Does belief have a history?

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the claim, which several important scholars have seemed to endorse, that belief is a historically and culturally contingent mental state. This claim has radical implications, and I try to reconstruct the assumptions about belief that could motivate it and consider whether these assumptions are well founded. I focus particularly on Malcolm Ruel's essay “Christians as believers” but also discuss the work of Rodney Needham, Jean Pouillon, Joel Robbins, Jonathan Mair, and Ethan Shagan. I argue that the assumptions about belief that underlie the claims for its historical and/or cultural contingency are misplaced, and that we have not been given compelling reasons to think that the ascription of beliefs could be anachronistic or ethnocentric.