Ninian Smart on World Religions

Volume 1: Religious Experience and Philosophical Analysis

John J. Shepherd

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351914505
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Mysticism

Ninian Smart came to public prominence as the founding Professor of the first British university Department of Religious Studies in the late 1960s. His pioneering views on education in religion proved hugely influential at all levels, from primary schools to academic teaching and research. An unending string of publications, many of them accessible to the general public, sustained a reputation that became worldwide. Here, for the first time, a selection of Ninian Smart's wide-ranging writings is organised systematically under a set of categories which both comprehend and also illuminate his varied output over a career spanning half a century. The editor, John Shepherd, was Principal Lecturer in Religion and Philosophy at the University of Cumbria. He first met Smart as a postgraduate student, and recently helped establish the Ninian Smart Archive at the University of Lancaster.

Appendix 1
Additional Publications by Ninian Smart

Virtually all of the items listed below have been published, and full details are available in the Ninian Smart Bibliography in Appendix 2 of Volume 2: [A] books; [B] papers in edited books; [C] papers in journals or published as pamphlets. (The bibliography is also available on the Ashgate website.) A few, though, are to be found only in typescript in the Ninian Smart Archive located in Lancaster University Library. These are referred to according to their location as listed in the Archive Catalogue, which is available on-line on the website of the Department of Religious Studies at Lancaster University. The entries are grouped by section.

I Autobiographical

• Fragments of a Life in Academe (1974-1977) [E4]
• SOAS at a Strange Time (1997) [E4]
• Fifty Years in Ivory Towers: From Hitler to Beyond the Cold War (Archive F4)
• Smart Ivory (Archive, Appendix)

II Religious Experience and the Logic of Religious Discourse

• Reasons and Faiths: An Investigation of Religious Discourse, Christian and Non-Christian (1958)
• The Concept of Worship (1972)
• The Criteria of Religious Identity (1958) [C]
• The Transcendence of Doctrines (1959) [C]
• Paradox in Religion (1959) [C]
• Social Anthropology and the Philosophy of Religion (1963) [C]
• Religious Experience (1976) [B]
• Our Experience of the Ultimate (1984) [C]
• Ultimate Non-Existence Revisited (1985) [B]

III Mystical Experience

• Mystical Experience (1962) [C]
• Mystical Experience, with Rejoinders (1967) [B]
• The Exploration of Mysticism (1977) [B]
• Interpretations of Mysticism (1972) [Archive F4]

IV Comparative Studies

• A Dialogue of Religions (1960)
• East-West Encounters in Philosophy and Religion (1996)
• Buddhism and Religious Belief (1961) [C]
• Attitudes Towards Death in Eastern Religions (1968) [B]
• Consciousness: Permanent or Fleeting? Reflections on Indian Views of Consciousness and Self (1989) [B]
• Western Society and Buddhism (1989) [C]
• ‘Transcendence in a Pluralistic Context’ (1997) [B]
• The Nature of Religion: Multiple Dimensions of Meaning (2000) [B]
• Is Hinduism an Offshoot of Buddhism? [with Knut Jacobsen] (2006) [B]

V Religious Studies and Religious Education: Method and Theory in the Study of Religion

• The Teacher and Christian Belief (1966)
• Secular Education and the Logic of Religion (1968)
• The Phenomenon of Religion (1973, second edition 1978)
• The Science of Religion and the Sociology of Knowledge: Some Methodological Questions (1973)
• New Movements in Religious Education (1975)
• Religion and the Western Mind (1987) [chapters 1-3]
• The Nature of Religion (1964) [El]
• Theology (1966) [B]
• A New Look at Religious Studies: The Lancaster Idea (1967) [C]
• The Comparative Study of Religion in Schools (1969) [C]
• The Principles and Meaning of the Study of Religion (1970) [C]
• What is Truth in RE? (1970) [C]
• Religion as a Subject (1970) [C]
• Religious Studies at Lancaster, England (1971) [C]
• Philosophy and Religion: Conversation with Ninian Smart (1971) [B]
• Comparative Hermeneutics: An Epilogue about the Future (1973) [B]
• The Exploration of Religion and Education (1975) [C]
• Exploring Religion in a Plural Society (1976) [C]
• Beyond Eliade: The Future of Theory in Religion (1978) [C]
• History of Religions (1979) [C]
• Towards a Dialogue at the Level of the Science of Religion: A Reply to Ren Jiyu (1979) [C]
• The Exploration of Religion in Public Education, I and II (1979 and 1980) [C]
• The Philosophy of Worldviews, or the Philosophy of Religion Transformed (1981) [C]
• A Curricular Paradigm for Religious Education (1981) [B]
• Threat to Religion on the Campus (1981) [C]
• Religious Studies and South Africa (1982) [C]
• Worldview Analysis: A Way of Looking At Our Field (1982) [C]
• Scientific Phenomenology and Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s Misgivings (1984) [B]
• The Scientific Study of Religion in its Plurality (1984) [B]
• The History of Religions and Its Conversation Partners (1985) [B]
• From Rome to Sydney: Reflections on the Study of Religions (1985) [C]
• Identity and a Dynamic Phenomenology of Religion (1985) [C]
• Foreword [to G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation] (1986) [B]
• Methods and Disciplines in the Study of Religion (1986) [B]
• Towards an Agreed Place for Religious Studies in Higher Education (1986) [B]
• The Study of Religion: Where Are We Going? (1987) [C]
• Comparative-Historical Method (1987) [B]
• Religious Studies in the United Kingdom (1988) [C]
• Graduate Education: Some Practical Issues (1988) [C]
• Religious Studies, Worldview Analysis and Business Education (1989) [C]
• Concluding Reflections: Religious Studies in Global Perspective (1990) [B]
• Religious Studies and Religious Education: Challenges for a New South Africa (1991) [C]
• Teaching Religion and Religions: The “World Religions” Course (1991) [B]
• The Pros and Cons of Thinking of Religion as Tradition (1991) [B]
• Secular Ideologies: How Do They Figure in Religious Studies Courses? (1991) [B]
• The Introductory Course: A Balanced Approach (1991) [B]
• Retrospect and Prospect: The History of Religions (1994) [B]
• The Values of Religious Studies (1995) [C]
• Some Thoughts on the Science of Religion (1996) [B]
• Freedom, Authority and the Study of Religion in the United States (1996) [B]
• Religious Studies and Theology (1997) [C]
• Does the Philosophy of Religion Rest on Two Mistakes? (1997) [C]
• Foreword [to P. Connelly, ed., Approaches to the Study of Religion] (1999) [B]
• The Future of the Academy (2001) [C]
• Religious Education (Archive F4)
• The University, the Ocean of Empathy and the Way to the Truth (Archive F4)
• What Most Needs to be Done in the Study of Religion (Archive F6)
• The Birth of Religious Studies in the U.K. and the U.S.A. (Archive F6)
• Comparative Religion and the Social Sciences (Archive F6)

