Religion and the hermeneutics of contemplation / D.Z. Phillips.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Phillips, D. Z. (Dewi Zephaniah), author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Religion--Philosophy--Methodology.

Religion.

Hermeneutics--Religious aspects.

Hermeneutics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 330 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Religion & the Hermeneutics of Contemplation

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Leading philosopher of religion D. Z. Phillips argues that intellectuals need not see their task as being for or against religion, but as one of understanding it. What stands in the way of this task are certain methodological assumptions about what enquiry into religion must be. Beginning with Bernard Williams on Greek gods, Phillips goes on to examine these assumptions in the work of Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Frazer, Tylor, Marett, Freud, Durkheim, Lévy-Bruhl, Berger and Winch. The result exposes confusion, but also gives logical space to religious belief without advocating personal acceptance of that belief, and shows how the academic study of religion may return to the contemplative task of doing conceptual justice to the world. Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation extends in important ways D. Z. Phillips' seminal 1976 book Religion without Explanation. It will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, anthropology, sociology and theology.

Contents:

Hermeneutics and the philosophical future of religious studies

The present contenders: the hermeneutics of recollection and the hermeneutics of suspicion

The hermeneutics of contemplation

Beyond interpretation to contemplation

Beyond frameworks and grids to concept-formation

Suspicion about suspicion

The hermeneutics of contemplation and Wittgensteinian Fideism

Bernard Williams on the gods and us

Hermeneutics and modernity

Assumptions about the gods

Questioning the assumptions

Hume's legacy

Hume and hermeneutics

Hume's first level of criticism

Hume's second level of criticism

Hume's third level of criticism

Hume's 'true religion'

Hume on miracles

Beyond design to a song of creation

Hume's one-sided diet

Hume and us

Feuerbach: religion's secret?

Feuerbach and demystification

God among the predicates

God and the human species

Contradiction and contemplation

Death and finitude

Contemplating reactions to death

God and death

Conclusions about death

Marx and Engels: religion, alienation and compensation

Marxism and monism

Religion and ideology

Tylor and Frazer: are religious beliefs mistaken hypotheses?

Animism and intellectualism

Animism, souls and spirits

What rituals can be

Rituals and the mythology in our language

Rituals and explanations

Marett: primitive reactions

Marett and anti-intellectualism

Marett and suspicion

In the beginning was the dance

Marett's other course.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

1-107-12345-3

0-511-32784-6

0-511-04383-X

0-511-15328-7

0-511-17394-6

0-511-61271-0

1-280-43332-9

0-521-80368-3

OCLC:

475916502