Religion (1996) 26, 275­281
REVIEW ESSAY
Religion, Reductionism, and the Seduction of
Epistemology
GUSTAVO BENAVIDES
After the publication of Religion and Reductionism it should no longer be possible, in
principle at least, to employ the term `reductionism' in the cavalier manner favored by
advocates of theological and para-theological approaches to study of religion*. Indeed,
some of the essays--particularly Thomas Ryba's demanding but rewarding `Are
religious theories susceptible to reduction?'--provide a much needed guide to the
discussions taking place in the philosophy of science, discussions which are generally
overlooked in the controversies, both written and oral, in which scholars of religion
engage. Since many, or perhaps most, of these oral exchanges amount merely to the
reflex-like condemnation of a theoretical position or methodological approach whose
characteristics are supposedly understood by everyone, one would hope that by showing
that one can be a reductionist by reducing religion to social processes, but also by
reducing it to the experiencing of `the sacred', this collection will put an end to those
reflexes [both critics and admirers of that anti-reductionist champion, Mircea Eliade,
will be surprised to find him classified as a reductionist by replacement (pp. 101­12), but
also of being guilty of anti-reductionist eliminativism (53)].
But one should not be so optimistic (or naive) to believe that elegant reasoning or
copious footnotes will change many minds (assuming, of course, that those minds will
spend the time necessary to acquaint themselves with the reasoning and with the
relevant literature): what is worth studying about theological and non-theological
approaches to religion is the fact that they seem to be condemned to function as
competing metalanguages--eternally condemned, as it were, to try to account for and
to subsume the rival discourse. Therefore, Lorne Dawson's complaint that `debates over
reductionism in religious studies often read like feuds between `straw men' ', and that
the `participants to these debates fail to take due advantages of theoretical developments
in the social sciences' (144), fails itself to take into consideration the fact that these
debates seem to require constructing straw men as well as disregarding or misreading the
literature on the subject. This is an issue that deserves more extended treatment and to
which I expect to return in a future publication.
A dimension of the discussion about reductionism that is likewise generally disregarded
in this volume (and elsewhere) is the political one. Are the controversies about
a sui generis or `reducible' religion simply the result of competing philosophical attitudes,
or should one place these debates in larger cultural and political contexts?1
Unfortunately,
neither this issue, nor the fact that the debate about reductionism seems to
flourish precisely in North America are subject to the exercise in reflexivity--or
metareflexivity--that would seem to be required. There is a mention of the political
aspect of this problem in Daniel Merkur `Reflections of a working historian'; however,
* Thomas A. Idinopulos and Edward A. Yonan (eds), Religion and Reductionism: Essays on Eliade, Segal and the
Challenge of the Social Sciences in the Study of Religion, Leiden, Brill, 1994. viii + 238 pp. $71.50, ISBN 90 04 09870 4.
0048­721X/96/030275 + 07 $18.00/0  1996 Academic Press Limited
Merkur's remarks about `the sort of occult viewpoint that we might expect of a former
Iron Guardian' (i.e. Eliade) (p. 255) are more cryptic than illuminating.
As is to be expected in a collection of this nature, the 16 essays that comprise the
volume set out to explore this cluster of issues from various perspectives and with
varying degrees of success. In the introductory chapter, Robert Segal returns to the
issues he has explored in a number of publications. Those who are familiar with his
articles, beginning with `In defense of reductionism' (1983), many of which have been
collected in two volumes (Segal, 1989, 1992), will encounter a typically terse
restatement of his position: non-reductionist approaches are inferior to reductionist
ones; explanations are not necessarily reductive, and, conversely, interpretations are not
necessarily non-reductive; to assume that there is something like the `religiousness' or
religion is as unwarranted as taking for granted the `literariness' of literature; to fend-off
social scientists, religionists have moved from denying the relevance of the social
sciences for the study of religion to embracing anthropologists and sociologists such as
Turner, Geertz, Douglas, Bellah, and Berger, among others. While it is difficult not to
admire Segal's merciless scrutiny of theological and crypto-theological approaches to
religion as well as his spirited defense of reductionism, one finds oneself asking, along
with several of the contributors to Religion and Reductionism, whether the reductionism
postulated and defended by Segal is ever going to descend from its Platonic heights and
assume a form, any form. Indeed, the question one eagerly asks is the following: what
is religion to be reduced to? To social, psychological, neurological, biological, chemical,
physical processes and structures? What kind of life would one live or want to live after
carrying to their logical conclusion any given reductionist approach? As Thomas
Idinopulos wisely observes (in a chapter with whose premises I otherwise disagree), `If
we are to accept Segal's argument that reductionism is a `superior' mode of analyzing
religion, we need to know something about the kind of new and more authentic human
life that results from that analysis' (81).
