Mikel Burley
Biographic Data
| ID | 1490316 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mikel Burley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mikel |
| FAMILY NAME | Burley |
| SIGNATURE | BURLEY M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7446-3564 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Not so much thought out as danced out’
When the anthropologist R. R. Marett affirmed that certain forms of religion are ‘not so much thought out as danced out’ (1914, xxxi), he was, in effect, anticipating a criticism that has been levelled at philosophy of religion in recent decades – namely, the criticism that this branch of philosophy has frequently underplayed the extent to which religions often prioritize ritual activities (including dance) over intellectual matters. Taking Maret…
Neither 'underpinning' nor 'overarching
One conception of philosophy’s role vis-à-vis religious studies is that of uncovering the ‘conditions of the possibility’ of approaches such as the history, psychology, or sociology of religion. Bernard Lonergan, for example, regarded philosophy of religion as ‘underpinning’ and ‘overarching’ other approaches; hence Jim Kanaris designated Lonergan’s conception of philosophy of religion a ‘philosophy of religious studies’. Without simply rejecting…
New Animism as Cultural Critique?
Is There Such a Thing as Religious Belief
Whether there is such a thing as religious belief has been queried by philosophers who think the attitudes that get called religious beliefs are radically different from standard types of belief. It is sometimes claimed that so-called religious beliefs are, for example, resistant to experiential evidence in ways that genuine types of belief are not. A recent proponent of this contention, Brian Clack (2016), has argued that the lack of connection …
The nature and significance of the Hindu Divine Mother in embodied thealogical perspective
The Hindu Divine Mother is revered by millions of religious practitioners in India and elsewhere, yet this goddess rarely receives attention in Western philosophy of religion. Focusing especially (though not exclusively) on her form as Kālī, this article utilizes sources from Hindu goddess traditions to explicate her contrasting characteristics, which include benign maternality and martial aggression. By adapting an embodied theological (or theal…
African religions, mythic narratives, and conceptual enrichment in the philosophy of religion
Myths, or sacred narratives, have been underexplored in mainstream philosophy of religion, which has also had little to say about African indigenous religions. These lacunae impoverish the philosophy of religion by diminishing its coverage both of the range of human religious possibilities and of the diverse modes through which religious ideas and world-views are conveyed. With particular attention to Yorùbá religion, this article promotes and ex…
‘That’s What Art Does’
The significance of narrative artworks as resources for, and possibly as instances of, philosophical thinking has increasingly been recognized over recent decades. Utilization of such resources in philosophy of religion has, however, been limited. Focusing on film in particular, this article develops an account of film’s importance for a ‘contemplative’ approach to philosophizing about religious ethics, an approach that prioritizes the elucidatio…
Philosophy of Religion in a Radically Pluralist Spirit
I AM enormously indebted to my four interlocutors in this roundtable for their meticulous attention to various aspects of my book, A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion: Cross-Cultural, Multireligious, Interdisciplinary. It is gratifying to learn that there are features of the book that they perceive to be of value as well as stimulating to hear where they consider its weaknesses to lie. In reflecting upon their criticisms, I am reminded of …
Reproaching the Divine
Engaging with works of poetry is one effective, yet hitherto underdeveloped, means of diversifying the philosophy of religion beyond the standard preoccupations with narrow formulations of theism. This article explores and exemplifies this potential in relation to two major poetic figures, namely R. S. Thomas and Rāmprasād Sen. Despite their locations in very different religious contexts—Anglican Christianity in twentieth-century Wales, in the on…
A Shuddering Awareness of Death and Life Together
Ambivalence is a prominent feature of religious traditions, with respect both to the attitudes exhibited in the faith of many religious practitioners and to the qualities embodied in conceptions of the divine. Yet these ambivalences have received little scrutiny from philosophy of religion, especially in its analytic mode. Helping to address this lacuna, the current article comprises critical and constructive components. In a critical vein, it ch…
Dance of the Deodhas
Possession' by a deity or spirit has been a prevalent phenomenon in many religious and cultural milieus, including those of South Asia. Yet it has frequently been neglected by Indologists and marginalized by elite religious authorities. Also underexplored have been forms of goddess worship in Northeast India, where Tantric Hinduism has been strongly influenced by non-Hindu indigenous traditions. Helping to fill these gaps, this article examines t…
Rebirth
Belief in rebirth is among the most common forms of belief in an afterlife. It is also extremely diverse, with a long history and vast geographical spread, a consequence of which is that there is no single model that deserves to be called the conception of rebirth. There are, however, overlapping features between different conceptions, and hence by considering both their similarities and differences an informative picture can be built up. Of two …
The Happy Side of Babel”
