Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:22:39.844Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Explanations of Religion as a Part of and Problem for Religious Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Martin Prozesky
Martin Prozesky
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, University of Natal
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the present context the word ‘explanation’ is taken to mean an identification of the factors which would disclose to us why a phenomenon exists and/or functions as it does, and it is my purpose in this paper to do three things: firstly to argue that explanation as just defined is the supreme goal to which the academic study of religion should direct its investigations; secondly to offer what I consider the most illuminating method of explanation in this context; and thirdly to consider certain problems which arise from that method for our subject as presently conducted. As such, the present essay is also a commentary on and defence of the central methodological ploy in my recent book, Religion and Ultimate Well-Being: An Explanatory Theory (1984), though it can stand on its own quite independently of the book.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 303 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Batson, C. D. and Ventis, W. Larry. The Religious Experience. A Social-Psychological Perspective (New York: O.U.P., 1982).Google Scholar
Hempel, Carl, Aspects of Scientific Explanation, and other Essays in the Philosophy of Science (New York: Free Press, 1970).Google Scholar
Nagel, Ernest, The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Popper, Karl, Objective Knowledge: an Evolutionary Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972).Google Scholar
Prozesky, Martin, Religion and Ultimate Well-Being: An Explanatory Theory (London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharpe, Eric J.Comparative Religion. A History (London: Duckworth, 1975).Google Scholar
Spiro, Melford, ‘Religion: Problems of Definition and Explanation’, in Banton, M. Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion (London: Tavistock, 1966).Google Scholar