ABSTRACT
Critical, like the words “critic” and “criticism,” has a general sense of finding fault, belittling, or being censorious. “Critical” first entered the English language from the Latin criticus and also the earlier Greek kritokos as a noun, with the latter often referred to a “judge,” namely, one who has knowledge of the law and can therefore credibly adjudicate a case or an issue. The use of the term “critical” in the modern academic study of religion is that of scrutinizing a certain posture towards data that are construed as religious, not unrelated to Judith Butler’s characterization of Foucault’s project as aiming “to establish critique as the very practice that exposes the limits of that epistemological horizon itself”.
