Coordinators: Rafal K. Stepien (Austrian Academy of Sciences); Simran Jeet Singh (Union Theological Seminary, Aspen Institute); Andreas Ohlemacher (Lutheran World Federation, German National Council); Wiebke Denecke (MIT)
The Idea: Motivations & Scope
Despite secularists long declaring the death of God and gods, religion remains a forceful presence in contemporary societies. About 85% of the world’s population still identify as members of a religion. Religious beliefs lie at the core of violent insurrection as much as peaceful coexistence. Across local, regional, national, and international communities, religions continue to shape social values and interactions as well as political agendas and mandates.
Philosophies serve a similar meaning-making function. While many textbooks and media outlets still preach the Western enlightenment concept of “reason,” they criticize religions as outmoded institutions from a premodern past. Although philosophers typically distance philosophy from religion, their discourse remains silently embedded within the religious values of their cultures and societies.
In this pillar, we explore the importance of belief (religious or otherwise) for reasoning (philosophical or otherwise) and technological development in an age of STEM (sciences), and the ethical roles believing and reasoning play in shaping individual, communal, and societal identities around the world. We seek to bring hitherto unjustly silenced voices in world history into discussions about the nature of belief and reason—and relatedly of religion and philosophy—in a bid to expand our conceptual horizons, enhance global understanding, and enable more effective collective action.
To accomplish this aim, we need a resolutely comparative and global approach; one that moves beyond Eurocentrism and Christocentrism to comprehend what religion and philosophy have meant across deep time and space, to understand how they have shaped diverse notions of the “good life.”
Guiding Questions
With reference to historically and geographically diverse cultural contexts we ask
- How can a deeper understanding of the dynamic relationships between the world’s religions and philosophies help us better diagnose the root causes of the greatest challenges of our collective historical moment?
- How do religious and philosophical ways of thinking and being nurture good lives?
- What positive and negative models for human action are embedded in religions and philosophies?
- How can we fruitfully mobilize the great diversity of reasoning and believing for more successful resolution of conflicts and the fostering of peace-oriented mindsets and behaviors?
- In what distinctive ways have concepts and practices of religion and philosophy co-existed or counter-defined themselves in various cultures and periods?
- How can we globalize the disciplines of philosophy and religious studies through systematic cross-cultural and cross-religious comparison in order to bring the greatest academic, social, and political benefits for humanity?
Goals & Actions
Our primary goals are to gain
- To bring greater clarity and honesty into our understanding and our debates regarding belief, reason, and human discovery in all its myriad dimensions
- To harvest the meaning-making potentials of religions and philosophies in the service of more cosmopolitan modes of inter-personal, inter-communal, and inter-religious human thriving
- To expose and interrogate standard assumptions as to what religion is, and what philosophy is, and how they interact, by exploring diverse religious, philosophical, and intellectual traditions of the past and present
- To problematize claims to any one universal reason or mode of religiosity and go beyond the ritualistic claim that “all religions preach the same,” in order to fully acknowledge the complex diversity of religious and philosophical heritage from around the world