Reconfigurations of philosophy of religion a possible future 9781438469096, 1438469098, 9781438469102, 1438469101

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Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion

Reconfigurations of Philosophy of Religion A Possible Future

Edited by

Jim Kanaris

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2018 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production, Dana Foote Marketing, Anne M. Valentine Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kanaris, Jim, 1964– editor. Title: Reconfigurations of philosophy of religion : a possible future / edited by Jim Kanaris. Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017021792 (print) | LCCN 2017061724 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438469102 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438469096 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Religion—Philosophy. Classification: LCC BL51 (ebook) | LCC BL51 .R32875 2018 (print) | DDC 210—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017021792 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction ix Jim Kanaris

Part I Philosophy of Religion and the Philosophical Tradition   1. Re-envisioning Philosophy of Religion Morny Joy   2. Toward a New Paradigm for Philosophy of Religion Maurice Boutin   3.

Re-visioning “Life” in Philosophy of Religion Today: Or: A New Concept for a Global Philosophy of Religious Life Pamela Sue Anderson

3 35

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  4. After the End of Philosophy of Religion N.N. Trakakis

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  5. The End of Philosophy of Religion? Timothy D. Knepper

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  6. Religion Beyond the Limits of Reason: Inoue Enryō, Kim Iryo˘p, and Tanabe Hajime on Philosophy of Religion Jin Y. Park

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Contents

Part II Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies, Theology, and the Modern Academy   7. The New Geophilosophy: How Globalization and Postcolonial Theory Are Redefining Contemporary Philosophy of Religion Carl A. Raschke   8. The Enecstatic Jig: Personalizing Philosophy of Religion Jim Kanaris

153 173

  9. Reverence as Critical Responsiveness: Between Philosophy and Religion Tyler Roberts

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10. Radical Theologians, Knights of Faith, and the Future of the Philosophy of Religion John D. Caputo

211

11. What Can Non-Philosophy Do for Philosophy of Religion? Non-Science and Non-Religion in the Work of François Laruelle Clayton Crockett

237

12. Reforming Philosophy of Religion for the Modern Academy Wesley J. Wildman

253

Notes on Contributors

271

Index

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Acknowledgments

The initial stage of this project, a symposium the editor organized at McGill University in April 2013 entitled “Has Philosophy of Religion a Future?,” was graciously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC), with the help of McGill University’s School of Religious Studies (SRS) and the McGill Centre for Research on Religion (CREOR). It’s unlikely that this volume would have taken shape without their valued support.

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Introduction Jim Kanaris

Philosophy of religion is, as Wesley J. Wildman argues in this volume, a field of inquiry that is multidisciplinary and comparative, not a discipline. It is folly, therefore, to desire mastery over it. It is also folly to assert a mastery over writings that recognize or assume the singly unmanageable nature and sweep of the field. For this reason, I am humbled by the task of organizing this volume’s material, modest perhaps in number but significant in understanding and visionary in orientation. What is equally elusive are categorical distinctions suggestive of an uncomplicated series of answers to a vexing question. And so one will be hard pressed to find a uniform vision in this collection. Indeed, the careful reader will spot several points of contention, which is both healthy and part and parcel of any field of inquiry. What Clifford Geertz (1973, 29) famously stated about anthropology applies no less to philosophy of religion: a field “whose progress is marked less by a perfection of consensus than by a refinement of debate. What gets better is the precision with which we vex each other.” It is this individuality, present here, that I would argue is a key strength of this volume. It exemplifies, while speaking to, an identity crisis—Carl A. Raschke describes it as a crisis more contextual than existential or socially introspective in nature (153–154). Global awareness and hypercritical self-consciousness stamp it. The eclectic nature of the contributions is proportional to an appreciation of plurality and difference unprecedented by former generations of philosophers of religion, their ideas of critical reason vis-à-vis “religion.” While being hypercritical does not or should not provide carte blanche or pose as a comfy alternative to tidy universalist perspectives, it is nonetheless better to see it present than absent. ix

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The vexing question noted above can be surmised from a cursory reading of the chapters. In some form or another, each author wrestles with the question of philosophy of religion’s future, a truly vexing question not only because, as Raschke notes, “everyone from philosophers to geophysicists to economists . . . have a horrible track record when it comes to divining the mysteries of tomorrow” (153). It is also and especially vexing because, despite the fact that the exercise is not frivolous, which Raschke himself reiterates, the unlikelihood of a better track record still renders the exercise—“this sophisticated academic version of play therapy” (153)—necessary—necessary, that is, if philosophy of religion is to be open to a future, to have a future. To put it in “Derridese,” this experience of the unlikely, because it pertains to the impossible (i.e., knowledge of the future), releasing its possibility in thought; this experience of the unlikely is an integral dimension of the messianic structure, the a-venir, of this particular “play therapy.” Each author invests in the task, knowing full well that we speak only to a possible future, a future we are opening ourselves to and inviting ourselves to consider—hence the book’s subtitle. The visions of reconfiguration here concern a possible future, variations of it, helping us to negotiate, as Raschke notes, a “real trauma or a niggling feeling of emergent crisis” (153). In certain cases, this possible future is coped with by looking for aid to thinkers of the distant past (e.g., Spinoza and Kierkegaard) and the not-so-distant past (e.g., Paul Ricoeur, Hannah Arendt, and Grace Jantzen). Sometimes it is managed by reflecting on the different thinking styles of the philosophical tradition, Western and Asian, analytic and continental. The reader will encounter proposals of rapprochement and even of supersession in a mind-numbing trail of thinking that moves from the poststructuralist and postcolonial to the whimsically branded post-postmodernist. While not exhaustive, the representation is both consequential and suggestive. Particularly refreshing is the problematic of ushering philosophy of religion into a post-phenomenological era of religious studies and theology. This is an underlying theme unique to this work. It is a neglected dimension in many laudable current discussions about contemporary philosophy of religion. In fact, and to offset what was said earlier, because of this theme, a commonality surfaces that is easily missed on account of the different register of voices. This affords (this editor, anyway) a look at the forest despite the trees, discerning a polyphony rather than a cacophony. A postcritical, postsecular appreciation of religio or darshana (a Sanskrit term that combines philosophy and religion, meaning “perspective” or “worldview”) dawns each chapter. The positivistic role of reason, inherited from the Enlightenment,

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has been sufficiently negotiated, if not altogether abandoned. An appreciation of “religion” can be detected here that transmogrifies the topically invested philosophy of religion of yesteryear. Present is a strong sense of retrieval, reimagi(ni)ng, and self-affirmation, that is, affirming, embracing, the singularity of the “faith-full” self through reason, be it the postanalytic, deconstructive, semiotic, or non-philosophy variety. This might make a Lord Herbert of Cherbury or Lord Shaftesbury wince, while a Shankara, Aquinas, or Maimonides might grin. I am not suggesting that the volume’s contributors are in solidarity with so-called New or Radical Orthodoxy—not that there would be anything “wrong” with that, of course. The point, rather, is to identify an implicit sensibility that connects somehow with the past, all of it, while deconstructing the dividing practices inherited from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theisms and deisms that still brand the field. Put otherwise, each installment typifies something of a second (third or fourth) naiveté, making its peace while breaking with the past. This disease, the precariousness of this faltering and yet necessary “play therapy” (to continue with Raschke), is crucial if we are to say “oui, oui” to the future, to the vitality of the institution under consideration (see Derrida in Caputo 1997, 6, 27–28). With all this in mind, a word remains to be said about the chapters themselves and their organization.1 In part 1, an overriding concern is with the philosophical tradition. In what might philosophy of religion consist that recognizes both the strengths and weaknesses of Western analytic and continental traditions? How might developments in ideology critique, gender studies, and Asian philosophies kickstart a less stilted view of the field? To whom might one turn in the tradition, both Western and Asian, to negotiate the perceived stalemate of philosophy of religion? It is to questions such as these that our first round of thinkers primarily addresses themselves. Morny Joy launches the discussion by arguing that religious studies needs to reclaim philosophy of religion—a principal concern of the second part of the book. Joy is interested in how developments in the continental philosophical tradition can help to achieve this. Her piece is included in part 1 because it provides a useful segue into subsequent discussions with a general overview of basic distinctions and thinking styles. Religious studies as a discipline, Joy argues, has been much criticized in recent years for its continued adherence to outdated methods and a basically Eurocentric orientation. Philosophy of religion, as a subset of religious studies, has mainly been associated with Anglo-American analytic philosophy and a rationalist method that focuses principally on proofs and truths.

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During the past decade, Joy has been involved in a number of projects that have attempted to revise the ways in which philosophy of religion can be studied. These activities have resulted in two books that she has edited: Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion (2011) and After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion (2012). In her chapter, “Re-envisioning Philosophy of Religion,” she surveys certain of the changes proposed in these books that investigate respectively: (1) the contribution that the approach of continental philosophy can make to rethinking the tasks of philosophy of religion, and (2) the impact that non-Western philosophies and religions can have when they are not analyzed in a way that proceeds solely by means of a comparative method. This often has resulted in a form of reductionism whereby interpretations of other philosophies and religions are described mainly in terms of Western categories and concepts. Joy calls upon the work of Grace Jantzen, Hannah Arendt, and Paul Ricoeur, all of whom reject this accustomed method and prefer to start from an affirmation of life in this world, and not to be preoccupied with life after death, with proofs of the existence of God, and theodicies that defend or reject the existence of a good and omnipotent God in the face of evil. In this way, she proposes ways whereby philosophy of religion can move beyond the restrictive parameters that have largely determined its definitions and methodology. In chapter 2, Maurice Boutin joins Joy in the “search for a new paradigm of philosophy of religion” but based on a critique of one of Joy’s dialogue partners: Paul Ricoeur. (Joy’s theme of a life-affirming philosophy is put on hold until the next chapter in which Pamela Sue Anderson details her vision of a philosophy of religious life.) Boutin focuses on three statements: (1) human being is fragile (referencing the work of Yves Ledure); (2) human being is fallible (referencing the work of Ricoeur); and (3) human being is finite. The latter statement directly challenges Ricoeur’s question “whether human transcendence is merely transcendence of finitude or whether the converse is not something of equal importance” (40–41) and also Ricoeur’s “working hypothesis concerning the paradox of the finite-infinite” (41) whose full recognition—essential to the elaboration of the concept of fallibility, according to Ricoeur—implies a move from human finitude to infinitude, from perspective, desire, limited nature and death, to discourse, demand for totality, love and beatitude. Boutin offers a fourth statement: freedom is the basic dynamism of finitude provided that finitude ceases to be identified and thus confused with limitation (35).

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Ricoeur’s promise of “unlimited rationality,” which is part of human destiny, goes along with what he calls “the sadness of the finite” nourished by primitive experiences expressing themselves negatively as lack, loss, dread, regret, deception, or dispersion. Boutin wants to reconfigure the anthropology that informs Ricoeur’s philosophy of religion by arguing that human being is indeed finite but that human finitude is kept alert through transcendence. To read divine transcendence into human finitude is a reminder that a god who does not become human only enjoys a transcendence akin to the transcendence of ideas for which finitude can only be limitation. This has consequences on the approach to human rights and freedom. Freedom is enabled only through actually engaging in the realization of others’ freedom. The latter is not a limitation; it is not a virtual threat to one’s own freedom; it is the condition of its possibility: one is free only to the extent to which one cares for others’ freedom. Freedom emerges from finitude itself. The mutual conditioning of personal freedom goes not, as Ricoeur suggests, from finitude as limitation (dependency) to the infinite, but rather from finitude to otherness. This leads Boutin to assert that only a finite being can be a transcendent being. This is a point of departure, he argues, perhaps even a new paradigm for philosophy of religion and not just a matter of choosing a new accent or tone. Pamela Sue Anderson manages the basic élan of the continental philosophical tradition in terms of her concept of “life,” a concern that reconnects with a feature in Joy’s contribution. Anderson argues that the meaning of the concept “life” is contested at its very core by philosophers with fundamentally diverging conceptual schemes, especially on matters of bodily experience and human morality. In her chapter, “Re-visioning ‘Life’ in Philosophy of Religion Today—Or: A New Concept for a Global Philosophy of Religious Life,” Anderson suggests that the meaning of life is to be found in a global philosophy, which is open to re-visioning its core concepts. Her proposal for a new, more dynamic conception of life as a core concept for a global philosophy of religion(s) is worthy of critical study precisely because traditional philosophy of religion, especially in its control of moral questions and answers, is failing to keep up with new understandings of matter and material integral to virtual, actual, and possible life in all of its ever-increasing complexities. Debates about life in philosophy of religion, she contends, will generate their own future, as we live, thinking, acting, and reacting within and across fields of immanence. In brief, disagreements about “life” in contemporary philosophies will inevitably result, she argues,

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in new thinking, new possibilities, and either new retreats to past “life” or new freedom to create viable “life” for the future. The next three chapters branch off in a different direction but are related to one another in elaborating on this question of philosophy of religion and the philosophical tradition, its critique and expansion. N.N. Trakakis develops, while correcting, some of his earlier ideas in his book The End of Philosophy of Religion (2008). In that work, Trakakis calls for an end to be put to certain approaches to the philosophy of religion, particularly those enshrined in the analytic philosophical tradition, and advocated instead a fresh start that would broaden and deepen philosophers’ engagement with religion. After the end comes renewal. This renewal, he argues, has both a methodological and metaphysical character. First, he contends that analytic philosophy of religion urgently requires a methodological reorientation so as to jolt it from its current “dogmatic slumber,” enabling it to retrieve the value of critical and imaginative thinking. Second, he challenges continental philosophy of religion likewise to be re-engaged with metaphysics. Signs of a return to metaphysics are already evident in both analytic and continental philosophy, but philosophers of religion have yet to appreciate the significance of so-called Eastern metaphysics for their own thinking about God. By overcoming its restriction to Western religious thought and entering into serious dialogue with Asian religious traditions, philosophy of religion could be provoked to develop new, more interesting, and more fruitful, ways of understanding divinity. As with Joy and the notion of “life,” we put Trakakis’s emphasis on hold until the next chapter in which Jin Y. Park calls for a broader perspective of philosophy of religion from East Asian perspectives. At this point in the discussion, the reader is faced with a critical assessment of the élan in Trakakis’s The End of Philosophy of Religion. Timothy Knepper, in his chapter “The End of Philosophy of Religion?” wants a fuller account than Trakakis outlines in his book concerning that which threatens to terminate philosophy of religion. As we see in his chapter, Trakakis now wants the same, but Knepper is after an alternative set of goals so that the “ends” of any philosophy of religion may be properly redrawn. He feels that the failure to do so is instructive of what is really wrong with our currently ascendant philosophies of religion, particularly with respect to their negligence to learn from and contribute to the academic study of religion. Knepper articulates five features of a philosophy of religion that has something to offer to religious studies, demonstrating in each case how extant forms of analytic and continental philosophy fall short of these marks.

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Park closes this section, joining Trakakis and Knepper in the call for a broader philosophy of religion through more elaborate examples drawn from East Asia. Philosophy of religion, she argues, emerged as an academic field at a certain point in the intellectual history of the West. This field has been specific to a certain region and tradition: regionally, it is based on Western philosophy; religiously, it is based on the Abrahamic religious traditions. In the East Asian tradition, whose philosophies become concerns with the development of religious studies in the West, distinct terms for “philosophy” (哲學, Jap. testugaku; Chi. zhéxué; Kor. ch’o˘rhak) and “religion” (宗教, Jap. shūkyō; Chi. zōngjiào; Kor. chonggyo) emerge only in the mid– nineteenth century. Japanese philosopher Nishi Amane (西周) introduced the term “philosophy” in an 1874 publication. The word “religion” entered the region through a translation of a letter from Commodore Perry in 1853. If philosophy of religion is to claim relevance for our time, Park argues— and Trakakis and Knepper would agree—it needs to open its borders to excluded religious traditions. Park asks what it would look like to approach philosophy of religion from a tradition in which the categories of philosophy and religion are themselves put into question. She considers the concepts of philosophy and religion at the dawn of the modern period in East Asia and discusses how the traditional themes of philosophy of religion, such as the proof of the existence of God or interpretation of the existence of evil, might be understood differently, and how incorporating new religious and philosophical traditions into the field would open up new possibilities for the philosophy of religion. Park discusses these issues with a focus on three modern East Asian thinkers—Inoue Enryō, Kim Iryo˘p, and Tanabe Hajime—on three topics: (1) the definition of philosophy and religion; (2) the nature of the transcendental being and the religious agent; and (3) the act of religion and the meaning of religious practice. Part 2 begins and ends with the two contributions alluded to earlier by Carl A. Raschke and Wesley J. Wildman. They frame this section nicely by developing explicitly, that is, theoretically and practically, the concerns of earlier chapters regarding a philosophy of religion that is to be both postcolonial (i.e., Joy, Trakakis, and Park) and multidisciplinary (i.e., Knepper). But in this section the focal point is philosophy in the context of scholarship in religion and theology. Raschke makes a case for a philosophically astute understanding of religious studies in a postcolonial context. Wildman, by contrast, takes us in a direction that is more “practical” in nature, calling

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for a philosophy of religion whose only hope for survival in the academy is by being a multidisciplinary comparative inquiry. I will get to a summary of Wildman’s directives in turn. In his chapter, “The New Geophilosophy: How Globalization and Postcolonial Theory Are Redefining Contemporary Philosophy of Religion,” Raschke considers how globalization and postcolonial theory are redefining philosophy of religion. While Western philosophers and philosophers of religion continue to wrangle over whether philosophy and theology can have anything to do with each other anymore, especially in a university setting, or whether “the future” of the philosophy of religion should be extrapolated from the latest innovations in phenomenology, linguistic research, cognitive science or physical, or whatever, a trend barely noticed in the traditional academy is shifting the entire scene of emergent discourse. It is the decline of the West not so much in Oswald Spengler’s sense, but the decline of the importance and utility of the very inferential system—what Raschke calls the “hermeneutical engine” of discourse itself—in which academics are accustomed to pose these questions in the first place. This chapter puts forward the view that two global and broad-based trends are raising significant doubts and generating conundrums regarding the very hermeneutical engine of Western philosophy, which has operated fairly consistently and efficiently since the age of the ancient Greeks. These trends are all interconnected with each other in a larger perspective, but Raschke focuses on the two main factors or forces that are challenging the current state of affairs: the phenomenon increasingly understood as “globalization,” as well as the new “geo-philosophical” (Gilles Deleuze’s term) language incubated within the cross-disciplinary field of the humanities and religious studies known as “postcolonial theory,” or more recently “decolonial theory.” Both globalization theory and postcolonial discourse have their origins in late twentieth and early twenty-first century continental philosophy of religion. However, just as the emergent and former colonized nations of the world have turned the mechanisms, institutions, and policy strategies of Western capitalism against itself to create a vast, brave new kind of economic order, so the Western-educated philosophical elite of these cultures have stood Western philosophy on its head with an even more radical reformulation of what Michel Foucault would call the current “episteme” than even the French poststructuralists of the last generation might have imagined. Raschke explores how these trends are mirrored in the work of certain current academic writers and theorists who have critical relevance for the traditional task of the philosophy of religion. He attends largely to the pub-

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lications of select figures from the postcolonial literature. He demonstrates how the efforts of these postcolonial theorists, conventionally considered as simply derivative when it comes to contemporary philosophy, actually concentrate and more finally attune the thought of well-known philosophers. The chapter by Jim Kanaris, “The Enecstatic Jig: Personalizing Philosophy of Religion,” could be included in the first part of the book since he looks to the continental tradition to reconfigure philosophy of religion. However, his consideration of controversies in academic circles of religion, phenomenological and post-phenomenological, makes it a natural fit for this part as well. The issue of Orientalism, high on the minds of scholars of religion and which Raschke discusses at some length, is also a presupposition, making Kanaris’s entry here a reasonable one. The dance reference in Kanaris’s title pays homage to an ethos entrusted to philosophers by Nietzsche, as does the neologism “enecstasis” to Heidegger. Both Nietzsche and Heidegger radically reshaped philosophy, providing for understandings of personal reflexivity that foundationalist programs ineluctably misplace. This aporia suffusing the desire for engaged thought points to a complex history. As a result, it has metastasized (hence is ever precarious) into a peculiar form of transcendental reflection in contemporary continental philosophy. As deracinating and subversive, this enecstatic form disrupts the intonations of an invariable program. As hypervigilant and affirming, it incites the participation of the concerned individual whose horizon for theory selection is context specific. Reminiscent perhaps of the simple two-step, the musical measure proposed by the tradition Kanaris relies on is far more difficult to follow, not only because of its erratic rhythm but also because its interpretation is exclusively agent dependent. Enecstatic philosophy of religion broaches these issues in the context of religious studies where analytic philosophy, as Joy indicates, has remote relevance. Consequently, Kanaris reconfigures the personalist gesture of phenomenology of religion in line with developments in current continental theorizing of religion. Sui generis religion is replaced by a topology within which individuals philosophize variant cultural forms, nurturing their own appreciation of and for “transcendence.” Kanaris calls this “disruptive agential self-possession.” This disposition connects well with the next two entries in that the personalist accent raises questions about the incorporation into religious studies of new philosophical forms of theology, “critical reverence” and “radical theology.” In his chapter, “Reverence as Critical Responsiveness: Between Philosophy and Religion,” Tyler Roberts offers a compelling vision of what

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this might mean. He disrupts efforts to defend the academic legitimacy of the study of religion that draw sharp lines between religion and the academic study of religion, between the religious and the secular, and between philosophy and theology. Various conceptual strategies have been employed in this effort. Persuasive to many today is the distinction between the academic study of religion as a “critical” discourse and religious modes of thought and practice as “uncritical.” Roberts rightly challenges this claim, and dominant views of the philosophy of religion, by considering the nature of criticism at the boundary between philosophy and religion. Ordinarily, philosophers of religion think about philosophy as a critical discourse that takes religion as its object or data: philosophy of religion thinks critically about religion. Roberts argues that we should consider the critical possibilities for a philosophy that thinks with, not just about, religion. Specifically, he explicates and develops the arguments of William Desmond, who writes about a “twoway intermediation or communication between religion and philosophy, not just a singular direction from religion to reason” (190); Stanley Cavell, who argues for a conception of criticism as a “conduct of gratitude . . . a specification and test of tribute” (199); and Rowan Williams, who argues for the critical function of theological appeals to “revelation” and “dogma.” Each raises historical and theoretical questions about how mainstream traditions of philosophy and theory have understood critique, cultural criticism, and critical thinking; and each offers resources for constructively rethinking philosophy and criticism in terms of religious moods, practices, and concepts such as reverence, gratitude, praise, and faith. To follow these lines of thinking is to reorient philosophical criticism in an affirmative direction and to redirect future philosophies of religion. Related to this is the thesis of John D. Caputo in his chapter, “Radical Theologians, Knights of Faith, and the Future of the Philosophy of Religion,” in which he thinks through the conditions of possibility that underlie the vexing question of philosophy of religion’s future discussed at the outset. Caputo argues that the future of philosophy of religion is rooted in what he calls “radical theology,” which, he maintains, is the very thing that motivates our interest in philosophy of religion and repays all our work. He compares radical theology to what Kierkegaard called “hidden inwardness,” where the philosophy of religion is asked to provide an incognito for radical theology, just the way the knight of faith appears under the cover of a tax collector. Radical theology is what is going on in the philosophy of religion while not always being visible to the eye. It gives words to our deepest hopes and desires and, as such, is turned structurally

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toward the future. Philosophy of religion has a future because it is in its deepest stratum an elementary thinking of the future, a way we say what we hope and pray is to-come (à venir). After identifying what he means by the “to-come,” Caputo spells out what he means by radical theology by contrasting it with confessional theology, which has a place in the confessional community, whereas radical theology is always out of place, displaced. Furthermore, if it is not at home in the religions, because it is too radical, it is no less unwelcome in the university, because it is too theological. Caputo then points out that the predecessor of radical theology is not Kant’s abstract, rationalist, and reductionistic approach to religion, but Hegel’s embrace of the concrete and historical, even if it is a kind of heretical Hegelianism (no “absolute knowledge”). Caputo’s point is that radical theology is an infinite passion amid the finitude of institutional structures; its incommensurability with the world is radical and hence ineradicable. So, the only refuge of radical theology is a subterfuge, a cover, an incognito. It gains admittance to the university by outwardly adopting the good manners and the protocols of the university, all the while inwardly dreaming of the future, of the promise of what is to come, keeping its own messianic secret, while calling for a new species of theologians, for a new humanities, in a university to come. In the meantime, were we ever to meet a radical theologian, we would step back and exclaim that this person looks for all the world like a philosopher of religion. Clayton Crockett’s chapter, “What Can Non-Philosophy Do for Philosophy of Religion? Non-Science and Non-Religion in the Work of François Laruelle,” sounds off in a different direction. It is included here because Crockett, too, is after a new form of philosophy that is vital to the study of religion and not just a subset of philosophical inquiry. As his subtitle indicates, Crockett looks to the contemporary French philosopher François Laruelle for inspiration. Laruelle develops the notion of non-philosophy as a way of criticizing philosophy’s intrinsic appeal to a totalizing self-sufficiency, which Laruelle calls the “principle of sufficient philosophy.” Laruelle suggests that appeals to difference on the part of contemporary continental philosophy are not radical enough; Laruelle wants to think from the One in what he calls a “vision-in-One.” Thinking from the One or the Real constitutes a “unilateral duality” because it only goes one way. Laruelle appeals to science, including quantum mechanics, to offer a unified generic theory of science and philosophy under the name of non-philosophy or nonstandard philosophy.

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At the same time, Laruelle appeals to a kind of religious heresy or gnosis in constructing a non-Christian idea of the human as Christ, or “Future-Christ.” Crockett reflects on the asymmetry of Laruelle’s engagements with science and religion, and suggests that science offers him something that religion cannot, and this is why Laruelle insists, against Gilles Deleuze, that there is no non-science. However, Laruelle does argue for a kind of non-religion that is compatible with non-philosophy. This tension in Laruelle’s work concerns the universality and applicability of religion as a category and framework. Despite this tension, Crockett argues, Laruelle helps us think about an idea of insurrection as a human political concept that has religious implications and applications. Finally, we get to the proposal of Wesley J. Wildman that puts a face on Caputo’s “good manners and protocols of the university” into which a philosophy of religion to-come can gain admittance. In his chapter, “Reforming Philosophy of Religion for the Modern Academy,” Wildman argues that there is shrinkage of jobs in philosophy of religion, especially in research universities, because the field strikes decision makers in philosophy and religion departments as lacking in objectivity, not about religion, and ravaged by internal conflicts. Much of this perception, he continues, is not due to misunderstanding. The first step toward reforming philosophy of religion in the modern academy is to understand and acknowledge these problems. Subsequently, philosophers of religion need to reform the field by taking back the name “philosophy of religion” for philosophical reflection on religious ideas and practices in all their complexity and variability; by surrendering the old ideal of philosophy of religion as a discipline and treating it as a field of multidisciplinary comparative inquiries using numerous styles and contributing to several philosophic traditions; by enclosing internal debates within the publicly intelligible frame of “philosophical research into religious beliefs and practices,” conducting those debates courteously and quietly; and by rewriting textbooks in philosophy of religion to reflect a wide appreciation and close analysis of religious beliefs and practices from around the world and across eras and traditions. To be able to function within the enclosing frame of “philosophical research related to religion,” philosophers of religion are advised to settle some questions by consensus: philosophy of religion must not promote any religion, belief, or practice; it must not focus on only one religious worldview (e.g., theism); it must be open to addressing what he calls first-order religious questions; and it must prove itself useful within religious studies. On other questions, philosophers of religion can and should debate their disagreements, which is healthy for

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the field so long as these debates are conducted within the ambit of a shared minimal consensus and mindful of larger institutional realities. The future will come, no question. The ideas of what it entails pertaining to philosophy of religion is a question and, finally, remains in question since the future is always coming. “Nonetheless,” as Trakakis advises, “something can be said about where we would like philosophy [of religion] to be in the future, even if we are unsure whether such a future will ever materialize” (72). That, to reiterate, is the basic problematic guiding all the contributions here. They constitute a “play therapy,” a jouissance, that each thinker invests in; the field’s vitality depends on it. To this end the book is offered. It remains to the reader to decide whether its various visions provide a desirable future for philosophy of religion. The rest, of course, the relative actuality of what materializes, is and can only be future. Oui, oui! NOTE

1. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for the division of the chapters into two parts. The reviewer suggests a division in terms of a two-way dialogue between philosophers of religion and scholars of religion. I have translated this to mean a division of foci or issues pertaining to (1) philosophy of religion and the philosophical tradition and (2) philosophy of religion and religious studies, theology, and the modern academy. All the contributors are “card-carrying” philosophers of religion; the only thing separating them is their departmental titles. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books. Caputo, John D., ed. 1997. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press.

Part I

Philosophy of Religion and the Philosophical Tradition

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Re-envisioning Philosophy of Religion Morny Joy

The way in which the philosophy of religion as conventionally practised acts as a technology of powers stands out clearly in relation to the disciplinary boundaries that are drawn around it, the ways in which the topics which comprise it are disciplined. The same topics come up with predictable regularity: as Brian Davies says, philosophy of religion is about what philosophers of religion usually do! There is no indication in his work . . . that the discipline has a history, that it is a social construction which has not always been constructed in the way that it is at present, and that what counts as philosophy of religion (and indeed as religion itself ) is closely related to who is doing the counting. —Grace Jantzen (1998) [T]he entire narrative of philosophy of religion in the modern West needs rethinking and retelling if both the “roots” and “fruits” of that curious modern invention, philosophy of religion, is one day to play a properly interdisciplinary and intercultural role. —David Tracy (1990, 29)

Religious studies as a discipline has been much criticized in recent years for its continued adherence to outdated methods and a predominantly Eurocentric orientation. Philosophy of religion, a subfield of religious studies, as a post-Kantian and mainly Protestant endeavor, is indeed a product of modernity that suffers from a similar syndrome. In the twentieth century, in the United Kingdom and North America particularly, it became mainly

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associated with Anglo-American analytic philosophy. It appeals to a distinctly rationalist approach that focuses principally on logical arguments and is concerned with proofs and truths. During the past two decades, I have been involved in a number of projects that have attempted to revise the ways in which philosophy of religion can be studied. These activities have resulted in two books that I have edited: Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion (2011) and After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion (2012a), as well as numerous articles on women and religion (see bibliography). In this chapter, I will explore the different ways in which my own attitudes to philosophy of religion have changed so that my preference now is to refer to the study of “philosophy and religious studies” until some more palatable term arises. My chapter divides into three sections:

1. The contribution that the approach of continental philosophy can make to rethinking the tasks of philosophy and religion; this will involve looking specifically at the influence of Paul Ricoeur.



2. The impact that non-Western philosophies and religions can have when they are not analyzed in a way that proceeds solely by means of a reductionist comparative method; this will survey the influence of a different approach, that of intercultural philosophy, which takes guidance from the criticisms of postcolonial theory.



3. The feminist criticism of conventional philosophy of religion, which has also been predominantly a male-dominated enterprise; this will appeal to the work of Pamela Sue Anderson and Grace Jantzen as they indicate the problems of the dominant “masculinist” orientation that has dominated the field.

In these explorations, I will attempt to avoid interpretations of other philosophies and religions where they are described unilaterally in terms of Western rational concepts. I will investigate approaches that are compatible with an affirmation of life in this world. As a result, they are not preoccupied with proofs of the existence of God, with speculations about life after death, or with theodicies that defend the existence of a good and omnipotent God in the face of evil. In this way, I plan to propose other approaches whereby

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philosophy of religion can move beyond the parameters that have thus far largely determined its reductive definitions and methodology. In my introduction to the Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion (2011), I nominated a number of markers that I viewed as distinctive influences in contemporary continental philosophy in relation to religion. These were:

1. The “death of God,” specifically the God of modernity as it was postulated according to rational concepts. This move was initiated irrevocably by Friedrich Nietzsche. The work of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze can both be identified as contemporary reworkings, albeit in distinct ways, of Nietzsche’s radical project.



2. The secular theories of Marx and Freud, which put into question both the proclaimed autonomy of the subject and the related reliability of consciousness. The work of Paul Ricoeur, especially his “hermeneutics of suspicion,” continues this task, though Ricoeur will also attempt to reclaim a more modest mode of subjectivity and attestation.



3. The phenomenological approach, as it was introduced in the work of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. This approach placed an emphasis on understanding a human being’s lived experience and the nature of existence, rather than maintaining a reliance on definitions dependent on abstract reasoning. Such a perspective puts into question what Heidegger calls “onto-theology,” and consequently sounded the death-knell of conventional metaphysics. More recent postmodern developments, however, have criticized both the privileged transcendental subjectivity that characterized the Husserlian approach and the new ontology that informed Heidegger’s project of Dasein and Ereignis.



4. The breakdown of confidence in the absolutist certainties of modern rationality and of Western Christian values, which were unable to prevent the two world wars. It is Emmanuel Levinas who interrogates this failure, specifically the aftermath of the Holocaust, and proposes an alternative approach, which promotes the primordiality of ethics

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instead of epistemology. Charles Taylor’s work also provides pertinent observations of this development.

5. The deception of an ideological bias, masquerading as truth, that has been exposed by members of the Frankfurt school, or the disclosure of vested interests in power and control disclosed by the genealogical investigations of Michel Foucault. (Joy 2011, 2)

All of these developments have dealt a severe blow to the former presumptions of unbiased objectivity on the part of the individual rational thinker who presided over such pronouncements. Cartesian absolute certainty is no longer guaranteed. Instead, a more chastened awareness of the limitations of human knowledge has resulted. From this perspective, neither philosophy nor religion can make claims to prerogatives of special knowledge and/or treatment. As a result, philosophy and religion could begin to be reconceived in drastically different ways. In this chapter, rather than recapitulate these positions, which can be read in Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion (2011), I will investigate the building blocks that have informed my own approach, examining carefully the works that have inspired me. I will turn first to Paul Ricoeur, who did not regard himself as a postmodern thinker. Nor did he regard himself as constrained by the tenets and methods of metaphysics or modernity. Instead, he forged a new approach, expanding and developing his own mode of a phenomenological hermeneutics that fostered a dynamic interchange between “oneself and another.” This was informed by an attitude of openness and awareness that did not demand rigid adherence to doctrinal truth but supported a mode of human flourishing that did not need to be confined to any specific religion.

Paul Ricoeur Ricoeur’s approach to philosophy was influenced by a profound humility and generosity. There is a theme that pervades his philosophy from the beginning. This is his concern for the “other.” Over the course of his career, this developed in diverse directions, but he remained primarily concerned that a philosopher should learn to leave behind what he called a “narcissistic and imperialistic ego” in favor of an openness to learn from any encounter

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with what might seem alien or different. This has at times been misinterpreted as an encouragement to passivity or an uncritical acceptance of ideas or systems that are hostile or intolerant. But this was not his intention. Ricoeur was distressed by what he perceived as human intolerance and the violence that is often indiscriminately inflicted on fellow human beings. He worried that such conduct appeared as virtually endemic to humanity. His career could be appreciated as a valiant attempt to minimize such suffering and to formulate conditions that could help to alleviate, if not eliminate, its effects. This became particularly evident in Ricoeur’s (2002) later work on recognition and justice. In the beginning, however, Ricoeur did not seem to be headed in this particular direction. The personalism of Emmanuel Mounier and the existential disposition of Gabriel Marcel informed his early work. It was his encounters with the work of both Husserl and Heidegger, however, that altered his priorities. These influences resulted first in Ricoeur’s phenomenological interpretation in the Husserlian manner in his book Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (1966). The Symbolism of Evil (1967), which followed, demonstrated a growing dissatisfaction with phenomenology as it was then being practiced and a move toward hermeneutics. This became particularly evident in Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1970). At this stage of his work, it was text that provided Ricoeur’s “other.” He was primarily concerned with interpreting a text in a manner that did not distort its meaning, so that the reader did not impose his or her own unreflective views in determining the meaning of a text. Ricoeur cautioned that such a presumption needed careful qualification. He issued a caution that encouraged a less controlling attitude on the part of a hermeneutically inclined reader: “By Self I mean a non-egotistic, non-narcissistic, non-imperialistic mode of subjectivity which responds and corresponds to the power of a work to display a world” (1975, 30). This was one of his first articulations of a growing awareness not only of the possibilities of reader interference, but also of the inevitable conflict that could result from a conflict of interpretations (Ricoeur 1974). Such a development marked his departure from a strict Husserlian phenomenology to a hermeneutic approach, specifically in its rejection of an absolutist self. It was replaced by a less controlling attitude: “There is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts; in the last resort understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating terms. In passing from one to the other, Ricoeur’s form of hermeneutics gradually freed itself from the idealism with which Husserl had identified phenomenology”

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(1987, 374). Ricoeur did not dismiss phenomenology totally but qualified its apodictic tendencies. A phenomenological hermeneutics, on Ricoeur’s account, remained linked to self-understanding, but the notion of self has assumed a different aspect from that in Husserl’s approach. Ricoeur (in Reagan 1996, 124) explains the change that hermeneutics introduces: “Hermeneutics remains fundamentally an understanding of the self. Thus, it is reflective. But, on the other hand, the means of understanding are no longer those of a transcendental or eidetic reflection but require understanding, interpretation and thus a mode of intelligibility other than that of the immediate and intuitive grasping of the essence of mental phenomena.” Ricoeur never deviated from this modified appreciation of the self and its relation to one’s reflective capabilities. He acknowledged that in hermeneutics: The most important consequence of all this is that an end is put once and for all to the Cartesian and Fichtean—and to an extent Husserlian—ideal of the subject’s transparence to itself. To understand oneself is to understand oneself as one confronts the text and to receive from it the conditions for a self, other than that which first undertakes the reading. Neither that of the two subjectivities . . . neither that of the author nor that of the reader; is thus primary in the sense of an originary presence of the self to itself. (Ricoeur 1987, 376) One further qualification of hermeneutics on Ricoeur’s part was the introduction of what came to be called a “hermeneutics of suspicion.” In his book, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay of Interpretation, Ricoeur refers to Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx as “masters” of the “school of suspicion” (1970, 17). It was Freud who first alerted him to latent archaic and obsessive tendencies that could distort interpretations as well as reinforce defense mechanisms against being open to alternative meanings suggested by the text. For Ricoeur, the three “masters of suspicion” draw attention to the possibility that we may not be fully in control of our processes of cognition because of either unconscious or external influences. The adoption of such a critical attitude to claims of consciousness thus put into question any pretension to an attainment of a universal truth.1 There were additional features that were also initiated by Ricoeur with this move. He recommended that no reader should immediately affirm

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what appeared as the self-evident meaning of a text. Self-reflexivity as well as critical distanciation from the text were required. This was necessary to detect whether there was manipulation or deception involved. In his lecture course on Ideology and Utopia at the University of Chicago, which was published in 1986, Ricoeur cautioned that no text was to be regarded as exempt from what he termed these two “pathologies of imagination.” While he supported imaginative explorations of alternative “worlds that I might inhabit,” Ricoeur was extremely vigilant in discouraging distortions or misrepresentations. In this connection, Ricoeur also made some dramatic observations about his hermeneutic stance in relation to religion. This was in keeping with his attitude that philosophical hermeneutics was distinct from theological advocacy. He observed: I am very committed to the autonomy of philosophy and I think that in none of my works do I use any arguments borrowed from the domain of Jewish or Christian biblical writings. And, if one does use these writings, it is not an argument from authority. I mean that, for example, I put them on the same plane as Greek tragedy or the histories of Israel, neo-Platonic metaphysical speculations or the patristic interpretations of biblical writing. As a consequence, there is no privileged place for religion in general, or for the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in philosophical argumentation. (Ricoeur in Reagan 1996, 125) Ricoeur preferred to regard religion and philosophy as two entirely separate domains in the manner of his mentor, Immanuel Kant, to whom he referred as “my preferred author for the philosophy of religion” (Ricoeur in Azouvi and de Launay 1998, 148). He subscribed to Kant’s rejection of metaphysics and had a special affinity for Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, finding there the basis of his “philosophical hermeneutics” (1995, 75). He describes his position: “[L]ike Kant, I assume the question of religion of determining whether a religion within the limits of reason is possible, which at the same time would recognize the external character of religious symbolism before taking on the task of providing a philosophical interpretation of it within the limits of reason alone.”2 In addition, besides his Kantian affiliation, Ricoeur has always maintained a Heideggerian “mistrust of ontotheology” (Ricoeur in Azouvi and Launay 1998, 150). This

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implied that he was reluctant to identify the Being of metaphysics with the God of the Christian tradition (Ricoeur in Raynova 2003, 686–687). He also thought that Hegel’s “cunning of reason” in attempting a grand synthesis came close to reducing religion to a gnosis (Ricoeur in Raynova 2003, 688). He views it as “almost like a magician’s trick that does not work” (Ricoeur 1988, 205). Given such observations, it is also no surprise when Ricoeur describes his misgivings about the privileged manner in which philosophy has conducted itself. “Philosophy has attempted in various ways to colonize this outside entirely for its own benefit and to make it its own” (Hahn 1995, 472). What becomes obvious from these remarks is that Ricoeur is instinctively opposed to all attempts at totalization (see Ricoeur’s “Response” to P. Bourgeois in Hahn 1995, 567). In keeping with both this strong antiauthoritarian and anti-elitist attitude, Ricoeur continues, with specific reference to philosophy: “Renouncing this hubris seems to me the first stage in a philosophy that is at once responsible for its arguments and prepared to recognize its Other and to be instructed by it” (Ricoeur in Hahn 1995, 472). This statement is emblematic of Ricoeur’s next step in relation to the other, which will now take a turn toward a human other rather than the exegetical form in relation to texts. This is a not a wholly unexpected change, as the notion of a “self ” gradually emerged in his writings on identity and narrative in the 1980s. At this juncture, he had become preoccupied with establishing a mode of identity that could withstand the vicissitudes of existence without succumbing, because of the postmodern challenge, to a shattered sense of self. Ricoeur had also become even more sensitized to the struggle to survive with dignity and integrity in a world that had provided little in the way of support for such endeavors. In reflecting back on devastations of the twentieth century, Ricoeur remarked: “It is this speculative problem of action and passion, but also the problem of victimization—the whole story of this cruel century, the twentieth century—and all of the suffering imposed on the Third World by the rich, affluent countries, by colonialism. There is a history of victims that keeps accompanying or reduplicating the history of the victors. But the history I try to revive has a strong ethical debt to the victims” (Ricoeur in Reagan 1996, 114). Ricoeur regarded such deliberate infliction of suffering on fellow human beings to be a mode of evil. It is within this context that Ricoeur made an admission, as if to justify the change in awareness from his previous framing of otherness as that of textuality, to his present preoccupation with his fellow human beings. The movement indicated a

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distinct turn in the direction of ethics, though Ricoeur never left hermeneutics completely behind. As he observed to Charles Reagan: “I must say that in my previous work there is very little about ethics and politics” (114). He also clarified this deficiency in his work: “I left unclear the face of impotence . . . owing not only to those infirmities of every sort that may affect the human body as the organ of action, but also the interference of outside powers capable of diminishing, hindering, or preventing our use of our abilities” (Ricoeur in Joy 1997, xl). Ricoeur now believed that it was time to dedicate his energies to the amelioration of the suffering of fellow human beings in the world. Ricoeur (1996, 16) advanced the question that would inform his future work, sustained by his compassion for the extent of human suffering: “The question becomes: What shall we do with this fragile being, what shall we do for him or her? We are directed towards the future of a being in need of help to survive and to grow.” This was tantamount to an admission that previously he had been more concerned with the interpretation of symbols and texts as otherness rather than with other humans in their struggles. He then defined his future project with more precision: “It is at this point that the distinction to which I am most attracted—that between, on the one hand fragility, vulnerability, fallibility—in short, finitude—and on the other, the historical effectiveness of evil already present—constitutes the primary resistance that I oppose to the temptation of mastery that thought claims to achieve, before considering any project of liberation, and this is so as early as the work of delimiting and identifying the problem of evil” (Ricoeur in Hahn 1995, 473). Again, as he stated earlier, Ricoeur is highly resistant to any form of philosophy, especially of a highly rationalist variety, that presupposes that it can supply the ultimate insight or justification, specifically here in the face of evil. At the same time, Ricoeur will further refine his understanding of the task of hermeneutics. It is carefully integrated into the new project. “It belongs to the reader, now an agent, an initiator of action, to choose among the multiple proposals of ethical justice brought forth by reading. It is at this point that the notion of narrative identity encounters its limit and has to link up with the non-narrative components in the formation of an acting subject” (Ricoeur 1988, 249). He presents an ideal case whereby the hermeneutic self-reflexive agent now has a specific ethical task in relationship to the other, in order to promote an act of recognition. Ricoeur describes the dynamics of this event: “Being-recognized, should it occur, would be for everyone to receive the full assurance of his or her identity, thanks to

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the recognition by others of each person’s range of capacities” (1991, 73). This orientation needs to be placed in a particular context. Similar to his hermeneutic approach, Ricoeur is not advocating an immediate and unreflective acknowledgment of the other. His position, nonetheless, is influenced by his anguish at the unmitigated suffering he perceives as the lot of much of humanity, and a concomitant delinquent neglect in acting toward its decline. Yet this does not constitute a call to an indiscriminate counterstrategy, but an advocacy to move beyond the narrow and self-centered preoccupations that too often characterize the developed world. Ricoeur expands on his position toward the less fortunate or suffering human beings: I can go rather far, from a philosophical point of view, in the idea of the priority of the other, and I have sufficiently repeated that the ethical is defined for me by the desire for the good life with and for others, and by the desire for just institutions. Solicitude assumes that, counter to all cultural pessimism, I pay credit to the sources of goodwill—what the Anglo-Saxon philosophers of the eighteenth century always tried to affirm in opposition to Hobbes, i.e., that man is not simply a wolf to man, and that pity exists. (Ricoeur in Azouvi and de Launay 1998, 159) Ricoeur (2000, xii) will propose that one encounters another person as an irreducible condition of the “dialogical constitution of the self.” In other words, one’s own self-realization depends on a reciprocal exchange with others. Such a claim would seem to be extraordinary—not simply in the fact that recognition of others is necessary for one’s growth in knowledge and self-awareness, but that recognition demands any meeting with another human being is, in addition, an acknowledgment of their uniqueness and their entitlement to the same rights as I would consider my due. It is here that Ricoeur revises Hegel’s recognition insofar as it does not consider the other as something to be “subsumed,” that is, absorbed or surpassed, but as having a nonnegotiable integrity. He also relates this development back to a problem that he understands as haunting phenomenology: “I want to bring to light the novelty of the existential category of reciprocity through an argument drawn from the difficulty phenomenology encounters in deriving reciprocity from a presumably originary dissymmetry in the relation of the ego to others” (2005, 153). It is in this manner that Ricoeur draws together a number of thematic threads that have informed his work to advance his final position on philosophy and its relation to religion.

