevertheless, firmly rooted in Islamic traditions. (Takeshita, p 4)
This is a critical step in the development of Ibn ‘Arabi scholarship. However, William Chittick, in a book review, criticizes this work for being overly ambitious and falling short of actually analyzing the concept itself. This being a caution to future scholars, my research will be more analytic and smaller in scope.
My project is divided into two parts. The first part will analyze how Greek Aristotelian and NeoPlatonic thought influenced the concept of individual/human perfection in Islamic philosophy. Already having a background in philosophy, this allows me to situate Ibn al-‘Arabi within the discipline of philosophy and to draw on the body of my academic knowledge. The second part will analyze how the idea of human perfection within the body of Islamic philosophy is linked to Ibn al-‘Arabi’s concept of the al-Insan al-Kamil.
My previous research MA in philosophy at Brock University analyzed the concept of the al-Insan al-Kamil within Ibn al-‘Arabi’s thought. Having no formal background in Sufism or Ibn al-‘Arabi it centered on analyzing various questions within the concept pertaining to the philosophy of the self, such as: what type of being does the Perfect Individual have, who can be a Perfect Individual, how does the Perfect Individual behave. Thus, while I have a strong background in the philosophical questions pertaining to this concept, I lack the background in Islamic studies, specifically in the broader historical development of Islamic and Sufi thought and in the Arabic language. The purpose of this second MA in Religion at the University of Toronto is to full those lacks so I can continue my larger research goals. Therefore I am focusing on acquiring a strong reading knowledge of Arabic and a solid understanding of the development of philosophical/religious thought in Classical Islamic philosophy and early Sufism. Taking classes on Arabic, classical Islamic philosophy, and mystical Persian Poetry this academic year is fulfilling this. The final research project outlined above, undertaken in the second year of my MA will be the culmination of my previous research and the research done at the University of Toronto, and will be the foundation for more extensive research at the PhD level and at the post-doctoral level.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The Evolution of World Religions Dialogue
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
- Article 18, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Why begin with a quote from the UDHR, and how is it relevant to this week’s readings? The UDHR marks the birth of universal human right’s discourse, it is the world’s cumulative pronouncement after World War II that all persons share a common humanity, and as such it represents a fundamental shift in the way the West viewed the world. This marked the end of colonialism and imperialism, it changed the way different cultures were viewed by the West, and it change the way the West viewed religion. (This is a broad, idealistic picture but this is not the place to debate the pitfalls of the UDHR and the human rights movement.) As such it can be used as a conceptual marker for our modern discourse on religion. For it is in this document that a paradigm shift that created our current method of analyzing the world was born. I argue that although Masuzawa claims to be taking a historical approach to the development of World Religions discourse (Introduction, p. 13) she glosses over (at least in the chapters we read for this week) the historical context within which these developments took place. She does not address some of the major ideological and philosophical trends of the times that shaped this discourse, such as: manifest destiny, skepticism and evolutionary theory, something I find especially important. She says: “Our task, then, is not to cleanse and purify the science we have inherited- such efforts, in any case, always seem to end up whitewashing our own situation rather than rectifying the past- but rather it is a matter of being historical differently.” (p. 21) What does she mean by “being historical differently”? Is this contingent upon our own historical placement? If this is so, then is it not vital to understand the historical situation of the early World Religions scholars so we can better understand how we can be or are historical differently? Is saying a scholar was the product of his/her times a type of attempted cleansing or justifying?
Looking at this from a different angle, we might ask whether our problem with the history of World Religions scholastics is rooted in the different conception of the “other” that they had. The UDHR, to use my contemporary example, is based on the idea that the other is also human, so shares a common set of inherent “rights,” that is inherently the same although culturally diverse. Thus, in contemporary Western scholasticism the other is on equal footing with us and although this other may have a different religious tradition this tradition shares an equal legitimacy with our religious tradition. (This generalization is overtly idealistic, but purposefully so to highlight the general assumption that may or may not be practically employed by the individual.) This is in contrast to the various ideas of the “other” that existed in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Smith gives a good illustration of this difference in reference to the explorer/colonist’s view of the natives’ “religion.” Smith explains:
“[Religion] is a category imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture. It is the other… who [is] solely responsible for the content of the terms… In constructing the second-order, generic category ‘religion,’ its characteristics are those that appear natural to the other.” (Smith, p. 269)
We find here that the “other” is defined as culturally strange, truly separate from us, and therefore the only way this strangeness can be understood is to find/create symbols in that otherness that conform to our norm. Yet, constant contact leads to an erosion of this strangeness. Van Voorst, in relation to contact with religious texts, points out that: “The more we genuinely encounter world scriptures in their full range of reception and use, the less likely we will be to inject our own biases into the scriptures of others.” (Van Voorst, p. 11) Thus, over time, according to Van Voorst, our biases diminish due to our evolving understanding of the foreign religious texts. Does this explain the slow evolution in the historical approach to World Religions from the superiority of Christianity to the democratization of religions? Yet at the end of his essay Smith says something that throws a wrench into this idea. He says: “‘Religion’ is… a term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore is theirs to define.” (p.281) Does this mean we trade old biases for new ones? Instead of finding a “truer” perspective do we just change our definitions and therefore our language game?
