On Studying Comparative Religion

The Dutch writer Menno ter Braak once observed that when there is no bacon in the larder you tend to spend your time sharpening your knives. In a different context a somewhat similar remark concerning his preoccupation with the sharpening of his analytical tools was made by the philosopher Husserl. Applying these remarks—without the least intent of facetiousness—to the comparative study of religions, we might say that concern with methodology should be an occasional pastime, in which we may indulge at moments when we take an occasional respite from our substantive labours—but with plenty of bacon, as it were, in the larder. The quinquennial congresses of the International Association for the History of Religions are undoubtedly an appropriate occasion for such critical and reflective introspection. In fact, some of the best methodological clarifications come not from a priori legislators but from active researchers stepping back for a moment, putting some distance between their nose and the grindstone, and asking themselves what exactly they and their colleagues have been and are doing, and how they should best proceed. (I am thinking, e.g., of J. Schwab's penetrating and profound essay ‘What do Scientists do?’ as an outstanding example of such reflection by a natural scientist.) Whilst the sterility of abstract discussions about the definition of religion is generally admitted, it should be acknowledged that some exceedingly helpful suggestions have been made by practising field-workers and historians of religion. I am thinking of e.g., C. Geertz, M. Spiro, and Th. van Baaren. Other examples of the theoretical clarifications resulting from the interaction—addicts of the currently fashionable jargon would say ‘feedback’—between attempts at definition and the actual praxis of historians of religion are H. Ch. Puech's short introduction and A. Brelich's major Prolégomènes in vol. i of the Pléiade Histoire des Religions (1970), as well as U. Bianchi's thoughtful and thought-provoking recent contribution. Clearly students of religion continue to be very much exercised by the double problem of the nature of their subject-matter and of the proper methods of studying it.