Radical Interpretation in Religion

This landmark interdisciplinary volume presents new methodological options for the study of religion in the twenty-first century. Ten distinguished scholars offer radical interpretations of religious belief and language from a variety of perspectives: anthropology of religion, ritual studies, cognitive psychology, semantics, post-analytic philosophy, history of religions, and philosophy of religion. For the first time, a collection of original essays explores the significance of Donald Davidson’s ‘radical interpretation’, Robert Brandom’s ‘inferentialism’, and Richard Rorty’s pragmatism for issues in the study of religion. Related topics include cultural variations in belief from Madagascar to China, experimental research from cognitive science, and the semantics of myth, metaphor, mana and manna. Radical Interpretation in Religion will be of interest to both general readers and specialists seeking a deeper understanding of new directions in the study of religion.