Returning back to the idea of history. Masuzawa’s very last sentence in Chapter Two should be a particularly sobering thought for us. She says: “Surely, our thorough lack of interest in their logic is ultimately to the detriment of our own historical understanding.” (p. 104) Should we be concerned then, not with finding means of separating us from them, but with understanding the preconceptions of their times that guided them and how this gradually changed? After all we are the heirs of the Western scholarly tradition, should we not understand the past logic of this tradition before we seek to create a new logic of our own?
Finally, the lingering questions for me after reflecting on Masuzawa, Van Voorst, and Smith are: what biases and/or assumed “Truths” does scholarship today hold that might make a future academia blush at us the way we blush at the early founders of World Religions dialogue? Is our only hope to strive to be individuals ahead of our times, or is this an act of hubris that will lead us to disaster? Is it better to be a Maurice who had good intentions, that is, a scholar who strives for accuracy but whose work falls short, or a Hardwick, a scholar who is rigorous in an effort to uphold the bias of his time (Reference Masuzawa pp. 96-97)? Or ultimately are these things we have little to no control over?
- Article 18, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
Why begin with a quote from the UDHR, and how is it relevant to this week’s readings? The UDHR marks the birth of universal human right’s discourse, it is the world’s cumulative pronouncement after World War II that all persons share a common humanity, and as such it represents a fundamental shift in the way the West viewed the world. This marked the end of colonialism and imperialism, it changed the way different cultures were viewed by the West, and it change the way the West viewed religion. (This is a broad, idealistic picture but this is not the place to debate the pitfalls of the UDHR and the human rights movement.) As such it can be used as a conceptual marker for our modern discourse on religion. For it is in this document that a paradigm shift that created our current method of analyzing the world was born. I argue that although Masuzawa claims to be taking a historical approach to the development of World Religions discourse (Introduction, p. 13) she glosses over (at least in the chapters we read for this week) the historical context within which these developments took place. She does not address some of the major ideological and philosophical trends of the times that shaped this discourse, such as: manifest destiny, skepticism and evolutionary theory, something I find especially important. She says: “Our task, then, is not to cleanse and purify the science we have inherited- such efforts, in any case, always seem to end up whitewashing our own situation rather than rectifying the past- but rather it is a matter of being historical differently.” (p. 21) What does she mean by “being historical differently”? Is this contingent upon our own historical placement? If this is so, then is it not vital to understand the historical situation of the early World Religions scholars so we can better understand how we can be or are historical differently? Is saying a scholar was the product of his/her times a type of attempted cleansing or justifying?
Looking at this from a different angle, we might ask whether our problem with the history of World Religions scholastics is rooted in the different conception of the “other” that they had. The UDHR, to use my contemporary example, is based on the idea that the other is also human, so shares a common set of inherent “rights,” that is inherently the same although culturally diverse. Thus, in contemporary Western scholasticism the other is on equal footing with us and although this other may have a different religious tradition this tradition shares an equal legitimacy with our religious tradition. (This generalization is overtly idealistic, but purposefully so to highlight the general assumption that may or may not be practically employed by the individual.) This is in contrast to the various ideas of the “other” that existed in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Smith gives a good illustration of this difference in reference to the explorer/colonist’s view of the natives’ “religion.” Smith explains:
“[Religion] is a category imposed from the outside on some aspect of native culture. It is the other… who [is] solely responsible for the content of the terms… In constructing the second-order, generic category ‘religion,’ its characteristics are those that appear natural to the other.” (Smith, p. 269)
We find here that the “other” is defined as culturally strange, truly separate from us, and therefore the only way this strangeness can be understood is to find/create symbols in that otherness that conform to our norm. Yet, constant contact leads to an erosion of this strangeness. Van Voorst, in relation to contact with religious texts, points out that: “The more we genuinely encounter world scriptures in their full range of reception and use, the less likely we will be to inject our own biases into the scriptures of others.” (Van Voorst, p. 11) Thus, over time, according to Van Voorst, our biases diminish due to our evolving understanding of the foreign religious texts. Does this explain the slow evolution in the historical approach to World Religions from the superiority of Christianity to the democratization of religions? Yet at the end of his essay Smith says something that throws a wrench into this idea. He says: “‘Religion’ is… a term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore is theirs to define.” (p.281) Does this mean we trade old biases for new ones? Instead of finding a “truer” perspective do we just change our definitions and therefore our language game?
