Religion in Relation: Method, Application and Moral Location

261 Pages·1993·25.266 MB·English

by  Ivan Strenski (auth.)

RELIGION IN RELATION
Also by Ivan Strenski and published by Palgrave Macmillan
FOUR THEORIES OF MYTH IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY HISTORY
RELIGION IN
RELATION
Method, Application and Moral Location
Ivan Strenski
Specialist in Religious Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
M
MACMILLAN
© Ivan Strenski 1993
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1993 978-0-333-53469-4
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ISBN 978-1-349-11868-7 ISBN 978-1-349-11866-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-11866-3
A catalogue record for this book is available
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Ellen Hamilton Strenski,
La mujer de mi vida
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: Making Relation Manifest 1
Part 1: From Analysis to History
1 Mircea Eliade: Some Theoretical Problems 15
2 Reductionism and Structural Anthropology 41
3 Falsifying Deep Structures 57
4 Hubert, Mauss and the Comparative
Social History of Religions 75
Part 2: From Enlightenment to Exchange
5 Gradual Enlightenment, Sudden Enlightenment and
Empiricism 89
6 Levi-Strauss and the Buddhists 110
7 On Generalized Exchange and the Domestication
of the Sangha 132
Part 3: The Moral Location of Theories
8 Heidegger Is No Hero 153
9 Love and Anarchy in Romania: A Critical Review
of Mircea Eliade's Autobiography, Volume 1: 1907-37 166
10 Henri Hubert, Racial Science and Political Myth 180
11 At Home with Rene Girard:
Eucharistic Sacrifice, the 'French School' and
Joseph De Maistre 202
Notes 217
Index 245
vii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank those responsible for granting permission to
republish material included in this collection.
'Mircea Eliade: Some Theoretical Problems', Sheed and Ward Pub-
lishers. This article first appeared in a volume edited by Adrian
Cunningham, Theory of Myth (London, 1973),40-78.
'Reductionism and Structural Anthropology', the Editor of Inquiry,
Univerisetsforlaget, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. This article
first appeared in Inquiry 19 (1976): 73-89 (published by the
Scandinavian University Press).
'Falsifying Deep Structures' (originally Man 9 (1974): 571-84)
'On Generalized Exchange and the Domestication of the Sangha',
(originally Man 18 (1983): 463-77), the Editor of Man, Royal Anthro-
pological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.
For rights to publish the English version of 'L' apport des eleves de
Durkheim' ('Hubert, Mauss and the Comparative Social History of
Religions' ,) which first appeared in the anthology, La tradition fram;aise
en sciences religieuses, Michel Despland, ed. (Quebec: Laval Univer-
sity Press, 1991, 109-27), I should like to thank the Press, the volume
editor, Professor Michel Despland, and the series editor, Professor
Raymond Lemieux.
'Gradual Enlightenment, Sudden Enlightenment and Empiricism',
(Philosophy East and West 30 (1980): 3-20) the Editor, University of
Hawaii-Manoa, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii.
'Levi-Strauss and the Buddhists', the editor of Comparative Studies in
Society and History 22 (1980): 3-22.
'Heidegger is No Hero' the Editor of The Christian Century, 19 May
1982, pages 598--601. Copyright 1982 Christian Century Foundation.
viii
Acknowledgements ix
'Love and Anarchy in Romania: A Critical Review of Mircea Eliade's
Autobiography, Volume I: 1907-37' from Religion 12 (1982): 391-403.
Thanks to Academic Press Ltd.
'Henri Hubert, Racial Science and Political Myth', Journal of the His-
tory of the Behavioral Sciences 23 (1987): 353-67. Reprinted with per-
mission of the Clinical Psychology Publishing Co., Inc., 4 Conant
Square, Brandon, Vermont 05733.
Personal thanks to Philippe Besnard, Louis Dumont, Girard Hubert,
the three Jennies - to Jennifer Lacey Evans for stenographing, com-
puting and accenting acutely, to Jennifer Pegg for editorial counsel,
and to Jennie Kieronski Strenski for special moral support through
the years. For institutional research support, the University Research
Library and especially David Unruh, Council for Educational
Development, University of California, Los Angeles.
Introd uction:
Making Relation Manifest
1 AGAINST INTELLECTUAL INCEST
The title of this collection fairly conveys a sense about religion itself
and about the study of religion in the essays included here. Each
chapter stands on its own as an attempt to solve certain problems;
yet the reader will find a common thread running through the collec-
tion - a concerted effort to illuminate problems by relation or juxta-
position. These connections include Levi-Strauss's approach to myth
and the philosophy of science of Karl Popper or debates about
reductionism in the exact sciences, Buddhist meditation styles and
Ernest Gellner's reading of empiricism, Eliade's mysticism and his-
tory of religions and the politics of radicalized Romania, Heidegger's
philosophy of Being and the National Socialists, Levi-Strauss's struc-
turalism and Theravada. We understand better the individual when
we know where the individual 'stands'. Good understanding de-
mands knowledge in context - in relation.
This contextualizing movement is especially important for reli-
gion and the study of religion. I assume that there exists a strong
tendency for religious folk to hide from the world, to try to avoid
putting religious faith at risk by exposing it to competing claims
about truth. Parochialism, obscurantism, dogmatism, evasiveness,
in-group exclusiveness, absolutely privileging the testimony of the
inner life, resistance to comparison with other religions - all these
are symptomatic of the unstated fear that religion cannot stand up
against the big, bad world. Therefore, religious folk must isolate
themselves, and resist admitting relation by whatever strategy serves
their ends. There is something cowardly and unedifying about this
stance.
But it is not primarily the timidity of some of contemporary
religious life that this book about relation addresses. Granted that it
is bad enough that religions resist relation, worse yet are attempts
within the university to pursue the same strategy.! Much of the
burden of these essays rests upon showing how religious studies
which put religion into relation with unconventional partners pro-
duces new insights and expands our understanding of the world, of
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