Neo-Perennialism: A Trap to Avoid or a Valid Research Program?

Abstract (Lang: English):In a previous essay in this journal, I suggested that the kind of perennialism associated with the names of René Guénon and Fritzjof Schuon may—despite its obvious defects—remain relevant to our thinking about religious pluralism. Anything that seems to echo the perspectives of their classic perennialism is, however, often dismissed by scholars in the field of religious studies as invalid. Here, I suggest that this dismissal is often based on what sociologists call “recipe knowledge” and that a number of factors point toward the possibility of developing a more nuanced kind of perennialism. These factors include developments within the cognitive science of religion and of anthropology, which are reinforced by considerations related to psychology and sociology that allow a new appreciation of the notion of archetypes to be found in the writings of C. G. Jung and Mircea Eliade. All these factors, when viewed in light of empirical research into religious experience of the kind initiated by Alister Hardy, point toward the way in which religious experience is to be understood as a significant factor in exploring religious pluralism. In the “neo-perennialism” that I shall advocate, the valid aspects of current thinking within religious studies are affirmed, while, at the same time, the recipe knowledge that tends to distort judgments within that field is discarded.