The Meaning and End of Religion

Author: (Canada) Smith / Dong Jiangyang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-06-01
Features: Anyone who wants to explore the essence of religious reality hidden beneath various religious traditions in the world will find Wilfred Cantwell Smith's writings to be erudite, thought-provoking, and enlightening. — Joseph Kitagawa of the University of Chicago, "The Meaning and End of Religion," is a classic work in religious studies. As usual, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, in examining the extensive historical and philosophical information within the scope of the material he considered, applied meticulous, meticulous, and cautious thinking, resulting in a thoughtful, effective, and challenging exploration of religious traditions and human beliefs. — George Rupp of Rice University
The originality of this book lies in its ability to help us understand religious phenomena in a new way. Because of Cantwell Smith, we become aware of the intellectual "glasses" formed by our own culture and through which we observe religious life, and try to re-examine everything. — John Bucher of Claremont Graduate School
This book examines the names, references, terms, categories, concepts, and self-understanding of the religious lives of almost all advanced civilizations so far from the perspective of the development and evolution of categories and concepts. The author points out that to truly describe and understand everything that has happened in human religious life, one should abandon the use of the concept of "religion" in both general and individual senses and replace it with the two independent concepts of "accumulated traditions" and "personal beliefs."