Formations of Secularity in Ancient Japan?: On Cultural Encounters, Critical Junctures, and Path-Dependent Processes
Starting from the premise that the diversity of forms for distinguishing between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ (i.e., multiple secularities) in global modernity is the result of different cultural preconditions in the appropriation of Western normative concepts of secularism, I would like to off...
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Brill
[2019]
|
In: |
Journal of Religion in Japan
Year: 2019, Volume: 8, Issue: 1/3, Pages: 9-45 |
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Japan
/ Secularism
/ History 500-700
|
RelBib Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AD Sociology of religion; religious policy KBM Asia |
Further subjects: | B
Secularity
B ancient Japan B epistemic and social structures B path-dependencies B critical junctures B cultural encounter |
Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
Summary: | Starting from the premise that the diversity of forms for distinguishing between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ (i.e., multiple secularities) in global modernity is the result of different cultural preconditions in the appropriation of Western normative concepts of secularism, I would like to offer a modest contribution to the understanding of the corresponding cultural preconditions in Japan. I will try to show that the specific—and at first glance, relatively unproblematic—appropriation of secularity as a regulatory principle in modern Japan is to some extent path dependent on relatively stable and durable epistemic and social structures that have emerged in the course of ‘critical junctures’ in history. In this context, I would like to put up for discussion my hypothesis that some decisions taken in the period between the sixth and eighth centuries CE regarding the organisation of the relationship between ‘the religious’ and ‘the secular’ generated path dependencies that were effective well into the nineteenth century. |
---|---|
ISSN: | 2211-8349 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal of Religion in Japan
|
Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/22118349-00801004 |