Gavin Flood

The Importance of Religion

Meaning and Action in Our Strange World

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

The Importance of Religion reveals the significance of religion in modern times, showing how it provides people with meaning to their lives and helps guide them in their everyday moral choices

Provides readers with a new understanding of religion, demonstrating how in its actions, texts and world views religion is enduring and vividly engages with the mystery of the world
Offers striking arguments about the relationship of religion to science, art and politics
Engagingly written by a highly respected scholar of religion with an international reputation

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wiley & Sons
• 2. Aufl.
• Seitenzahl: 266
• Erscheinungstermin: 27. Dezember 2011
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 231mm x 155mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 476g
• ISBN-13: 9781405189729
• ISBN-10: 140518972X
• Artikelnr.: 33928256

Autorenporträt

Gavin Flood is Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Oxford where he is also the Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He is the author of Introduction to Hinduism (1996) and The Ascetic Self: Subjectivity, Memory, Tradition (2006); and editor of the Blackwell Companion to Hinduism (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003).

Inhaltsangabe

Preface xi Acknowledgments xv Introduction: Religion and the Human
Condition 1 Mediating Our Strange World 6 Theories of Religion 8 Religion
and Religions 12 Defining Religion 14 The Argument 17 Alienation and the
Human Condition 17 The Primacy of Perception and the System of Signs 23 The
Invisible and the Transcendent 24 The Truths of Religion 26 Conclusion 27
Part One ACTION 1 Clearing the Ground 37 Reification: The Marxist Legacy 40
Rationalization: The Weberian Legacy 44 Knowledge and Action 46 Methodology
49 Conclusion 50 2 The Meaning of Religious Action 53 The Sociology of
Religious Meaning 55 Meaning and Action 58 Moral Acts 60 Ritual and the
Body 63 A Rite of Affliction 66 The Meaning of Sacrifice 69 A Phenomenology
of Sacrifice 71 The Meanings of Death 73 Conclusion 74 3 The Inner Journey
80 Languages of Spirituality 83 The Spiritual Habitus 91 Conclusion 95 Part
Two SPEECH 4 The Reception of the Text 101 Routes to the World of Life 102
Theories of the Text 106 The Reception of Sacred Texts 109 Sacred Text and
Act 111 Conclusion 113 5 Tradition, Language, and the Self 115 Linguistic
Universals 117 Linguistic Relativity 118 Language and Religious Experience
122 Language as a Model of Religion 125 Conclusion 127 6 Religion and
Rationality 130 What is Rationality? 131 Rational Religious Communities 139
Rationality and Cosmology 141 Conclusion 146 Part Three WORLD 7 The Mystery
of Complexity and Emergence 153 A History of Antagonism 155 Complexity and
Constraint 159 The Ontology of Process 164 Conclusion 166 8 The Union of
Nature and Imagination 171 Art and the Real 172 Cosmological Art 175 Pavel
Florensky 177 Abhinavagupta 178 Secular Art 180 Re-Spiritualizing Art 182
Conclusion 185 9 Religion and Politics 189 Religion in the Public Sphere
190 The Secular Public Sphere 195 The Traditionalist View 197
Fundamentalism 200 The Religious Citizen 201 Conclusion 205 Summary 210
Epilogue 217 References 221 Index 237

Rezensionen

"The book has a creativity, comprehensivness, and energy not often found in contemporary Religious Studies. It has the hallmarks of a milestone statement in theorizing about the phenomenology of religion." -- William E. Paden, The University of Vermont

"In this erudite work, Gavin Flood develops a powerful new understanding of religion as springing from the nature of the human condition itself. It will challenge and provoke, and will surely renew the field." -- Oliver Davies, King's College London

"Flood presents a thesis about 'religion' that is provocative, irenic, learned and wide ranging. His interdisciplinary intervention is an elegant challenge to those who think religion is dead or dying. It is a sensitive exploration of religion as the textual and ritual generator of meaning." -- Gavin D'Costa, University of Bristol

"Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty." (Choice, 1 January 2013)