1663.What Is At Stake

SCANNED PDF

What is at stake for me in defining "religion"-as I've put it-strictly "functionally," instead of "substantively" (d., e.g., Is There Dilly Dlle True Religioll: 9 f., 22 f.)7

VVhat is at stake-and 1believe all that is at stake-is that I'm interested in defining "religion" entirely in terms of the qllestiolZ it asks and answers, together, of course, with whatever its question necessarily presupposes or implies, as distinct from defining it in terms of any of the possible aIlS11JeJ'S to the question given by different specific religions. In other words, there is no more than a verbal difference between my distinguishing between "functional" and "substantive" definitions of "religion," on the one hand, and my distinguishing, on the other hand, between what religions are "formally" and what they are "materially." 

Of course, my distinction between "axial" and "preaxial" religions is itse] f more than a merely "formal," and, insofar forth, a "material," distinction. It is "material" because the questions the axial religions typicaJly ask and answer are themselves materially different from the type of questions asked and answered by the preaxial religions. Whereas questions of the second type are occasioned by so-cal1ed metaphysical evils, or by the "boundary situations" typical of ~ituation commonly cal1ed "the human predicament"-the predicament of freely and responsibly choosing to misunderstand oneself in one's ultimate setting as a fragmentary being who cmz understand, and therefore also 1Illlst understand (or misunderstand) itself and everything else. But the inference to be drawn from this, surely, is that the distinction between "formal" and "material," although, in one sense, absolute, is also, in another sense, or at another level, relative. Concepts/ terms that function in one sense, or at one level, to allswa the religious question ITIay function, in yet another sense, or at another level, to ask it, thereby creating the need for still other concepts/ tenTIS wherewith to answer it as thus asked. fragmentary existence that understands, questions of the first type are occasioned by the unique factual evil of self-misunderstanding, or by the unique factual

,

In any case, 1 feel no need to continue to talk about defining "religion" strictly "functional1y," in addition to saying that, for various reasons, "religion" can and should be defined purely "formally" by analyzing its distinctive question and what that question necessarily presupposes and implies. Assuming, as one surely must, that, whatever else "religion" is, it is a more or less distinguishable form of human culture, or "cultural system" (Clifford Geertz), one may define it purely formally, or generically, as I define it: as the primary form of culture through which the religious question, or, more formaBy still, the existential question, is explicitly asked and answered. Any particular religion, then, is to be defined purely forma])y, and yet specifically, as the primary form of culture constituted by this, that, or the other explicit answer to the religious, or existential, question.

10 June 2009; rev. 6 November 2009