Intellectualist and symbolist accounts of religious belief and practice
Philosophy of the Social Sciences 27 (4):526-544 (1997)
| Abstract | An account of the relation between belief and practice is inseparable from a general theory of religion and religious discourse. Rejection of the one time popular, but now more or less defunct, nonrealist position of people such as D. Z. Phillips, Don Cupitt, and indeed Wittgenstein leaves contemporary theo rists in anthropology and the "history of religions" with basically the vastly different "literalist" and "symbolist" analyses of religion (i.e., its ritual and discourse, belief and practice) from which to choose. This article critically appraises John Skorupksi's influential defense of intellectualism. I argue that his dismissal of symbolist approaches is more theoretically radical than he recog nizes. It rejects outright some of the very foundations and staples of contempo rary anthropology in, for example, Durkheim. His argument for the rejection of the symbolist approach is examined. Skorupski's defense of intellectualism is set in the context of a problematically naive understanding of the nature and function of religion. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,865 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesJohn W. Cook (2004). The Undiscovered Wittgenstein: The Twentieth Century's Most Misunderstood Philosopher. Humanity Books.
Paul Helm (2001). The Indispensability of Belief to Religion. Religious Studies 37 (1):75-86.
D. Z. Phillips (2000). Recovering Religious Concepts: Closing Epistemic Divides. St. Martin's Press.
Ilkka Pyysia¨Inen (2003). True Fiction: Philosophy and Psychology of Religious Belief. Philosophical Psychology 16 (1):109-125.
Ilkka Pyysiäinen (2003). True Fiction: Philosophy and Psychology of Religious Belief. Philosophical Psychology 16 (1):109 – 125.
P. J. E. Kail (2007). Understanding Hume's Natural History of Religion. Philosophical Quarterly 57 (227):190–211.
Edward Berryman (2005). Belief, Apparitions, and Rationality: The Social Scientific Study of Religion After Wittgenstein. Human Studies 28 (1):15 - 39.
Michael Luntley (1982). Understanding Anthropologists. Inquiry 25 (2):199 – 216.
Robert Bird (1999). Martin Heidegger and Russian Symbolist Philosophy. Studies in East European Thought 51 (2):85-108.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2009-01-28Total downloads7 ( #134,848 of 556,772 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #64,754 of 556,772 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
