On the Subject, Purpose and Method of Religious Education as a Practical Metaphysics

Abstract

The aim of this study is to discuss the possibilities of designing the current science of religious education as a practical metaphysics without excluding its objectives. The current science of religious education is a religious pedagogy in terms of the conditions that brought it into existence and its characteristics. Accordingly, religious education activities are carried out after transforming religious knowledge within the limitations of pedagogy. Pedagogy, on the other hand, depends on the paradigm of being, human being and behavior that finds its meaning in natural sciences such as physics and biology, human sciences, especially psychology, and educational sciences, which are established depending on the natural state in which modernity is formed. Religious education activities are therefore bound to a conception of the human being whose capabilities are determined. But, as a newly established discipline, religious education as religious pedagogy naturally does not possess a fully developed theoretical framework (naẓarīyat), and thus, its principles, goals, methods, and the outcomes of religious education activities have not been subjected to a critical analysis. However, education is the process of becoming human, and by taking various differences in meaning into account, it means becoming a social reality, historicizing, and becoming a subject. Religious education as a practical metaphysics which is proposed to replace religous pedagogy, maintains its critical perspective and since it deals with subjectivity and the historicization of subjectivity, pedagogy can be articulated to discourses and institutions taking into account the criteria of verification. The pedagogical approach to religion is inherently anthropological due to the requirements of its discursive characteristics. While it necessarily considers a specific religion and its tradition, it derives its principles from a spectrum of sciences, ranging from natural sciences to educational sciences. Religious education as practical metaphysics isn’t obliged to derive its principles from any specific science, as it’s founded on existence itself. Instead, it calls for the reevaluation of sciences based on potential forms of subjectivity and promotes the establishment of new scientific disciplines. The general framework and concepts adopted in this study are derived from Platonic philosophy and Foucault’s analyses. The current educational paradigm is part of the line extending from Aristotle to modern science. Traditional religious thought, represented by the sciences of the explication (bayān) has established strong links with Aristotelian thought via kalām. Plato's philosophy, on the other hand, provides a third theoretical possibility alongside Aristotelian philosophy and the discipline of kalām. Foucault's analyses on subjectivation, which refers to the socialization of individuals and consequently their historicization, theorize the allegory of the cave in Politeia, which coincides with the verse that the worldly life is play and amusement. The analysis of subjectivity enables us to perceive the human being in a holistic manner, which is reduced in the Aristotelian thought system and fragmented in the discipline of kalām, as it reveals the human existence in its most general characteristics. Religiosity in terms of identity is the primary characteristic of subjectivity. As the science of subjectivity, practical metaphysics will be able to analyze religiosity without dividing it and thus create a new basis for interpreting traditional religious sciences. The study consists of three parts in which the subject, aims and methods of religious education as a practical metaphysics are expounded. The subject of religious education as a practical metaphysics is the most general form of human existence in the world, which is subjectivity. Its purpose is to scrutinize the conditions for the formation of subjectivity and to articulate a process of subjectification integrated with pedagogy. Thus, pedagogy can be conducted in harmony with the general principles of subjectification. Practical metaphysics can use the dialectical method in terms of human relation to truth, archaeology and genealogy for the analysis of subjectivity and forms of subjectivation, and any justified method for its pedagogical dimension.