Marshall Hodgson was the greatest Islamicist that the United States has yet to produce and a pioneer in the emerging field of World History. As far as Islamic Studies are concerned, Norman O. Brown called Hodgson "our Copernicus." On page 158 of volume one of his magisterial three volume The Venture of Islam, Hodgson included an autobiographical footnote (n. 11) that illuminates both his scholarship and the academic study of religion as he practiced it. Hodgson wrote:
I am personally a convinced Christian, of the Quaker persuasion, but neither here nor earlier do my general formulations on the nature of religion represent Christianity as such. If they represent anything, it is the sort of considerations that have been developed in the modern discipline of religion studies in the works of such scholars as Rudolf Otto and Mircea Eliade; not without influence from the anthropological tradition (e.g., Bronislaw Malinowski, Paul Radin), the sociological (e.g., Emile Durkheim), certain psychologists (e.g., Carl Jung), and philosophers (e.g. Ernst Cassirer, Wm. James, Albert Camus).
The Camus reference has always pleased me and, to an extent, surprised me. The French author and playwright has been important to me since I first read portions of L'Etranger in tenth grade French; I have long been thankful that Hodgson listed him among his influences in religious studies. Camus belongs there as a sympathetic religious critic of the first order.
No comments:
Post a Comment