Anthony, Kwame Anthony. Explaining Religion: Notes Toward a Research Agenda
2009, In: S.A. Levin (Hg.), Games, Groups, and the Global Good. Springer Physica-Verlag.
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, Contributed by: Tammo LossauAbstract:
I begin by arguing that our model of religion is often based on Christianity. A Christian model of religion is going to look for gods and creeds, churches, priests, prayer, collective worship, moral codes, each of which is absent in some of the things we might want to call religions. And it may well ignore dietary and sumptuary rules or cult for ancestors, which are important in some of them. Religion is a paradigm of what Wittgenstein taught us to call a “family-resemblance” concept: each religion, like each member of a family, is like every other, in some respect, but there are few, if any, characteristics they all share. So the first thing we need to do in trying to decide what it is we're explaining is disaggregate the elements that come together in Christianity; if we find that they usually come together that will be one of the things that we need to explain. What then are the questions worth focusing on? I think that, from an evolutionary point of view, it will be two families of issues. First will be the social and the cognitive features of religions that make their explanation challenging. A second family of issues worth exploring, once we have identified these components, is how they fit together. Why, for example does belief in invisible beings go with rituals dealing with disaster? Why does agreement in creeds go with creating powerful social groups that last across the generations? When one finds broad patterns across many societies there are usually two natural types of explanation that spring to mind. One is that the pattern reflects shared solutions to common problems, independently discovered: evolutionary homology, as it were. The other is diffusion from common sources: in a word, copying. I suspect that much of what is share in the organization of religions globally today is the result of diffusion. But, of course, why some patterns diffuse successfully and others don't is itself something that needs explaining.Comment: The discussion of whether there is a coherent concept of religion spanning all the various traditions that are usually classified as religious is a good setup for classes on philosophy of religion. Appiah also gave a TED-Talk ("Is religion good or bad? (This is a trick question)"), in which he explains the core ideas but ends up with a different conclusion. Namely, he argues in the talk that the concept of religion is defective - contrary to the paper, where he promotes a "cluster concept" understanding of religion. Which of these conclusions is more plausible is a good discussion question.
Kuokkanen, Rauna. Towards an “Indigenous Paradigm” From A Sami Perspective
2000, The Canadian Journal of Native Studies XX, 2: 411-436
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Added by: Kas BernaysAbstract:
The author discusses the need, significance and objectives of an "Indigenous paradigm" which is a way of both decolonizing Indigenous minds by "re-centring" Indigenous values and cultural practices and placing Indigenous peoples and their issues into dominant, mainstream discourses which until now have relegated Indigenous peoples to marginal positions. The author argues that the main objectives of such a paradigm include the criticism of Westem dualistic metaphysics and Eurocentrism as well as the return to the Indigenous peoples' holistic philosophies in research.Comment (from this Blueprint): A broad consideration of treating Indigenous philosophy, with an introductory focus on Sámi thought.
Kuokkanen, Rauna. The Logic of the Gift: Reclaiming Indigenous People’s Philosophies
2006, in Thorsten Botz-Bornstein and Jürgen Hengelbrock (eds.), Re-ethnicizing the Minds? Cultural Revival in Contemporary Thought. Brill
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Added by: Kas BernaysAbstract:
This chapter considers the notion of philosophy from the perspective of indigenous peoples. It starts by critically examining the concept of philosophy and expands it with the help of feminist and indigenous scholarship which have pointed out the exclusions and biases in Western philosophical conventions. The main argument of the chapter is that the notion of the gift is one of the structuring principles of many indigenous peoples’ philosophies. The chapter suggests that the understanding of the world which foregrounds human relationship with the natural environment, common to many indigenous peoples, is manifested by the gift, whether give-back ceremonies and rituals or individual gifts given to the land as a recognition of its abundance and reinforcement of these relationships.Comment (from this Blueprint): Introduces the significance of gifting as an ecological idea in the Sámi tradition.
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