Religion And Practical Reason

Book Details:

• Author: Frank E. Reynolds and David Tracy

• Publisher: Sri Satguru Publications

• Language: English

• Edition: 1997

• ISBN: 9788170305262

• Pages: 460

• Cover: Hardcover

• Dimensions: 23 cm x 15 cm

• Weight: 640 gm

About the Book:
Religion and Practical Reason: New Essays in the Comparative Philosophy of Religions is the third and concluding volume in a landmark series that emerged from a sequence of nine international conferences held between 1986 and 1992. Sponsored by the Institute for the Advanced Study of Religion at the University of Chicago and funded in part by the Booth-Ferris Foundation, these conferences brought together distinguished scholars in the field of comparative philosophy of religion.

Edited by Frank E. Reynolds and David Tracy, this volume—like its predecessors Myth and Philosophy (1990) and Discourse and Practice (1992)—blends programmatic essays with focused case studies. The aim: to rethink the methodologies, assumptions, and practices that have traditionally defined the comparative philosophy of religions.

The essays in this collection explore how religious thought and philosophical reasoning intersect with lived practice—emphasizing the concept of "practical reason" not in a narrow Aristotelian sense, but as a dynamic interplay between theory and human experience. It is a conceptual space where disciplined philosophical analysis and the contingencies of religious practice converge.

The book is structured around two main thrusts: first, essays that propose new frameworks for understanding religious traditions comparatively, and second, case studies that apply these frameworks to specific religio-historical materials. The sustained scholarly dialogue across the three volumes reveals an intellectual trajectory that moves from rethinking the relationship between myth and philosophy to understanding philosophical discourse itself as a form of religious practice.

Ideal for scholars and advanced students in the fields of religious studies, theology, comparative religion, and philosophy, this volume is both intellectually rigorous and broadly interdisciplinary. It encourages the re-envisioning of religious inquiry as a practice informed by both analytic clarity and historical sensitivity