Bridging the two cultures or re-rectifying incommensurability? A commentary on Ariel Gluklich’s The Joy of Religion

A review of Ariel Gluklich's The Joy of Religion (2020) finds the book's ambitious attempt to bridge scientific and cultural approaches to religious joy ultimately unsatisfactory. The author argues that while Gluklich acknowledges pleasure as a biological fact amenable to cognitive science and evolutionary biology, he treats cultural pleasure as escaping scientific explanation. This creates an apologetic tenor that elevates philosophical phenomenology over science, reestablishing a dichotomy between explanation and interpretation rather than overcoming it. The reviewer concludes that the incommensurability between the two approaches prevents a persuasive synthesis.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Ariel Gluklich takes up an important and according to him partly overlooked topic in The Joy of Religion (2020). The book has many qualities, and much of its argument is challenging, original, and thoughtful. It attends to pleasure and joy in an imbalanced fashion, but there is a reason. While the former is usually culturally excoriated, the latter is eulogized, but howdoes that relate to their biological counterparts? Is it in cultural representations only that we bifurcate happiness into negative and positive sides, or do they, also at the biotic level, trigger differently valenced behaviors and effects? Gluklich admirably seeks to tie together a science-based approach with cultural studies applied to the question how does the emotional, instinctual level connect to feelings of pleasure and joy. Ambitious as the book is, in the end I find the argument unsatisfactory. The attempt to establish a dialogue between the two cultures falters on the grounds that Glucklich’s embrace of a philosophical phenomenological tradition ultimately disqualifies the scientific contribution. The use of cognitive science, evolutionary biology and psychology are obvious in a study of religious joy, as is the attempt to combine the approach with cultural studies, and Gluklich both wants to have his biscuit and eat it. He grants that pleasure is a biological fact, which can be studied by cognitive science and evolutionary biology and psychology, i.e., as an adaptation for avoidance and approach. As a cultural phenomenon, though, pleasure eludes the scientific perspective. The argument is not outright religious, as one may be tempted to think, but it has an apologetic tenor in the dismissal of science for a full grasp of religious experience. It ends up in re-rectifying the time-honored dichotomy between explanation and interpretation. I do not mean to suggest that this is a full rejection, however. There is much to learn; but the attempt to bridge scientific theorizing with philosophical phenomenology does not persuade because of the incommensurability between the two and the elevation of phenomenology at the cost of science. I am also critical about some of the examples adduced from the history of religions, but my focus here is on the overarching argument.