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Ricoeur has never been one for proofs and truths. In this, he follows Kant, for whom the existence of God cannot be either proved or disproved. As a result, he is averse to any arguments as to the existence of God. He regards theodicies as unconvincing. His response in this regard is also Kantian: In philosophical terms: evil requires a nonethical and nonpolitical transformation of our will, what Kant calls regeneration; it is the task of “religion within the limits of reason” alone to elaborate the condition of possibility of this regeneration, without alienating freedom either to magical conception of grace and salvation, or to an authoritarian organization of the religious community. (Ricoeur 1995, 215) In following Ricoeur through the various stages of his philosophical itinerary, it has become manifestly clear that he rejects totalizations of any variety—be they philosophical, theological, practical, ethical, or political. In this way, Ricoeur’s philosophy encourages a new mode of doing philosophy in relation to religion. He wants to allow for deep reflection in the manner that addresses existential suffering but that remains attentive to hermeneutic dilemmas. Ultimately, however, any such approach needs to be one that is informed by an ethics that aims at establishing a good and just society.3 Perhaps Ricoeur’s primary philosophical concern is best encapsulated in a concluding observation he makes in relation to the problem of evil as it is exemplified by Job: Wisdom . . . is no longer to develop arguments or even to accuse God but to transform, practically, emotionally, the nature of desire that is at the base of the request for explanation. To transform desire practically means to leave behind the question of origins, toward which myth carries speculative thought, and to substitute for it the question of the future and the end of evil. (Ricoeur 1987, 207) In so many ways, Ricoeur’s work can be considered as a journey that culminates in inculcating wisdom rather than in asserting certainty. Such a change in perspective fosters a distinctive form of philosophy of religion with a generous and collaborative way of understanding human existence and its ways of knowing.

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Intercultural Philosophy and Religion Any examination of the range of philosophy of religion textbooks today confirms that business continues as usual.4 The perennial topics are constantly repeated: arguments for the existence of God, belief and reason, death and the afterlife, the problem of evil, miracles, and questions regarding moral behavior. In recent years, there has been a nod in the direction of diversity, even in books with traditional titles such as Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Readings (Palmer 2011) and The Philosophy of Religion Reader (Meister 2007). Both of these books include readings from the different world religions, but the approach remains basically Christocentric. Perhaps this is the approach that Eugene T. Long has in mind when, in his book Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion: 1900–2000, he expresses some of the allegations against such an approach to philosophy of religion: Some philosophers argue that the philosophy of religion is too embedded in the eighteenth-century problematic of western theism at a time when persons are becoming more global in outlook and the boundaries of our histories are being expanded. Other philosophers argue that the traditional approach to philosophy suffers from unacknowledged ideologies which limits its scope and prevents it from taking into account the rich diversity of human experiences, purposes and social contexts. In some cases this results in calls to expand the scope of western philosophy of religion. In other cases philosophers call for the reconstruction of the philosophy of religion. At the root of many of these challenges are deep questions involving the nature of philosophy itself. (Long 2000, 2) Long chooses not to address these issues at any length in his book; it appears to be sufficient to register the complaints. Yet the traditional trend continues, with a few notable exceptions, such as Gary Kessler’s Philosophy of Religion: Toward a Global Perspective (1998). It is one of a number of textbooks that endeavors to make a strong contribution to understanding other religions on their own terms. This is not to say that classic books about the state of comparative studies have not been written over the years; see, for instance, Gerald J. Larson and Eliot Deutsch (1987); Fred Dallmayr (1996); and Ninian Smart and B. Srinivasa Murthy (1996). Their observations have not filtered down measurably to the textbook level, which do not address

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the difficult issues that come to the fore in attempting to combine in one book both comparative religion and comparative philosophy. It was in response to this lacuna that in 2007 a group of professors from the Departments of Religious Studies and Philosophy at the University of Calgary organized a workshop to bring together a group of leading scholars in the two fields of what has been called “comparative religion” and “comparative philosophy.”5 The mandate was to explore the current state of affairs in these fields and to explore whether there can be a rapprochement between them. To further this task, it set out to investigate certain problems and/or to suggest alternative approaches. While there were already numerous specialized books in the particular fields of comparative philosophy and of comparative religion, there are a limited number of scholars who can address both disciplines. Twelve such scholars, who represented diverse interests in the major religions in the world, were invited to attend this workshop. The unique aspect of the workshop was that this was perhaps the first time that a group of scholars had been intentionally assembled who had expertise in both areas of comparative philosophy and comparative religion. A central problem that presented itself was how to address the past distortions that had affected the descriptions of religions, specifically those other than Christianity. While the division between the two disciplines of religious studies and philosophy is commonplace in Western academia, this bifurcation does not necessarily apply in non-Western settings, where religion and philosophy often tend to be integrated. As a result, when the disciplines are virtually mutually exclusive, as in the West, a full appreciation of non-Western approaches to either religion or philosophy is not easily attained, and problems, such as appropriation, often occur. Within the last ten years, there has been a concerted effort on the part of a number of scholars to try to address these deficiencies, but it was necessary to distinguish this project from others that were occurring. It is not an exercise in inter-religious dialogue, which occurs only among believers and practitioners. Nor is it an apologetic undertaking in which one religion would maintain dominance. Instead, it is an academic activity, initiated with the goal of re-examining ideas that may have been misappropriated or otherwise excluded in comparative studies. Such errors have resulted from an approach in which the religions and philosophies of non-Western peoples have been interpreted by reducing or manipulating their ideas and values to fit solely with Western concepts and categories. One of the central issues of interest was that of envisaging the ways that comparative philosophy and religion would change

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if the concepts and categories of non-Western philosophies and religions were taken as primary in their terms of reference. The workshop also examined the overlapping terrain between the fields of philosophy and religion. In this respect, the workshop was particularly pertinent because it allowed for the examination of certain religious undercurrents that have informed philosophy. It also supported the exploration of whether the division between the two in the West has served to narrow the horizons of much contemporary Western philosophy in a way that excludes modes of thinking that may not be amenable to its systems of classification. It also acknowledged that the Western-based academic study of religions has often tended to focus narrowly on one aspect in an in-depth study of a particular religion, or it made grandiose claims of similarity with non-Western religions, based on broadly organized typologies of a phenomenological nature. This has often led to vague generalizations or inaccurate reduction to Western constructs. In response, the workshop encouraged a re-examination within comparative philosophy and religious studies of a number of ideas that have often previously been taken for granted. In this spirit, the conference also encouraged interdisciplinary discussion between scholars working in a variety of cultural, religious studies, and philosophical fields. Nevertheless, the practice of bringing one culture, language, philosophy/religion into contact with another culture, language, philosophy, and religion for the purposes of a clearer appreciation of the relevant definitions, contexts, and topoi remains a daunting task. There is a need to undertake a search for new and more constructive responses to these questions and also for alternative topoi. In such an approach, comparative philosophy and comparative religion engage in an encounter between fundamentally different traditions and address issues of how to deal with the “other.” Not only does this necessitate working between languages that may not readily lend themselves to translation, but it also demands an exposure to ways of thinking that may be either unknown or marginalized within one’s accustomed canon. In another respect, however, this project sought to engage with accustomed and possibly erroneous understandings of the “other.” As a result, it is imperative to avoid such pitfalls as simply superimposing familiar categories onto another tradition in order to achieve a comfortable synthesis. Yet, at the same time, by venturing into such unfamiliar terrain, one needs also to examine more familiar traditions from the perspective of this “other” and thereby reveal presuppositions that are often taken for granted. This may well foster an awareness of incongruities within one’s

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own paradigms that might otherwise go unnoticed. It is in this connection that postcolonial theory can be of assistance. The workshop was thus conducted with full awareness of the postcolonial critique of such enterprises. In addition, the overall aim of the project was not to reach a final solution or to recommend a definitive method or procedure; it had a more modest endeavor of stimulating constructive discussion, which all participants who were involved hoped that the resulting volume would effect. As in the previous section, I prefer not to present in great detail the contents of the volume from which this material is taken. It is readily available (Joy 2011). Instead, I have reviewed the developments in scholarship that have influenced my own thinking and also gave the group the incentive to undertake such a workshop.

Postcolonialism Another phenomenon that has occurred in the last forty years in the area of religious studies is the critique of the colonial or Eurocentric mindset that informed its very establishment as a discipline. Studies in the formative period of religious studies by scholars such as Philip C. Almond (1988), David Chidester (1996), Richard King (1999), Donald Lopez (1998), P.J. Marshall (1970), and Keith Urban (2003), among others, have been unequivocal in their portrayal of the idealizations and distortions adopted by scholars to suit their own vested interests. Edward Said’s initial volume on Orientalism (1978), describing the European encounters with Islam, as well as his own subsequent refinements (2004), have also been especially influential. At the same time, anthropologist Talal Asad (1993) has provided astute insight into the need for a careful analysis of religion’s modernist origins and the implications this has for evaluating and classifying the religious practices and behavior of others. Where Asad’s criticism differs from the basic postcolonial critique is that he was the first to delineate carefully the overlapping and interweaving elements that are often difficult to disentangle in any such transactions. His sophisticated theory of the construction of knowledge also takes into account the problematic and often overlooked intricacies of both mutual influence and accommodation. It is only more recently that work by women scholars in religion has begun to appear on the subject of women and postcolonialism, such as Donaldson (1993), Donaldson and Kwok (2001), Dube (2002), Marcos (2006; 2010), and Joy (2000, 2008, 2012b). They are all particularly concerned

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with exclusions that have marked women’s existence as well as the egregious misrepresentations of women. All these books strive in different ways to amend such omissions or propose solutions to these disparate distortions. A number of these works have been influenced by the ideas of two prominent postcolonial scholars, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1988) and Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1984). Their continuing concern has been directed toward the most marginalized of women in what was called the “Third World,” or more recently, the “global South” or “the two-thirds world.”6 It was Mohanty (1984, 74) who first defined the situation: [I]t is only insofar as “Woman/Women” and “the East” are defined as Others, or as peripheral, that Western Man/Humanism can represent himself as center. It is not the center that determines the periphery, but the periphery that, in its boundlessness that determines the center. . . . Just as feminists such as Kristeva and Cixous deconstruct the latent anthropomorphism in Western discourse, I have suggested a parallel strategy in this essay in uncovering a latent ethnocentrism in particular feminist writings on women in the third world. Spivak is remembered for her work on the “subaltern,” a word that she adapted from Italian Marxist thinker, Antonio Gramsci.7 Their work has evolved from the purely theoretical to that of active intervention in the situation of such women whom they view today as being exploited by a second incarnation of colonialism, globalization (Mohanty 2003; Spivak 2004). It immediately becomes all too obvious that the “othering” that has taken place in regard to the actual portrayals of other religions under European influence, with their sense of superior culture and civilizing mission, has also been accorded, doubly so, to women. The sad situation is that philosophy of religion, insofar as it takes any interest in comparative studies, let alone any notion of “construction” in Christianity, has singularly failed to remark on these developments. It was Grace Jantzen who, in her frank and distinctive way, drew attention to the parallels that can be drawn between feminism and postcolonialism in her 2009 essay, “ ‘Uneasy Intersections’: Postcolonialism, Feminism and the Study of Religion.” In this article, she outlined a number of ways that the strategies of feminist scholarship could prove helpful to philosophy of religion in paying attention to the postcolonial challenge. Jantzen’s principal suggestion, from a feminist perspective, was that it would be wise to

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pay heed to the voices of those who have been excluded from participation in society or a discipline—be they from other cultures or religions—and thereby silenced and marginalized, as women have been in Christianity over the centuries. Jantzen made other observations that would help to lessen the sense of rejection of such minorities. This was that emphasis should no longer be placed on the acquisition of Eurocentric languages with their specific idioms as a necessary prerequisite for the recognition of rationality. These were major issues that Jantzen herself addressed as part of her determination to foster the full participation of women in the scholarly discussion of philosophy of religion. (This topic will be treated in more detail in the following section.) Such a development, she believed, would ultimately change the nature of the philosophy of religion. This is because, as Jantzen has demonstrated in her other works, notably Becoming Divine (1998), that women’s voices, previously silenced, dismissed, or denied, have begun to have an impact on contemporary scholarship. In this way, she was promoting the admission of other minority voices to philosophy and religion. Their voices, however, will be able to be heard, similarly to that of the subaltern’s, only if there are considerably more major changes. These have to do with altering the ideas about the constituency and dynamics of an egalitarian society, of culture, and of gender. (These crucial ideas are developed in Jantzen’s [1998] work.) There are also other developments in postcolonialism that have further implications for the study of religion in ways that have not as yet been registered. These are developments in anthropology that occurred in what has sometimes been referred to as a period of “decolonization” of that discipline from the 1980s to the 1990s. James Clifford was one of the thinkers who recognized that the discipline of anthropology was itself markedly tainted by faults similar to those that were being charged by postcolonial scholars. In his groundbreaking work, The Predicament of Culture, Clifford (1988, 8) claimed that there was “a pervasive postcolonial crisis of ethnographic authority” in anthropology. He continued by posing the following rhetorical questions: “Who has the authority to speak for a group’s identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and other clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, modern interethnic relations?” (8). In the following pages, he supplied answers to these queries, carefully delineating the close relationship of anthropology with colonialism, and a similar process of “othering.” He was one of the first anthropologists prepared to admit that: “Ethnography is actively situated between powerful systems of meaning. It poses questions at the boundaries

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of civilizations, cultures, classes, races, and genders. Ethnography decodes and recodes, telling the grounds of collective order and diversity, inclusion and exclusion. It describes processes of innovation and structuration, and is itself part of these processes” (2–3). As a consequence, he claimed that: “Anthropology no longer speaks with automatic authority for others defined as unable to speak for themselves (‘primitive,’ ‘preliterate,’ ‘without history’)” (9–10). (The latter terms are indicative of the lack of esteem with which these people were regarded.) In this way, Clifford indeed has opened up questions of power, but he was also interested in issues of the construction of other “cultures.” It is to this matter that I will now briefly turn to further investigate issues that pertain to the positing of non-Christian religions, especially those of indigenous peoples, as being “godless” or pagan. In particular, philosophy of religion, in conjunction with theology, has been involved in dubious maneuvers in order to exclude even eastern religions from what has been considered “absolute truth.” From this perspective, philosophy of religion remains basically a Christian enterprise. As such, it cannot remain impervious to the charges that have been laid against Christianity as being closely allied with colonialism and former imperial ambitions (see Horsley 2003). In this regard, the philosophy of religion seems at best unwilling to acknowledge such an allegiance and past complicity in the objectification and demeaning of others, especially on matters of assigning degrees of rationality. In this connection, issues of power and dominance still need to be confronted. While this situation has begun to be addressed, there remains a sense of complacency, if not presumption in certain domains of philosophy of religion. This becomes quite patent in its connection with women and their noticeable absence in much of the current discussions and debates in the field.

Women and Philosophy of Religion Perhaps one of the strongest impressions one receives as a woman in reading books and articles on philosophy of religion is that, as a field of study, it remains a predominantly and unreflexively male undertaking. In recent times, masculinity studies have provided insights into the protective reenforcing of male institutions,8 but no one has yet applied such an investigation to the discipline of philosophy of religion. Fortunately, a number of women scholars have undertaken exacting inquiries that have demonstrated some questionable views and practices. I would like to turn to the criticisms

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voiced by two prominent women scholars in this area: Pamela Sue Anderson and Grace Jantzen. These criticisms describe problems that the discipline needs to face if it is to be able to address vital contemporary issues, especially those that pertain to women. I will review certain of their most important criticisms and suggestions as to the way in which the discipline needs to change. This exercise will not simply specify the exclusion of women but indicate underlying presuppositions that have encouraged this exclusion and require attention. I will first present the work of Pamela Sue Anderson, who is also a participant in this project. Anderson’s book, A Feminist Philosophy of Religion (1998), was the first critical book in this field published by a woman. A comment she made in a later interview about what prompted her to write this book intrigued me. Here she referred to philosophy of religion as a “strange discipline.” Anderson then elaborated the reason she chose this phrase and the way it would feature in her analysis: “The intention is to rend strange the conceptions which are, or have been, all too familiar in order to see the exclusive nature of a now traditional perspective. In particular, there is too much familiarity, and so unquestioning acceptance, accompanying the classical model of traditional theism” (Anderson 2001, 1). At issue for Anderson is the very strangeness of the nature of an immortal God who is at the center of a continuing debate regarding both his existence and attributes such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. This theoretical argumentation seems to be at a far remove from the lives of many women. Anderson is also concerned about what she considers a virtual obsession with a demand for clarity and coherence of argument. It is not as if she totally dismisses such ideals and principles, but they seem to again be distant from the indefiniteness and discrepancies of much human existence. A sole emphasis on such an abstract approach fails to take into consideration any of the distortions and inequity that social factors, economic interests, and political programs can bring about for human beings. It is in answer to this lack of sensitivity that Anderson states she will attempt to develop a mode of philosophizing that endorses epistemic justice. Central to her approach will be, first, an acknowledgment of the “deeply gendered—often sexist and racist—nature of our social and physical locations” (3–4). In response to such a charge, Anderson aims to develop a transformative mode of philosophizing in religion. This, she believes, will help to encourage an appreciation of the notions of sex/gender as well as the diversities of race, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.9 However, Anderson understands that this demanding task, with its goal of epistemic justice, will not be able to

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be achieved without a definite epistemological strategy. This she describes as “thinking from the lives of others” and “reinventing ourselves as other” (5). The term “otherness” is one that has been used frequently in recent years, having both a phenomenological and deconstructive connection.10 Anderson uses the term in a different manner again from both of these forms, appealing to a number of thinkers that help her to detail her position. She has refined and clarified this ambitious undertaking in a number of ways over the years in articles, interviews, and books.11 Her two main influences are the work of Sandra Harding on standpoint theory (Harding 1991) and Michèle Le Doeuff on the philosophical imaginary (Le Doeuff 2002). In adapting their theories, Anderson formulates another understanding of “otherness.” This requires first that one literally take into consideration the situation and views of others. In developing what Anderson calls a “feminist standpoint theory,” she first qualifies her understanding of Harding’s theory by stating that one does not simply attain this position by virtue of being born a woman or by experiencing life from a woman’s perspective. She defines it as an “epistemically informed perspective” that is arrived at by thinking about and from the lives of other people, especially those who have been relegated to the margins by the prevailing epistemology. She does not necessarily restrict this standpoint to women but allows it a wider application, though her own particular focus is that of women. Consequently, a “feminist standpoint” is the result of a “struggle by, or on behalf of women and men who have been exploited, oppressed or dominated, including women who have been exploited or even oppressed by very specific, pernicious monotheistic beliefs” (Anderson 2001, 5). This permits a specific stance that no longer claims absolute objectivity but is both reflexive and oriented to an appreciation of the status and views of other human beings who have suffered discrimination. Yet this would seem to be easier said than done, and it is for this reason that Anderson also appeals to the work of Le Doeuff. For it is only by introducing the notion of “a philosophical imaginary” that this task can be undertaken. “Imaginary” here has no reference to psychoanalytic theories in the manner of Jacques Lacan or Luce Irigaray but refers initially to a certain form of philosophical excavation, involving the imagination, which Anderson views as both evaluative and reparative. This task needs to be undertaken because, Le Doeuff maintains, women have been excluded from the philosophical tradition, and it is necessary to discover both the work and ideas of such “disinherited” or “othered” women. It is directed specifically at feminist philosophers, though other philosophers are not excluded. Ander-

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son (2007, 110) provides the details of this task: “[T]hey should imagine alternative thought patterns and intellectual spaces in which they glimpse possibilities that have been excluded through polarizations of (male) reason and (female) emotion; or, knowing and imagining. This critical task would be a philosophical exercise of the philosophical imaginary, and, I suggest at this time, the most constructive exercise.” In this way, she appropriates Le Doeuff’s intention to enrich the conventional male-centered philosophical imaginary. The basic problem, as envisaged by both Le Doeuff and Anderson, is that it has been a “man of reason”12 who has dominated the Western philosophical tradition. As Anderson (2007, 108) describes it: “The position in Western philosophy has been that while for man philosophy is the rational activity par excellence, for woman—who is imagined as unable to think for herself—philosophy is an activity from which she is blocked. The external exclusions and the internal process of concept formation reinforce each other: as long as the man of reason is the philosopher whose activity constitutes his own self-definition, the conceptual scheme of philosophy.” In Anderson’s adaptation of Le Doeuff, she demonstrates that the imaginary in philosophy is not simply an ornamental additive but operates most effectively in a manner that is crucial to the self-definition of philosophy itself by scrutinizing the words employed to convey its relevant ideals and worth. The task, then, involves a mimetic refiguring the images and ideas about women as they have been configured in philosophy. This means removing them from the margins whence they have been relegated as untrustworthy— having been deemed, starting from the Greek thinkers, both emotional and irrational. Le Doeuff does not prescribe any definitive method for detecting the means by which women have been excluded from the exercise of philosophizing, though she certainly provides her own extremely relevant illustrations.13 In keeping with Le Doeuff’s reluctance to prescribe a set method, Anderson will adopt her own particular approach. It will involve first an investigation of certain female mythical figures (e.g., Antigone as configured by men). She follows this with a further exploration of women’s desires, or “yearning,” as a way to examine women’s own refigurations of their role and identities. “Yearning” is a word that Anderson appropriates from black American writer bell hooks. Anderson appreciates hooks’s use of the term as one that evokes a passion and, for Anderson, a “rational passion,” to achieve a parity or worth in a society that has deprived them of the means of attaining this. She quotes from hooks’s work: “[U]nder the heading Yearning . . . I looked

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for common passions, sentiments, shared by folks across race, class, gender, and sexual practice, I was struck by the depths of longing in many of us” (Anderson 2006, 43; hooks 1999, 12–13). Anderson, however, will extend this passionate longing for equity, not simply to refer to black women’s yearning for social acceptance and recognition, but also to evoke many women’s longing for recognition of their intelligence and philosophical aptitude. She is very careful in this move not to diminish in any way the force of hooks’s call for an end to social injustice or to distance herself from the necessary concrete struggles to end all forms of oppression. But Anderson also endows passionate longing with her own specific interpretation, whereby yearning takes on both personal and political dimensions for women philosophers. She states: “My contention is that the ultimate goal of a woman’s philosophical search for identity is mutual recognition, even if unreachable.”14 Her own passionate yearning is one that would effect an egalitarian reciprocity, first among women, and then between women and men. In support of this aspiration, especially as it includes women philosophers, Anderson (2006, 43) also invokes Judith Butler’s (2000) (post-)Hegelian reading of “longing” in her work, “Longing for Recognition.”15 Yet she is all too well aware of the risks involved in this wager of intersubjectivity. Le Doeuff has alerted her to the fact that women need to remain extremely conscious that they do not, in their turn, initiate a new form of exclusivity by establishing a women’s-only mode of philosophizing. At the heart of the work of philosophy, for both Anderson and Le Doeuff, it is imperative that women retain the responsibility to see themselves as through the eyes of others, that is, reflexively and less partially, and to never presume that they have access to any ultimate truth (Anderson 2010; 2011). In this manner, Anderson seeks to modify the claims to objective knowledge that presumes to provide a God’s-eye view or to assert that rationality alone dictates the terms of religious knowledge (Anderson 2010; 2011). Another woman thinker who seeks a similar outcome but approaches it in a different manner is Grace Jantzen. During the course of her scholarly career, Jantzen was also troubled by the use of rationality to justify the existence of a “putative transcendent being,” together with his attributes. In particular, she was offended by certain of Richard Swinburne’s thought experiments whereby, on her account, he virtually imagines God in his own image. “He argues that because he can imagine himself as a disembodied person, that is, as a disembodied subject who can nevertheless have experiences and can still act in the world, this shows that it is conceptually coherent to think of God as an infinite disembodied subject” (Jantzen

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1998, 28). For Jantzen, taking one’s own masculine selfhood unquestioningly for granted, then using it as an analogue for God, seems somewhat presumptuous. There were other aspects of philosophy of religion to which Jantzen took exception, most especially its preoccupation with immortality and other worlds. This indicated an estrangement and “detachment from ‘community and cosmos’ so that the world is perceived not as a home but as an alien reality to be fled from or conquered” (Jantzen 1998, 151). Such an attitude also indicated an equal distaste for the body and all things mortal—hence physical. Equally disturbing was the attempt using reason to reconcile a good God with the existence of evil—theodicy. Jantzen proposed that the problem lay more with the nature of the divine thus depicted than with the need to justify his seemingly erratic behavior. She contributed her own evaluation of such occurrences: “A feminist approach to the ‘problem of evil’ is first of all outrage and bewilderment at the suffering and evil itself: how can the world be like this? How dare some people make others suffer in the way that they do? What sort of divinity could we possibly be talking about if such suffering is allowed to continue?” (1998, 263). Jantzen was vitally concerned with the creatures of this world, taking a passionate interest in their well-being and flourishing (Joy 2009; 2010). Her intention was to destabilize the current structures and system, most specifically in the interests of justice (Jantzen 1996, 442). But Jantzen took a different direction from Anderson, initially calling on Derrida, Foucault, and Irigaray to help disturb the certainties of Enlightenment reason and analytic philosophical arguments as they had unduly influenced philosophy of religion.16 A number of times she was charged with simply exacerbating the binary that she depicted as existing between men and women in philosophy of religion. But this was not Jantzen’s intention. As she remarked on a number of occasions: “Double reading, or deconstruction as I understand it, is a careful analysis of a standard text or position, especially in order to identify its repressed other: that which it denies even while depending upon it. Secondly, it lifts up this repressed other to see what has been hidden and what can come of bringing it to light: it therefore pays particular attention to it, thus beginning to correct the imbalance which has existed by its repression” (Jantzen 2000, 119). This should not in any way contribute to the construction of a new binary but allow the emergence of repressed and ignored readings that can stimulate different modes of thinking (119–120). Jantzen’s work was, in one sense, similar to Anderson’s, in its search for omissions, repressions, and negligence (Jantzen 2001; 2002) but, above all, in its outrage at inequity and

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oppression, especially directed to, though not limited to, women. Similarly, again, Jantzen’s work was a quest for justice, but informed by a distinctive take on the symbolic and the imaginary that could be viewed as variously influenced by Lacan, Irigaray, and Charles Taylor.17 One of Jantzen’s most damning indictments in her later work was the charge that she developed in the trilogy, Death and the Displacement of Beauty (2004–2009; two volumes published posthumously) that the Western philosophic and religious tradition was suffused by “a symbolic of mortality.” As she alleged: “Plato’s true philosopher lived with ‘one foot in the grave’; Christians demanded ‘mortification’; Heidegger argued that we are ‘beings toward death’ ” (Jantzen 2002, 145). Jantzen connects this preoccupation with death expressed by male philosophers with that of Christian philosophers’ and theologians’ own obsession with an otherworldly salvation, rather than a “redemption” that is both of and in this world. She is also distressed at the evidence she finds that women are often portrayed as emblematic of the evils of this moribund world. Her whole oeuvre is devoted to an attempt to change this perspective and to allow women to take their place as rightful co-inheritors of a creative orientation toward “becoming divine” (Jantzen 1998), a task that she posited as possible by finding one’s voice and realizing one’s potential in this world. Her riposte is: “But though we will all die, surely it is at least as important that we have all been born” (Jantzen 2002, 145). This leads Jantzen to adapt Hannah Arendt’s neologism, “natality” as a way of responding to numerous challenges that she views as contemporary evidence of this seeming predilection for mortality.18 Arendt had introduced this term in The Human Condition, as part of her own project of the revitalization and renewal in a new mode of thinking. In Arendt’s words: “The new beginning inherent in birth can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is of acting. In this sense of initiative, an element of action, and therefore of natality, is inherent in all human activities” (Arendt 1958, 10–11). Jantzen found in this aspect of Arendt’s work a kindred spirit to help in her own work of healing. She states: “My work explores the natality as a conceptual category and a reorientation of the imaginary, showing the connection of natality with gender, with agency and the ability to act, with human interconnection and flourishing, with new beginnings and creativity. . . . [N]atality is not to be confused with motherhood or birth, but is rather a way of destabilising the hegemony of death and the violence of its mastery” (Jantzen 2002, 147). Jantzen interprets “natality” in a manner that is compatible with Arendt. She explores the implications of natality as

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comprising both a conceptual category and a reorientation of the imaginary. In this way, Jantzen can establish “the connection of natality with gender, with agency and the ability to act, with human interconnection and flourishing, with new beginnings and creativity.”19 Another restorative gesture that Jantzen can make is the rehabilitation of the body as a direct refutation of Plato and other devotees of immortality. “The possibility of beginning which is rooted in our own beginning, is always material, embodied: there is no disembodied natality . . . thus the freedom of natality is not the putative freedom of a disembodied mind, a mind made as free as possible from of bodily shackles, as Plato would have it, but rather a freedom that emerges from and takes place within bodily existence” (145). Finally, Jantzen also foresees that a transformation of philosophy of religion is made possible by the integration of natality as a revitalizing force. For Jantzen, “Taking a symbolic of natality seriously has direct and immediate consequences for a philosophy of religion. It affirms the concreteness and embodied nature of human lives and experience, the material and discursive conditions within which subjects are formed and out of which a religious symbolic must emerge” (110–111). Though she died at an early age, Jantzen’s work has provided many women in philosophy of religion with guidance for their own journeys of renewal. The work of both Pamela Sue Anderson and Grace Jantzen has made an invaluable contribution to women’s ongoing struggles to reform philosophy of religion. Their respective “therapies of philosophy of religion,” each in their own way, provide alternative modes of imaginary interventions that cannot but trouble existing categories, concepts, and practices, entrenched as they firmly are in a masculinist worldview. Their ethical dedication, which is guided by an unwavering commitment to justice and a responsibility to others, cannot but introduce a serious challenge to contemporary philosophy of religion.

Conclusion If one were to take seriously the criticisms and recommendations for renewal made in the above four sections, philosophy of religion would be transformed. To describe what exactly it would look like is not my intention in this chapter, but my hope is to inspire serious reflection. In concluding, I will list a number of the vital changes that I envisage as requisite for a revitalized approach to philosophy and its encounters with religion. Instead

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of remaining an elitist, modernist project, and an exceedingly abstract one at that, it needs to acquire a more grounded and contextual approach that acknowledges the material conditions of all knowledge. This does not imply that epistemic inquiry would be utterly abandoned. It would require, however, that it cease to be solely concerned with debates about other worlds, putative qualifications about an absent god construed in accordance with human designs, and theodicies that avoid altogether the actual sufferings of humanity, especially at the hands of their fellows. Proofs and truths would be replaced by an ethical disposition that confronts abuse of power and exclusions based on hierarchical privilege. Questions of sex, race, gender, class (i.e., intersectionality) would inform an awareness that honored the body and its diverse incarnations as well as the mind (Joy 2006). Above all, ethical relationships would be ordered toward recognition and justice. Such priorities would all contribute to an affirmation of this world instead of a fixation on mortality and violence. In this way, philosophy of religion would cease to be related to disassociated idealizations or defensive mechanisms but instead would contribute toward the flourishing of all the vulnerable creatures that inhabit this planet. NOTES

 1. Ricoeur was quite honest in his evaluation of the masters of suspicion in connection with religion. He noted: “I see an essential connection between the criticism of religion practiced by Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud and the selfunderstanding of faith. This critique of religion is, of course, constituted entirely outside of hermeneutics, as a critique of ideology, as a critique of otherworldliness, as a critique of illusions. But for a text-centered hermeneutical understanding this critique can simultaneously remain the recognition of an external adversary, whom one does not attempt to retrieve and baptize by force, and also become the instrument of an internal critique, which appropriately belongs to the labour of distanciation which all self-understanding before the text requires. Today a ‘hermeneutics of suspicion’ is an integral part of all appropriation of meaning” (Ricoeur 1975, 32).   2. Ricoeur (in Hahn 1995, 495–496). Ricoeur completes this quotation in a way that henceforth situates his own approach: “Like Hegel, I assume the question of determining whether speculative philosophy can transmute figurative thinking into its own essence, while leaving it just as it is. In both cases, my response is, regretfully, somewhat negative. To this extent, I assume an irreducible dichotomy between what has been considered  .  .  .  as religious discourse and all other discourses falling under the jurisdiction of reason alone. This dichotomy does not exclude the fact that religious discourse allows itself to be instructed by philosophical reason precisely as a critique of anthropomorphism” (496).

