RLGN 3100 Rituals of Death and Mourning

RLGN 3100 Rituals of Death and Mourning
Term: Winter 2011 / Credit Hrs 3 / CRN 24578
Room: 403 Tier Building
Tuesday & Thursday 11:30am-12:45pm
Last day for Voluntary Withdrawal: March 18

Dr. Kenneth G. MacKendrick
Office: 331 Fletcher Argue
Telephone: (204) 474-6277
Email: mackendr@ms.umanitoba.ca
Office Hours:

2010-2011 Undergraduate Calendar Description: An exploration of the ritual dimensions of death and mourning in selected religious traditions, including such topics as: burial rites, cremation, funeral ceremonies, gender and mourning, grave goods and grave markers, lamentation and social protest, mortuary practices.

Required Texts:

Davies, Douglas. Death, Ritual and Belief. Second Edition. New York: Continuum, 2002.

McCorkle Jr., William W. Ritualizing the Disposal of the Deceased: From Corpse to Concept. Bern: Peter Lang, 2010.

Wilson, Liz., ed. The Living and the Dead: Social Dimensions of Death in South Asian Religions. Albany: SUNY, 2003.

Review of Daniel Boyarin’s Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism

And it is said, “for Your sake we have been killed all the day” (Ps. 44:23)

I read Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism by Daniel Boyarin with great interest. If I understand his thesis correctly, Boyarin envisions a revised understanding of the relationship between early Christianity and Judaism. The typical metaphors for the relation are parental: Judaism is the parent, Christianity the offspring. Boyarin provides justification for the thesis that Christianity, far from being the offspring of Judaism, is riding tandem with Rabbinic Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple. This would mean we should take the term “Jewish Christian” to be an appropriate designation. If correct, Christianity should be viewed less as a new religious movement and more as a movement within Judaism, perhaps even a proselytizing sect. Boyarin argues that Christianity became a distinct religion only after its institutionalization as the religion of empire in the fifth century. If the thesis can be sustained, much of the scholarship concerning the relation between Judaism and Christianity would need to be critically rethought and reconstructed. I’m not a specialist in early Christianity or Rabbinic Judaism but the thesis seems plausible and is very well documented.

Highlights include fascinating Talmudic accounts of tricksterism within Rabbinic narratives, idealizations of feminine virginity, and stories of martyrdom. In the section on martyrdom Boyarin shows how martyrdom came to be viewed as the fulfillment of God’s love, what he calls “the eroticization of death for God,” an ideal that has yet to lose its spellbinding and self-destructive character even today.

Review modified from original post:

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Dying-For-God-Martyrdom-and-the-Making-of-Christianity-and-Judaism-Daniel-Boyarin/978080473704-550739-Review.html

Review of Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Are you on the bus? Or, are you part of the establishment, the problem – are you off the bus? Tom Wolfe’s THE ELECTRIC KOOL-AID ACID TEST is a book that has never been out of print and is considered one of the definitive accounts of the LSD experience. In 1964 Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters took their LSD on the road in a Day-Glo painted bus with the phrase “Go Furthur” splashed across the front. They did their thing; the freaks, out front.

What intrigues Wolfe is not that they openly used LSD, but what they did with the hallucinogenic drug. Kesey and the Pranksters did not use LSD to escape. It wasn’t passive. For the Pranksters using LSD was a confrontation, an engagement with society and their own excesses. The Pranksters took to the streets, zonked out and untamed. In Wolfe’s account LSD also serves as a kind of sacrament. The “acid tests” were similar to religious ceremonies. Wolfe’s comparison on this is explicit. “First comes the ecstatic experience, then comes the theology… here I had a chance to look at a primary religion in its early stages…” (borrowing his theory of religion from Joachim Wach and Max Weber).

