Religion and Spiritual Experience: Revisiting Key Assumptions in Sociology
S. Cohn, Kyriacos C. Markides
July 1, 2013 DOI: 10.24972/ijts.2013.32.2.34 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that sociology and the social sciences emerged from Socratic philosophical traditions open to religious experience as contact with a transcendent reality, but that the discipline's founders adopted an Enlightenment-era separatist and skeptical stance, claiming sociology would demonstrate religious beliefs to be epiphenomena of social structures and establish knowledge on purely material foundations. |
Abstract
Sociology, and all the social sciences, have their origin in philosophical traditions dating back to Socrates. These classical traditions considered the possibility that religious experiences may reflect contact with a transcendent reality. The social sciences, however, became differentiated from philosophy during and after the Enlightenment in an intellectual climate that viewed religion skeptically. The founders of sociology adopted this separatist position and argued that sociology would show that religious beliefs were epiphenomena of social structures. They claimed that, as a science, sociology would disprove the claims of religion and establish human knowledge upon purely material foundations.