‘Religion’ as a Philosophical Problem Historical

Authors: Richard Amesbury

Publish Date: 2014/02/13

Volume: 53, Issue: 4, Pages: 479-496

PDF Link

Abstract

In the late nineteenth century European philosophical theologians concerned about the perceived threat of secularity played a crucial role in the construction of the category of ‘religion’ conceived as a transcultural universal the genus of which the socalled ‘world religions’ are species By reading the work of the late John Hick 1922–2012 the most influential contemporary philosophical advocate of religious pluralism through an historically informed hermeneutic of suspicion this paper argues that orientalistderived understandings of religion continue to play a significant though often unacknowledged role within the philosophy of religion today Though couched in the language of pluralism Hick’s later work in the philosophy of religion functions apologetically to maintain a version of the religious–secular distinction that while theologically and politically loaded is I show philosophically arbitrary Moving the philosophy of religion beyond Eurocentrism I argue will require freeing it from the logic of the modern understanding of religion

Keywords: