• humanity's view of religion changes, so how we define religion should change.
• “yet one idea that has been produced in part of its world devolpment, namely the notion of a systematic, religious entity, conceptually indefintabile and carchatezing a distinct community, has been of special interest to us in this present inquiry and of special influence lateley throughout the world.”
• one of the changes in devolpment is finding out if the defts of religion are useful at all
• WCS thinks that this devolpment means perhaps these defintions “are much less servicable and legitmate than they once seemed”
• so, perhaps not baby out with the bathtub, but changing schematics
• one of the reasons why we need to change these revisions, is the problems of eurocentricism, racism, etc
• that one of the changes that should be made in the changes of definition, is the move from a “great man” theory of history, to one that prirotized the larger personal whole. (social history)
• that this might result in a complete dropping of religion as a defintional concept
• is this a failure of empiricism? “for example the dilema of the modern Jew is acute who has accepted the belief that there is somewhere something called Judisam, though he cannot find it” (115)
• abuts the problem of religion being understood by those practicing at all: critics who believe that religion cannot be understood, contemporary practioners (after having transferred the power to the lay), who believe that religion cannot be understood, but even the ancient pracitoners of those traidtions
• did anyone ever know how do define religion
• or is religion the after effects of the revelation of the followers, is the traces the only thing that can be measured: “no man has seen the point of his own religious tradition for whom the concept religion is an adequate indication oof what it is all about”(118)
• In this sense—those who belong to the religion are too close to understand what the religion is, an outsider has to name religions, but recent outsiders think that religion is undefinable, and so how to reconcile?
• Those who belong to the religion are too close
• outsider, might be too localised, too abstracted: “the custome of interperting other peoples religious life under a seires of rubics of the several religions, some of them named, is Western, is recent, and has already passed its zenith” (120)
• prolegomennen
• “Being a Muslim means lviing in a certain context, sociological,historical, ideological, and trqansdencents. The signifince of being a Muslim lies in this fact, not in some pprolegomenen to it. The concern of the observer with something that he calls Islam shifts attention from the heart of the matter” (124)
• the thing the critic and the adherent have in common is a kind of dismisive quality to the other: “We are now in a position to recongise that it was not dortotious that the rleigion concepts, having arisen in WEstern Europe are inherently deprectriative. For the Christian traditon, particualiry in its Protestant form, has historically been unusually disaparing of other religions traditons; and the rationalist academic tradition has been skeptical, if not disparging of all” (126)
• abstraction?
• The problerm of defining wrt this kidn of abstraction, with this wide diversity of religious abilities. (128-129)
• “we can speak with prevision and elegance in our deinfitons of imaginary construts; an irrational number of any of the notions in matthemtiacs, model types in sociological theory; the notions in mathematics; model types in sociological theory; concepts in physica, abstractions of all kinds” (129)
• this variety and diversity, suggests that pretty explcitly, that there is nothing essential in religion—that defitnions have to work with the abstracitons in such a way that it precludes essentalism: “For essences do not have a history. Essences do not change. Yet it is an observable and important fact that what have been called the religions do, in history change”
• the definition comes from the internalaztion of these abstracitons—outside of the essentializing aspescts of adherents, or the coldness of scholars: “...not to be ignored, however, is what we do not see: the Buddhist faith in the queit corner of a man's inner heart: the inspiraitonal in the mind of the artist of which is completred artefact before is iis the inadequate expression: the moral ideal in the lfie of the believer to which his actual behaviour is but a paartial and perhaps even sorry apromixaiton” (133)
• this suggests that what occurs, is not the basic element of the religion—this ties in with the changing from the one thinker, one initial essentialism, into a wide variety/network of lived rleigion—this networking suggests a constant renewing conceptualism: “To equate Buddhism starkly with the Buddha's teachings or the first decades of the Sangha's life is to dismiss with scant justice the rich elaboration of the manhayana tradition in China and Japan. This is virtually to post something called a religion and then to assert thatr is had no history, to leave unxpeained and unnoticed almost the whole religious history of man” (135)
• to return back to the original point—all of this abstraciton, and bleif in lived religion, and the academic absence, and all of that: “...Platonic ideals do not serve the beliver himself” (136)
• multiform, human and unstable (137)

Johnathon Z Smith:

• 19^th century german as sense of order
• qoutes Ricouer—the question of what is history
• Defintion as an act agaisnt colonization
• there are other ways of taxonomizing, against the 19^th century methods, or understandings.
• We can see these other forms of taxonomizing in things like Cargo Cults, and other oceanic forms of exchange as examples.
• Actual Deft, emerges on 189.

Tweed:

• bored in defining
• the possiblity that nothing can be disagreed on
• the problem of exgetical fussiness
• Actual Deft, 34.
• Placeholders, rship to traces, etc—making sure that nothing holds fast.

Saler:

• Prototype approach
• Wittengenstin—words affect general concepts.
• The words, can be thought of to come from which is determiend to be first
• we can work this from the 19^th century,
• category does not need to be a judgement of the act
• “a few kind words on behalf of essentialism

Ninian Smart:

• multipiclity of discourses
• refusal of monomyths (this includes the studying of religion, via theology—15) which does not preculde the possiblity of xians doing serious theology. Or w/i branches (19)
• attempts at disrupting religion, including but not limited to marx
• marx, freud, etc become a kind of religious tendency
• hursell's empiricism 14
• difference b/w empathy and sympathy (15)
• religion then can be understood thru the lens of a spec structure (26)
• This can be constructed thru an explicitly emperical lens (25)
• polymethody and how it relates to the rship that humans have with themselves and others (28)
• ideas need symbols