The Invention of World Religions by Tomoko Masuzawa

The Invention of World Religions by Tomoko Masuzawa

The idea of "world religions" expresses a vague commitment to multiculture alism. Not merely a descriptive concept, "world religions" is also a particular ethos, a pluralist ideology, a logic of classification, and a form of knowledge that has shaped the study of religion and infiltrated ordinary language. In this ambitious study, Tomoko Masuzawa examines the emergence of "world religions" in modern European thought through a close reading of a variety of sources as early as the seventeenth century. Devoting particular attention to the relation between the comparative study of language and the nascent science of religion, she demonstrates how new classifications of language and race caused Buddhism and Islam to gain special significance as these religions came to be seen in opposing terms - Aryan on one hand and Semitic on the other. Masuzawa also explores the complex relation of "world religions" to Protestant theology, from the hierarchical ordering of religions typical of the Christian supremacists of the nineteenth century, to the aspirations of early twentieth-century theologian Ernst Troeltsch, who embraced the pluralist logic of "world religions" and by so doing sought to reclaim the universalist destiny of European modernity.

Tomoko Masuzawa is associate professor of history and comparative literature at the University of Michigan. She is the author of In Search of Dream Time: The Quest for the Origin of Religion, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780226509891
ISBN 10	0226509893
Title	The Invention of World Religions
Author	Tomoko Masuzawa
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Year published	2005-05-15
Number of pages	384
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.