Within the narrative of the text Wolfe makes himself a character, feeling that his readers might want a sober point of reference, a pair of lucid eyes through which to witness the lunacy of the 400 pages that follow. This sobriety mirrors Wolfe’s own position with the Pranksters, the man in the white suit on the bus but not ON the bus. Wolfe realized that he didn’t fit in with the Pranksters, so he didn’t try, saying that “I quickly realized that it would be folly to pretend for a moment to be ‘on the bus’ with the Merry Pranksters.” “Once you pretended to be or somehow assumed that you were a part of what was going on, you were swept into the maelstrom.” He also knew that if he attempted to fit it in would have gone badly. “There was a kind of creature that Kesey and the Pranksters, practically everybody in the psychedelic world, detested more than anything else, and that was the so-called weekend hipster… somebody who was hip on the weekends but went back to the straight job during the week.”

The book is a tremendous success and engagement with the “new journalist” style that was emerging around the time it was written. Since he uses the techniques of literature to convey the feeling of the experience and the sensation of events, the narrative unfolds in a far more powerful way than it would have if told in a more traditional format.

Keywords: vibrations, current fantasy, experience, feeling, expansion, perception, out front, shared, :::::lime:::::light:::::, now, other world, speed, neon, intersubjectivity, flow, pranks, Intrepid, furthur, zonked, acid, our movie, our movie, “you’re either on the bus . . . or off the bus,” trip, control, power, bad trip, synch, group mind, cosmic control, Attention, beautiful people, doors of perception, pattern, weird-up, American flag, present moment, breakthrough . . .

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::G-O
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::F-U-R-T-H-U-R

“The trouble with Leary and his group is that they have turned back. But of course! They have turned back into that old ancient New York intellectual thing, ducked back into the romantic past, copped out of the American trip. New York intellectuals have always looked for . . . another country, a fatherland of the mind, where it is all better and more philosophic and purer, gadget-free, and simpler and pedigreed: France or England, usually – oh, the art of living, in France, boys. The Learyites have done the same thing, only with them it’s – India – the East – with all that ancient flap-doodle of Gautama Buddha or the Rig-veda blowing in like mildew…” (112)

“I never heard any of the Pranksters use the word religious to describe the mental atmosphere they shared after the bus trip and the strange days in Big Sur. In fact, they avoided putting it into words. And yet –
(124)

“Thus bus trip was already becoming an allegory of life” (72).

RLGN 1440 Evil in World Religions (Fall 2010)

RLGN 1440 Evil in World Religions (Fall 2010)
Term: Fall 2010 / Credit Hrs 3 / CRN 10877
*Satisfies Written English Requirement

Dr. Kenneth G. MacKendrick
Office: 331 Fletcher Argue
Telephone: (204) 474-6277
Email: mackendr@ms.umanitoba.ca

2010-2011 Undergraduate Calendar Description: The course introduces students to perspectives on evil in selected world religions.

Introduction: For those interested in the study of religion, evil cannot be taken as a viable first order category. As a second order taxonomic category, the concept “evil” is useful in helping us to arrange and organize our subject matter so we can see things differently. To this end I define evil as the domain of perceived dangers and aversions in relation to a postulated supernatural realm. While this definition may unduly tax the popular usage of the term, it provides a better and more insightful way of thinking about religious systems of classification, ethics, and aesthetics. In sum, course material reflects an approach to the study of evil as dangers and aversions in selected world religions. Studies from several disciplines including anthropology, moral philosophy, psychology, religious studies, and sociology are used.

The course readings are divided into five sections. The first section is an introduction to the topic of evil as something ordinary. The second sections deals with key concepts and exemplars, the third section with emotions and religion. The fourth section is an excursus, focusing on order and disorder with an emphasis on monsters and revolutionary violence. The fifth and final section deals with moral philosophy and evil.

The course is arranged in the form of an argument, a thesis. The readings present evidence for the claim that religious notions of evil are magical in character whereas moral notions of evil are discursive and conceptual.

Required Texts: RLGN 1440 Evil in World Religions Reading Package (Fall 2010-2011). Those shopping for used Course Readers should be advised that the Fall 2010/2011 package contains new material.

