Abstract
In recent decades, the concept of religion, and specifically its application to non-Western historic cultural formations has come unter critical scrutiny. This paper proposes the study of semantic fields as a method to explore the self-understanding of historic formations of what, in modern parlance, counts as religion, and thus, as a testing strategy for the concept of religion that is employed in scholarly analysis. It uses the said method to analyse three works by the medieval Japanese Buddhist monk Dōgen (1200–1253), who came to be revered as founder of the still extant Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism. By putting his notion of the ‘Buddha Way’ (butsudō) into strong relief, it provides a basis for comparison with modern concepts of religion. The conclusion is that Dōgen’s ideas conform to a surprisingly large extent with modern ideas. This may be one reason for his popularity in modern times. But Dōgen should not be taken to represent the general world-view of medieval Japan. Further comparative analyses of other corpora remain necessary to gauge the applicability of ‘religion’ as a category for the analysis of medieval Japanese culture.
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© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Auf der Suche nach Erkenntnis zwischen Asien und Europa: al-Ġazālī, Descartes und die moderne Forschungswissenschaft
- Unfertige Studien 3: Die Nihāyat al-marām des Ḍiyāʾaddīn ar-Rāzī
- Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »
- L’analyse sur la Négation Explétive en Chinois-Mandarin à Travers sa Comparaison avec le Français
- Sondersektion „Religionsbegriff“
- Concepts of Religion between Asia and Europe – Some Retrospective Preliminaries
- Religion and the Public Sphere in Premodern India
- ‘Religion’ and the Concept of the Buddha Way: Semantics of the Religious in Dōgen
- Übersetzungen – Translations – Traductions
- The Chronicle of Jōe – A Translation of the Second Part of the History of the Fujiwara House
- Bedeutungswandel der Zivilgesellschaft oder das Elend der Ideengeschichte: Eine kommentierte Übersetzung von Kiyoaki Hiratas Aufsatz zum Begriff shimin shakai bei Antonio Gramsci (Teil 2)
- The International Situation in East Asia and the Establishment of a Modern Army and Modern Warfare in Japan: The Memorandum of Takashima Shūhan
- Über die Idee und das Wirkliche (Teil III)
- Forschungsnotiz – Note de recherche – Research Note
- Protest und Demokratisierung in Myanmar: Erste Erkenntnisse aus dem „Myanmar Protest Event Dataset“
- Rezension – Compte rendu – Review
- Milburn, Olivia: The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Auf der Suche nach Erkenntnis zwischen Asien und Europa: al-Ġazālī, Descartes und die moderne Forschungswissenschaft
- Unfertige Studien 3: Die Nihāyat al-marām des Ḍiyāʾaddīn ar-Rāzī
- Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »
- L’analyse sur la Négation Explétive en Chinois-Mandarin à Travers sa Comparaison avec le Français
- Sondersektion „Religionsbegriff“
- Concepts of Religion between Asia and Europe – Some Retrospective Preliminaries
- Religion and the Public Sphere in Premodern India
- ‘Religion’ and the Concept of the Buddha Way: Semantics of the Religious in Dōgen
- Übersetzungen – Translations – Traductions
- The Chronicle of Jōe – A Translation of the Second Part of the History of the Fujiwara House
- Bedeutungswandel der Zivilgesellschaft oder das Elend der Ideengeschichte: Eine kommentierte Übersetzung von Kiyoaki Hiratas Aufsatz zum Begriff shimin shakai bei Antonio Gramsci (Teil 2)
- The International Situation in East Asia and the Establishment of a Modern Army and Modern Warfare in Japan: The Memorandum of Takashima Shūhan
- Über die Idee und das Wirkliche (Teil III)
- Forschungsnotiz – Note de recherche – Research Note
- Protest und Demokratisierung in Myanmar: Erste Erkenntnisse aus dem „Myanmar Protest Event Dataset“
- Rezension – Compte rendu – Review
- Milburn, Olivia: The Spring and Autumn Annals of Master Yan