Now, in order to develop his position Segal does refer to arch-reductionists, such as
Feuerbach, Marx and Freud, who have indeed proposed visions of human life. He
argues, for instance, that Marx `deems religion dysfunctional because he deems it false,
but he does not deem religion false because he deems it dysfunctional' (11). But is this
claim warranted by Marx's approach to religion? Is it the case that Marx is, like Segal,
concerned only with epistemological issues--with whether religion is true or false--or
is it the case rather that Marx is compelled to subject religion to his critique because
religion, `as an inverted consciousness of the world', as `the fantastic realization of human
essence' (Marx 1844/1994, p. 28), would be dysfunctional in terms of fulfilling his
vision about communism, that is, the true realization of human essence? After all, in the
second of the so-called `Theses on Feuerbach' Marx writes, `The question whether
human thinking can reach objective truth--is not a question of theory but a practical
question' (Marx, 1845/1994, p. 99). To be sure, neither Segal's essay nor mine is about
Marx; nevertheless, I think that Marx's critique of Feuerbach points to the core of what
is problematic with most of the contributions to Religion and Reductionism, and, in
general, with this entire discussion: its disembodied character, the fact, to paraphrase the
First Thesis on Feuerbach, that religion `is conceived only in the form of the object of
perception, but not as sensuous human activity'. Segal's epistemological--one would be
tempted to say theological--concerns, which he shares with the majority of the
contributors to this volume, lead him, and them, to neglect the materiality and the ritual
aspect of religion--religion as practical, human-sensuous activity' (Thesis 5). Thus, on
p. 6 he writes: `Who would deny that self-professed believers offer prayers and sacrifices
276 G. Benavides
because they believe in god?' Is it the case, however, that the concept of belief is as
unproblematic as Segal seems to imply? Why, indeed, do `self-professed believers offer
prayers and sacrifices'? Is it because they have come to the considered conclusion that
there is a god with whom they should establish a specific kind of relationship? No
doubt, such an explanation would do justice to the behavior of many religious people
now as well as in previous generations; but one could very well reverse the chain of
reasoning and argue that it is because people have been trained to pray and make
offerings, and move their bodies in peculiar ways, that they have come to believe,
although mostly in a semi-propropositional manner, in their gods. The complex give
and take between unspoken assumptions and religious behavior, between ritual activity
and belief, and among bodily practices,2
feelings and religious representations are
ignored due to the relentless intellectual bent of most of the contributions.3
It is true that
Terry Godlove has addressed this issue in `The instability of religious belief: some
reductionist and eliminative approaches'; but in this case also, in approaching religious
experience and its relation to belief, the author does not pay enough attention to the
activities of those who believe x or y. If, unlike Godlove, one were to pay attention to
what happens to the bodies of those who`step over the threshold to the altar', we would
be less concerned with what they believe about the continuous or discontinuous
character of that space (p. 58), than with the changes in their posture, movements and
facial expression, and with the significance of those changes. It is an indication of the
character of these discussions that instead of referring to a particular belief, or to a
particular set of ritual actions, Godlove is content with remaining at the metatheoretical
level and referring only to the theories advanced by Staal, Bell, Smith, Lawson and
McCauley.4
In `Human reflexivity and the non-reductive explanation of religious action', Lorne
Dawson is concerned not with the problem of reductionism, which he, in effect,
places outside the boundaries of what can be meaningfully discussed, but rather with the
rationality of religious actions. After an infinitely subtle, if perhaps not altogether
necessary, discussion of theories of rationality and explanation, he focuses on the
assessment of `the relative rationality of a religious believer's actions', `by discerning
the degree of reflexivity displayed by the believer with regard to his or her actions'
(pp. 159­60). Using C Wright Mills' `Situated actions and vocabularies of motive', he
comes to the conclusion that `religious talk is distinguished by some conceptual
reference to a culturally transcendent order or dimension' (p. 160);5
to those who would
question not the `reality' but `the rationality of accepting the reality of the culturally
postulated transcendent', he responds that `such questions carry us beyond the
methodologically warranted bounds of the social scientific study of religion and
into metaphysics or morality' (p. 160).6
It would seem, then, that, according to Dawson,
as long as one exercises a modicum of reflexivity one can believe in whatever one
wishes and act accordingly (a similar kind of reasoning can be found in Godlove's
` `sociological argument' for the existence of God', a perverse exercise in crypto-
theology7
). An openly theological position, on the other hand, can be found in
Tony Edwards' `Religion, explanation, and the askesis of inquiry'. In the postmodern
way that is becoming increasingly common these days--one which seems to have
transformed the old-fashioned hermeneutical charity principle into a universal compassion
which warmly allows, indeed celebrates everything, especially people's selfunderstanding--Edwards
is also concerned with defending people's self description
against the disrespect, offensiveness and bad feeling which seem to be present in any act
of redescription (pp. 170­1, 178). Unlike Dawson, however, Edwards is not interested
Religion, Reductionism, and the Seduction of Epistemology 277
in the role that reflexivity may play in somehow validating one's self-description;
what seems to concern him--along with Richard Rorty, one of whose stupefying
`insights' is quoted on p. 170--is merely the need to protect at all costs people's
self-understanding.
