Cantwell Smith

FEW HISTORIANS OF RELIGION in America are as well known and controversial as Wilfred Cantwell metalworker, although his sometimes contentious reputation was not menti singled in the February 2000 obituary that lauded him as one of the past centurys most influential contributors to interfaith talk and the comparative study of religion.1 When I began my teaching career at Oberlin College in the mid-1960s, Wilfred Cantwell Smith and Mircea Eliade bookended unearthly studies for me. Although their approaches to religion were in some respects a picture in contrastsâ€" memorial of religions versus history of religion, historical diversity, faith, and transcendence versus hermeneutics and patternsâ€"both brought to the field a righteous commitment that expressed their ultimate concern.2 In inaugurating the journal History of Religions, for instance, Eliade made a strong case for the comparative study of religions as playing a vital ethnic role: not only because an projecting of exotic and rude religions provide significantly assist in a heathenish dialogue with the representatives of such religions. It is more especially because by attempting to understand the existential situations expressed by the documents he is studying, the historian of religions will inevitably attain a deeper fellowship of . . .

[what it means to be human]. It is on the basis of such a knowledge that a new humanism, on a world-wide scale, could develop.3 No doubt Smith would quibble with the meaning of representatives of such religions and humanism, but he would be very sympathetic to Eliades language of existential situations and a deeper knowledge of what it means to be human, for Smith viewed religion in impairment of the matrix of the existential encounter among persons, and as an essential select of what it means to be human. As a critic, Smith attacked contemporaneous philosophical discussions of religious language for failing to reckon with its religious and historical quality within... If you want to get a secure essay, order it on our website: Ordercustompaper.com

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