WORLDS OR WORDS APART? WITTGENSTEIN ON UNDERSTANDING RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE

In this paper I develop an account of Wittgenstein's conception of what it is to understand religious language. I show that Wittgenstein's view undermines the idea that as regards religious faith only two options are possible – either adherence to a set of metaphysical beliefs (with certain ways of acting following from these beliefs) or passionate commitment to a ‘doctrineless’ form of life. I offer a defence of Wittgenstein's conception against Kai Nielsen's charges that Wittgenstein removes the ‘content’ from religious belief and renders the religious form of life ‘incommensurable’ with other domains of discourse, thus immunizing it against rational criticism.     

The fragmentation of the religious tradition of the creation,after‐life and morality: Modernity not post‐modernity

Religion asks three central questions: ‘What becomes of us after death?’, ‘How should we lead a moral life?’, and ‘How and why were the universe, life and human beings created?’ In the past, these questions were answered together as part of a single unified narrative. From the mid‐nineteenth century onwards, the growth of modern science and of spiritualism led to a fragmentation of this religious tradition so that the questions are now often asked separately and the answers combined in unexpected ways. This phenomenon is an outgrowth of modernity, not post‐modernity. Post‐modernists have suggested that there has been a recent, new and definitive ending of modernity with a collapse of all dominant grand narratives. Religion is one of the grand narratives supposed to have suddenly unravelled and fragmented in this recent sea‐change, although post‐modernists in general have not bothered to provide the empirical evidence to demonstrate this. The detailed account of the long, slow process of religious fragmentation and the particular role of nineteenth‐century spiritualism given here shows that the post‐modernist thesis does not work for Europe's most important grand narrative—the Christian religion. We can see rather a process of slow unravelling of the origins which go back at the very least to the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time of classic modernity and confidence in progress. This tendency towards fragmentation has continued at least in Europe, but religion persists; it has not experienced the mushroom rise and sudden implosion that has characterised the (until recently) fashionable, grand narratives of the secular intellectuals. We are living in modern, not post‐modern, times.     

Wittgenstein,Quasi-fideism,and Scepticism

In the discussion of certainties, or ‘hinges’, in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty some of the examples that Wittgenstein uses are religious ones. He remarks on how a child might be raised so that they ‘swallow down’ belief in God (§107) and in discussing the role of persuasion in disagreements he asks us to think of the case of missionaries converting natives (§612). In the past decade Duncan Pritchard has made a case for an account of the rationality of religious belief inspired by On Certainty which he calls ‘quasi-fideism’. Pritchard argues that religious beliefs are just like ordinary non-religious beliefs in presupposing fundamental arational commitments. However, Modesto Gómez-Alonso has recently argued that there are significant differences between the kinds of ‘hinges’ discussed in Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and religious beliefs such that we should expect an account of rationality in religion to be quite different to the account of rational practices and their foundations that we find in Wittgenstein’s work. Fundamental religious commitments are, as Wittgenstein said, in the foreground of the religious believer’s life whereas hinge commitments are said to be in the background. People are passionately committed to their religious beliefs but it is not at all clear that people are passionately committed to hinges such as that ‘I have two hands’. I argue here that although there are differences between religious beliefs and many of the hinge-commitments discussed in On Certainty religious beliefs are nonetheless hinge-like. Gómez-Alonso’s criticisms of Pritchard mischaracterise his views and something like Pritchard’s quasi-fideism is the correct account of the rationality of religious belief.

     

Recovering enchantment: addiction,spirituality, and Charles Taylor’s malaise of modernity

This article illuminates the nature of ‘spirituality’ as it relates to addiction in modernity. It does so by using philosopher Charles Taylor’s conception of the malaise of modernity and the meta-narrative he presents in A Secular Age as theoretical starting points. It then draws from qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews and ongoing ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Canadian millennials who self-identify as ‘spiritual but not religious’. The young people’s experiences of addiction provide insight into the trappings of free-market capitalist modernity and its inability to provide an overarching source of meaning to their lives. Addiction becomes the means by which these individuals experience the malaise of modernity, which in turn leads them to seek an alternative understanding of the good life—a process they equate with ‘spirituality’. Therefore, an interest in ‘spirituality’ ought to be understood as a personalized attempt to re-enchant what is experienced as a disenchanted world.     

