The inaugural, 2015 session of the “Global Critical Philosophy of Religion Seminar” is devoted to determining the key topics or categories that will structure the content of the book. What core topics or problems should appear in a religiously inclusive and critically informed philosophy of religion?
The aim of the session was to start a constructive discussion about an introductory textbook for philosophy of religion that is religiously inclusive and critically informed. The initial concept was for a textbook that thoroughly integrates non theistic religious philosophies and critically engages the methodological and theoretical issues of religious studies. The seminar was constituted by area-specialist scholars of religion, comparativist philosophers of religion, critical theorists of religion, and traditional (analytic) philosophers of religion. Beginning with this session, the group began forming with an aim to identify the comparative categories and critical terms for global-critical philosophy of religion, to populate these categories with the arguments and ideas of a diversity of religious traditions, to take up critical issues pertaining to cross-cultural comparison and philosophy of these arguments and ideas, and to develop the blueprint and content for an innovative new undergraduate textbook in global-critical philosophy of religion.
The session featured the following papers:
“From “Faith and Reason” to the Post-Colonial Re-Evaluation of
Religious Epistemologies,” Jacob Sherman (University of Cambridge)
“Rethinking the Categories of Philosophy of Religion Through the
Particularities of Shabistari and Sarasvati’s Epistemologies of the Self,” Nariman Aavani ( Harvard University)
“Philosophy of Religion and Disabilities” Nathaniel Holmes (Florida Memorial University)
“Scripture as a Topic in Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion: A
Preliminary Survey of Major Questions,” Steven G. Smith (Millsaps College)
“The Problem of Religious Language,” Lawrence Whitney (Boston University)