Table Of ContentAsian Philosophies and the Idea
of Religion
With a focus on Asian traditions, this book examines varieties of thought
and self-transformative practice that do not fit neatly on one side or another
of the standard Western division between philosophy and religion.
It contains chapters by experts on Buddhist, Confucian, Taoist, Hindu
and Jain philosophies, as well as ancient Greek philosophy and recent
contemplative and spiritual movements. The volume also problematizes
the notion of a Western philosophical canon distinguished by rationality
in contrast to a religious Eastern “other”. These original essays creatively
lay the groundwork needed to rethink dominant historical and conceptual
categories from a wider perspective to arrive at a deeper, more plural and
global understanding of the diverse nature of both philosophy and religion.
The volume will be of keen interest to scholars and students in the
philosophy of religion, Asian and comparative philosophy and religious
studies.
Sonia Sikka is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Ashwani Kumar Peetush is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wilfrid
Laurier University, Canada.
Routledge Studies in Religion
Seeing God in Our Birth Experiences
A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into Pre and Perinatal Religious Development
Helen Holmes
Islam, IS, and the Fragmented State
The Challenges of Political Islam in the MENA Region
Anoushiravan Ehteshami, Juline Beaujouan and Amjed Rasheed
Vedantic Hinduism in Colonial Bengal
Reformed Hinduism and Western Protestantism
Victor A. van Bijlert
Themes in Religion and Human Security in Africa
Edited by Joram Tarusarira and Ezra Chitando
Muslim Minorities and Social Cohesion
Cultural Fragmentation in the West
Abe W. Ata
Religion, Migration, and Existential Wellbeing
Edited by Moa Kindström Dahlin, Oscar L. Larsson and Anneli Winell
Prophetic Witness and the Reimagining of the World
Poetry, Theology and Philosophy in Dialogue – Power of the Word V
Edited by Mark S. Burrows, Hilary Davies and Josephine von Zitzewitz
Asian Philosophies and the Idea of Religion
Beyond Faith and Reason
Edited by Sonia Sikka and Ashwani Kumar Peetush
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
religion/series/SE0669
Asian Philosophies and
the Idea of Religion
Beyond Faith and Reason
Edited by Sonia Sikka and
Ashwani Kumar Peetush
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Sonia Sikka and Ashwani
Kumar Peetush; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Sonia Sikka and Ashwani Kumar Peetush to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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explanation without intent to infringe.
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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ISBN: 978-0-367-86283-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-02423-1 (ebk)
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Contents
List of contributors vii
1 Introduction 1
SONIA SIKKA AND ASHWANI KUMAR PEETUSH
2 Aspiration, conviction, and serene joy: faith and reason in
Indian Buddhist literature on the path 13
WILLIAM EDELGLASS
3 Faith and/or/as enlightenment: rethinking religion
from the perspective of Japanese Buddhism 36
BRET W. DAVIS
4 Faith and its derivatives: knowledge, conduct and
liberation in Jainism 65
ANNE VALLELY
5 Enlightening the unEnlightened: the exclusion of
Advaita Vedānta from the Western philosophical canon 76
ASHWANI KUMAR PEETUSH
6 Ruism and the category of religion: or, what to do about
the Confucians? 106
PAUL CARELLI AND SARAH MATTICE
7 Faith, reason, and the paradox of wu-wei in the Zhuangzi 125
JULIANNE CHUNG
vi Contents
8 Medium of many messages: roles of aesthetic discourse in
religion and philosophy 147
GORDON F. DAVIS
9 Trusting the daimonion: faith and reason in the case of
Socrates and beyond 177
ANNA LÄNNSTRÖM
10 Reason and faith on the path to the transcendent in Plotinus 193
CATHERINE COLLOBERT
11 Thoughtful seekers among the “spiritual but not religious” 209
SONIA SIKKA
12 Between faith and reason: feminist contemplative pedagogy 227
ERIN McCARTHY
13 An immanent world of wonder: nonreligion and emerging
worldviews 245
LORI G. BEAMAN
Index 264
Contributors
Lori G. Beaman is the Canada Research Chair in Religious Diversity and
Social Change and Professor in the Department of Classics and Religious
Studies at the University of Ottawa.
Paul Carelli is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and
Religious Studies at University of North Florida, USA.
Julianne Chung is Assistant Professor at York University, Department of
Philosophy, Canada.
Catherine Collobert is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa,
Canada.
Gordon F. Davis is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Carleton Univer-
sity, Canada.
Bret W. Davis is Professor and Thomas J. Higgins, S.J. Chair in Philosophy
at Loyola University Maryland, USA.
William Edelglass is Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at
Marlboro College, USA.
Anna Lännström is Professor of Philosophy at Stonehill College, USA.
Sarah Mattice is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and
Religious Studies, and Director of Interdisciplinary Studies at University
of North Florida, USA.
Erin McCarthy is Professor of Philosophy at St. Lawrence University, USA.
Ashwani Kumar Peetush is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wilfrid
Laurier University, Canada.
Sonia Sikka is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Anne Vallely is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of
Ottawa, Canada.
1 Introduction
Sonia Sikka and Ashwani Kumar Peetush
In the West, the distinction between religion and philosophy has been
grounded for centuries in an opposition between faith and reason. By now,
the equation of religion with faith, understood as a mode of arriving at
beliefs that contrasts with reason, has become globally self-evident, to such
an extent that the terms “religion” and “faith” are often used interchange-
ably. Religion as faith, we typically suppose, involves a special kind of trust
in divine beings, superhumanly enlightened individuals, revealed texts,
clerical authorities, and so forth. Such an attitude of trust would seem to
contrast sharply with the reliance on evidence and inference common to
the methods of both science and philosophy.1 In matters of metaphysics,
moreover, where the natural sciences may not be able to provide answers,
philosophical reasoning is distinguished from faith through commitment to
open-ended questioning, refusing allegiance to any confessional creed.2 To
be sure, the history of Christian thought also includes “natural” or “philo-
sophical” theology, relying on reason rather than revelation. As theology,
however, philosophical theology generally seeks rational justification for
what is already believed. That is what distinguishes it from metaphysics.
Likewise, philosophy of religion is an affair of reason, but its practitioners
do not suppose that the beliefs they are investigating and evaluating are
themselves arrived at through philosophical reasoning. They are, after all,
religious beliefs, the kind held by “believers.” Philosophers usually do not
see themselves as “believers” in this sense.3
Yet many patterns of thought and practice around the world cannot eas-
ily be placed on one side or another of a binary equating faith with religion
and reason with philosophy. Asian traditions, for example, are notoriously
difficult to classify in terms of this Western conceptual map. Elements within
ancient Greek philosophy also do not easily fit, contradicting overly hasty
and often biased presumptions about the contrast between European and
Asian views of knowledge. In addition, some recent wisdom-seeking move-
ments, arising in the West but often heavily inspired by Asian ideas, share
with these ancient schools of thought a way thinking and being that treads
outside the lines demarcating what we have come to call “religion,” in con-
tradistinction to “philosophy.”
