The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism - Softcover

Masuzawa, Tomoko

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226509893 ISBN 13: 9780226509891

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2005

Synopsis

The idea of "world religions" expresses a vague commitment to multiculturalism. Not merely a descriptive concept, "world religions" is actually a particular ethos, a pluralist ideology, a logic of classification, and a form of knowledge that has shaped the study of religion and infiltrated ordinary language.

In this ambitious study, Tomoko Masuzawa examines the emergence of "world religions" in modern European thought. Devoting particular attention to the relation between the comparative study of language and the nascent science of religion, she demonstrates how new classifications of language and race caused Buddhism and Islam to gain special significance, as these religions came to be seen in opposing terms-Aryan on one hand and Semitic on the other. Masuzawa also explores the complex relation of "world religions" to Protestant theology, from the hierarchical ordering of religions typical of the Christian supremacists of the nineteenth century to the aspirations of early twentieth-century theologian Ernst Troeltsch, who embraced the pluralist logic of "world religions" and by so doing sought to reclaim the universalist destiny of European modernity.

About this title

About the Author

Tomoko Masuzawa is associate professor of history and comparative literature at the University of Michigan. She is the author of In Search of Dream Time: The Quest for the Origin of Religion, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226509893
• ISBN 13: 9780226509891
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384