Religious Philosophy after ‘Religion’?

Richard Amesbury

Published online: 27 May 2012# Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Keywords WesleyWildman . Philosophy of religion . Religious studies . Religion .

Orientalism

A few years ago, Bill Wainwright and I were on a panel at the American Academy ofReligion on the theme rethinking philosophy of religion. During the question-and-answer time afterwards, someone in the audience, bemoaning the poorly ventilatedstate of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion, suggested that ‘philosopherscould use a little bit of a religious studies sensibility.’1 Wesley Wildman would nodoubt agree. His new book, Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary ComparativeInquiry, constitutes an ambitious attempt to open the field of philosophy of religion toimportant currents in the contemporary academy, bringing it into deeper conversationwith religious studies and cognate disciplines.2

Religious philosophy, as Wildman describes it, is religious in much the same waythat religious studies is religious; that is to say, it is secular. Religion comprises itssubject matter, not its method.3 Properly pursued, its inquiry is “unbridled byreligious or other ideological institutional interests, it does not indulge specialpleading or favoritism, it is fully responsive to the insights of whatever disciplines

SOPHIA (2012) 51:293–297DOI 10.1007/s11841-012-0318-0

1Richard Amesbury and William Wainwright, ‘Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: A Dialogue,’ AmericanJournal of Theology and Philosophy 28:2 (May 2007): 235.2Wesley Wildman, Religious Philosophy As Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Futurefor the Philosophy of Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010). Subsequent referencesto this text are in parentheses.3Though the analogy with religious studies, a methodologically secular project, is explicit, the use of theadjective ‘religious’ rather than the prepositional phrase ‘of religion’ may unfortunately contribute to theperception that religious philosophy employs distinctively religious methods. Indeed, there is reason tobelieve that, even within the academy, a similar confusion is not uncommon regarding religious studies.

R. Amesbury (*)Claremont School of Theology, 1325 N. College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711, USAe-mail: ramesbury@cst.edu

Richard Amesburye-mail: richard.amesbury@gmail.com

have a claim in the subject matter, and it earnestly and assiduously seeks out sourcesof correction, wherever they may be found” (314). So conceived, Wildman argues,religious philosophy belongs in the university. Indeed, it is ‘a form of inquiry whoseonly natural home and principal nurturing tradition is the secular academy’ (316).

The subtitle of Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry is:Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion. Why the need for a new vision?Wildman argues that at present, what he calls ‘traditional philosophy of religion’ ishaunted by two major problems: ‘it suffers from unresolved contradictions aboutmethod and scope arising from internal diversity of its activities and fundamentaldisagreements about human reason, and it is significantly out of step with theacademic study of religion’ (ix). Moreover, and partly for these reasons, philosophyand religious studies faculties in secular universities tend to be ‘wary of hiringphilosophers of religion − whose intellectual work strikes them as parochial orunconsciously in thrall to a particular theological outlook, uncritically assumed tobe the proper context for philosophical reflection on religious themes’ (xii). To somedegree, Wildman shares this suspicion: much of what goes by the name of ‘philos-ophy of religion’ is indeed parochial or confessional. Yet, as a wholesale critique ofphilosophy of religion, the presumption of bias is, Wildman points out, unfair, and itdamages the prospects of those working creatively at the intersection of philosophyand religious studies, who understand their intellectual projects differently. Of thosein this latter category − whom Wildman sometimes calls ‘young philosophers ofreligion,’ but whose ranks surely include a few older ones too! − he writes, ‘Theywonder how they should describe themselves: whether they should call themselvescomparativists or historians, and whether to stop talking about philosophy of religionin order to avoid being misunderstood as covert theological apologists on behalf of aparticular religious tradition…They debate the future of their discipline, if indeed itreally is still a discipline as such, or ever was one’ (xiii).

It is in response to these concerns about the future of philosophy of religion thatWildman offers a novel constructive proposal − a reboot of the program ‘not as adiscipline but as a field of multidisciplinary comparative inquiries,’ doing business, atleast temporarily, under a new domain name (ix). He writes:

I shall call this multifaceted venture ‘religious philosophy’ in parallel with thephrase ‘religious studies’ − neither is a religious venture as such, but both takereligion to be the object of study. I would rather call this venture ‘philosophy ofreligion,’ and hopefully one day that name will once again be available todefine a field of multidisciplinary comparative inquiries. (xiii-xiv)