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  3. I have treated this aspect of Ricoeur’s work in more detail elsewhere (Joy 2011, 25–28).   4. In this section, I will draw on material that can be found in my Introduction to After Appropriation (Joy 2012a). Reprinted with permission.   5. These professors were Tinu Ruparell, Head of the Department of Religious Studies, Katrin Froese, and Chris Framarin, who hold joint appointments in both the departments of Religious Studies and Philosophy, and myself.   6. Chandra Talpade Mohanty (2003, 506) provides an excellent description of these terms that are as much metaphorical as literal. “I find the language of OneThird World versus Two-Thirds World as elaborated by Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash (1998) particularly useful, especially in conjunction with Third World/ South and First World/North. These terms represent what Esteva and Prakash call social minorities and social majorities—categories based on a quality of life led by peoples and societies in both North and South.”   7. Spivak acknowledges her borrowing of the word “subaltern” from Gramsci. She collaborated with Ranajit Guha to refine this term as referring to the utter deprivation of those who find themselves unable to express their dissatisfaction at their exclusion from any means to address this situation (see Guha and Spivak [1988, 10–15]). Initially, Spivak herself was criticized for usurping their voices, but she amended her theory to allow that the subaltern does indeed have a voice, but the fact is that their words do not receive attention.   8. For an introduction to this topic, see R.W. Connell (2008).   9. This acknowledgment is an early reference to what today is called “intersectionality.” See Crenshaw (1991). 10. See Morny Joy (2011, 221–246). 11. See especially Anderson (1998 and 2012). 12. Lloyd (1983) was the first work to study in detail the applicability of this terminology. 13. See especially Le Doeuff’s (2002) reading of Descartes. 14. Anderson (2006, 43). Anderson will describe her own understanding of “yearning” as related to a passionate task related to a woman’s search for philosophical form of identity. This is “to recognize a common yearning for recognition. This yearning is evident in sexual desire, political rage, unavoidable grief and self-giving/ self-creating love” (2006, 44). 15. In addition, Anderson acknowledges that her work owes a debt to Beauvoir’s reading of Hegel and the influence it had on a certain stream of French feminism. One could argue also that it shows the influence of Ricoeur’s revising of Hegel’s understanding of recognition as it appeared in Oneself as Another (2002). 16. Initially, Jantzen seemed particularly taken by the critical work of Derrida and Foucault, especially of their later work, where they both took something of a humanistic turn, stating that aim was more that of questioning the presumptions of Enlightenment reason. She also was impressed by the feminist orientation of

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Irigaray—but this seemed to be not as strong in her later work, where Hannah Arendt’s notion of “natality” became crucial. It is this aspect that I concentrate on, as I believe that it had the most impact on her own prescriptions for change in philosophy of religion. 17. It needs to be observed that over the course of the three volumes of Death and the Displacement of Beauty, Jantzen is not particularly consistent in her use of the terms “symbolic” and “imaginary,” or their exact meanings. Nor does she ever define them satisfactorily. At times, the terms do have definite psychoanalytic references in the mode of Lacan and also of Irigaray’s corrective reading of him from a feminist viewpoint. In other instances, however, Jantzen’s usage has definite resonances with Charles Taylor’s definition of the “social imaginary”: “A social imaginary is the [way] people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them, and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations” (Taylor 2003, 23). It would, nonetheless, seem that social, moral, and psychoanalytic resonances remain inherent in the revisionist process that she advocates. 18. It is in this connection that Jantzen (2002, 43) illustrates that she does not regard life and death as binaries: “[I]t is through such engagement with beauty and natality that lack and death can be better understood, so that they stand not as binary opposites to plenitude and life, but as elements within them, never desired or without value, but taking their appropriate secondary place.” 19. Jantzen (2002, 150). Jantzen’s adaptation of Arendt’s affirmation of life in this world, or amor mundi, as Arendt termed it, is not just simplistic or optimistic bromide. Jantzen (1998, 152) defends her usage of Arendt’s orientation: “Amor mundi is not, for her, a romantic or sentimental attitude to a world where all is daffodils and songbirds, but rather respect for and fostering of the natality of all human beings and the world which is our home. . . . A symbolic of natality is not in any sense a denial of death or a pretence that death does not matter. It is however, a love of life, and beyond our individual lives a love of the life of the world and the lives of those for whom it will be a home.” BIBLIOGRAPHY

Almond, Phillip. 1988. The British Discovery of Buddhism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Anderson, Pamela Sue. 1998. A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2001. “The Case for a Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Transforming Philosophy’s Imagery and Myths.” Ars Disputandi 1(1): 1–17. http://www. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15665399.2001.10819707#aHR0cDov L3d3dy50YW5kZm9ubGluZS5jb20vZG9pL3BkZi8xMC4xMDgwLzE1NjY1Mzk5LjIwMDEuMTA4MTk3MDdAQEAw

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———. 2006. “Life, Death and (Inter)Subjectivity: Realism and Recognition in Continental Feminism.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60(1– 3): 41–59. ———. 2007. “Book Review: The Philosophical Imaginary and the Sex of Knowing,” Feminist Theory 8: 107–14. ———, ed. 2010. New Topics in the Philosophy of Religion. Dordrecht: Springer. ———. 2011. “Engaging the ‘Forbidden Texts’ of Philosophy: Pamela Sue Anderson Talks to Alison Jasper,” Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture 1(1): 312–328. ———. 2012. Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love, and Epistemic Locatedness. London: Ashgate. Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Disciplines and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Azouvi, François, and Marc de Launay. 1998. Critique and Conviction: Paul Ricoeur. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. New York: Columbia University Press. Butler, Judith. 2000. “Longing for Recognition: Commentary on the Work or Jessica Benjamin.” Studies in Gender and Sexuality 1(3): 271–290. Chidester, David. 1996. Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Connell, R.W. 2008. “A Thousand Miles from Kind: Men, Masculinities and Modern Institutions,” Journal of Men’s Studies 16(3): 237–252. Crenshaw, Kimberlé W. 1991. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241–1299. Dallmayr, Fred. 1996. Beyond Orientalism: Essays on Cross-Cultural Encounter. Albany: State University of New York Press. Donaldson, Laura E. 1993. Decolonizing Feminisms: Race, Gender, and EmpireBuilding. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Donaldson, Laura E., and Pui-Lan Kwok, eds. 2001. Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse. New York/London: Routledge. Dube, Musa W. 2002. “Postcoloniality, Feminist Spaces and Religion.” In Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, edited by Laura E. Donaldson and Kwok Pui-Lan, 100–120. New York/London: Routledge. Guha, Ranajit, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. 1988. Selected Subaltern Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hahn, Lewis Edwin, ed. 1995. The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Vol. 22, Library of Living Philosophers. Chicago: Open Court. Harding, Sandra. 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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hooks, bell. 1999. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston: South End Press. Horsley, Richard. 2003. Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Jantzen, Grace. 1996. “What’s the Difference? Knowledge and Gender and (Post) Modern Philosophy of Religion.” Religious Studies 32(4): 431–448. ———. 1998. Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2000. “Response to Harriet Harris.” Feminist Theology: The Journal of the Britain & Ireland School of Feminist Theology 23: 119–120. ———. 2001. “Flourishing: Towards an Ethic of Natality.” Feminist Theory 2(2): 219–232. ———. 2002. “Birth and the Powers of Horror: Julia Kristeva on Gender, Religion, and Death.” In Rethinking Philosophy of Religion: Approaches from Continental Philosophy, edited by Philip Goodchild, 139–161. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2004. Death and the Displacement of Beauty. Vol. 1. Foundations of Violence. London: Routledge. ———. 2008. Death and the Displacement of Beauty. Vol. 2. Violence to Eternity, edited by Jeremy Carrette and Morny Joy. London: Routledge. ———. 2009a. Death and the Displacement of Beauty. Vol. 3. A Place of Springs, edited by Jeremy Carrette and Morny Joy. London: Routledge. ———. 2009b. “ ‘Uneasy Intersections’: Postcolonialism, Feminism and the Study of Religion.” In Postcolonial Philosophy of Religion, edited by Purushottama Bilimoria and Andrew B. Irvine, 295–301. New York/Heidelberg: Springer. Joy, Morny. 2000. “Beyond a God’s-Eye View: Alternative Perspectives in the Study of Religion.” In Perspectives on Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, Adjunct Proceedings of the 17th Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, edited by Armin W. Geertz and Russell T. McCutcheon. Leiden: Brill. ———. 2006. “Gender and Religion: A Volatile Mixture.” Temenos 42(1): 7–30. ———. 2008. “Method and Theory in Religious Studies: Retrospect and Prognostications.” Temenos 43(2): 65–88. ———. 2009. “Grace Jantzen and the Work of Love.” In Redeeming the Present, edited by Elaine Graham, 23–42. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. ———. 2010. “Rethinking the ‘Problem of Evil’ with Hannah Arendt and Grace Jantzen.” In New Topics in the Philosophy of Religion, edited by Pamela Anderson. Dordrecht: Springer. ———, ed. 2011. Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion. Dordrecht: Springer. ———, ed. 2012a. After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion. Calgary: University of Calgary Press.

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———. 2012b. “Revisiting Postcolonialism and Religion.” Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 25(2): 102–122. Kessler, Gary. 1998. Philosophy of Religion: Toward a Global Perspective. Boston: Wadsworth Publishing. King, Richard. 1999. Orientalism and Religion: Post-colonial Theory, India and the Mystic East. London: Routledge. Larson, Gerald, and Eliot Deutsch, eds. 1987. Interpreting across Boundaries: New Essays in Comparative Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Le Doeuff, Michèle. 2002. The Philosophical Imaginary. Translated by Colin Gordon. London: Continuum. ———. 2003. The Sex of Knowing. Translated by Kathryn Hamer and Lorraine Code. New York and London: Routledge. Lloyd, Genevieve. 1984. The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy. London: Routledge. Long, Eugene T. 2000. Twentieth-Century Western Philosophy of Religion: 1900–2000. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Lopez, Donald. 1998. Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marcos, Sylvia. 2006. Taken from the Lips: Gender and Eros in Mesoamerican Religions. Leiden: Brill. ———, ed. 2010. Women and Indigenous Religions. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Marshall, P.J. 1970. The British Discovery of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meister, Chad. 2007. The Philosophy of Religion Reader. New York: Routledge. Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1984. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” Boundary 2: 333–358. ———. 2003. Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practising Solidarity. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ortner, Sherry B. 1996. Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon Press. Palmer, Michael. 2011. Philosophy of Religion: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. Raynova, Yvanka, 2003. “All that Give Us to Think: Conversations with Paul Ricoeur.” In Between Suspicion and Sympathy: Paul Ricoeur’s Unstable Equilibrium, edited by A. Wiercinski, 670–696. Toronto: Hermeneutic Press. Reagan, Charles. 1996. Paul Ricoeur: His Life and Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1966. Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary. Translated by E.V. Kohák. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1967. The Symbolism of Evil. Translated by E. Buchanan. Boston: Beacon Press.

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———. 1970. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. Translated by D. Savage. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ———. 1974. The Conflict of Interpretations. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. 1975. “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 5(1): 14–33. ———. 1986. Ideology and Utopia, edited by George Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1987. “On Interpretation.” In After Philosophy: End or Transformation?, edited by Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, and Thomas McCarthy, 357–380. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 1988. Time and Narrative, vol. 3. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1991. “Narrative Identity.” Philosophy Today 35(1): 73–81. ———. 1992. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1995. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. Translated by David Pellauer. Edited by M. Wallace. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. ———. 1996. “Fragility and Responsibility.” In Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action, edited by Richard Kearney, 15–22. London: Sage. ———. 1997. “A Response by Paul Ricoeur.” In Paul Ricoeur and Narrative: Context and Contestation, edited by Morny Joy. Calgary: University of Calgary Press. ———. 2000. The Just. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2005. The Course of Recognition. Translated by David Pellauer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon. ______. 2004. Humanism and Democratic Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press. Smart, Ninian, and B. Srinivasa Murthy, eds. 1996. East-West Encounter in Philosophy and Religion. Long Beach, CA: Long Beach Publishers. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, 271–313. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ———. 2004. “Righting Wrongs.” South Atlantic Quarterly 103(2–3): 523–581. Taylor, Charles. 2003. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Tracy, David. 1990. “On the Origins of Philosophy of Religion: The Need for a New Narrative for its Founding.” In Myth and Philosophy, edited by Frank E. Reynolds and David Tracy, 11–36. Albany: State University of New York Press. Urban, Keith. 2003. Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Toward a New Paradigm for Philosophy of Religion Maurice Boutin

We sometimes put research in the service of refusing to find anything out. —Peter Sloterdijk (2004)

While taking for granted that the predicate of a proposition is deemed the most intelligible, the following proposal draws attention to three statements and then suggests (4) that freedom is the basic dynamism of finitude provided that finitude ceases to be identified, and thus confused, with limitation. The three statements are: (1) human being is fragile; (2) human being is fallible; (3) human being is finite.

Human Being Is Fragile This is the emphasis made by Yves Ledure (1920–2012) in Transcendances: Essai sur Dieu et le corps (1989). Ledure’s endeavor sets up a new distribution within the human relational realm with reference to a precise goal. This requires uncovering a hidden dimension of corporality whose ending is objectified in terms of transcendence. What is at stake is at once a conquest over the immanence and distortions of human history, over doubt, over the mortal absolute—a conquest that the divine is—and a personal effort toward immortality, plenitude of life, self-permanence (i.e., eternalizing as 35

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the most basic desire of human corporality). The overall relevance of this desire is constant in Ledure’s book. All through his argument, the reflection goes from what life generally is to the singular living being characterized by an extreme fragility that sets it apart in the universe. The human as such is the place for revelation and the encounter with the divine. The transcendent thus cuts across each and every human existence and the whole history of humankind. There is no historical figure of the transcendent being other than human being as a whole. God’s incarnation is an extraordinary assumption of human being, and yet it takes place at the expense of a fragilizing of the divine. God’s incarnation should be understood literally: in Jesus of Nazareth the divine assumes corporality along with its rules and constraints, and in Jesus’s humanity the meeting point of history and the transcendent is achieved. Jesus’s story is not only the expectation of full personal accomplishment; it is the full realization of life itself. Yet this personal accomplishment remains something historical and as such constantly longed for. Here, transcendence is not merely rational, it is historical. In other words, transcendence is in keeping with human personal becoming, and such becoming is the reason why transcendence is never total transparency, even in Jesus of Nazareth. God’s incarnation is kenosis: in Jesus, the divine strips itself of transcendence. Jesus is just a human being, in everything similar to a human being. Such is the enigmatic figure of God’s incarnation Ledure calls the fragility of the divine. The visibility of transcendence is away; only the divine naming remains: “Lord” (an indication of transcendence). The only figure—however obscure—of the transcendent is human history. In it the divine completely empties itself to the point that human history seems to be stripped of all transcendence and to be the exclusive arena of human activity. More than any other before, our present era experiences this. As long as human beings were subjected to natural determinism, this subordination was deemed a spontaneous and immediate expression of transcendence. However, with the growing human control over nature, this kind of supply means has disappeared and, nowadays, God’s incarnation is total: it leaves history autonomous and human beings in control over their destiny. At the core of such human destiny, the incarnated transcendent is active, though not as some external, alien(ating) force. God’s incarnation forces us to figure out the transcendent as part of human interiority, which is its greatest accomplishment since it raises corporality to the dimensions of the absolute. The gnostic readings and the docetic interpretation of God’s incarnation attest to the difficulty of acknowledging that the human body is

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capable of being the transcending God. Of course, Christian ontotheology does overshadow such capacity. And yet the incarnation of the transcending God entails the accomplishment of anthropology and thus becomes the secret of anthropology. By putting God’s incarnation at the center of its discourse, Christianity resumes what is latent in today’s anthropologies: human self-affirmation. But more than that, because it gives something ultimate to human self-affirmation and opens up a future that corporality alone—on account of death—cannot hope for. For Ledure, the task consists in deciphering the positive core of transcendence as a call for human freedom and a way toward self-accomplishment. This is not just pure possibility, that is, a reality stripped of itself. On the contrary, freedom as a choice does away with tyrannical immediacy and opens up a promising future. It does not in any way end up in some sort of air pocket, that is, in hopeless idealism content with the management of a present situation stripped of any future perspective.

Human Being Is Fallible Fallible Man ([1960] 1986) is the title of the first part of Paul Ricoeur’s (1913–2005) Finitude and Guilt, the second volume of his Philosophy of Will. As Walter J. Lowe (in Ricoeur [1960] 1986, xxxv) reminds us, Fallible Man “is not concerned with the concrete manifestation of fault, whatever its form may be [the notion of fault was elided in the first volume of Philosophy of the Will devoted to The Voluntary and the Involuntary], but rather with that in humans which permits fault to arise: fallibility.” The word “fault” should be taken in the geological sense: a break, a rift, a tearing. Ricoeur frequently uses the words faille (break, breach, fault), which is akin to faillibilité, as well as écart (gap, di-gression), fêlure (rift), déchirement (a tearing, torn) to describe human being’s existential condition. The same sense is provided by the verb “to err” (in the sense of wandering, going astray, deviating), which is retained in aberrant and error. Ricoeur’s book, therefore, is concerned with that which allows for the possibility of a “rift” in human beings, what enables them to “err,” to become divided against themselves and thereby to become the “flawed” creatures. (Lowe in Ricoeur [1960] 1986, xxxv)

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According to Ricoeur ([1960] 1986, 146), “fragility is not merely the ‘locus,’ the point of insertion of evil, nor even the ‘origin’ starting from which human being falls: it is the ‘capacity’ for evil. To say that human being is fallible is to say that the limitation peculiar to a being who does not coincide with himself is the primordial weakness from which evil arises.” What Ricoeur calls ‘disproportion,’ or ‘discord’ (e.g., Ricoeur 1986, 75, 141), is a constant issue in Fallible Man; it comes time and again in all kinds of contexts. His goal is to work out an “anthropology of fallibility” (82) in three steps. The first two steps deal with transcendental imagination whose work is “to take the thing and the person for reflective references” (81), the second step still remaining “quite formal, having escaped a transcendental formalism only to enter upon a practical formalism, that of the idea of the person” (69). The third step pertains to the “heart,” the Gemüt, feeling. Ricoeur sketches his argument as follows: In advancing step by step from consciousness in general to self-consciousness and then to feeling, or, in other words, from the theoretical to the practical to the affective, philosophical anthropology progresses to a heightened sense of inwardness and more fragility. The moment of fragility of consciousness in general is, we recall, the transcendental imagination, a blind spot of knowledge transcending itself intentionally in its correlate, the thing. Consequently the synthesis of speech and appearance is a synthesis in the thing itself, or rather in the objectivity of the thing. The second moment of fragility is that of respect. It corresponds to the project of the self or the person. But the paradoxical, disproportionate constitution of respect is transcended intentionally in the representation of the person, which is still a kind of objective or objectival synthesis. The “heart,” the restless heart, would be the fragile moment par excellence. All the disproportion that we have seen culminate in the disproportion of happiness and character would be interiorized in the heart. But the question is whether a philosophy of the “heart” is possible. It must be a philosophy which does not relapse into the pathétique, but which is foregrounded in the level of reason which is not satisfied with the pure and the radical, but which demands the total, the concrete. The direction in which we must look is shown to us by the very movement of the preceding reflection.

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That reflection is made up of a reduction of the pathétique. But that pathétique is not devoid of all thematic structure; it was not utterly alien to the sphere of speech for it even has a language proper to it, that of myth and rhetoric. Therefore, if that pathos is already mythos, that is, speech, it must be possible to reconstruct it in the dimension of philosophic discourse. Now, this mythos bespeaks the primordial crucifixion that is the misery of the intermediate being. A merely transcendental reflection of the thing does not fully restore that theme, nor does the practical reflection on the person. If a philosophy of feeling is possible, it is feeling that should express the fragility of the intermediate being that we are. In other words, what is at stake in philosophy of feeling is the very gap between the purely transcendental exegesis of “disproportion” and the lived experience of “misery.” The two questions are connected, the question of method and the question of substance: the question of the possibility of a philosophy of feeling and that of a completion of the meditation on ‘disproportion’ in the dimension of feeling. We must resolve these two questions together. (82–83) The “locus and the node of disproportion” (91) is situated between sensuous desire and reason. This “between,” called θυμόϛ by Plato, “constitutes the human feeling par excellence” and allows for “an understanding of the whole of human fragility” (92). Ricoeur’s “working hypothesis” presented right at the beginning of his essay (1–6) is then summarized later in the following statement: “Man’s humanity is the discrepancy in levels, that initial polarity, that divergence of affective tension between the extremities of which is placed the ‘heart’ ” (92). According to Ricoeur ([1960] 1986, xliv), human disproportion or discord is to be understood as “the polarity within the human being of the finite and the infinite. . . . Human specific weakness and essential fallibility are ultimately sought within this structure of mediation between the pole of finitude and the pole of infinitude.” The “global character” of human disproportion plays a central role in Ricoeur’s “attempt at totalization” of the various facets of finitude. Thereby one should keep in mind that totality is not just the addition of “everything human—ideas, beliefs, values, signs, works, tools, institutions” (67). Yet the question remains: “How should I pass from the idea of a sum to that of a whole? Man’s function, insofar as it is distinct from the sum of his partial intentions, would elude me if I

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could not connect the movement of the whole to the very project of reason, which is that in me which demands the totality” (66). This does not mean that the idea of totality would be “merely a rule for theoretical thought. It dwells in the human will and in this way becomes the source of the most extreme ‘disproportion’: that which preys on human action and strains it between the finitude of character and the infinitude of happiness” (67). Finitude is “my point of view” (Ricoeur [1960] 1986, 20–21). The overall relevance of “finite perspective” as a theme (61) in Ricoeur’s approach leads to the relation of human finitude and limitation up to the point of deducing finitude from the limited point of view taken naturally. Walter J. Lowe pointedly describes Ricoeur’s “regressive analysis” (21) or “regressive route” (23) in his introduction to Fallible Man by saying: “I do not know my finitude by a simple act of introspection, looking within myself. Rather I begin by noting that a given object presents only one side of itself: it is on this basis that I realize that I see things from a specific, limited point of view and am, in this sense, finite” (Lowe in Ricoeur [1960] 1986, xvi).

Human Being Is Finite Dissociating himself from what Ricoeur ([1960] 1986, 6–15) calls “The Pathétique of ‘Misery,’ ” Ricoeur starts by analyzing the “Finite Perspective” (18–24) and the “Infinite Verb” (24–37), and he puts Descartes’s “theme of finite-infinite” at the basis of his analysis of human fallibility. By doing so, he dissociates himself from what he considers the contemporary tendency to make finitude “the global characteristic”—as he calls it—of human reality. He adds: To be sure, none of the philosophers of finitude has a simple and non-dialectical concept of finitude; all of them speak in one sense or another of the transcendence of human being. Conversely, Descartes, having announced an ontology of the finite-infinite, continues to call the created human being finite with respect to the divine infinitude. Consequently it is unwarranted to exaggerate the difference between the philosophies of finitude and a philosophy that starts straightway with the paradox of finiteinfinite human being. But the difference is not trivial even when it is reduced to one of accent or tone. The question is whether human transcendence is merely transcendence of finitude or

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whether the converse is not something of equal importance: as will be seen, human being appears to be no less discourse than perspective, no less a demand for totality than a limited nature, no less love than desire. The interpretation of the paradox beginning with finitude does not seem to us to have any privilege over the opposed interpretation. According to the latter, human being is infinitude, and finitude is a sign that points to the restricted nature of this infinitude; conversely, infinitude is a sign of the transcending of finitude. Human being is no less destined to unlimited rationality, to totality, and beatitude than limited to a perspective, consigned to death, and riveted to desire. Our working hypothesis concerning the paradox of the finite-infinite implies that we must speak of infinitude as much as of human finitude. The full recognition of this polarity is essential to the elaboration of the concepts of intermediacy, disproportion, and fallibility, the interconnections of which we have indicated in moving from the last to the first of these concepts (3–4), that is, from human finitude to infinitude, from perspective, desire, limited nature and death, to discourse, demand for totality, love, and beatitude. For Ricoeur, planet Earth remains what it has been for so long: a place for corruption, limited movements and death, a place for great sublunar cemeteries, “the dark spot on the clear jacket of the sky” (Sloterdijk 1999, 420; my translation), which encourages at best a kind of private property on fascinating mysteries. Actually, it provides the humiliation of all human beings, compared to a supraterrestrial space practically out of reach for them. Ricoeur’s promise of “unlimited rationality” to which human being “is no less destined” is indeed a meager consolation. No wonder he speaks in the conclusion of Fallible Man of “la tristesse du fini”—“the sadness of the finite” (Ricoeur [1960] 1986, 138–140). Sadness is for him an “excellent word” referring to “a negative lying deeper than all language” (140). Following Spinoza, Ricoeur defines sadness as “a passion by which the soul moves to a lesser perfection.” He adds: Besides the sadness that expresses the intermittent character of my effort to exist, there is a ground of sadness that may be called the sadness of the finite. This sadness is nourished by all the primitive experiences that, to express themselves, have recourse to negation: lack, loss, dread, regret, deception, dispersion, and

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irrevocability of duration. Negation is so obviously mixed in with them that we can indeed hold this experience of finitude for one of the roots of negation. (139) The analyses “proposed under the heading of pure description” (xli) in the first volume of Philosophy of Will were, as Ricoeur says in the “Preface” to Fallible Man, necessary to put Fault and the whole experience of human evil [in parentheses] so as to delimit the field of pure description. In thus bracketing the domain of fault, I sketched the neutral sphere of human being’s most fundamental possibilities, or, as it were, the undifferentiated keyboard upon which the guilty as well as the innocent human being might play. Straightway that purely descriptive neutrality endowed all the analyses with a deliberately chosen, abstract turn. The present work [namely Fallible Man] intends to do away with this purely descriptive abstraction by reintroducing what was bracketed. Now, to take away the abstraction, or to remove the parentheses, is not to draw the consequences or apply the conclusions of pure description. It is to disclose a new thematic structure that calls for new working hypotheses and a new method of approach (xli). When in the conclusion of Fallible Man, Ricoeur—despite the firm intention to work out new hypotheses and a new method of approach— talks about “la tristesse du fini,” he indicates that he has left in no way the domain of the “pure description” of “the neutral sphere of human being’s most fundamental possibilities,” since such a description in the first volume of Philosophy of Will ends up also with reference to a threefold “tristesse” (translated as “sorrow”): “the sorrow of finitude” (447–448), which refers to “la tristesse du fini,” then “the sorrow of formlessness” (448–450) and “the sorrow of contingence,” (450–456) followed by a section on “experience of contingence and the idea of death” (456–463). To a large extent, human finitude is taken for granted not only in the philosophy of religion, but also in Christian theology with the exception of the theology of creation that emphasizes the creature character of human being. And yet even there, Karl Rahner states, one hates created reality because it is not that which is upon itself unconditioned. One calls it the relative, the contingent, that which is related to God and can thus be determined only negatively as mere limitation of the infinite being as such, which alone counts. And one forgets that precisely that conditioned reality is loved unconditionally by the unconditioned and has

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for that reason a relevance that makes out of it more than just a provisory reality vanishing before God; one forgets that the created unconditioned forbids us to appreciate it only negatively.1 Breaking the spell of totality and the magic of the infinite goes along with the breach of finitude qua limitation. To confuse finitude with limitation may indeed be well intentioned. However, to break with such a confusion brings human being back to transcendence as one’s proper enabling (Stambaugh 1992, 11), according to which limitation consists precisely in having no limitation. A self-proclaimed finitude breaks with limitation and not transcendence as such. Human being is finite. Human finitude is kept alert—not in check—through transcendence; human finitude is the casket (écrin)—not the screen (écran)—of transcendence. The illusion that is ours pertains less to the true import of knowledge than to the tendency to reify knowledge and to forget that the forms of thinking go further than what is just “given.” To read divine transcendence into human finitude reminds us that a god who does not become human only enjoys at best a transcendence akin to the transcendence of ideas; it reminds us also that the important thing consists in knowing what one says, which is less obvious than one may believe, especially when—as Ricoeur ([1960] 1986) does—“a vague, formless transcendence” is chastised because it would be viewed only as “a simple field of appearance,” not as “an intelligible order” (44) under “a totalizing consideration” (48) for which finitude can only be limitation.

Finitude and Freedom Ricoeur takes as the starting point of his reflection on human fallibility what he calls “the conditions of possibility of the objectivity of the thing” ([1960] 1986, 47). He readily acknowledges that the “nexus of things especially lacks the presence of persons with whom we work, fight, and communicate, and who stand forth on the horizon of things, on the setting of pragmatic and valorized objects, as other poles of subjectivity, apprehension, valorization, and action” (47–48). And yet he suggests a “striking resemblance” between the “synthesis” of reason and existence (72)—or reason and finitude (74)— that the person is on the one hand, and the synthesis of the object (72) is on the other hand, with the only difference that the synthesis in which the form of the person is constituted is deemed “fragile,” whereas the synthesis in which the thing’s form is constituted is deemed “hidden” (79). However,

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the possibility of the synthesis in the object “is in no way an experience capable of being dramatized; the consciousness of whose province it belongs is by no means self-consciousness, but the formal unity of the object, a project of the world” (106–107). According to Ricoeur, “most often we treat ourselves as objects. Working and social life require this objectification; our very freedom depends on these social regularities which give us a routine existence” (101). “[I]nasmuch as the most important obstacles and dangers of life come from intersubjective reality,” “the insertion of another person among the consumable objects toward which the sensible appetite is directed constitutes a turn that is singularly more decisive than the insertion of an obstacle and danger between desire and pleasure, or between repulsion and pain” (Ricoeur [1960] 1986, 109). “The encountering of another person is what breaks the finite, cyclic pattern of the sensible appetite” (111). “In imagining another state of affairs or another kingdom, I perceive the possible, and in the possible, the essential. The understanding of a passion as bad requires the understanding of the primordial by the imagination of another empirical modality, by exemplification in an innocent kingdom” (112). Ricoeur lets himself “be guided by the constitution of objectivity for which feeling is the counterpart through interiorization” (122) with regard to what he calls “the context of having” (114–116), “the context of power” (116–120), and “the quest for esteem” and “reciprocity” (120–124). Having: Mine and yours, by mutually excluding each other, differentiate the I and the you through their spheres of belonging. Strictly speaking, the multiplicity of subjects is not a numerical multiplicity. Each ego retains a fringe of spiritual indifferentiation which makes communication possible and which makes the other my like. But the mutual exclusion, begun by the body insofar as it is a separate and occupied spatiality, is continued by mutual expropriation; the attachment of the body changes character through the interference of the attachment to the “mine.” If I hold to my house because of my body, the relation to my body becomes, in turn, dependent on the economic relation to things that nourish it, clothe it, and protect it. Being established and settled completes incarnation and transforms it through and through. Moreover, the relation of appropriation invades the region of the mind step by step: I can be in a rela-

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tion of appropriation with my thoughts (I have my ideas about that, I say). Straightway the mutual expropriation moves from the body to the mind and carries to completion even into their very inwardness the breach between the I and the you. (Ricoeur [1960] 1986, 114–115) However, Ricoeur continues: . . . it should be possible to draw a dividing line that cuts not between being and having, but between unjust having and a just possession that would distinguish among human beings without mutually excluding them. And even if all innocence had to be denied to private appropriation, the relation between human being and having would still be reaffirmed on the level of a “We.” Through the mediation of the “we” and the “our,” the “I” would again join itself to a “mine.” Thus, imaginative variation encounters a limit that bears witness to the resistance of an essence: I cannot imagine the I without the mine, or human being without having. (Ricoeur [1960] 1986, 115) Power: . . . I could not understand power as evil if I could not imagine an innocent destination of power by comparison to which it is Fallen. I can conceive of an authority which would propose to educate the individual to freedom, which would be a power without violence; in short, I can imagine the difference between power and violence; the utopia of a Kingdom of God, a City of God, an empire of minds or a kingdom of ends, implies such an imagination of non-violent power. This imagination liberates the essence; and this essence governs all efforts to transform power into an education to freedom. Through this highly meaningful goal I “endow” history, in fact, with a meaning. (Ricoeur [1960] 1986, 120) Esteem and Reciprocity: The quest for reciprocity . . . is not satisfied by the interhuman relations in the context of having, which are relations of mutual

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exclusions, nor by the relation in the context of power, which are asymmetrical, hierarchical relations, and therefore non-reciprocal ones. This is why the constitution of the Self is pursued beyond the economic and political spheres in the realm of interpersonal relations. It is there that I pursue the aim of being esteemed, approved, and recognized. My existence for myself is dependent on this constitution in another’s opinion.  .  .  .  Up to now we have made it our policy to let ourselves be guided by the constitution of objectivity for which feeling is the counterpart through interiorization. What is the objectivity here that follows up the objectivity of economic ‘goods’ in the quest for having and the objectivity of political institutions in the quest for power? It seems that there is no longer any objectivity at all. (Ricoeur [1960] 1986, 121–122) Here, Ricoeur adopts what he calls “a reflection of a Kantian style”—as follows: . . . esteem involves a representation, the representation of an end that is not merely an “end to be realized,” but an “end existing by itself.” The person as represented is just this. Now, this representation has a status of objectivity insofar as the worth of this end is not merely for us, but in itself. The opposition between the representation of an end in itself and that of a means for us is of itself constitutive of a dimension of objectivity. Not to be able to utilize another person is to encounter objectivity as a limit of my arbitrariness. Objectivity consists in that I cannot use another merely as a means, nor utilize persons like things. . . . Kant gives the name of humanity to this objectivity. The proper object of esteem is the idea of human being in my person and in the person of another. I expect another person to convey the image of my humanity to me, to esteem me by making my humanity known to me. This fragile reflection of myself in another’s opinion has the consistency of an object; it conceals the objectivity of an existing end that draws a limit to any pretension to make use of me. It is in and through this objectivity that I can be recognized.  .  .  .  Cultural objectivity is the very relation of human beings to human beings represented in the idea of humanity; only cultural testimonies endow it with the density of things, in

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the form of monuments existing in the world: but these things are “works.” It is this formal and material objectivity of the idea of human being that engenders an affectivity to its measure: the cycle of the feelings of esteem. . . . Because the relation to self is an interiorized relation to another, opinion and belief are the core of it; worth is neither seen nor known but believed. I believe that I am worth something in the eyes of another who approves my existence; in the extreme case, this other is myself. Insofar as I am affected by it, this belief, this credence, this trust, constitutes the very feeling of my worth. . . . Nothing is more fragile, nothing is easier to wound than an existence that is at the mercy of a belief; and one can understand how the “feeling of inferiority” could serve as a clue to the genesis of neuroses. (Ricoeur [1960] 1986, 122–125; emphasis mine) According to Ricoeur, feelings not ruled by the belonging to “Ideas” or the belonging to a “We” . . . are essentially formless, moods, Stimmungen, or, as someone has termed them, atmospheric feelings. . . . It might be said that the unconditioned, which is thought but not known by means of objective determinations, is experienced in a modality of feeling that is equally formless. If being is “beyond essence,” if it is horizon, it is understandable that feelings that most radically interiorize the supreme intention of reason might themselves be beyond form. “Moods” alone can manifest the coincidence of the transcendent, in accordance with intellectual determinations, and the inward, in accordance with the order of existential movement. The height of the feeling of belonging to being ought to be the feeling in which what is most detached from our vital depth—what is absolute, in the strong sense of the word—becomes the heart of our heart. But then one cannot name it; one can merely call it the Unconditioned that is demanded by the reason and whose inwardness is manifested by feeling. (Ricoeur [1960] 1986, 105–106) Let us conclude these long quotations with the following words. For Ricoeur, “Human being is the Joy of Yes in the sadness of the finite” (1986, 140). “If the human being is capable of Joy, of Joy in and through anguish,

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[then] that is the radical principle of all ‘disproportion’ in the dimension of feeling and the source of human being’s affective fragility” (106). “With feeling, the polemical duality of subjectivity replies to the solid synthesis of objectivity” (107). “The object is synthesis; the self is conflict” (126). Except on pages 101 and 120, quoted above, there are but a few allusions to freedom in Fallible Man. At the end of the Preface, Ricoeur refers to the “grandeur” and the “limitation” of what he calls “an ethical vision of the world.” In such a vision—and this is its “grandeur”—“not only is it true that freedom is the ground of evil, but the avowal of evil is also the condition of the consciousness of freedom. For in this avowal one can detect the delicate connection of the past and the future, of the self and its acts, of non-being and pure action in the very core of freedom” ([1960] 1986, xlix). As to its “limitation,” it is “already signified in the ambiguous structure of the myth of the fall: by positing evil, freedom is the victim of an Other” (xlix). In chapter 2, on “the transcendental synthesis” (17–45), the summary of the argumentation at the end of the section on “Infinite verb” (24–37) includes the following considerations: The transcendence of speech centered upon the verb, and the verb revealed its soul of affirmation. In moving the accent from signification in general (which was understood rather in the sense of “noun”) onto the verb, we move it also from the truthintention to the freedom-intention. Here again the correlation between assent and a specific moment of speech prevents the separation of the two problematics of truth and freedom. The verb supra-signifies: that means that it signifies primarily as a noun and is built on the primary intention of signifying. Thereby our freedom of affirming—insofar as it is tied to the verb—is rooted in the soil of noun-meanings. Moreover, . . . the verb binds human affirmation to the truth-intention in a twofold way. The verb considered as a declaration of being is the reference to the present time, and the reference to the subject is the verb as relational. The two dimensions of truth, existential and relational, are thus implied in the verb. Accordingly, if freedom of judgment lies in the act of affirmation, if the intentional correlate of affirmation is the verb, and if the verb aims at the truth, then freedom and truth form the noesis-noema pair [see Husserl] that is constitutive of human affirmation. ([1960] 1986, 36–37)

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These are the only explicit references to freedom in Fallible Man. Is it so because human finitude is understood by Ricoeur as limitation? Let us examine this issue by referring to the usual approach to human rights and freedom still inspired by the 1789 Declaration of human rights, article 4. You have rights—others also do! You are free—others also are! The rights of others can interfere with my own rights and make their implementation more difficult and potentially impossible to achieve. The freedom of others is usually seen as a limitation of, and as a virtual and even real threat to, my own freedom. Considering others as threat goes along with individualism, subjectivism and instrumentality, and ultimately a loss of freedom. Not to be taken for granted, let alone to be just defended or even imposed, my own freedom is enabled only through my actual engaging in the realization of the freedom of others. The latter is not a limitation; it is not a virtual threat to my own freedom; it is its condition of possibility. I can be free only if I care for the freedom of others. Freedom emerges from the core of finitude itself. The mutual conditioning of personal freedom goes not from finitude as limitation (dependency) to the infinite, but from finitude to otherness.

Conclusion The philosophy of religion helps to understand why speaking is frightening because never enough is being said, even though what is said is always too much. To know why one says “finitude” is to know why one no longer wishes to put the emphasis on “infinite”—according to Ricoeur ([1960] 1986, 12), a word “more expressive than meaningful”—on “absolute,” “limitation,” “immanence,” “fallibility,” or “fragility.” The issue does not consist in merely incorporating the term “finitude” into one’s vocabulary while keeping the mindset intact or untouched; rather, it is to put into question one’s own habits of thinking. To say that human being is so finite that one no longer knows what human being is—this is really to say nothing at all. This is so because human finitude—like meaning—is not a theme of understanding, but the condition of possibility of being human. I need to understand human finitude otherwise than as limitation and together with transcendence in order to understand transcendence otherwise than as mere super-imposition. Nowadays, philosophy allegedly reaches the peak of its art when it makes plain how to word things in case it would have something to say.

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Referring to finitude in direct relation to transcendence means that we are condemned, as it were, to creativity, namely, to inquire into what remains to be done when nothing can be said. This is both the necessary and impossible task of religious thought. Creative people are those who prevent themselves from sinking into noxious routine. Even the absence of creativity has to be thought of in view of a new intimacy with what is deemed obvious. Only a finite being can be a transcendent being. This is a point of departure, perhaps even a new paradigm for philosophy of religion, not just a matter of choosing a new accent or tone. In the movement from and return to this statement lies the hope that it is properly understood. NOTE

1. Rahner quoted in Tremblay (1992, 319n37). One may add that human finitude is often practically ignored in the various approaches to the notion of revelation, with few exceptions, including Rahner (see Tremblay 1992). BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aboulafia, Mitchell. 1982. “Finitude and Self-Overcoming.” Dialogos 17(39): 53–64. Birault, Henri. 1960. “Heidegger et la pensée de la finitude.” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 14: 135–162. Borel, Alain. 1972. Hegel et le problème de la finitude. Paris: La Pensée Universelle. Boutin, Maurice. 1974. Relationalität als Verstehensprinzip bei Rudolf Bultmann. Beiträge zur Evangelischen Theologie, no. 67. Munich: Chr. Kaiser. ———. 1980. “Aporie et temporalité: Remarques sur un cas limite, l’herméneutique de la conclusion chez Castelli.” In Esistenza, Mito, Ermeneutica: Scritti per Enrico Castelli, vol. 1, edited by Marco M. Olivetti, 419–444. Padua: CEDAM. ———. 1980. “Le texte biblique et la question du sens.” Laval Théologique et Philosophique 36(2): 139–171. ———. 1983. “L’Un dispersif: Examen d’une requête récente.” In Neo-platonismo e Religione, edited by Marco M. Olivetti, 253–279. Padua: CEDAM. ———. 1983. “Anonymous Christianity: A Paradigm for Interreligious Encounter?” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 20: 602–629. ———. 1986. “Autrui différé: Remarques sur la théorie de l’action de George Herbert Mead.” In Intersubjectività, Socialità, Religione, edited by Marco M. Olivetti, 725–739. Padua: CEDAM. ———. 1988. “Dieu et la projection non-objectivée: Conséquences de la compréhension de Dieu dans la théologie de Rudolf Bultmann.” Laval Théologique et Philosophique 44(2): 221–246.

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———. 1990. “Méprises du langage, énigme du monde: À propos d’une expression étrange du Tractatus de Wittggenstein.” Journal Religiologiques 1(2): 37–49. ———. 1992. “Relation, Otherness, and the Philosophy of Religion.” The Journal of Religious Pluralism 2: 61–82. ———. 1994. “Conceiving the Invisible: Joseph C. McLelland’s Modal Approach to Theological and Religious Pluralism.” In The Three Loves: Philosophy, Theology, and World Religions: Essays in Honour of Joseph C. McLelland, edited by Robert C. Culley and William Klempa, 1–18. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. ———. 1996. “L’inouï l’indécidablde selon Castelli et Derrida: Philosophie de la religion et critique du logocentrisme.” In Philosophy of Religion Between Ethics and Ontology, edited by Marco M. Olivetti, 815–829. Padua: CEDAM. ———. 2001. “Énigme du dire.” In Intersubjectivité et théologie philoso-phique, edited by Marco M. Olivetti, 431–438. Padua: CEDAM. ———. 2002. “Finitude et transcendance: Conditions d’un changement de paradigme.” In Théologie négative, edited by Marco M. Olivetti, 341–355. Padua: CEDAM. ———. 2003. “Truths & Texts: ‘Dead or Alive!’—Only (a) Text?” Journal ARC 31: 39–51. ———. 2004. “Le penser comme dette.” In Le don et la dette, edited by Marco M. Olivetti, 453–465. Padua: CEDAM. ———. 2005. “Effacing the Divine: Kai Nielsen’s Philosophical Achievements.” Journal ARC 33: 506–518. ———. 2005. “On A Quasi-Realm for Reflection: Richard Kearney’s The God Who May Be,” 18 p. (roneo). Paper AAR/EIR Conference, Panel 7/2 on “God after Metaphysics: Discussing Kearney,” May 7, Montreal. ———. 2007. “The Current State of the Individual: A Meditation on ‘The Falling Man,’ a Photo Taken by Richard Drew.” Toronto Journal of Theology 23(2): 173–182. ———. 2008. “Virtualité et identité: L’identité narrative selon Paul Ricoeur, et ses apories.” Études Théologiques et Religieuses 83(3): 367–376. Cambron, Micheline, ed. 2013. L’héritage littéraire de Paul Ricoeur: Postures d’héritiers. Actes de colloques du site Fabula. Paris: Fabula.org/ Dastur, Françoise. 2013. “Je ne pense pas que la philosophie puisse devenir populaire.” Philosophie magazine 72: 70–75. Dillon, M.-C. 1977. “Human Finitude and the Limits of Reason: A Phenomenological Approach to the Question of Irrationality.” Journal of the British Society of Phenomenology 8(2): 94–102. Emad, Parvis. 1985. “World, Finitude, and Solitude as Basic Concepts of Metaphysics.” Research in Phenomenology 15: 247–258. Farrer, Austin. 1959. Finite and Infinite: A Philosophical Essay. London: Westminster Press. Fetscher, Irving. 1975. “Vivre dans la finitude.” Concilium 105: 79–92.

