Kevin Schilbrack

What Isn't Religion?

This article is motivated by the sense that the category of religion has become sprawling, overly inclusive, and unwieldy. This problem is partly be- cause the multiple definitions of religion in play today are so various and divergent, but it is also because some of those definitions are so capacious that the term “religion” loses its analytic usefulness.[From first paragraph]

The Social Construction of Religion and Its Limits: A Critical Reading of Timothy Fitzgerald

Several theorists argue that the concept of “religion” is not a cultural universal but rather emerged under particular historical and political conditions in the modern post-Reformation west. “Religion,” they say, is a social construction. What are the implications of this view of the ontology of religion? My aim in this paper is to critically engage the arguments of Timothy Fitzgerald—a social constructionist about religion who combines, in my judgment, insight and confusion on the issue—in order to trace out the values and the limits of this approach.

The Study of Religious Belief after Donald Davidson

Scholars in religious studies are increasingly drawing important insights from Davidsons philosophy of language. Unfortunately, the most prominent of Davidsons interpreters in religious studies have been Rortian neopragmatists who, I argue, have read into Davidson views which are not his own. This essay seeks to disentangle Davidsons stance from its neopragmatist interpretations. The goal is to understand his stance in order to see how one might approach the study of religious beliefs, and in particular religious metaphysical beliefs, from a Davidsonian perspective.

Myth and metaphysics

This paper defends the assertion that among the things that religions teach, inculcate, and celebrate are understandings of the world that are metaphysical in scope, and that these metaphysical views are often taught, inculcated, and celebrated through religious myths. Its thesis and recommendation is therefore that the philosophical discipline of metaphysics can be legitimately and fruitfully used to help understand myths.

Teaching Comparative Religious Ethics - A Review Essay

Though others have surveyed the different methods in comparative religious ethics, relatively little attention has been given to different approaches to pedagogy (exceptions include Lovin and Reynolds; Juergens-meyer; Twiss). The field of comparative religious ethics has now reached a level of maturity so that there are a variety of ways such courses can be taught. In this review I consider the approaches to comparative religious ethics found in four recent texts by Jacob Neusner, Darrell Fasching and Dell deChant, Regina Wolfe and Christine Gudorf, and Sumner Twiss and Bruce Grelle. In the essay I note the strengths and weaknesses of each text, with special attention given to how the texts might work in the classroom. I then argue that the different texts reflect different understandings of the goal of teaching comparative religious ethics, and I make these goals explicit in order to help teachers decide how they might approach the teaching in this growing field.

Towards a Philosophy of Religious Studies: A Response to Critics

This paper responds to critiques of my Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto (Blackwell, 2014) from Jeppe Jensen, Mark Gardiner, Bryan Rennie, and Kenneth MacKendrick. It aims to defend my book’s proposals in such a way as to nudge the discipline of philosophy of religion into a reflexive mode that might be called “philosophy of religion studies.”

Theorizing Religion and the Role of Philosophy

This paper is a response to Patrick Hart’s “Theory, Method, and Madness in ReligiousStudies,” and it argues that philosophy is presupposed and therefore ineliminablewhen theorizing religions.

[Review of] Robert C. Neville (ed.): The Human Condition: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project; Ultimate Realities: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project; Religious Truth: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project

Robert C. Neville (ed.), The Human Condition: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001, xxvi + 337 pages, Hb

New Directions for Philosophy of Religion: Four Proposals

74.50, pb

The Unity of Knowledge and Action: Toward a Nonrepresentational Theory of Knowledge. Warren G. Frisina

25.95 Robert C. Neville (ed.), Ultimate Realities: A Volume in the Comparative Religious Ideas Project. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001, xxvi + 363 pages, Hb