Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective (5 page)

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Authors: Lawrence Kaplan

Tags: #Religion, #General, #Fundamentalism, #Comparative Religion, #Philosophy, #test

BOOK: Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective
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Page 15
1
Fundamentals of Fundamentalism
Martin E. Marty
To speak of "the" fundamentals of fundamentalism would signal arrogance. Yet any effort to describe international fundamentalisms, as we are doing in this volume, demands at least some sort of hypothesis. We need heuristic devices to begin a search. "Fundamentals," then, refers to some distinctive, not necessarily unique, features of movements called fundamentalist. They need not be present in the same way or same measure in all such movements, but they should be characteristic of most of them.
A word, first, about the spirit of the inquiry. Spinoza set forth some terms. In his tract on politics the philosopher said that when he set out to study human actions, he made a sedulous effort not to laugh, not to cry, not to denounce, but to understand. It is easy to have emotions roused on this controversial topic, and this author brings preconceptions. But the main goal is to hold such attitudes sufficiently in suspension that we can begin to understand.
We begin in the spirit of Edmund Husserl's imaged explorer. This explorer comes across what is to him a trackless place. If it has been mapped, he does not know this. He can discern certain outlines: a hill, high trees, or whatever, but he must make his way through it, noting and charting as he goes. So we come across the islands called fundamentalisms, and begin noting, charting, and then naming.

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