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Fontan, Pierre. 1969. “Approches du fini.” Revue Thomiste 69: 25–58; 570–588. Fulton, J. 1981. “Experience, Alienation and the Anthropological Condition of Religion.” The Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion 5: 1–32. Gefen, Alexandre. 2013. “Paul Ricoeur; ou les livres intérieurs.” Le Magazine Littéraire 532: 8–12. Heidegger, Martin. 1995. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hohler, T.-P. 1976. “Fichte and the Problem of Finitude.” Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 7(3): 103–112. Lamblin, Robert. 1977. Raison absolue et finitude: Pour une critique de la raison pure philosophique. Paris: Vrin. Laruelle, François. 1981. “Réflexion sur le sens de la finitude dans la ‘Critique de la raison pure.’ ” Revue Internationale de Philosophie 35: 269–283. ———. 1986. Les philosophies de la différence. Paris: PUF. Ledure, Yves. 1989. Transcendances: Essai sur Dieu et le corps. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer. ———. 2010. La rupture: Christianisme et modernité. Paris: Lethielleux. Lucash, Frank. 1982. “On the Finite and Infinite in Spinoza.” Southwestern Journal of Philosophy 13(1): 61–73. Mahlman, Th.R., and R. Romberg. 1972. “Endlich.” In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 2, edited by Joachim Ritter, 481–489. Darmstadt: Wissenschaft-liche Buchgesellschaft. Raeymaeker, Louis de. 1932. “La structure métaphysique de l’être fini.” Revue Néoscolastique de Philosophie 34: 187–217. Ricoeur, Paul. (1950) 1966. Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary. Translated and with an introduction by Erazim V. Kohak. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. ———. (1960) 1986. Fallible Man. Translated by Charles A. Kelbley and with an introduction by Walter J. Lowe. New York: Fordham University Press. Sallis, John. 1965. “World, Finitude, Temporality in the Philosophy of M. Heidegger.” Philosophy Today 9: 40–52. Sloterdijk, Peter. 1999. Sphären II: Makrosphärologie—Globen. Frankfurt-Main: Suhrkamp. ———. 2004. “Foreword to the Theory of Spheres: An Interview by Jean-­Christophe Royoux.” October 16, Vienna. Accessed February 6, 2013. http://www.sed. manchester.ac.uk/research/marc/news/seminars/latour/COSMOGRAMINTER-GB_Spheres.pdf (site discontinued). Stambaugh, Joan. 1974. “Time, Finitude and Finality.” Philosophy East and West 24(2): 129–135. ———. 1992. The Finitude of Being. Albany: State University of New York Press. Taminiaux, Jacques. 1971. “Finitude et absolu: Remarques sur Hegel et Heidegger, interprètes de Kant.” Revue Philosophique de Louvain 69: 190–215.

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Tauxe, Henri-Charles. 1971. La notion de finitude dans la philosophie de Martin Heidegger. Lausanne: Éditions L’Âge d’Homme. Tremblay, Jacynthe. 1992. Finitude et devenir: Fondements philosophiques du concept de révélation chez Karl Rahner. Series Héritage et Projet, no. 47. Montréal: Fides.

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Re-visioning “Life” in Philosophy of Religion Today Or: A New Concept for a Global Philosophy of Religious Life

Pamela Sue Anderson

Preliminary Matters I would like to take up “life” as an essentially contested concept in the study of religions and philosophy. The meaning of this concept is contested at its very core by philosophers with fundamentally diverging conceptual schemes, especially on matters of bodily experience, human morality, and religion. In this chapter, I seek to defend a socially and materially located concept of life, while exploring the ever-new possibilities of re-visioning other related concepts for the future of a global philosophy of religion(s). Although I do not want to either oppose or propose a straw “man” or “woman” position, I have recently been reminded (Bennett 2010, 47–69) of the dangers in allowing “life” to be construed by the “naïve vitalism” of certain Christian theists who participate in philosophy of religion. These (naïve) Christian philosophers have revived a vitalism, which was a “live” option at the beginning of the previous century, for our twenty-first century My completion of this chapter was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, via The Enhancing Life Project. The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

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thinking about Anglo-American religion. All too roughly, the naïve vitalists give spiritual life to matter by ensouling human bodies; for them, matter on its own is lifeless; and the body without a soul-life is not human. In fact, a naïve vitalism was implicit in a USA political party, which had the voice of George W. Bush, speaking for “the culture of life.”1 Now, this Christian philosophical use of “life” represents a position and sustains a meaning, which I would like to dismiss categorically as having nothing to do with the new vision that I advocate in developing a dynamic concept of life for the future of the field of philosophy of religions globally. Nevertheless, as philosophers we perhaps might like to address the dangers remaining in the contested meaning of “life” precisely because of the likely confusions between my proposal and the persistence of a culture of life in Christian philosophical circles. This latter reduces life to nonmatter, distinguishing human from nonhuman, but also the life of some human men, for example, Christian men, above (all) women and other non-Christian men. To my mind, this has done untold damage to the field of philosophy of (the Christian) religion; that this religious thinking about men, women, birth, life, death, and so on within USA politics is equated with philosophy of religion in (m)any locations today is worrying, especially if we would like to speak about the future of philosophy of religion. To list merely three of the most obvious dangers in a Christian philosophical culture of life, as proposed by the naïve (Christian) vitalists, who try to use “life” to control human beings and nature:

1. They seek to spiritualize “life” by ensouling human beings, distinguishing life from matter, but also human from nonhuman beings;



2. They try to fill the indeterminancy in nature left by scientific knowledge with divine knowledge—that is, God’s omniscience and omnipresence;



3. They seek to erect a hierarchy of “life” with God-man at the top, and woman, animals, and matter following after Him.

In contrast, I have come to see the very different possibilities in life for the future of philosophy by following French feminist philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff, back to the writings of the twentieth-century French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Especially significant are Deleuze’s (1991, 1992, 1995) writings on those philosophers from the history of Western philosophy of

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religion who might be called “marginal” (or, at times, treated as “atheists), including Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, and Le Doeuff herself (see also Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 70–71, 222n7). Yet more positively stated, the place of Spinozist concepts can be discovered anew for what they offer to life in Nietzsche, Bergson, Deleuze, and other French (women) philosophers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Le Doeuff (Anderson 2012a). This lineup of marginal philosophers has begun to inform my work in feminist philosophy of religion, as it has already informed French feminist philosophy, especially concerning material and social life. Today I consider, in part, a Deleuzian trajectory in contemporary philosophy because it no longer focuses on the timeless questions in philosophy about God, goodness, and the afterlife, as much as on the arguments, the texts, and the public discussions in the field of philosophy concerning this life as a dynamic phenomenon with virtual, actual, and possible dimensions spanning human time. In other part, I consider a trajectory in contemporary philosophy of religion(s) that does not need to take as its starting point “the question” of God’s existence or nonexistence. Instead we are better off exploring the (religious) life flowing within and across our bodies connecting us to all of animate nature. This proposed trajectory for future philosophies of life would aim at the creation of new concepts for philosophy that are “religious,” insofar as they are “bound together” by what we share or could share in material and social life. In other words, while I will seek to articulate a new concept of life, my proposal is not merely to reject core concepts—associated with the “good old” omni-perfect God—but to seek concepts for women as much as men, for what is most vital and dynamic in contemporary philosophical thinking and living. For instance, if we assume Nietzsche’s rhetorical assertions are correct—that “God is dead” and “we have killed him”—then there is no point to raise the question of “His” existence. Dead concepts, as well as lifeless and static arguments, are to be seen as part of our past in philosophy of religion, even if they may still have “life” for some philosophers of religion. The new proposal sees the future for the field in the possibility of a dynamic, humane life that moves (some) contemporary philosophers of religions (those who are not led by privileged Christian philosophers) forward to ever-greater intensities in the movement of immanent forces within our animate and inanimate relations (Anderson 2012a, 33, 37–38). As will be obvious, the most significant new dimension in my own contributions to contemporary philosophy of religion is in “re-visioning

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gender,” in order to transform what has been implicitly gender-biased in our thinking about religion. Most notable here is the central concept in philosophy of religion: the “masculinist” ideal of the omni-perfect God that has been an “idol” for men’s rational subjecthood and that has idolized “the second sex” who fixes her gaze on the God-man, preventing her from thinking and living a life that is her own.2 Re-visioning gender, then, laid the ground for new, more inclusive thinking that recognized the possibility of transforming these roles and gendered locations in philosophy. This transformation is especially significant when it comes to our concepts concerning life, love, reason, and our epistemic practices.

Life and Philosophers from the Margins Basically, in this section I will urge philosophers to open up their own thinking and living to a new style of philosophizing that would be dynamic and transformative for women and men. In turn, this dynamic thinking generates a new sense of human time as virtual, actual, and possible life for contemporary philosophy of religion(s). I have in mind a critically open style of thinking that together with a philosophical concept of dynamic life will generate a trajectory for the future in expanding and transforming the field(s) of philosophy of religion globally. I began to discover the dynamic nature of life as an ongoing process in my book, Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love and Epistemic Locatedness (Anderson 2012c). This discovery comes by way of revisioning—seeing possibilities in philosophy, as if looking for the first time at—the content and style of our philosophizing with vital, new concepts. Yet I also want to allow a path to understanding the assumptions concerning life of traditional Christian philosophy of religion, which has flourished in those social and cultural locations where Christian theists continue to live and think through their own “life” in relation to their own conception of God. Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion set me on a path intended to enable philosophers to become both more sensitive to their own locatedness and more aware of their own ability to see beyond the past and the present. This “beyond” was not directed toward a transcendent reality above this one—but “beyond” in the horizontal direction in looking toward a dynamic future. My hope is that philosophers of religion will no longer focus exclusively on a field that is by and large static in asking the same central questions about traditional topics to do with (Christian) theism

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and atheism, including the coherence of the attributes of the traditional theistic God. For that matter, my contention is that the central concept for the fields of a global philosophy of religions in the future, whether an analytic or continental approach to this philosophy, will no longer be strictly on “God” and “His” attributes. Rightly or wrongly, for many philosophers, the theistic concept of God has been drained of life; that is, “God” has become “dead” for those people who are living, actively thinking and proactively becoming themselves in all kinds of new ways, in active and reactive relations with animate and inanimate life. This means that I take life to be a process on the move, transforming/reforming each of our lives, and so, the very idea of life itself. One thing would seem to be clear: whatever this life will become it is not something distant from, or transcendent of, this world of human and nonhuman (material) relations. Instead, life is immanent, intensifying animate and inanimate relations to matter/materiality and to what matters. At the point of mentioning “life’s intensities,” I must explain a bit more about the philosophical debt indirectly and directly to the French philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, as well as his relations to other French twentieth-century philosophers who are concerned about living and thinking (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 20–22, 39–41). Deleuze’s writings have begun to enable not only French critical thinkers, but Anglo-American and continental philosophers alike, each from their own social and material locations. One result of this Deleuzian influence has been the rejection of the style of philosophy that has relied on a philosophical tradition shaped by and shaping BIG questions about the omni-perfect God and “His” creation. The idea that a big, philosophical question gives philosophy its unique, core subject matter and its distinctive style is, or so I would like to contend, becoming redundant on and off the continent of Europe. For instance, contemporary followers of Nietzsche, as much as Deleuze, have taken seriously the fact that debates generated by questions—such as can we prove the “existence” of “God”?—are no longer “live” debates for many philosophers. More bluntly stated, this philosophical question about God is outmoded. There is no longer the “live” issue of God’s omniscience— or His other omni-attributes—generating vital, new insights in philosophy. Instead, if we take seriously that at one time the question of God was a “live” one, but that—as Nietzsche proclaimed, “God is dead”—we are able to see more clearly ahead—the new trajectory in life opening up the future of philosophy as a humanistic discipline. This is a trajectory sensitive to historical and epistemic locatedness of each of us as human bodies with a

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life shaped by both our living and our thinking. The paradoxical awareness that the past is merely the present that has been is augmented by the (more) vital awareness of our lives in their material and social locatedness. That is, we find ourselves in relation to social mechanisms of religion, race, sexual orientation, and class, which make us gendered subjects, as much as dialectically relationed subjects: we are bodies that both individuate us uniquely and unite us collectively. In fact, greater awareness of our historical and epistemic locatedness can free us to move forward in thinking and living a new trajectory. Put all too simply, we become critically aware that philosophy of religion has a future and we as embodied subjects have a unique place it. In turn, this forward-looking trajectory involves an intensification of life, as Deleuze and Guattari (1994, 73–83) would say, on “a plane of immanence.” As a result, philosophy of religion would no longer be exclusively asserting transcendent values as the necessary condition for securing the justification of our present values. Instead, the philosopher of religion of the future would be open to transforming and being transformed by living a thinking life—thinking on planes of immanence and in movements of life. In this picture of the future, philosophy of religion is not static. And this philosophy of religion will continue to thrive, even though once live, now dead questions are no longer of vital philosophical concern. It will be no surprise that with the above, iconoclastic account of “philosophy of religion having a future,” I am not following either the status quo or the dominant view in the history of Western philosophy. Instead what is attractive (to me at least) about this philosophy of life is both its futuredirectedness and its alignment with philosophers from our philosophical past who have been historically marginal figures, especially those marginalized by traditional theism, that is, marginalized by mainly Christian theists. For me, these figures include Spinoza, Bergson, Nietzsche, and Deleuze—but also Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Mary Midgley, Michèle Le Doeuff, Sally Haslanger, and other women in philosophy—who motivated feminist philosophers of religion (like myself ) to build bridges across those Deleuzian planes of immanence. These planes replace the fields formerly characterized by philosophical questions and formal defenses of a transcendent and omni-perfect God-man; these new planes offer an immanent life, stretching out before us to something creative and generative of new possibilities, in the materially inclusive sense of the term “life” (Moore 2012). Philosophy of religion can become a fertile ground again for discussing those concepts that have a life and vitality—like nature itself.

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New trajectories, such as looking forward in order to create new concepts, allows philosophy to draw on both virtual and actual reality; the virtual accompanies philosophers as affective memories, becoming recognized at actual moments that keep the future connected to the past, while new possibilities generate our real futures. In this context, “life” (bios) no longer has a static sense of material nature causally or mechanistically determined. Instead, life activates and opens up fields of forces and matter that together can become ever more active as individuals are no longer merely passive or reactive, but active. Interactions in life locate us in relations and interrelations with all sorts of other human and nonhuman planes of immanence. Again, remember that transcendent values are no longer necessary for the justification of divine or human existence. As I mentioned at the outset, it is helpful to keep in mind one dominant view of “life” in Christian philosophy of religion, which still endures. Now, although I might reject this concept as no longer one that guides my actions, and as no longer guiding my world, I can understand it as a concept that is static within the world of Christian philosophy and perhaps, to my mind, backward looking; that is, Christian vitalism is not incomprehensible to me as much as it does not motivate my actions or thinking about life today. I guess that we can still find a regressive view of life in contexts where “moral” questions have remained the traditional and exclusive focus of Christian thinking in traditional philosophy of the Christian religion. In conservative Christian social contexts, it is more than likely that debates concerning the “culture of life” reduce and restrict philosophy of religion to the dominant questions concerning God’s goodness, whether in justifying human actions with regard to the beginning and the end of “life,” or in justifying God’s command to procreate (or conversely, to go to war) in the face of suffering due to extreme poverty and oppressive gender and sexual relations. As indicated already, Jane Bennett’s philosophical writings on “the new materialism” (mainly in political philosophy) can speak about the dangers for philosophy and for life today in the Christian “culture of life.” It is good to be able to disagree with other philosophers, especially those patriarchal Christian philosophers who dominate the field in certain places in the Anglo-American world. Bennett describes the naïve vitalist Christian thinker’s sense of “life” as reductive and as distinct from matter; we can clearly recognize this reductive sense of life as it continues to dominate the Christian right-wing moral majority on issues of abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia, and, however contradictory, capital punishment and war. For

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this still popular Christian culture, “life” is sacred only insofar as it is in the hands of those patriarchs who aim to control life. Yet, like Bennett, I think that such control of life only curtails new insights in Christian philosophy of religion; and such control will always fail to understand change as the heart of a more dynamic, new life. Most worrying is the conservative Christian eclipse of change. The role of change is virtually removed from thinking that insists on trying to control life. Yet I argue that change is in fact necessary for life—that is, necessary in order for life to transform itself in creating a future for a globally complex world, a world that cannot be reduced to one static view of life. Life will simply not be contained or constrained by a totalitarian philosophy of the Christian religion. Clearly, “philosophy of religion” will be dismissed by forward-looking philosophers, if it remains equated with a philosophy that aims to control life and prohibit change. In sharp contrast to the life defined by Christian patriarchs is the life as seen by the new materialist philosophers; many of the latter are influenced by those “marginal” philosophers in the history of Western philosophy, including Spinoza, Bergson, Beauvoir, and others—for whom life is not merely something infused by God into inert bodily matter. Rather, life is integral to all their thinking and to all their doing in living a natural life, as much as in doing philosophy as a humanistic discipline. For example, Deleuze’s groundbreaking appropriation of Spinoza has made it clear to many contemporary philosophers (of life) that life is what a body does! A body lives and moves and transforms itself in relation to other bodies. If we are going to be brought together—to connect—in a religious philosophy that matters globally, certainly this philosophy will consider virtual, actual, and possible life, endowing us with the hope and joy of the experience of life that encompasses all of nature. In highlighting this contrast between life as static and life as dynamic, we are able to grasp how two very different concepts of “life” generate a philosophical point of contestation. Although the (Christian) theist’s vitalist conception of life might persist in the Anglo-American field of philosophy of religion, even over and against what I have been proposing for a more dynamic, forward-looking “life,” it will be backward looking and not sustainable on its own, at least not for long. If we can learn philosophical lessons from the past, then there remains the possibility that those in Christian circles in which life is understood within a revived “culture of life” will discover the philosophical problems inherent in the Christian vitalism of

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1920s to ’30s USA. The question is, do we reject “philosophy of religion” that retains a grip on how Christians think about life and death issues? Such a grip insofar as it controls life inevitably clashes strongly with the dynamic picture of the future of philosophy of religions globally, which I have been at pains to propose. Nevertheless, my contention remains that philosophy of religion is materially and socially located, and this locatedness helps us to understand concepts of life such as that found in the conservative locations of Christian vitalists; identifying such social locations allows us to understand a concept of life, even when that particular concept no longer guides our own actions or determines the values that inform our norms and views of the world. I think that my proposals for a new, more dynamic conception of life as a core concept for a global philosophy of religion(s) is worthy of philosophical study precisely because traditional philosophy of religion, especially in its control of moral questions and answers, is failing to keep up with new understandings of matter and material integral to virtual, actual, and possible life in all of its ever-increasing complexities. Debates about life in philosophy of religion, I suggest, will generate their own future, as we live, thinking, acting and reacting, expressing ourselves within and across immanent life. In brief, disagreements about “life” in contemporary philosophies of religions will inevitably result in new thinking, new possibilities, and either new retreats to past life or new freedom to create viable life for the future.

After Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy In Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion, I sought to make the field of philosophy of religion more compatible with new movements in a philosophy of life. This means that I was digging in and hollowing out “the shipwreck” that was patriarchal philosophy of religion in order to see what treasures remained in philosophy for new possibilities in the branch of philosophy of religion(s) today. My 2012 monograph also builds on feminist aims, which were openly discussed with me in 2000 by the late feminist philosopher of religion Grace M. Jantzen in an exchange of published letters before her death in 2006.3 These aims were originally mapped out by Jantzen as three questions for our open correspondence about feminist philosophy of religion. Consider her questions below, each followed by my response.

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1. How do we seek transformation? I have sought to re-vision gender in Anglo-American philosophy of religion, hoping to transform injustice with new reasons for change (­Harris 2007, 651–660; Levine 2007, 237–248). A new vision for philosophy of religion was thought to be more likely if normative reasons for action, including the grounds for interactions within religions, became more life-giving and whole-making. 2. How do we carry out our critiques? Philosophers of religion in the mainstream are not seeking much that is radically new. In contrast, feminist critiques of philosophy of religion aimed to move forward and embrace the radical spirit of a life-giving vision for a feminist philosophy of religion. Today this seems to move women and men in the field philosophy of religion closer to the Continent, notably to engage with philosophers like Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, Deleuze, Le Doeuff, but also more recently with the Spinozism in the French philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. Crucial for my proposal is that each of these philosophers takes a critical direction from Spinoza’s way of persevering in life and of expressing human nature as finite individual modes acting with and upon others.   In Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy, I contended that feminist philosophy of religion could not do much better than to affirm the power to act rationally, passionately, and confidently. Spinozist philosophers have taken the lead on affirming life by falsifying so-called “contrary relations” of reason and passion, of mind and body, of men and women. As illusory, these “contrary” relations undermine the individual’s power to act both responsibly and with approbation. 3. What do we do with our sources? A feminist philosophy (of religion) seeks to re-vision our source texts, and not be afraid to reject arguments which were, as described by Jantzen, “death-dealing.” The positive task is to embrace that which enhances our endeavors to persevere in being, and so, in the life of God or Nature (deus sive natura). A significant issue exists here for theism: do we exclude “God” and say “Nature” to avoid any confusion between Spinoza’s one substance and

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the Christian theistic God? Feminist philosophers of religion might find Spinoza’s alternative “God or Nature” liberating, since neither would be the personal God of masculinist theism. I suggest that Jantzen herself encourages feminist philosophers of religion to move beyond a dismissive labeling of Spinoza (as if “a pantheist” is a fatal threat to the subject). Instead, we should be free to discover a creative corporeality. From this it is clear that one crucial feminist challenge for the future of philosophy of religion is to free minds to affirm their bodily life within an ever-greater perfection that remains, however, always short of perfection. For example, Ricoeur, whose life work overlaps at one point at least with Deleuze’s interest in Bergson, demonstrates a great interest in Spinoza (which, as I have suggested elsewhere) would not have been far from Deleuze’s Spinozist thinking). In particular, Ricoeur puts aside the derogatory label “pantheist” in order to commend Spinoza’s “ethics” as involving an ethical journey (le trajet éthique) of the finite mode toward recognition of being a particular individual within a larger whole (la parcelle d’un grand tout) (Ricoeur 1999, 43–47; see also Rorty 2002, 204–224). Thus, in the spirit of Spinoza, along with other feminist and French philosophers of religion, I have argued—in chapter 7 of Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion—that each and every individual and that each particular within nature move forward in striving for a joyful continuation of bodily existence that expresses what we might agree is an intellectual love of either God or Nature. Spinoza and Ricoeur each affirm life and the power to act, as much as to suffer; this primary affirmation of every individual assumes each is responsible and actively thinks for herself.4 The affirmation of life and the assumption of responsibility resonate profoundly with the core challenge posed by feminist philosophers.5 The urgent wish of Jantzen was that feminist philosophy of religion become “more life-giving” (Jantzen 1998). Or, in Spinoza’s words ([1677] 2000, 276; see Anderson 2009a), “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.” Jantzen herself would have carefully qualified the philosophical significance of Spinoza for feminists. I would like now mainly to expand on this quotation in an appropriation of Spinoza’s meditations on life, that is, on the power of life, especially confidence in this life. My affinity with Spinoza in this chapter is apparent in giving a highly significant role to a distinctive concept of life and its dynamic power. But

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I suggest that the philosopher, whether a woman or a man, requires the appropriate amount of confidence to exercise her power to act not submissively, but if need be, to transform (her) reactions into active passions. This power in acting and transforming our reactions into active passions— directing them—is crucial to making contemporary philosophy of religion life-giving. The task is not merely to think about life; it is to give life to oneself and to others, individually and collectively. New ways in which to be bold—that is, more confident in acting rationally and passionately—are crucial to a new concept of life, which is not reduced to a causally determined picture of human actions. Freedom to change what we think, what we feel, and how we interact with one another and with nature is essential for a contemporary philosophy of life. To be more specific, I would like to propose a philosophy that aims at a “religious” striving in this life. This striving, though, will be highly specific insofar as it appropriates Spinoza’s conatus. The conatus refers to a striving and perseverance in being. Affective relations of conative power in self-affirmation and other-approbation would seek to be wise in Spinoza’s sense of striving for an increase in knowledge. In his Ethics, Spinoza’s striving is directed toward an intellectual love of corporeal nature, individually and corporately.6 A contemporary philosophy of religious life would want to take this vision further and explicitly to a corporate picture of bodily life, bringing individual bodies together without losing the integrity of one’s own corporeal life. All too briefly, I would explain, as far as I am concerned, what Spinoza contributes to a philosophy of life. In Spinoza’s Ethics, conatus stands for a thing’s endeavor to persevere in being against unwise passions; and this perseverance becomes a thing’s very essence. In the case of those individuals who are human bodies, conatus has an intimate connection with reason. But instead of having reason serve, in turning away from harmful passion, as an alternative source of ethical motivation, the mind achieves freedom by bringing its understanding to bear on its passions, transforming them into active, rational emotions. In Spinoza’s terms, if we can be the “adequate cause” of one of “the affections of the body” by which the power of acting is “increased or diminished, helped or hindered,” then “I understand by the emotion an action; otherwise, I understand it to be a passion” ([1677] 2000, 164–165). The challenge, then, is to appropriate a concept of life that encompasses what we, our bodies with our minds, do; and what material bodies actively do determines what counts as living well. The more we do rationally

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and corporately—as opposed to undergo—the better we live together. In particular, to achieve a Spinozist and a feminist-friendly “intellectual love of nature” is no longer to trust in the benevolent purposes of a transcendent creator—the purposes for which we await satisfaction. Instead, this is a love of bodily life, whereby the mind’s joyful recognition of itself as incarnate, as corporate-corporeal, renders it part of the unified whole of nature. This would express an intellectual love in which love’s core in all its forms is the joy of continued, corporate life. That joy is vulnerable, and yet it is a surer grounding for our lives and loves than the glorification of unsatisfied desire for a wholly transcendent and disembodied being called God (Spinoza [1677] 2000, 106–112).

Conclusion To conclude, allow me to make three statements: (1) to re-vision gender in philosophy of religion, feminist philosophers require a new trajectory that is generative of new life in philosophy of religion; (2) to move philosophy of religion forward with a life-giving vision requires a new concept of life, offering a dynamic and joyful future. The feminist critique that I have advocated in philosophy of religion exposes the limitations of abstract reasoning: it is unable to grasp striving for life in its fullness. Nevertheless, this striving creates the essence of religion. As we have seen, one response to the critique of traditional philosophy of religion is to turn to philosophers who have been marginalized in the history of Western philosophy; it is they who offer the concept of life as that which is at the heart of every religion—this is the heart that philosophers of religion could give to a heartless world; (3) to create new concepts premised on the assertion that “God is dead” would mean that the traditional omni-perfect God is no longer a concept that guides (my/our) action; and this would be a world no longer guided by that “old white man in heaven.” Ultimately, I have urged contemporary philosophers of religion to come at old texts with fresh eyes and to come from a critical direction that is more life-giving and whole-making than traditional (analytic) philosophy of religion. Seeing philosophy from this critical direction makes possible an open and reflexive engagement with, for instance, Spinoza’s Ethics, without accepting labels such as “pantheist” to dismiss his text. Labels that inhibit our free reading of old texts and our free discovery of new conceptual possibilities must be left out of contemporary philosophy, since labeling is

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unphilosophical! Instead, the freedom to see things anew and the possibilities for new concepts will allow, on the one hand, reading Spinoza and other “marginal” philosophers in the history of Western philosophy, and on the other hand, discovering with fresh eyes the beauty of life as we live it and think it singly and multiply. Instead of prohibiting women, or any man, from direct access to the philosophical texts of European philosophers such as those of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, Beauvoir, Deleuze, Ricoeur, Le Doeuff, and—why not?—feminist philosophers of religion, we will encourage every woman, in particular but not only, to dialogue with texts and with each other. In turn, such dialogues with texts will widen and increase the philosophical canon for religions and philosophy. An ongoing challenge for re-visioning life in philosophy of religion is to free the mind to affirm bodily life within an ever-greater perfection that never reaches its goal but constantly increases ever-wiser affective power in loving relations. When following, perhaps not the exact argument, but at least the trajectory of “marginal” philosophers, each and every individual will move forward in striving for a joyful continuation of bodily existence that expresses what, we might agree, becomes life in all its fullness. And this is to generate a future-directed philosophy of religious life with a global trajectory. NOTES

1. The phrase “culture of life,” which is opposed to “the secular culture of death,” was the theme of Pope John Paul II’s 1995 “Evangelium Vitae,” before “culture of life” was adopted by non-Catholic evangelicals in the USA to refer to a set of theological beliefs for political policies. See John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae: To the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, Men and Women, Religious, Lay, Faithful and All People of Good Will, on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life, Encyclical of 25 March 1995 (http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/ hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html). 2. Masculinism in general means “the assertion of masculine dominance over the feminine” (see Le Doeuff 2007, 78; see also 44–45, 78–79, 96, 97, 139, 165). 3. The September 2000 issue of Feminist Theology (25) should be read alongside of the January 2001 issue (26) going from Anderson’s first letter and then to Jantzen’s and then back to Anderson’s reply and Jantzen’s. I will take up crucial points from Jantzen’s letter to me concerning Anderson (1998); see Jantzen (2001, 102–109). 4. For more detailed, critical discussion of Spinoza and Ricoeur on the question of “living up to death,” see Anderson (2012b, 151–162).

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5. For a twofold idea of affirming life and acting responsibly, see Beauvoir (1948, 74–155). 6. Spinoza’s imagination involves free exercise of “the affections of the human body” (see Spinoza [1677] 2000, 132–134, 139). These affections would be “ideas” in the sense of images of things or corporeal traces that impinge on the affected body. As such, they could take on a highly positive role in the process of becoming—in Jantzen’s terms, “more whole-making.” Of course, if Jantzen had lived longer to continue her own work in feminist philosophy of religion, we might wonder whether she would have ensured an optimism in corporate and corporeal relations that would go beyond Spinoza’s Ethics. Some philosophers will say that we are on shaky ground with Spinoza’s “imagining” since it deals only with “inadequate ideas.” BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Pamela Sue. 1998. A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: The Rationality and Myths of Religious Belief. Oxford: Blackwell. ———. 2009a. “ ‘A Thoughtful Love of Life’: A Spiritual Turn in Philosophy of Religion.” Svensk Teologisk Kvartalskrift 85(3): 119–129. ———. 2009b. “The Urgent Wish: To Be More Life-Giving.” In Redeeming the Present, edited by Elaine Graham, 41–54. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. ———. 2011. “A Feminist Perspective.” In The Oxford Handbook of Religious Diversity, edited by Chad Meister, 405–420. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2012a. “Believing in this Life: French Philosophy after Beauvoir.” In Intensities: Philosophy, Religion and the Affirmation of Life, edited by Katharine Sarah Moody and Steven Shakespeare, 21–38. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited. ———. 2012b. “From Ricoeur to Life: ‘Living up to Death’ with Spinoza, but also with Deleuze.” In From Ricoeur to Action: The Socio-Political Significance of Ricoeur’s Thinking, edited by Todd Mei and David Lewin, 151–162. London and New York: Continuum. ———. 2012c. Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love and Epistemic Locatedness. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited. ———. 2013a. “Feminist Perspectives on Natural Theology.” In The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, edited by Russell Manning, 354–369. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ———. 2013b. “The Other.” In The Oxford Handbook of Theology and Modern European Thought, edited by Nicholas Adams, George Pattison, and Graham Ward, 83–104. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Beauvoir, Simone de. 1948. The Ethics of Ambiguity. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Citadel Press.

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Bennett, Jane. 2010. “A Vitalist Stopover on the Way to a New Materialism.” In New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics, edited by Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, 47–69. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Bergson, Henri. 1977. The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Translated by R. Ashley Audra and Cloudesley Brereton, with the assistance of W. Horsfall Carter. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1988. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy. Translated by Robert Hurley. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books. ———. 1991. Bergsonism. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberism. New York: Zone Books. ———. 1992. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza. Translated by Martin Joughin New York: Zone Books. ———. 1995. Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life. Translated by Anne Boyman. New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1994. What Is Philosophy? Translated by Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson. London and New York: Verso Press. Harris, Harriet A. 2007. “Feminism.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Paul Copan and Chad Meister, 651–660. London: Routledge. Jantzen, Grace M. 1998. Becoming Divine: Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Religion Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. ———. 2001. “Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Open Discussion with Pamela Anderson.” Feminist Theology 26: 102–109. Le Doeuff, Michèle. 2003. The Sex of Knowing. London: Continuum. ———. 2007. Hipparchia’s Choice: An Essay Concerning Women, Philosophy, Etc. Translated by Trista Selous. 2nd ed., with an Epilogue by Le Doeuff. New York: Columbia University Press. Michael Levine. 2007. “Non-theistic Conceptions of God.” In The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Religion, edited by Paul Copan and Chad Meister, 237–248. London: Routledge. Moore, A.W. 2012. The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Paul II, Pope John. 1995. Evangelium Vitae: To the Bishops, Priests and Deacons, Men and Women, Religious, Lay, Faithful and All People of Good Will, on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life, Encyclical. http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paulii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html Ricoeur, Paul. 1999. L’unique et le singulier. L’intégrale des entretiens Noms de dieux’ d’Edmond Blattchen. Brussels, Belgium: Alice Editions. Rorty, Amelie. 2002. “Spinoza on the Pathos of Idolatrous Love and the Hilarity of True Love.” In Feminism and the History of Philosophy, edited by Genevieve Lloyd, 204–224. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Spinoza, Benedict de. (1677) 2000. Ethics. Edited and translated by G.H.R. Parkinson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

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After the End of Philosophy of Religion N.N. Trakakis

What Comes After the End? The End of Philosophy of Religion was the title I gave to a book published a decade ago (Trakakis 2008). This was a work of metaphilosophy, which examined and compared the methods and styles, the values and goals of the two most prominent schools or traditions within contemporary philosophy: anglo-American analytic philosophy and continental or European philosophy. Primary focus, however, was given to the ways in which this metaphilosophical divide has played itself out in the field of the philosophy of religion. For example, I contrasted the styles of two of the field’s leading practitioners: the quasi-scientific style of Alvin Plantinga’s work, with its emphasis on clarity and logical and argumentative rigor; and the more literary, rhetorical, and affective language of John D. Caputo (more precisely, Caputo’s later writings). The conclusion I reached (perhaps alarming, given that I was trained in the analytic tradition) was that the tools and commitments of the analytic school are irredeemably defective as a way of practicing philosophy—and especially the philosophical study of religion, given that a proper understanding of religious ideas and experiences demands a kind of sensibility and frame of mind that is not well suited to the methods and aims of analytic philosophy. I therefore called for an end to be put to philosophy of religion (at least as it has been pursued in the analytic tradition), and advocated a fresh start that would broaden and deepen philosophers’ engagement with religion. The book received a range of responses. Somewhat predictably, some analytic philosophers reacted with bewilderment, if not outrage, whereas 71

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some continental philosophers were largely sympathetic and complimentary. Others were not so partisan and agreed with many of the details but also expressed reservations, especially toward the main thesis regarding the intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of analytic philosophy (of religion). I have come to accept some of the reservations of this latter group, as I have changed my mind on certain metaphilosophical matters: I now find much more value in analytic philosophy than I allowed in the book, and I now see more problems and pitfalls in continental philosophy (especially the postmodern and phenomenological variants) than I earlier recognized. The end or death of philosophy of religion I had so fervently desired and predicted is something I would continue to construe as a deep failure and crisis, but not one that requires the complete overthrow of philosophical tradition or a radical revolution in philosophical practice (though this must always be a possibility). Rather, the opportunity I see before us is one of redirection and renewal, taking what is best and valuable from both the analytic and continental traditions while leaving the rest behind. Even if political or institutional rapprochement between the two schools remains unlikely, this need not stand in the way of a creative philosophical synthesis of the two. But this is still quite vague and schematic. And so, we might ask: If philosophy of religion does have a future after all, in what precisely does this future consist? Philosophers are not prophets, even if they sometimes give the impression they are. Nonetheless, something can be said about where we would like philosophy to be in the future, even if we are unsure whether such a future will ever materialize. My view, which I will briefly defend here, is that the future for philosophy of religion lies, first, in a certain methodological reorientation, which I describe as a return to skeptical and imaginative modes of practicing philosophy; and second, in a certain metaphysical reorientation, one that might well include a turn to the idealist and monist metaphysics of the East (as well as the venerable parallels in the West).