Section One: Evil in world religions? (Lectures 1 – 3)

Sept 9 Lecture 1 Introduction to Evil in World Religions
Highly Recommended (not included in reading package):
MacKendrick, Kenneth G. “Evil in World Religions at the University of Manitoba (2002-2008): An Introduction and Provocation.” Golem: Journal of Religion and Monsters 3, no. 1 (2009): 37-55. http://www.golemjournal.org/GOLEM3-1-2009_MacKendrick.pdf

Sept 14 Lecture 2 Evil as Something Ordinary
McCutcheon, Russell T. “Like small bumps on the back of the neck . . .’: the problem of evil as something ordinary.” In The Discipline of Religion: Structure, Meaning, Rhetoric, 146-166. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Sept 16 Lecture 3 Myth and Culture and the Study of Religion
McCutcheon, Russell T. “Myth.” In The Guide to the Study of Religion. Edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, 190-208. New York: Continuum, 2000.
Lincoln, Bruce. “Culture.” In The Guide for the Study of Religion. Edited by Willi Braun and Russell T. McCutcheon, 409-422. New York: Continuum, 2000.

Section Two: Key Concepts and Exemplars for the Study of Evil and Religion (Lectures 4- 12)

Sept 21 Lecture 4 Magical Thinking
Nemeroff, Carol and Paul Rozin. ‘The Marking of the Magical Mind: The Nature and Function of Sympathetic Magical Thinking.” In Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific, and Religious Thinking in Children. Edited by Karl S. Rosengren, Carl N. Johnson, and Paul L. Harris, 1-34. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Sept 23 Lecture 5 Pollution and Fertility
Watson, James L. “Funeral Specialists in Cantonese Society: Pollution, Performance, and Social Hierarchy.” In Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China. Edited by James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski, 109-134. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Sept 28 Lecture 6 Purity and Danger
Douglas, Mary. “Pollution.” In Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology, 106-115. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Douglas, Mary. “Secular Defilement.” In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Pollution and Taboo, 36-50. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Sept 30 Lecture 7 Purity and Social Boundaries
Sack, Daniel. “The Cup: Purity and Authority.” In Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture, 31-59. New York: Palgrave, 2000.

Oct 5 Lecture 8 Rituals and Symbols
Bloch, Maurice. “Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation or Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?” Archives Européennes de Sociologie 15, no. 1 (1974): 55-81.

Oct 7 Lecture 9 Religion and Rhetoric I
Harding, Susan Friend. “Speaking is Believing.” In The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics, 33-60. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000

Oct 12 Lecture 10 Religion and Rhetoric II
Neuman, Yair and Mor Levi. “Blood and Chocolate: A Rhetorical Approach to Fear Appeal.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 22, no. 1 (2003): 29-46.

Oct 14 Lecture 11 Taboo and Classification
Leach, Edmund. “Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse.” In New Directions in the Study of Language. Edited by Eric H. Lenneberg, 23-63. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1964.

Oct 19 Lecture 12 Verbal Insults (and cannibalism)
Bowden, Ross. “Maori Cannibalism: An Interpretation.” Oceania 55, no. 2 (1984): 81-99.

Section Three: Emotions and Religion (Lectures 13 – 16)

Oct 21 Lecture 13 Disgust
Rozin, P., J. Haidt, and C. R. McCauley. “Disgust.” In Handbook of Emotions, Third Edition, 757-776. Edited by M. Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, and L. Feldman Barrett. New York: Guilford Press, 2008.

Oct 26 Lecture 14 Buddhism and Disgust
Wilson, Liz. “Celibacy and the Social World.” In Charming Cadavers: Horrific Figurations of the Feminine in Indian Buddhist Hagiographic Literature, 15-39. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Oct 28 Lecture 15 Shame
Rochat, Philippe. “Shame and Self-Knowledge.” In Others in Mind: Social Origins of Self-Consciousness, 105-117. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009.

