Does Religion Have a Universal Essence?

Both Geertz and Asad attempt to demonstrate how religion is integrated with and interacts with human culture. However, these scholars diverge on their specific understandings about how religion as a phenomenon is a part of human society. While their descriptions of religion are problematic, their work helps to demonstrate how a scholar’s assumptions can greatly affect how the relationship between the religious perspective and the secular perspective relate to one another.

Geertz believes that human beings communicate through symbols (The Interpretation of Cultures 89). Moreover, humans themselves construct cultural significance through the interpretation of groups of symbols (5). By extension, Geertz defines religion as “(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (90). Implicit in Geertz’s definition is his assumption that religion is a discernible universal phenomenon, distinct from the non-religious sphere of culture.

Geertz elaborates further that humans rely upon symbols for epistemic purposes: “Man depends upon symbols and symbol systems with a dependence so great as to be decisive for his creatural viability and, as a result, his sensitivity to even the remotest indication that they may prove unable to cope with one or another aspect of experience raises within him the gravest sort of anxiety” (99). Hence, Geertz argues that symbols are central to the human’s process of learning, and that humans depend upon the symbols to be able to convey various epistemic significances.

Further evidence demonstrating Geertz’s assumption of an underlying religious paradigm, distinct from a non-religious paradigm is evident in his understanding that the religious perspective is merely one of several cultural perspectives. For instance, Geertz maintains that the common-sense perspective, which is distinct from the religious perspective, is common to all people (119). Furthermore, he argues that, typically, ritual action leads to an expansion of the practitioner’s common-sense paradigm (122). Thus, Geertz argues that religious belief can derive through religious ritual. This position, problematically, presumes a correspondence between ritual and belief.

Conversely, Asad argues that the pursuit of a definition of religion is misguided endeavour, and contends that formulating such a definition presumes that religion has a universal essence (Asad 252). Asad argues in a Foucaultian fashion that the development of religious traditions needs to be understood within the context of a history of a genealogy of knowledge. In particular, Asad examines the history of western Christianity, and demonstrates the importance of power for the transformation and growth of the tradition. Namely, Asad argues that “it is not mere religious symbols that implant true Christian dispositions, but power”, ranging from imperial, ecclesiastical, hellfire, church, fasting, and penance (242-243).

A second major contribution of Asad’s work is demonstrating that the western notion of separating the religious (private) and non-religious (public) spheres developed out of western Christian thought. Asad argues that Christianity redrew the boundaries between “the religious and the secular” several times during the medieval period (244), and, at a later period, “with the triumphant rise of modern science, modern production and the modern state, the Churches would also be clear about the need to distinguish ‘the religious’ from ‘the secular’, shifting, as they did so, the weight of religious truth more and more onto the moods and motivations of the believer” (244). Thus, Asad demonstrates that analyzing religion separate from the secular is a modern conception, and, therefore, it is harmful to impose such a distinction on all religious traditions since no such distinction may actually exist for the adherents. For instance, there would certainly be no such distinction among the Jews of the Second Temple period. Therefore, Geertz’s treatment of religion as a separate perspective from the aesthetic and scientific paradigms is rooted in the underlying assumption that there is a cultural distinction between the religious and the secular (250).

I appreciate Asad’s position that constructing a universal definition of religion might be a delimiting pursuit. However, neglecting the pursuit of such a definition renders our discussions about such traditions, which are typically considered religious, virtually meaningless. Without drawing reference to a definition of religion, we risk segregating cultural traditions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and treating them as if they are each distinct cultural phenomena with limited comparative value since each is an entirely unique phenomenon. A definition of religion (no matter how synthetic it might be) must be crafted and continually revised in order to advance our knowledge of these traditions. Though Asad is correct that attempting to define religion presumes a priori that there is an essence to the phenomenon; however, Asad’s call to altogether abandon the pursuit of such a definition likewise presumes that there is no essence to religion. Thus, perhaps a way to solve this anachronistic understanding of religion as a distinct paradigm from the secular would be to understand religion in a more general fashion.

Namely, drawing upon Geertz’s notion that common-sense is the most universal human paradigm, we might integrate religious tendencies into this most universal of human perspectives. Thus, common-sense should be extended to include the human disposition to reach beyond itself; for example, ‘where do the lightning bolts come from during a thunderstorm?’ ‘Who casts down these beams of fire/light to earth?’ The human urge to ask such questions should be considered fundamental to the human experience. Hence, under this more general paradigm, we can explain why both Hindus have traditionally attributed the rain to Indra, and many scientists have preferred to attribute the rain to natural meteorological phenomena. In other words, Geertz’s universal common-sense perspective should be extended to include the human desire to explain the unexplained. Thus, this revised common-sense perspective can be understood as the most universal human paradigm and can serve as a genus for the phenomenon of religion, and from which we might derive a definition of religion.