Philosophy and the Study of Religions

Kevin Schilbrack is Professor and Head of Department of Religion and Philosophy at Western Carolina University. Schilbrack has served as president of the American Academy of Religion for the Southeast, as a senior fellow with Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions, and as a participant in a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Development Seminar in Taiwan and Thailand. An award-winning teacher, he has published numerous articles in philosophy and theory of religion, and is the contributing editor of Thinking through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives (2007) and The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Religious Diversity (forthcoming).

"Here, informed by the work of a wide range of social theorists, anthropologists, and others, Schilbrack seeks to draw philosophers of religion out of their cultural insularity, through a consideration of concepts such as 'embodied knowledge,' to contemplate what 'religion' might be, feel like, and mean in 'the rest' of the world." (Church Times, 4 September 2015)"The book adds considerable momentum to the most innovative developments in philosophy of religion today." (Int J Philos Religion, 1 March 2015)"Schilbrack concludes with strong arguments on the cross-cultural study of religion and suggests a combination of functional (the work religion does in human lives) and substantive (what religion enables people to know). Each chapter includes a bibliographic essay that will make this book a delight for classroom use. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above." (Choice, 1 January 2015)"This book is a valuable resource for both undergraduate and postgraduate students in either field. Similarly, scholars will find important issues raised in this volume that they often ignore given, as Schilbrack argues, the insularity that characterizes the philosophy of religion." (Religious Studies Review, 1 September 2014)

• Preface xiAcknowledgments xixChapter 1: The Full Task of Philosophy of Religion 1i. What is “Traditional Philosophy of Religion”? 3ii. The First Task of Philosophy of Religion 10iii. The Second Task of Philosophy of Religion 14iv. The Third Task of Philosophy of Religion 19v. What is the Big Idea? 24Bibliographic Essay 25Endnotes 27Chapter 2: Are Religious Practices Philosophical? 29i. Toward a Philosophy of Religious Practice 31ii. Embodiment as a Paradigm for Philosophy of Religion 33iii. Conceptual Metaphors and Embodied Religious Reason 36iv. Religious Material Culture as Cognitive Prosthetics 40v. A Toolkit for the Philosophical Study of Religious Practices 47Bibliographic Essay 49Endnotes 51Chapter 3: Must Religious People Have Religious Beliefs? 53i. The Place of Belief in the Study of Religions 55ii. Objections to the Concept of Religious Belief 57iii. Holding One’s Beliefs in Public 61iv. What We Presuppose When We Attribute Beliefs 66v. The Universality of Belief 70Bibliographic Essay 76Endnotes 80Chapter 4: Do Religions Exist? 83i. The Critique of “Religion” 85ii. The Ontology of “Religion” 89iii. Can There be Religion Without “Religion”? 92iv. “Religion” as Distortion 96v. The Ideology of “Religion” 101Bibliographic Essay 105Endnotes 110Chapter 5: What Isn’t Religion? 113i. Strategies for Defining Religion 115ii. Making Promises: The Functional or Pragmatic Aspect of Religion 121iii. Keeping Promises: The Substantive or Ontological Aspect of Religion 127iv. The Growing Variety of Religious Realities 129v. What this Definition Excludes 135Bibliographic Essay 141Endnotes 147Chapter 6: Are Religions Out of Touch With Reality? 149i. Religious Metaphysics in a Postmetaphysical Age 151ii. Antimetaphysics Today 154iii. Constructive Postmodernism and Unmediated Experience 158iv. Unmediated Experience and Metaphysics 163v. The Rehabilitation of Religious Metaphysics 167Bibliographic Essay 171Endnotes 172Chapter 7: The Academic Study of Religions: a Map With Bridges 175i. Religious Studies as a Tripartite Field 177ii. Describing and Explaining Religious Phenomena 180iii. Evaluating Religious Phenomena 185iv. Do Evaluative Approaches Belong in the Academy? 189v. Interdisciplinary Bridges 197Bibliographic Essay 203Endnotes 205Works Cited 207Index 223