Masuzawa and the Language of the Study of Religion

In “Philology and The Discovery of a Fissure in the European Past,” Masuzawa provides a detailed account of the role played by language in the nineteenth-century’s ranking of world religions. Drawing on evidence presented in a number of different sources, she argues that the period’s esteem for inflection (over agglutination) led to a biased evaluation of the religions (163). According to the West, belief-systems belonging to geographical areas characterized by an inflectional language were worthy of distinction and subsequently, these religious traditions were given positions of prominence within the hierarchy of world religions that European/Western scholars were busy constructing (163). While I am interested in Masuzawa’s attempt to thoroughly underscore the ways in which this practice was/is unjustifiable, I find that after having read her book, what I am inclined to continue thinking about with regard to this issue of language is something else.

In the same chapter, Masuzawa quotes from Wilhelm von Humboldt’s On Language often, providing the reader with a variety of controversial ideas that the bulk of contemporary thought may (or may not) find foreign. One such example is when Masuzawa cites Humboldt as having written, “The comparative study of languages … loses all higher interest if it does not cleave to the point at which language is connected with the shaping of the nation’s mental power” (159). Notably, Masuzawa goes on to use this statement as further evidence of the kind of thinking that both created and sought to justify the unfounded subordination of the Semitic (and Turanian) language families to Aryan ones (163-170). Without intending to undermine the significance of this argument, I do want to say that the level of importance attached to language in Humboldt’s statement is what especially interests me.

Humboldt’s reverence for language in terms of what it illuminates about a particular culture or humanity in general is clearly outlined throughout the chapter. I would like to divorce some of his statements from their context by looking at them on their own, independent of the racially-charged theory that they were meant to propagate. Given what was said last class about the complications surrounding the c(C)ontext of a text, I wonder if what I am proposing is technically possible or even fair. In spite of all of this, however, I would like to “break the rules” and view two of his statements as simply a grouping of words that yield an interpretation of language that interests me. The first statement occurs when Humboldt refers to language as “the outer appearance of the spirit of a people” and the second occurs when he helpfully begins to unpack it with another:

The bringing-forth of language is an inner need of human beings, not merely an external necessity for maintaining communal intercourse, but a thing lying in their own nature, indispensable for the development of their mental powers and the attainment of a world-view, to which man can attain only by bringing his thinking to clarity and precision through communal thinking with others. (160)

When I read these two assertions as a pair, Humboldt’s regard for language as a deeply spiritual dimension of the human experience appears evident. Words like “spirit,” “bringing-forth,” “inner need,” and “nature” all connote a sense of organic-ness with respect to language’s relationship to the human condition and religious experience and I find this organic linking attractive. But why exactly? What do I find appealing about imbuing linguistic acts (verbal communication) with a kind of fundamental or basic religious significance? In finding this appealing, am I in some way exhibiting this so-called “inner need of human beings”?

I feel unsure of how to think about these things especially given my general frustration with the role that I find language often plays in discussing religion and religious experience in particular. In Varieties of Religious Experience, William James talks about the ineffability that so frequently defines religious phenomena and while I am fascinated by this ineffability, how do I talk about something that cannot be articulated? As the readings for last week and our class discussion demonstrated, I use and will continue to use terms like, “spiritual” and “religion” even though I am unable to define them. What is more, despite this imprecision, I plan to go on and generate scholarship on these topics. These realities confuse me but they have crystallized my awareness of the special place or function that language occupies/fulfills within the study of religion.

Reading Masuzawa has been challenging because while she is very good at outlining the philological dilemma of the discipline, she does not go as far to suggest a way of dealing with it. After having finished her book, I can say that I have benefited from her perspective on the genesis of the study of world religions and yet, still feel the absence of an appropriate vocabulary with which to articulate my own thoughts on the subject. What “language,” if any, is she advocating the use of in her critique of the “world religions” dialogue, I wonder? What “language” is she herself using to speak about her particular interest in the study of religion? How did she formulate it? Moreover, is it possible to develop a “language” or a way to speak about religion and religious experience that is both academically responsible in its objectivity and experientially responsible in its sensitivity towards the insider? These are just some of the questions that I find myself thinking about currently.