The Feeling of Believing: The Importance of Affectivity in the Rehabilitation of Belief

Implicit Religion 25 (1-2):77-101 (2023)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The last half-century of religious studies scholarship has seen the diminishing importance of belief as a concept of analysis. The putative inaccessibility of beliefs and the concept’s Western Christian provenance has led many scholars of religion to reject the concept. Recent years have seen attempts to rehabilitate the concept of belief, including Kevin Schilbrack’s 2014 Philosophy and the Study of Religions. Schilbrack proposes that by engaging with contemporary philosophical reflection on belief—specifically dispositionalist and interpretationist theories—the traditional critiques of belief can be overcome. The purpose of this paper is to further develop this approach by proposing an additional, currently overlooked, element of belief—its affectivity. This approach builds on current research from enactivist cognitive science and avoids the objections traditionally levelled at belief, while enabling a more sophisticated analysis of power dynamics in religion.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 98,169

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2023-12-04

Downloads
26 (#712,352)

6 months
9 (#383,972)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Jack Williams
University of Edinburgh (PhD)

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references