- “Religion.”
The Field and its Significance
begin with an analysis or definition of religion. Unfortunately,
there is no current consensus on a precise identification of the necessary
and sufficient conditions of what counts as a religion. We therefore
currently lack a decisive criterion that would enable clear rulings whether
some movements should count as religions (e.g., Scientology or Cargo
cults of the Pacific islands). But while consensus in precise details
is elusive, the following general depiction of what counts as a religion
may be helpful:
and prescribed practices about an ultimate, sacred reality or state
of being that calls for reverence or awe, a body which guides its
practitioners into what it describes as a saving, illuminating or
emancipatory relationship to this reality through a personally
transformative life of prayer, ritualized meditation, and/or moral
practices like repentance and personal regeneration.
[This is a slightly modified definition of the one for “Religion”
in the Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion,
Taliaferro & Marty 2010: 196–197; 2018, 240.]
counting a tradition as religious if it involves belief in God or gods, as some
recognized religions such as Buddhism (in its main forms) does not involve
a belief in God or gods.
What is “science”, and what is “religion”?
there are between them, we must at least get a rough sense of what science and
religion are. After all, “science” and “religion” are not eternally unchanging
terms with unambiguous meanings. Indeed, they are terms that were coined
recently, with meanings that vary across times and cultures. Before the
nineteenth century, the term “religion” was rarely used. For medieval authors,
such as Aquinas, the term religio meant piety or worship, and was denied of
“religious” systems outside of what he considered orthodoxy (Harrison 2015).
The term “religion” obtained its considerably broader current meaning through
the works of early anthropologists, such as E.B. Tylor (1871), who
systematically used the term for religions across the world.
nineteenth century. Prior to this, what we call “science” was referred to as
“natural philosophy” or “experimental philosophy”. William Whewell
(1834) standardized the term “scientist” to refer to practitioners of
natural philosophies. Philosophers of science have attempted to
demarcate science from other knowledge-seeking endeavors, in particular
religion. For instance, Karl Popper (1959) claimed that scientific
hypotheses (unlike religious ones) are in principle falsifiable.
Many (e.g., Taylor 1996) affirm a difference between science and
religion, even if the meanings of both terms are historically contingent.
They disagree, however, on how to precisely (and across times and cultures)
demarcate the two domains.
science concerns the natural world, whereas religion concerns both the
natural and the supernatural. Scientific explanations do not appeal to
supernatural entities such as gods or angels (fallen or not), or to
non-natural forces (like miracles, karma, or Qi). For example,
neuroscientists typically explain our thoughts in terms of brain states,
not by reference to an immaterial soul or spirit.
epistemological principle that limits scientific inquiry to natural
entities and laws, and ontological or philosophical naturalism, a
metaphysical principle that rejects the supernatural (Forrest 2000).
Since methodological naturalism is concerned with the practice of
science (in particular, with the kinds of entities and processes that
are invoked), it does not make any statements about whether or not
supernatural entities exist. They might exist, but lie outside of the
scope of scientific investigation. Some authors (e.g., Rosenberg 2014)
hold that taking the results of science seriously entails negative
answers to such persistent questions as free will or moral knowledge.
However, these stronger conclusions are controversial.
- “Theocracy”
as the supreme civil ruler, the God's or deity's laws being
interpreted by the ecclesiastical authorities.
- “Democracy” defined.
generally to a method of group decision making characterized by a kind of
equality among the participants at an essential stage of the collective decision
making. Four aspects of this definition should be noted. First, democracy
concerns collective decision making, by which I mean decisions that are made
for groups and that are binding on all the members of the group. Second, this
definition means to cover a lot of different kinds of groups that may be called
democratic. So there can be democracy in families, voluntary organizations,
economic firms, as well as states and transnational and global organizations.
Third, the definition is not intended to carry any normative weight to it.
It is quite compatible with this definition of democracy that it is not desirable
to have democracy in some particular context. So the definition of democracy
does not settle any normative questions. Fourth, the equality required by the
definition of democracy may be more or less deep. It may be the mere formal
equality of one-person one-vote in an election for representatives to an assembly
where there is competition among candidates for the position. Or it may be more
robust, including equality in the processes of deliberation and coalition building.
“Democracy” may refer to any of these political arrangements. It may involve direct
participation of the members of a society in deciding on the laws and policies of the
society or it may involve the participation of those members in selecting
representatives to make the decisions.
but to determine which, if any, of the forms democracy may take are morally desirable
and when and how. For instance, Joseph Schumpeter argues (1956, chap. XXI),
with some force, that only a highly formal kind of democracy in which citizens vote
in an electoral process for the purpose of selecting competing elites is highly desirable
while a conception of democracy that draws on a more ambitious conception of
equality is dangerous. On the other hand, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762, Book II,
chap. 1) is apt to argue that the formal variety of democracy is akin to slavery
while only robustly egalitarian democracies have political legitimacy. Others have
argued that democracy is not desirable at all. To evaluate their arguments we must
decide on the merits of the different principles and conceptions of humanity and
society from which they proceed.
