Collective Intentionality and the Study of Religion - (Expanding Philosophy of Religion) by Andrea Rota (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

In this open access book, Andrea Rota makes the case for philosophical, theoretical, and empirical approaches to the study of religion, drawing on ongoing debates and challenging individualist perspectives.

Rota begins with a survey of the work of Michael Bratman, John Searle, Raimo Tuomela, and Margaret Gilbert exploring the relevance of their insights for the study of religion. He sets out a theoretical framework to operationalize their philosophical ideas in an empirical research setting. Applying this framework in Part Two, Rota analyses the collective agency of Jehovah's Witnesses, focusing on the roles that print and electronic media play in structuring communicative processes that conduce to collective intentions and commitments. He presents extensive fieldwork carried out in Switzerland and Germany, examining both qualitative and quantitative data.

By demonstrating the fruitfulness of philosophical perspectives on collective intentionality and social ontology, Rota's study makes a timely contribution to our understanding of the beliefs, emotions, and aesthetic experiences of religious groups.

The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Review Quotes

"In this carefully researched book, Andrea Rota familiarizes scholars of religion with the group-making dynamics of collective intentionality. After reading this work, we can no longer afford to neglect the theoretical and analytical purchase of this framework." --Michael Stausberg, Professor of Religion, University of Bergen, Norway

"Since Durkheim's focus on the collective effervescence of group rituals, the question of how churches and other religious groups differ from the sum of their individual members has been raised, but seldom answered. Andrea Rota has rendered an important service by demonstrating the necessity and possibility of applying insights derived from the philosophical analysis of collective intentionality to the study of religious groups." --Robert A. Yelle, Chair and Professor for the Theory and Method of Religious Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University, Germany

About the Author