Williams T. Cavanaugh's Myth of Religious Violence

[GS Talbert No.2903057]

No the book has nothing to do with God right off the bat, it's instead looking at the roots and development of the western political notion of religion and it's uses specifically in reference to the legitimization of secular violence. It's key theme is that "religion" is a modern construction that as a category has no parallel outside of post 16th century Europe and is neither trans-historical or trans-cultural.
Anyone read? Anyone know of similar lines of scholarship?

[Anonymous No.2903058]

I have no clue but I'm gonna say Zizek.

[Anonymous No.2903066]

Christopher Hitchens said that it took religion to make a good man do bad things. So I'd heartily recommend any of his works.

Also,
> it's (twice)

[Anonymous No.2903075]

souds pretty cool. having never read it, i'm going to say Orientalism by Edward Said

[Anonymous No.2903081]

foucault's notion of epistime

[Anonymous No.2903084]

How is religion a modern construction? Your "post-16th century" comment hints that it probably has something to do with Descartes and the emergence of the "autonomous subject"?

[Anonymous No.2903088]

It's called critical religious studies, as far as I know.

Timothy Fitzgerald is one of the most popular exponents of it, there's a pretty good podcast with an introduction to his ideas here: http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2012/06/04/podcast-timothy-fitzgerald-on-religion-and-mystifi
cation/

Might want to check this out too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSfNyGSiRck

>>2903081
I also second this.

[Anonymous No.2903091]

Voegelin.

[GS Talbert No.2903099]

I've read Hitchens and he's referenced in the book several times, Billy really tears him a new one. I feel Hitchen's ripped off Chomsky's writing style of intellect-o-vomit which is where one says a great deal about nothing. Hitchen's actually fails to give a single definitive definition for religion and in his book "God is not Great" he actually contradicts himself and makes unfounded absolutist claims by blessing western secular democracy with what amounts to divine providence. He also claims that Stalin ran a theocracy which is laughable and that the Reverend Martin Luther King wasn't a religious figure. Last time I'll ever read something from Vanity Fair.
A few good commentaries on Hitchens and a summary of the topics in the book by Cavanaugh here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWnInrHihAM

[GS Talbert No.2903101]

>>2903088
Thank you, thank you!

[Anonymous No.2903120]

>>2903099
yeah Hitchens isn't really intellectually serious

[Anonymous No.2903127]

>>2903099

The entire point of Hitchens' writing career was to make an ass of himself.

[GS Talbert No.2903129]

>>2903084
No it comes about with the concept of monopolization of the use of violence by the rise of the secular monolithic state and that there is no such objective empirical phenomenon that is separable from economic, cultural, and political causes. A good example is Cicero who was a professed atheist, listed psychological and sociological reasons on why people believe in Gods but was also a roman priest and believed that "religio" (which at the time had completely different connotations than the modern word religion) was extraordinarily important and took his public duties as a priest with the utmost seriousness.
Also there exists a problem with the concept of such a thing as a "secular" nation. Is it fair to call America a secular nation when it compels children to put their hands over their hearts and swear fealty in a public prayer to a piece of cloth on a stick endowed with totemic properties?

[Anonymous No.2903136]

>>2903099
Anyone who tells the religious that they're idiots, to their faces, will always have my admiration. Regardless of ' intellect-o-vomit' or 'unfounded absolutist claims'.

One cannot have a rational, balanced view of critical religious studies in the 21st century without Hitchens.

[Anonymous No.2903148]

>>2903129
Yeah, I think all that is very true. I don't think it's the case that "religion" is a modern construction; rather that a distinctive, almost unique concept of religion emerged out of the 16th century, what with idea of deeply personal religion, different magisteria (separation of religion and politics, separation of religion philosophy science, etc). basically as a reaction to violence of 30 years war. i

A lot of the interesting stuff about this, from a political side at least, comes from some very conservative people - look at Schmitt's thought, especially his analysis of Hobbes in "Leviathan in the State Theory of Thomas Hobbes" where he basically argues that the loss of the unity of political and religious is the fundamental problem of modern politics. Of course some would say he went a little wrong in (more or less) believing that the solution was the Third Reich. You might also be interested in Leo Strauss' work (strongly influenced by Schmitt, tho not a Nazi) and also Eric Voegelin, as someone else mentioned, who was really interested in this problem from a political philosophy point of view.

