Tomoko Masuzawa - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Tomoko Masuzawa

History of European Ideas

Routledge eBooks, Oct 31, 2022

Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 2003

Although recognized as a nineteenth-century champion of comparative methods and leading figure in... more Although recognized as a nineteenth-century champion of comparative methods and leading figure in the founding of the science of religion, F. Max Müller has been paid surprisingly little attention since his death a century ago. In 2002, a substantial scholarly biography by Lourens P. van den Bosch and an anthology of Müller's representative works edited by Jon Stone were published. Through a review of these two publications, this article first retraces the familiar contour of the "life and work" of Müller as a progenitor of Religionswissenschaft, an image that both these texts help resuscitate. In the second part of the article it is suggested that, when the voluminous extant material is viewed from another angle, a considerably different portrait of Müller comes to the foreground, especially if his life-long engagement in comparative philology is taken more seriously, rather than treated as a merely preliminary or technical aspect of his scholarly profile. In this alt...

The idea of "world religions" expresses a vague commitment to multiculture alism. Not m... more The idea of "world religions" expresses a vague commitment to multiculture alism. Not merely a descriptive concept, "world religions" is also a particular ethos, a pluralist ideology, a logic of classification, and a form of knowledge that has shaped the study of religion and infiltrated ordinary language. In this ambitious study, Tomoko Masuzawa examines the emergence of "world religions" in modern European thought through a close reading of a variety of sources as early as the seventeenth century. Devoting particular attention to the relation between the comparative study of language and the nascent science of religion, she demonstrates how new classifications of language and race caused Buddhism and Islam to gain special significance as these religions came to be seen in opposing terms - Aryan on one hand and Semitic on the other. Masuzawa also explores the complex relation of "world religions" to Protestant theology, from the hierarchical ...

SPIRIT MATTER The first two essays show that the great unanswerable questions—in this case the re... more SPIRIT MATTER The first two essays show that the great unanswerable questions—in this case the relation of spirit to matter—can be rich terrains for investigation of the beliefs of those who struggle to answer them.

O bservers of the academic scene in the united states pertaining to the study of religion would d... more O bservers of the academic scene in the united states pertaining to the study of religion would doubtless recognize a curiously twinned structure of the field, represented by two learned societies that seem to couple and decouple on various occasions, engage and disengage regularly, and not infrequently quarrel. These two bodies, the American Academy of Religion (AAR) and the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL), are not symmetrical either in size or in scope. As with any deeply entrenched division of long standing, moreover, they do not agree on the nature of the difference that divides them. That said, one way of characterizing this division that might be deemed relatively uncontroversial may be that the former organization claims or aspires to be global and pluralistic in the coverage of the subject, whereas the latter is essentially monocentric, if not also centripetal, in the sense that it is focused on a particular legacy, namely, the biblical-broad, expansive, and diversified though it may be within itself. All this, to be sure, may be but a matter of local curiosity, a state of affairs sufficiently obscure and trivial for most outsiders, I presume, to feel perfectly at liberty to ignore or to remain confused about. It is certainly not my object here to discuss these scholarly bodies, explain their relation, or arbitrate between them. Rather, I draw attention to this regional condition as a backdrop to announcing my actual intention. This latter is, above all, to consider the dominant paradigm that governs our customary thinking about religious diversity today, or what I am inclined to call more generally the pluralist regime for organizing and regulating difference. In this essay I

Modern Intellectual History

Scholars of religion today understand that the scientific basis of religious studies lies in the ... more Scholars of religion today understand that the scientific basis of religious studies lies in the fact that religion is a multifarious historical phenomenon accessible through empirical research, and that this study therefore differs fundamentally from theology premised on the acceptance of supernaturally revealed truths and faith traditions. Meanwhile, it has been broadly believed that theology once occupied the preeminent position in the medieval university, as expressed by the well-known sobriquet “queen of the sciences.” By surveying the early history of the university, this article shows that most medieval universities did not have a theology faculty until the fourteenth century. With the notable exception of Paris and its immediate offspring (Oxford and Cambridge), the relation between theology and the university was far more tangential and temporizing than is generally assumed—a point worth bearing in mind as we consider the question of the secularization of learning, which is...