The Wisdom to Question Philosophy of religion, particularly in the analytic tradition, is currently suffering from a “dogmatic slumber,” brought on in large part by the conservative and evangelical stream of the Christian church. By this I mean that Christian (analytic) philosophers of religion approach their field of

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research with an unquestioning and complacent attitude toward the truth of traditional (Nicene) Christianity. Even those who subject Christian beliefs to critical scrutiny give the impression at least of already having made up their minds before their “inquiry” has begun; and it is not unusual to find a high degree of confidence (smacking of triumphalism) displayed toward the case they have constructed in support of Christian theism (or an element thereof, e.g., bare theism).1 Also, consider that one would be hard pressed to find in the published output of a contemporary philosopher of religion any fundamental changes or reversals, such as giving up belief in God or relinquishing some significant religious belief.2 This predicament brings me to Heidegger’s critique of “Christian philosophy.” Heidegger (2000, 8) famously stated: “A ‘Christian philosophy’ is a round square and a misunderstanding” (see also Heidegger 1998b, 53). In doing so, Heidegger was advocating a methodological atheism in philosophy, which (in the guise of phenomenology) seeks to provide an analysis of being that is independent of, and prior to, the analyses of beings provided by any of the ontic, positive sciences—including theology.3 Although I disagree with Heidegger on this methodological point, the rationale motivating this methodology is quite instructive for our contemporary practice. Part of the reason for Heidegger’s separation of philosophy and theology lies in his view that philosophy is more radical in nature than theology. Theology, on this picture, does not allow for radical or genuine questioning: if we start from a position of faith, then our questioning or seeking begins by already having found what it searches, namely, God. Dominique Janicaud, in his criticism of the theological turn in phenomenology, made a similar point: “The dice are loaded and choices made; faith rises majestically in the background.”4 Philosophy, by contrast, must consist in honest questioning, really following inquiry or evidence wherever it leads. As mentioned earlier, I do not entirely agree that methodological atheism is mandatory in philosophy. Rather, I side with Plantinga (1984), who in his influential 1983 inaugural address at Notre Dame (published as “Advice to Christian Philosophers”) pointed out that there are no metaphysically neutral starting points in philosophy, and so a Christian philosopher is entirely within his rights in starting from belief in Christianity when working on some central philosophical problem (say, the nature of knowledge or free will), even if he cannot convince all or most philosophers of the truth of Christianity. This, in effect, means that the Christian philosopher can (and indeed ought to) work at his craft in a distinctly Christian manner. An entire generation of Christian philosophers has followed Plantinga’s advice

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and put it into practice. This has contributed to what has been called a “radical renewal” in philosophy of religion, after the field lay fallow in the wilderness of twentieth-century positivism. I have no in-principle objection to taking Christianity as a starting point in one’s philosophical research. But problems begin when “starting points” lose their temporary, provisional, and hypothetical character, and instead take on the appearance of final and fixed doctrine. And this is what has happened, with the result that analytic philosophy of religion has now morphed into “analytic theology.”5 The lack of a fundamental questioning attitude is apparent on many levels. To begin with, philosophers of religion with Christian leanings do not dare to question the truth or reasonability of Christian beliefs and practices. Even when some central theistic or Christian beliefs are put forward for examination (e.g., the belief in the goodness of God, when discussing the problem of evil), the results are predetermined by the general parameters or framework (in this case, the Christian worldview) within which the investigation is being carried out. Allied to this, there is very little willingness to look beyond traditional Christianity, where by “traditional Christianity” I mean that version of Christianity developed in the writings of the “church fathers” and represented by the creeds of the first millennium, particularly the so-called “Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed” (now generally associated with the second ecumenical council of 381). So-called “heretical” theologies (e.g., Arianism, Nestorianism), crushed by the power of the medieval church and state, continue to be treated by philosophers as heresies rather than viewed as genuine or live possibilities. Equally troubling, there is little desire to look beyond the Christian faith and explore non-Christian religions, particularly non-Abrahamic and Eastern religions, in a spirit of sincere openness—that is, with an openness to being corrected and enlightened by the other, and not simply seeking to prove a point or defeat one’s interlocutor (this kind of aggression being an occupational hazard of the philosopher). What is lacking is not merely an informed awareness of non-Christian religions, but also a genuine engagement and dialogue with them, where this presupposes attentive listening, an attitude of respect and humility, and above all a readiness to undergo a possibly painful and disruptive transformation in one’s worldview. But I would suspect that few Christian philosophers of religion (belonging to the analytic tradition) would view dialogue in such terms—that is, as something that holds the potential to change one’s beliefs and practices in drastic ways. This is simply not a live option for so many of today’s philosophers, who

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are therefore restricted to entering into dialogue with other religions (if they ever do so) predominantly one-sidedly. By way of contrast, consider Husserl’s conception of philosophy as “the honesty of the intellect,” and his whole life as an effort to attain this. In conversation with one of his former students, he admitted: My whole life I have fought, indeed wrestled, for this honesty, and where others had been long-since satisfied, I questioned myself ever anew and scrutinized whether there was not indeed some semblance of dishonesty [lurking] in the background. All my work, even today, is only to scrutinize and inspect again and again. . . . One must have the courage to admit and say that something that one still considered true yesterday, but that one sees to be an error today, is such an error. (Husserl in Jaegerschmid, 2001, 337) In these respects, at least, Heidegger has been proven correct: Christian philosophy is (or has become) a square circle—a kind of philosophy lacking in authentic philosophical spirit, one driven by ideology rather than the pursuit of truth.6 What is surprising is that this has gone largely unnoticed in analytic circles. There are admittedly some lone voices in the wilderness, but they are few in number and tend to be swiftly dismissed.7 To wake philosophy of religion from its dogmatic slumber what is required is a renewed appreciation for the kind of thinking that has traditionally been regarded as integral to philosophy—a thinking that demands deep and searching questioning and a restless and perhaps even endless exploring, but without knowing where such wondering and meandering will lead (so as not to prejudice the outcome). It is what Heidegger envisioned as a type of thinking that is always underway, traveling “off the beaten track” onto bypaths and even dead ends, but with no predetermined end in sight. Commitment, even religious commitment, is not thereby ruled out, as long as it makes room for a questioning frame of mind, and accords value to skepticism and doubt. The Canadian (analytic) philosopher of religion J.L. Schellenberg has recently been advocating skepticism as the most promising source of renewal for both religion and the philosophy of religion. Religious skepticism, as Schellenberg understands it, is the view that neither religious belief nor religious disbelief is justified by the relevant evidence, where “religious belief ” is the belief that there exists an ultimate and salvific reality. For

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Schellenberg (2007, xiii), the most rational position to adopt with respect to religion is skepticism, “exercising the wisdom to doubt instead of the will to believe.” From the ashes of such skepticism, Schellenberg (2009) goes on to fashion a “skeptical religion,” an unconventional form of religious faith grounded in will and imagination, not in belief, and directed to a reality that is metaphysically and axiologically ultimate and salvific (what he dubs “generic ultimism”), but not one that has any further features such as that represented by the God of theism. The kind of skepticism I am advocating also involves a sincerely and persistently questioning attitude, but unlike Schellenberg I do not think that such skepticism can support only a nonbelieving faith or that it will be incompatible with belief in any “elaborated” form of ultimism, such as Christianity. My focus, rather, is on method or process, not on the results or positions one finally ends up subscribing to.8 But the emphasis must not only be placed on questioning. What also needs to be retrieved and brought to the fore is creativity. If we wish to grapple with the ultimate questions of life and death in novel, more interesting and more fruitful ways, a creative spirit is required, one that allows philosophers to depart from the conventional and familiar and freely roam on roads less traveled, imaginatively constructing speculative theories, experimenting with diverse myths, models, and metaphors of, for example, God and the world, without necessarily subscribing to everything they print on paper, but performing a kind of epochē or suspension of belief that gives them license to imagine and create (where this also includes trying out new styles of writing, and not being limited to the technical and formal language of much analytic philosophy). As this suggests, it might be to philosophers’ advantage if they allow themselves, occasionally, some frivolity and play, and stop taking themselves so seriously! My call, then, is for a style of thinking in philosophy of religion that is skeptical (in the etymological sense, of “thought-full”), open and creative, and indeed exciting and adventurous. I will turn to idealism in the next section, but it may be worth noting here that at the turn of the nineteenth century British idealists saw it as their task to rejuvenate philosophy by encouraging the very way of thinking proposed here. F.H. Bradley (1908, xii), in his Preface to Appearance and Reality, promoted “an attitude of active questioning.” He went on to say that what the English-speaking philosophy of his time was primarily in need of was a “sceptical study of first principles,” and he explained that “by scepticism is not meant doubt about or disbelief in some tenet or tenets. I understand by it an attempt

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to become aware of and to doubt all preconceptions. Such scepticism is the result only of labour and education.”9 Bradley envisioned free skeptical inquiry as the best antidote to intellectual prejudice and dogmatism, and one of the prejudices he fought against was the rejection of metaphysics—a prejudice that lingers still (a point to which I will return later).10 Bradley’s own work was also admired for its originality,11 and his critical and skeptical approach no doubt contributed to this originality. One of the many ways in which philosophy of religion can be rejuvenated, so as to be brought back to a properly philosophical mode of studying religion, is by thinking God otherwise—proposing models of divinity that have been given scant attention, perhaps even wild and fanciful models by current standards, though always developed and defended with the requisite clarity and rigor. Arguably, continental philosophers of religion are way ahead of the game in this respect, compared to their analytic counterparts. But here I am concentrating on the analytic tradition. Also, in the following section I point to an equally damaging weakness that plagues continental approaches to religion. The impetus for reimagining divinity, in my work as in that of many others, arises in part from the problem of evil. On the traditional theistic model, God permits or intends evil for the sake of some greater good. But what kind of being would create a world in which people suffer horribly? Even if (indeed, especially if ) such a being permitted horrific evil for some greater good, that being would have to be unimaginably different from any personal form of goodness with which we are familiar (e.g., that embodied by kind and compassionate humans), to such an extent that it may not be legitimate to think of that being as “personal” and “good.” The problem of evil, in this respect, compels us to think God otherwise. For if this problem reveals anything, it is that the language we use in commonplace contexts may be highly unsuited and misleading when applied in any straightforward manner to God or ultimate reality. Our language about God suffers a kind of breakdown when faced with evil, thus provoking a purgation of our understanding of God, maybe even to the point of atheism—an outright rejection of God, or at least certain concepts of God. It is not only our understanding of God but also our practice of philosophy of religion that stands to be transformed in our attempts to come to grips with the problem of evil. Such a view has recently been insightfully developed by Beverley Clack (2007), who endorses an “aporetic” approach to the problem of evil that reinforces the call I am making for a skeptical and imaginative pursuit of philosophy. Borrowing from the p ­ sychoanalytic

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model of therapy as a “pathless path” or aporia, Clack envisages an alternative framework for our thinking about God and evil, one that sees such thinking as a wondering journey with no predetermined goal or end point: “a journey where the road is strange and unknown” (207). Rather than treating the problem of evil as a merely logical or theoretical puzzle to be resolved, Clack’s model encourages an approach that is less abstract and more experiential, and also one that does not seek final answers but is content in continuous exploration. Further, unlike theodicies (and other conventional approaches to the problem of evil), which set out to render evil consistent with preconceived ideas about God and the world, Clack’s model begins instead with the realities of evil and allows these to “shape how we subsequently understand the nature of things” (205). Kenneth Surin (1986, 124) has similarly stated: “If anything is Christianity’s primary concern with regard to what took place at Auschwitz . . . it is, rather, to allow itself to be reinterpreted, to be ‘ruptured,’ by the pattern of events at Auschwitz.” Again, unlike much contemporary work on the problem of evil, Clack’s model highlights the literary and creative arts as significant sources of insight into evil and suffering, and this is because “the best art challenges, forcing the viewer/reader to consider again the way in which they habitually see the world.”12 But such challenges will fail to be appreciated unless a paradigm shift is brought about not only in what we think about God, but also in how we conceive and practice philosophy of religion. As Clack (2007, 212) puts it, “A different model for the philosophy of religion is needed, one that is fluid, that does not seek to make all things fit neatly together but allows, in Wittgenstein’s words, what is rugged to stay rugged.”

The Return to Metaphysics If analytic philosophy of religion urgently needs to retrieve the value of a wondering and skeptical spirit, continental philosophy of religion could be provoked and challenged to move into the metaphysical terrain it had long ago closed off (or surrendered to others). Analytic philosophy can be (and indeed has been) just as critical and dismissive of metaphysics as contemporary continental philosophy. Also, both philosophical traditions, analytic and continental, have recently been making a return to metaphysics. But the metaphysical turn I am espousing is one that crosses, or transcends, this metaphilosophical divide, and looks instead to pre-twentieth-century currents of metaphysical thought, even premodern currents—particularly

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those found in Eastern philosophies of religion. So, I think of the East as at least one promising but neglected source of metaphysical renewal for philosophy of religion, a field that is in urgent need of “globalization” so as to overcome its restriction to Western religious thought and enter into genuine dialogue with Eastern religions. This raises the question as to what exactly is meant by “metaphysics.” Without wishing to enter into a detailed analysis here, it may be helpful to turn again to Bradley (1908, 1), who provides the following definition of metaphysics at the beginning of Appearance and Reality: We may agree, perhaps, to understand by metaphysics an attempt to know reality as against mere appearance, or the study of first principles or ultimate truths, or again the effort to comprehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by fragments, but somehow as a whole. More recently, Peter van Inwagen (1998, 11) takes a similar approach to that suggested by Bradley (without, however, explicitly citing Bradley), stating that, “The best approach to an understanding of what is meant by ‘metaphysics’ is by way of the concepts of appearance and reality.” Van Inwagen goes on to explain: We can say this: if one is attempting to “get behind all appearances and describe things as they really are,” if one is “engaging in metaphysics,” one is attempting to determine certain things with respect to certain statements (or assertions or propositions or theses), those statements that, if true, would be descriptions of the reality that lies behind all appearances, descriptions of things as they really are. Following van Inwagen, then, we may say that the essence of metaphysics consists in the attempt to describe (in a sufficiently general way) ultimate reality.13 Metaphysics in this sense has been an integral and indeed foundational part of much philosophy from ancient to modern times, but it has also had quite a checkered history. In introducing a collection of essays entitled The Nature of Metaphysics, Grice, Pears, and Strawson (1957, 1) rightly state: “Metaphysics has a unique power to attract or repel, to encourage an uncritical enthusiasm on the one hand, an impatient condemnation

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on the other.” Such condemnation has often taken the form of rejecting metaphysics as in some sense “impossible.” A strong version of this impossibility thesis contends that there is no ultimate reality to be known or described, and so all metaphysical statements are false or meaningless (a view upheld by logical positivists). On a weaker reading of the impossibility thesis, there may well be an ultimate reality but we human beings are unable to reach it, since the task of describing it is beyond our powers (see van Inwagen 1998, 14–16). This latter view is especially associated with Kant, who argued that traditional metaphysics overreached itself, seeking to use reason beyond the boundaries to which it was properly limited. Not deterred by Kant’s Critique, the German idealists sought to reinvigorate metaphysics, principally through the development of systems of “absolute idealism”—the view, briefly put, that ultimate reality is mind-like or nonphysical and consists in a unitary and all-inclusive “experience” or “idea.” The key figure here was Hegel, whose monumental metaphysical system, with the “Absolute” (a universal self-consciousness) at the center, attempted to demonstrate that reason could in fact do what Kant thought impossible. Continuing this tradition, the British idealists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (including F.H. Bradley, T.H. Green, Edward Caird, J.M.E. McTaggart, and Bernard Bosanquet) turned away from the naturalism, utilitarianism, and empiricism characteristic of British philosophy (e.g., Hume), holding instead to a form of idealism where physical objects and the subjective points of view of conscious individuals stand in a system of “internal relations” called the “Absolute.” Soon enough, however, a hostile turn against such metaphysical thinking arose, in both English-speaking philosophy and on the Continent. After a brief dalliance with idealism, G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell vehemently repudiated it, thus marking the beginning of analytic philosophy.14 There followed the critique of metaphysics by the logical positivists on the grounds that metaphysical statements are “cognitively meaningless” since they are not empirically verifiable, and a shift toward language and linguistic practices (especially under the influence of Wittgenstein): a turn from ideas and minds to words and language games. This linguistic turn was usually allied to a newfound respect paid to the deliverances of ordinary language (and commonsense) and the sciences (particularly the formal sciences, aided by the development of formal logics and languages). Continental philosophy also underwent a “linguistic turn,” but in a different way from analytic philosophy: here the emphasis was placed on the ways in which language is incapable of accurately representing or mirroring

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extra-linguistic reality; and the impossibility of finding or circumscribing the meaning of a text, as highlighted by interpretive (or “deconstructive”) strategies that uncover a plurality of meanings that may be in conflict with each other. This, in turn, led to the postmodern critique of metaphysics, which sought to debunk a range of metaphysical ideas prominent in modern philosophy, including the notion of an autonomous, cohesive, and rational self possessed of a timeless, disembodied essence and considered the ground of meaning, knowledge, and value. Philosophy of religion practiced in the light of such postmodern critique similarly sought to “overcome metaphysics” or to develop a “nonmetaphysical” theology, understood as the attempt to release discourse about God as far as possible from questionable metaphysics or from “onto-theology.” The latter (now overworn) label was Heidegger’s way of exposing the damaging trajectory of Western philosophy (particularly due to Aristotle and Hegel) in striving to render the whole realm of beings intelligible to human understanding, which it has often done by appeal to the supreme being, God. However, such antipathy toward metaphysics is nothing new. As Bradley (1908, 1) pointed out in his Introduction to Appearance and Reality, the bias against metaphysics is a long-standing one: The writer on metaphysics has a great deal against him. Engaged on a subject which more than others demands peace of spirit, even before he enters on the controversies of his own field, he finds himself involved in a sort of warfare. He is confronted by prejudices hostile to his study . . . Any such pursuit [of metaphysics] will encounter a number of objections. It will have to hear that the knowledge which it desires to obtain is impossible altogether; or, if possible in some degree, is yet practically useless; or that, at all events, we can want nothing beyond the old philosophies. These familiar criticisms are now being challenged by a new generation of philosophers, thus helping to bring about the astonishing contemporary renewal of metaphysics. Analytic philosophy, for example, has witnessed a revival of a range of metaphysical problems, including those to do with modality (possible worlds and possibilia), events, space and time, free will, and the relationship between the mental and the physical. Continental philosophy has taken a similar route, as witnessed, for instance, in the work of Gilles Deleuze, who considered himself a traditional philosopher

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and metaphysician, Alain Badiou’s set-theoretical ontology, Slavoj Žižek’s ­Hegelianism, and the rise of “speculative realism” and the “new materialism” in philosophy (led by Quentin Meillassoux). But the kind of return to metaphysics I wish to advocate is one rarely taken nowadays. This involves a turn to idealism, particularly as developed in Eastern philosophies and religions. Idealism, of course, is only one of many possible metaphysical options in philosophy, including philosophy of religion (whether of the continental or the analytic sort). However, I wish to advocate this particular possibility as at least a live and serious one, in part because a genuine engagement in philosophy of religion with Eastern thought is long overdue, and in part because this (once more) helps to bring about a thinking of God otherwise. What is “otherwise,” this time, is not only methodological (as argued above), but also metaphysical, a way of thinking about God that pushes the understanding along new (or perhaps comparatively new, for contemporary Western philosophers of religion) and fascinating paths. I will begin with a point of contrast, briefly comparing the dualist worldview of traditional Christian theology with the monist outlook of the idealist Hindu school known as Advaita Vedanta. My aim is to challenge the often-assumed metaphysical incompatibility between the Christian and Advaita views, but also to deploy the Advaita understanding in a way that may help us to arrive at a more profound conception of “ultimate reality” than is usually afforded by the standard varieties of theism discussed in contemporary philosophy of religion.

The East–West Divide To appreciate how this divide has been given metaphysical expression, I will begin with a fairly standard account of Christian metaphysics (or some aspects thereof ). The Christian worldview has traditionally been taken to be dualist in nature: all that exists is either mental (spiritual) or physical (material), or a combination of both. The nonphysical or spiritual realm properly speaking consists only of God, who is considered to be wholly incorporeal and invisible—for example, God is spoken of in the Greek patristic tradition as being a pure “spirit” (πνεῦμα) or an “ideal” (νοερός) substance (Prestige 1964, 17–20). As the ultimate reality, God is the source of all that is, where this is understood to mean that God brought the universe into existence out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), while God is himself unoriginated, (ontologically) independent (this is his aseity), and unconditioned.

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The world created by God is a physical world, populated not only by animals and humans, but also by “angels”—nonhuman intelligent beings acting as intermediaries between God and humanity, some serving God, others (the “demons”) rebelling against him. It might be surprising to find angels located in the physical world, given that they are usually considered immaterial or spiritual beings. However, theologians have qualified this to mean that angelic nature appears “immaterial” when compared to human nature, but when compared to the divine nature it is in fact “material.”15 The created world also includes what we ordinarily regard as “the physical world,” where this refers to the created world that is physical in a way that the angelic world is not—for example, “physical” in the sense that it is ordered according to fixed laws of nature (whereas angelic beings are not subject to these laws). This material, spatial-temporal world is accorded great value, given that it is the creation of a benevolent God (consider, e.g., the appeal to the value of materiality by the defenders of icons, or iconophiles, in the eighth and ninth centuries), and is seen as possessing an ontological reality and integrity, governed by its own laws and existing independently of humanity (even though not independently of the creative and sustaining activity of God). In line with this, particular historical events (such as the Incarnation, Jesus’s miracles and resurrection) are imbued with momentous salvific significance. Uniquely placed and called in history and creation is the human being (in this sense the pinnacle of God’s creation), and a dualistic account of what it is to be a human being is frequently offered: a human being is a unity of soul and body, and after death the soul is reunited with a resurrected (“spiritual” or “glorified”) body. The picture that thus emerges is a thoroughly dualistic one. Despite the foregoing account, the dividing line is not always drawn in the same way. It is quite common, for example, to find theologians from the Eastern Christian tradition taking the fundamental divide to be not between the physical and spiritual realms, but between the created and uncreated worlds. The point behind this way of dividing up reality is to emphasize that the world created by God is an altogether new and essentially different reality: it is not identical with God (thus avoiding pantheism), nor is it a diffusion or emanation from him (in the way in which all that exists in the universe emanates from the One in Plotinus’s system). Rather, the world is the product of the divine creative word and will, but not the divine essence, thus forming an ontological gap (or diastema) between the uncreated Creator and the contingent creation, a gap that no created being can ever bridge. What is important for my purposes is that, however the

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dividing line is drawn, Christian theology has historically been marked by a fundamentally dualistic metaphysics. I turn now to the very different tradition of Advaita Vedanta, and its non-dualistic metaphysics. Amongst the six “orthodox” Hindu schools (darsanas) of philosophy (“orthodox” [astika] in the sense that they recognize the authority of the Vedas), the most influential has been the Vedanta school, which has become (in the words of Gavin Flood [1996], 238) “the philosophical paradigm of Hinduism par excellence.” Vedanta encompasses three principal philosophical traditions or subschools, which differ on how to interpret the relation that exists between the “atman” (the individual self or soul) and “Brahman” (Ultimate Reality), especially as this is depicted in the philosophically oriented thought of the Upanishads. Unlike the other two Vedanta schools, which espouse a form of dualism or qualified non-dualism, the Advaita school understands the relation between the atman and Brahman in outright non-dualist terms (as indicated by the Sanskrit term “a-dvaita,” which means “non-dual”). The Advaita view, particularly as elaborated by its most prominent member, Shankara (traditionally 788–820 CE), rejects all duality and considers the sole reality to be Brahman, which in turn is identified with atman. This is a version of “substance monism”: there are no separate things, for reality is essentially one or a unified whole. On this view, all plurality, including the world of material objects, is founded on illusion and ignorance, preventing us from recognizing the underlying unity of reality. This is conjoined with a variety of absolute idealism: the most basic or ultimate reality is the “Absolute” (in this case, “Brahman”), that which has an unconditioned existence (not conditioned by, or dependent on, anything else), and is regarded as mental or spiritual in nature, so that matter or the physical world is only an appearance to or expression of mind. Brahman, on the Advaita view, is the ultimate ground of all being, and is described as an eternal and undifferentiated consciousness that transcends all qualities and distinctions (such as subject and object, personal and impersonal).16 Given the foregoing, how could the metaphysics of Christianity be reconciled with that of Advaita Vedanta, or to rephrase an age-old question, what has India to do with Jerusalem? The Christian view appears thoroughly dualistic: many of the dualisms of everyday life are accepted or presupposed here (e.g., good/evil, subject/object), although metaphysically the most fundamental duality is that between spiritual or immaterial substance and physical or material substance, or that between the uncreated (God) and the created world. By contrast, Advaita Vedanta upholds a strict monism, according to which only one kind of thing or substance is

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ultimately real (i.e., Brahman), with all else (including the physical world) demoted to the level of appearance. A consequence of this view is often thought to be that the existence and significance of anything material, finite, and historical is diminished, or even obliterated, as it is relativized and subsumed within the Absolute. The Christian view, moreover, is deeply personalistic, as the ultimate reality (God) is a trinity of persons. Although this implies that God is not a person, and even though talk of “persons” in the context of the Trinity may be far removed from the ways in which we ordinarily think of a “human person” (as, e.g., an individual with an autonomous will), this does entail that the foundation of reality is in some significant sense personal. On one view, for example, God as Trinity consists in loving, interpersonal, and perichoretic communion, and this discloses the most basic character of reality to be communion in love.17 Advaita Vedanta also allows for devotion (bhakti) to a personal Lord (Isvara), but this is only a concession to popular piety. Strictly speaking, ultimate reality is brahman nirguna (without attributes), a pure, undifferentiated consciousness that cannot be named or described, even by means of such qualities as goodness and personality. As a result, Brahman, unlike the Christian God, is not something that is to be worshipped and petitioned, but is to be “realized” as identical with one’s inner being.18

The Marriage of East and West Various proposals for reconciliation have been offered, but here I will concentrate on the work of Sara Grant (1922–2000), in particular her 1989 Teape Lectures delivered at Cambridge University (and later at the University of Bristol) and published as Toward an Alternative Theology: Confessions of a Non-Dualist Christian.19 Grant’s work stands within a venerable tradition, which dates principally from the 1960s, of seeking to challenge and enrich Christian theology and spirituality through dialogue with Hinduism, especially the Advaita Vedanta school.20 Grant, a Scotswoman who became a leading figure in the Indian Catholic Church, studied philosophy at Oxford before relocating to India. But what she encountered at Oxford was the “ordinary language” philosophy of Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin with its emphasis on the analysis of the language of everyday speech. As a result, Grant felt frustrated and disappointed by the lack of engagement with the great and meaningful

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questions of existence. Instead, there was “Professor Gilbert Ryle on Mrs. Beaton as a model of linguistic usage” (Grant 2002, 18), Beaton being the author of a popular cookbook. As Grant put it, “Metaphysics was definitely out” (18). Grant therefore left for India in 1956, and it was when she began teaching Indian philosophy there that she discovered Advaita. From here on, a constant preoccupation in her life and writings would be “the implications of the Hindu experience of non-duality for Christian theological reflection.”21 In 1972 she helped re-found the Christa Prema Seva Ashram, in Pune (it was originally established in 1927), as an ecumenical community, and from 1977 she was the co-acarya (spiritual head) of the ashram: “This is really non-dualism in action at the level of ordinary life,” she was to say (26). Grant’s first step in reconciling Advaita and Christianity, or at least in demonstrating deep correspondences between the two, consists in disabusing Christians of some mistaken ideas they may have about Advaita. She challenges, for example, the impression some Christians might have that Shankara considers the empirical world to be “unreal” or even the product of maya (illusion, magic). Grant (2002, 34) points out that when Shankara refers to the physical world as “unreal,” what he means is that it is subject to change. “Metaphysically speaking, however, it [the empirical world] had a definite status of its own as essentially relative, absolutely dependent being.” Shankara, then, is not denying the reality of the world, but only highlighting its utterly contingent or relative nature. Confusion and ignorance, on this view, consist in absolutizing the relative—something, admittedly, inherent in human nature.22 This leads Grant to her central insight: the concept of relation as the key plank in reconciling East and West, and in particular as the point of convergence between Shankara and Aquinas. According to Grant, both Shankara and Aquinas view the relation between creation and the ultimate Source of all being as a non-reciprocal dependence relation, which Grant (2002, 40) explains as “a relation in which a subsistent effect or ‘relative absolute’ is dependent on its cause for its very existence as a subsistent entity, whereas the cause is in no way dependent on the effect for its subsistence.” Although Grant identifies a number (no less than nine, in fact) points of similarity between Shankara and Aquinas (51–53), it is their shared commitment to non-dualism more than anything else that makes possible a remarkable degree of metaphysical complementarity between these two seemingly disparate thinkers. As Grant states:

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Both were non-dualists, understanding the relation of the universe, including individual selves, to uncreated Being in terms of a non-reciprocal relation of dependence which, far from diminishing the uniqueness and lawful autonomy of a created being within its own sphere, was their necessary Ground and condition, while apart from that relation of total dependence no created being would be at all.23 Although the differences between Shankara and Aquinas, and their respective religious traditions, cannot be overlooked or minimized,24 their convergence on the ontological relationship between the Absolute and the world enables Grant to speak of “the extraordinary agreement between the two men, deep calling to deep across the centuries” (54). Grant’s discussion, then, might help us to rethink the relationship between the Christian and Advaita Vedanta worldviews, and may perhaps in the process compel us to reconceive the nature of God or ultimate reality. For example, the monism of Advaita may not be entirely incompatible with the dualism of Christianity, at least if the monistic vision of Advaita is essentially a matter of recognizing the relativity and contingency of the world, rather than rejecting the world outright as an illusion, projection, or fiction. In Christian terms, this is to see God as the ultimate reality, as the source and foundation of all that is. To see God in this way is to avoid idolatrous and anthropomorphic conceptions of God as one more item or thing in the universe, albeit “the biggest thing around” (the infinitely big). Even if we continue to think of God as an entity or being of some sort, a substantive ontological gap must be acknowledged between the (uncreated, independent) being of God and the (created, dependent) being of all else. Grant, as we have seen, describes this as the “non-reciprocal relation of dependence” between God and the world, while the notion of “diastema,” mentioned earlier, was used by Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century to similarly draw attention to the ontological distance between Creator and creation. While postulating such an ontological divide, the Advaita tradition also upholds the fundamental identity between Brahman and the self. However, something similar can be said in Christian terms about the relation between the human person and God. Grant (2002, 79–80), for example, borrows the Hindu understanding of the human person in terms of “kosas,” or “depths of interiority,” “to speak of a new and progressively developing capacity for awareness of Atman-Brahman, or God, as the Self of my own

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self, the prompter from within of every thought, word, and deed, without prejudice to the autonomy and freedom of the person.” The non-dual Advaita saying beloved by Grant—“in every ‘I’ which I attempt to utter, his ‘I’ is already glowing” (63, 95)—is therefore something that the Christian too may affirm. As Meister Eckhart recognized, it is erroneous to think of God and the human soul as two entirely separate things, the one standing over against the other: “One should not apprehend God nor consider Him outside oneself, but as our own and as what is in ourselves.”25 Likewise, the Christian view of “ultimate reality” as personal may not be fundamentally at odds with the Advaita view of Brahman as “nonpersonal,” at least if the latter is seen as underscoring the limitations of human personhood as a model for understanding Brahman. Further, the apophatic dimension in the Advaita notion of brahman nirguna, where all names and forms (including those of personality and impersonality) are transcended, is reminiscent of the via negativa of Christian mysticism, where God is considered to be ineffable, unnameable, and unknowable, and where this divine mystery is due not so much to any human weakness as to the intrinsic nature of God himself. The encounter with Advaita therefore enables a reclamation of the (often overlooked) apophatic stream in Christianity, but in line with an earlier segment of this paper, such a retrieval must be set within the context of a genuinely creative and imaginative approach to theology and philosophy of religion that values doubt and questioning. Thus, simple and “conversation-stopping” appeals to mystery are to be replaced by an understanding of mystery as that which motivates and provokes further, indeed endless, searching—never resting content with having secured certainty or finality. The question of worship may also require reconsideration. If the divine being is ultimately beyond the categories of personality and impersonality, worship and devotion (directed toward Brahman) seem to be ruled out. However, just as the Advaita distinguish between brahman nirguna (Brahman as unthinkable, unknowable, and inexpressible) and brahman saguna (Brahman as manifested to humankind, as Vishnu, Shiva, etc.), so too a distinction may need to be drawn in Christian theology between God as he is in himself and God as he appears to us. This very distinction is commonplace in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which speaks of two distinct aspects or dimensions of the divine: (1) the “divine essence” (ousia), God as he is known to himself, or God in his essential nature; and (2) the “divine energies” (energiai), the operations and actions of God in the world, or those acts of divine self-manifestation that disclose God’s

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power and presence in creation. On this view, the divine essence is totally inaccessible to human nature. But even though God is unknowable and unapproachable in essence, we can come to know and experience God insofar as we can participate in his “energies.” Perhaps, then, we could say that it makes sense to pray to and worship God once this devotion is thought of as directed to God as he manifests himself to us (by means of his energies). But the ideal, as in Advaita thought, would be to divest oneself of distinctions such as those between subject and object, and personal and impersonal, and to “realize” oneness with the Absolute. What this suggests is that a more radical departure from traditional Christian theology may be effected by the encounter with Advaita thought than is usually appreciated or permitted by Christians entering into dialogue with Hindu philosophies. This is not necessarily to do away with Christian theology, though it does involve a re-evaluation of its underlying metaphysics. In particular, the idealist and monist metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta point to a radically relational view of reality, where to be is to be in relation with others, and above all with the Other (Brahman, God).26 On this view, the world does not consist of persistent entities or “substances,” in the (Aristotelian and Cartesian) sense of things that are ontologically distinct and independent, having an essence or identity that persists through time unchanged. Rather, the world is conceived as a complex web of interconnections or relations, so that the deepest level of reality consists in a holistic connectivity. But this is not entirely foreign to Christian thought, particularly in Trinitarian theologies that take “communion” as central, and in process theologies where what ultimately exists is a structured nexus of interacting and constantly changing processes or events. We are now even further removed from classical Christian theism, given that the process perspective brings all being, including the divine being, within the purview of becoming, so that (unlike classical theism) God is in some respects temporal, mutable, and passible, while remaining in other respects eternal, immutable, and impassible.27 I will conclude with what I take be at least one promising consequence of the metaphysical reorientation suggested by the encounter with Advaita Vedanta. In Christian theology, evil is thought to pose an intractable problem, given that the presence of evil in the created world seriously challenges the perfect goodness (or perfect power and knowledge) of that world’s Creator. But what happens to the problem of evil when ultimate reality is conceived in the idealist, monist, and relational terms sketched above? In Shankara’s system, as in that of Western philosophical idealists

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such as Bradley, the Absolute as the supreme reality transcends all conceptual delimitation and thus cannot be categorized as either good or evil. This is not to deny the reality of evil, but only to deny that the Absolute can be distinguished by such qualities as goodness and personality. Even if the Absolute, as an integrated and unified whole, could be considered harmonious and thus “good” in some metaphysical or aesthetic sense, what seems to be ruled out is one of the key presuppositions motivating the problem of evil—that God shares a “moral community” with us, so that there are moral principles and categories that are applicable to both God and human beings. But if that is the case, then from the Advaita perspective the problem of evil (as standardly conceived) cannot even arise. The journey to the “Far East” may therefore inspire philosophers of religion to not only think God otherwise, but to also rethink the relationship between God and evil in ways that free them from traditional theodical stalemates.28 NOTES

  1. Many examples of this could be offered. Two clear and prominent cases are the apologetical work of William Lane Craig and the natural theology of Richard Swinburne. Much work that now takes place under the banner of “Christian philosophy” also exhibits these features.   2. I am, of course, here engaging in generalities, and exceptions do (thankfully) exist. Also, although my target is Christian philosophy, similar comments could be made about the work of contemporary nontheist analytic philosophers of religion.  3. Heidegger’s prioritization of philosophy as fundamental ontology over theology as one of the ontic sciences is evident in many places, including the following famous passage from “Letter on ‘Humanism’ ”: “Only from the truth of being can the essence of the holy be thought. Only from the essence of the holy is the essence of divinity to be thought. Only in the light of the essence of divinity can it be thought or said what the word ‘God’ is to signify” (Heidegger 1998a, 267).   4. Janicaud (2000, 27). Janicaud is referring here to Levinas.   5. The stated goal of “analytic theology” is to apply the concepts, rhetorics, and methods of analytic philosophy to topics that have usually been the preserve of systematic theology (e.g., the Trinity, the Incarnation, the divine inspiration of Scripture, etc.). See Crisp and Rea (2009).   6. Christianity turns into an “ideology” when it demands an inviolable faith that cannot in principle be overturned (or perhaps even challenged) by rational considerations. This, in turn, raises the suspicion that such faith was not motivated by or grounded in rational considerations in the first place, but was motivated by

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nonrational factors to do with, for example, politics or psychology. (It is the work of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” to unearth such motivations.)  7. One such lone voice has been Michael Levine, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Australia. See in particular Levine’s (2000) trenchant critique of current practice in (analytic) philosophy of religion. Levine criticizes the work of contemporary Christian analytic philosophers as lacking vitality, relevance, and seriousness. He identifies these shortcomings in recent work in the areas of biblical interpretation, theodicy, and religious experience.  8. It is also worth noting that Schellenberg, in line with the ahistorical practice of analytic philosophy, reaches his skepticism about religion without having engaged with the rich historical panoply of religious conceptions of ultimate reality. For example, no consideration is given in his works to (Christian and nonChristian) Neoplatonism, or to idealist conceptions of the divine in Hindu and Buddhist thought. And this despite his advocacy of widening philosophy of religion so that it “more fully takes account of nonorthodox Christian and non-Christian religious ideas” (Schellenber 2005, 185n19). To be sure, the specific argument Schellenberg develops in defense of religious skepticism is such as to not require a detailed evaluation of each of the concrete religions. But the reliance on such an abstract argumentative strategy is problematic when it encourages one to overlook concepts and insights from the past that tend to be neglected in contemporary discussions—this being precisely the fate of idealism, whether it be in its Neoplatonist or Eastern variety. A further, but related, weakness that attends to this neglect of the history of religious thought is that what Schellenberg calls “ultimism” may not in fact encompass all historical religions, contra Schellenberg’s view that ultimism is entailed by every religion. Again, this seems to be the case with some forms of Hinduism, such as the Advaita Vedanta conception of Brahman, which takes Brahman to be quality-less and transcategorical in a way not permitted by Schellenberg’s notion of the “ultimate.” In short, philosophers of religion remain without excuse for ignoring history and theology.  9. Bradley (1908, xii). He goes on to state one of the preconditions of such education: “The present generation is learning that to gain education a man must study in more than one school” (xiii). This is something that our generation of philosophers, deeply entrenched in either the analytic or the continental school, needs to relearn. 10. Other such prejudices named by Bradley (1908, 5) are “orthodox theology” and “common-place materialism.” 11. J.H. Muirhead (1925, 175), for example, states that Bradley was “perhaps the most original thinker of his time in philosophy.” 12. Clack (2007, 207–208). Clack considers two examples: Frida Kahlo’s painting, “Henry Ford Hospital or the Flying Bed” (1932), which illustrates Kahlo’s response to her experience of miscarriage; and Chuck Palahniuk’s fairy tale–like novel

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Lullaby (2002), which addresses the suffering of a grieving husband and father who holds himself responsible for the death of his wife and children. 13. Van Inwagen (1998, 11–14). An alternative characterization of metaphysics, derived from Aristotle, considers it in terms of the question, “What is existence (being)?” Here metaphysics is the most general or abstract investigation possible into the nature of reality, what Aristotle called “first philosophy,” “the science of being,” and the study of “being qua being.” A distinct kind of metaphysical inquiry (usually labelled “ontology”) is concerned with the problem: “What types of things exist?” In this case, the aim is to uncover what there is or what exists, and the natures and categories of the different entities there are. 14. Russell describes his defection from idealism as providing him with a new lease of life, enabling him finally to see the world aright, in realistic and commonsense terms: He [i.e., G.E. Moore] took the lead in rebellion, and I followed, with a sense of emancipation. Bradley argued that everything common sense believes in is mere appearance; we reverted to the opposite extreme, and thought that everything is real that common sense, uninfluenced by philosophy or theology, supposes real. With a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to think that grass is green, that the sun and stars would exist even if no one was aware of them, and also that there is a pluralistic timeless world of Platonic ideas. The world, which had been thin and logical, suddenly became rich and varied and solid. (Russell 1989, 12; emphasis in original) Similarly, elsewhere Russell (1987, 135) states: “It was an intense excitement, after having supposed the sensible world unreal, to be able to believe again that there really were such things as tables and chairs.” 15. John of Damascus (1958, 205), for example, held that angels are bodiless and immaterial, but only in a comparative sense. He describes angels as having “a bodiless nature, some sort of spirit, as it were, and immaterial fire.” He goes on to say: “an angel is an intellectual substance, ever in motion, free, incorporeal, ministering to God, with the gift of immortality in its nature.” But he then qualifies the ascription of immateriality as follows: “Now, compared with us, the angel is said to be incorporeal and immaterial, although in comparison with God, who alone is incomparable, everything proves to be gross and material—for only the Divinity is truly immaterial and incorporeal.” John also states that angels “have no need of tongue and hearing; rather, they communicate their individual thoughts and designs to one another without having recourse to the spoken word” (206). This indicates that angels have a level of immateriality not possessed by humans. See also Andrew Louth (2002, 120–125); Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia.50,1 and 1a.51,1.

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16. Many interesting parallels could be drawn between the Advaita view and Bradley’s form of idealism. Like the monist view of Advaita, Bradley considered reality to be ultimately “one,” a single and all-embracing “experience,” where experience is broadly understood so as to encompass feeling, thought, and volition. And like Brahman, the Absolute in Bradley’s philosophy is the ultimate, unconditioned reality as it is in itself, not distorted by conceptual thought or abstraction. Reality, for Bradley as for the Advaitins, outstrips and transcends discursive thought—hence, the strong mystical and apophatic strain in both. This aspect of Bradley’s thought has not gone unnoticed by commentators. A.E. Taylor (1925, 9), a friend of Bradley’s, described him as “an intensely religious man, in the sense of a man whose whole life and thought was permeated by a conviction of the reality of the unseen things and a supreme devotion to them. Taylor also remarks: Bradley’s own personal religion was of a strongly marked mystical type, in fact of the specific type common to the Christian mystics. Religion meant to him, as to Plotinus or to Newman, direct personal contact with the Supreme and Ineffable, unmediated through any forms of ceremonial prayer, or ritual, and, like all mystics in whom this passion for direct access to God is not moderated by the habit of organized communal worship, he was inclined to set little store on the historical and institutional element in the great religions. (10; emphasis in original) Similarly, the authors of the entry on Bradley in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy note that Bradley was led to his conception of the Absolute in part by “a kind of personal experience of a higher unity which in another context might have made him one of the world’s revered religious mystics” (Candlish and Basile 2013, §6). 17. This is the influential “being as communion” thesis developed by John Zizioulas (1985). 18. Bradley Malkovsky (1999, 405–406) summarizes well the traditional Christian attitude to Advaita: Because Advaita denies the reality of the created world and of history and, therefore, of the incarnation, because it teaches that the Absolute is impersonal rather than personal, and because its spirituality is oriented to knowledge and identity rather than to love and to a communion of persons, it is not surprising that a widespread Christian response is to deny all possibility of harmonizing Advaitic doctrine and Christian faith, that is, that Christians have nothing to learn from Advaita because Advaita is basically false teaching. In this view there is a complete doctrinal incompatibility between Christian and Advaitic teaching.