[Anonymous No.2903151]

>>2903136
Hitchens was just a polemicist/social commentator ... I don't think you could really put him down as a linchpin of "critical religious studies"... I'd be very uncomfortable using anything he ever wrote in an essay etc

[Anonymous No.2903152]

This is very interesting OP. Do you know any other books like it? Even if they're not on religion.

[Anonymous No.2903155]

>>2903151

>That feel when you got an F for citing Hitchens in an essay once

[Anonymous No.2903159]

>>2903155

You deserved it.

[Anonymous No.2903158]

>>2903155
I know that feel ;_;

[GS Talbert No.2903161]

>>2903088
Thank you again for that post:
"‘Religion’ has proved a problematic category, difficult to define and difficult to translate into non-European languages. In this interview, Timothy Fitzgerald presents his critical deconstruction of religion as a powerful discourse and its parasitic relation to ‘secular’ categories such as politics and economics. Religion is not a stand-alone category, he argues; ‘religions’ are modern inventions which are made to appear ubiquitous and, by being removed to a marginal, privatised domain, serve to mystify the supposed natural rationality of the secular state and capital. Feminist deconstruction of gender categories shows how power constructions which serve male interests come to appear as natural and inevitable, a powerful analogy to the mystification of power relations by the modern invention of religious and secular domains."
This was exactly what I was looking for, and yes I'm sucking your e-peen.

[GS Talbert No.2903164]

>>2903148
I fucking love strauss, he's crazy but so much fun to get high to.

[Anonymous No.2903165]

>>2903155
I hope you upbraided the assessor; being marked down for using a legitimate source is unacceptable.

> “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
If that is not a quote worthy of Aristotle, then I don't know what would be.

[Anonymous No.2903169]

>>2903161
No problem, and I'd be interested in hearing if you know anything about it beyond the book in the OP.

I've been pretty hungry for critical religious studies stuff for a while, but it's apparently a pretty obscure academic path.

[GS Talbert No.2903171]

>>2903152
lol that's what I'm here for

[Anonymous No.2903185]

>>2903161
Would it be accurate to refer to that as 'foucauldian'?

[Anonymous No.2903189]

>>2903057
Don't suppose you have an electronic copy of the book OP?

[Anonymous No.2903190]

>>2903189
http://en.bookfi.org/s/?q=myth+of+religious+violence&t=0

[Anonymous No.2903200]

>>2903190
Great, thanks!

[Anonymous No.2903220]

>>2903136
You're an idiot.

Atheism is a religion just as much as anything else.

Thanks for your respect, but I don't care about what respect I get from idiots.

[GS Talbert No.2903231]

>>2903169
Right, I think part of the reason why it's obscure is that this academic path not only undermines certain strains of Western Christianity but also the entire Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris/Dennet brand of secular humanism that evolved from those strains and the political systems that it upholds. I find Cavanaugh interesting in that he's an American academic and strong Catholic to boot so his perspective is interesting. I came across this book, and thus this line of scholarship, 7 months ago when I downloaded randomly running around pirate bay http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/5658852/Criticism_of_the_Western_Society__amp__Civilization_-_Collect
ion_4. The guy who posts this is so hilariously Muslim and some of these posts are just facepalm but it has a surprising amount of literary gems. I got Clark - Petrodollar Warfare, Comor - Consumption and the Globalization Project, Quiggin - Zombie Economics; How Dead Ideas Still Walk among Us, from it. You also have crap in there with authors trying to link witch burnings to their studies on chimpanzee genocidal tactics, which not even Kind Bud could make that tolerable.

[GS Talbert No.2903246]

>>2903189
Glad anon got to you first
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWnInrHihAM
The book is awesome but the author gives an awesome guest lecture on the subject matter here and shapes the outline of his argument; honestly he's a great speaker.

[Anonymous No.2903247]

>>2903231
can you throw this up on mediafire, then, if you have a file? that would be cool.

[GS Talbert No.2903273]

>>2903247
check out anon's post
>>2903190

[GS Talbert No.2903285]

>>2903169
The Meaning and End of Religion by Wilfred Cantwell Smith, I have been looking for this one. If anyone can post it I'd blow you, it's suppose to be amazing.