Religious Studies, Ethics and Modernity

Abstract

In the last few decades, an ethical turn in the humanities and social sciences has brought new questions to the fore. For religious studies, this development has introduced ethics to existing theoretical frameworks that essentialised or emphasised experience (Friedrich Schleiermacher), social identity (Émile Durkheim), language (Ernst Cassirer, Ludwig Wittgenstein), the sacred (Mircea Eliade) and conflict (David Chidester). Ethics and morality may be found in these reflections and theories but are often marginalised and made to serve other theoretical ends. Thus, for example, Weber’s attention to Protestant values served to reflect on modernisation in the West and the world. And Durkheim’s study of morality as collective representations turned attention to socially constructed mores and values.