Returning back to the idea of history. Masuzawa’s very last sentence in Chapter Two should be a particularly sobering thought for us. She says: “Surely, our thorough lack of interest in their logic is ultimately to the detriment of our own historical understanding.” (p. 104) Should we be concerned then, not with finding means of separating us from them, but with understanding the preconceptions of their times that guided them and how this gradually changed? After all we are the heirs of the Western scholarly tradition, should we not understand the past logic of this tradition before we seek to create a new logic of our own?
Finally, the lingering questions for me after reflecting on Masuzawa, Van Voorst, and Smith are: what biases and/or assumed “Truths” does scholarship today hold that might make a future academia blush at us the way we blush at the early founders of World Religions dialogue? Is our only hope to strive to be individuals ahead of our times, or is this an act of hubris that will lead us to disaster? Is it better to be a Maurice who had good intentions, that is, a scholar who strives for accuracy but whose work falls short, or a Hardwick, a scholar who is rigorous in an effort to uphold the bias of his time (Reference Masuzawa pp. 96-97)? Or ultimately are these things we have little to no control over?
Sunday, September 14, 2008
methodology I think
I found the issue of methodology relating to the three articles a fascinating exercise on my own academic biases. Thus, while addressing some of the questions posed by Dr. Garrett I will explore why I found Huntington’s Introduction to be a better methodological model.
Structure and articulation are inextricably linked in these pieces, for structure dictates how you can say something and how you say something implies a type of structure in an essay. Bynum and Huntington have very different structures. Bynum has a narrative approach while Huntington is analytical. Bynum’s approach allows her to create a dialogue between the past and present, a point I will come back to. In doing this however her approach relies on the connection of various intertwined narratives that tie her theme together. For example in “Fragments” she starts by describing how two scholars from the Middle Ages understood bodily fragmentation (pp. 11-13). Then (pp. 13-14) she goes on to discuss fragmentation in terms of a collection of essays, all dealing with various “fragmented” topics. She returns to the theme of fragmentation (pp. 21-23) by asserting that medieval history has been fragmented off from the rest of history due to a lack of engagement with new historical theory, something she seeks to engage. And finally, the last part of her Introduction (pp. 24-26) deals with the idea that all historical work is fragmentary, that is only partial and liable to change. This is a rather relaxed method, mingling theory with narrative and anecdote, which I found more expositional than argumentative. I found her humorous and engaging, although somewhat informal, perhaps given that her intended audience was broader than just scholars in her field, thus trying to make her writing appeal to the amateur “historian” or the novice student.
Huntington is dealing with a much more theoretical topic and applies what I found to be a much more rigorous and authoritarian method. He is more succinct in defining his terms, and the methods he is countering, for his purpose is to present a method whereby scholars can discuss the meaning and not just the historical and philological aspects of the text. Thus, he begins by outlining the currently accepted scholarly methods for studying Asian religious philosophy, points to their failings, and outlines what he believes to be a better approach to the texts, i.e., one that addresses problems of interpretation. This might be the heart of my bias, for I find a method dealing with meaning and interpretation more engaging than one that is expositional.
He, unlike Bynum in either of her articles, quotes from scholars who support his method (pp. 8, 10, 14) and from the Western philosophical traditions of hermeneutics and epistemology that provide the groundwork for his interpretive method (pp. 7, 9, 10). Bynum tends to use her references to other scholarship for empirical data rather than theoretical abstraction, and she mentions them more in passing than to prove a point (for Huntington they directly help to justify his methodological claim). In fact, in “Holy Feast” she does not name any scholar outside of the time period she is writing about, which may be intentional on her part, since her purpose in the book is to reveal the past. She says: “It is a book about then, not about now… My commitment, vision, and method are historical; I intend to reveal the past in its strangeness as well as its familiarity” (“Holy Feast” p. 8). In “Fragments” however, she does use major twentieth century intellectual thought. She says: “The three methodological pieces all use major twentieth century intellectual figures as means to better understand late medieval religion” (“Fragments” p. 14). This contrasts the different purposes in her books, and thus the different methods employed. In “Fragments” to show how the past engages questions that are seen as modern, and in “Holy Feast” to show how the past was.
This brings up the problem of history addressed in all three Introductions. Bynum’s methodology creates a link between the past and the present. In “Fragments” the goal is to show how the medieval mind understood problems that are in the forefront of history today, to bring medieval history into the realm of modern historical method. In “Holy Feast” the goal is to show how the past is unique from the present. Although Bynum mentions in both Introductions that present day society is not a direct descendant from medieval society she can make these links because the she is working within the same tradition, that is Western tradition. For Huntington history and the historical consciousness become more complicated. He says: “This introduction to the Madhyamika is predicated on a conviction that any attempt at understanding the texts must proceed through an effort to uncover our own presuppositions as well as those of the Indian and Tibetan authors” (pp. 14-15). The Western religious/philosophical vocabulary is different from the Indian, and the Western scholar cannot empty him/herself of this contingency. History is both enemy and friend, for helps give context to the Buddhist texts, but it also burdens the translator with hidden presuppositions. Thus, Huntington makes use of Gadamer’s theory of hermeneutics to aid the western reader in understanding these texts.
