Soraj Hongladarom et al., "Philosophies of Appropriated Religions: Perspectives from Southeast Asia" (Springer, 2024)
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What is the book “Philosophies of Appropriated Religions” and why was it created?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm Malcolm Keating, and today we'll be talking to Suraj Hongladoram and JJ Joaquin, two of the editors of the Philosophies of Appropriated Religions, Perspectives from Southeast Asia, published in 2023 by Springer. Welcome to New Books and Philosophy, Suraj and JJ. Hi, hi. Nice to
have you.
Yeah, yeah. Nice to be here. Great. Glad to have the two of you here. Before we start, we should note that there's a third editor who wasn't able to be here, and that's Frank Hoffman, but he is also an editor of this book, so we want to make sure that everyone knows he was involved as well. Okay, so let's start with a kind of high-level entry into the topic. Your book aims to bring perspectives from Southeast Asia, especially what you describe as appropriated religions, into the field of philosophy of religion. And it's a pretty hefty volume. It's almost 400 pages long, and you have 27 chapters ranging over lots of topics and texts and traditions. But still, in your introductory remarks, you suggest that there's something like a Southeast Asian way of engaging with problems in the philosophy of religion.
So before we dive into all the details, can you give us maybe a high level of summary of how you understand this approach and what your book is doing or arguing? Yeah,
maybe. Yeah. Yeah, so this project is under the Global Philosophy of Religion project by the University of Birmingham Center for Philosophy of Religion. So we discussed this with the director, former director of that center, Eugene Nagasawa. Now he's in Oakland. And his project is really to globalize philosophy of religion. He wants to take in different fields, different traditions from across the world, across the globe, and get into issues in philosophy or religion. So he had a call for grants, grant applications, and we tried to submit an application, and Our project, this project, this book project is about that. So we're looking at particular ways of looking at the traditional problems in philosophy of religion to the lens of Southeast Asian religions.
Now, we're using the term appropriated, and I know that it has a heavy baggage. The term appropriation, as you know, in the States connotes a lot of different things. But for us, we're looking at it from the vantage point of assimilated religions or appropriation. what you could call inculturated religions. As you know, many of the world religions are in Southeast Asia, Catholicism or different various forms of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, and so on. But these world religions have a unique or enculturated forms in various Southeast Asian nations. So we're looking at that perspective from the perspective of Southeast Asian philosophers who are into philosophy of religion as well. So that's the whole idea of the project.
So, for example, when we're looking at the problem of traditional problems of evil, we want to look at it not just from the vantage point of some monotheistic religion, but from the vantage point of an appropriated monotheistic religion, such as Islam religion in Malaysia or Islam religion in Indonesia, and so on and so forth. Another example is when we talk about omniscience and free will. So that's another big problem, big problem in the philosophy of religion. So you want to look at it from the vantage point of, for example, a Filipino Christian looking at omniscience, divine omniscience and free will. How do you understand free will and omniscience in this kind of religious setting and religious culture?
Yeah, if I might add to what JJ has said, of course, there are a lot of diversity in the book, as you said, and there are 27 chapters, more than 400 pages and so on. However, there is a kind of a guiding thread, so to speak, to these chapters in that, first of all, they are from Southeast Asia. Most of them are from the Philippines and Thailand because this is where JJ and I are working and we get our networks from there. But we also have papers from other countries, for example, from Malaysia and Indonesia.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the book “Philosophies of Appropriated Religions” and why was it created?
0:01–6:00
2
How do the editors define “appropriated” or “inculturated” religions in Southeast Asia?
6:00–11:53
3
Why is interdisciplinary work (philosophy, sociology, anthropology) essential for this volume?
11:53–19:07
4
How does the project address classic philosophy‑of‑religion problems (evil, free will, afterlife) from a Southeast Asian perspective?
19:07–24:35
5
What methodological challenges arise when combining empirical data with philosophical analysis?
24:35–30:52
6
How do indigenous practices and syncretic traditions shape the concept of “religion” in the region?
30:52–37:12
7
What criticisms about disciplinary boundaries and inclusivity have the editors encountered?
37:12–43:30
8
What are the editors’ next projects and how will they expand global philosophy of religion?
43:30–48:48
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