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19. This was first published in 1991 and was later republished in 2002 by the University of Notre Dame Press. 20. Other prominent figures in this dialogue have included Klaus Klostermaier, Swami Abhishiktananda, Dom Bede Griffiths, Richard De Smet (who greatly influenced Grant’s work on Shankara), and more recently Francis X. Clooney. Not all of the foregoing respond to the encounter with Advaita in the same way, and some depart more radically from Christian theology than did Grant. One of those who made such a radical departure was Grant’s close friend, Swami Abhishiktananda (1910–1973), who was born in France as Henri Le Saux, and later took the Sanskrit compound Abhishiktananda (the bliss of Christ) as his Indian monastic name (see Malkovsky 1999, 415–420). 21. Grant (2002, 1). Grant states that “[t]he sense of the inner unity of all things and the desire to discover how they were related to each other in their ultimate cause became practically an obsession” (8). 22. An alternative way to put this (though Grant does not express the point in this way) is to say that the world is “less real” than Brahman, not that it is “unreal.” This parallels the notions of degrees of being and degrees of truth, common in idealistic systems of thought, from Plato and Plotinus to Bradley. Like Grant, Richard Brooks (1969) has pointed out that the real in Advaita is closely connected to the eternal, the unchanging, the independent, and the unlimited: “in order for Advaitins to apply the word ‘real’ to something, that thing must be (1) experienceable, (2) nonillusory or nonimaginary, and (3) stable, lasting, or permanent” (388; see also the expanded definition of reality given on pp. 391–392) Brooks goes on to say that “Advaita will also be able to use the word ‘real’ in a less strict sense and to allow for degrees of reality insofar as some things are experienced but are illusory and other things are nonillusory but are impermanent” (389). The levels of reality are termed “ultimately real” (paramarthika), “pragmatically real” (vyavaharika), “merely illusory” (pratibhdsika), and “utterly unreal” (tucchika) (393). The empirical world is classed as “pragmatically real,” given that it has a practical effect on us—for example, another human being may respond to our shouts. (Incidentally, on p. 394, Brooks provides a very useful table, comparing Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism on levels of reality.) 23. Grant (2002, 52; emphasis in original). As this talk of “created being” makes clear, Grant (like De Smet before her) controversially interpreted the theology of Shankara as allowing for the idea of Brahman as cause or creator. 24. Grant (2002, 53), for example, points to differences in eschatology. 25. Meister Eckhart (in Clark 1957, 189). Similarly, Augustine (1961, 62 [Confessions III.6] recalls his futile search for God in the outer world, when he failed to see that (as it is sometimes put) God is closer to us than we are to ourselves: “Yet you were deeper than my inmost understanding and higher than the topmost height that I could reach.” And later on, from a well-known passage: “I have learnt to love you late! You were within me, and I was in the world outside

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myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation. You were with me, but I was not with you” (231 [Confessions X.27]). 26. To be sure, in systems of absolute idealism (such as those of Advaita and Bradley), ultimate reality is characterized in terms of the absolute, not the relative or relational. Nonetheless, the Absolute is thought of as a comprehensive and harmonious whole or unity that consists in (or just is) a set of relations. Bradley, for example, held that everything is related (e.g., temporally or spatially) to everything else, and he further added that all relations must be “internal,” which implies that the nature and identity of each thing depends upon its relation to everything else. In this respect, at least, one could call Bradley’s idealism a relational view of reality, even though relations in Bradley’s system are “appearances” or “unreal” (since they are not independent existents, but exist only in and through the whole). 27. Process theism therefore jettisons the classical theistic view that there is nothing contingent or relative in God, and it does so partly on the basis of the view that divine love presupposes empathetic sensitivity to the joys and sorrows of the beloved. It is now Christian (process) philosophy that poses a challenge to Advaita thought, according to which change and temporality are unreal or not ultimate features of reality. However, see Grant (2002, 96–97n12, 97–98n22), where Advaita is interpreted as possibly allowing for desire and affectivity within Brahman. 28. For an exposition and defense of this position, which I call “anti-theodicy,” see Trakakis (2013, forthcoming). BIBLIOGRAPHY

Augustine. 1961. Confessions. Translated by R.S. Pine-Coffin. London: Penguin. Bradley, F.H. 1908. Appearance and Reality: A Metaphysical Essay. London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Brooks, Richard. 1969. “The Meaning of ‘Real’ in Advaita Vedānta.” Philosophy East and West 19: 385–398. Candlish, Stewart, and Pierfransesco Basile. 2013. “Francis Herbert Bradley.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. http://plato. stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/bradley Clack, Beverley. 2007. “Distortion, Dishonesty and the Problem of Evil.” In Wrestling with God and with Evil: Philosophical Reflections, edited by Hendrik M. Vroom, 197–215. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Clark, James M., trans. and ed. 1957. Meister Eckhart: An Introduction to the Study of His Works with an Anthology of His Sermons. New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons. Crisp, Oliver D., and Michael C. Rea, eds. 2009. Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flood, Gavin. 1996. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Grant, Sara. 2002. Toward an Alternative Theology: Confessions of a Non-Dualist Christian. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Grice, H.P., D.F. Pears, and P.F. Strawson. 1957. “Metaphysics.” In The Nature of Metaphysics, edited by D.F. Pears, 1–22. London: Macmillan. Heidegger, Martin. 1998a. “Letter on ‘Humanism.’ ” Translated by Frank A. Capuzzi. In Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill, 239–276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998b. “Phenomenology and Theology.” Translated by James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo. In Pathmarks, edited by William McNeill, 39–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000. Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Gregory Field and Richard Polt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Jaegerschmid, Adelgundis. 2001. “Conversations with Edmund Husserl, 1931– 1938.” Translated by Marcus Brainard. In The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, edited by Burt Hopkins and Steven Crowell, 331–350. Seattle: Noesis Press. Janicaud, Dominique. 2000. “The Theological Turn of French Phenomenology.” In Phenomenology and the “Theological Turn”: The French Debate. Dominique Janicaud et al., 1–103. New York: Fordham University Press. John of Damascus. 1958. Saint John of Damascus: Writings. Translated by Frederic H. Chase, Jr. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Levine, Michael. 2000. “Contemporary Christian analytic Philosophy of Religion: Biblical Fundamentalism, Terrible Solutions to A Horrible Problem, and Hearing God.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 48: 89–119. Louth, Andrew. 2002. St John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Malkovsky, Bradley. 1999. “Advaita Vedānta and Christian Faith.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 36: 397–422. Meister Eckhart. 1957. Meister Eckhart: An Introduction to the Study of his Works with an Anthology of His Sermons. Translated by James M. Clark. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons. Muirhead, J.H. 1925. “Bradley’s Place in Philosophy.” Mind 34: 173–184. Plantinga, Alvin. 1984. “Advice to Christian Philosophers.” Faith and Philosophy 1: 253–271. Prestige, G.L. 1964. God in Patristic Thought. London: SPCK. Russell, Bertrand. 1987. Autobiography. London: Unwin. ———. 1989. “My Mental Development.” In The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited by P.A. Schilpp, 1–20. La Salle, IL: Open Court. Schellenberg, J.L. 2005. Prolegomena to a Philosophy of Religion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 2007. The Wisdom to Doubt: A Justification of Religious Skepticism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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———. 2009. The Will to Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Surin, Kenneth. 1986. Theology and the Problem of Evil. Oxford: Blackwell. Taylor, A.E. 1925. “F.H. Bradley.” Mind 34: 1–12. Trakakis, N.N. 2008. The End of Philosophy of Religion. London: Continuum. ———. 2013. “Antitheodicy.” In A Companion to the Problem of Evil, edited by Justin P. McBrayer and Daniel Howard-Snyder, 389–404. London: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. Forthcoming. “Anti-theodicy.” In The History of Evil, vol. 6, edited by Chad Meister and Charles Taliaferro. London: Acumen. Van Inwagen, Peter. 1998. “The Nature of Metaphysics.” In Contemporary Readings in the Foundations of Metaphysics, edited by Stephen Laurence and Cynthia Macdonald, 11–21. Oxford: Blackwell. Zizioulas, John. 1985. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

5

The End of Philosophy of Religion? Timothy D. Knepper

With the 2008 publication of Nick Trakakis’s The End of Philosophy of Religion, that which some long feared and others eagerly anticipated was finally entitled. Hyperbolically so, one might add. For it was not the philosophy of religion per se that Trakakis found moribund, but analytic philosophy of religion: “The present study claims to drive one further nail into the coffin of philosophy as it is practiced in the analytic tradition, but with one peculiar twist: the focus will be on the philosophy of religion” (Trakakis 2008, 1). Unfortunately, the nail missed. Trakakis’s reading of analytic philosophy of religion was so narrow that the corpse it attempted to enter was straw.1 Worse, Trakakis’s efforts came up short at both ends, failing not only to diagnose what is really ailing contemporary philosophy of religion but also to prescribe a viable course of recovery. What Trakakis found to be afflicting contemporary philosophy of religion was the overly professional

A version of this chapter was first read at a spring 2010 Humanities Center colloquium at Drake University, then at the fall 2010 annual conference of the American Academy of Religion, and finally at the spring 2011 conference on the future of continental philosophy of religion at Syracuse University. I thank those whose critical comments have aided its development—Jennifer McCrickerd, Craig Owens, and Joseph Schneider (in the case of the first reading); Jerome Gellman, Michael Rea, and Kevin Schilbrack (in the case of the second reading); Ron Mercer, Dan Miller, and Nick Trakakis (in the case of the third reading); and the two anonymous reviewers at Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JAAR). A version of this chapter was first published as the opening chapter of Knepper (2013), then subsequently published in JAAR (Knepper 2014b). I thank both Palgrave Macmillan and Oxford University Press for allowing me to reuse this material.

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and technical, overly scientific and logical, and overly objective and detached nature of analytic philosophy of religion: “My aim will be to show that the analytic tradition of philosophy, by virtue of its attachment to scientific norms of rationality and truth, cannot come to terms with the mysterious transcendent reality that is disclosed in religious practice” (2). But couldn’t one say that matters are quite the opposite?—that philosophy of religion is even still not yet a field of academic inquiry that investigates religious reason-giving in as many of the religions of the world as possible, with as many reliable tools and methods of inquiry as possible, by a community of inquirers that makes every effort to be as objective and diverse as possible?2 Indeed, philosophy of religion ought to advance and test hypotheses, for this is how humans inquire; it ought to apply the tools of formal logic and empirical science, where applicable, for these have shown themselves conducive to human inquiry more often than not; it ought to be professional and, where necessary, technical, for this is how communities of inquirers attain degrees of objectivity and precision; and it ought to conduct its affairs as critically and correctively as possible, for doing so has proved an effective way of managing and minimizing distorting biases. But it ought to do all this with respect to human acts of religious reason-giving in a diversity of historical religions, not just ahistorical theism or postmodern philosophy. And so, the issue is not “whether it is legitimate (in some significant sense) to offer a theodicy in response to the problem of evil” (6), but whether it is legitimate only to inquire about theistic efforts at explaining anomie.3 The same is true at the other end. The concluding chapter of The End of the Philosophy of Religion advocates, with Bruce Wilshire, the retrieval of the “value of myth,” which served as “a fountain of wisdom in ancient cultures”; and, with David Tacey, the fashioning of a “new image of God,” which “must be expressed in a new language” (Trakakis 2008, 115–116). But as this new image of God is said to be “intimate, intense, and immanent,” and this new language is said to express the existence of this God as a matter of “reasoned trust” or “mystical faith,” these ends not only exclude a significant portion of the world’s religions but also beg some of the very questions that a philosophy of religion should want to investigate.4 But what is most unfortunate about Trakakis’s book is that, much like a Hollywood blockbuster, it fails to deliver on a provocative title. Indeed, there is something wrong with the philosophy of religion, so wrong that scholars of religion should call for an end, or at least for “a completely fresh start” (115). But it is not the overtechnical or overscientific methods of the field. Nor is it the putative specters of cognitive meaninglessness or

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onto-theological complicity. Rather, it is the simple fact that philosophy of religion is significantly out of step with, and therefore has very little to offer to, one of its parent fields, religious studies. And this is largely because the content of reflection in philosophy of religion is usually either a fictionalized and rarified theism or the latest critical notion of some continental philosopher, not the historical religions of the world in their localized complexity and comparative diversity. But it is also because philosophy of religion can look more like philosophical theology—not a (relatively) religiously neutral examination of reason-giving in the religions of the world, but an overt apologetic for (or against) the reasonableness or value of some particular kind of religion. This, then, is the great irony of contemporary philosophy of religion: at the time when it thrives most, it offers least to the academic study of religion (which thrives all the more). The remainder of this paper serves therefore as a sort of sequel to Trakakis’s debut screening, albeit one with different sets of conflicts and resolutions. In place of Trakakis’s resolutions of myth-value retrieval and divine-image construction, it articulates five ends or desiderata of a philosophy of religion that has something to offer to the academic study of religion: (1) cultural-historical diversity among the human acts of religious reason-giving about which it inquires; (2) diversity of race, gender, class, and creed among its inquiring community; (3) thickness of description with respect to the cultural-historical details of concrete acts of religious reason-giving; (4) formality of comparison with respect to the categories and processes of comparison of particular acts of religious reason-giving; and (5) multidimensionality of evaluation of the diversities and patterns of religious reason-giving.5 And in lieu of Trakakis’s conflicts of professionalism and objectivism, it shows that what threatens to end or marginalize a certain philosophy of religion is a tendency to fall short of these five ends (and, so, in a sense, to be professional and objective enough). Tend is the operative root here. By no means could this paper’s portrayal of analytic and continental philosophy of religion be complete; rather its scope is limited to a few recent essay collections that claim to be representative or constitutive of analytic or continental philosophy of religion: in the case of the former, Michael Peterson and Raymond VanArragon’s (2004) edited collection Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion (CDPR), Yujin Nagasawa and Erik Wielenberg’s (2009) edited collection New Waves in Philosophy of Religion (NWPR), and Jonathan Kvanvig’s (2009) edited collection of the second volume of Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion (OSPR); and in the case of the latter, Philip Goodchild’s (2002a) edited collection R ­ ethinking Philosophy

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of Religion (RPR), Deane-Peter Baker and Patrick Maxwell’s (2003) edited collection Explorations in Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion (ECCPR), and Eugene Long’s (2006) edited sixtieth volume of the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion (IJPR) (which was later published as the essay collection Self and Other).6 And even here, space permits a treatment of no more than just a few essays with respect to each desideratum; thus the focus is on those essays that best exemplify both the successes and the failures of analytic and continental philosophy of religion. Perhaps it goes without saying, then, that neither analytic nor continental philosophy of religion is either entirely or intrinsically useless to the academic study of religion. Nevertheless, as will be demonstrated below, if these collections are indeed representative or constitutive of these subdisciplines (as their editors claim), then both analytic and continental philosophy of religion tend toward the useless, if not the harmful.7

A Diverse Object of Inquiry First, the object of inquiry in any philosophy of religion that has something to offer to the academic study of religion must be religiously diverse—not the religious reason-giving of some one religion or type of religion but the religious reason-giving of all religions insofar as this is possible.8 (More on the “religious reason-giving” part of this phrase below.) For philosophers of religion hardly understand anything about human acts of religious reasongiving in general—their diversities, patterns, deployments, genealogies—if they limit their inquiry to a small subset of the whole. Worse, philosophers of religion risk mistaking part for whole. Arguably, analytic and continental philosophy of religion, at least as represented in these collections, are guilty of both. The object of inquiry in analytic and continental philosophy of religion tends not to be the historical religions and, even when it is, tends to be a philosophically rarefied Christianity.9 Consequently, when analytic and continental philosophers of religion do rise above their primary object of inquiry to generalize about religion or religious reason-giving in general, they tend to do so in an ethnocentrically essentialistic manner. Now analytic and continental philosophy of religion do both make important contributions to the philosophy of religion—the former, the dense investigation and critical evaluation of theistic reason-giving; the latter, the creative exploration of new forms of religious reason-giving in “postsecular” continental philosophy. But one need only read the tables of

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contents of these collections to know that the analytic collections are almost exclusively occupied with Christian theism, the continental collections with continental philosophy. And to read the essays themselves is to find that not one of them engages historical religion outside the “Judeo-Christian” fold in any significant respect, and that not more than one in every ten engages historical religion at all. Each set of collections does contain a call for things to be different. Wayne Hudson (2002, 293) concludes his exposition of the philosophies of religion of Schelling and Bloch with seven implications for the future of continental philosophy of religion, the first of which implores it to move beyond work that is “ethnocentric and unhistorical”: First, there is a clear implication that philosophy of religion needs to take account of historically positive data about religious traditions, actual mythologies, and particular esoterisms, and not only be about Kantian aporias based on ahistorical notions of religion, reason, or language. This implies that work on the philosophy of religion that is ethnocentric and unhistorical may require substantial qualification. And J.L. Schellenberg (2009, 260) maintains that theistic solutions to the problem of faith and reason are premature apart from “careful and sympathetic attention to other religious traditions”: Religion in the world today is hugely diverse, but many of those concerned with theism still live in something of a “bubble” when it comes to acquaintance with religion. Furthermore—and here we have another testimony to human immaturity . . .—theistic religious traditions are often models of self-preoccupation, fixated on details of self-articulation and self-preservation. Within such an ethos, reinforced by emotion-heightening participation in particularized religious practice and ritual, there is not much motivation to really get to know people and ideas and experiences in other traditions. But precisely such careful and sympathetic attention to other religious traditions and the experiences associated with them is required to become justified in believing what one’s own theistic religious experience suggests. . . . In this context, for the theist to believe that her present religious experiences tell the truth about the universe instead of resisting belief and taking such experiences as nudging her further along

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an exciting though presently inconclusive line of research, seems to have rather little to do with the philosopher’s burning desire for real truth and understanding. One of the analytic collections also contains a couple of essays that actually are different. Tomis Kapitan ventures beyond the theistic in proffering a naturalistic definition of being religious that ranges over all the historical religions.10 And Graham Oppy (2009) draws on religious traditions as diverse as Zoroastrianism and Dvaita Vedānta in problematizing reductive theistic stipulations of the concept of God. But such efforts are simply drowned out. And that by which they are drowned out could, in some cases, be characterized as ethnocentric essentialism. In the case of analytic philosophy of religion, such ethnocentrism is evident in the very editorial introductions to these collections. The editors of New Waves in Philosophy of Religion conclude their introductory discussion of the contents of their collection—contents that resemble the standard fare in analytic philosophy of religion: attributes of a theistic God, proofs for a theistic God, implications of the existence of a theistic God for human morality and existence, and a dash of Christian doctrine (atonement, in this case) for good measure—by claiming that “[i]t should be clear by now that this volume covers a wide range of topics from many different perspectives” (Nagasawa and Wielenberg 2009, x). And although the editors of Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion are careful to point out that their content is restricted to issues related to classical theism in general and Christian doctrine in particular (Peterson and VanArragon 2004, xi), their exclusion of nontheistic religion gives the impression that questions such as “Does science discredit religion?” and “Is God’s existence the best explanation of the universe?” can be meaningfully answered in such absence, and furthermore, their inclusion of debates about Christian doctrine such as “Is it rational for Christians to believe in the resurrection?” and “Should a Christian be a mind–body dualist?” gives the impression that philosophy of religion is really just Christian theology. For continental philosophy of religion, this is usually less stated than implied—namely, in this case, that to get clear about the nature of religion one need only consult a continental philosopher or two, perhaps in conjunction with a Christian mystic or two. But for one essay in particular, these assumptions are effectively identified with the entirety of continental philosophy (of religion). From its very Kantian inception, declares Matthew Halteman (2002, 59), continental philosophy has argued “that theo-

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logical inquiry is secondary to the more fundamental philosophical task of elucidating a conceptual logic of ‘the religious,’ the universal structure that underlies all particular faith traditions.” For Halteman in particular, this logic or structure is first exemplified by concepts such as infinite love, responsibility, sin and salvation, repentance, and sacrifice, then located in the infinite and therefore unattainable demands of justice and responsibility that Derrida reads out of Levinas’s reading of Kierkegaard’s reading of the myth of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac (see 62–63, 64–70). Of course, this characterization of religion’s universal structure looks all too much like the latest in a long line of modern Western constructions.11 But it is not the result as much as the method that should bother us here: why look to only the (post)modern and Western for the universal structure of religion? This is what is so troubling about the object of inquiry in continental and analytic philosophy of religion—not just the restriction of it to continental philosophy or ahistorical theism, but the ethnocentric essentializing of it as the whole of religion in general or the privileged instance of religious reason-giving in particular.

A Diverse Community of Inquiry Second, the subject that inquires in a philosophy of religion that has something to offer to the academic study of religion should strive to remain as ideologically critical and corrective as possible—a community of inquirers that brings critical awareness of its biases to its objects of inquiry, allowing those objects to correct those biases. Of course, this is not to say that we can ever come to leave all our distorting biases at the door of inquiry, let alone even come to awareness of them. But we must try. And since we can never succeed, it is of crucial importance that a diversity of biases be represented among the inquiring community. This means, for starters, diversity of gender, race, and class. But in the case of philosophy of religion, diversity of creed is arguably even more important. And this is just where analytic and continental philosophy of religion appear least diverse (at least as represented in these putatively representative collections).12 With respect to religion, not only are the objects of inquiry in these essays almost exclusively restricted to Christianity—in the few cases where such objects are historical religions—but several essays also contain confessional moments in which the authors give indication either that they are themselves Christian or undertake their projects for Christian ends.13 And with respect to philosophy, not only does the analytic–continental

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distinction seem more rigid in the philosophy of religion than in any other area of philosophical inquiry, but there is also little evidence of dialogue, let alone collaboration, between the two fields. Such lack of diversity is in itself problematic in that it limits the objectivity of the inquiring community: if it is the case that preconceptions can never be put aside entirely and may even be constitutive of inquiry, then it is important that as wide a variety of perspectives as possible be represented among the inquiring community. Much more problematic, though, is when this lack of diversity is ignored, if not actively encouraged. Here we sometimes see not, as we might expect, critical awareness of the relative homogeneity of the inquiring community combined with active efforts to open that community to difference and alterity, but rather the celebration of bias, particularly in the form of the deliberate adoption of religiously confessional standpoints; the refusal to expose those biases to correction, particularly from outside the inquiring community; and the appeal to authority, as a surrogate for actual arguments. Take, for example, John D. Caputo’s “The Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God” (RPR), which, for all of its interesting attention to the concept of “divine time” in the Christian New Testament and Peter Damian, takes this concept to be both manifestly true and devastatingly confounding to “the philosophers, who are accustomed to arrange things according to the principles of being, reason, order, possibility, presence, sense, and meaning” (Caputo 2002, 53). In this one move, it would seem that Caputo establishes a certain Christian-postmodern homogeneity among the inquiring community, grounds the findings of that community not in publically contestable reasons but in religious-philosophical authority, and protects these biases and findings from scrutiny by the diverse others outside the community. Now Caputo’s essay may be extreme. Nevertheless, it is still the case that, for all of its lip service to alterity and difference, there is very little actual alterity and difference in continental philosophy of religion.14 There are, of course, feminists. And here, it should be noted, Pamela Sue Anderson (2003, 199) deserves attention not only for her emphasis on the importance of plurality in practices and practitioners but also for her recognition that such plurality “must remain distinct from higher-order claims to unity or agreement” that make it possible “to judge good and bad beliefs or inclusive, exclusive and hurtful practices.” Beyond feminism, however, these continental collections are absent of philosophical otherness, and altogether devoid of religious otherness.15 Lacking even feminists, at least in these collections, the situation in analytic philosophy of religion appears bleaker.16 It is true: here be atheists.

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But the majority of essays in these analytic collections appear to be written by (Christian) theists in defense of (Christian) theism.17 And those that are not, taken together with those that are, give the impression that the only interesting and important clash of ideas in the philosophy of religion is between theism and atheism. Now there are understandable reasons for this, reasons that largely pertain to the genealogy of Western philosophy of religion. But times have changed—increasingly we live in a global society populated by a teeming diversity of religious institutions and practices and beliefs, most of which are not covered by the concept of ahistorical theism. What is of chief concern in these collections, therefore, is not the absence of religious-ideological diversity among the inquiring community as much as the absence of awareness that this is a problem that needs to be addressed. There is again one exception. And it just so happens to occur in an exchange with the most explicit insistence on sectarian commitment in the philosophy of religion: the debate between John Schellenberg and Paul Moser on divine hiddenness. Schellenberg’s (2004, 41) arguments for why divine hiddenness justifies atheism are most notable for the “consequence” that is drawn from them, which is not that naturalistic atheism is therefore epistemically preferable to traditional theism, but that neither category is very satisfactory, that the “range and diversity and complexity of religion” far exceeds these options, that the philosophy of religion is therefore “potentially far more richer and far more wide-ranging” than these options allow, and that the hiddenness of the traditional theistic God might in fact allow “the real God—ultimate reality as it really is—to be more clearly revealed.” But this expansive understanding of the philosophy of religion is lost on Moser, who argues in response that one simply cannot judge matters of divine hiddenness outside of a “filial relationship” with the God of Christianity, that philosophy of religion, in essence, can be undertaken only by subjects who confess allegiance to the Christian faith and inquire about objects that have been revealed by the Christian God: Proper knowledge of God, according to Jesus, requires one’s humbly, faithfully, and lovingly standing in a child-parent, or filial, relationship to God as one’s righteously gracious Father. Such filial knowledge rarely surfaces in philosophy of religion, or even in Jewish-Christian approaches to knowledge of God. This omission is regrettable indeed. (Moser 2004, 45) As in the case of Caputo’s essay, Moser’s essay is extreme. Nevertheless, it is representative insofar as a significant number of the essays in these

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c­ollections seem to assume that if a “God” exists, it is of the Christiantheistic variety; that if religion is true, it is of the Christian-theistic variety; and that if the practice of philosophy of religion is to be conducted from the vantage point of some particular religious perspective, it is of the Christiantheistic variety. This gives an entirely wrong impression of philosophy of religion, which is not a confessional-religious activity that assumes and supports some particular religious faith, but an academic field of inquiry that seeks, above all, to understand and explain the diversities and patterns of religious reason-giving in the religions of the world. As such, it cannot arbitrarily stipulate some one religion true from the outset. (Why not Yoruba? Why not Sikhism?) Nor can it arbitrarily stipulate adherence to some one religion as prerequisite for its practice. (Why not Islam? Why not Daoism?) Reasons would need to be offered in both cases, reasons that would need to be contested by a diverse community of inquiry, a community that would no doubt find such appeals to authority unconvincing.

Thick Description Third, any philosophy of religion that has something to offer to the academic study of religion must begin with, and linger for some time over, the thick description of religious reason-giving in the religions of the world. The religious reason-giving part of this phrase puts succinctly what it is that philosophers of religion study, and does so in a way that shows not only how philosophers of religion study an aspect of religion that is typically not covered by other subfields of religious studies but also how philosophers of religion study this aspect of religion as something humans do (rather than something humans think or something “God” is). Still, religious reason-giving should be construed broadly, including both formal and informal acts of reason-giving, both the grounds and ends of reason-giving, both the ideas that populate reason-giving and the theories that reason-giving supports, both the authors and audiences of reason-giving, both the proponents and opponents of reason-giving, and both the cultural contexts and historical trajectories of reason-giving.18 All this is to say that religious reason-giving should be described “thickly.” It is also to say a diversity of methods should be used to generate such descriptions. But in the way of methods of description, hermeneutical and critical ones stand out insofar as they are attentive to the contexts of both the inquirer and inquired in a manner that is both “affirmative” and “suspicious.”19 And in the way of objects of description,

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moments of contestation and change stand out insofar as it is in such moments that humans actively reason with one another about religion— about what religious reasons they take as reasonable and unreasonable and why; about how they defend, modify, and abandon religious reasons and why; and so forth.20 Now, one might expect continental philosophy of religion to excel here, if only because these hermeneutical, critical, and genealogical tools come from a continental toolbox. But in fact there are very few essays in these continental collections that exhibit a hermeneutically sensitive and ideologically aware reading of a “text” from outside the continental philosophical tradition itself. Of course, very few even read the texts of the religions of the world. But even those that do are generally inattentive to the details of the text, show few signs of subjecting their prejudices about the text to critical reflection, and fail to admit or exhibit moments when the text challenges their prejudices about it. Take, for example, William Franke’s essay “Apophasis and the Turn of Philosophy to Religion” (IJPR), which generalizes away the significant textual diversities of classical Neoplatonism, reduces this historical other to the contemporary same of continental philosophy, and appropriates this constructed hybrid entity qua monolithic whole to solve the problem of pluralism and protect divine mystery from human idolatry.21 Again there are exceptions—or, in this case, an exception: Jonathan Ellsworth’s essay (2002), which, unlike Franke’s (2006), contains a considerable amount of textual and historical detail concerning the ascetic practices that were historically constitutive of negative theology, looks to historical apophasis for a critique of contemporary philosophy’s “divorce of negative theology from its constitutive practices” and consequent “betrayal” of negative theology, and is careful to distinguish those aspects of apophasis and asceticism that should be recovered and practiced from those that should not (see Ellsworth 2002, 214). But this exception notwithstanding, these continental collections do not read the world’s religions with thick hermeneutical affirmation; and this exception withstanding, they do not read the world’s religions with critical hermeneutical suspicion. So much the worse, then, for analytic philosophy of religion, for which hermeneutical, critical, and genealogical modes of philosophical practice are foreign. Here, inquiry usually begins, at least in these collections, not by reading the “texts” of the historical religions, but by positing the notion of theism, which is then conceptually clarified and argumentatively evaluated in some respect. And even when such inquiry does read such texts—as, for example, in the case of the Moser essay mentioned above, which nudges

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the debate about divine hiddenness away from the theistic God and toward the “Hebraic God”—it only ever reads the texts of Christianity and almost always reads them affirmatively. Although this neglect of thick and critical description is true across the board, it is perhaps most obvious in the case of the problem of evil, which is considered solely with respect to whether and how evil can be reconciled with theism. Missing in all such essays, therefore—and especially in William Rowe’s debate with Daniel HowardSnyder and Michael Bergmann—is not only the sheer recognition of the diversity of forms and contexts of reason-giving about anomie in the religions of the world, but also a critical exploration of the pervasive and positive role that such reasons play for them qua “sacred canopy.”22 Instead, the debate is limited from the outset to “restricted theism”—the core theistic belief “that there exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good being (God)”—thereby effectively excluding not only the nontheistic religions but also the theistic ones (Rowe 2004, 4).23 To be fair, such moves might be appropriate if one’s investigation is only of the coherence and rationality of theism. But if one wants to do philosophy of religion, to investigate religious reason-giving in the religions of the world, it is not (for the simple reason that it is neither historically grounded nor religiously diverse). And the latter is arguably interesting and fruitful where the former is not. (It would seem that the only thing some sixty years of debate about the rationality of theism has achieved is an impoverishment of our understanding of the diversities and complexities of reason-giving in the religions of the world.) Moreover, the latter would bring a greater appreciation for the contextuality of religious reason-giving, and with it an expanded understanding of the evaluation of religious reason-giving, that might serve the former well.

Formal Comparison Fourth, since any philosophy of religion that has something to contribute to religious studies must work cross-culturally, investigating reason-giving in many different religions of the world as possible, it must also work comparatively, undertaking formal acts of comparison that are critically aware of both the categories under which and the methods by which comparisons are made. As J.Z. Smith famously argued, there are no rules for the production of comparisons. But as the Comparative Religious Ideas Project has responded, this need not mean that comparison is magic (Neville and Wildman 2001a, 2001b). Rather, through the judicious selection

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of “vague” categories for comparison and repeated correction of those categories through exposure to the data, the categories for comparison can be refined over time, thereby growing more and more capable of producing less and less biased comparisons. Given this process of correction, it ultimately does not matter too much what categories one begins with, so long as those categories are vague enough to register different and possibly contradictory entries that fall under them. But why not make things easier and begin with our best candidates for human universals—for example, the panhuman behaviors, functions, and dispositions identified by William Paden (2001)?24 In the case of continental philosophy of religion, it can at least be said that the effort it has expended in extracting scores of new categories from the texts of recent continental philosophers provides a potential source of categories for cross-cultural comparison. Unfortunately, though, these categories are still of Western provenance and therefore not only fail to offset the systematic bias toward Western forms of religious reason-giving in the philosophy of religion, but also, if actually applied in acts of cross-cultural comparison, would most likely result in the ethnocentric distortion and oversimplification of the non-Western other.25 Just imagine the ethnocentric havoc that might be wreaked if, for example, the concepts that Halteman (RPR) provides as examples of the universal structure of the religious—infinite love, responsibility, sin and salvation, repentance, and sacrifice—were to be drawn on in formal East–West comparisons. Nor has any critical attention been paid to the method by which comparisons are made when they are made. Anselm Min (2006, 114), for example, concludes his explication of apophatic motifs in Levinas, Derrida, and Marion by pronouncing, without any trace of critical reflection on methods or categories or criteria, that “[m]ore than any other religion, Christianity has to speak of God because God has spoken to us in the Son in the language of humanity, but also has to speak of God in such a way that it does not reduce God to another object in the world even if it is the highest or most exalted object.” These collections do contain one essay that advances formal categories for cross-cultural comparison: Fred Dallmayr (2006) arranges philosophical-theological theories of evil on a spectrum ranging from radical monism to radical dualism.26 But these categories appear to concern the metaphysics underlying these theories more than the theories themselves, and, moreover, are advanced for the express purpose of criticizing American foreign policy by undermining the theories of evil upon which it supposedly rests: extreme dualism, which is “profoundly questionable if not pernicious,” and the “theodicy-like

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a­ rguments” of extreme monism, which, since Auschwitz, have not only “lost their luster” but are in fact “obscene” (184). The case of analytic philosophy of religion is almost the opposite. Here, quite a bit of attention is sometimes paid to the categories and methods of comparison. But these comparisons are usually of “isms,” not the ideas and arguments of the historical religions. Moreover, they are almost always only between theism and atheism, and almost always conducted in a manner that is more combative than comparative.27 Some of this is true even of one of the three apparent exceptions in the analytic collections: a debate between Keith Yandell and Peter Byrne entitled “Can Only One Religion Be True?” (CDPR). Even here, the investigation is less a comparison of the religions of the world than an evaluation of yet another “ism,” with Yandell charging that (Hickean) religious pluralism is not only logically and rationally incoherent but also religiously and morally dangerous, and Byrne replying that (Byrnean) religious pluralism, in essence, both makes good religious sense and enjoys widespread popular support. Thus, here, the diversity of religious ideas is not a source for philosophical comparison but a problem for theological resolution, with Yandell arguing that, at most, only one religion can be true, and Byrne (2004b, 216) countering that “[t]he great religions seem to have a shared vision of the final good: it will consist in eternal union with or contemplation of a superhuman, supersensual spiritual source.” One might say, therefore, that critical comparison is precisely what this debate lacks. Perhaps Yandell and Bryne are not entirely to be faulted; perhaps blame is also to be placed both with the editors, who determined that the only debate in their collection in any way concerned with religious diversity would in fact be about whether Christians can believe that other religions are true, and with analytic philosophy in general, which tends either to ignore nontheistic religions altogether or to facilely assimilate or combatively defeat them.28 Nevertheless, there is little growth of comparative knowledge here with respect to broad, theistic-transcendent categories such as religion and religious reason-giving (let alone the precise similarities and differences between those phenomena that fall under these categories).

Multidimensional Evaluation Fifth, a philosophy of religion that has something to contribute to religious studies can and should critically evaluate those instances and forms of religious reason-giving that it describes and compares. This might not make

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some in the academic study of religion too happy. But evaluation need not mean what it seems. Evaluation should not come at the expense of description and comparison; in fact, evaluation requires antecedent description and comparison. (It is probably therefore the case that, given the current state of philosophy of religion, evaluation ought to be largely suspended until thick descriptions and formal comparisons can be produced, each of which will not only require a considerable amount of time and concerted effort but also be of great value to religious studies in and of themselves.29) Evaluation should also be diverse, an estimation of the successes and failures, uses and abuses, virtues and vices, and significances and insignificances of instances and forms of religious reason-giving in a diverse number of contexts, by a diverse community of inquirers, through a diverse set of criteria, with respect to a diverse set of aims. And evaluation should be undertaken fallibilistically, correctively. Still, evaluation is a critical component of a philosophy of religion that has something to contribute to the academic study of religion, for with it comes understanding about those instances and forms of religious reason-giving that have been and still are more and less plausible and valuable.30 It should by now come as no surprise that what we find in the case of analytic and continental philosophy of religion, at least in the case of these collections, is a rush to evaluate and appropriate religious concepts and arguments before undertaking the difficult, time-consuming work of describing those concepts and arguments in all of their messy and complex social-historical details. Given this, evaluation and appropriation tends to be rather narrow in range—in the case of analytic philosophy of religion, of the coherency or truth of the concept or argument; in the case of continental philosophy of religion, of the value or significance of the concept or argument. Now it may seem that critical evaluation is the strong suit of analytic philosophy of religion (much in the way that hermeneutic description seemed to be the strong suit of continental philosophy of religion). And in some ways it is. Unlike continental philosophy of religion, whose evaluations are often tacit and private, analytic philosophy of religion explicitly articulates and publically contests its evaluations. But it is also the case that critical evaluation is, on the one hand, too much of a strong suit in that it is almost always the only end of analytic philosophy of religion (to the neglect of thick description and formal comparison), and, on the other hand, not enough of a strong suit in that it is usually only between modern Western theism and atheism (or between varieties of theism) and

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usually only for the sake of demonstrating one or the other of these “isms” rational. A brief survey of these collections’ editorial introductions and tables of contents once again makes this clear. So does a close reading of their contents, in this case the debate between William Alston and Evan Fales regarding whether religious experience justifies religious belief. Here, the rush to evaluate (positively) has Alston (2004, 134–136) reducing the teeming diversity of religious experiences to those that are direct, nonsensory, and focal “perceptions of God” (which are direct, while those of “a mysterious presence in nature” are not); deploying “God” as a term that “ranges over any supreme reality, however construed” (where such construal is either of the personal-theistic or impersonal-Buddhist sort); and limiting the religious beliefs produced by religious experiences to those about “what God is ‘doing’ vis-à-vis the subject” and the “divine characteristics one might conceivably experience God as having.” So much, then, has been assumed or distorted from the very beginning that a critical evaluation of Alston’s conclusion—religious beliefs produced by religious experiences are prima facie rationally acceptable, at least in the absence of successful “overriders”—hardly seems necessary, or even possible. Fales (2004, 146) is exactly right in claiming that “the extreme variability of mystical experiences and the doctrines they are recruited to support,” not to mention the relative ease with which such experiences are explained naturalistically, makes the problem of cross-checking them “acute.”31 For continental philosophy of religion, this “rush to evaluate” is not as blatant. On the one hand, there is a general allergy to critical evaluation, fueled in large part by a disdain for the overemphasis on evaluation in analytic philosophy of religion, manifested in small part as an outright hostility toward and protectiveness against critical evaluation. In addition to Trakakis, who exemplifies the former, and Caputo, who exemplifies the latter, the contributions of both Philip Goodchild and Grace Jantzen are here apropos, both for their strengths and for their weaknesses. Goodchild (2002a, 28–29, 38) takes a refreshingly expansive view of human reason, one in which objectivity, which is never final or certain, is a product of the multiplication of perspectives; but then Goodchild’s (2002b, 322) concluding essay in RPR moves to protect religion from critical evaluation and naturalistic explanation, maintaining that philosophy of religion must be situated in direct experience itself rather than mediated conceptuality, that religion by nature exceeds rational description and definition, and therefore that theories of religion—among which he ranks history, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, cultural studies, and comparative religion—are unable to

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grasp religion as it is in its excess. And in one and the same essay, Grace Jantzen (2002, 141–145) looks to psychoanalytic theories for a naturalistic explanation of religious phenomena (death in particular), launching a fleet of ostensibly objective truth-claims about such theories and phenomena in the process, all the while excoriating analytic philosophy of religion for its emphasis on objectivity in rationality and truth. Thus, on the other hand, it would seem that continental philosophy of religion in fact does engage in critical evaluation of its object of inquiry, though does so in a way that is not fully aware or honest about what it is up to, and therefore, unlike analytic philosophy of religion, does not explicitly articulate and publically contest these evaluations. Of course, my greater complaint here, one that applies to analytic and continental philosophy of religion alike, is that evaluation is only of (post)modern, Western forms of religious reason-giving, and therefore much too narrow in range, and always prior to thick description and formal comparison, and therefore much too biased in result. Perhaps one might retort that philosophy of religion need only consider the most recent and strongest of arguments. But this appears both religiously ethnocentric and historically naïve. Philosophy of religion needs to take account of religious reason-giving in as many places and times as possible. Only then will it be in a position not only to understand religious reason-giving as a general human activity but also to evaluate the sundry forms of religious reason-giving.