When symptom is symbol: some comments on Rosemary Gordon's, ‘Masochism: the shadow side of the archetypal need to venerate and worship’

This paper is a commentary on Rosemary Gordon's paper, ‘Masochism: the shadow side of the archetypal need to venerate and worship’, with a suggestion for an alternative interpretation of masochism as a part of a sado‐masochistic couple. Gordon postulates an archetypal need to venerate and worship that can be hidden in the shadow and distorted in such practices as sexual masochism. Her paper also offers several avenues of exploration for further studies in connection with the phenomenon of masochism, including sexual perversion (‘paraphilia’), chronic psychological victimhood, PTSD and traumatology, religious extremist behaviour such as self‐flagellation, transformation in the individuation process and numinous experience. An extension of her hypothesis to include religious problems of modernity is suggested.     

Liminal Subjectivities and Religious Change: Circumscribing Giddens for the Study of Contemporary American Religion

Observers of American religion have noted significant changes in the last 50 years. Many of the current theories interpreting these changes cite the writings of the British social theorist Anthony Giddens. Such works suggest that we are living in a post-traditional, ‘late modern’ society in which self-identity, community, and the codes we live by are no longer ascribed, but reflexively made and re-made in continuous ‘projects of the self’. This article seeks to circumscribe late modernity theory for the study of contemporary religion, examining its usefulness and limitations. I argue that the disembedding structures of late modernity—while uneven in their effects on individuals from different social locations—create ‘liminal subjectivities’ among certain classes and groups. This state of being ‘betwixt and between’ social locations places individuals into new and sometimes ephemeral social networks, which in turn may result in them seeking out and experimenting with new religious groups, beliefs, and practices.     

Fear of Death and Supernatural Beliefs: Developing a New Supernatural Belief Scale to Test the Relationship

Fear of death features in both historical and contemporary theories of religion, but the relationship between death anxiety and religious belief is still ambiguous, largely due to the use of inappropriate or imprecise measures. The current studies therefore aimed to develop a valid, targeted measure of respondents' tendency towards religious belief, the ‘Supernatural Belief Scale’ (SBS), and to use the SBS to examine the relation between death anxiety and religious belief. Results indicate that the SBS shows high reliability and convergent validity and that its relation to death anxiety depends on participants' religious identification: ‘religious’ participants fear death less the stronger their religious beliefs, whereas ‘non‐religious’ participants are more inclined towards religious belief the more they fear death. These studies contribute a new measurement tool for research on religious belief and provide a starting point for an experimental integration of discrepant research findings. Copyright © 2013 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Towards a decolonized assessment of the religious other

When confronted by the plurality of religions (and the corresponding plurality of claims to truth), believers usually resort either to absolutism or relativism. The absolutist evaluates the religious other in view of criteria with which the latter does not agree. The religious other is thus being colonized by a hegemony (i.e. enforced homogeneity) of standards. In an attempt to transcend this hegemonic colonization, the relativist, on the other hand, simply surrenders the evaluation of the beliefs and practices of the religious other to subjective arbitrariness. This attempt at the decolonization of the religious other defeats itself, in so far as it deprives us of the right to criticise the beliefs and practices of any other, including the colonizing other. Avoiding both absolutism and relativism calls for an interreligious common scale which will, as such, allow the ‘objective’ or non-arbitrary evaluation of religious beliefs and practices. This scale can only, if at all, be identified through an ongoing interreligious dialogue which respects the particularity, individuality and historicity—or, in short, the non-foundational nature—of both religious and meta-religious beliefs. As such, interreligious dialogue constitutes the first step towards an effective decolonization of the religious other.     