Philosophers and other scholars of religion are increasingly recognizing that if philosophy of religion is to remain relevant to the study of religion, its scope must be expanded well beyond the confines of a highly intellectualized and abstract “theism.” Means of engendering this expansion include methodological diversification—drawing upon thickly described accounts of religious life such as those afforded by ethnographies and certain narrative…
Conundrums of Buddhist Cosmology and Psychology
Despite the Buddha’s renowned aversion to metaphysical-cum-cosmological speculation, ostensibly cosmological systems have proliferated in Buddhist traditions. Debates persist over how to interpret these systems, a central puzzle being the relation between apparently cosmological and psychological aspects. This article critically analyzes three main interpretive orientations, namely psychologization, literalism, and the one-reality view. After exa…
Mountains of Flesh and Seas of Blood”
Despite recent moves among philosophers of religion to avoid undue abstraction by giving closer attention to religion’s practical dimensions, such moves commonly remain limited to a relatively narrow range of religious traditions. What D. Z. Phillips has termed the “radical plurality” of religious and nonreligious forms of life, comprising morally troubling as well as edifying varieties, thus continues to be neglected. This article promotes an ex…
Rebirth and ‘ethicisation’ in Greek and South Asian thought
Eating Human Beings
Philosophy as well as anthropology is a discipline concerned with what it means to be human, and hence with investigating the multiple ways of making sense of human life. An important task in this process is to remain open to diverse conceptions of human beings, not least conceptions that may on the face of it appear to be morally alien. A case in point are conceptions that are bound up with cannibalism, a practice sometimes assumed to be so mora…
Approaches to philosophy of religion
What is the point of philosophy of religion? Is it to help us find the right path in life, with the philosopher as guide and mentor? Or is it, as D. Z. Phillips proposes, to contemplate ‘the world in all its variety’, deepening our understanding of multiple perspectives (both religious and non-religious) without trying to appropriate or reject any of them? Recognizing certain shortcomings of the former conception, this article seeks to elucidate …
Philosophy and the Study of Religions
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…
God and Moral Obligation
One of the things for which C. Stephen Evans is best known is his excellent work on Kierkegaard. Though references to Kierkegaard in this new book are fairly scant, they occur here and there. In the concluding section, for instance, Evans quotes the Danish philosopher's striking assertion that there ‘has never been an atheist, even though there certainly have been many who have been unwilling to let what they know (that the God exists) get contro…
"A Petrification of One's Own Humanity"? Nonattachment and Ethics in Yoga Traditions
Karma, Morality, and Evil
The doctrine of karma has been praised as a rational and morally edifying explanatory response to the existence of evil and apparent injustice in the world. Critics have attacked it as a morally misguided dogma that distorts one's vision of reality. This essay, after outlining the traditional doctrine, examines three criticisms that have been central to recent debates: firstly, that the doctrine offers no practical guidance; second, that it faces…
Reincarnation and Ethics
Studies of reincarnation beliefs often assume that these beliefs are logically and historically prior to certain ethical values and practices, and hence that the values and practices are based on, and explained by, the beliefs (or “theory”). This assumption has been challenged by Catherine Osborne, who argues with reference to certain ancient Greek philosophers that the order of priority is the other way round. Through critical engagement with Os…
Atheism and the gift of death
Richard Beardsmore once argued that, although it is possible for atheists and religious believers alike to regard life as a gift, the regarding of one's own death as a gift is open only to the (Christian) believer. I discuss this interesting contention, and argue that, notwithstanding some important differences between the attitudinal possibilities available to atheists and believers in God, there are at least three senses in which an atheist cou…
Mounce and Winch on Understanding (or Not Understanding) an Indigenous Society
Howard Mounce and Peter Winch both made novel and illuminating contributions to discussions about how, or whether, we can understand societies very different from our own – societies that would, these days, be referred to as “indigenous,”“tribal,”“traditional” or “small‐scale.” This paper aims to elucidate some disagreements between Mounce and Winch while also critically engaging in the debate. The concepts of “practice” and “language‐game” are c…
Eating Human Beings
Philosophy as well as anthropology is a discipline concerned with what it means to be human, and hence with investigating the multiple ways of making sense of human life. An important task in this process is to remain open to diverse conceptions of human beings, not least conceptions that may on the face of it appear to be morally alien. A case in point are conceptions that are bound up with cannibalism, a practice sometimes assumed to be so mora…
Philosophy and the Study of Religions
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…
Dance of the Deodhas
Possession' by a deity or spirit has been a prevalent phenomenon in many religious and cultural milieus, including those of South Asia. Yet it has frequently been neglected by Indologists and marginalized by elite religious authorities. Also underexplored have been forms of goddess worship in Northeast India, where Tantric Hinduism has been strongly influenced by non-Hindu indigenous traditions. Helping to fill these gaps, this article examines t…
