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Asceticism is a central concept in Buddhism. It is both a constituent ideal and a practice needing to be tamed by institutional religion. This article analyzes Buddhist asceticism as textual ideal and religious practice from an understanding of asceticism as both renunciation (Gavin Flood), and training (Peter Sloterdijk). Influenced by Mary Douglas' group/grid model, a typology is suggested in which both the Buddha legend, historical Buddhism in its various expressions and modern Japanese shugyō and Western mindfulness are placed. It is the article's claim that asceticism is a foundational Buddhist ideal and a practice with significance for the development and societal integration of the religion.

In the current article I raise the question of asceticism as a ubiquitous and multifarious phenomenon in human culture. Contrary to much traditional scholarship on asceticism within the history of religion that has focused almost exclusively on the phenomenon as confined to a Judaeo-Christian and Indian context, I point to the importance of bringing the later phenomena into dialogue with previous examples in tribal and archaic types of religion. In anthropology there has from an early period been a strong acknowledgement of the pervasiveness of ascetic practices not least in conjunction with ritual. Yet, this appreciation has never really been taken into consideration by scholars working on subsequent forms of asceticism. By means of genealogically typological reflections, I aim to develop a full scale understanding that will enable us to take the entire gamut of ascetic practices and phenomena into consideration. My ruminations rest on a biocultural evolutionary approach that allows me, on the one hand, to account for the pluriform nature of the phenomenon under scrutiny and, on the other hand, to place emphasis on the uniting features. From this perspective, two points of transition come to the fore of discussion. The first crucial transformation pertaining to asceticism took place at the time of the emergence of axial age thinking and practice at which period asceticism changed from being ritually to be ideologically determined. The second decisive change occurred at the transition from post-axial age types of religion to modernity when the element of privation disappeared. I develop my understanding of the specific nature of asceticism pertinent to the singular stages in the history of asceticism in the wake of thinkers such as Robert Bellah, Peter Sloterdijk and Pierre Hadot.

Redaktionelt forord om dette nummers tema: Robert Bellah, religionshistorie og kulturel evolution

Artiklen præsenterer og diskuterer to artikler af den amerikanske religionssociolog Robert Bellah, “Religious evolution” fra 1964 og “What is Axial about the Axial Age?” (2005). I forhold til en generel mangel på interesse for en religionens historie (forskellig fra religionernes historie) blandt religionsvidenskabelige forskere anbefales Bellahs model som et frugtbart udgangspunkt for en revitalisering af en hæderværdig del af religionsvidenskaben, særlig når den kombineres med aktuelle diskussioner af ‘aksetiden’ og Merlin Donalds biokulturelle, kognitive model for hominid evolution.

The article gives a survey of selections from recent literature and a few older, classic works on the history of the religions, i.e. Christianity, Islam and Judaism in the Balkans (except Turkey). the article puts a special emphasis on literature dealing with the connection between the religions and the political and social history. This is followed by a comment on national mythologies in the Balkans and an interoduction to the literature on the history of this region. the conclusion evaluates the role of the religions in the present Balkan conflicts; t he religions are not curcial and the conflicts are not religious wars but because of the importance of religion in ethnic classification, the religions become parts of the nationalist power game.

Nogle grundlæggende religionsvidenskabelige metodeovervejelser. Vilhelm Grønbech (1873-1948) is so far the most important and well-known Danish historian of religion. In 1987, Professor J. Prytz-Johansen published a new book on Grønbech, and this is the immediate occasion for this article which surveys Grønbech’s life and works, and the secondary literature on Grønbech before and including Prytz-Johansen. Its primary aim, however, is to describe Grønbech’s “project” and religio-social “method” – these are unsatisfactorily treated by Prytz-Johansen – in order to reflect on their validity for us today. The conclusion is, primarily, that we from Grønbech may learn that also the science of religion is a public, cultural and political affair, and, consequently, that we as scholars need to become aware of this fact and of the responsebility vis à vis our society which follows from this fact. Secondly, we may learn from Grønbech’s peculiar “method” of “objective subjectivity” or “subjective objectivity” and from his “holistic” approach to religion. Further, we may learn something from his ideas or definition of religion. And finally, it would be fortunate if we today could learn a little from Grønbech’s beautiful and straightforward way of presenting his results to the public. Consequently, there are good reasons not to forget Grønbech either in Denmark or abroad.

The History of Religions as an academic enterprise has traditionally been concerned with the study of Otherness, i.e. non-Christian traditions. This article focuses on the ways in which historians of religions have constructed Other religions in accordance with Western and Christian theologically inspired concepts of religion. Such constructions of religious Otherness have mainly been based on universalist and nostalgic views of religion, without regard to the historicity of scholarly work. The History of Religions is basically a comparative enterprise, illustrated here by the ideas of Clifford Geertz, by the emic/etic distinction and in a discussion of the three main frames of comparison: relativism, evolutionism and universalism, all of which may often be found in any single treatment of Other religions.