Religious Studies and Comparative Methodology: The Case for Reciprocal Illumination - Hardcover

Sharma, Arvind

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0791464555 ISBN 13: 9780791464557

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2005

Synopsis

A contribution to the methodology of religious studies, this work discusses using comparison to provide mutual illumination among religious traditions while avoiding the problem of assimilating one tradition to another.

Comparison is at the heart of religious studies as a discipline and foundational to the field's methodology. In this book, Arvind Sharma introduces the term "reciprocal illumination" to describe the mutual enlightenment that can occur when a comparison is made between one tradition and another, one method and another, or between a tradition and a method. Developing the concept of reciprocal illumination through historical, phenomenological, and psychological methods, Sharma demonstrates how to use comparison, while avoiding the pitfall of treating it as merely raw material for higher order generalizations.

About this title

About the Author

Arvind Sharma is Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at McGill University. He is the author of many books, including One Religion Too Many: The Religiously Comparative Reflections of a Comparatively Religious Hindu and Hinduism as a Missionary Religion, and the coeditor (with Ellen Bradshaw Aitken) of The Legacy of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, all published by SUNY Press.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791464555
• ISBN 13: 9780791464557
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 324