The one contributor who has moved beyond the narrow concern with epistemological
issues, and with the ultimately theological concern with the truth or falsity of
religion, is Ivan Strenski. In `Reductionism without tears' he maintains that Segal's
`biggest mistake is to have taken up with the agenda dictated by the anti-reductionists
in the first place' (p. 96) and asks, in an appropriately impatient tone, `Why not simply
dump the entire agenda of theological discussion of reduction?' (p. 97). One cannot but
agree with Strenski when he asks that in discussing disciplinary autonomy one pay
attention to the realities of academic politics, funding and the like [on this issue he is
supported by Donald Wiebe, who in his `Postscript: on method, metaphysics and
reductionism' attacks what he calls Daniel Pals' (disciplinary) essentialism (p. 124)]. On
the other hand, Strenski's rather hurried treatment of all that is gained when one for
example focuses on the `religious'--as different from, say, the `political'--aspect of
shi`a martyrdom (p. 106), should be supplemented with Ryba's nuanced discussion
of the epistemological vs. ontological relationship between basic and special sciences
(pp. 34­35), a discussion that has the advantage of considering the issue of hierarchies of
explanation. Given the limited space at my disposal, I shall add that Daniel Pals devotes
his essay to showing how the distinctions made by Segal are not as clear-cut as he would
want them to be (for Pals' own position one should refer to his articles), and that
William Padden offers an illuminating treatment of Durkheim's non-theological
understanding of `the sacred'.
Besides the already-mentioned disregard for religious activity and for the physical
aspects of religion, a cause for concern is the narrow geographic and linguistic limits
imposed to the discussion. By this I do not refer to the fact that only scholars working
at the time in Canada and the United States were invited to participate in the conference
that resulted in this volume--logistic, budgetary and other reasons make such limitations
unavoidable and perhaps even desirable. What I mean is that even when their positions
parallel those of the contributors to the volume, reference to the contributions of
scholars who do not work in either the United States or Canada are almost entirely
absent (Merkur mentions in passing `Scandinavian, Italian and Israeli historians of
religion' (p. 225), but then switches, staccato-like, to a discussion of Weber's ideal types).
This is not the place to review the debates about the sui generis nature of religion, the
role of explanation and understanding and related issues that take place outside the upper
part of the northern portion of the western hemisphere; nonetheless, it may be worth
pointing out that the unashamedly theological position defended for example by Carl
Keller, for whom the `science des religions est une sort de théologie fondamentale',8
has
something in common with the somewhat more restrained--or more `qualified'--ones
proposed in several of the essays in Religion and Reductionism; or that Dawson's
`open-ended', and therefore `epistemologically more responsible policy' towards the
transcendent (Dawson 1987, pp. 238, 242), has much in common with Peter Antes',
Rainer Flasche's and also Keller's approaches. Antes maintains that `The conclusions
obtained from an anthropological approach . . . may not exclude the truths offered by
traditional answers';9
according to Flasche, the Religionswissenschaft has to concern itself
with the `Selbstverständnis der Gläubigen', as well as with a `total andersartige
Wirklichkeit';10
finally Keller proposes `l'acceptation méthodolique' `de l'existence des
partenaires `autres' de l'homme' (Keller 1988, p. 157). It is also necessary to mention
278 G. Benavides
that disregard for scholarship in languages other than English (or produced outside the
English-speaking world) leads Strenski to write that `news about the religious dimension
of the Iranian revolution was delivered by scholars from departments of political science
or history, when students of religion should have been in the forefront' (p. 107): in fact,
students of religion, although not necessarily those belonging to the American Academy
of Religion, were among the first to explore these issues, among them Hans Kippenberg
(1981) and Jan Hjärpe (1982, in English). The important question, however, is whether
one can afford to engage in these debates without taking into consideration the
contributions by, among others, Bianchi,11
Cancik, Gladigow,12
Kippenberg,13
Rudolph,14
Seiwert15
or Waardenburg16
--scholars who deal, or have dealt, with
methodological issues, but also with specific cultural developments in Greek and
Roman religions, ancient and contemporary Gnosticism, Judaism, Islam, and Chinese
religions.
