Reply to Segal

Dear AAR reader,

Professor Segal appears to have taken umbrage with my proposal for teaching comparative religion by way of exploring dialogues among given religions or religious groups. Between my essay and his response, we may have a very helpful illustration of the kind of interminable dispute I claimed is rife in modern religious studies and theology: that is, a dispute for which there are as yet no shared terms for dialogue.

As I read him, Professor Segal believes I have argued (1) that "old style" comparative religion is at the heart of the interminable debates I bemoan between theology and religious studies; (2) that reasoning by "similarity" rather than "difference" is the source of the problem; (3) that I offer "new style" comparative religion as a solution; (4) and that this means comparison through dialogue.

In response, he argues that (1) he has for years successfully explored comparative religion without dialogue; (2) he has done this in order to answer why questions: in particular, why all religions display the similar traits that they display; (3) to his satisfaction, he has succeeded in answering his why questions, thereby explaining things about his informants' religion that they could themselves not explain; (4) that I am therefore wrong to think that this cannot or should not be done.

As I read my words, I argued that (1) when there are interminable debates, we can read them as symptoms of underlying behavioral conflicts; (2) we may read these conflicts as symptoms of the persistent dialectics of modern civilization, which generate such binaries as the subjects versus objects of colonialist behavior (including colonialist thinking); (3) that the dialogic practice of comparative religion offers one example of how we might overcome such binaries in our profession.

In the terms of that argument, I would read Professor Segal's argument as simply bracketing the issue that concerns me (the connection between interminable debates and various behavioral binaries) and then introducing issues that do not yet have clear meaning in the terms I laid out. Among these are (1) the "I think" (his first person address) as self-evident ground and justification for conducting inquiry; (2) (the I) "asking why" as the purpose of religious studies; (3) the relation between a scholar's answering his/her own "why" questions and our profession's purpose or contribution to the world. As I see it, he and I as yet lack conditions for dialogue about any of these issues, because he has bracketed the conditions I offered and then offered his own arguments as if the conditions for understanding them were self-evident. But they are not self-evident.

What shall we do? Perhaps, there is nothing to do until and unless some third party (you?) introduces conditions for our undertaking meaningful dialogue. In the meanwhile, it appears we would simply continue our separate work.

. . . . Unless there is indeed an opening in Professor Segal's final comment about the pragmatists' interest in uncovering the societal–behavioral crises that may underlie interminable disputes. Do you believe we two are stimulated by different and nonoverlapping crises to pursue different or even competing forms of reparative inquiry? Or do you read our nondialogue as itself the symptom of some crisis?

Thanks,