Mountains of Flesh and Seas of Blood”
Despite recent moves among philosophers of religion to avoid undue abstraction by giving closer attention to religion’s practical dimensions, such moves commonly remain limited to a relatively narrow range of religious traditions. What D. Z. Phillips has termed the “radical plurality” of religious and nonreligious forms of life, comprising morally troubling as well as edifying varieties, thus continues to be neglected. This article promotes an ex…
Karma, Morality, and Evil
The doctrine of karma has been praised as a rational and morally edifying explanatory response to the existence of evil and apparent injustice in the world. Critics have attacked it as a morally misguided dogma that distorts one's vision of reality. This essay, after outlining the traditional doctrine, examines three criticisms that have been central to recent debates: firstly, that the doctrine offers no practical guidance; second, that it faces…
Immortality and Meaning
This article reflects upon the debate, initiated by Bernard Williams in 1973, concerning the desirability of immortality, where the latter expression is taken to mean endless bodily life as a human or humanoid being. Williams contends that it cannot be desirable; others have disputed this contention. I discuss a recent response from Timothy Chappell and attempt to pinpoint the central disagreement between Chappell and Williams. I propose that nei…
Aloneness’ and the problem of realism in classical Sākhya and yoga
The concept of kaivalya (literally, ‘aloneness’) is of crucial importance to the systems of classical Indian philosophy known as Sākhya and Yoga. Indeed, kaivalya is the supreme soteriological goal to which these systems are directed. Various statements concerning this final goal appear in the classical texts—namely, the Sākhyakārikā and Yogasūtra—and yet there is no consensus within modern scholarship about how the concept is to be interpreted. …
Lucretius' Symmetry Argument and the Determinacy of Death 1
Immortality and Meaning
This article reflects upon the debate, initiated by Bernard Williams in 1973, concerning the desirability of immortality, where the latter expression is taken to mean endless bodily life as a human or humanoid being. Williams contends that it cannot be desirable; others have disputed this contention. I discuss a recent response from Timothy Chappell and attempt to pinpoint the central disagreement between Chappell and Williams. I propose that nei…
Atheism and the gift of death
Richard Beardsmore once argued that, although it is possible for atheists and religious believers alike to regard life as a gift, the regarding of one's own death as a gift is open only to the (Christian) believer. I discuss this interesting contention, and argue that, notwithstanding some important differences between the attitudinal possibilities available to atheists and believers in God, there are at least three senses in which an atheist cou…
Mounce and Winch on Understanding (or Not Understanding) an Indigenous Society
Howard Mounce and Peter Winch both made novel and illuminating contributions to discussions about how, or whether, we can understand societies very different from our own – societies that would, these days, be referred to as “indigenous,”“tribal,”“traditional” or “small‐scale.” This paper aims to elucidate some disagreements between Mounce and Winch while also critically engaging in the debate. The concepts of “practice” and “language‐game” are c…
Reincarnation and Ethics
Studies of reincarnation beliefs often assume that these beliefs are logically and historically prior to certain ethical values and practices, and hence that the values and practices are based on, and explained by, the beliefs (or “theory”). This assumption has been challenged by Catherine Osborne, who argues with reference to certain ancient Greek philosophers that the order of priority is the other way round. Through critical engagement with Os…
God and Moral Obligation
One of the things for which C. Stephen Evans is best known is his excellent work on Kierkegaard. Though references to Kierkegaard in this new book are fairly scant, they occur here and there. In the concluding section, for instance, Evans quotes the Danish philosopher's striking assertion that there ‘has never been an atheist, even though there certainly have been many who have been unwilling to let what they know (that the God exists) get contro…
"A Petrification of One's Own Humanity"? Nonattachment and Ethics in Yoga Traditions
Karma, Morality, and Evil
The doctrine of karma has been praised as a rational and morally edifying explanatory response to the existence of evil and apparent injustice in the world. Critics have attacked it as a morally misguided dogma that distorts one's vision of reality. This essay, after outlining the traditional doctrine, examines three criticisms that have been central to recent debates: firstly, that the doctrine offers no practical guidance; second, that it faces…
Approaches to philosophy of religion
What is the point of philosophy of religion? Is it to help us find the right path in life, with the philosopher as guide and mentor? Or is it, as D. Z. Phillips proposes, to contemplate ‘the world in all its variety’, deepening our understanding of multiple perspectives (both religious and non-religious) without trying to appropriate or reject any of them? Recognizing certain shortcomings of the former conception, this article seeks to elucidate …
Philosophy and the Study of Religions
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…
Rebirth and ‘ethicisation’ in Greek and South Asian thought
Eating Human Beings
Philosophy as well as anthropology is a discipline concerned with what it means to be human, and hence with investigating the multiple ways of making sense of human life. An important task in this process is to remain open to diverse conceptions of human beings, not least conceptions that may on the face of it appear to be morally alien. A case in point are conceptions that are bound up with cannibalism, a practice sometimes assumed to be so mora…