‘Thank God We Are in Syria!’ Modernization,Interfaith Relations and Women’s Rights in Syria Before the ‘Arab Spring’ (2000–2010)

The status of women is generally considered a measure of ‘modernity’ and it has often been exploited by the West to highlight the ‘backwardness’ of non-Western countries and to justify colonialism and ‘civilization’ endeavours. The question of women’s rights and its connection to ‘modernity’, however, is not simple. This article considers the example of Syria immediately before the revolts of 2011, and highlights that the government’s approach to the issue of women’s rights appears to have been inspired by a peculiar idea of ‘modernity’ that is not in line with the Western mainstream view, because it is not based on the centrality of the individual and does not include a view of secularization that underestimates the social and political importance of religious beliefs. Reflections on the peculiarities of the Syrian approach may help avoid simplifications and – more generally – may help us reflect on the premise of the mainstream Western approach to the issue in countries considered as ‘other’.     

THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION AND MODERNITY: WILLIAM CAVANAUGH'S THEOPOLITICAL IMAGINATION AND CHARLES TAYLOR'S MODERN SOCIAL IMAGINATION1

This essay argues that William Cavanaugh's ‘Theopolitical Imagination’ uncovers some of the possibilities latent within the Catholic imagination. While his critique of modernity is often persuasive, this essay questions whether Cavanaugh's assessment of modernity can be complemented by a more differentiated approach. What Charles Taylor provides is both a bolstering of Cavanaugh's thesis about the power of the imagination and an alternative: that there is a way of thinking about the relationship between the Church and modernity other than in dialectical terms – namely a ‘Ricci reading’ of modernity.     

Being ‘Spiritual’ and Being ‘Religious’ in Europe: Diverging Life Orientations

The present study shows that being ‘spiritual’ and being ‘religious’ are becoming different life orientations for a large part of the population. As far as we know, for the first time, a sample from an European country shows that these orientations are reflected in two coherent clusters of beliefs, experiences, and practices of what we call ‘new spirituality’ on the one hand and ‘traditional, church-related religion’ on the other hand. In addition, it appears that ‘only spiritual’ (and not ‘religious’) people and ‘only religious’ (and not ‘spiritual’) people have less ‘intensive’ spiritual/religious lives than people who describe themselves as ‘both spiritual and religious’. The ‘both’ category is not homogenous, probably as a result of the different associations which its members have of the conceptions of ‘spiritual’ and ‘religious’. The people in this category can be sub-divided in two sub-groups which show different profiles.     

Intersubjectivity and Receptive Experience

Wilfrid Sellars's iconic exposé of the ‘myth of the given’ taught us that experience must present the world to us as normatively laden, in the sense that the contents of experience must license inferences, rule out and justify various beliefs, and rationalize actions. Somehow our beliefs must be governed by the objects as they present themselves to us. Often this requirement is cashed out using language that attributes agent‐like properties to objects: we are described as ‘accountable to’ objects, while objects ‘hold us’ to standards, and so forth. But such language is either deeply anti‐naturalistic or trades on a set of metaphors in need of a literal translation. We offer an explanation of how the material features of the world, as received in experience, can rationally constrain our beliefs and practices—one that makes no recourse to this imagery. In particular, we examine the structure of ostensive practices (that is, practices of directing one another's attention to objects and features of the world) and the distinctive role they play in making us jointly beholden to how things actually are.     

The problem of tradition in the work of Anthony Giddens

This paper seeks to problematise the notion of ‘tradition’ presented in the recent sociology of Anthony Giddens on reflexivity and late modernity. Three broad areas of critique are highlighted and discussed: the view of tradition as simultaneously static and reflexive; the view that within the ‘post‐traditional’ world tradition survives and flourishes; and the view that tradition and reflexivity are historically mutually exclusive phenomena. In the final section, Mellor's (1993) conception of ‘reflexive traditions’ is introduced and developed as a possible hermeneutic tool for the study of contemporary traditions with reference to the author's recent ethnographic fieldwork with the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, a millenarian new religious movement of Indian origin.     

