General Abstract: One source of our ideas about religion is the anthropology
and sociology of religions, which took their first steps as modern disciplines
in the decades leading up to the First World War. In these lectures, I'll
explore some of the central ideas of the field in the work of some central
figures—Edward Tylor, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim—and go on to argue that
their ways of framing religions show up in more recent Darwinian work on the
evolution of religion. I'll end by discussing whether the study of what we now
call "religions" is helped or hindered by the conception of religion
the founding fathers invented. Along the way we'll consider the great diversity
of the people, practices, ideas, institutions, and identities, we call
"religious." The project is one on social ontology—trying to
characterize a kind of socially-produced object—and in the philosophy of the
social sciences that aim to explore that object.
"Churches, Morals,
Symbols" Abstract: Among the things that Tylor neglected were the
role of religious institutions in the ethical life of their adherents and the
centrality of religion as a source of moral ideas. He also says very little
about one of the most evident features of much religion, which is the place of
symbolism in ritual and belief. These lacunae were filled in by Durkheim and by
Weber, whose work we'll explore in the second lecture.