Kevin Schilbrack
Biographic Data
| ID | 1032452 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kevin Schilbrack |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kevin |
| FAMILY NAME | Schilbrack |
| SIGNATURE | SCHILBRACK K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Appalachian State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8930-0290 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 54 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 128 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
The Problem of Evil for Atheists
Ian Alexander Cuthbertson, ‘Enchantment: A Critical Primer’
Ian Alexander Cuthbertson, Enchantment: A Critical Primer (Sheffield: Equinox, 2024), 154 pp., $80.00 (cloth), $29.95 (pbk or eBook), ISBN: 9-781-80050-4455
Does analytic theology belong in the public university
An overarching question in William Wood's Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion concerns the conditions under which theology belongs in the public university. On this question, many or most academics today are methodological naturalists, and they would not accept explanations that appeal to supernatural entities. Wood devotes a chapter to arguing against that position. Nevertheless, Wood is not a ‘sectarian’ who argues that Christi…
The Revival of Realism and the Study of Religions
What will the academic study of religions look like in the future? My work in our multi-disciplinary field is philosophical, and my answer to this question describes what seems to me to be a rising development—if not a revolution—happening in philosophy. To appreciate the significance of this development, I want to put it in the context of the history of Western philosophy as a whole. One can consider Western philosophy's history in three stages.…
A Continental Philosophy of the Academic Study of Religion
TOWARD A PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES: ENECSTATIC EXPLORATIONS. By Jim Kanaris. Albany: SUNY Press, 2023. Pp. 210. Cloth: $99.00. Unlike traditional philosophy of religion, a “philosophy of religious studies” would offer philosophical reflection not on religious beliefs, practices, experiences, and institutions, but instead on how academics study such things. As an inquiry into inquiries, it might include the examination of what is involved in…
The Realist Discursive Study of Religion
Filip Rasmussen (2024) argues that the discursive study of religion is misunderstood when one assumes that it focuses only on discourse, ignoring material entities and forces. A discursive approach, he proposes, need not deny the existence or the effects of the material world, and so it is not in conflict with, for example, a critical realist approach to social theory that seeks to explain social behavior in terms of material mechanisms. Rasmusse…
Do you practice the critical study of religion
The term ‘critical’ has become ubiquitous in academia these days. It is always a term of praise, but, for many in the academic study of religion, being critical also provides a marker that distinguishes the kind of scholarship that belongs in the academy from the non-academic approaches that do not belong there. Over the past few hundred years, however, the term has been used to identify very different virtues. In this paper, I distinguish five b…
Emergence Theory and the New Materialisms
Emergence Theory and the New Materialisms
Beyond Heaven and Earth: A Cognitive Theory of Religion
The interdisciplinary field of religious studies includes both the humanities and social sciences in a tricky detente. Some religion scholars focus on interpreting texts, teachings, and rituals in an effort to grasp what religious practitioners understand themselves to be doing. Other scholars want to move beyond the the practitioners’ views to create explanatory accounts of religion in terms of social power, psychological benefits, and modules i…
Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking
Globalization and climate weirding are two of the leading phenomena that challenge and change the way we need to think and act within the planetary community. Modern Western understandings of human beings, animals, and the rest of the natural world and the subsequent technologies built on those understandings have thrown us into an array of social and ecological crises with planetary implications. Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and…
Realism after Postmodernism in the Academic Study of Religion
Parts Behave Differently in Wholes
Sophie Gibb, Robin Findlay Hendry, and Tom Lancaster (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Emergence (New York: Routledge, 2019), 420pp., $245.00 (cloth), ISBN: 978-1138925083. Stuart A. Kauffman, A World beyond Physics: The Emergence and Evolution of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 151pp., $24.95 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0190871338. Mariusz Tabaczek, Emergence: Towards a New Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science (Notre Dame: University of No…
Conceito De Religião
Texto publicado originalmente em 28 de março de 2022 na The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . A tradução segue a versão nos arquivos do SEP, disponível em: . Esta versão traduzida, portanto, pode diferir da versão final, que pode ter sido atualizada desde o momento desta tradução. A versão atual está disponível em: e . Gostaríamos de agradecer ao autor e editores da Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy por conceder permissão para traduzir e pu…
Philosophical Hermeneutics and the Priority of Questions in Religions: Bringing the Discourse of Gods and Buddhas Down to Earth
"Buddhas, gods, prophets and oracles are often depicted as asking questions. But what are we to understand when Jesus asks 'Who do you say that I am?', or Mazu, the Classical Zen master asks, 'Why do you seek outside?' Is their questioning a power or weakness? Is it something we are only capable of due to our finitude? Is there any kind of question that is a power? Focusing on three case studies of questions in divine discourse on the level of st…
