Once the semester ended, I shifted gears to research and have not been back to the blog over the last two months. Before writing about current projects -- and classes, which start in a couple weeks! -- I thought it would be good to write a little more about the philosophy of religion course.
As has been discussed in the philosophy blogosphere in recent weeks, many philosophers are uncertain about the place of the subfield in the larger field of philosophy. Even so, in that discussion at Daily Nous and later in a discussion over at NewAPPS, a number of constructive suggestions were offered for teaching philosophy of religion in a way that approaches the category of religion critically and the subfield itself with an eye to philosophical and religious diversity.
My goals in teaching this course were to teach it in a way relevant to contemporary Chinese students. Of course, above all, this meant that the course needed to treat the concept of "religion" critically, being as how it is not a natural kind term. Furthermore, the term which is used to translate "religion", "zongjiao" does not have the same associations the English term has. It was also important to spend time on this issue so that any areas of potential misunderstanding could be identified and dealt with.
It also meant that the conventional approach to the field in the West, of foregrounding issues relating to the existence and attributes of God (especially as reflected in the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions) would not do. While we did read some of that history, it mainly served to show that the field has a lot of work to do to get up to speed with philosophical problems that arise in connection with twenty-first century religious movements. Much more relevant to these students are the philosophical traditions of Buddhism and Daoism, as well as the doctrines, institutions, and/or practices of the five recognized religious traditions in China: Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism.
The students were particularly fond of the cross-cultural and pluralistic approaches to philosophy of religion, especially as advanced by John Clayton, John Hick, and Ninian Smart. Of course, these approaches are not mutually consistent with each other, but I think the students found the humanistic impulse behind each of these approaches refreshing. (Each of these approaches treats religious phenomena as above all human phenomena; if one is interested in understanding humanity in its diversity, then understanding religious systems will play a role in that understanding.)
Also of particular importance to students is the role that Confucianism will play in China's future. Of particular help here was Xiaomei Yang's overview article in Philosophy Compass, "Some Issues in Chinese Philosophy of Religion". The debate over the classification of Confucianism was particularly interesting to students, not least because some of them thought the "debate" consisted in Westerners raising the question of Confucianism's religion-status, and Chinese rejecting the charge. Seeing that this is also at times a debate among Chinese intellectuals helped my students approach this as a live issue (and not just as another example of foreigners misrepresenting Chinese culture).
Most of the students wrote about pluralism in one way or another for their final projects. In this way, the students perceived religions as potential sources of social disharmony; pluralistic approaches towards understanding religions -- and especially religious differences -- were of interest to the students insofar as they seemed to support the ends of mutual co-existence and of a smooth-functioning, orderly society. In this way, the students' attitudes were in line with Confucianism (and some of them explicitly so). I say "in line with" Confucianism, because I detect a layer of ambivalence about Confucianism among many students. While the tradition may be regarded with some measure of pride, most students seem to regard the tradition as irretrievable in the contemporary context (and they may well be right); any retrieval would be also a modification.
All in all, teaching this course was a fascinating experience, one that I'll be thinking about for a long time to come...