Nov 2 Lecture 16 Shame and Sexuality in Islam
Delaney, Carol. “Seeds of Honor, Fields of Shame.” In Honor and Shame and the Unity of the Mediterranean. Edited by David Gilmore, 35-48. Washington, D.C.: American Anthropology Association, 1987.

Section Four: Excursus on Order and Chaos (Lectures 17 – 19)

Nov 4 Lecture 17 Religion and Monsters
Beal, Timothy K. “Introduction” and “The Blood is the Life.” In Religion and Its Monsters, 1-12, 123-140. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Nov 9 Lecture 18 Sati and Sacrifice
Harlan, Lindsey. “Perfection and Devotion: Sati Tradition in Rajasthan.” In Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Wives in India, 79-91. Edited by John Stratton Hawley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Brown, Karen McCarthy. “Good Mothers and Bad Mothers in the Rituals of Sati.” In Sati, the Blessing and the Curse: The Burning of Wives in India, 91-99. Edited by John Stratton Hawley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Nov 11 Remembrance Day: No Classes

Nov 16 Lecture 19 Revolutionary Violence
Smith, Jonathan Z. “The Devil in Mr. Jones.” In Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, 102-120. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Lincoln, Bruce. “Revolutionary Exhumations in Spain.” Discourse and the Construction of Society, 103-127. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Section Five: Moral Philosophy and Evil (Lectures 20 – 23)

Nov 18 Lecture 20 The Origins of Morality
Gopnik, Alison. “Love and Law: The Origins of Morality.” In The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life, 202-233. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2009.

Nov 23 Lecture 21 Moral Development and Gender
Benhabib, Seyla. “The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Moral Theory.” In Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics, 148-177. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Nov 25 Lecture 22 Genocide and the Law I
Arendt, Hannah. “Duties of a Law Abiding Citizen” and “Judgment, Appeal, and Execution.” In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Revised and Enlarged Edition, 135-150, 234-52. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.

Dec 2 Lecture 23 Genocide and the Law II
Arendt, Hannah. “Epilogue” and “Postscript.” In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Revised and Enlarged Edition, 253-98. New York: Penguin Books, 1994.

Dec 7 Lecture 24 Conclusion: From Evil in World Religions to Moral Philosophy

RLGN 4080 Critical Theory and Religion (Winter 2011)

RLGN 4080 Critical Theory and Religion (24585)
RLGN 7300 Seminar in Religion and Culture (24590)
Term: Winter 2011 / Credit Hrs 3
Room: 400 Tier Building
Thursday 2:30 – 5:25
Last day for Voluntary Withdrawal: March 18

Dr. Kenneth G. MacKendrick
Office: 331 Fletcher Argue
Telephone: (204) 474-6277
Email: mackendr@ms.umanitoba.ca
Office Hours: tba

Introduction: An intensive study of the critical social theory of Jürgen Habermas. The course begins with an introduction to critical theory as developed by its primary architects: Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. This will be followed by an introduction to Habermas’s early writings on ideology and ideology critique as well as his debate with Hans-Georg Gadamer about the university of hermeneutics. This will be followed by Habermas’s critique of the first generation of critical theorists and responses from Habermas’s sympathizers and critics to this critique. The next section focuses on his moral theory of discourse (communicative ethics, discourse ethics) and responses to this project. Lastly, Habermas’s writings on political theology and religion in the public sphere.

Required Texts: RLGN 4080 Required Readings (available in bookstore)
Recommended: RLGN 7300 Supplementary Reading Package

Lectures and Readings

Jan 6 Introduction
Jan 13 Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer and Marcuse
Jan 20 Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer and Adorno
Jan 27 Early Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas
Feb 3 Critical Theory and Hermeneutics (Gadamer and Habermas debate)
Feb 10 Habermas’s Critique of the Frankfurt School
Feb 17 Debating Critical Theory

Feb 21-25

Mar 3 Discourse Ethics / Moral Theory of Discourse
Mar 10 The Communicative Ethics Controversy
Mar 17 Habermas and Public Theology
Mar 24 Habermas, Religion, and the Public Sphere
Mar 31 Religious Thought and Post-Secular Society
Apr 7 Conclusion

RLGN 4080 Critical Theory and Religion
RLGN 7300 Seminar in Religion and Culture
Reading Package 2010-2011
Dr. Kenneth G. MacKendrick

Readings marked with an asterisk (*) are required for 7300 and recommended for 4080.

