The Degeneration Paradigm in the Western Study of World Religions

THE DEGENERATION PARADIGM IN THE WESTERN STUDY OF WORLD RELIGIONS Evan M. Zuesse PRECIS Western scholarship has primarily interpreted other religions to be in a state of de cline. Typically, the past traditions of non-Christian religions have been elevated as their culminations, while present forms are viewed as declining shadows of former glorious tradi tions. The derivation of the hypothesis of decadence is traced to "the Western experience of colonialism and imperialism," during which even the most liberal interpreters were con vinced of the superiority of their own culture. The confrontation of missionaries and scholars with religion in India provides a case in point. But everywhere we encounter the "white man's burden" syndrome-the moral imperative of converting all non-Western cul tures to the superior Western prototype. Evidently, viewing the unique responses of other cultures to similar problems has been threatening to the faith in the efficacy of our own Western responses. Other factors produced the judgment that non-Western cultures were degenerate: (1) The theological concept that only Christianity was endowed with a special "supernatu ral" grace, that "other" cultures were merely "natural," was considerably evident, especially in nineteenth-century perspectives on Chinese and Indian cultures. (2) Later, the same Indian scriptures were elevated as a "primordial revelation" by poets and philosophers of the Romantic period. (3) Nationalism also had considerable influence, illustrated particu larly by nineteenth-century German intellectuals. (4) "A literary, textual approach to cul ture" constituted another factor producing the "degeneration paradigm." This approach led to numerous misunderstandings as is discussed, and ultimately to a denumanization of non-Western cultures. (5) "The formative Christian polemic against its mother-religion Juda ism" provides an even "deeper source for degeneration assumptions," by providing a model for every future religious "contest." A dualistic interpretation of the essence of religion underlies the hypothesis of degen eracy and, if applied universally to all viable religions, would have to include Christianity itself. The author states that "a revulsion from the living present and actual human beings is built into degeneration theories." The past is glorified and the present, vilified-this phe nomenon is interpreted as common to all religions and culture, as an essentially "human" characteristic. But Christianity intensified it into a We-Theyism which terminated in the elevation of itself as the realization of all other religions and cultures. Other religions have also activated the "degeneration paradigm" and have pictured themselves as the terminus of a religio-cultural evolution, as is illustrated. However, the paradigmatic approach reflects false and "inauthentic" consciousness. In the last pages of this excellent study of The Practice of Chinese Bud dhism: 1900-1950 (Cambridge, MA, 1967), Holmes Welch draws attention to a paradox. He has just finished demonstrating the extraordinary vitality and depth Evan M. Zuesse has been an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Case Western Reserve University since 1975, following six years at Allegheny College in Mead- ville, PA. Prior to that he taught in Israel. Dr. Zuesse holds a B.A. from Dartmouth College, and an M.A. and PhJD. (1971) from the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he specialized in African and primitive religions and methodology. He is the author of several articles on ritual structures, published in Numen, History of Religions, and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. 15 16 Journal of Ecumenical Studies of contemporary monastic Buddhism in China, at least up to the Communist take-over, yet, as his citations from leading modern authorities remind us, for three centuries it has been commonly thought in Sinological scholarship that Buddhism has degenerated in the modern period and is both dying and distorted, especially in the monasteries. In this view even the most recent authorities have concurred. Nevertheless, it is obviously untrue; Welch's whole work demon strates that.1 It might be possible to explain this anomaly solely in terms of the idiosyn- cracies and particularities of Sinological research if a similar kind of judgment had not been made of other religions. But, in fact, we find the same classifica tion applied everywhere, so we are not actually dealing here with a peculiarity of scholarship in one field. Whether it is Theravada, Mahayana, or Mantrayana Buddhism; Hinduism; Islam; Shinto; Confucianism; or even localized religions such as we find in Africa, Oceania, and elsewhere—Western scholarship has come to much the same conclusion: the religion in question might well have had a glorious past, but at present it is in a state of decadence, weakness, and confu sion. The "golden age" occurred well before the first extensive Western contact was made in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, perhaps, or the pristine vision of the founders of the religion has long since been deformed and diluted (if not betrayed) by ritualism, priestcraft, loss of creativity, or other historical happenstance. Every religion has a few Western defenders, however, who especially in the past decade or so (like Welch in regard to Chinese Buddhism) have tried to suggest that the "degeneration" motif is unjustified, and that there is still au thentic spiritual power even in the traditionist sectors ofthat religion. But there is something that is felt to be paradoxical and surprising about such assertions even now, in the face of the universality of the degeneration judgment from the Enlightenment period (when non-Western cultures were first seriously encoun tered) till the present. Yet, objectively considered, it would seem highly unlikely and improbable that all non-Western religions were simultaneously in the depths of decadence at the time the West first made contact with them. We may, of course, suppose that some hidden law or rhythm of human history caused this universal decadence and corruption, of the same nature as Jasper's "Axial Age" of religious creativ ity. But there are those who are not satisfied with a mystical, existential, or materialistic dialectic, for whom the near unanimity of the judgment suggests that it could at no period be relied upon as such. At least as a hypothesis, it will be admitted that it simplifies our task of explaining degeneration judgments if we had only one phenomenon to explain (Western attitudes), instead of an infinity of unrelated ones (all world cultures, each with its unique history). Further detailed discussion of this seeming anomaly can be found in Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China (Cambridge, MA, 1968), chap. 11, "Christian Stereotypes and Buddhist Realities," and chap. 12, "The Meaning of the Revival," pp. 222-270. The Degeneration Paradigm 17 It ought not to occasion surprise that paradigms can so profoundly affect even the most scholarly and objective research, as is su^ested here. To mention only one* instance, the rise in the modern period of a multitude of Western nationalisms, each with its native scholarship developing its own theory of his tory, of folk-soul, of political rights, etc.-but with each nationalism's scholar ship conflicting on essential points with rival views—has had a humbling impact on modern historiography, at least in its theoretical constructions, its philosophy of history. It is even possible to view the history of science as a history of conflicting paradigms, as Thomas Kuhn has demonstrated in The Structure of Scientifc Revolutions (Chicago, 1970). We can go further. Precisely in the area of religion we are the most subject to what may be termed "deep" paradigms (applying Chomsky's "deep structures" terminology): models of reality which pervasively shape our perceptions into a "grammar" applying not only to our selves but also to other selves and other possible universes as well. These struc tures are "deep" not only in their rootedness but also in their necessary tacit- ness; they are and must be too real to doubt, for only if they reside at such a depth can they be applied to all the raw material of experience, including the encounter with alien cultures, and make a "grammar" out of that experience which is self-validating. In a very true sense, to come to know these paradigms is to doubt them, for by raising them to consciousness and "knowing" them we remove them from the deep level of certainty at which they must operate to be effective. It would be an error to suppose that such symbolic models are sustained by merely one motivation or cause. They exist at a deep level precisely due to their multivalency, which gives them support on every plane of culture. Every reference to them evokes a host of subterranean echoes which reinforce and confirm their power and truth. Inner psychic complexes of varying etiology and outer social structures chime together and find their unity in such symbolic models, while the unison of these disparate elements gives the symbol too great a meaning to be rationally comprehended. The unison confirms the paradigm even as the paradigm confirms and maintains its elements. An analysis of a paradigm, therefore, must also be an archeology, in which layer after layer of meaning and psycho-social reference is penetrated, and a complicated history is unraveled. The first thing we notice, then, about the judgments concerning the decay of alien cultures is that

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