Description
Jacques Waardenburg’s Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion, first published in 1973 and updated in 1999, was groundbreaking in establishing religious studies as an independent academic field. The volume consists of two parts. The first is Waardenburg’s magisterial essay tracing the rise and development of the academic study of religion from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, outlining the establishment of the discipline, its connections with other fields, religion as a subject of research, and perspectives on a phenomenological study of religion. The second part comprises an anthology of texts from 41 scholars whose work was programmatic in the evolution of the academic study of religion. The pieces selected for this volume were taken from the discipline of religious studies as well as from related fields, such as anthropology, sociology, and psychology, to name a few. Each chapter presents a particular approach, theory, and method relevant to the study of religion. This second edition also includes a new foreword by Russell McCutcheon. This pioneering work is essential reading for any student of religion.
Chapter
Part One: The Study of Religion Established as an Autonomous Discipline
Plea for a Science of Religion
The Comparative Study of Religions
‘Elements of the Science of Religion’ – I
‘Elements of the Science of Religion’ – II
Pierre D. Chantepie de la Saussaye
‘The Science of Religion’
Phenomenology of Religion
Part Two: Connections with Other Disciplines
Vindication of a Critical Mind
N. D. Fustel de Coulanges
‘The Necessity of Studying the Earliest Beliefs of the Ancients in Order to Understand their Institutions’
Historical Research on the Pentateuch
The Study of the Religion of the Semites
Friedrich C. G. Delitzsch
‘The Quest of the Historical Jesus’
The Study of Religious Experience
‘The Golden Bough’ and the Study of Religion
‘The Tabu-Mana Formula as a Minimum Definition of Religion’
‘The Origin and Growth of Religion’
‘The Quest of the Supreme Being’
‘On the Method to be Followed in the Study of Rites and Myths’
‘The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life’
Classification Systems and Religion
‘Primitive Mentality’ and Religion
Symbolic Meaning and Religion
‘The Question of a Weltanschauung’
Part Three: Religion as a Special Subject of Research
‘The Origin of the Belief in God’
On the Study of Religious Phenomena
‘Some Recent Achievements of Psychological Research and their Application to History, in Particular the History of Religion’
On Phenomenology and its Relation to Theology
‘Religion in Essence and Manifestation’
‘The Scholarly Study of Religion’
‘The Aim of the Comparative Study of Religions’ (‘Typology’)
On Comparative Studies in Religion
‘The Concept of the “Classical” in the Study of Religions’
‘The Meaning and Task of the History of Religions (Religionswissenschaft)’
Part Four: Later Contributions from Other Disciplines
On ‘Psychology of Religion’
The Study of ‘Primitive Man’ and His Religion
‘The Nature and Substance of Religion’
‘Primitive Man as Philosopher’
The Religious and the Non-Religious Man
Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown
On the Advancements Made in the Study of Greek Religion
On the Study of Greek Religion: ‘The Homeric Gods’
On the Greek Gods and on Myth
Part Five: Perspectives of a Phenomenological Study of Religion
‘“History” and “Phenomenology” in the Science of Religion’
On the Presuppositions and Limits of the Science of Religion
Psychology, ‘Concrete’ and ‘Essential’ Phenomenology of Religion
On Phenomenological Research in the Field of Religion
Sources and Acknowledgments
Index of Scholarly Concepts
Index of Concrete Subjects