Modernity and childrearing in families of Gujarati Indian adolescents

Over the last two decades, researchers have devoted increasing attention to the role of cognitive factors in parenting. These cognitive mediational models focus on the role of attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge in influencing parenting behaviours. A cognitive factor that contributes to cultural variation in parenting is attitudinal modernity—a broad concept that refers to the “Westernization” of attitudes in such diverse areas as gender role conceptions, political attitudes, attitudes toward authority, the family, and religious beliefs. Modernity has been most useful in describing the attitudes of individuals from countries undergoing the rapid social and economic changes that accompany industrialism and urbanization. The present study focused on India—a country currently undergoing such changes. Despite the wide range of modern and traditional beliefs among contemporary Indian parents, our understanding of the determinants of these individual differences is limited. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relation between modernity and parental childrearing practices, as well as to examine the relation between adolescent modernity and parental childrearing. Mothers, fathers, and adolescents in 50 Hindu, Gujarati families completed questionnaires about the modernity of their attitudes and were interviewed about parental childrearing practices. Parental and adolescent modernity were highly correlated. Moreover, parental modernity predicted the nature of parental childrearing values and practices, and parental childrearing values predicted adolescent modernity. Although the findings varied somewhat for mothers versus fathers, parental modernity was associated with individualistic childrearing values and practices, and parents who valued individualistic characteristics in their adolescents had sons and daughters who reported the highest levels of modernity. Implications for understanding the role of mothers and fathers in the socialization of modernity are considered.     

Life,Death, and Life After Death: Meanings of the Relationship Between Death Anxiety and Religion

ABSTRACT

A sample of 389 individuals completed a death anxiety scale and a series of items that measured self-reported religious practices and beliefs. Those lowest in religious practices and beliefs were significantly higher in death anxiety. Contrary to some prior research, depth of belief had a stronger negative association with death anxiety than did religious activities. Strongest relationships had to do with concepts of life after death. The oldest respondents reported the least death anxiety.     

Two Accounts of the Hermeneutic Fore-structure of Scientific Research

In this article, I examine various aspects of the application of Heidegger's motif of interpretative articulation (the core phenomenological motif of existential analytic) to the constitutional analysis of meaningful objects in scientific research that are contextually ready-to-hand. It is my contention that not only the concepts of the ‘fore-structure of understanding’ and the ‘as-structure of interpretation’, but also the extended concepts of the ‘hermeneutic fore-structure of meaning constitution’ and ‘characteristic hermeneutic situation’ are the keys to understanding the interpretative nature of scientific research. The paper applies the constitutional analysis of hermeneutic phenomenology to several phenomena of scientific research—constitution of meaningful objects, situational fulfilment of a domain's general project, production of a domain's thematically given objects, implementation of readable technologies to what is contextually ready-to-hand, reading hypothetical theoretical objects, and exegetical textualizing within interrelated practices. The study is supplied with exemplary illustrations from enzymology and biochemistry. The correlation between a domain's interpretative articulation and the appropriation of research possibilities within the research everydayness is addressed. Special attention is paid to the belief in and reading of intracellular enzymes as hypothetical theoretical objects.     

Ethical selfhood and the status of the secular: Muslim identity in Mumbai

As part of a larger project, this essay contributes to the current anthropological rethinking of categories such as ‘religion’, ‘secularism’ and ‘politics’ in relation to social processes and subjects: a series of ventures that are related, in the Indian context, to modernity and liberal conceptions of statehood, sovereignty and personhood. In discussing everyday phenomena such as piety and religious authority, gender and childraising, and political and professional pursuits in Mumbai, I demonstrate that the ostensibly ‘religious’ domain of Islam is not necessarily the only, or even primary, basis for achieving a self-consciously ethical selfhood for even those who identify as observant and devout Muslims. I argue that the religious domain of Islam in this context is defined as such and intersected by discourses and practices of the self as a political and economic agent defined largely in terms of political modernity.     

