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The roar of the lion, the taste of the salt: on really religious reasons

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2012

STEVEN G. SMITH
STEVEN G. SMITH*
Affiliation:
Department of Religious Studies, Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi 39210, USA e-mail: smithsg@millsaps.edu
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Abstract

Some of the most significant religious appeals can be taken as reasons of a distinctively religious kind. But many popular ways of interpreting religious reasoning pose obstacles to appreciating religious reasons as such. To avoid binding the concept of religious reason to an intellectual programme that requires a disjunction between the religious and the rational or that dissolves all tension between religious claims and general rational standards of validity and normativity, religious reasons can be defined for purposes of liberal study by their challenging yet rationally appreciable transvalid claims and transnormative implications. Examples from the book of Amos and the Chandogya Upanishad are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , December 2012 , pp. 479 - 496
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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