The End This, again, is the great irony of contemporary philosophy of religion, at least as it is represented in these putatively representative collections: as it thrives most, it offers least to the academic study of religion. Of course, this raises multiple questions, the most obvious of which is why should philosophy of religion want to be in step with and contribute to the academic study of religion? For me, the answer to this question is as simple as this: philosophy of religion philosophizes about that which religious studies. More elaborately, if religious studies is the academic field that studies religious phenomena, the goals of which include, minimally, a hermeneutically nuanced and ideologically aware description of a diverse array of religious phenomena, then any philosophy of religion that claims to philosophize about these religious phenomena is well advised to pay attention to these descriptions. This is not to say that every philosophy of religion needs to

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pay attention to such descriptions; there are uses of a “philosophy of religion” that works instead from the concept of ahistorical theism or the writings of postmodern philosophers (as will be explained in a couple of paragraphs). But if a certain philosophy of religion seeks to philosophize instead about the religions of the world in their localized complexity and cultural diversity, then that philosophy of religion should pay attention to the field of academic inquiry that is engaged in such endeavors. And not just to pay attention to, but also to contribute to—in an effort to grow our overall knowledge of the religious phenomena under investigation. It is my hope that the twenty-first century might finally see the creative growth and institutional support of such a philosophy of religion. That neither continental nor analytic philosophy of religion pays much attention to the field of study that generates, at minimum, hermeneutically nuanced and ideologically aware descriptions of a diverse array of religious phenomena, that neither continental nor analytic philosophy of religion pays much attention to historical religions beyond a certain Christianity, raises another question: Are our existing forms of philosophy of religion really doing philosophy of religion? Again, the answer to this question seems as simple as this: if a philosophy of religion is supposed to philosophize about religion, then neither continental nor analytic philosophy of religion is philosophy of religion. Rather, they are, at best, philosophies of narrow subsets of religion (religionized postmodernism and Christian theism, respectively), and at worst, theological efforts at understanding and defending these subsets (that more closely resembles philosophical or apologetic theology).32 This is not to call for an end to either analytic or continental philosophy of religion. In fact, both projects have quite useful ends. Analytic philosophy of religion excels at encouraging the rational investigation of a certain Christian-theistic faith. Continental philosophy of religion excels at encouraging a certain postreligious faith. (For what it is worth, they are therefore much more similar than is often appreciated.) Moreover, both offer invaluable sources and insightful studies of a select range of religious reason-giving. Still, it might be better if they no longer called themselves philosophy of religion. Of course this struggle is about much more than a name; it is about the very heart of philosophy of religion—what it should be and how it should be practiced. But it is also about a name. For as long as the presses continue to be flooded by books that claim to be philosophies of religion but in fact are really only philosophies of Christian theism or religionized postmodernism, we philosophers of religion continue to show the field of religious studies that we do not have much to offer to the

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academic study of religion. Maybe, then, Trakakis was half right about two things: existing forms of philosophy of religion should end, though only in name, and philosophy of religion is in need of a “completely fresh start,” though only as a respectable field of inquiry that has something to offer to the academic study of religion. NOTES

  1. This is best evidenced in one of Trakakis’s central chapters, his critique of theodicy as too objective and detached, too scientific and logical, too professional and technical. The entire chapter is premised by the claim that theodicy is “one of the heartlands of analytic philosophy of religion”; those analytic philosophers of religion who in some way object to the problem of theodicy are therefore “lonely voices in the wilderness” (Trakakis 2008, 2, 6). But then, in an attempt to bolster his critique, Trakakis goes on to note more than twice as many analytic philosophers of religion who are criticizing theodicy as those doing theodicy. A second example—Trakakis’s defense of perspectivalism against epistemic foundationalism— is almost the inverse: instead of noted diversity being marginalized, actual diversity is unnoted. I frankly do not see any philosopher of religion disagreeing with the central claim of Trakakis’s epistemic “perspectivalism”—the conditioned and contingent nature of knowledge (59). And I certainly do not see any philosopher of religion claiming to attain “absolute truth,” “the final answer on God and religion,” or “objective knowledge,” “the knowledge of things as they are in themselves” (60, 75). As one prominent analytic theologian has taken pains to explain, not only is there a good deal of diversity in analytic philosophy about such matters, but most analytic philosophers of religion simply do not fit such a caricature (Rea 2009).  2. Trakakis appears to confuse the philosophy of religion with what looks more like Christian spiritual formation, accusing it of ignoring or reducing to purely abstract concerns the existential and lived dimension, of failing to come to terms with “the mysterious transcendent reality that is disclosed in religious practice” due to “an attachment to scientific norms of rationality and truth,” and, in the case of theodicy, not only of passively neglecting the needs of but also of actively injuring those who suffer (115, 2, 29). Of course there is, in a good many contexts, something wrong with reducing the lived dimension of religion to purely abstract concerns, with applying scientific norms of rationality and truth to religious practice, and with professionalizing and technicalizing the philosophy of religion. But the professional practice of philosophy of religion is not one such context.   3. About anomie (which encompasses many more types of nomos-threatening disorder than evil), see Berger (1967). Note that Trakakis (2008, 11) does recognize that, in the case of theodicy, “the heart of the problem lies with the kind of God, or the specific conception of God, that forms the basis of discussion.” And he even goes on to add that this is “to call attention to the nature of the divine reality

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that is taken to be experienced in the world’s religious traditions” (11). But there is then no mention of religious traditions outside of the Abrahamic fold, nor really any awareness that “the nature of divine reality that is taken to be experienced” in such religions might be quite different—indeed, might not even be taken to be divine or real. Such considerations are not altogether absent from his co-authored essay (Chandha and Trakakis 2007), which he develops more explicitly in his essay in this volume. Even better, see Bilimoria (1995).  4. Trakakis (2008, 116). And the same is true of Trakakis’s other attempt to steer a new course for the philosophy of religion: his chapter 5 reading of Kazantzakis’s The Poor Man of God, which, in contradistinction to the preceding four chapters—chapters that are admitted to be terminologically, stylistically, and methodologically analytic in appearance—seeks “to take a glimpse at what a ‘philosophy without philosophy’ [Blanchot] might look like, what a ‘weak philosophy’ [Vattimo] could assume in practice” (85). What follows, though, is by no means clear, appearing most to resemble a “deconstruction without deconstruction”—a stylistically Derridean exposition of The Poor Man of God (complete with shifting marginalia) that seeks to locate not those interstices at which the text undermines itself but those quotes on which a continued critique of analytic philosophy of religion can be grounded. What is clear is that, once again, answers to the very sorts of questions that philosophers of religion should want to ask are assumed—answers, moreover, that privilege a certain Western (Romantic) understanding of God: Truth is like that. And the ultimate truth, Truth Itself, that is, God, always evades neat and accurate formulations, much to the consternation of philosophers and theologians. (88) The mind, with its sophisticated proofs and refutations, wishes to augment its authority, to “spread itself out and conquer the world not only by means of heaven but also by force,” whereas the simple, illiterate heart has no such ambitions, but desires only love and peace. (91) And so there is little of use here for any philosophy of religion that might have something to offer to the academic study of religion, a failing that seems partly attributable to the fact that Trakakis looks for viable alternatives to analytic philosophy of religion only within continental philosophy and narrative-literary approaches. (1, 113, 2)   5. More will be said about religious reason-giving under the upcoming section “Thick Description.” But for now, let me point out two things. Religious reasongiving puts succinctly what I believe philosophers of religion should study—localized human acts of reason-giving about religious matters, not generalized systems of religious ideas, not “divine” reality itself. Religious reason-giving also displays how philosophers of religion study an aspect of religion that is typically not covered by other subfields of religious studies (e.g., when philosophers of religion examine top-

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ics such as ritual and gender, they do so with respect to the reasons that humans offer about them).   6. A few brief words about my selection of sources are in order. I looked, first, for essay collections (so as to encounter as many different voices and viewpoints as possible); second, for works that concerned the nature and practice of analytic or continental philosophy of religion as such; and third, for essay collections that were published relatively recently. (At the time of my research, the second volume of OSPR was the most recent volume available.) I should also say that, although I do not quote from any other sources here, my estimations of analytic and continental philosophy of religion are also informed both by conferences I have attended on the futures of these subdisciplines (in 2011) and by additional essay collections, journal articles, seminal monographs, and comprehensive histories I have read from and about these subdisciplines. There are just too many sources to treat them all in this chapter. Also note well: all the editors of these collections maintain that the contents of their collections are representative or constitutive of their respective subdisciplines. Peterson and VanArragon (2004, xi) say their textbook is “designed to feature some of the most important current controversies in the philosophy of religion,” and thus that its debates are between “recognized experts” on “key questions.” Nagasawa and Wielenberg (2009, vii) say their volume “aims to gather together some of the best philosophers of religion of the new generation,” providing “an opportunity for young and up-and-coming philosophers of religion to review these developments [of earlier philosophers of religion] and introduce their own cutting-edge research.” Kvanvig (2009, vii) says his edited volume “continues the initial intention behind the series of attracting the best work from the premier philosophers of religion, as well as including the work of top philosophers outside this area when their work and interests intersect with issues in philosophy of religion,” and therefore believes that it contains “contributions by an impressive group of philosophers on topics of central importance to philosophy of religion.” Goodchild (2002a, 28, 29–38) indicates that the work presented in his collection is by “the contemporary inheritors of this tradition [of Enlightenment philosophy of religion]”; he then goes on to summarize the contents of the collection as five different approaches to the field of continental philosophy of religion. (Note also that these essays were first written in response to a call for papers that asked, “What is Continental philosophy of religion?”) Baker and Maxwell (2003, 1, 6) pronounce their collection both “an exploration and a showcase”—the former, as “an endeavor to delineate some of the content and dimensions of contemporary scholarship in the area of philosophy of religion in relation to the European or ‘Continental’ philosophical tradition”; the latter, as “authored by philosophers whose names may not immediately leap to mind to a broad philosophical audience when they think of philosophy of religion [“with some exceptions”], but who nonetheless are producing scholarship of the highest quality and thereby filling out the meaning of the term ‘Continental Philosophy of Religion.’” And about his edited issue of IJPR, Long (2006, 1) says, “The essays in

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this volume were invited with the hope that they might make more widely available and contribute to some of the discussions that are shaping recent continental philosophy of religion.”  7. As I make clear in my conclusion, this is not to say that analytic and continental philosophy of religion are not well suited to other ends. In fact, each constitutes a dense investigation of a narrow subset of religious reason-giving, and therefore contributes data to a wider, cross-cultural investigation of religious reasongiving. Thus, as I also make clear in my conclusion, I do not desire their demise (unlike Trakakis, who calls for the end of analytic philosophy of religion). I should also say here that I am not under any illusion that analytic and continental philosophers of religion actually do or possibly will think of their subdisciplines as in step with and contributing to the academic study of religion. (As one anonymous reviewer indicated, such philosophers of religion are usually trained and appointed in philosophy departments—this is the discipline with which they are in step and to which they seek to contribute.) And so my goal here is less that of convincing such philosophers of religion to jump ship than that of helping row and steer an alternative philosophy of religion that is in step with and seeks to contribute to religious studies. And by no means am I alone in this. Among the many contributions to a philosophy of religion that is historically grounded and religiously diverse, I count some of the contributions of my mentors at Boston University: Wesley Wildman (2010), John Clayton (2006), and Robert Neville (e.g., the publications of the Comparative Religious Ideas Project). I am pleased also to count some of the contributions to this very volume, notably Kanaris’s, Park’s, Raschke’s, Roberts’s, Trakakis’s, and Wildman’s.   8. My understanding of inquiry is influenced by Wesley Wildman (2010), my understanding of religious reason-giving, by John Clayton (2006). And my response to the vexed issue of whether there are religions outside the modern West is shaped by Kevin Schilbrack (2010). To be sure, the philosopher of religion should tread carefully with the category of religion, mindful not to homogenize and ossify, privatize and autonomize, transcendentalize and sacralize. In fact, philosophers of religion might want to dispense with the category of religion when identifying acts of religious reason-giving since what matters here is not that such acts occur under the auspices of some “religion” (as opposed to, say, some “philosophy” or some “culture”) but that they pertain to some ultimate problem, solution, path, destination, reality, or truth for some community. Dispensing with the category of religion in this respect might help the philosopher of religion see and appreciate a wider array of acts of religious reason-giving. Indeed, it might help the philosopher of religion see and appreciate acts of religious reason-giving among the philosophizing of analytic and continental philosophy of religion. This is to say that although the object of inquiry in analytic and continental philosophy of religion often is not the historical religions (but rather the concept of theism or the texts of postmodernity), the activities of analytic and continental philosophy of religion constitute histori-

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cal acts of religious reason-giving that can be investigated as such. I hope that this suffices as a response to one anonymous reviewer’s concerns about my use of the concept historical religions. To be sure, there is no neat distinction between inquiry into, e.g., tetralemmas in Nagarjuna, proofs in Plantinga, and aporias in Derrida. What matters most here is that the investigation of religious reason-giving covers a wide array of cultural-historical acts, not just ahistorical theistic or postmodern philosophical ones.  9. Examples of neglect of the historical religions in general and the nonAbrahamic religions in particular abound. For the analytic collections, this includes the following: in the case of the attributes and actions of God, the debates between William Hasker and Paul Helm (CDPR) and between Michael Murray and David Basinger (CDPR), as well as the essays of Daniel Hill (NWPR), Klaas Kraay (NWPR), Brian Leftow (OSPR), and Ted Warfield (OSPR); in the case of arguments for/against the existence of God, the debates between John Worrall and Del Ratzsch (CDPR) and between Richard Gale and Bruce Reichenbach (CDPR) and between William Alston and Evan Fales (CDPR), as well as the essays by Alexander Pruss (NWPR), Neil Manson (NWPR), Bradley Monton (OSPR), and Jordan Sobel (OSPR); in the case of theodicy, the debate between William Rowe and Daniel Howard-Snyder/ Michael Bergmann (CDPR), as well as the essays by Michael Almeida (OSPR), Daniel Howard-Snyder (OSPR), and Hugh McCann (OSPR); and in the case of the beliefs and actions of theists, the debate between Dean Zimerman and Lynne Baker (CDPR), as well as the essays of David Efrid (NWPR), Christian Miller (NWPR), Daniel Howard-Synder (NWPR), Christopher Eberle (NWPR), Thaddeus Metz (NWPR), and Christian Miller (OSPR). And when there is consideration of the historical religions, it is usually cursory and Christian: in the debate between J.L. Schellenberg and Paul Moser about divine hiddenness (CDPR), Moser considers evidence for divine hiddenness in the Bible; in the debate between Gale and Reichenbach (CDPR) about the cosmological proof, Reichenbach considers whether a gap remains between the God it proves and the God of the theistic religions; the debate between Stephen Davis and Michael Martin (CDPR) about whether it is rational for Christians to believe in the resurrection considers relevant New Testament passages; the debate between Peter Byrne and Keith Yandell (CDPR) recognizes the diversity of the world’s religions (and, in Byrne’s case, also within each religion); the debate between William Hasker and Paul Helm (CDPR) about whether God takes risks considers some tensions between the God of the Bible and the philosophical god of theism; the debate between Janine Idziak and Craig Boyd/Raymond VanArragon (CDPR) on divine command morality (CDPR) focuses on biblical evidence of divine commands; in the debate between Jerry Walls and Thomas Talbott (CDPR), Talbott counters the God of theism with the God of the New Testament; the essay of T.J. Mawson (NWPR) considers nontheistic answers to the question “Why is there anything?”; the essay of Tim Bayne and Greg Restall (NWPR) looks to recent biblical commentary to support their participatory model

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of the atonement; the essay of Hud Hudson offers a new metaphysical understanding of the biblical-Christian myth of a “fall”; the essay of Graham Oppy (OSPR) considers some varieties of theism, nontheism, and polytheism; the essay of Tomis Kapitan (OSPR) develops a definition of religion that ranges over several different types of historical religions; and the essay of J.L. Schellenberg (OSPR) considers future nontheistic configurations of rational religion. In my estimation, it is only the essays of Oppy (OSPR) and Kapitan (OSPR) that substantially engage historical religions beyond the Abrahamic traditions. This makes for two essays out of fortyseven. Matters are perhaps worse in the continental collections. The majority of the essays considered only recent Continental philosophers. From RPR this includes Philip Goodchild (both essays), Matthew Halteman, Donna Jowett, Bettina Bergo, Gary Banham, Grace Jantzen, Graham Ward, Gregory Sadler, Clayton Crockett, and Wayne Hudson; from ECCPR, Jeffrey Robbins, Will Large, Jones Irwin, Eric Boynton, Jim Kanaris, Michael Purcell, Clayton Crockett, and Pamela Sue Anderson; and from IJPR, Michael Purcell, Richard Cohen, Pamela Sue Anderson, Anselm Min, Merold Westphal, and Maeve Cooke. A couple of these essays also included consideration of recent analytic philosophers: Pamela Sue Anderson (RPR, ECCPR) and Hent de Vries. And a few others were less expository and more constructive in nature: Mark Nelson (ECCPR), Deane-Peter Baker (ECCPR), Eugene Thomas Long (IJPR), and Calvin Schrag (IJPR). But only nine (of forty-one) spent significant time with the historical “religions”: John D. Caputo (RPR: Christian gospels and Peter Damian), Jonathan Ellsworth (RPR: pagan and Abrahamic apophasis), Edith Wyschogrod (RPR: Neoplatonism; IJPR: Jewish halakah), Karmen MacKendrick (ECCPR: Gospel of John), Catherine Pickstrock (ECCPR: Plato), Patrick Lenta (ECCPR: South African jurisprudence), William Franke (IJPR: Damascius), and Fred Dallmayr (IJPR: theodicy in several different religions). And none (of forty-one) spent significant time with non-Abrahamic religions. 10. Kapitan (2009) defines being religious as follows: “a person is religious in virtue of (1) possessing certain attitudes that determine a fundamental problem, and (2) engaging in efforts to resolve that problem” (83). Religion, then, is the nominalization of this human activity: “the impulse or tendency in human beings to participate in the religious response to the religious problem” (91). 11. Compare Del Ratzsch’s (2004, 73) characterization of the “core beliefs shared by nearly every religion”: A supernatural person—God—created the cosmos. God cares about humans. God ultimately controls cosmic and human history. God can intervene in earthly events. There is objective meaning/significance to human life both now and after death.

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12. As note 10 suggests, only Oppy’s and Kapitan’s contributions to OSPR devote significant attention to religions other than Christianity or Judaism. This makes for two contributions out of eighty-eight, far fewer than the twelve contributions by women. It is true, as one anonymous reviewer pointed out, that these collections appear to be just as homogenous with respect to race. But given that they are collections in the philosophy of religion, their lack of diversity with respect to religious-philosophical commitments is more conspicuous. It is also true both in general that content is not necessarily indicative of commitment, and in particular that the commitments of these contributors are not always discernable. But when they are, they are almost always of a Christian-theistic (or antitheistic) persuasion, rarely of a nontheist, and never of a polytheist persuasion. (For evidence and exceptions, see the following note.) Add to this (1) the relative lack of awareness of the religious-ideological homogeneity of the inquiring community, (2) the relative lack of effort in the diversification of the religious-ideological commitments of the inquiring community, (3) and the relative lack of critical attention to the crosscultural applicability of concepts such as religion and theism, and we have a fairly strong case for the relative narrowness of creed among the inquiring community. 13. I do not mean to suggest that the mere articulation of Christian-theistic commitments is problematic. It is only so (in the context of the philosophy of religion) when unbalanced and unchecked by other religious-philosophical commitments. These are the essays in which such commitments are stated or implied: Howard-Synder (NWPR), Bayne and Restall (NWPR), Hudson (OSPR), Howard-Synder and Bergmann (CDPR), Moser (CDPR), Ratzsch (CDPR), Davis (CDPR), Yandell (CDPR), Murray (CDPR), Basinger (CDPR), Walls (CDPR), Talbott (CDPR), Idziak (CDPR), Boyd and VanArragon (CDPR), Zimmerman (CDPR), Baker (CDPR), Caputo (RPR), MacKendrick (ECCPR), Nelson (ECCPR), and Min (IJPR). Antitheistic commitments are most explicitly articulated in Rowe (CDPR), Worrall (CDPR), Fales (CDPR), and Martin (CDPR), and nontheistic commitments in Schellenberg (CDPR), Bryne (CDPR), and Long (IJPR). 14. A notable exception can be found among another of Philip Goodchild’s (2003) edited collections: Difference in Philosophy of Religion. But this collection is not identified as a work in continental philosophy of religion. 15. There are ten contributions by women in these three collections, four of which advance feminist perspectives, three of which are written by Anderson: Jantzen (RPR), Anderson (RPR), Anderson (ECCPR), Anderson (IJPR). 16. Of the forty-seven contributions to these collections, only two were written by women—Idziak (CDPR) and Rudder Baker (CDPR)—and none advanced a feminist perspective. The closest these contributions come to doing so is the contribution by J.L. Schellenberg (CDPR) that will be treated later in this paragraph. (Schellenberg [2004, 35] maintains that one reason why we underestimate the force of the argument from divine hiddenness is that we tend to think uncritically of God

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as a father and of fathers as distant or absent, and we therefore fail to appreciate the fact that attributes such as caring and closeness, compassion and empathy are “nonnegotiable in any theistic view that takes the moral perfection and worshipworthiness of God seriously.”) 17. Of the forty-seven contributions to these three collections, only seven are not preoccupied with theism (or matters of Christian belief ): Alston (CDPR), Fales (CDPR), Yandell (CDPR), Byrne (CDPR), Kapitan (OSPR), Oppy (OSPR), and Schellenberg (OSPR). Contrast this to the eight contributions that are explicitly focused on topics pertaining only to Christianity: Davis (CDPR), Martin (CDPR), Walls (CDPR), Talbot (CDPR), Zimmerman (CDPR), Baker (CDPR), Bayne and Restall (NWPR), and Hudson (OSPR). This leaves thirty-two essays, twenty-seven of which appear to defend the rationality of theism in some respect: HowardSynder and Bergmann (CDPR), Moser (CDPR), Ratzsch (CDPR), Reichenbach (CDPR), Gale (CDPR), Hasker (CDPR), Helm (CDPR), Murray (CDPR), Basinger (CDPR), Idziak (CDPR), Boyd and VanArragon (CDPR), Hill (NWPR), Mawson (NWPR), Pruss (NWPR), Efrid (NWPR), Miller (NWPR), Howard-Synder (NWPR), Eberle (NWPR), Metz (NWPR), Almeida (OSPR), Howard-Synder (OSPR), Leftow (OSPR), McCann (OSPR), Miller (OSPR), Monton (OSPR), Sobel (OSPR), and Warfield (OSPR). 18. Religious reason-giving is best exemplified by those instances and patterns of formal arguments that pertain to the reasonableness or unreasonableness of some type of religious belief or practice, especially when such reasons concern some ultimate problem or solution, path or destination, reality or truth for some community. Of course, it is not always obvious what is and is not such. Philosophers of religion will need to look and see. To aid in such looking I suggest employing as heuristic devices something akin to William Paden’s list of panhuman behaviors, functions, and dispositions (see the following section of this chapter). As candidates for human universals, they increase the likelihood of detecting instances of religious reason-giving in many different religious traditions. Since they do not come from Western theophilosophical traditions, they increase the likelihood of detecting religious reason-giving about ultimate problems, solutions, paths, destinations, realities, and truths that lie outside those traditions. And insofar as they constitute a set of panhuman behaviors, functions, and dispositions, they increase the likelihood of detecting the actual argumentative linguistic behavior of humans rather than abstract, decontextualized ideas. 19. A few quick clarifications about how I understand hermeneutical description: first, it is not free of theoretical bias; second, it is not exclusive of critical explanation; third, it does not recover singular meaning. 20. Why should (some) philosophers of religion engage in thick description of religious reason-giving in the religions of the world? Because they want to know how human beings from a diverse array of places and times reason about ultimate problems, solutions, paths, destinations, realities, and truths. Why should (some)

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philosophers of religion engage in thick description of religious reason-giving? Both because thick description is a means to critical understanding and because philosophers of religion can only competently compare and evaluate that which they first understand. 21. Franke (2006, 64, 65, 66). Early in the essay, Franke generalizes over Neoplatonic negative theology as critical not merely of all thinking and speaking about the Neoplatonic One, but of all rational formulations, cultural myths, linguistic assertions, and expressible thoughts in general. This Neoplatonic philosophy of the ineffable, commonly called negative theology, is critical of all rational formulations as inadequate to what they intend to describe. Negative theology arises at a very advanced stage in the development of rational reflection in any given culture, a stage where the founding myths of that culture, and lastly language itself as the foundation of all culture, come into question. At this point, language can no longer be used unself-consciously as having a direct grip on reality and simply delivering the truth. . . . In fact, every thought that can be thought and therefore expressed is viewed as ipso facto inadequate and subject to critique. All that can be said, affirmations and negations alike, must be negated. (64) This is just not true of Neoplatonism in general, as any scholar of Proclus will attest (see for example Siovanes 1996), and as I, a scholar of Dionysius the Areopagite, will also argue (see, e.g., Knepper [2014a]). 22. Here, I am obviously influenced by Peter Berger, whose term anomie I prefer to evil insofar as it encompasses many more types of “world”-threatening disorder. Clearly, though, this is one instance of a category that cries for critical scrutiny. 23. Rowe distinguishes restricted theism from the “expanded theism” of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 24. Just imagine the sea change if philosophy of religion were to map and compare instances and patterns of religious reason-giving under categories such as the ones Paden (2001, 280) identifies as panhuman social, sociocultural, conceptual, and self-modification behaviors (in “Universals Revisited”): forming bonds and loyalties with a kinship group; distinguishing between kin and non-kin; ranking people within a group; learning reciprocities and etiquettes of cooperative relationship (or social give and take exchange); making and following rules; defending/protecting group order; punishing or resolving infractions of order; socializing and initiating the young; recognizing authority and social power; communicating with others; asking, petitioning; passing on cultural prototypes for imitation as guidelines for behavior; endowing certain objects and persons with superhuman status, prestige, authority, inviolability, charisma; constructing pasts and reciting sacred histories; regenerating social values by performing periodic rites and festi-

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vals; marking and dignifying important occasions and roles with ritual behavior and special objects; creating linguistic objects that have no visible existence, and acting toward them as though they were real and efficacious; classifying and mapping the universe, including time and space; worldmaking; attributing significance (including causation) to events and objects whether mental or physical; experimenting with alternative forms of consciousness, trance, disassociation; disciplining the mind and body and forming constraining regimens of behavior in order to effect certain results and kinds of fitness; using ideas to guide behavior and sort out behavioral options; reflecting on perceived errors of thought and behavior; reinventing selfhood. 25. Of course there are no such comparisons in these collections (since there is no substantive consideration of non-Western religions). Where there are comparisons, they are usually of continental philosophers. Occasionally, a continental philosopher is compared to Christian or Jewish religious phenomena: Caputo (RPR), Wyschogrod (RPR). And only once is a comparison proffered over diverse cultural-historical religious phenomena (Dallmayr [RPR]); this, though, is more of an itemized list than a formal comparison (see the following note). 26. Here are Dallmayr’s (2006, 171) categories and examples: (1) radical monism, which “holds that ultimate reality—being a reflection of the divine or a benevolent creator—is wholly good and perfect, whereas perceived imperfections are illusions or the result of ignorance,” is exemplified by Christian and Neoplatonic . “gnosis,” Leibniz, Advaita Vedānta (Śankara), and Sufism (al-Ghazālī, ibn ‘Arabī); (2) radical dualism, which is not given a description, is exemplified in Manichaeism, versions of Gnosticism, extreme Puritan theories of predestination (Milton), and Luther; and (3) the middle ground between monism and dualism, which is largely occupied by those who acknowledge evil or ignorance but give primacy to goodness or rationality, is exemplified by Augustine, Descartes, and Kant (171). 27. CDPR stages four debates between theistic and atheistic perspectives: Rowe vs. Howard-Synder and Bergmann, Schellenberg vs. Moser, Worrall vs. Ratzsch, and Alston vs. Fales. See note 20 for the contributors who defend theism. The only analytic contributions that compare over diverse religious phenomena (rather than “isms”) are Kapitan (OSPR) and Oppy (OSPR). As I explain above, the debate between Yandell and Byrne involves an evaluation of religious pluralism rather than a comparison of plural religions. 28. It is not for nothing that Bryne (2004b, 209) says the following of Yandell’s dismissal of Advaita Vedānta: “One person’s metaphysical profundities are notoriously another person’s examples of pretentious nonsense.” 29. Of course, evaluation is present throughout inquiry—but I am speaking here about formal acts of evaluation of cross-cultural content. 30. I would also argue, as others have, that, since religions do make truthclaims and scholars of religion are always already engaged in tacit evaluations of these claims, some branch of religious studies ought to undertake these evaluations in an explicit and public manner.

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31. For Fales (2004), cross-checking denotes all those procedures and strategies that we use to settle questions about the causes of something. Note that Alston (1991) is a bit more forthright about the problem of such variability. 32. As the former, they could contribute invaluable, dense investigations of these respective subsets of religious reason-giving to a more global philosophy of religion. But two caveats would here be in order. First, analytic philosophy of religion would need to devote critical attention to the cross-cultural applicability of the category of theism and descriptive attention to the actual patterns and diversities of acts of theistic reason-giving. Second, both analytic and continental philosophy of religion would need to check their apparent assumptions that their respective subsets of religious reason-giving constitute the totality or essence of religious reason-giving. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alston, William P. 1991. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Belief. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Alston, William P. 2004. “Religious Experience Justifies Religious Belief.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 135–145. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Anderson, Pamela Sue. 2003. “Feminism in Philosophy of Religion.” In Explorations in Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion, edited by Deane-Peter Baker and Patrick Maxwell, 189–205. New York: Rodopi. Baker, Deane-Peter, and Patrick Maxwell. 2003. “Introduction.” In Explorations in Contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion, edited by Deane-Peter Baker and Patrick Maxwell, 1–6. New York: Rodopi. Berger, Peter L. 1967. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books. Bilimoria, Purushottama. 1995. “Duhkha & Karma: The Problem of Evil and God’s Omnipotence.” Sophia 34(1): 92–119. Byrne, Peter. 2004a. “It Is Not Reasonable to Believe that Only One Religion Is True.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 201–210. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ———. 2004b. “Reply to Yandell.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 215–217. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Caputo, John D. 2002. “The Poetics of the Impossible and the Kingdom of God.” In Rethinking Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip Goodchild, 43–58. New York: Fordham University Press. Chadha, Monima, and Nick Trakakis. 2007. “Karma and the Problem of Evil: A Response to Kaufmann.” Philosophy East and West 57(4): 533–556. Clayton, John. 2006. Religions, Reasons and Gods: Essays in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Anne M. Blackburn and Thomas D. Carroll. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Dallmayr, Fred. 2006. “An End to Evil.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60(1–3): 169–186. Ellsworth, Jonathan. 2002. “Apophasis and Askêsis in Mystical Theology” In Rethinking Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip Goodchild, 212–227. New York: Fordham University Press. Fales, Evan. 2004. “Do Mystics See God?” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 145–158. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Franke, William. 2006. “Apophasis and the Turn of Philosophy to Religion: From Neoplatonic Negative Theology to Postmodern Negation of Theology.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60(1–3): 61–76. Goodchild, Philip. 2002a. “Continental Philosophy of Religion: An Introduction.” In Rethinking Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip Goodchild, 1–39. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2002b. “Politics and Experience: Bergsonism Beyond Transcendence and Immanence.” In Rethinking Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip Goodchild, 297–329. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 2003. Difference in Philosophy of Religion. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Halteman, Matthew C. 2002. “Toward a ‘Continental’ Philosophy of Religion: Derrida, Responsibility, and ‘Nondogmatic’ Faith.” In Rethinking Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip Goodchild, 59–79. New York: Fordham University Press. Hudson, Wayne. 2002. “Schelling, Bloch, and the Continental Philosophy of Religion.” In Rethinking Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip Goodchild, 283–296. New York: Fordham University Press. Jantzen, Grace. 2002.“Birth and the Powers of Horror: Julia Kristeva on Gender, Religion, and Death.” In Rethinking Philosophy of Religion, edited by Philip Goodchild, 139–161. New York: Fordham University Press. Kapitan, Tomis. 2009. “Evaluating Religion.” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan Kvanvig, 80–104. New York: Oxford University Press. Knepper, Timothy D. 2013. The Ends of Philosophy of Religion: Terminus and Telos. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2014a. Negating Negation: Against the Apophatic Abandonment of the Dionysian Corpus. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock. ———. 2014b. “The End of Philosophy of Religion.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82(1): 120–149. Kvanvig, Jonathan L. 2009. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan L. Kvanvig, vii. New York: Oxford University Press. Long, Eugene Thomas. 2006. “Self and Other: An Introduction.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60(1–3): 1–7.

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Min, Anselm K. 2006. “Naming the Unnameable God: Levinas, Derrida, and Marion.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60(1–3): 99– 116. Moser, Paul K. 2004. “Divine Hiddenness Does Not Justify Atheism.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 42–54. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Nagasawa, Yujin, and Erik J. Wielenberg. 2009. “Introduction.” In New Waves in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Yujin Nagasawa and Erik J. Wielenberg, vii–x. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Neville, Robert C., and Wesley J. Wildman. 2001a. “On Comparing Religious Ideas.” In The Human Condition, edited by Robert C. Neville, 1–20. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 2001b. “On Comparing Religious Ideas.” In Ultimate Realities, edited by Robert C. Neville, 187–210. Albany: State University of New York Press. Oppy, Graham. 2009. “Gods.” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan L. Kvanvig, 231–250. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Paden, William. 2001. “Universals Revisited: Human Behaviors and Cultural Variations.” Numen 48(3): 276–289. Peterson, Michael L., and Raymond J. VanArragon. 2004. “Preface.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, xi–xii. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Ratzsch, Del. 2004. “The Demise of Religion: Greatly Exaggerated Reports from the Science/Religion Wars.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 72–87. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Rea, Michael. 2009. “Introduction.” In Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea, 1–30. New York: Oxford University Press. Rowe, William L. 2004. “Evil is Evidence against Theistic Belief.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 3–13. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Schellenberg, John L. 2004. “Divine Hiddenness Justifies Atheism.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 30–41. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Schellenberg, John L. 2009. “The Evolutionary Answer to the Problem of Faith and Reason.” In Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion, vol. 2, edited by Jonathan L. Kvanvig, 251–274. New York: Oxford University Press Schilbrack, Kevin. 2010. “Religions: Are There Any?” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78(4): 1112–1138. Siovanes, Lucas. 1996. Proclus: Neo-Platonic Philosophy and Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

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Smith, J.Z. 1982. “In Comparison a Magic Dwells.” In Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, 19–35. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Trakakis, Nick. 2008. The End of Philosophy of Religion. New York: Continuum. Wildman, Wesley J. 2010. Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press. Yandell, Keith E. 2004a. “How to Sink in Cognitive Quicksand: Nuancing Religious Pluralism.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 191–201. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ———. 2004b. “Reply to Byrne.” In Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon, 211–214. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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Religion Beyond the Limits of Reason Inoue Enryō, Kim Iryo˘p, and Tanabe Hajime on Philosophy of Religion

Jin Y. Park

The philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy born out of a specific intellectual context in the West. The Western origin of the field dictates some of the presuppositions about philosophy and religion. This chapter engages with East Asian intellectual traditions to identify how they approach some of the core issues in the Western philosophy of religion. For this purpose, I will examine three modern East Asian thinkers—Inoue Enryō (井 上円了 1858–1919), Kim Iryo˘p (金一葉 1897–1971), and Tanabe Hajime (田辺元 1885–1962)—on three topics: (1) the definition of philosophy and religion; (2) the nature of the transcendental being and the religious agent; and (3) the act of religion and the meaning of religious practice.

Question of the Genre: Philosophy and Religion in Inoue Enryō The philosophy of religion genre presumes a distinction between philosophy and religion. It also implies a certain degree of contention between the two fields. The Western notions of philosophy and religion were introduced to the East Asian intellectual tradition during the nineteenth century. The This work was supported by the Academy of Korean Studies Grant (Grant #AKS2014–R29).

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East Asian vocabulary equivalent to the English word “philosophy” (哲 學, Jap. tetsugaku; Chi. zhéxué; Kor. ch’o˘rhak) came into existence in the late nineteenth century when a Japanese philosopher named Nishi Amane (西周 1829–1897) used the expression in his book Hyakuichi shinron (百 一新論, One Hundred and One New Ideas, 1874).1 Nishi also introduced philosophical terminology currently in use in East Asia, including reason (理性) and morality (道德). The translation in this case was not merely a transition from one language into another. A comparison of the Chinese characters (or Japanese kanji) that make up these “new” vocabularies and their connotations in English shows that delicate differences exist as regards East Asian equivalent terms. The delicate differences in the East Asian vocabulary pertaining to “philosophy,” “reason,” or “morality” influence how different intellectual traditions approach some of the fundamental questions in philosophy. Like the expression “philosophy,” the word “religion” (宗教, Jap. shūkyō; Chi. zōngjiào; Kor. chonggyo) was introduced to the East Asian world in the mid–nineteenth century.2 The expression “religion” appeared in diplomatic letters from American President Fillmore (1800–1874, president 1850–1853) and Commodore Matthew Perry (1794–1858). On July 8, 1853, American warships appeared off the coast of Japan, and American Commodore Matthew Perry, the commander of the squadron visiting Japan, was carrying a letter from President Fillmore addressed to the emperor of Japan. In the letter, the president stated: “The constitution and laws of the United States forbid all interference with the religious or political concerns of other nations” (Fillmore 1968, 220). Commodore Perry’s letter also contained a passage on religion with a tone similar to that of the president’s. Perry wrote that “the United States are connected with no government in Europe, and that their laws do not interfere with the religion of their own citizens, much less with that of other nations.”3 Both letters wanted to affirm to the Japanese that the United States had no intention of interfering with either individual citizens’ or the nation’s religious concerns. The Americans must have felt it necessary to acknowledge, as a preamble to diplomacy with Japan, individuals’ and the nation-state’s right to pursue their own religious practice. The expression “religion” in this sense already contained social and political dimensions. We can further assume that both Fillmore and Perry understood that religion could be a source of conflict in establishing diplomatic relations with Japan. The introduction of terms inevitably creates the tradition that the vocabulary inherits. Gerard Clinton Godart, a scholar of Japanese religion, pointed out that once the category

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“religion” appeared, “religions in East and South-East Asia adopted and applied Protestant models of ‘religion’ to their own traditions. As a result, emphasis was placed more on beliefs than on practices, as religions started to identify with their foundational texts and founders” (Godart 2008, 73–74). As “philosophy” and “religion” emerged as distinctive fields of study, East Asian thinkers began to examine the unique nature of each category. They also asked whether a specific East Asian tradition such as Buddhism could or should be categorized as a philosophy or a religion. Inoue Enryō was one of the first thinkers who took up this project in modern Japan. In his essay “Buddhist Philosophy” (Bukkyō tetsugaku 仏教哲学), Enryō begins his discussion by characterizing the differences between philosophy and religion. To carry out that task, Enryō describes the world through a dual structure of the knowable (kachiteki sekai 可知的世界) and the unknowable (fukachiteki sekai 不可知的世界). The knowable is the aspect of phenomena (genshōteki sekai 現象的世界) characterized by the finite, relativity, and distinctions. The unknowable refers to the aspect of the noumenon or the world of reality (jittai sekai 実体世界) characterized by the infinite, absolute, and “the same” (or equal; byōdō 平等). Enryō tried to clarify the distinctions between philosophy and religion by employing this formula, stating that: (1) “philosophy goes from the knowable to the unknowable, and religion begins from the unknowable and proceeds to the knowable” (Inoue 1987–1990, vol. 7: 109; Heisig, Kasulis, and Maraldo 2011, 621); (2) “philosophy admits the unknowable, whereas religion tries to explain its existence” (translation modified); (3) philosophy is based on the “function of the intellect [kokoronochiryoku 心の知力], whereas religion is based on the functions of the feelings and emotions”; (4) philosophy is active, whereas feelings are passive; (5) philosophy is related to “thought,” whereas religion is related to “faith”; and (6) philosophy leads to the principle (dōri 道理) of the world, whereas religion leads to the revelation. While examining the nature of philosophy and religion in this manner, Enryō noticed the problem of a philosophy of religion. He understood that the primary goal of the philosophy of religion is a rational investigation of religion. However, the unknowable, by definition, is not accessible to the human mind and cannot be reached through either intention or intellectual activities. Enryō asked, “How does philosophy, which is based on the intellect, come to know anything outside human intellect?” (Inoue 1987–1990, vol. 7: 110; Heisig, Kasulis, and Maraldo 2011, 622). As Enryō stated, “the unknowable is the unknowable precisely because I cannot know it.” Enryō, however, does not completely deny the possibility of getting to

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know the unknowable, and this access to the unknowable does not happen by applying the logic of the knowable to the unknowable. Instead, it occurs through a happening in which the unknowable slips into the knowable, so that I, the knowable subject, experience the unknowable.4 Enryō stated that as the intellect tries to approach the unknowable, it gets to the proximity of the absolute. Enryō uses the case of Vimalakīrti, a well-known lay Buddhist from the text Vimalakīrti Sūtra in the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition, as an example of this case. In this Buddhist scripture, written in approximately 100 CE, the main character Vimalakīrti is a lay Buddhist practitioner, but his level of spiritual cultivation outwits that of the Buddha’s disciples, generating awe among them. In a well-known chapter on non-duality, Vimalakīrti is asked to describe non-duality, the highest teaching of Buddhism and foundational idea of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Non-duality (不二) indicates “definitive awareness achieved through enlightenment” (Buswell 2014, 109). This is an awareness that transcends the dualistic view that unenlightened beings employ in understanding the world. By awakening to non-duality, practitioners transcend the subject–object dualism that dictates the conventional level of understanding of the world. How does one describe the state in which subject–object dualism is erased and binary postulations lose their power? Vimalakīrti responds to the question by remaining silent. Mañjuśrī, one of the Buddha’s disciples, praises Vimalakīrti’s silence as the best answer to explain non-duality. By keeping silent, Vimalakīrti demonstrates that the ultimate reality is ineffable. Vimalakīrti’s response is a clear statement that philosophy cannot explain or describe the ultimate reality, the revelation of which is the realm of religion. The irony of Vimalakīrti’s silence is that Vimalakīrti’s performance of ineffability can also be another way of describing ineffability, and not a case of philosophy’s incapacity to deal with the ultimate. Zen Buddhist tradition has a long history of handling the ineffable nature of reality in this manner and thus facilitates the experience of the ultimate reality by employing language against itself.5 Of note in this context is that logic and rationality are not the major tools in this type of philosophizing or in understanding the ultimate reality. Enryō started out by making distinctions between philosophy and religion and characterizing each by rather conventional features. He identified philosophy with intellect, thought, logic, and reason, and religion with emotions, feelings, faith, intuition, and revelation. As he evaluated Buddhism according to these categories, Enryō asked whether the border between the two was impenetrable. Enryō concluded that philosophy requires, after all,

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faith as much as religion. That is, philosophers have faith in the theories or philosophies that they propose as much as believers have faith in the object of their belief (Inoue 1987–1990, vol. 7: 110; Heisig, Kasulis, and Maraldo 2011, 623). Expanding on this idea, Enryō submitted that any religious tradition contains philosophical aspects through which religion tries to explain the unknowable rationally, and any philosophy requires faith in that which a certain philosophy proposes. Behind Enryō’s discussion of religion and philosophy lies the Buddhist logic of non-duality. From the Buddhist perspective, the transcendent, or the unknowable in Enryō’s term, does not exist as the “wholly other,” as Rudolf Otto puts it in The Idea of the Holy. The unknowable in Enryō is not an ontological concept. The ultimate being, or the noumenal aspect of existence, does not exist as a reality that is ontologically distinct from the phenomenal or the religious agent. From the Buddhist perspective, the noumenon is unknowable because existence is only possible through the interaction of innumerable causes and conditions. As a nonsubstantial system of thought, Buddhism does not assume an ultimate being with specific ontological characteristics. The ultimate being, whether it be God or the Buddha, does not attain the position of the ultimate being through its fundamental ontological identity. Instead, a supreme being attains that position through the capacity to realize its full potential and the capacity to recognize that capacity in itself and others. The idea of the ultimate being as ontologically different from the agent of religious practice is based on the identity principle. In this case, a being’s identity is definable and independent from other beings. The Buddhist theory of non-duality negates the idea that a being has an independent essence or identity in an ultimate sense. In the aforementioned chapter on non-duality in the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, a bodhisattva named Padmavyūha states: “Dualism is produced from obsession with self, but true understanding of self does not result in dualism. Who thus abides in nonduality is without ideation, and that absence of ideation is the entrance into nonduality.”6 To conceptualize the ultimate being as a being at a different ontological level is, from the Buddhist perspective, a result of “ideation.” The idea of non-duality offers an example of why the nature of the ultimate being and the relationship between the ultimate being and the religious subject in East Asian traditions are radically different from those of the Judeo-Christian traditions. Enryō’s theory of non-duality appears in an intriguing way in his vision of the cosmos. A number of East Asian thinkers from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tried to conceptualize the structure

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of the cosmos. This can be another influence of the introduction of the genre of religion to the East Asian intellectual world. It also has to do with the influence of modern science that was newly introduced to East Asian society.7 Enryō was not an exception. In his description of the structure of the cosmos, Enryō envisioned two dimensions: the vertical dimension and the horizontal dimension. The vertical dimension refers to a temporal dimension that envisions the cosmos going through cyclic movements. There were worlds before this world that emerged from the nebula and returned to it, which he calls the “great change” of the world (Inoue 1987–1990, vol. 2: 236; Heisig, Kasulis, and Maraldo 2011, 624). The cosmos goes through circular recurring changes; this world will be repeated in the future, and Inoue Enryō will be born again. The horizontal dimension of the cosmos contains mind and matter. Mind and matter, and thus idealism and materialism, have been understood as mutually exclusive. However, Enryō claimed that if we examine the mind to its extreme, we reach matter, and vice versa. Enryō argued that the seeming dualism of the cosmos—including mind and matter, idealism and materialism, the absolute and the relative, and monism and dualism—would turn out to be two parts of one and the same thing. If we examine one of the two extremes extensively, we get to the other side of the dualism. In this context, Enryō proposes a “theory of mutual containment and inclusion.”8 This is the logic of Huayan (華嚴, Jap. Kegon) Buddhism. A Huayan adage states that “a particle of dust contains the entire universe.”9 The Chinese Huayan thinker Fazang (法藏 643–712) offers a detailed discussion of mutual containment and mutual identity in his Five Teachings of Huayan (華嚴五敎章 Huáyán wuˇjiào zhāng). Based on this mutual dependency of seeming opposites, Enryō declares that “contradiction is truth” (Inoue 1987–1990, vol. 2: 239; Heisig, Kasulis, and Maraldo 2011, 626). At the relative level, light and darkness have a distinctive identity; if we put them together into the same identity, this creates a contradiction, since light is not darkness. However, in the ultimate sense, light and darkness are non-dual, since light requires darkness to be perceived and vice versa. In this sense, Enryō claims that the contradiction of light-qua-darkness is the truth of the world. The other two East Asian thinkers we discuss in this chapter also pay attention to the importance of contradiction in understanding our existence. This idea has a significant impact on the way these thinkers envision the ultimate being. The Buddha’s teaching of the middle path anticipated this claim about the reality of contradiction. In a conversation with one of his followers named Kaccāyana, the Buddha teaches the middle path as

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follows: “ ‘Everything exists’: this is one extreme; ‘everything does not exist’: this is the second extreme. Without approaching either of these extremes, the Tathāgata teaches the dharma by the middle” (Holder 2006, 83). The Buddhist middle envisions existence through causes and conditions. From the Buddhist perspective, the nature of reality is nonsubstantial, lacking a permanent and independent essence. Existence becomes possible through contributions of diverse causes and conditions. This principle of existence applies to all beings, including God, the Supreme Being, individual humans, a particle of dust, or a bug. The radical, nonsubstantial view concerning the nature of existence constitutes the foundation of Kim Iryo˘p’s views on God, the Buddha, and their relation to human and nonhuman beings.

