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A Visit to the Local God: Reclaiming the Diversity of the Divine Leah Kalmanson Drake University

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A Visit to the Local God: Reclaiming the Diversity of the Divine Leah Kalmanson Drake University Journal of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition, Vol. 4, 2021 http://hilo.hawaii.edu/jpact _____________________________________________________________________________ A Visit to the Local God: Reclaiming the Diversity of the Divine Leah Kalmanson Drake University KEYWORDS ABSTRACT In this essay I offer reflections on the barriers and bridges Chinese separating philosophy and religion, with a special focus on philosophy, contemporary narratives regarding disenchantment and re- colonialism, enchantment on the trajectory of so-called global modernity. disenchantment, Through the investigation, a uniquely politicized approach to the Hawaiian question of the “supernatural” in religious thought presents itself philosophy, as at least one promising area of investigation for a “comparative Jewish theology, philosophy of religion.” Here “supernatural” means philosophy of “hypernatural,” which is to say, a special, heightened, or religion, re- otherwise extra-ordinary development still rooted in the enchantment, everyday natural world. A “politicized approach” to the religious supernatural means a theoretical and methodological framework pluralism that is cognizant of and responsive to the dynamics of social power under conditions of disparity. The path of the essay includes visits to several gods, spanning my time spent in Hawai‘i for graduate school, my current position teaching and researching in Chinese philosophy, and the still-jealous God of my Jewish childhood. In dialogue with several cosmological answers to religious questions of creation and existence, we seek narratives that accommodate religious diversity without falling back on Eurocentric theological models. JOURNAL FOR THE PACIFIC ASSOCIATION OF THE CONTINENTAL TRADITION 23 Having recently become involved in the that is cognizant of and responsive to such “comparative philosophy of religion,”1 I have ongoing negotiations under conditions of begun to wonder what differentiates research disparity. In other words, a politicized in this field from that in general “comparative framework remains aware that not all philosophy,” especially when speaking of scholarly voices are equally situated within the Asian traditions. That is, what methodological neocolonial realities of contemporary or theoretical frames might meaningfully academia, and, in response, it seeks liberatory distinguish these two enterprises, given that the divide between “philosophy” and “religion” Can we mold it? Can we make it one? is already somewhat artificial in the East Asian Can we, without prognosticating or context? In light of the theme of this special divining, know our fortunes and issue, I offer some thoughts here on the misfortunes? barriers and bridges separating research in Can we halt? Can we stop? these areas, with a special focus in how this Can we, without seeking from others, topic relates to contemporary narratives obtain the self? Contemplate it, contemplate it, again regarding disenchantment and re-enchantment repeatingly contemplate it. on the trajectory of so-called global modernity. We contemplate it but cannot reach it. As I propose in what follows, a uniquely The ghosts and spirits that can reach politicized approach to the question of the it— supernatural in religious thought presents itself Not because they are especially forceful, as at least one promising area of investigation but because the purest qi reaches the farthest.* in a “comparative philosophy of religion.” Let me clarify at the outset my use of the terms 能摶乎？能一乎？ “supernatural” and “politics” in this context. 能無卜筮而知吉凶乎？ By “supernatural” I mean phenomena that may lie outside the perceptive capabilities of 能止乎？能已乎？ ordinary consciousness or that may defy 能勿求諸人而得之己乎？ reductive mechanistic or materialist 思之思之，又重思之，思之而不通。 explanations. Notably, I do not mean 鬼神將通之，非鬼神之力也，精氣之 phenomena that lie outside the realm of the “natural.” I use “supernatural,” in this sense, to 極也。 