VI Religious Ethics

• The Perfect Good (1955) [C]
• Omnipotence, Evil and Supermen (1961) [C]
• Ethics and Linguistic Philosophy (1965) [C]
• What is Happiness? (1980) [B]
• Spiritual Diversity and the Planet in the 21st Century (1993) [B]
• Friendship and Enmity Among Nations (1994) [B]
• Marriage in the World’s Religions (1995) [C]

Appendix 2
Table of Contents for Volume 2

Ninian Smart (1927-2001)

Preface

Acknowledgements

I: INDIVIDUAL TRADITIONS

(i) Buddhism

• 1 ‘Mysticism and Scripture in Theravāda Buddhism’, in Steven T. Katz (ed.), Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 232-241
• 2 ‘Theravāda and Processes: Nirvāṇa as a Meta-process’, in Frank Hoffman and Deegalle Mahinda (eds), Pali Buddhism, Richmond: Curzon Press, 1996, pp. 196-205
• 3 ‘The Dramatic Effect of the Buddha on Western Theories of Religion’, in Thomas Ryba, George D. Bond, and Herman Tull (eds), The Comity and Grace of Method: Essays in Honor of Edmund F. Perry, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004, pp. 321-329

(ii) Hinduism

• 4 ‘Indian Arguments About the Existence of God’, in Dr S. Radhakrishnan Souvenir Volume, Moradabad, India: Darshana International, 1964, pp. 412-420
• 5 ‘The Analogy of Meaning and the Tasks of Comparative Philosophy’, in Gerald J. Larson and Eliot Deutsch (eds), Interpreting Across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988, pp. 174-183
• 6 ‘Swami Vivekananda as a Philosopher’, in Swami Ghanananda and Geoffrey Parrinder (Editorial Advisers), Swami Vivekananda in East and West, London: Ramakrishna Vedanta Centre, 1968, pp. 64-83
• 7 ‘Integral Knowledge and the Four Theories of Existence’, in H. Chaudhuri and F. Spiegelberg (eds), The Integral Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo: A Commemorative Symposium, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1960, pp. 167-173

(iii) Chinese Religions/Worldviews

• 8 ‘Reflections on Chinese Religious and Other Worldviews in Regard to Modernization’, in Dai Kangsheng, Zhang Xinying and Michael Pye (eds), Religion and Modernization in China, Cambridge: Roots and Branches, 1995, pp. 93-101
• 9 ‘Maoism and Religion’, Ching Feng: Quarterly Notes on Christianity and Chinese Religion and Culture (Hong Kong Edition), 18 (4) (1975): 219-230
• 10 ‘The Bounds of Religion and the Transition from the Tao to Mao’, Sri Lanka Journal of the Humanities, 1 (1) (1975): 72-80

(iv) Christianity

• 11 ‘Myth and Transcendence’, The Monist, 50 (4) (1966): 475-487

(v) Islam

• 12 Islamic Responses to the West (1988) [first publication]
• 13 Salman Rushdie in a Plural World [first publication]

(vi) Shamanism

• 14 ‘The Twenty-First Century and Small Peoples’, in Nils G. Holm et al. (eds), Ethnography is a Heavy Rite, Studies in Comparative Religion in Honour of Juha Pentikainen, Religionsvetenskapliga skrifter No. 47, Abo, Finland: Åbo Akademis trycke...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Ninian Smart (1927-2001)
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: A Critical Analysis
• I: Autobiographical
• II: Religious Experience and the Logic of Religious Discourse
• III: Mystical Experience
• IV: Comparative Studies
• V: Religious Studies and Religious Education: Method and Theory in the Study of Religions
• VI: Religious Ethics
• Appendix 1: Additional Publications by Ninian Smart
• Appendix 2: Contents of Volume 2
• Name Index