Why Do Religious Forms Matter?: Reflections on Materialism, Toleration, and Public Reason

ISBN-13: 9783030957780 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022 / 156 str.

Pooyan Tamimi Arab

Opis

In Why Do Religious Forms Matter?, Pooyan Tamimi Arab reflects on the Early Modern roots and contemporary relevance of a materialist perspective on the politics of religious diversity.Taking as a starting point the insight that religions manifest in myriad sensible forms—in architecture, in images, in the use of objects in rituals, and in distinctive ways of speaking—Tamimi Arab traces to Spinoza the material-religion approach prevalent in anthropology and religious studies. It is in Locke’s political philosophy, however, that forms are tied to toleration—understood as a neutrally applied civil right—which Tamimi Arab discusses through contemporary case studies of mosque construction, amplified calls to prayer, and the right to ritual slaughter.Going beyond the Enlightenment criticism and toleration of religions, the book concludes with an inclusive reading of Rawls’s ideal of public reason, which assumes forms of discourse—religious and non-religious—to always be several. Religious forms thus turn out to be indispensable to liberal democracy itself.

Spis treści

Introduction: What Is a Religious Form?

          Religious Forms: Essential and Non-Essential?

          Religious Forms of Discourse in Public Domains

 

Chapter 1. Spinoza: Arch-Father of the Material-Religion Approach

          Mind-Body Equality

          Imagined Sacrality/Imagined Communities

          Internal Faith/External Faith

          Governing Religious Pluralities

          Why Materialist Critique Still Matters

 

Chapter 2. Locke: Equal Rights to Toleration Today

Equal Monks, Equal Hoods

Accommodating Religious Minorities

Constructing Mosques: Emancipation and Ottomania

Amplifying Islam: Sound Testing Toleration’s Limits

Ritual Slaughter: Not Just an Exception to the Rule

The Spirit of Neutrality

 

Chapter 3. Rawls: Religious Forms and Public Reason

Is the Constitutional State Secular?

Is Public Reason Secular?

Desires of Public Reason

The Diverse Ways Toward an Overlapping Consensus

The Early Modern Legacy

 

Coda: Why Abstraction Matters

O autorze

Pooyan Tamimi Arab is Assistant Professor of religious studies at Utrecht University. He is a board member of the Amsterdam Spinoza Circle and member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Blurb

In Why Do Religious Forms Matter?, Pooyan Tamimi Arab reflects on the Early Modern roots and contemporary relevance of a materialist perspective on the politics of religious diversity.

Taking as a starting point the insight that religions manifest in myriad sensible forms—in architecture, in images, in the use of objects in rituals, and in distinctive ways of speaking—Tamimi Arab traces to Spinoza the material-religion approach prevalent in anthropology and religious studies. It is in Locke’s political philosophy, however, that forms are tied to toleration—understood as a neutrally applied civil right—which Tamimi Arab discusses through contemporary case studies of mosque construction, amplified calls to prayer, and the right to ritual slaughter.

Going beyond the Enlightenment criticism and toleration of religions, the book concludes with an inclusive reading of Rawls’s ideal of public reason, which assumes forms of discourse—religious and non-religious—to always be several. Religious forms thus turn out to be indispensable to liberal democracy itself.

Pooyan Tamimi Arab is Assistant Professor of religious studies at Utrecht University. He is a board member of the Amsterdam Spinoza Circle and member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.