Week 1 Introduction to Critical Theory (Frankfurt School)

*Honneth, Axel. “A Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory.” In The Cambridge Companion to Critical Theory, 336-360. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Horkheimer, Max. “Traditional and Critical Theory.” In Critical Theory: Selected Essays, 188-243. New York: Continuum, 2002.

Horkheimer, Max. “Thoughts on Religion.” In Critical Theory: Selected Essays, 129-131. New York: Continuum, 2002.

Marcuse, Herbert. “Philosophy and Critical Theory.” In Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, 134-158. Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.

Week 2 Introduction to Critical Theory (Frankfurt School)

*Adorno, Theodor W. “The Actuality of Philosophy.” Telos 31 (1977): 120-133.

*Adorno, Theodor W. “Meditations on Metaphysics.” Negative Dialectics. Translated by Dennis Redmond. 2001. http://www.efn.org/~dredmond/nd5.PDF

Horkheimer, Max and Theodor W. Adorno. “The Concept of Enlightenment” and “Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment.” Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, 1-62. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002.

Week 3 The Early Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (1965-1970)

Habermas, Jürgen. “Knowledge and Human Interests: A General Perspective.” In Knowledge and Human Interests, 301-317. Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971.

*Habermas, Jürgen. “Technology and Science as ‘Ideology.’” In Toward a Rational Society: Student Protest, Science, and Politics, 81-122. Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon Press, 1970.

Habermas, Jürgen. “Toward a Theory of Communicative Competence” and “On Distorted Communication.” In Recent Sociology No. 2: Patterns of Communicative Behavior, 115-148. Edited by Hans Peter Dreitzel. New York: Macmillan Company, 1970.

Week 4 Critical Theory and Hermeneutics (1967-1971)

Habermas, Jürgen. “Review of Truth and Method.” In Understanding and Social Inquiry, 335-363. Edited by Fred R. Dallmayr and Thomas A. McCarthy. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977.

Habermas, Jürgen. “The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality.” In The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, 245-272. Edited by Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift. Albany: SUNY, 1990.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “The Universality of the Hermeneutical Problem.” In Philosophical Hermeneutics, 3-17. Translated by David E. Linge. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “On the Scope and Function of Hermeneutical Reflection.” In Philosophical Hermeneutics, 18-43. Translated by G. B. Hess and R. E. Palmer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “A Reply to My Critics.” In The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, 273-297. Edited by Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift. Albany: SUNY, 1990.

Week 5 Habermas’s Critique of the First Generation of Critical Theorists

Habermas, “The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno.” In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, 106-130. Translated by Frederick G. Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987.

Habermas, “To Seek to Salvage an Unconditional Meaning Without God is a Futile Undertaking: Reflections on a Remark of Max Horkheimer.” In Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics, 133-146. Translated by Ciaran P. Cronin. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993.

*Habermas, Jürgen. “Walter Benjamin: Consciousness-Raising or Rescuing Critique.” In Philosophical-Political Profiles, 129-163. Translated by Frederick G. Lawrence. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983.

Habermas, “Psychic Thermidor and the Rebirth of Rebellious Subjectivity.” In Habermas and Modernity, 67-77. Edited by Richard J. Bernstein. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Week 6 Debating Critical Theory

Benhabib, Seyla. “Modernity and the Aporias of Critical Theory.” Telos 49 (1981): 39-59.

Honneth, Axel. “Communication and Reconciliation: Habermas’ Critique of Adorno.” Telos 39 (1979): 45-61.

