The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism - Brossura

Masuzawa, Tomoko

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0226509893 ISBN 13: 9780226509891

Casa editrice: University of Chicago Press, 2005

Riassunto

The idea of "world religions" expresses a vague commitment to multiculturalism. Not merely a descriptive concept, "world religions" is actually a particular ethos, a pluralist ideology, a logic of classification, and a form of knowledge that has shaped the study of religion and infiltrated ordinary language.

In this ambitious study, Tomoko Masuzawa examines the emergence of "world religions" in modern European thought. Devoting particular attention to the relation between the comparative study of language and the nascent science of religion, she demonstrates how new classifications of language and race caused Buddhism and Islam to gain special significance, as these religions came to be seen in opposing terms-Aryan on one hand and Semitic on the other. Masuzawa also explores the complex relation of "world religions" to Protestant theology, from the hierarchical ordering of religions typical of the Christian supremacists of the nineteenth century to the aspirations of early twentieth-century theologian Ernst Troeltsch, who embraced the pluralist logic of "world religions" and by so doing sought to reclaim the universalist destiny of European modernity.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull'autore

Tomoko Masuzawa teaches European intellectual history and critical theory at the University of Michigan, where she holds a joint appointment in the Department of History and the Program in Comparative Literature. She is the author of In Search of Dream Time: The Quest for the Origin of Religion, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: University of Chicago Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2005
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0226509893
• ISBN 13: 9780226509891
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 375
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile