REL-2350 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Wei Shou, History Of China, Taoism
Document Summary
Changes in criteria and systems of classification and in the awareness of the classifiers. Within even neutral statements are implications that determine the questions we ask and the assumptions we make about the nature of religions: discourse of religions is rooted in western history. Smith: religion is simply our word for a universally existent entity or a recognized category. To speak of religions is to demarcate things in ways that are not inevitable or immutable but are contingent on the shape of western history/thought/institutions. Other cultures lack equivalent demarcations: jonathan smith says that the term religion is only used to summarize a. Morality of regard for local interpretations but we must interpret, so it is not possible to not use the term. Categorizing leads to illusions that the category is universal and natural: just because it was not necessarily categorized as a religion doesn"t mean that there weren"t analogous things.
