Comparing what?
Purushottama Bilimoria writes*,
“So the question comes down to this: can religions in reality be compared? A positive answer to this presumes that (1) there is a multiplicity of religious phenomena across various cultures, (2) they can be grouped into ‘‘religions,’’ and (3) they have something in common (e.g., a belief in the transcendent or in ‘‘sacred things’’ and in the possibility of salvation or liberation).
But on the other hand, if we were to suppose that each religion is an organic whole and to that extent a system complete in itself in a way that no part of it can be isolated and considered separately from the other parts, how is comparison possible? If each part had a particular function that could not be explicable outside the system of which it is a part, then any assumptions about a ‘‘comparable’’ part in another religion might well be spurious.”
In response I ask, is the concept of “mass” in Newtonian and Einsteinian physics, respectively, a part with a function inexplicable outside of the system? Yet aren’t we able, if not to reconcile the two systems, to successfully compare the two? Granted, Bilimoria isn’t arguing that comparative religious study is fruitless, but pointing out the need for more of a critical standpoint while undertaking it. After all, the origin of comparative studies was prescriptive in nature, a quest for the natural religion which all human beings shared. While this isn’t the motivation for most scholars today, there’s leftover methodological and conceptual baggage to be addressed.
Think about even the most basic analytical categories that scholars assume when undertaking comparative studies: concepts like “necessity, universal, essential, analyticity, a prioricity, ens realissimum, the transcendent, and transcendental.” Where do they come from? Billmoria goes on, “…each has a root in an earlier theological, even biblical, term expressive of notions, respectively, like eternity, immutability, distinguishing mark, predestined, neverbefore revelation (akin to the Sanskrit apurva), identity of likenesses, God’s will for the natural, and attributes of the heavenly order, et cetera.”
What we look for in comparison (concepts like those above) will be framed by our own historical location, whether we are aware of it or not. This doesn’t make the project invalid, only located. Awareness of that locatedness and another doubling-back, onto the comparative project itself, may seem to be academic overkill, but it is necessary.
*Citations from “What is the ‘Subaltern’ of the Comparative Philosophy of Religion?”, Philosophy East & West Volume 53, Number 3 July 2003 340–366