Perhaps what we need now is a companion volume to Religion and Reductionism: a
collection of essays, perhaps by the same authors, in which the virtues of reductionist,
non-reductionist and `qualified' approaches would be tested. In his valuable and unfairly
neglected Spiegare o comprendre la religione?, Aldo Terrin, after discussing some of the
issues the contributors to Religion and Reductionism are concerned with, examines (not
unlike P. McGinty, Interpretation and Dionysos) various interpretations of the god
Dionysos.17
Would it not be an exhilarating intellectual experience to descend from the
realm of metatheory in order to read a number of studies about beliefs and practices of
specific groups at a given historical period, written in a manner that foregrounds the
researcher's theoretical position or methodological approach?
Notes
1 For an attempt in this direction see Benavides 1995.
2 On this issue one should consult Connerton 1989 as well as Bloch 1974.
3 I have already made this point in my review of Segal's Explaining and Interpreting Religion, which
appeared in Christian Century, 13­20 July, 1994, 297­8. It may be worth pointing out that last
sentence of the review I sent to the journal read as follows: `[the investigation of the connection
between ritual and belief] would move us from the purely epistemological terrain to one which
may lead to cooperation among students of religion, anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists'.
The printed version reads: `. . . cooperation between theologians, anthropologists,
sociologists and psychologists' (emphasis added).
4 In making his argument Godlove agrees with the theologian Robert Wilken about the need not
to `narrow the circle of people we will talk to' (p. 56), and thereby disregards Ryba's lucid point
(made not against Godlove but against Segal!) about the fallacy of ad populum arguments
(p. 36).
5 See also Dawson 1987.
6 Dawson's position is similar to the one advanced most recently by Clarke and Byrne who accuse
Durkheim of making `a metaphysical choice' when denying the existence of a non-mundane
reality; see Clarke and Byrne 1993, p. 171.
7 See Godlove 1989, pp. 195­6.
8 Keller 1988, p. 160; Keller concludes his article as follows: `. . . Car le chrétien a de fortes raisons
de penser--et de le dire courageusement--que tous les mystres de l'Ultime s'éclairent  la
lumire de Jésus-Christ'.
9 Antes, 1979a, p. 282 (English Summary); on the same page he writes: `. . . müssen allen
Aussagen so formuliert werden, das die Wahrheit bestimmter Antworten nicht generell--
sozusagen ex officio--abgelehnt wird. Religionswissenschaftliche Forschung mus sich
diebezüglich neutral und offen zugleich verhalten'. See also Antes 1978, 1979b, 1986.
10 See Flasche 1981, esp. pp. 229, 231.
11 See, among many other contributions, Bianchi 1970, 1972, 1974, 1975/76. Bianchi's position
is similar to the one proposed in Saler 1993.
Religion, Reductionism, and the Seduction of Epistemology 279
12 See Cancik's and Gladigow's contributions to Cancik, Gladigow and Laubscher (eds), Handbuch
religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe (of which three volumes have already been published).
Unlike The Encyclopedia of Religion, published under the general editorship of Mircea Eliade, this
is a Handbuch of basic concepts in the study of religion and does not include entries on religious
history. This important publication does not seem to have had any impact in English-speaking
countries.
13 See Kippenberg 1983.
14 Rudolph 1962 and the essays reprinted in 1992.
15 See Seiwert 1977; at the conclusion of this article Seiwert writes: `Die Religionswissenschaft
hat zu sehr versucht, ihre Andersarstigkeit und Sonderstellung zu betonen, anstatt sich auf
die gemeinsame Basis aller empirischen Wissenschaften zu besinnen: Rationalität und
U}berprüfbarkeit der Aussagen'. Particularly important is Seiwert 1981.
16 See Waardenburg 1984.
17 See Terrin 1983; it is a pity that this book is not available in translation.
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GUSTAVO BENAVIDES is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Villanova
University. Among his most recent publications are articles in Religion and in Curators of
the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism (University of Chicago Press 1995).
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19085,
U.S.A.
Religion, Reductionism, and the Seduction of Epistemology 281