Perceptions of South African Emerging Adult FET College Students on Sexual Practices in Relation to Religion

HIV and AIDS are rapidly spreading amongst the world’s 15- to 24-year age group, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite vigorous government interventions and campaigns, 10 % of South African youth in the age cohort 15–24 are infected with HIV and AIDS. Furthermore, for the first time in history the world has its largest number of individuals under the age of 30 years. Researchers are desperately seeking a solution and have found religion to play an important role in moderating risky sexual behaviour amongst youth. This exploratory qualitative study aims to increase our understanding of emerging adult Further Education and Training (FET) students’ perceptions of the role of religion and religious beliefs in their sexual decision-making and practices. The qualitative data emerged from five focus group discussions, each consisting of 12 heterosexual emerging adult FET college students aged 18–24 years, selected using random sampling. Participants were representative of all the major South African racial groups (Blacks, Whites, Coloured and Indians) as well as different religious and cultural groupings. Secularisation theory was used as a theoretical framework for this study. These focus group discussions revealed the following themes: Theme 1—religious institutions need to embrace change in order to become effective social agents of change. Theme 2—a need for open discussion and communication concerning current issues related to young people’s sexual health (by religious institutions/religious leaders). Theme 3—perceptions of religion’s negative sanctions towards sexual behaviour. Theme 4—religious leaders’ indifference and abdication of responsibility to the problems that youth face. Theme 5—religion and condom-related beliefs. Theme 6—perceptions of religious leaders as role models. Theme 7—emerging adults general concern for the moral decay of society. Theme 8—perceptions of whether religion has an influence on young people’s sexual decision-making and practices.     

Responsibility beyond rationality: the case for rhizomatic consequentialism

A key challenge for education is to encourage children to act responsibly. If ‘spiritual literacy’ does not involve an autonomous, rational soul capable of ‘reading and writing the world as God intended’, it must refer to ethical (and perhaps religious) capacity in relation to contingent actions in a context free of moral absolutes. In relation to the former, Kant's Categorical Imperative supposed that actions are either right or wrong according to an absolute reason derived from the most basic templates of human sense making. According to Kant, therefore, right is rational irrespective of the apparent consequences of specific actions. In contrast, in an age lacking Kant's beliefs in both God and absolute reason, it is tempting to see an unethical pragmatism as the only alternative to the Categorical Imperative. However, it is possible to instil responsibility through a consequentialism based on a broader conception of relatedness, inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's notion of the ‘rhizome’. ‘Rhizomatic consequentialism’, as here defined, provides a ‘third way’ for moral education between instilling an understanding of absolute right and wrong and encouraging the belief that ‘right is what you can get away with’.     

Zorba The Buddha: Capitalism,Charisma and the Cult of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh

This essay suggests a new way of understanding the notorious Indian guru, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, by examining the intimate relationship between his religious teachings and his business practices. Rajneesh's ideal was in fact that of ‘Zorba the Buddha’, the perfect synthesis of the spiritual and material, the religious and capitalist impulses. After analysing and criticizing the classical Weberian concept of ‘charisma’, this paper argues that charismatic authority is by no means incompatible with bureaucratic organization or rational business practices. On the contrary, not only can charismatic authority be combined with a complex bureaucratic organization, but it can also be transformed into a kind of ‘commodity’ which is bought and sold on the consumer market. Rather than a ‘routinization of charisma’ what we find in the Rajneesh movement is a kind of ‘commodification’ and ‘commercialization’ of charisma. Bhagwan offered (and sold) his followers the promise of the same charismatic authority and divine freedom which he himself enjoyed (though, in practice, this authority could never actually be attained by any of his followers). Moreover, charismatic authority became the basis for a new kind of bureaucratic organization in Rajneesh's world-wide network of commercial enterprises—an organization characterized by a high degree of fluidity and flexibility, able to adapt itself rapidly to meet the changing demands of its consumer market.