Philosophy 33

In a classroom I see my job as presenting a way to look at the material that you are otherwise becoming familiar with through your reading.  That means I am being very selective in what I talk about, and for most students it may work best to have read the appropriate chapters beforehand, then, after going over what I say, read those chapters again and also check out additional material available through the Internet.  You might also want to follow my suggestions for still other activities (films, visits, etc.)

I am organizing these lectures in this way:  first, there will be a general discussion of the subject; after I have had a chance to read some of the things you might say back to me (whether directly through an email message or through a posting in the discussion group) there will be some afterthoughts (usually I will send these out through Nicenet).  You will find that some of the names and concepts allow links to other sources.  Use your back button to return here. (I would like  to discourage you from just printing out these lectures.  Read them online and do make use of the links.)

I strongly recommend what I call a triple-notes approach as you study.  Whether you benefit more by reading the text before the lectures or the lecture before the text is something you will need to determine through experience.  However, in either case you should take notes as you read (and this includes notes on the linked material for the lectures) so that you already have two sets of notes.  On each set a good strategy is to write yourself questions about what may be less clear (things that you will need to review or perhaps investigate further by using a search engine such as Google).  Next, prepare a set of study notes that organizes the key things you should know (take a look at the review questions going with each lecture as well as general review questions for each section to make sure you are touchng on the main points).  When it comes time for the midterm and final use these study notes as the basis for preparing the deck of 3x5 note cards that you may bring in for these exams. 

Please alert me if there are broken links below.

There was a time, starting about a century and a half back, when some very brilliant individuals thought they had explained religion.  First there was Auguste Comte, who traced human thought about nature from a theological to a metaphysical to a scientific ("positive") stage.  Then there was Karl Marx, who saw institutional religion as a basis for class exploitation.  And then came Sigmund Freud, who saw religion as an illusion allowing us to overcome the fear of death.  All three were convinced that traditional religions would be unnecessary in a world enlightened by science.

Other scientists, particularly Sir James Frazer and Bronislaw Malinowski, detailed how religions work, and again the impression remained that in explaining the origin of religion we also explained the phenomenon away.

The point is that religions are a dominant feature of any cultural landscape and so they cannot be ignored in attempting to understand individuals affected by them.  Religious language and symbolism are integral to so much of our art and literature that for this reason alone we should become more familiar with them.

But what do we mean by this word "religion"?  That is a very big problem.  If we start out with the religions we are already most familiar with in American culture, we might say they have certain things in common, such as the idea of God and some set of practices by which we attempt to save our souls by following God's law.  But then we hit a roadblock, since not all religions are monotheistic (accepting a single divinity) and some might be classified as atheistic (not accepting any divinity).  Not all religions accept the immortality of the soul, so that the idea of salvation fades away.

I encourage you to use the approach to language presented by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who argued for a "family resemblances" approach.  Imagine you are at a family reunion and you can see definite characteristics appearing with those who are there: many have the same eyes or ears or chins, but none seem to have all of these.  Instead there are overlapping sets of these characteristics.  In the same way we can classify religions according to certain characteristics without necessarily seeing them as having any one of these characteristics in common.

As we go on I will talk more about these characteristics.  I will also try to make use of certain concepts or categories that let us compare different religious traditions.  One of these is the concept of spirituality, best understood as a personal effort to relate to that which is "beyond" everyday experience.  Another is the concept of an institution, such as a church in which we talk about individuals coming together in some manner.  One of the most interesting ideas coming up is how these two can either reinforce each other or be at war with each other.

A couple of ideas that I would like to start with are these.  (1) Following the French philosopher Henri Bergson I do like to think of there being two sources for morality and religion.  One is the need to set limits on the individual so that religion enshrines values that hold a society together.  The other is the urge to transcendence that above all appears with the charismatic individuals (Gautama, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad) seen as founders of the great world religions we talk about today.  (2) The similarity of stories and practices might easily create the impression that there is no "true" religion, a thought very offensive to many who are "believers."  To avoid problems I am fond of citing what I call the Eusebius principle, which I name after the early Christian bishop who commented that the similarities among the mystery religions of his time were simply the manner in which God prepared the way for the Gospel.  I use it to mean that the similarities can be understood by the nonbeliever one way and by the believer in a very different way.  Obviously there is no outside "third" way of saying who would be correct.

