VLVL2 (1) Missed Communications: Beginnings

[Michael Joseph]

Thanks, Dave, for the tantalizing excerpt. More recently (Changing
Religious Worlds: The Meaning and End of Mircea Eliade), Tim Murphy
criticized Eliade along similar lines, that is, he doesn't adequately
account for difference. I will post an editorial response by Bryan Rennie
to his essay if there is any interest. (NOTE also carl Olson'e
consideration in Murphy's list of works, which is a warm and generous
appreciation of Eliade's work vis-a-vis legitimating faith (in this case,
it happened to be Christian) according to the forms and ideals of
rationalism.)

M



ELIADE, SUBJECTIVITY, AND HERMENEUTICS

Tim Murphy

The problem of Eliade's relation to subjectivity is usually dealt with in
Religious Studies in one of two ways. Either he is read in the tradition
of Wach and Kristensen vis a vis the "insider/outsider" problem, or he is
read in the tradition of Popper and Nagel in which he is seen as a "soft
subjectivist" in the pejorative sense. This paper suggests another
reading: Eliade's emphasis on the relation between subjectivity and
hermeneutics can be fruitfully read within the larger context of the
"subjective turn" of the modern human sciences and culture.  This
recontextualization will be used to explain how it is that a
transhistorical subjectivity ("humanism" in Eliade's terms) forms the
condition for the possibility of the kind of hermeneutic of religion which
Eliade both described and practiced. This, it is argued, is Eliade's
central legacy in the history of the study of religion.

Once this is established, I will suggest what I think is wrong with this
paradigm and what kinds of methodological options exist after the
decentering of the subject. As to the first, briefly, Eliade's view of
subjectivity lacks a reflexive hermeneutical dimension in that he does not
critically differentiate the foreconceptions of interpretive history in
which he stands from the objects of interpretation. His concept of a
universal subjectivity allows him, in short, to illicitly (so it is
argued) overleap historical and cultural difference.

What methodological options are there for Religious Studies after the
disappearance of the subject? I argue that the poststructuralist
conception of "genealogy," understood as historical change without an
underlying subject of change, can fruitfully replace the phenomenological,
subject centered methodologies which have predominated in Religious
Studies throughout most of its history.

E-mail address and/or mailing address:
timurphy at CATS.UCSC.EDU


C.V. or relevant publishing history:

Tim [sic] Murphy is a graduate of the History of Consciousness Program at
the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has published a number of
articles and reviews in the areas of theory and method and is currently a
Lecturer at San Jose State University's Comparative Religious Studies
Program. With Russell McCutcheon, he is coeditor of the Council of
Societies for the Study of Religion's Bulletin.

Articles and reviews:

"Wesen und Erscheinung in the History of the Study of Religion: A
Poststructuralist Perspective." Method and Theory in the Study of
Religion, 6/2: 119146, 1994.

"Is a Psychology of Religion Possible? A Critique of the Taxonomy of
Religion in William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience."
Paradigms, 7/2:110, Spring 1992.

"The Concept of Entwicklung in German Religionswissenschaft Before and
After Darwin." Method and Theory in the Study of Religion,
forthcoming, 1998.

Review of Explaining and Interpreting Religion by Robert Segal. Religious
Studies Review, 22/4: 333, 1996.

Review of Religion, Interpretation, and Diversity of Belief: The Framework
Model from Kant to Durkheim to Davidson, by Terry Godlove.
Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 8/1: 8489, 1996.

Review of The Theology and Philosophy of Mircea Eliade, by Carl Olson.

Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 6/4: 398405, 1994.

Review of Impasse and Resolution: A Critique of the Study of Religion, by
Hans Penner. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 6/3:
298302, 1994.

Review of Interpreting Religion: The Phenomenological Approaches of Pierre

Daniel Chantepie de la Saussaye, W. Brede Kristensen, Gerardus van der
Leeuw by George James. Religion, forthcoming.

See also http://www.westminster.edu/staff/brennie/eliade/antholog.htm

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003, Dave Monroe wrote:

> From Jonathan Z. Smith. "A Slip in Time Saves Nine:
> Prestigious Origins Again," in Chronotypes: The
> Construction of Time, ed. John Bender and David E.
> Wellbery (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1991), pp. 67-76
> ...
>
>    "Note well the argument.  Extraordinary privilege
> and priority is given to naked experience.  Jensen
> locates all meaning in a prelinguistic, highly
> individual, originary moment of 'seizure' that is sui
> generis.  All socialization of this moment, from
> linguistic expression to repetition, destroys
> spontaneity, impoverishes meaning, and is, ultimately,
> mere habit...." (p. 72)
>
>    "One does not have to go far to discern the
> governing premise of this sort of theory.  It is the
> Protestant principle of individuation, of unmediated
> and spontaneous revelation run rampant."  (pp. 72-3)
>
> "In Eliade, space and time are conceives as parallel
> with respect to the difference betyween the sacred and
> the profane.  In both cases, the profane is
> 'homogeneous' and lacks 'reality.'  Because of this,
> it is the realm of the 'meaningless.'"  (p. 73)
>
> "I have deliberately employed the term 'Protestant,'
> for it is Protestantism, and in Protestantism alone,
> that one finds the systematic articulation of the
> model of the 'circle and line' in curious combination
> with a strong affirmation of 'breakthrough.' [...]
> Both the cyclical and linear models of time employed
> ... under the influence of the Protestant myth reduce
> 'difference' to a discourse of the 'same.'  The
> cyclical model does so by insisting on a notion of
> repetition that is held to be either inherently
> meaningless (as in Metzger) or meaningful because it
> is wholly congruent with its exemplar, that is to say
> because it lacks difference (as in Eliade).  The
> linear model does so by reducing history to a
> succession of meaningless events, identical to one to
> the other unless interrupted by or directed toward a
> supramundane telos.  By viewing the sacred as 'other'
> and the profane as the 'same,' the bulk of studies in
> religion have eliminated the complex middle gropund of
> thought about 'difference' where myth and ritual
> live." (p. 76)
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0008&msg=48508&sort=date
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0008&msg=48509&sort=date
>
> http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0106&msg=57091&sort=date
>
> --- Michael Joseph <mjoseph at rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
> >
> > Terrence, just to clarify - Eliade does not posit
> > any specific theodicy. Your quotation unfortunately
> > implies a Christian or monotheistic foundation to
> > his writing, which most definitely is not there.
>
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