Idinopulos – författare

This volume on Religion and Reductionism grew out of a conference convened in November, 1990, where the participants were asked to respond to the conceptual and methodological problem of reductionism in the academic study of religion. The conference focused on the writings of Robert A. Segal and his defence of reductionism and criticism of Mircea Eliade's non-reductive interpretation of religion.At the Miami conference some of the most important and enduring questions were raised: (1) What is religion? (2) What is religion and/or religious meaning? (3) How should religion be studied and taught? (4) What are the possibilities and limits of social scientific analyses of religious phenomena? (5) What is reductionism? (6) What is anti-reductionism?These and other questions on religion and reductionism are widespread and invite serious consideration; they help to illuminate the basic issues that are at the core of any study of the world's major religions.

This volume of essays is devoted to a careful examination of the importance of methodology in the study of primary religious data. The essays focus on the "e;Sacred"e; as an ultimate object of descriptive analysis and critical scrutiny on the part of a select number of North American and European methodologists in the study and teaching of the history of religions and its allied disciplines. The central question to which the contributors respond are these: What is the Sacred? Is it a being or a concept of a being; is it a mental state or an objective reality or something else entirely? Can the Sacred be described as an empirical fact, or as a formal rule for religious inquiry? If the Sacred is a valid category in the study and teaching of religion, then what can be said about the antithesis of the sacred, namely the profane or the secular?This volume probes these questions with great care in order to justify a number of ways the Sacred can be construed as an indispensable notion for the study and teaching of religion.

What is Religion? consists of fourteen essays written by a selection of scholars who represent a wide spectrum of approaches to the acedamic study of religion.Each of the essays is an effort not only to take stock of the present controversy concerning appropriate methodologies for the study of religion, but also to take one giant step beyond that to formulate a precise definition of religion.Given the considerable confusion today about what it is exactly that religious studies scholars take to be their subject matter when they presume to professionally teachabout religion, this volume provides a much needed forum for leading scholars to debate and clarify what professors of religious studies understand as the central object or objects under their scrunity.