To What Can I Compare Thee?
Comparison - A Critical Primer - Aaron W. Hughes
Aaron W. Hughes [+ ]
University of Rochester
Aaron W. Hughes is the Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and the Philip S. Bernstein Professor in the Department of Religion and Classics at the University of Rochester. His research and publications focus on both Jewish philosophy and Islamic Studies. He has authored numerous books, including Situating Islam: The Past and Future of an Academic Discipline (Equinox, 2007); Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction (Equinox, 2012); Muslim Identities: An Introduction to Islam (Columbia, 2012); and Abrahamic Religions: On the Uses and Abuses of History (Oxford, 2012). He currently serves as the editor of the journal Method and Theory in the Study of Religion.
Description
This introductory chapter seeks to reveal the task and paradoxes of comparison: its naturalness, its artificiality, its failure, and its potentialities. It introduces the notion that if comparison is to be an effective method it must be historical and not phenomenological, local and not global.