Whitebook, Joel. “The Problem of Nature in Habermas.” Telos 40 (1979): 51-69.

*Wellmer, Albrecht. “Reason, Utopia, and the Dialectic of Enlightenment.” In Habermas and Modernity, 35-66. Edited by Richard J. Bernstein. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985.

Week 7 Discourse Ethics / Moral Theory of Discourse

Habermas, Jürgen. “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification.” In Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, 43-115. Translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.

*Habermas, Jürgen. “Justice and Solidarity: On the Discussion Concerning ‘Stage 6.’” In Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics, 32-52. Edited by Michael Kelly. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991.

Week 8 The Communicative Ethics Controversy

*Apel, Karl-Otto. “Is the Ethics of the Ideal Communication Community a Utopia?” In The Communicative Ethics Controversy, 23-59. Edited by Seyla Benhabib and Fred Dallmayr. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990.

Benhabib, Seyla. “In the Shadow of Aristotle and Hegel: Communicative Ethics and Current Controversies in Practical Philosophy” and “The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Moral Theory.” In Situating the Self: Gender Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics, 23-67, 148-177. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Heller, Agnes. “The Discourse Ethics of Habermas: Critique and Appraisal.” Thesis Eleven 10/11 (1984-85): 5-17.

*Heller, Agnes. “Habermas and Marxism.” In Habermas: Critical Debates, 21-41. Edited by John B. Thompson and David Held. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982.

Week 9 Habermas and Public Theology

Habermas, Jürgen. “Transcendence from Within, Transcendence in this World.” In Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, 67-94. Edited by Eduardo Mendieta. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002.

Habermas, Jürgen. “Religion in the Public Sphere: Cognitive Presuppositions for the ‘Public Use of Reason’ by Religious and Secular Citizens.” In Between Naturalism and Religion, 114-147. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Malden: Polity, 2008.

*Habermas, Jürgen. “From Kant’s ‘Ideas’ of Pure Reason to the ‘Idealizing’ Presuppositions of Communicative Action: Reflections on the Detranscendentalized ‘Use of Reason.’” In Truth and Justification, 83-130. Translated by Barbara Fultner. Malden: Polity, 2008.

Habermas, Jürgen. “Faith and Knowledge.” In The Future of Human Nature, 101-115. Translated by Hella Beister and Max Pensky. Malden: Polity Press, 2003.

Week 10 Habermas, Religion, and the Public Sphere

Habermas, Jürgen. “Fundamentalism and Terror.” In The Divided West, 3-25. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Malden: Polity Press, 2006.

Habermas, Jürgen. “Prepolitical Foundations of the Democratic Constitutional State.” In Between Naturalism and Religion, 101-113. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Malden: Polity Press, 2008.

*Habermas, Jürgen. “Religious Tolerance as Pacemaker for Cultural Rights.” In Between Naturalism and Religion, 251-270. Malden: Polity Press, 2008.

*Habermas, Jürgen. “What is Meant by a ‘Post-Secular Society’: A Discussion on Islam in Europe.” In Europe: A Faltering Project, 59-77. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Malden: Polity Press, 2009.

Habermas, Jürgen. “An Awareness of What is Missing.” In An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-Secular Age, 15-23. Malden: Polity Press, 2010.

Week 11 Religious Thought and Post-Secular Society

Benhabib, Seyla. “The Return of Political Theology: The Scarf Affair in Comparative Constitutional Perspective in France, Germany, and Turkey.” Philosophy and Social Criticism 36, no. 3-4 (2010): 451-471.

*Chambers, Simone. “How Religion Speaks to the Agnostic: Habermas on the Persistent Value of Religion.” Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007): 210-223.

Cooke, Maeve. “Salvaging and Secularizing the Semantic Contents of Religion: The Limitations of Habermas’s Postmetaphysical Proposal.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60 (2006): 187-207.

Cooke, Maeve. “A Secular State for a Postsecular Society? Postmetaphysical Political Theory and the Place of Religion.” Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007): 224-238.