The rise of the sovereign state
In medieval Europe there were two institutions with pretensions to power over the continent as a whole – the (Catholic) Church and the Empire. The Church was the spiritual authority, with its centre in Rome. Apart from a small Jewish minority, all Europeans were Christian and the influence of the Church spread
far and penetrated deeply into people’s lives. As the custodian, from Roman times, of institutions like the legal system and the Latin language, the Church occupied a crucial role in the cultural and intellectual life of the Middle Ages. The Empire – known as the Holy Roman Empire – was established in the tenth century in central, predominantly German-speaking, Europe. It also included parts of Italy, France and today’s Netherlands and Belgium. It too derived legitimacy from the Roman Empire, but had none of its political power. The Holy Roman Empire is best compared to a loosely structured federation of many hundreds of separate political units.
The political system of medieval Europe was thus a curious combination of the local and the universal. Yet, from the fourteenth century onward this system was greatly simplified as the state emerged as a political entity located at an intermediate level between the local and the universal. The new states simultaneously set themselves in opposition to popes and emperors on the universal level, and to feudal lords, peasants and assorted other rulers on the local level. This is how the state came to make itself independent and self-governing. The process started in Italy where northern city-states such as Florence, Venice, Ravenna and Milan began playing the pope against the emperor, eventually making themselves independent of both. Meanwhile, in Germany, the pope struggled with the emperor over the issue of who of the two should have the right to appoint bishops. While the two were fighting it out, the constituent members of the Holy Roman Empire took the opportunity to assert their independence. This was also when the kings of France and England began acting more independently, defying the pope’s orders. Between 1309 and 1377, the French even forced the pope to move to Avignon, in southern France. In England, meanwhile, the king repealed the pope’s right to levy taxes on the people.
With the Reformation in the sixteenth century the notion of a unified Europe broke down completely as the Church began to split apart. Before long the followers of Martin Luther, 1483–1546, and John Calvin, 1509–1564, had formed their own religious denominations which did not take orders from Rome. Instead the new churches aligned themselves with the new states. Or rather, various kings, such as Henry VIII in England or Gustav Vasa in Sweden, took advantage of the religious strife in order to further their own political agendas. By supporting the Reformation, they could free themselves from the power of Rome. All over northern Europe, the new ‘Protestant’ churches became state-run and church lands became property of the state. Yet, the new divisions were cultural and intellectual too. With the invention of the printing press, power over the written word moved away from the monasteries and into the hands of private publishers who sought markets for their books. The biggest markets were found in books published not in Latin but in various local languages. From the early eighteenth century onwards Latin was no longer the dominant language of learning. As a result, it was suddenly far more difficult for Europeans to understand each other.
In this climate, the increasingly self-assertive states were not only picking fights with universal institutions but also with local ones. In order to establish themselves securely in their new positions of power, the kings rejected the traditional claims of all local authorities. This led to extended wars in next to all European countries. Peasants rose up in protest against taxes and the burdens imposed by repeated wars. There were massive peasant revolts in Germany in the 1520s with hundreds of thousands of participants and almost as many victims. In the latter part of the sixteenth century, there were major peasant uprisings in Sweden, Croatia, England and Switzerland. In France, in the middle of the seventeenth century, the nobility rose up in defence of its traditional rights and in rebellion against the encroachments of the king.
Medieval kings were really quite powerless. They had no proper bureaucracies at their disposal, no standing armies and few ways of raising money. In fact, there were few good roads, ports and not many large cities. These, however, soon came to be constructed. From the sixteenth century onwards the states established the rudiments of an administrative system and raised armies, both in order to fight their own peasants and in order to defend themselves against other states. Since such state-building was expensive, the search for money became a constant concern. The early modern state was more than anything an institutional machinery designed to develop and extract resources from society. In return for their taxes, the state provided ordinary people with defense and a rudimentary system of justice. If they refused to pay up, state officials had various unpleasant ways to make them suffer.
Early modern Europe was the golden age of political economy. During this period, the economy was not thought of as a distinct sphere separated from politics but instead as a tool of statecraft which the state could manipulate to serve its own ends. Economic development meant higher revenues from taxes and gave the kings access to more resources which they could use in their wars. The state was keen to encourage trade, not least since taxes on trade were a lot easier to collect than taxes on land. It was now that a search began for natural resources – agricultural land, forests, iron and copper ore, but also manpower – which the state might make use of. Maps were drawn up which located these resources within the country’s borders, and lists were made of births, marriages and deaths in order to better keep track of the population. Domestic industries were set up and given state subsidies, above all in militarily significant sectors such as metal works and in sectors that were easy for the state to tax. In addition, various ‘useful sciences’ wereencouraged, by the newly established scientific academies, and prizes were given to innovations and discoveries. In state-sponsored universities, future members of the emerging administrative class were taught how best to regulate society and assure peace and social order.
