Jason Josephson Storm

Much of Storm's early writing on Japanese religions built on his doctoral research. This writing particularly examined how the categories of religion, superstition, and science came to be constructed in Meiji-era Japan. For example, the paper "When Buddhism became a 'Religion'," one of Storm's most cited papers according to Google Scholar,[6] examined the categorization of different aspects of traditional Japanese Buddhism as religion and superstition in the work of Inoue Enryō.[7]

In his 2012 book The Invention of Religion in Japan, Storm expanded this argument to examine how Japanese thinkers in the Meiji era adopted Western categories of religion, superstition, and science. Storm examined the origins of State Shinto in this light.[8]^:133 The book also examined the confluence of Japanese religious thought, political theory, science, and philology in movements such as the Kokugaku.[8]^:110–111

Kevin Schilbrack has associated The Invention of Religion in Japan with "Critical Religion" or the "critical study of religion", an approach in religious studies that challenges the stability of religion as an analytical category.[4]^:93–94 Other thinkers in this movement include Talal Asad and Russell T. McCutcheon. Within this field, The Invention of Religion in Japan draws on insights from postcolonial theory and has been connected to Edward Said's Orientalism and Richard King's Orientalism and Religion.[9]^:82 At the same time, Storm complicates Said's thesis, noting in particular that Japanese scholars adapted the concept of religion to their own ends and contributed to orientalist scholarship in order to position Japan as a culturally and intellectually dominant force in East Asia, including over Korea during Japan's colonization of the region.[9][8]^:247

In his book introducing different concepts of religion, Benjamin Schewel claimed that Storm's work in The Invention of Religion in Japan made "major conceptual contributions" to what Schewel terms the "Construct Narrative" of the definition of religion.[10]

Other ideas developed in The Invention of Religion in Japan have been applied more broadly in religious studies. For instance, the ideas of hierarchical inclusion and exclusive similarity, which Storm coined to describe Japanese methods of conceiving religious difference,[8]^:24–39 have been applied in research on South Asian religions.[11]

Storm's 2017 book The Myth of Disenchantment challenged the validity of the thesis of disenchantment in the social sciences. The book argues that social-scientific data do not support the idea of a widespread loss of belief in magic in the West.[1]^{:ch. 1} The book distinguishes between secularization and disenchantment as theoretical and sociological phenomena and argues that they have not been correlated in European history. According to Storm, these data challenge traditional definitions of modernity.[1]^:306–310 Storm argues that disenchantment has come to serve as a myth in the sense of a "regulative ideal" that impacts human behavior and leads people to act as though disenchantment has occurred, even though it has not.[12]

In addition to its sociological critique of the reality of disenchantment, The Myth of Disenchantment offered new intellectual-historical interpretations of sociological theorists commonly associated with disenchantment. The book argued that many of these thinkers, including Max Weber, James George Frazer, and Sigmund Freud, engaged with mysticism and the occult.[1] For this reason, Storm argues, accounts of disenchantment derived from the work of these figures may need to be revised. In The Myth of Disenchantment and other academic articles, Storm also argued for a close connection between Western esotericism and the origin of religious studies as a discipline.[13][1]^{:ch. 4}

Around the time of The Myth of Disenchantment's publication, Storm discussed the thesis and main arguments of the book in semi-popular articles for aeon.co and The Immanent Frame as well as through interviews with magazines and podcasts.[14][15][12]

Storm has written on broader questions of epistemology and theory in religious studies. Some of his work in this field seeks to extend and generalize concepts developed in The Invention of Religion in Japan.

Building on ideas in his 2012 book, Storm has developed a trinaristic approach to examining the relationship between secularism, superstition, and religion that he argues is applicable more generally.[16] This trinary contrasts to earlier social-scientific accounts of secularization, which tend to presuppose a binary between religion and secularism. According to Storm, the trinaristic formulation may allow for a more refined theorization of secularism, secularization, and modernity. Brill's Method & Theory in the Study of Religion devoted an issue to further discussing and applying Storm's idea in other subfields of religious studies.[17]

In a 2020 article for Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, Storm applied analytic philosophy of science to critique attempts to model the methods of religious studies on the natural sciences.[18] There Storm also discussed his plans to develop a new approach to the social sciences that he terms metamodernism.[18]

• Josephson, Jason Ānanda (2012). The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226412344.
• Josephson Storm, Jason (2017). The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6.

• Josephson, Jason Ānanda (2006). "When Buddhism Became a "Religion": Religion and Superstition in the Writings of Inoue Enryō". Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. 33 (1): 143–168.
• Josephson, Jason Ānanda (2013). "God's Shadow: Occluded Possibilities in the Genealogy of "Religion"". History of Religions. 52 (4): 309–339. doi:10.1086/669644.
• Josephson, Jason Ānanda (Spring 2015). "Specters of Reason: Kantian Things and the Fragile Terrors of Philosophy". J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists. 3 (1): 204–211. doi:10.1353/jnc.2015.0011. Retrieved 9 February 2021.
• Josephson Storm, Jason Ānanda (January 2, 2018). "The Superstition, Secularism, and Religion Trinary: Or Re-Theorizing Secularism". Method & Theory in the Study of Religion. 30 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1163/15700682-12341409.
• Josephson Storm, Jason Ânanda (28 July 2020). "Revolutionizing the Human Sciences: A Response to Wiebe". Method & Theory in the Study of Religion: 1–7. doi:10.1163/15700682-12341498.