Interrogating the Comparative Method: Whither, Why, and How?1

Abstract

This essay seeks to illuminate the problematics, methods, and dynamics of comparison by interrogating how certain analytical categories in the study of religion, such as scripture and the body, can be fruitfully reimagined through a comparative analysis of their Hindu and Jewish instantiations. I consider a range of issues that are critical to any productive comparative study, and I reflect more specifically on the principal components of my own comparative method in light of Oliver Freiberger's analytical framework: the goals of comparative analysis; the modes of comparison; the parameters that define the scope and the scale of the comparative inquiry; and the operations involved in the comparative process, beginning with selection of the specific traditions and analytical categories to be addressed and formulation of the organizational design of the study and culminating in the re-visioned categories and models in the study of religion that constitute the fruits of the comparative inquiry.

Polemical Comparisons in Discourses of Religious Diversity: Conceptual Remarks and Reflexive Perspectives

“…According to Masuzawa, the formation of the discourse on world religions is a prime example of how comparing, othering, and the naturalisation of highly selective classifications are intertwined. See, for instance, Holdrege (2000Holdrege ( , 2018 and Freiberger (2018Freiberger ( , 2019. Positioning his work beyond postmodernist and postcolonial critiques, Freiberger (2019, 196) asserts that these critiques "have helped to sharpen our methodological awareness, but they do not have the potential to call comparison into question in a fundamental way."…”

“…"post-postmodern" or "post-postcolonial" approaches (Holdrege 2000(Holdrege , 87, 2018Kimmich 2017, 140-41). Comparing, as the argument goes, can lend itself to the reflexive and relational turn both in ontology and epistemology, devising an "ethics of comparison" and implementing a "politics of recognition."…”