Of Gods and Man: The Biocognitive Turn in Religious Studies
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- March 22, 2019
- Creator
-
Aghapour, Andrew
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Religious Studies
- Abstract
- This thesis surveys and analyzes the biocognitive turn in Religious Studies over the last decade, which is characterized by a rise in cognitive and evolutionary accounts of religious beliefs and practices. Using Michel Foucault's archaeological method, I analyze three key discourses--evolutionary and cognitive explanations of religion, sui generis defenses of religion as irreducible by science, and inaugural projects for streamlining Religious Studies--with attention to how they mobilize a set of shared intellectual categories and presuppositions. Central to all of these biocognitive discourses, I argue, is Foucault's analytic of finitude, or the epistemological framing of Man as both an object of knowledge and a subject who knows.
- Date of publication
- August 2012
- DOI
- Resource type
- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Advisor
- Styers, Randall
- Degree
- Master of Arts
- Graduation year
- 2012
- Language
- Publisher
Relations
- Parents:
This work has no parents.