Afro-Brazilian Religions and the Prospects for a Philosophy of Religious Practice

Bibliographic Data

ID3323902
AuthorsJosé Eduardo Porcher (0000-0002-5654-8396, Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, corresponding author), F Carlucci (0000-0001-8947-6598, Fleming Medicina, Porto Alegre 90035-006, RS, Brazil)
Year2023
Volume14
Issue2
Pages146
Publication date2023-01-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel14020146
OpenAlexW4318206226
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited39

In this paper, we take our cue from Kevin Schilbrack's admonishment that the philosophy of religion needs to take religious practices seriously as an object of investigation. We do so by offering Afro-Brazilian traditions as an example of the methodological poverty of current philosophical engagement with religions that are not text-based, belief-focused, and institutionalized. Anthropologists have studied these primarily orally transmitted traditions for nearly a century. Still, they involve practices, such as offering and sacrifice as well as spirit possession and mediumship, that have yet to receive attention from philosophers. We argue that this is not an accident: philosophers have had a highly restricted diet of examples, have not looked at ethnography as source material, and thus still need to put together a methodology to tackle such practices. After elucidating Schilbrack's suggestions to adopt an embodiment paradigm and apply conceptual metaphor theory and the extended mind thesis to consider religious practices as thoughtful, we offer criticism of the specifics of his threefold solution. First, it assumes language is linear; second, it takes a problematic view of the body; and third, it abides by a misleading view of the "levels" of cognition. We conclude that the philosophy of religion should adopt enactivism to understand religious practices as cognitive enterprises

Anthropology of religion · Cognition · Cognitive science of religion · Epistemology · History of religions · Metaphor · Philosophy of religion · Religious experience · Sociology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious studies · Social Representations and Identity

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