Words Matter

René Gothóni is Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Helsinki, a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a life member of the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. He is also President of the Finnish Society of Friends of Mount Athos. His publications include Attitudes and Interpretations in Comparative Religion (2000) and The Unknown Pilgrim (2006), and he edited How to do Comparative Religion? Three Ways, Many Goals (2005), The Monastic Magnet. Roads to and from Mount Athos (with G. Speake, 2008) and Pilgrims and Travellers in the Search of the Holy (2010).

• Contents: The Challenge: the kind of knowledge of quality aimed at – The Uniqueness: humans possesses speech and words are revelatory of being – Beyond Methodic Truth: method as discernment and movement between concept and word – A Pilgrim among Pilgrims: the relation between subject matter and interpreter – Symbols: how historical belongingness determines interpretation – Towards a Method of Hermeneutic Reflection: the question of truth – The Method of Hermeneutic Reflection: Units and Universe, and the characteristics of hermeneutic reflection.

«This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with issues of method in the study of religions, and perhaps (it can be hoped) may stimulate the long-overdue dialogue between the cognitive scientists of religion and those who, like Gothóni, seek a less rigid and linear form of research.» (Margaret Gouin, Paranthropology)