mean “hypernatural,” which is to say, a special, heightened, or otherwise extra-ordinary development still rooted in the everyday interventions in hegemonic practices. natural world. By “politics” I mean the shifting dynamics of social power, and by “politicized One such unequally situated subject of approach” to the supernatural, I mean a discourse is precisely the question of the theoretical and methodological framework “supernatural.” Historically, as discussed 1 These projects reflect the work of my colleagues Tim Kalmanson, Ineffability: An Exercise in Comparative Knepper and Gereon Kopf and others involved with Philosophy of Religion. the Global-Critical Philosophy of Religion Seminar * Dai Wang 戴望, comm., Guanzi jiao zheng 管子校 that recently concluded a five-year term at the 正, (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010), 271. Translated American Academy of Religion. See Knepper, “How by Jennifer Liu with the help of Leah Kalmanson. to Philosophize about Religion Globally and Critically . with Undergraduates”; Knepper and 24 L. KALMANSON below, engagement with the supernatural has collusion between science, religion, and been associated with a cluster of negatively colonialism in European history. As Jason flavored concepts such as superstition, Josephson-Storm has discussed, the word irrationality, and (depending on the religion) “religion” travels across cultures not alone but idolatry. Today, philosophers of religion tend as part of a larger conceptual apparatus that to take the issue of the supernatural solely as a includes religion, secularism, and superstition. question of epistemology: Is “belief” in On this model, the often under-theorized supernatural entities “justified”? In search of category of “superstition” serves to police the alternatives and liberatory interventions, I boundaries of both religion “proper” and the follow here a politicized approach—the assumed rational character of secular, journey includes visits to several gods, scientific inquiry. 2 Accordingly, a central spanning my time spent in Hawai‘i for point of tension is made visible when we graduate school, my current position teaching broach the question of what differentiates the and researching in Chinese philosophy, and “superstitious” from the “properly” religious. the still-jealous God of my Jewish childhood. Throughout the journey, we find the so-called The word “religion” derives from a Latin root enchanted world fraught with political strife (religio), whose precise origin is unclear. In yet open to a sense of “wonder” made all the his studies of the translation of “religion” more vivid by its constitutive existential intoJapanese, Josephson-Storm says: uncertainty. “Regardless of its origins, in pre-Christian Roman usage, religio generally referred to a The Politics of Disenchantment prohibition or an obligation.”3 By the fifteenth century, religio was used in Catholicism to Broadly speaking, the historical trajectory of refer to “the performance of ritual obligations, “disenchantment” refers to the claim that, over especially . to describe a state of life bound the course of Europe’s modern period, a by monastic vows”; and, accordingly, “the materialist and reductive scientific worldview noun ‘the religious’ referred to monks and took hold and erased so-called supernatural nuns.” 4 Strictly speaking, these terms are phenomena from the realm of plausibility. specific to European intellectual history; or, as Accordingly, religion became disentangled Robert Ford Campany says: “Discourse about from politics in the public sphere and relegated religions is rooted in Western language to the status of private belief. The upside communities and in the history of Western (according to some) was the rapid cultures. To speak of ‘religions’ is to advancement of science and technology and demarcate things in ways that are not the spread of liberal democracy, while at least inevitable or immutable but, rather, are one downside was the loss of a certain sense of contingent on the shape of Western history, “wonder” regarding the mysteries of the world thought, and institutions. Other cultures may, around us. and do, lack closely equivalent demarcations.” 5 By the eighteenth and I am interested here in the political downsides nineteenth centuries, European scholars had of disenchantment, evident in the intimate developed a specific way to “demarcate things” 2 Josephson-Storm, “The Superstition, Secularism, and changed, and I cite his work accordingly in the notes Religion Trinary.” and references. 3 Josephson, The Invention of Religion in Japan, 17. 4 Ibid., 16. Note, the name under which this author publishes has 5 Campany, “On the Very Idea of Religions (in the Modern West and in Early Medieval China),” 289. JOURNAL FOR THE PACIFIC ASSOCIATION OF THE CONTINENTAL TRADITION 25 within a hierarchical schema that tended to The overall trajectory of this intellectual include, according to Tomoko Masuzawa’s history reveals Europe’s self-narration of its analysis, Christianity as the only true religion, so-called progress toward humanistic Judaism and Islam as “almost Christian, or at secularism, where religion is not erased but least would-be Christians,” and a multitude of often politely ignored as a vestige of more so-called idolators or heathens who did not naïve times. On the one hand, in terms of possess proper religion at all.6 dynamics internal to Europe, we might say that this turn toward secularism is an antidote to the In this context, European colonization was hegemony of Christian universalism. In other framed as a civilizing mission, which involved words,
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