종교학의 비교방법론 -공동작업에 근거한 비교철학 연구를 위한 제언-

Abstract

As the Korea Research Foundation offers incentives for the project groups to engage in the multi-disciplinary research, not a small number of teams claim that their work is "comparative." The term "comparison" is often added in order to justify gathering together the often quite diverse works of large numbers of project members. But many of these researchers do not take their comparative methodology seriously. Scholars who engage in comparative projects should be aware that comparison may lead to distorted ideas and impair the academic value of their work, even while it may simultaneously be a useful research tool. In order to ensure that the comparative method is rigorously employed, it will be fruitful for the SNU comparative philosophy project team to examine the ends, methods, and procedures of scholars of comparative religion. Many scholars of comparative religion can offer models and examples of successful comparison to the comparative philosophy team. Included among these researchers are Mircea Eliade, who adopts comparative morphology to demonstrate universal human religiosity; Jonathan Z. Smith, who emphasizes rigorous scientific methods and operations of comparison; and Wendy Doniger, who suggests eclectic "from bottom up "comparative methods. The team would do well to follow J. Z. Smith's guidelines for establishing appropriate comparative processes in order to minimize possible fallacies: First members should articulate the purpose of comparative research through careful planning and with the full awareness of the problems that comparison can involve. Second, examples corresponding to the purpose should be selected, thoroughly analyzed and contextualized. And finally comparison should be undertaken in order to produce theoretical explanations of the exempla and, ideally, to rectify existing ideas. For a comparative philosophy project based on teamwork to obtain justifiable results, the team should look over examples of comparative works from other areas. By making the best use of comparative methods, the team-based research project in comparative philosophy will be able to broaden the horizons of individual specialists and produce the reliable results relevant to neighboring human science disciplines. For that purpose I expect the comparative philosophy team to broaden disciplinary horizons and to establishing overarching "philosophical humanities" that encompass history, anthropology, and religious studies.