For the moment, however, some rebranding is in order.As someone who works at least part of the time at the intersection of philosophy

and religious studies, and has taught in both a state university and a school oftheology, I am sympathetic to Wildman’s critique of traditional philosophy of religionand his desire to reconfigure the playing field. The model of religious philosophy thatWildman develops here − sensitive to context, conversant with other disciplines, opento cross-cultural comparison, attuned to corrective feedback, and accommodating ofvarious styles of inquiry, ranging from the phenomenological and the literary to theevaluative − is a compelling and attractive one, and I appreciate Wildman’s attention

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to questions of institutional dynamics and location. A significant virtue of the book isthe author’s ability to shuttle between the more theoretical perspective of a philoso-pher and scholar of religion, on the one hand, and the more pragmatic perspectivecharacteristic of a university administrator, on the other. In this way, Wildmanrecognizes that boundary disputes in academia, though impinging importantly onintellectual concerns, also usually turn on political questions, and that the shape of theuniversity is a product of messy historical contingency rather than a carving of realityat the joints.

One of the book’s burdens is to demonstrate that it is possible to explore religiousthemes philosophically without violating the ethics of inquiry on which the modernuniversity is premised. Satisfying this stipulation, I would agree, is a necessarycondition for the possibility of carving out space for religious philosophy as a fieldwithin the secular academy. However, I am not convinced that it is a sufficientcondition. Consider, for a moment, the field of religious studies, which religiousphilosophy self-consciously takes as a model. As Wildman notes, religious studieshas staked its claim to academic propriety largely by cutting ties with theology:though its pretensions to objectivity are not always convincing, they function rhetor-ically to align the field strategically with what are commonly taken to be paradigms ofintellectual respectability. Indeed, an unfortunate side effect of this posture is, asWildman notes, the tendency of religious studies to distance itself from the human-ities (with the exception of history), in favor of the social sciences. Ironically,however, the alignment of religious studies with existing social-science disciplinesexposes the field to a different sort of challenge. Wildman writes:

There is a danger that the success of religious studies contains the seeds of itsown undoing as a multidisciplinary academic field. To the extent that it isexclusively a matter of historical or social-science research, why maintain areligion department at all? Why not absorb religious studies back into thedisciplines that it is so intent on resembling? This is a nontrivial problem.The growing scarcity of serious comparativists and the decentralization of thehumanities within religious studies has robbed many departments of a feasiblecore identity. (22)

In the case of religious studies, apparently, the academic viability of the field is notguaranteed by its disciplinary respectability; indeed, on Wildman’s reading, it isjeopardized by it. What is missing?

Embedded within this pragmatic problem of religious studies’ disciplinary identi-ty, I would argue, is a more theoretically interesting problem having to do with itsputative subject matter. A few pages earlier, in describing the field, Wildman hadnoted that although religious studies scholars commonly identify themselves profes-sionally as, say, sociologists or historians, they fully expect to work alongsidescholars trained in other disciplines and employing quite different methods. Com-menting on the inherently multidisciplinary nature of the field, he writes, ‘This driveshome the fundamental goal of religious studies; it is to understand religion as such −not merely what any one given discipline can comprehend of religion, but religion asa whole, in all its intricate variations and manifestations’ (14). In other words, what ismeant to keep the various disciplines from flying off in different directions is the

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gravitational pull of a common subject of inquiry − namely, religion. But herein liesthe rub: to whatever extent religious studies as a field might today be in question, it islargely because religion is in question as a coherent subject matter.

As numerous thinkers, from J.Z. Smith to Talal Asad and Tomoko Masuzawa haveshown, ‘religion,’ conceived as universal and sui generis − the genus of which the so-called ‘world religions’ are species − is a relatively recent notion, constructedalternately to ‘otherize’ and to assimilate and entangled with Western colonialism,Orientalism, and the rise of modern nation-states. Among the more strident critics of‘religion’ as a category of analysis, Timothy Fitzgerald argues quite explicitly fordissolving the field of religious studies, which he views as hopelessly entangled incrypto-theological confusions, and finding homes for its better practitioners in otheruniversity departments.4 (Arguably, however, he overlooks the extent to which thedepartments he tends to valorize − anthropology and cultural studies, for example −are plagued by historical embarrassments of their own.) Worries about ‘religion’ are,at the moment, largely (though certainly not wholly) internal to religious studies −Fitzgerald, for all his relentless deconstruction of ‘religion,’ teaches in a departmentof religious studies − and it is possible that, as in the case of anthropology, which hassubjected itself to vigorous internal critique without falling apart, the field of religiousstudies has the momentum and creativity necessary to turn such challenges into oppor-tunities for development. But whatever the institutional future of religious studies as afield may turn out to be, genealogical and postcolonial critiques have succeed in shiftingthe category of “religion” from an unremarked analytical term to a discursive formationnow widely recognized by scholars as standing in need of analysis.

