SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

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I Social Theory and Social Action
Comparison, Pragmatics, and Interpretation I 169
ate with the distinction between effective action and discursive reasoning. In
other words, the field of religion seems to have pragmatics in the field of ritual
and reason in the realm of doctrine or philosophical argumentation, thus leaving
little room for a unified notion of practical reason. Furthermore, what is practical,
namely, ritual action, is not particularly subject to efficient articulation or
philosophical scrutiny. Also, both ritual, with its tendency toward decontextualized
semiotic form (see Chapter 6) and religious discourse, with its attention to
transcendent realities, often place religion at the opposite pole from the utilitarian
or functional concerns of everyday life, which can be taken to be the locus
of practical rationality (Maurice Bloch 1974:78).
On closer inspection, however, practical reason does play a critical role in
religious traditions. Cross-culturally, religious phenomena that could be listed under
the rubric of practical reason include: the embodiments of divinity in material
tokens such as sacraments, amulets, icons, and masks; religious practices of socialization,
indoctrination, initiation, and discipline; ritual acts with effective or
even performative force, such as blessing, anathematization, and healing; rhetorical
devices in religious communication, preaching, and conversion; the normative,
ethical dimension of religious life and religious thinking; and the explicit
philosophical expression of the religious validity of practical reason as an alternative
to theoretical reason in notions such as mystical participation, coincidentia
oppositorum, and the absurdity of belief. 8
To this rather obvious list of dimensions of practical reason in religion needs
to be added comparison, seen both as the historical interface of religious traditions
and as a topic for philosophical and theological discourse about religion. In
fact, if there is a tendency for the discipline of the comparative philosophy of
religion to fission between the study of the cultural-historical dimension of religious
traditions and the study of philosophical discourses about religion, careful
attention to the importance of comparison can be a useful experiment in selfcritical
dialogue, since there appears to be a complex dialectic or reciprocal feedback
between historical circumstances and philosophical reflections: on the one
hand, the historical encounter between religious traditions can compel philosophical
and theological theorizing about comparison; on the other hand, philosophical
positions and theological doctrines can play powerful roles in prestructuring
the experience of religious interface.
In commenting on her ethnographic fieldwork in New Guinea, where smallscaled
societies live in close proximity with interlocking exchange relationships,
Mead (1964:281) generalized:
It can, I believe, be demonstrated that contiguity and close interrelationship
between groups with differing communicational styles increase awareness that
various aspects of the communicational system are learned, can be taught, and
are transmissible to others who are not born with them.
This heightened sensibility to the conventionality of cultural systems as a result
of historical encounter presents certain difficulties for religious and philosophical
traditions, both of which, in many cases at least, try to make a claim of uniqueness
and absoluteness. Thus, when religious traditions come into historical contact
the encounter often becomes part of broader political and economic power
relations put into play, though it is a mistake to analyze these situations solely
from the point of view of the agency of the dominant force in the interface. The
range of historical stances runs from fanatical exclusivism's dictating the rejection
and condemnation of the Other so that no communication is deemed possible
(Tillich 1963:31); to the zealous proselytizing of missions to convert the
Other; to respectful juxtaposition facilitated by a thoroughgoing allegorizing of
the Other's texts and doctrines in an effort to make the foreign seem "the same"
(J. Z. Smith 1987:101); to creative forms of syncretism, blending, and hierachical
layering; to efforts at multicultural dialogue predicated either on the relativist
assumption of the formal equivalence of deities, cosmologies, or ritual practices
or on the inclusivist assumption of the constructive benefit of modifying the
"reading" of the local tradition through the perspective of an alien tradition
(Clooney 1989:547; 1990).
Walker's (1994) analysis of al-Farabi, a tenth-century Islamic philosopher,
illustrates a particularly clear case of comparison by hierarchical synthesis. 9 In
the confrontation—real or hypothetical—between Greek philosophy, personified
by Aristotle, and Islamic religion, epitomized by its founder Muhammad, al-Farabi
maintains the formal identity of the great philosopher and the great religious
founder, but only on the condition that each of the two roles operates according
to the guidelines of "theoretical" reason, the principles of which were discovered
by Aristotle. Theoretical reason leads to universal, logically demonstrated knowledge,
while practical reason depends on the linguistic expressions, representational
forms, and rhetorical techniques of particular cultures. AI-Farabi writes:
There are two ways of making a thing comprehensible: first, by causing its
essence to be perceived by the intellect, and second, by causing it to be imagined
through the similitude that imitates it. . . . Now when one acquires knowledge
of the beings or receives instruction in them, if he perceives their ideas
themselves with his intellect, and his assent to them is by means of certain
demonstration, then the science that comprises these cognitions is philosophy.
But if they are known by imagining them through similitudes that imitate
them, and assent to what is imagined of them is caused by persuasive methods,
then the ancients call what comprises these cognitions religion. ... In everything
demonstrated by philosophy, religion employs persuasion. (al-Farabi
1962:44-45)
Thus, the philosopher and the religious leader are brought into a hierarchical
relationship, since Aristotle and Muhammad can only enter into a nonlinguistic