Navigating Academic Positionality and Eurocentrism in the Definition of Esotericism.

In this article, Steven Engler and Mark Q. Gardiner propose a new way of classifying esotericism using a taxonomy borrowed from biology. They define esotericism based on a set of properties that are ranked according to their significance and how they relate to each other. The authors aim to synthesize existing definitions of esotericism into a consensual meta-definition, using scholarly consensus as the criterion for validity. However, the authors' approach reflects a conventional understanding of semantic meaning analysis and perpetuates a Western Eurocentric perspective. They also fail to address the issue of Eurocentrism and overlook recent attempts to move beyond it. [Extracted from the article]