On Credonomy: How to Study the Normative Consequences of Beliefs
Lecture and Discussion with Dr. Ryszard Bobrowicz
4 June 2024, 6:15 p.m., Seminar Room 1, Rabinstraße 8
Beliefs have normative consequences — this notion might be so obvious that it is easily overlooked. At a time, when people increasingly tend to construct their own systems of beliefs, and when one of the most significant challenges of Artificial Intelligence is its bias and hidden beliefs, the question of how to analyze the normative implications of individual beliefs in different contexts takes on an unprecedented urgency. And yet, we seem to struggle to find an adequate methodological foundation for studying beliefs and their normative consequences that would be holistic in approach. Rather, the topical, political, and methodological fragmentation means that some aspects or some subsets of a given belief are analyzed in detail, for example, within a concrete system of belief, while others remain unnoticed — for instance, meritocracy, while nearly completely abandoned in its Christian version, continues to triumph in a secular shape.
The lecture is an invitation to develop such a new holistic approach. To do that, I will consider three things. First, the reasons for fragmentation, that is, a brief look into the history of a division between theology and religious studies, between the religious and the secular, and the ‘pure’ analysis dividing into the object and the subject. Second, what kind of methods and approaches are already used to study borderline cases, such as nones or syncretism? Third, what could be the holistic approach, that is, what I call “Credonomy” and what could stand at the foundation of its methodology?
Dr. Ryszard Bobrowicz
Currently in Bonn on Annemarie Schimmel Fellowship at CTSI, Ryszard Bobrowicz is a postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven and an affiliate researcher at Lund University, working on law and religion and the normative implications of religious diversity. He regularly collaborates with A World of Neighbours, the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe, and the Atlas of Religion or Belief Minority Rights. His monograph, The Politics of Multifaith: The Limits of Legible Religion in Europe (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming), received a “Special Mention for Excellence in Religious Studies” in the 2024 Giuseppe Alberigo Junior Prize Award of the European Academy of Religion (EUARE).