Carl Raschke
University of Denver
"It’s a matter of God."
--Jacques Derrida
Can there be a "science of religion," as the nineteenth century yearned for?
Is there indeed a bona fide Religionswissenschaft that compasses and comprehends the whole of what Roman civilization identified as the religiones?
What would such a "science" of religion involve?
Can there ever be a "religiology" in the same sense there has been for some time a sociology, or an anthropology, or a psychology?
Does the subject matter that goes by the name of religio offer itself to the same sort of discursive expansion and methodological execution as the bios of biology?
If a "religiology" were discernible, how would it actually push forward?
ontrary to positivist trends in the so-called "social sciences" over the last quarter century, an integral science of religion would require that any theoretical assessment of the religiones be anchored in a formal structure of inquiry, experimentation, and demonstration. Such a formalism has always seemed alien to the study of religion. Ever since Roman classical authors profiled the religiones as "cultic responsibilities," as dark and termagant mysteries impenetrable to the gaze of reason, the idea of a "scientific" resolution of the issue has remain essentially problematic.[1]
[1] The word religiones was frequently used by the Roman writers to describe the secret ceremonies and guarded mysteries of the Druids. For works that discuss the Roman view of religiones in this manner as shadowy activities that go on in impenetrable woods, see Peter B. Ellis, The Druids (Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 58-9. See also Nora Chadwick, The Celts (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1966).
[2] I am of course using the term "deontology" here not in its conventional philosophical manner as a form of ethical reasoning, but in the more literal sense as it sums up the method of deconstruction, that is, as an internal critique of ontological thought.
[3] Victor Taylor, Para/Inquiry (New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 3.
[4] Para/Inquiry, p. 17.
[5] Jacques Derrida, "Of An Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy," trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., in Harold Coward and Toby Foshay, Derrida and Negative Theology (Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1992), p. 36.
[6] "Of An Apocalyptic Tone," p. 53.
[7] Jacques Derrida, "Post-Scriptum," in Derrida and Negative Theology, p. 289.
[8] "Post-Scriptum," p. 299.
[9] Mark Taylor, About Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 40.
[10] Mark Taylor, "nO nOt nO", in Derrida and Negative Theology, p. 175.
[11] About Religion, pp. 40-1.
[12] Mark Taylor, "Paralectics," in Robert P. Scharlemann (ed.), On the Other: Dialogue and/or Dialectics (Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1991), p. 29.
[13] "Paralectics," p. 30.
[14] Russ McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
[15] Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 101-2.
[16] To Take Place, p. 110.
[17] To Take Place, p. 105.
[18] Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 43.
Carl Raschke is professor of religious studies at the University of Denver and senior editor of the Journal for Religious and Cultural Theory. His major books include The End of Theology (The Davies Group, 2000), Fire and Roses: Postmodernity and the Thought of the Body (SUNY 1996), The Engendering God (Westminster Press, 1995), Painted Black (Harper Collins, 1990), Theological Thinking (Scholars Press, 1988). He is the author of over 200 popular and scholarly articles on subjects ranging from postmodern religious thought to computer-mediated education to new religious movements. He is formerly president of the Rocky Mountain-Great Plains Region of the American Academy of Religion and an editor of several series with the American Academy of Religion. He is also a well-known national media personality.
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