If religious philosophy, like religious studies, defines itself partly by reference to aparticular subject matter, then it would seem that emphasizing the secularity of itsmethods is not, by itself, adequate to make the case for such an academic field; itwould also be necessary to defend the coherence of the putative subject that unifies(and the complexity of which is said to demand) its admittedly disparate disciplines,as well as the fruitfulness of so configuring research. Ironically, Wildman’s attempt tomove beyond parochialism by shifting ‘religion’ from method to subject matter, inkeeping with an earlier move of this kind by religious studies, coincides with a newsense among scholars in religious studies that the assumption of a subject mattercalled ‘religion’ is no less parochial. To be sure, the various activities that the rubricof ‘religious philosophy’ attempts to capture might be entirely defensible on theirown terms and indeed might not employ the category of ‘religion’ in their ownanalyses. But I take it that Wildman wants to do more than merely defend thesevarious projects individually; his aim is to defend the field qua field − i.e., as a ‘viablesocial container for…diverse projects’ (xi). If religious philosophy is to serve as acenter of gravity − even if not, like religious studies, an autonomous department −capable of pulling scholars trained in a variety of disciplines into its orbit, someaccount presumably needs to be given of what these diverse projects have incommon, of what unifies them as a field.

In seeking to move philosophical reflection on religion beyond the provincialpreoccupations of the past, Wildman offers a broad characterization of religion − one

4 Timothy Fitzgerald, The Ideology of Religious Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Seeesp. Chaps. 11 and 12.

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based on family resemblances rather than essences (35–7). But I would myself like tosee the project carried further − into a reflexive self-critique of the very concept of‘religion’ itself. Wildman speaks of the importance of comparativists’ taking respon-sibility for the categories they bring to their work, and it is merely an extension of thispoint to observe that the architectonic of ‘religion’ itself cries out for analysis.

Though I am confident that Wildman is capable of offering a robust defense of thesubject matter at issue in religious philosophy as he has framed it, I would like tosuggest in closing that we ought also to ponder the benefits that might come from afull-throated endorsement of the case against ‘religion.’ For one thing, it wouldarguably open up new theoretical vistas for scholars working at the intersection ofphilosophy and religious studies. Think, for example, of how traditional questionshaving to do with the relation between religion and politics might be reconceivedonce it comes to be recognized that categorizing certain institutions, reasons, orpeople as ‘religious’ is already a political act, as opposed to an innocently descriptivesetting of the stage. Moving beyond conventional understandings of ‘religion’ − e.g.,as a socially differentiated domain of life distinguishable in principle from other,secular, domains − could also open fruitful dialogue with postcolonial theory aboutthe way the deployment of such categories can function as an impediment torespectful engagement with non-Western understandings. It might even reopen linesof communication with theology.

It is possible that a reflexive critique could be built right into the self-description ofreligious philosophy from the outset, foregrounding the question of “religion” as,among other things, a problem relevant to (religious) philosophy. But it is alsopossible to imagine many of the projects for which Wildman rightly wants to makespace being undertaken profitably from within other sub-fields of philosophy. A fieldorganized around ‘religion’might not actually be necessary to ensure the future of thekind of multidisciplinary, comparative inquiry he describes. Indeed, one possiblebenefit of disaggregating these projects is that it might bring them out of a potentialphilosophical ghetto, into the mainstream. If, as Wildman notes, many academicsreact with unthinking aversion to anything labeled ‘religion,’ then perhaps it is in thestrategic interests of philosophers concerned with matters traditionally so labeled tofind other ways of characterizing their research interests, and other venues in which toconduct their work.

Of course, even if you think, like I do, that religion is not a single, very complexthing, but a lot of different things, lumped together for what are often philosophicallyarbitrary reasons, you might still think that a field called ‘religious philosophy’makessense in the short term, as a space hospitable to projects that other branches ofphilosophy or religious studies are not yet prepared to embrace, given their currentprejudices. But in seeking to move beyond the shoals of parochialism into unchartedwaters, ‘religious philosophy’ may find the concept of ‘religion,’ a decidedly Westernconstruct, acting as a sea anchor.

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