Sacrifice and Violence: New Perspectives in the Theory of Religion from René Girard

Abstract

We live in a time in which the boundary fences between the various disciplines are being dismantled—at least as far as the social sciences and humanities are concerned. Take, for example, the work of Michel Foucault. Is it philosophy, history, sociology or political science? Again, where would one place the deconstructionism of Jacques Derrida? Under the guise of literary theory it has profoundly changed the enterprise of literary criticism, and some think it is finally bringing to an end the hegemony of historical criticism in the theory and practice of biblical interpretation. With a nod towards Thomas Kuhn we could say that across the social sciences and humanities there is a search for new paradigms.Students of that questionable discipline, called variously science of religion, history of religions, religiology, religious studies, comparative religion, or simply religion, are well used to a cloud of uncertainty obscuring the legitimacy, function and defining method of their academic project. About the only point of agreement is that the science of religion is not theology—and even that distinction is understood in different ways. Other questions abound. Is there a single science of religion, with a defining method, distinguishing it from such related sciences as anthropology and sociology? Or, is it a collective name for a group of sciences and disciplines with no single methodology? Is there a strictly empirical science of religion or is the study of religion essentially a hermeneutic discipline, demanding a methodology appropriate to one of the Geisteswissenschaften? One could continue along these lines, multiplying questions. Enough has been said to indicate what all its practitioners know, the uncertain status of the academic study of religion. By the ‘academic study’ of religion I mean that study when disengaged from the controlling authority and presuppositions of any particular religious tradition or organization.