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 1992

Religion in Contemporary Society, 2012

Method Theory in the Study of Religion, 2003

Religion and Society, 2007

This chapter historically analyses the concept and discourse of 'world religions', as a l... more This chapter historically analyses the concept and discourse of 'world religions', as a loose variant. It is an excavation project aiming at an archaeology of present discursive practice (focused on the science of religion, but also with an eye to understanding its ramifications in our everyday discourse and what it implies); it is not conceived as a methodological mission to protect or to improve upon the science of religion. From the very beginning of the discovery of Buddhism, Europeans with varying attitudes toward Christianity were keen on drawing a structural affinity between the two religions. Like Christianity, Buddhism was said to have begun as a reform movement initiated by a supra-human but historically real person, whose mission supposedly was to bring a universal moral message, and who had a spiritual appeal to all humanity.Keywords: Buddhism; Christianity; Europeans; humanity; science of religion

Representations, 1988

IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME since the question of the origin of religion was seriously entertained. Tod... more IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME since the question of the origin of religion was seriously entertained. Today, there is little sign of the matter ever being resuscitated and once again becoming the focus of lively debate as of old; for, looking upon the bold speculations of the forefathers-names such as F. Max MUller, W. Robertson Smith, and James Frazer immediately come to mind-contemporary scholars of religion tend to consider themselves to be in a new phase of scholarship, having learned, above all, not to ask impossible questions. After all, those grand old ideas, or so-called theories of the origin of religion, were conceived by the powerful Victorian imagination in the lacunae of concrete data and naturally turned out to be stillborn, or so we have been told; and if we still study these ideas today, it is supposedly only to assist their more decorous burial. Still, it is the prerogative of origin as such, more than the paucity of factual grounding, that has come under suspicion in recent times, together with the assumption of the unity, simplicity, and self-identity of absolute beginning-in short, all of the pristine metaphysics of presence/permanence/plenitude that the concept of origin is said to embody. In this connection we have also come to see that the sovereignty of the author/originator over his text is as imaginary as any other assumption of a unitary origin. In light of this general critique, it might seem a questionable endeavor to draw attention once again to the dubious exploits of those great books that so unambiguously set out in search of origins many decades ago, the books that are now laid to rest in the sepulchral category called "classics." On the other hand, if we are to encounter some unlaid ghost at the burial site of one of such "classics," the uncanny double of the author/master might tell us more stories than the dead master had ever dreamt, or would have allowed. Though perhaps not a literary match for the purple prose of Frazer's Golden Bough, Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life'-"by common accord ... Durkheim's most ambitious work"2 is counted among the masterful performances of the speculative genius. The year was 1912; the objective, the excavation of the origin of religion; and the general context of discussion, totemism, which the author estimated to be the "more fundamental and more primitive" of all the known forms of religion (107). In the course of several hun-

positions: east asia cultures critique, 1999

Page 1. From Empire to Utopia: The Effacement of Colonial Markings in Lost HorizonTomoko Masuzawa... more Page 1. From Empire to Utopia: The Effacement of Colonial Markings in Lost HorizonTomoko Masuzawa At a recent international conference held in what might be called the heart of Europe, concerted efforts were made to examine ...

MLN, 1985

... B. Brecht's influence upon Benjamin; "Politics of Translation: Siegfried Kr... more ... B. Brecht's influence upon Benjamin; "Politics of Translation: Siegfried Kracauer and WalterBenjamin on the ... vasive and unfaltering, even in the face of the fact that Benjamin actually complicated ... in a Turkish garb, seemingly designed to play a winning game of chess every time ...