Inquiry and Argument in the Secular Academy

Abstract

Abstract Part IV turns to an extended engagement with the academic study of religion, which is often constitutively hostile to any form of theology. Chapter 11 identifies some of the norms of inquiry and argument that prevail in the secular academy in order to show that analytic theology conforms to those very same norms. I develop a framework for academic argument that depends on the notion of “discursive commitments,” taken from the pragmatist philosophy of Robert Brandom and Jeffrey Stout. Here is the central insight: when we engage in academic argument, we are obliged to support our claims with reasons and evidence, and to respond with reasons and evidence when our claims are appropriately challenged.