Global Intellectual History and the Dynamics of Religion

The essay sketches a new approach in Global Intellectual History: a theory of 'over-extended' reference or intentionality, especially during the age of European expansion. These over-extensions took place for instance when scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth century inquired about exotic languages and religions, as they did by collecting translations of the Lord's Prayer. What if some of these religions had no concepts for God or Holiness? If one admitted the possibility of atheistic peoples, the proof of God's existence through a `consensus pentium' was in danger. Some Lutherans therefore developed a theory of a 'penumbra', a half-shadow, for places where the knowledge of God was obscured, but not totally absent. In order to find traces of this darkened knowledge they turned to the interpretation of rituals. It was - with all its misinterpretations and mis-references - a sort of globalized mapping of religion.