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Expanding ‘religion’ or decentring the secular? Framing the frames in philosophy of religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2019

RICHARD AMESBURY Open the ORCID record for RICHARD AMESBURY [Opens in a new window]
RICHARD AMESBURY*
Affiliation:
School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies, Arizona State University, 975 S. Myrtle Ave., P.O. Box 874302, Tempe, AZ85287–4302, USA
*
e-mail: richard.amesbury@asu.edu
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Abstract

New cross-cultural approaches to philosophy of religion seek to move it beyond the preoccupations of Christian theology and the abstractions of ‘classical theism’, towards an appreciation of a broader range of religious phenomena. But if the concept of religion is itself the product of extrapolation from modern, Western, Christian understandings, disseminated through colonial encounter, does the new philosophy of religion simply reproduce the deficiencies of the old, under the guise of a universalizing, albeit culturally and historically particular, category? This article argues that it is necessary to interrogate the secular episteme within which religion is thematized as a discrete topos.

Type
Original Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 56 , Special Issue 1: Philosophy of Religions: Cross-Cultural, Multi-Religious Approaches , March 2020 , pp. 4 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019

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