Afro-Brazilian Religions and the Prospects for a Philosophy of Religious Practice
José Eduardo Porcher, Fernando Carlucci
Religions February 24, 2023 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.3390/rel14020146 via DOAJ
Summary
Afro-Brazilian traditions like Candomblé and Umbanda involve practices such as spirit possession, mediumship, and sacrifice that philosophers have neglected because they focus on text-based, belief-centered religions. Anthropologists have studied these orally transmitted traditions for nearly a century. The paper argues that philosophy of religion needs a new methodology to treat such practices as thoughtful, cognitive enterprises. It critiques Kevin Schilbrack's proposed embodiment paradigm, conceptual metaphor theory, and extended mind thesis, finding them flawed in their views of language, the body, and cognition levels. Enactivism is recommended instead.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Philosophy of religion should adopt enactivism to understand religious practices like those in Afro-Brazilian traditions as cognitive enterprises, rather than relying on text-based, belief-focused approaches. |
Abstract
In this paper, we take our cue from Kevin Schilbrack’s admonishment that the philosophy of religion needs to take religious practices seriously as an object of investigation. We do so by offering Afro-Brazilian traditions as an example of the methodological poverty of current philosophical engagement with religions that are not text-based, belief-focused, and institutionalized. Anthropologists have studied these primarily orally transmitted traditions for nearly a century. Still, they involve practices, such as offering and sacrifice as well as spirit possession and mediumship, that have yet to receive attention from philosophers. We argue that this is not an accident: philosophers have had a highly restricted diet of examples, have not looked at ethnography as source material, and thus still need to put together a methodology to tackle such practices. After elucidating Schilbrack’s suggestions to adopt an embodiment paradigm and apply conceptual metaphor theory and the extended mind thesis to consider religious practices as thoughtful, we offer criticism of the specifics of his threefold solution. First, it assumes language is linear; second, it takes a problematic view of the body; and third, it abides by a misleading view of the “levels” of cognition. We conclude that the philosophy of religion should adopt enactivism to understand religious practices as cognitive enterprises.