*Lafont, Cristina. “Religion in the Public Sphere: Remarks on Habermas’s Conception of Public Deliberation in Postsecular Societies.” Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007): 239-259.

Review of Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

From the preface: [This book] “is intended to raise consciousness – raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one.” THE GOD DELUSION is a provocative and eminently readable book. His basic claim is that religion is a delusion, a modification of Freud’s claim that religion is an illusion (a wish fulfillment). It is also a political warning. Dawkins holds the view the religions are dangerous, both cognitively and politically. The book is well written and fun to read even when you disagree. With lively prose and invective rhetoric there is something here that is sure to annoy almost everyone. It is provocative and entertaining. In other words, it is the perfect coffee table book. It is also a very SUCCESSFUL book on its own terms. Dawkins wants to talk critically about religion, in public. The book and the video (followed by the billboard campaign in England) have been widely discussed in the media, although rarely with much approval. At a recent conference (2010) the playful phrase “village atheist” was bandied about. So, even if you disagree vehemently, if you are reading this review Dawkins has probably accomplished his aims. He wants to talk about religion in public and he wants more people to talk about religion in public, and he wants to establish atheism as a reasonable voice in the public sphere (not the only reasonable voice, but a reasonable voice no less).

As a scholar of the study of religion I have numerous reservations about this book. I’ll mention only one. Dawkins’ starting point is essentially that religion is “bad science.” He spends a lot of time showing us the absurdity of “intelligent design” all the while making good fun of the various proofs for the existence of God. He also castigates the idea that science is about truth and religion about meaning – religion is never only about questions of meaning.

The problem is this: religion isn’t bad science. I would even go so far as to say that theology isn’t bad science (although if I’m correct, this might jeopardize the legitimacy of theology’s position within the academy). Religion isn’t scientific at all. Religious thought participates in ritually reinforced symbol systems and as such are closely tied with condensed and unelaborated forms of communication and identity formation. When a Christian says, “I believe” they are not making a scientific claim but attesting to membership within a particular community. It may sound like a scientific claim but it isn’t, not really. Belief is a declaration, not an invitation to debate – a peculiar use of language that thrives on stylized rhetoric rather than propositional content. This is what Dawkins misses. In other words, you don’t need to apply quantitative testing techniques to “belief,” you simply need to contact a church registrar. Instead of the God hypothesis he could have talked about “the God ritual.” Most of the difficulties of this debate disappear from view if one considers this seriously. Because of this logical error (equating an expressive ritual with a propositional truth claim) one sees that Dawkins ends up banging his head against the wall because he keeps getting the same answer to his criticisms: “it is true because I believe it” or “It is true because it is true.” Such responses will drive any reasonable person nuts.

But, there is logic to it. Belief or believing are best understood as ritual performances. Dawkins runs with the assumption that the statement “I believe in God” or “God exists” is a propositional claim. Strictly speaking, they aren’t propositions but performances… more like a routine or habit or theatrical skit than a validity claim. Religion is rooted in ritual – religion embodies a ritual kind of living. Its symbolic vocabulary is more or less closed to non-members who are not initiated into the system of meaning that are utilized within religious rituals and it is driven by its impoverished codes of communication and socialization; impoverished in the sense of restricting creative response and hermeneutic elaboration.

In closing: if you are interested in studying religion then this is not the place to turn, although it is worth reading. Scholars have been studying religions – as distinct from practicing religion – for a long time. Most universities currently have some form of religious studies as part of their curriculum. Although theology and the study of religion occasionally overlap there is an occupational distinction between the two. There are many fine works concerning the study of religion which help us understand why people do the things they do. For those interested in the idea of religious rhetoric as a ritual see the writings of Susan Harding (The Book of Jerry Falwell), Malory Nye (Religion: The Basics), and Catherine Bell (Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions).

An earlier version of this review was published here:

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/The-God-Delusion-Richard-Dawkins/9780618918249-351921-Review.html