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Book: Theory in a Time of Excess

Chapter: 16. The Study of Religion, Bricolage and Brandom

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.28828

Blurb:

The chief glory of the Study of Religion is its theoretical eclecticism. As a field, claims Bagger, programmatic theoretical approaches should be resisted. Instead, he argues that the use and development of theory should be driven by specific questions that arise in particular studies of religious phenomena. Metatheoretical reflection should generally be closely tethered to works of first-order scholarship. The use of Robert Brandom’s analysis of existential commitments to illuminate so-called narrative theology illustrates these claims and bears implications for the cognitive science of religion.

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