As you read through the material in the second section on Hinduism, note the way in which there seems to be a direct connection between how complex a culture is and how institutionalized religion is within the culture.  In particular, look at the extent to which there are specialists in religious practices.  In a relatively simple culture every individual is more or less on equal footing since everyone dreams and so everyone might have visions.  In a more complex culture we have shamans with a distinctive ability to interact with the spirit world.  In a very complex culture personal visions of any kind are downplayed in favor of set patterns of divination, but this easily sets up a situation in which the good of the soul seems to be downplayed. Our world religions have their roots in very complex cultures which were ready for the kind of person we label the visionary or the mystic.

Another thing I want you to note is that in a tribal setting our modern notion of belief does not play much of a role.  This is one reason why today there can be a greater acceptance, as in Hawaii, of indigenous practices as cultural expressions.

REVIEW QUESTIONS FOR SECTION A

(1) What are examples of ways in which various figures have attempted to explain what religion is?
(2) Why is it important to become more familiar with religious language and symbolism?
(3) What keeps us from coming at a definition of the term "religion" based on the religions we are most familiar with?
(4) What is the family resemblances approach?
(5) What do we mean by the term "spirituality"?
(6) What did the philosopher Bergson think were the two sources of morality and religion?
(7) What do I mean by the Eusebius principle?
(8)  What is the connection between a culture's complexity and how institutionalized religion is within that culture?

Much of the terminology in your text as well as in these notes will be new to you.  Do pay attention to the distinctions made between theistic and nontheistic religions (which may challenge a supposedly commonsense definition of what any religion is supposed to be).  In the lecture notes above I mention some figures (Freud and Marx, above all) who represent what some texts call a projectivist perspective (meaning, we essentially invent our idea of the supernatural on the basis of our human needs), but with my reference to Bergson I want to leave the door open to those who might be called responsivists (meaning, we can also be responding to a higher reality).  By citing Wittgenstein you'll note my partiality to the idea (a polythetic approach) that there is no common element that allows a simple definition of what counts as a religion.  Do note that this is a point on which the authors of your text appear to disagree.

Also, I do prefer to focus on what any given set of beliefs or practices means to an individual or a community (a functionalist approach), and here I am using an idea from  William James (the pragmatist philosopher who was also a pioneer of American psychology and author of The Varieties of Religious Experience), that beliefs should be understood as rules for action.  This relationship between beliefs and rules can be a very complicated one, though.  For instance, I might use a proposed belief to justifiy an action that I feel "right" and which I might continue even if I did not accept such a belief.  Or I might be acting simply because it is how I understand what I am called to do because of a specific belief.

There will be a very broad distinction between an Asian and a Western approach to religion in terms of what is seen as the importance of asserting a particular statement to be "true" (whatever you think that is supposed to mean).  In the West we are used to thinking of what one believes as the basis for being religious.  In Asia it is more a question of how one acts, with belief as a justificatory backdrop.

This last point makes more sense if we also look at a possible distinction between spirituality (something personal) and religion (something social).   Writers on spirituality, above all the monk Thomas Merton, have looked at how individuals from very different traditions are more alike than they are different, and this has suggested a model like thie following.  Try to imagine a diamond balanced at one point.  At the base think of the more or less magical approach that links an Italian peasant praying to the saints with any tribal member invoking the spirits of a mountain or river.  At the top think of the mystical approach linking a Trappist such as Merton with a Zen monk.  At the center, where there is a great deal of space, think of the theologians who attempt to make sense of both what is at the top and what is at the bottom.  Here there will be great differences that are more marked than the similarities we find at the top and at the bottom.

It would not be appropriate in a course such as this to have you debate your own religious outlook.  This is a course for both believers and non-believers (and it is not really important that you know where I fit in as your instructor).  But at the same time it will make it more real for you if you do attempt to relate what you read to how you think about what might be "true" or, at least "good to believe."  One of the websites I recommend for your consideration early on is BeliefNet, which has various quizzes you might take to help you sort out your own point of view.