Critique vs. Evaluation in Post-colonial Philosophy of Religion
IN A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion, Mikel Burley proposes a model of philosophy of religion that does not include the evaluation of religious truth claims as one of its tasks. On what he calls a “contemplative” model of philosophy of religion, philosophers, like most anthropologists and historians of religion, eschew arguing for or against their objects of study. Instead, they seek “simply” to elucidate the meaning of religious practic…
Hospitality and the ethics of religious diversity
As the discipline of philosophy of religion stretches to become a global, cross-cultural discipline, it takes on ethical questions about how one should treat those who participate in religious forms of life one does not share. This article offers a typology of possible ethical positions in a context of religious diversity and argues that the strongest position is one of conditional hospitality. That is, the moral ideal proposed here is one of wel…
A metaphysics for the study of religion: A critical reading of Russell McCutcheon
Russell McCutcheon is one of the foremost proponents of what he calls "the critical study of religion," that is, the shift to reflect critically on the concepts used in the academic study of religion, who invented them, and why. The critical study of religion leads to the realization that the concepts with which we think were invented by particular people, at a particular historical location, for a particular purpose. What are the philosophical i…
The Material Turn in the Academic Study of Religions
What Does the Study of Religion Study
At the end of the twentieth century, scholars in the academic study of religion made what we might call “the reflexive turn,” in that they picked up the tools of genealogy, deconstruction, and post-colonial studies and they began in earnest to reflect critically on their own conceptual categories. Where did the very concept of “religion” come from? Whose interests are served by this apparently modern, European, and Christian way of categorizing p…
Critical theory and the ontology of “religion”: A response to Thomas Lynch
Thomas Lynch has proposed that scholars of religion can profitably follow Sally Haslanger’s lead and treat “religion,” as she treats race, as a social construction. He argues that this proposal resembles my treatment of “religion” in Philosophy and the Study of Religions, but it goes further by treating “religion” as what Haslanger calls a strongly pragmatic social construction, that is, a category that is solely the product of the use of the con…
The Place of Subjectivity in the Academic Study of Religion: A Response to Craig Martin
This paper responds to post-structuralist criticisms of my book, Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto , made by Craig Martin. In particular, it defends my realist accounts of human beliefs and of religions as structures that operate, respectively, in human subjectivity and in history, even when they are not named
Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities. By Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin
In this book, Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin argue that the use of the word “religion” to translate the Latin religio and the Greek thrēskeia distorts our understanding of antiquity. In assessing their argument, I judge that it helps to distinguish between (1) their lexicographical claim that the modern concept does not capture the shifting semantic range of the Latin and Greek terms; and (2) their ontological claim, foregrounded in the book…
A realist social ontology of religion
Jonathan Z. Smith famously pointed out that the concept of ‘religion’ is not universal but emerged only in the modern West. Several scholars have drawn from Smith the non-realist implication that the existence of religion apart from that concept is an illusion. The word ‘religion,’ they say, does not refer to something out there in the world. In this article, the author argues that Smith’s point is open to a realist interpretation according to wh…
Religious Experience and New Materialism: Movement Matters . Edited by Jeorg Rieger and Edward Waggoner
New Materialism is an emerging stance that seeks to take full account of the causal power and the noninstrumental value of the material world in order to combat the anthropocentrism that has characterized most human thinking, and this volume seeks to show the relevance of this stance to the academic study of religion. The book’s subtitle combines two ideas. First, matter is not inert but has agency; matter moves. Second, revalorizing the material…
Religions: Are There Any
Journal Article Religions: Are There Any? Get access Kevin Schilbrack Kevin Schilbrack E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 78, Issue 4, December 2010, Pages 1112-1138, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfq086 Published: 23 November 2010
Religion, Models of, and Reality: Are We Through with Geertz
Journal Article Religion, Models of, and Reality: Are We Through with Geertz? Get access Kevin Schilbrack Kevin Schilbrack Wesleyan College, Macon, GA 31210-4462. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 73, Issue 2, June 2005, Pages 429-452, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfi042 Published: 01 June 2005
WhatIsn'tReligion
The Social Construction of “Religion” and Its Limits: A Critical Reading of Timothy Fitzgerald
Several theorists argue that the concept of “religion” is not a cultural universal but rather emerged under particular historical and political conditions in the modern post-Reformation west. “Religion,” they say, is a social construction. What are the implications of this view of the ontology of religion? My aim in this paper is to critically engage the arguments of Timothy Fitzgerald—a social constructionist about religion who combines, in my j…