Rebirth
Belief in rebirth is among the most common forms of belief in an afterlife. It is also extremely diverse, with a long history and vast geographical spread, a consequence of which is that there is no single model that deserves to be called the conception of rebirth. There are, however, overlapping features between different conceptions, and hence by considering both their similarities and differences an informative picture can be built up. Of two …
The Happy Side of Babel”
Philosophers and other scholars of religion are increasingly recognizing that if philosophy of religion is to remain relevant to the study of religion, its scope must be expanded well beyond the confines of a highly intellectualized and abstract “theism.” Means of engendering this expansion include methodological diversification—drawing upon thickly described accounts of religious life such as those afforded by ethnographies and certain narrative…
Conundrums of Buddhist Cosmology and Psychology
Despite the Buddha’s renowned aversion to metaphysical-cum-cosmological speculation, ostensibly cosmological systems have proliferated in Buddhist traditions. Debates persist over how to interpret these systems, a central puzzle being the relation between apparently cosmological and psychological aspects. This article critically analyzes three main interpretive orientations, namely psychologization, literalism, and the one-reality view. After exa…
Mountains of Flesh and Seas of Blood”
Despite recent moves among philosophers of religion to avoid undue abstraction by giving closer attention to religion’s practical dimensions, such moves commonly remain limited to a relatively narrow range of religious traditions. What D. Z. Phillips has termed the “radical plurality” of religious and nonreligious forms of life, comprising morally troubling as well as edifying varieties, thus continues to be neglected. This article promotes an ex…
Dance of the Deodhas
Possession' by a deity or spirit has been a prevalent phenomenon in many religious and cultural milieus, including those of South Asia. Yet it has frequently been neglected by Indologists and marginalized by elite religious authorities. Also underexplored have been forms of goddess worship in Northeast India, where Tantric Hinduism has been strongly influenced by non-Hindu indigenous traditions. Helping to fill these gaps, this article examines t…
‘That’s What Art Does’
The significance of narrative artworks as resources for, and possibly as instances of, philosophical thinking has increasingly been recognized over recent decades. Utilization of such resources in philosophy of religion has, however, been limited. Focusing on film in particular, this article develops an account of film’s importance for a ‘contemplative’ approach to philosophizing about religious ethics, an approach that prioritizes the elucidatio…
Philosophy of Religion in a Radically Pluralist Spirit
I AM enormously indebted to my four interlocutors in this roundtable for their meticulous attention to various aspects of my book, A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion: Cross-Cultural, Multireligious, Interdisciplinary. It is gratifying to learn that there are features of the book that they perceive to be of value as well as stimulating to hear where they consider its weaknesses to lie. In reflecting upon their criticisms, I am reminded of …
Reproaching the Divine
Engaging with works of poetry is one effective, yet hitherto underdeveloped, means of diversifying the philosophy of religion beyond the standard preoccupations with narrow formulations of theism. This article explores and exemplifies this potential in relation to two major poetic figures, namely R. S. Thomas and Rāmprasād Sen. Despite their locations in very different religious contexts—Anglican Christianity in twentieth-century Wales, in the on…
A Shuddering Awareness of Death and Life Together
Ambivalence is a prominent feature of religious traditions, with respect both to the attitudes exhibited in the faith of many religious practitioners and to the qualities embodied in conceptions of the divine. Yet these ambivalences have received little scrutiny from philosophy of religion, especially in its analytic mode. Helping to address this lacuna, the current article comprises critical and constructive components. In a critical vein, it ch…
The nature and significance of the Hindu Divine Mother in embodied thealogical perspective
The Hindu Divine Mother is revered by millions of religious practitioners in India and elsewhere, yet this goddess rarely receives attention in Western philosophy of religion. Focusing especially (though not exclusively) on her form as Kālī, this article utilizes sources from Hindu goddess traditions to explicate her contrasting characteristics, which include benign maternality and martial aggression. By adapting an embodied theological (or theal…
African religions, mythic narratives, and conceptual enrichment in the philosophy of religion
Myths, or sacred narratives, have been underexplored in mainstream philosophy of religion, which has also had little to say about African indigenous religions. These lacunae impoverish the philosophy of religion by diminishing its coverage both of the range of human religious possibilities and of the diverse modes through which religious ideas and world-views are conveyed. With particular attention to Yorùbá religion, this article promotes and ex…
New Animism as Cultural Critique?
Philosophy (25 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Theology (11 works) · Art (8 works) · Religious studies (8 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Theology and Philosophy of Evil (7 works) · Indian and Buddhist Studies (6 works)