Robert A. Segal

IN DEFENSE OF THE COMPARATIVE METHOD

While in some disciplines the comparative method is used unhesitatingly, in others it is spurned. In the field of religious studies, the method has long been rejected, and that rejection far antedates the anti-comparativist stance of postmodernism. This article identifies the main objections commonly lodged against the method and attempts to refute them all - as mischaracterizations either of the method or of the quest for knowledge itself. The article then considers the use of the method by the two figures in religious studies still singled out as the most egregious practitioners of it: James Frazer and William Robertson Smith. In actuality, not even they turn out to be guilty of any of the objections lodged against the method. At the same time they turn out to employ the method in contrary ways. Frazer uses the method to show the similarities among religions; Smith uses it as much to show the differences. The contrasting use of the same method by its most famous practitioners shows that the method is not merely malleable but indispensable to all scholars of religion - those seeking the particularities of individual religions no less than those seeking the universals of religion.

Explaining and interpreting religion : essays on the issue

Contents: This book of essays challenges the conventional view that social scientists explain religion and that, by contrast, scholars of religions studies - religionists -interpret it. Both groups turn out to explain and interpret religion alike.OR: This book of essays demonstrates the disparate uses of the terms explanation and interpretation in the study of religion. It then considers the implications of those uses for the reconcilability of a social scientific approach to religion with a religionist one.

Jung as psychologist of religion and Jung as philosopher of religion.

Is it possible to be both a psychologist and a philosopher? Is it possible for a psychologist, or more generally a social scientist, to use social scientific findings to make philosophical claims? Specifically, is it possible for a social scientist to use social scientific findings to determine the existence of God? Did Jung profess to be only a psychologist or also a philosopher? If he professed to be both, did he enlist his psychological findings to make philosophical claims? Specifically, did he enlist his psychological findings to determine the existence of God?

Kuhn and the science of religion

Abstract Ever since the challenge to the ‘received’ view of the philosophy of scienceda view epitomized by Karl Popper and Carl Hempeldthe status of science has been questioned. If radical critics of the received viewdcritics including Kuhn, Laudan, Feyerabend, the Edinburgh Strong Programme, and Latourdare right, can science, which means natural science, still be considered objective? Can it still be deemed the model of objectivity to be emulated by the social sciences and even by the humanities? Because religious studies is commonly assumed to fall short of the standards of objectivity of the natural sciences and even of the social sciences, what bearing does criticism of conventional philosophy of science have on it? Specifically, can the religionist approach to religion, the approach that purports to be the sole appropriate one for religious studies, be defended? Does radical philosophy of science, by challenging the objectivity of scientific claims, make the world safe for religious ones? This article will focus on the philosophy of Thomas Kuhn and will seek to determine what use defenders of religious studies can make of it.

William Robertson Smith: Sociologist or theologian?

Abstract William Robertson Smith is often considered to be the first modern sociologist of religion. I argue that Smith was truly a pioneering sociologist of religion, but of ‘‘primitive’’ and ancient religion only. He pitted primitive and ancient religion against modern religion, which for him was religion of the individual rather than of the group. I suggest that Smiths sociologising of religion, as revolutionary as it was, stops short. Where his sociology ends, his theology begins.

The Frazerian roots of contemporary theories of religion and violence

Abstract The association of religion with violence rather than with peace long antedates 9/11. Among theorists of religion, the association goes back at least to J.G. Frazer, author of the classic The Golden Bough (first ed. 1890). Contemporary theorists who tie religion to violence are beholden to Frazer, even when they spurn any dependence. At the same time the function of religious violence for contemporary theorists has shifted from control over the physical world to control over the social world. That shift typifies the overall shift from a nineteenth-century approach to religion to a twentieth-century one. This article considers two of the most prominent contemporary theorists who connect religion to violence: Rene Girard and Walter Burkert. How they at once depend on Frazer and break with him is the subject of this article.

On Mills' ‘Jung's Metaphysics’

Despite his patient attempt to reconstruct Jungs metaphysics, Jon Mills fails to show that Jung was a metaphysician or even a philosopher of science and perhaps even a scientist. Mills seems to equate metaphysics with the postulation of immaterial entities – notably, archetypes. But on the one hand metaphysics can be materialist as well as dualist. On the other hand it is a speculative enterprise. A metaphysician would not simply announce the existence of immateriality but would seek to prove that immateriality fits the nature of reality as already known. Jungs metaphysics, which for him means sheer pronouncements, constitutes neither psychologism nor idealism, as Mills seems to agree. But Jung is not a Kantian, either. Jung should be treated as a great psychologist, but not as a thinker.

The Blurry Line Between Humans and Gods

Abstract The conventional view is that at least in the West there is a clear-cut and insurmountable divide between human beings and God. This article argues that the divide is neither clear-cut nor insurmountable. Three disparate cases are considered: the conception of God in the Hebrew Bible, traditional and contemporary conceptions of heroism, and the status of celebrities.

Making the Myth–Ritualist Theory Scientific

Abstract Working from his base in ancient Greek religion, Walter Burkert has come to propose a theory of religion generally. That theory rests on the work of ethologists and, more recently, of sociobiologists. While concentrating on ritual, which for him is the heart of religion, Burkert links ritual to myth to offer his own version of the myth–ritualist theory. Rejecting the old-fashioned view, epitomised by James Frazer, that myth and ritual function to spur the crops to grow, he maintains that the two function at once to unify society and to alleviate anxiety. Their function is sociological and psychological rather than magical. Put another way, their function is symbolic rather than practical. For Burkert, as for Frazer, myth–ritualism arose in the stage of agriculture, but for Burkert it is tied to the prior stage of hunting. How original is Burkerts theory of myth–ritualism and of religion? Why does he turn to ethology in particular? If he is seeking to provide a scientific theory of religion, what does he mean by ‘scientific’?

The rebirth of the hero: mythology as a guide to spiritual transformation

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