A metaphysics for the study of religion: A critical reading of Russell McCutcheon
Russell McCutcheon is one of the foremost proponents of what he calls "the critical study of religion," that is, the shift to reflect critically on the concepts used in the academic study of religion, who invented them, and why. The critical study of religion leads to the realization that the concepts with which we think were invented by particular people, at a particular historical location, for a particular purpose. What are the philosophical i…
After We Deconstruct ‘Religion,’ Then What? A Case for Critical Realism
Some scholars of religion have turned their attention from religion to “religion” and have then deconstructed the conceptual category, arguing that the concept of religion is an invention of the scholar that corresponds to nothing. In Schilbrack (2012), I used the work of Tim Fitzgerald to identify what such arguments get right and what they get wrong. In the present reply to Fitzgerald, I make a case for critical realism as a methodological stan…
Bruce Lincoln's Philosophy
T h e title o f m y p a p e r is polem ical. Eor this reason I w ant to hegin w ith a b rief sketch and justification for w hat I am aim ing to do
The Study of Religious Belief after Donald Davidson
Scholars in religious studies are increasingly drawing important insights from Davidson's philosophy of language. Unfortunately, the most prominent of Davidson's interpreters in religious studies have been Rortian neopragmatists who, I argue, have read into Davidson views which are not his own. This essay seeks to disentangle Davidson's stance from its neopragmatist interpretations. The goal is to understand his stance in order to see how one mig…
A realist social ontology of religion
Jonathan Z. Smith famously pointed out that the concept of ‘religion’ is not universal but emerged only in the modern West. Several scholars have drawn from Smith the non-realist implication that the existence of religion apart from that concept is an illusion. The word ‘religion,’ they say, does not refer to something out there in the world. In this article, the author argues that Smith’s point is open to a realist interpretation according to wh…
The Material Turn in the Academic Study of Religions
The Place of Subjectivity in the Academic Study of Religion: A Response to Craig Martin
This paper responds to post-structuralist criticisms of my book, Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto , made by Craig Martin. In particular, it defends my realist accounts of human beliefs and of religions as structures that operate, respectively, in human subjectivity and in history, even when they are not named
Towards a Philosophy of Religious Studies: A Response to Critics
This paper responds to critiques of my Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto (Blackwell, 2014) from Jeppe Jensen, Mark Gardiner, Bryan Rennie, and Kenneth MacKendrick. It aims to defend my book’s proposals in such a way as to nudge the discipline of philosophy of religion into a reflexive mode that might be called “philosophy of religion studies.”
Theorizing Religion and the Role of Philosophy
This paper is a response to Patrick Hart’s “Theory, Method, and Madness in Religious Studies,” and it argues that philosophy is presupposed and therefore ineliminable when theorizing religions
Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto. By Kevin Schilbrack
THIS REVIEW ESSAY ROUNDTABLE consists of three reviews by Mikel Burley, Luke Fox, and William Wood. Their reviews are followed by a response from the manifesto's author, Kevin Schilbrack. Taken together, they explore the significance of Philosophy and the Study of Religions, both the book and its implications for future work in the philosophy of religion. Kevin Schilbrack's manifesto offers a diagnosis of the shortcomings of contemporary philosop…
Do you practice the critical study of religion
The term ‘critical’ has become ubiquitous in academia these days. It is always a term of praise, but, for many in the academic study of religion, being critical also provides a marker that distinguishes the kind of scholarship that belongs in the academy from the non-academic approaches that do not belong there. Over the past few hundred years, however, the term has been used to identify very different virtues. In this paper, I distinguish five b…
Conceito De Religião
Texto publicado originalmente em 28 de março de 2022 na The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . A tradução segue a versão nos arquivos do SEP, disponível em: . Esta versão traduzida, portanto, pode diferir da versão final, que pode ter sido atualizada desde o momento desta tradução. A versão atual está disponível em: e . Gostaríamos de agradecer ao autor e editores da Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy por conceder permissão para traduzir e pu…
Critique vs. Evaluation in Post-colonial Philosophy of Religion
IN A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion, Mikel Burley proposes a model of philosophy of religion that does not include the evaluation of religious truth claims as one of its tasks. On what he calls a “contemplative” model of philosophy of religion, philosophers, like most anthropologists and historians of religion, eschew arguing for or against their objects of study. Instead, they seek “simply” to elucidate the meaning of religious practic…
Imagine No Religion: How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities. By Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin
In this book, Carlin A. Barton and Daniel Boyarin argue that the use of the word “religion” to translate the Latin religio and the Greek thrēskeia distorts our understanding of antiquity. In assessing their argument, I judge that it helps to distinguish between (1) their lexicographical claim that the modern concept does not capture the shifting semantic range of the Latin and Greek terms; and (2) their ontological claim, foregrounded in the book…