Could it be that because my research is centered on engaging a topic as a philosophical concept that I found Huntington’s method more appealing? Or, could it be that working with non-Western material in English requires a more critical approach? Since that is what I plan on doing, the issues of translation and interpretation will have to be a necessary part of my methodology.
Structure and articulation are inextricably linked in these pieces, for structure dictates how you can say something and how you say something implies a type of structure in an essay. Bynum and Huntington have very different structures. Bynum has a narrative approach while Huntington is analytical. Bynum’s approach allows her to create a dialogue between the past and present, a point I will come back to. In doing this however her approach relies on the connection of various intertwined narratives that tie her theme together. For example in “Fragments” she starts by describing how two scholars from the Middle Ages understood bodily fragmentation (pp. 11-13). Then (pp. 13-14) she goes on to discuss fragmentation in terms of a collection of essays, all dealing with various “fragmented” topics. She returns to the theme of fragmentation (pp. 21-23) by asserting that medieval history has been fragmented off from the rest of history due to a lack of engagement with new historical theory, something she seeks to engage. And finally, the last part of her Introduction (pp. 24-26) deals with the idea that all historical work is fragmentary, that is only partial and liable to change. This is a rather relaxed method, mingling theory with narrative and anecdote, which I found more expositional than argumentative. I found her humorous and engaging, although somewhat informal, perhaps given that her intended audience was broader than just scholars in her field, thus trying to make her writing appeal to the amateur “historian” or the novice student.
Huntington is dealing with a much more theoretical topic and applies what I found to be a much more rigorous and authoritarian method. He is more succinct in defining his terms, and the methods he is countering, for his purpose is to present a method whereby scholars can discuss the meaning and not just the historical and philological aspects of the text. Thus, he begins by outlining the currently accepted scholarly methods for studying Asian religious philosophy, points to their failings, and outlines what he believes to be a better approach to the texts, i.e., one that addresses problems of interpretation. This might be the heart of my bias, for I find a method dealing with meaning and interpretation more engaging than one that is expositional.
He, unlike Bynum in either of her articles, quotes from scholars who support his method (pp. 8, 10, 14) and from the Western philosophical traditions of hermeneutics and epistemology that provide the groundwork for his interpretive method (pp. 7, 9, 10). Bynum tends to use her references to other scholarship for empirical data rather than theoretical abstraction, and she mentions them more in passing than to prove a point (for Huntington they directly help to justify his methodological claim). In fact, in “Holy Feast” she does not name any scholar outside of the time period she is writing about, which may be intentional on her part, since her purpose in the book is to reveal the past. She says: “It is a book about then, not about now… My commitment, vision, and method are historical; I intend to reveal the past in its strangeness as well as its familiarity” (“Holy Feast” p. 8). In “Fragments” however, she does use major twentieth century intellectual thought. She says: “The three methodological pieces all use major twentieth century intellectual figures as means to better understand late medieval religion” (“Fragments” p. 14). This contrasts the different purposes in her books, and thus the different methods employed. In “Fragments” to show how the past engages questions that are seen as modern, and in “Holy Feast” to show how the past was.
This brings up the problem of history addressed in all three Introductions. Bynum’s methodology creates a link between the past and the present. In “Fragments” the goal is to show how the medieval mind understood problems that are in the forefront of history today, to bring medieval history into the realm of modern historical method. In “Holy Feast” the goal is to show how the past is unique from the present. Although Bynum mentions in both Introductions that present day society is not a direct descendant from medieval society she can make these links because the she is working within the same tradition, that is Western tradition. For Huntington history and the historical consciousness become more complicated. He says: “This introduction to the Madhyamika is predicated on a conviction that any attempt at understanding the texts must proceed through an effort to uncover our own presuppositions as well as those of the Indian and Tibetan authors” (pp. 14-15). The Western religious/philosophical vocabulary is different from the Indian, and the Western scholar cannot empty him/herself of this contingency. History is both enemy and friend, for helps give context to the Buddhist texts, but it also burdens the translator with hidden presuppositions. Thus, Huntington makes use of Gadamer’s theory of hermeneutics to aid the western reader in understanding these texts.
Could it be that because my research is centered on engaging a topic as a philosophical concept that I found Huntington’s method more appealing? Or, could it be that working with non-Western material in English requires a more critical approach? Since that is what I plan on doing, the issues of translation and interpretation will have to be a necessary part of my methodology.
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