The Pragmatics of Defining Religion: Contexts, Concepts and Contests

✍ Scribed by Jan Platvoet (editor), Arie L. Molendijk (editor)

• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishing
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 567
• Series: Studies in the History of Religions
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The Pragmatics of Defining Religion is a multidisciplinary volume on the problem of the definition of religion with chapters on the polemics of defining religion in modern contexts, the history of the concept of religion, the methodology of its definition; it includes several definition proposals.

✦ Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Notes on the contributors
PART ONE INTRODUCTION
In defence of pragmatism
PART TWO MODERN CONTEXTS
The politics of defining religion in secular society: From a taken-for-granted institution to a contested resource
Religion as claim: Social and legal controversies
Religion as memory: Reference to tradition and the constitution of a heritage of belief in modern societies
Paradoxes: An essay on the object of the Psychology of Religion
PART THREE CONCEPTUAL CHANGES
'Religio' and 'religion' in the 18th century: The contrasting views of Wolff and Edelmann
Shifting cargoes: Ernst Troeltsch on the study of religion
The sacred in the social sciences: On the definition of religion by the Année sociologique group
Psychologists define religion: Patterns and prospects of a century-long quest
PART FOUR METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES
On defining religion
To define or not to define: The problem of the definition of religion
Intuiting religion: A case for preliminary definitions
The third bank of the river: Play, methodological ludism and the definition of religion
Defining 'religions' as the domain of study of the empirical sciences of religions
PART FIVE DEFINITION PROPOSALS
Defining religion in spite of history
The definition of religion: Squaring the circle
What is religion?
On a semantic definition of religion
Religion as the realization of faith: The conceptualization of religion in relational psychoanalysis
PART SIX EPILOGUE
Contexts, concepts & contests: Towards a pragmatics of defining 'religion'
Index of names
Index of subjects
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS NUMEN BOOK SERIES