Emyr Vaughan Thomas, Wittgensteinian Values: Philosophy, Religious Belief and Descriptivist Methodology
The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence: A Naturalist Philosophy of Religion . Jerome A. Stone
Spirituality, Diversion, and Decadence: The Contemporary Predicament . Peter H. van Ness
The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta: A Comparative Study in Religion and Reason
Religious Pluralism and Truth: Essays on Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion. Thomas Dean
Rush Rhees on Religion and Philosophy . D. Z. Phillips
The Formless Self. Joan Stambaugh
The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy. Donald Wiebe
Teaching Comparative Religious Ethics: A Review Essay
Though others have surveyed the different methods in comparative religious ethics, relatively little attention has been given to different approaches to pedagogy (exceptions include Lovin and Reynolds; Juergensmeyer; Twiss). The field of comparative religious ethics has now reached a level of maturity so that there are a variety of ways such courses can be taught. In this review I consider the approaches to comparative religious ethics found in f…
The Study of Religious Belief after Donald Davidson
Scholars in religious studies are increasingly drawing important insights from Davidson's philosophy of language. Unfortunately, the most prominent of Davidson's interpreters in religious studies have been Rortian neopragmatists who, I argue, have read into Davidson views which are not his own. This essay seeks to disentangle Davidson's stance from its neopragmatist interpretations. The goal is to understand his stance in order to see how one mig…
Religious Diversity and the Closed Mind Religious Ambiguity and Religious Diversity . Robert McKim Problems of Religious Diversity . Paul J. Griffiths Religious Diversity: A Philosophical Assessment .…
Thinking Through Myths: Philosophical Perspectives
The Unity of Knowledge and Action: Toward a Nonrepresentational Theory of Knowledge . Warren G. Frisina
Thinking Through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives
Emyr Vaughan Thomas, Wittgensteinian Values: Philosophy, Religious Belief and Descriptivist Methodology
Bruce Lincoln's Philosophy
T h e title o f m y p a p e r is polem ical. Eor this reason I w ant to hegin w ith a b rief sketch and justification for w hat I am aim ing to do
Religion, Models of, and Reality: Are We Through with Geertz
Journal Article Religion, Models of, and Reality: Are We Through with Geertz? Get access Kevin Schilbrack Kevin Schilbrack Wesleyan College, Macon, GA 31210-4462. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 73, Issue 2, June 2005, Pages 429-452, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfi042 Published: 01 June 2005
Myth and metaphysics
Religions: Are There Any
Journal Article Religions: Are There Any? Get access Kevin Schilbrack Kevin Schilbrack E-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 78, Issue 4, December 2010, Pages 1112-1138, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfq086 Published: 23 November 2010
The Social Construction of “Religion” and Its Limits: A Critical Reading of Timothy Fitzgerald
Several theorists argue that the concept of “religion” is not a cultural universal but rather emerged under particular historical and political conditions in the modern post-Reformation west. “Religion,” they say, is a social construction. What are the implications of this view of the ontology of religion? My aim in this paper is to critically engage the arguments of Timothy Fitzgerald—a social constructionist about religion who combines, in my j…
New Directions for Philosophy of Religion: Four Proposals
This set of papers explores the topic of "Possible Futures for Philosophy of Religion." Though the field of philosophy of religion today has grown relatively narrow, these four papers seek to stretch it back out and all four are (as befitting our topic) forward-looking. Although the papers cover several different issues, I am going to shoehorn them into that pre-conceived category-the future of philosophy of religion-and then focus on the parts o…
After We Deconstruct ‘Religion,’ Then What? A Case for Critical Realism
Some scholars of religion have turned their attention from religion to “religion” and have then deconstructed the conceptual category, arguing that the concept of religion is an invention of the scholar that corresponds to nothing. In Schilbrack (2012), I used the work of Tim Fitzgerald to identify what such arguments get right and what they get wrong. In the present reply to Fitzgerald, I make a case for critical realism as a methodological stan…
Philosophical Explorations of New and Alternative Religious Movements
Journal Article Philosophical Explorations of New and Alternative Religious Movements Get access Philosophical Explorations of New and Alternative Religious Movements. Edited by Morgan Luck. Ashgate, 2012. 177 pages. $99.95. Kevin Schilbrack Kevin Schilbrack Western Carolina University [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Volume 81, Issue 1,…
WhatIsn'tReligion
Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto
Philosophy and the Study of Religions: A Manifesto advocates a radical transformation of the discipline from its current, narrow focus on questions of God, to a fully global form of critical reflection on religions in all their variety and dimensions. Opens the discipline of philosophy of religion to the religious diversity that characterizes the world today Builds bridges between philosophy of religion and the other interpretative and explanator…
Religious Pluralism: A Check‐Up
Philosophy (47 works) · Epistemology (37 works) · Sociology (35 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (34 works) · Study and Philosophy of Religion (25 works) · Political science (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Religious studies (14 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Computer Science (10 works)