The Allure of Decadent Thinking: Religious Studies and the Challenge of Postmodernism - Hardcover

Olson, Carl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199959838 ISBN 13: 9780199959839

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Carl Olson offers a compelling and provocative argument against the application of postmodern thought to religious studies, showing how such radically skeptical thinking undermines, subverts, and distorts the study of religion.

Religious studies is a newly and artificially constructed field for the scholarly study of religious narratives, thoughts, actions, and phenomena. It is an ongoing experiment with various types of methodological approaches to the study of religion, which is itself a human construct with limited cross-cultural application. Without a commonly agreed-upon method for the study of its subject, religious studies is characterized by the use of multiple methods, which tend to be adopted based on the latest trends in the field. Most recently, notes Olson, these trends have been dominated by postmodern thought. Because the discipline of religious studies is a product of the European Enlightenment with its values and representational mode of thinking, he argues, it is challenged and even threatened by postmodern thought, which calls into question many of its values, basic presuppositions, and convictions.

After reviewing the many fads and fashions of religious studies, Olson examines various postmodern positions related to the study of religion, including those of Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Marcel Mauss, Michel Foucault, and Edward W. Said. Olson contrasts the thought of more traditional history of religions scholars Mircea Eliade and Wendy Doniger with selected postmodern thinkers on the topics of hermeneutics, comparison, and difference. The Allure of Decadent Thinking concludes by exploring the postmodern challenges to such accepted concepts of religion and considers the long-term implications of a scholar's adoption of postmodern methods. Regardless of whether they are transformed by postmodern thought, Olson suggests, all methods and concepts should be subject to pragmatic review.

About this title

About the Author:

Carl Olson is Professor of Religious Studies at Allegheny College. He has published numerous book reviews and essays for academic journals, books, and encyclopedias and has authored or edited books on Hinduism, Buddhism, comparative philosophy, and method in the study of religion.

Review:

"The Allure Decadent Thinking is something that has been crying out to be done. It contributes to new understanding. It makes important corrections to well-established views. It adds a new approach to the study of religion. In short, it makes a most valuable and original contribution to the ongoing formation of religious studies as a discipline in the modern university."--Sushil Mittal, Professor of Religion, James Madison University

"Postmodernism has had a tremendous impact on the study of religion. This impact has been bemoaned and celebrated alike. Many of us are as ambivalent as we are indebted, as resistant as we are convinced. What we have often lacked are systematic meditations on the power and problems of the approach across the field as a whole. Carl Olson's new book answers that need with his trademark insight, balance, and verve."--Jeffrey J. Kripal, J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophical and Religious Thought, Rice University

"In this learned work, Carl Olson meets head on and with admirable incisiveness the critical challenge facing religious belief and practice in our times. This is a major contribution to setting the academic study of religion on a constructive course once more."--Julius Lipner, FBA, Professor of Hinduism and the Comparative Study of Religion, University of Cambridge

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0199959838
• ISBN 13: 9780199959839
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 224