Kim Iryo˘p’s Philosophy of Religion: God, the Buddha, and Us Humans As a daughter of a Christian pastor and his wife, Iryo˘p grew up a faithful Christian who envisioned her future as a Christian missionary. As she turned into a young adult, she began to question basic doctrines of Christianity, but her father’s strict evangelicalism warned her against any doubts about God’s intentions and worldview. When she showed a hint of her questioning mind, her father told her that doubt indicated a lack of faith and that the solution to the situation was prayer. Unable to find answers to her questions, Iryo˘p lost her faith in Christianity and became a nonbeliever. An unexpected introduction to Buddhism gradually attracted her to Buddhist doctrines, and in 1933, in her mid-thirties, Iryo˘p joined a monastery and remained a Zen Buddhist nun until her death in 1971. Despite her religious struggle with Christianity, Iryo˘p did not openly express her doubts about Christianity until later in life. Only in her sixties, after she had spent almost thirty years in Buddhist monasteries, did Iryo˘p look back on her questions about Christianity and articulate the problems she saw with Christianity, spelling out her understanding of God, faith, good, and evil. As she reflected upon the time when her Christian faith began to falter, she identified the existence of evil as one of the questions that had disturbed her faith in God. If God is the creator of the world, Iryo˘p reasoned, He should be as responsible for the existence of evil as for good. By the same token, Iryo˘p reasoned that if God created humans, God should be responsible for the failure of human beings, including those of Adam and Eve, and that humans themselves are, in that sense, innocent victims of

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problems created by God. Iryo˘p asked if a sinner suffering in Hell accused God, stating that he had not asked God to create him but that God had and was now making him suffer in Hell, would God be able to defend Himself? If those in Heaven could see their family members suffer in Hell, would they still be able to enjoy Heaven? At the bottom of Iryo˘p’s questions regarding Christian doctrines was the issue of dualism. The dual postulations of good and evil, God (creator) and humans (created), and Heaven and Hell did not seem to be tenable to her, as one inevitably requires the other. Heaven, Iryo˘p argued, cannot exist without Hell, and the notion of the good cannot arise without its opposite. The binary opposites and the accompanying value judgment arise, from Iryo˘p’s perspective, when the oneness of life is understood in fragments. The oneness of the world takes many shapes in the phenomenal world. The two extremes of birth and death, arising and ceasing, day and night are not mutually exclusive in this logic of nondualism, but they are different phases of the same source. A being understood through binary logic is an isolated and fragmented entity, one whose capacity is limited because of the boundaries created for the construction of an independent identity. Iryo˘p understood this viewpoint as the fundamental source of constraints on an individual’s freedom. Buddhist practice—and in that sense, a religious practice in general, for Iryo˘p—is a way to learn this totality of one’s existence so that one can recover full capacity and freedom. The recovery of full capacity of one’s existence requires re-envisioning the value structure we are familiar with in our society. For Iryo˘p, the individual who has fully recovered the totality of one’s capacity is called the Buddha. The Buddha in this sense cannot be the exemplification of pure goodness. Instead, the Buddha is the source of both good and evil. Unlike the Christian notion of God that she questioned during childhood, she re-envisioned God as the being who, like the Buddha, has completely and freely exercised the full capacity that a being has. For Iryo˘p, the difference between God or the Buddha and individual human beings or unenlightened, sentient beings does not lie in their ontological differences. God, or the Buddha, is the one who is fully aware of, and is fully exercising, their capacity, whereas we are ignorant of our capacity and thus fail to fully utilize it. For Iryo˘p, in this sense, “The Buddha and God originate from the same seed” (Kim 1960, 59; Park 2014, 96). Iryo˘p reasoned that Gautama Buddha was awakened to the foundation of existence, which is one. He reached the realization that the bounded state one experiences in life is not permanent and one’s capacity

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is in fact limitless and was thus able to embody freedom. God is not a being completely separated from humans, nor should God be the object of one’s worship. Instead, God, or the Buddha, is a model or a witness that a being is, in its ultimate sense, whole and that religion is an education to teach the wholeness of each being so that each individual can see the entire capacity of oneself instead of seeing oneself as a fragmented being. The idea that God is a creator means that God embodies the creativity with which each one of us is born. To claim that God is the creator of the world is not only wrong but also does damage to God since in that case God should be responsible for all of the evils that exist in the world. The idea of the mutual existence of good and evil is not exclusively Iryo˘p’s. The Buddhist tradition has a long history regarding the issue. Still, Iryo˘p further elaborated upon it and interpreted the Christian God within that context. Religion is an education to awaken each individual to their original capacity, and by realizing that capacity, an individual can be released from suffering and live life as a free individual. Iryo˘p emphasized the importance of faith and religious practice by stating the following: The mind that makes efforts to follow this teaching is called the religious mind, without which we are like a tree that is uprooted: We lose our hold on the existential life code. The religious mind is not limited to the belief in God or in the Buddha. Whoever it might be, if one sincerely serves the person as one’s teacher, or whatever one might do, if one does it, devoting all one’s mind and body, that is what is called the religious mind. This is religious practice. (Kim 1960, 29; Park 2014, 61) Iryo˘p’s discussion of God, good and evil, and the meaning of faith and religious practice demonstrates how the traditional themes of the philosophy of religion can be understood differently in a tradition whose foundation does not share the fundamental assumptions found in Judeo-Christian religious traditions. Iryo˘p sometimes characterized oneness as that which is understood as the ground of existence shared by all beings, including the Buddha and God, and identified this oneness as nothingness. To envision the ultimate being as “nothingness,” instead of “being,” indicates a different understanding of “being” and “nothingness” in the Eastern and Western philosophical traditions. The Kyoto School thinkers heavily invested their time in discussing nothingness as the foundation of their philosophies (see

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Heisig 2001) and its meaning in religion (see Nishida 1987; Nishitani 1982). Tanabe Hajime’s dealing with nothingness as the ground for the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of action offers us a good example.

Tanabe Hajime and Philosophy/Religion as Repentance The philosophy of religion as a distinctive field in the Western philosophical tradition has been dominated by the rationalist approach to religion. The claim that a certain human faculty is capable of dealing with issues related to religion was the very motivation for the emergence of the field. Descartes claimed that it is a philosopher’s job, not a theologian’s, to prove the existence of God; Hegel, in his vast work of lectures on the philosophy of religion, tried to outline the evolution of religions from Asian and primitive forms to what he considered to be the most mature form of religion, which, for him, was represented by Christianity. In these figures’ discussion of religion, religious phenomena were understood as being “homogeneous,” and no serious consideration was given to the idea that there might be different ways of envisioning the ultimate being, the individual’s relation to that ultimate being, and the very meaning of a religious agent. Hegel might have wanted to consider religious traditions other than the Christian tradition, but his lectures on the philosophy of religion fell far short of acknowledging different possibilities of understanding the features of religious phenomena in different religious traditions.10 When the classical topics in the philosophy of religion were considered by Asian thinkers in the context of Asian religious and philosophical traditions, the nature of the discussions changed. Enryō postulated that, as much as religion, philosophy required faith, and he thus challenged the fundamental assumption of philosophical investigation in modernist philosophy. Iryo˘p argued that the absolute beings in religious traditions, such as the Buddha or God, are not beings who are completely different—at their ontological level—from the common practitioners of religion, but instead, they are the ones who have fully recovered the very meaning of existence and thus of their capacity and freedom. This fully recovered capacity is characterized as encompassing both extremes of dualist postulation. As Iryo˘p repeatedly emphasized, nothing in the world exists as an independent entity. One extreme, when it reaches its ultimate, turns toward its opposite, and even the Buddha is the combination of the Buddha and the demon. “Demon,” in this case, is not related to a moral

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concept; rather, it represents the phenomenal world in which things come into being according to causes and conditions and then disappear when those causes and conditions are exhausted. The understanding that things inevitably contain both extremes within themselves became grounds for an “absolute critique” of reason for the Kyoto School thinker Tanabe Hajime. It might not be a coincidence that the reflections on philosophy and religion of all three of the thinkers we discuss here are keenly influenced by specific social and historical realities. The introduction of the Western categories of philosophy and religion was a source of inspiration of Enryō’s philosophy; Iryo˘p’s Buddhist philosophy was in some way an extension of her search for freedom, which she began as an activist in women’s issues in her pre-monastic life; and Tanabe’s philosophy of religion is explicitly related to the reality of post–World War Japan. At the outset of his book Philosophy as Metanoetics (懺悔道としての哲学 Zangedō to shite no tetsugaku), reflecting upon Japanese militarism during World War II and his own contribution to Japanese imperialism, Tanabe asks whether philosophy and philosophers can do anything to remedy the situation. In other words, philosophers were supposed to pursue truth, but during the war, philosophers, including Tanabe himself, were blinded by historical reality.11 For Tanabe, historical reality is not only a problematic moment for Japanese history but also evidence of the limits of human reason. As John Maraldo (1990, 237), a scholar of Japanese philosophy, states: As the categories of the natural sciences spread throughout the world, so did a sense of meaninglessness, of nihilism. The modern ideal of reason had lost its Socratic mooring in personal examination and had become an impersonal investigation that was impotent in the face of the irrationalities and cruelties of human history. In lectures delivered in 1939, Tanabe, too, had emphasized that history involves problems that cannot be treated impersonally like questions of engineering. Husserl ended by affirming the necessity of faith in reason and its infinite task of humanization. Tanabe, on the other hand, proposed that we take reason to its limits and then be ready to give it up, indeed to give ourselves up. On the surface, Iryo˘p’s Buddhism and that of Tanabe pose as opposite approaches to the relationship between the subject and the absolute, that is, the object of one’s religion. Iryo˘p was trained in the Zen Buddhist tradition,

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which based itself on the premise that the sentient being is the Buddha. As a Zennist, Iryo˘p emphasized the self-power of the individual, and for Iryo˘p, enlightenment meant realizing one’s full capacity. God and the Buddha are the beings who fully realized their capacities. Tanabe was trained in the Shingon Buddhism (shingon-shū 真言宗) of Shinran (親鸞, 1173–1263). For Tanabe, both philosophy and religion should ground itself within the realization that an individual is fallible and that the only way in which to save individuals from this fallible reality is through the “Other-power” (tariki 他力). Tanabe (1986, lvi) argues that philosophy based on reason is a “philosophy of self-power,” and this philosophy of self-power (jiriki 自 力) inevitably faces its limitations because “the reason it presupposes as its basis is bound to fall into antinomies in the encounter with actual reality.” How, then, do we avoid this pitfall, and is it possible to still envision the role of reason in our philosophizing? For Tanabe, the role of the Otherpower is exactly this. By completely submitting oneself to this Other-power, Tanabe claims, an individual will be reborn as a being whose limitations are constantly being tested by the Other-power. Philosophy is an activity of reason, but the claim of reason for Tanabe (1986, 26) “amounts to no more than an ideal that can never be fulfilled completely so long as we maintain the position of self-power.” Only by completely submitting oneself to the Other-power, Tanabe argues, will philosophy overcome this impotence of reason and fulfill its role of exploring the absolute. Philosophy as an act of rational investigation cannot help but have limitations; after all, when reason performs a critical evaluation of the world and beings, this activity is still performed within the domain of the subject. For Tanabe, rational thinking and even the critique of reason as launched by Kant remains in the subjective realm and thus is fallible. The only way for reason to perform its assigned function of the critique of reality is by being mediated by the Other-power. One might wonder how this submission to the Other-power can be qualified as the subject’s rational activity. The subject in this case must give itself up to the divine power of the other, and philosophizing will be nothing more than being a servant to the divine will. Tanabe had a different idea. For Tanabe, this Other-power is not any “Being” (or being) but is characterized as nothingness. Tanabe describes this process of the self ’s submission to the Other-power as the “Great Nay” (大非). Nothingness, by definition, does not exist; it cannot have its own power other than negating the limits of beings. The absolute nothingness (zettai mu 絶対 無) is simply negation and cannot have an ontological status. By submitting oneself to this constant negation, the sub-

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ject’s subjective position is constantly being reformulated. Tanabe ([1946] 2000, 22; 1986, 17–18) writes: Philosophy begins from a consciousness of the self in conformity with the autonomy of reason and from there extends, through the limitations and determinations of the world, to an awareness of the fact that the self exists through the mediation of absolute nothingness, which sets up a relationship of mutual transformation between world and self. Therefore, philosophy must be carried out in the faith-witness that the self is being-qua-nothingness, that is, being (rupa) as a manifestation of emptiness (sunyata) or absolute nothingness. Nothingness is another name for nonfoundational reality. Tanabe explains this process of the subject’s self-negation through its submission to the Other-power, and its rebirth through the submission and reconstitution of the self, with the expression “metanoetics” (or “repentance,” or, in Japanese, zangedō 懺悔道). Metanoetics, by definition, is that which goes beyond the noetic experience. The cognitive process (noesis) through which one perceives the external object (noema) is, from Tanabe’s perspective, always troubled by fallibility because the subject is a limited being. Rationality as a faculty of the subject cannot save the subjectivity if rationality remains within the realm of the subject’s consciousness and subjectivity. The absolute critique is then possible not through consciousness, or intellectual activities, but by going beyond reason and conscious rational thinking. Tanabe states, “Kant proposed a ‘religion within the limits of reason alone,’ but in truth there can be no such religion. . . . ‘[R]ational religion’ does not signify a faith based on reason but a faith mediated by reason. . . . ‘[R]ational faith’ is a concept to be defined not by means of self-identical determination but by means of negative dialectical mediation. A rational faith must be transrational; it must be the negation of reason” (Tanabe [1946] 2000, 55; 1986, 50–51; emphasis in original). How does this subjugation of the self to the Other-power prevent the subject from falling into the subject’s frailty? That is possible, Buddhists claim, by emptying out the self ’s subjective position. One way that traditional Zen Buddhism facilitates this complete emptying out of subjectivity is known as hwadu (話頭) meditation, in which Iryo˘p was trained.12 Pure Land Buddhism, which Tanabe follows, takes an opposite approach in that it relies on the Other-power of Amita Buddha. By chanting the name “Amita Buddha,”

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practitioners go through a process of self-emptying. However, relying on the Other-power means there is a risk of becoming dependent on it. In dealing with the apparent pitfall of the subject’s dependency on and idolization of the Other-power, Tanabe emphasizes the importance of “self-reflection.” Tanabe’s definition of “self-reflection” is different from the rational thinking that he criticized. Self-reflection in this case is based not on “construction” but on the power of “nay,” which is the negation that deconstructs the self ’s constructive power. For Tanabe (1986, 39), reason must break down in order to function, and that breaking down should happen in the absolute transformative power of absolute nothingness. Once again, we note the importance of thinking through “nothing” instead of “being” in the East Asian religio-philosophical tradition. Iryo˘p postulated the grounds of being as nothingness, and for her, becoming awakened to this root called nothingness is a path to freedom. Tanabe claimed that the subject’s submission to nothingness enables him or her to overcome the subject’s fallibility and be newly reborn as a rational being. In what sense is nothingness capable of performing this function? Nothingness is, by definition no thing. It cannot have its own boundaries, as a being does. The identity by which a being is defined is the being’s way of declaring what distinguishes it from other beings. However, for precisely that reason, the price of having an identity is the subject’s freedom because it creates boundaries to distinguish itself from others. The subject as a nonbeing, or as nothingness, is an “emptied being” (kū-u 空有) (see Tanabe 1986, 42). Tanabe ([1946] 2000, 28; 1986, 24) calls this emptied-out subject “being as upaya” (hōbensonzai 方便存在). Skillful means, or upāya (方 便, Chi. fāngbiàn; Kor. pangp’yo˘n; Jap. hōben), is a Buddhist concept that explains phenomena and their relation to noumena.13 The idea of a being as upāya is an absolute demand for self-surrender, which Tanabe ([1946] 2000, 27; 1986, 23) believes is the only way that the subject will overcome the limits of a being and its most dangerous activation, the “radical evil,” “the self-assertion and rebellion of the relative vis-à-vis the absolute.” Nothingness makes the transformation of the subject possible, and Tanabe calls this an act of metanoetics. Tanabe also calls this grace. Nothingness, which the subject experiences through “repentance” or “metanoesis,” means that the subject completely surrenders itself obediently to Otherpower. Through this self-negation, the subject empties out the pitfall of subjectivity and the limits of reason that arise from individuality. Tanabe ([1946] 2000, 82; 1986, 74) explains the entire process of metanoetics

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through the three stages of “action-faith-witness” (gyōshinshō 行信證), and he defines action as follows: When I speak of “action,” I do not mean that the being (or substratum) of the self changes its qualities, but that being is converted into nonbeing and nonbeing into being, that the very character of being itself is transformed in the process. In other words, action means that absolute nothingness emerges to work in such a way that being is converted into nothingness and nothingness into being. For Tanabe, action means a process of the relative encountering the absolute, and this absolute is characterized as nothingness. The relative transforms itself through this process of encountering nothingness. In this sense, Tanabe’s notion of action shows the dimension in which philosophical ideas are actively realized through what we conventionally call religious practice. This philosophico-religious practice is further paired with faith in the sense that one needs to have a belief in this process, and this action-faith should be confirmed through the individual’s own experience or the embodiment of this process in one’s life, which Tanabe calls “witness.”

The Modern Self and the Philosophy of Religion from East Asian Perspectives The introduction of the genres of philosophy and religion to the East Asian intellectual world brought to the forefront the question of the distinctive natures of the two disciplines and their relationship to traditional East Asian thought. The three East Asian thinkers discussed in this chapter proposed that philosophy and religion cannot be two completely separate genres. As one of the first thinkers to investigate this issue, Inoue Enryō came to the conclusion that any philosophical system contains religious aspects in it and vice versa. Enryō stated that the theoretical dimension of philosophical religious traditions constitutes philosophy and that the practice of philosophy is religion. Enryō himself tried to demonstrate this issue through his idea of the “philosophy of action.” From 1890 until his death in 1919, he toured various corners of Japan to deliver talks, and his philosophy tour was his way of “practicing” philosophy. In her discussion of Buddhism and Christianity,

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Kim Iryo˘p strongly underlined the importance of religious awareness and religious education as ways to find the meaning of existence. In Tanabe’s philosophy we find that philosophical and religious dimensions are fully intermingled with his demand for philosophy as metanoetics—that is, philosophy as repentance. Tanabe (1986, 22) called the process of repentance a way to “practice metanoetics subjectively.” A fundamental premise of modernity was to acknowledge an independent self. This premise of modernity, however, generated its own burden. The independent self is a phenomenal self and, as Tanabe stated, a relative one. The modern self claimed independence and therefore also needed to accept its own boundary. It came to realize the necessity of overcoming its finite reality as much as it wanted to declare its independence. How does the self claim its independence and at the same time expand its power to overcome its limitations? A scholar of Japanese philosophy, Sueki Fumihiko (末木文美士), proposed in his book, Kindai Nihon to Bukkyō (近代日本と 仏教, Modern Japan and Buddhism), two developments in modern Japanese thought that tried to answer the challenge the modern self faced: nationalism and nothingness. In nationalism, the power of the “I” is expanded by imagining it as part of the “nation.” I am unable to discuss this issue here. Suffice it to say that scholars have given attention to the nationalism deeply permeating the philosophy of the Kyoto School thinkers.14 Nothingness, as a way to overcome the independent but fragmented modern self, seems to demonstrate a distinctively East Asian approach to the nature of being, as discussed earlier. The “I,” which is an independent and limited being, needs to be transformed and reborn in order to overcome its limited conditions. In Kim Iryo˘p’s and Tanabe’s philosophies of religion, this perennial religious theme of death and rebirth is envisioned through the mediation of nothingness instead of through the power of an ultimate being. For them, nothingness is that space in which the transformation from the limited self to the boundless self takes place. Kim Iryo˘p explained this process as a transformation from the “small I” (soa, 小我) to the “great I” (taea, 大我). Both Iryo˘p and Tanabe emphasized that this transformation should take place not through rational thinking but through the individual’s capacity to release himself or herself from self-imposed limitations. The transformation through nothingness liberates an individual from the limits of gender, as in the case of Kim Iryo˘p. It also reveals to the individual the source of “sin,” that is, individuality, so that one can repent from the limits of rational thinking. In the process

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of transformation through nothingness, the ethical, which always contains antinomies according to Iryo˘p’s and Tanabe’s perspectives, will give way to the religious, in which contradictions themselves are understood as a principle of the universe. The ultimate being, then, is not the one who champions any specific quality, whether it be considered positive or negative in the world of rational moral deliberation; the ultimate being is the one who is aware of the inevitable polarization of things and beings at the phenomenal level and the ultimate emptiness and lack of grounding substance behind the phenomenon. Religion is the very act of being awakened to this reality of existence. Enryō stated that philosophy requires faith as much as religion, denying the objective rationality of philosophical investigation. Iryo˘p argued that any contradictions can be rationally justified by the intention of the subject. And Tanabe systematically launched a critique of reason. Tanabe claimed this critique of reason and self cannot be made unless the self is completely negating itself since otherwise the critique would be done from the viewpoint of the critiquing self and the self ’s rationality. In this sense, Tanabe posited the “other” power (nothingness) as the source for the regeneration. East Asian thinkers’ challenge to rational thinking and reason, especially in connection with the “act” of religion, proposes that both philosophy and religion need to go beyond the limits of reason. This “beyond,” however, does not indicate a return to the power of a transcendental being; rather, it is envisioned as a way for a being to reach a state in which the subject can be released from the limits of subjectivity through constant self-renewal through nothingness, which facilitates the self ’s experience of releasing subjective perspectives. NOTES

 1. Nishi Amane studied in the Netherlands from 1862–1865. Before he went to the Netherlands, Nishi was already teaching philosophy. Hyakuichi shinron is based on his philosophy lectures. See Kang (2002, 216–217).  2. For discussions of this, see Isomae (2003), Godart (2008, 74–75), and Josephson (2013).  3. Cited from Josephson (2013, 265n3). Josephson pays attention to the fact that even though both President Fillmore and Commodore Perry assured that the United States had no intention to interfere with religions of the Japanese and of Japan as a nation, Perry’s later letter confirms that “Christianization of Japan” came second only to trade in the goal of Perry’s expedition to Japan. Josephson

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(2013, 266n4) cites Perry in this context: “To Christianize a strange people, the first important step should be to gain their confidence and respect by means practically honest and in every way consistent with the precepts of our holy religion.”   4. William James characterized passivity as an element of a religious experience, especially of mysticism (2012, 415). In discussing mysticism, James identifies four characteristics of mystic experience: (1) ineffability—it is not possible to give concrete verbal description of what one experienced in a mystic encounter; (2) noetic quality—one experiences a state of insight into deep reality; (3) transiency—mystic experiences last at most for half an hour or maximum of one or two hours; and (4) passivity—one cannot create certain environments for mystic experience (2012, 414–415).  5. See my discussions on how Zen Buddhism uses language against itself to articulate ineffability (Park 2002, 2005).   6. Thurman (1976, 76). In the scripture, Vimalakīrti outwits the Buddha’s best disciples with his understanding of the Buddha’s teaching. When asked to explain non-duality, he remains silent because non-duality means the impossibility of making individual identity, and linguistic expressions are always relying on dualistic individuation.   7. For a discussion of science and its influence on Baek Seonguk, see Park (2016).   8. Inoue (1987–1990, vol. 2, 238); Heisig et al. (2011, 625). ˘ isang (義湘 625–702) explains   9. A Korean Huayan/Hwao˘m monk/thinker U this mutual containment and inclusion in his diagram known as “Po˘pso˘ng kye” ˘ isang (1979–1984, 1). English translation, (法性偈 Diagram of Dhama Nature). U Odin (1982, 13–21). 10. For a discussion of Hegel’s take on Buddhism in his philosophy of religions, see Park (2008, 31–46). 11. Nationalism, militarism, and imperialism, with which the Kyoto School thinkers were involved, has been explored by American scholars. See, for example, Heisig and Maraldo (1996). 12. For a discussion of the mental revolution of Hwadu meditation, see Park (2005). 13. Elsewhere I have discussed the issue of whether upāya is truth as such or is a means to know truth. Park (2012, 2013). 14. See, for example, note 11 above. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buswell, Robert E., and Donald S. Lopez, Jr. 2014. The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Fillmore, Millard. 1968. “Letter of the President of the United States to the Emperor of Japan.” In The Personal Journal of Commodore Matthew C. Perry: The Japan

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Expedition: 1852–1854, edited by Roger Pineau, with an introduction by Samuel Eliot Morison. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Godart, Gerard Clinton. 2008. “ ‘Philosophy’ or ‘Religion’? The Confrontation with Foreign Categories in Late Nineteenth Century Japan.” Journal of the History of Ideas 69(1): 71–91. Heisig, James W., and John C. Maraldo, eds. 1996. Rude Awakening: Zen, the Kyoto School, & the Question of Nationalism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Heisig, James W. 2001. Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Heisig, W. James, Thomas P. Kasulis, John C. Maraldo, eds. 2011. Japanese Philosophy: A Sourcebook. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Heisig, James. 2013. Nothingness and Desire: A Philosophical Antiphony (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Holder, John. 2006. Early Buddhist Discourses. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett. Inoue Enryō. 井上円了. 1987–1990. Inoue Enryō Senshū 井上円了選集 (Selected works of Inoue Enryō). 25 volumes. Tokyo: Tōyō Daigaku. Isomae Junichi 磯前順一. 2003. Kindai nihon no shūkyō gensetsu to sono keifu: shūkyō, kokka, Shinto. 近代日本の宗教言説とその系譜：宗教、国家、神道. Tokyo: Iwanami. James, William. 2012. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Josephson, Jason Ānanda. 2013. The Invention of Religion in Japan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kang Yo˘ngan 강영안. 2002. Uri ege ch’o˘rhak u˘n muot in’ga: ku˘ndae, iso˘ng, chuch’e ru˘l chungsim u˘ro salp’yo˘bon hyo˘ndae Han’guk ch’o˘rhak sa. 우리에게 철학은 무 엇인가: 근대, 이성, 주체를 중심으로 살펴본 현대 한국 철학사 (What Is Philosophy to Us? History of Modern Korean Philosophy with a Focus on the Modern Period, Reason, and the Subject). Seoul: Kungni. ˘ nu˘ sudoin u˘i hoesang 어느 修道人의 回想 (Reflections Kim Iryo˘p 金一葉. 1960. O of a Zen Practitioner). Yesan, Republic of Korea: Sudo˘ksa. Maraldo, John C. 1990. “Metanoetics and the Crisis of Reason: Tanabe, Nishida, and Contemporary Philosophy.” In The Religious Philosophy of Tanabe Hajime, edited by Taitetsu Unno and James W. Heisig. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press, 235–255. Nishida Kitarō. 1987. Last Writings: Nothingness and Religious Worldview, translated by David A. Dilworth. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Nishitani Keiji. 1982. Religion and Nothingness, translated by Jan van Bragt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Odin, Steve. 1982. Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpenetration. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Otto, Rudolf. 1923. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by John W. Harvey. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Park, Jin Y. 2002. “Zen and Zen Philosophy of Language: A Soteriological Perspective.” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 1(2): 209–228. ———. 2005. “Zen Language in Our Time: The Case of Pojo Chinul’s Huatou Meditation.” Philosophy East and West 55(1): 80–98. ———. 2008. Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan and the Possibility of Buddhist Postmodern Ethics. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. ———. 2012/2013. “A Huayanist Reading of the Lotus Sūtra: The Case of Li Tongsuan.” Journal of International Association of Buddhist Studies 25(1/2): 229–261. ———. 2016. “Burdens of Modernity: Formation of Buddhist Philosophy in Baek Seonguk and Inoue Enryō.” In Traditional Korean Philosophy, edited by Youngsun Baek and Philip J. Ivanhoe. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 197–221. ———. 2017. Women and Buddhist Philosophy: Engaging Zen Master Kim Iryo˘p. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Staggs, Kathleen M. 1979. “In Defense of Japanese Education: Essays from the Meiji Period by Inoue Enryō and Murakami Senshō.” PhD Dissertation, Princeton University. 1979. Staggs, Kathleen M. 1983. “ ‘Defend the Nation and Love the Truth’: Inoue Enryō and the Revival of Meiji Buddhism.” Monumenta Nipponica 38(3): 251–281. Sueki Fumihiko. 末木文美士. 2004. Kindai Nihon to Bukkyō 近代日本と仏教 (Modern Japan and Buddhism). Tokyo: Transview. Tanabe Hajime 田辺元. (1946) 2000. Zangedō to shite no tetsugaku. shino tetsugaku 懺悔道としての哲学. 死の哲学. Kyōto-shi: Tōeisha. Tanabe Hajime. 1986. Philosophy as Metanoetics. Translated by Takeuchi Yoshinori. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thurman, Robert A.F., trans. 1976. The Holy Teaching of Vimalakīrti: A Mahāyāna Scripture. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. ˘ isang 義湘. 1979–1984. “Hwao˘m ilsu˘ng po˘pkyedo” (華嚴一乘法界圖). Han’guk U Pulgyo Cho˘nso˘ (韓國佛敎全書), vol. 2. Seoul: Tongguk taehaggyo ch’ulpa’nbu.

Part II

Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies, Theology, and the Modern Academy

7

The New Geophilosophy How Globalization and Postcolonial Theory Are Redefining Contemporary Philosophy of Religion

Carl A. Raschke

It seems in every era of intellectual transition we find a field, or a subfield, asking earnestly about its own future. The exercise is neither simply selfreferential nor necessarily gratuitous. However, we must be brutally honest and ask ourselves if the line of questioning is more about a certain quiet crisis of self-confidence than it is about boldly posing a prophetic vision of the hitherto inconceivable. When Nietzsche, for example, proclaimed with his well-known audacity that he was writing a “philosophy of the future,” it was something far different from when an academic discipline conjures up a conference or sets aside appropriate journal venues to ask its members to speculate with stolid “futurological” sobriety on what may lie in the offing. The truth is, of course, everyone from philosophers to geophysicists to economists (those who indeed have the most unself-reflective chutzpah when it comes to “forecasting”) have a horrible track record when it comes to divining the mysteries of tomorrow. However, the exercise is not frivolous by any means. It is our sophisticated academic version of play therapy whereby we both dramatize our anxieties and work out our new maturing sense of identity and self-confidence. We often wonder about the future in a compelling way when we have experienced either real trauma or a niggling feeling of emergent crisis. I would maintain that the latter option is what is perhaps driving us these days. The mood of crisis is less existential and socially introspective (as, for

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instance, in Robert Musil’s literary figures on the eve of August 1914) than it is contextual. For a quarter-century up until the middle of the last decade Western letters had been under mounting assault from the cultural periphery for its presumption of both epistemic pre-eminence and methodological sovereignty. The criticisms constituted the crystallizing academic voices of previously excluded identities, morphing gradually from claims of social marginalization to more robust revisions of the definitions of acceptable knowledge. The poststructuralist revolution in France, once it had fallen into the hands of the Anglophone world’s cultural revolutionaries and militants, became a powerful tool for delegitimating the very epistemic foundations that the Western intellectual tradition had taken for granted since ancient Athens. “Eurocentrism,” an obvious form of geosocial hegemony that the new militancy with its fascination with so-called “Third World” revolutionaries, now was fingered by the “consciousness raising” pedagogies of the new ethnic, sexual, and gender politics to be merely a covering term for the more insidious types of “logocentrism,” “phallocentrism,” “heterosexualism,” and so forth. The meteoric rise, particularly in America, of the reputation of Michel Foucault with his notion of “discursive regimes” combined in the late 1970s with the mystique of “difference” associated with the writings of Jacques Derrida, producing the general theoretical protocols that at first were known by the vague descriptors of “cultural studies” or “critical theory.” Later these protocols, especially because of the influence of Gayatri Spivak and the radical anti-Western historicism of Edward Said, coalesced under the rubric familiar today as “postcolonialism.” But it was only with the economic collapse of 2008 that a sense of actual historical vulnerability set in throughout the West, which was magnified all at once by the realization that the very economic hegemony that had been the object of scathing critical analysis for so long was now threatened, and along with it went a breakdown in resistance among the West’s intellectual elites to the same kind of discursive and epistemological dissent that had grown quite familiar without really anyone taking it all that seriously.

The Coming of a New Geophilosophy My thesis is that two global and broad-based trends—in both the spatiotemporal and conceptual sense—are raising significant doubts and generating conundrums regarding the very hermeneutical engine of Western

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philosophy, which has operated fairly consistently and efficiently since the age of the ancient Greeks. These trends are all interconnected with each other in a larger perspective, but we will focus on the two main factors or forces challenging the current state of affairs: the phenomenon increasingly understood as “globalization” as well as the new “geophilosophical” (Gilles Deleuze’s term) language incubated within the cross-disciplinary field of the humanities and religious studies known as “postcolonial theory” or, more recently, “decolonial theory.” Both globalization theory and postcolonial discourse have their origins in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century continental philosophy of religion. However, just as the emergent and former colonized nations of the world have turned the mechanisms, institutions, and policy strategies of Western capitalism against itself to create a vast, brave new kind of economic order, so Western-educated philosophical elite of these cultures have stood Western philosophy on its head with an even more radical reformulation of what Foucault would call the current “episteme” than even the French poststructuralists of the last generation might have imagined. The economic and political shift has been exhaustively analyzed by bloggers, pundits, and, of course, the sundry critics of would-be Western pretentiousness. But the cultural and intellectual displacements now underway, which mirror the present-day realignment of “world order,” are only slowly beginning to be recognized, especially in the liberal academy. When it comes to philosophy of religion, we are experiencing a certain quantum of denial. We are witnessing the decline of the West not so much in Oswald Spengler’s sense, but the decline of the importance and utility of the very inferential system—what I call the “hermeneutical engine” of discourse itself—in which we as academics are accustomed to pose their questions in the first place as well as make sense of our own legacy. It is something far more monumental than Thomas Kuhn’s now famous, and often clichéd, “paradigm shift.” Paradigm shifts occur, as Kuhn pointed out, within the orbit of “normal science.” The insight can be applied analogically to the way in which Western philosophy frames questions and stakes out positions. But rarely does the framework for the establishment of the paradigm itself, or the hermeneutical engine as a whole, come into question. As Andrea Nye (2000) elaborates, philosophy itself has historically and routinely imbibed the conceptual and semiotic cross-drafts of their era in order to exhale its own unique anticipation of what its tasks and projects for the future must be. Socrates drew upon the idiom of Greek craft disciplines, which were in powerful gestation during his lifetime. John

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Locke parroted the “metaphysics” of Newtonian physics. And, of course, Nietzsche in-sourced the popular language and sensibility of the performing arts, which were at their zenith in his time, while Deleuze and Guattari made the powerfully radical gesture from their own tumultuous generation of suggesting a kind of psychedelicized vision of philosophy as a kaleidoscope of unrepresentable “desiring” intensities, where what I would term the signifying singularities of somatic experience and the intoxicating enchainments of hyperpoetic tropes all at once took precedence over proposition, predicating, and the proper protocols of logical entailment. However, the reduction of philosophy to consensual academic fashions during the present day has led to what Nye dubs a string of persistent “refusals” to recognize the radical reconditioning of what in the nineteenth century was known as philosophy’s “life world” that our new global civilization is forcing upon us. Philosophy tends to dismiss all the busy activism of its subtle reconditioning as “not philosophy” or “non-philosophy,” something which François Laruelle in France has taken up in his own idiosyncratic manner with a revisionist vengeance. “Philosophy’s very origin could be said to be controversial self-questioning and self-renewal,” Nye writes. Yet “in the grip of particular, strongly rooted philosophical paradigms . . . this history can be forgotten. And this may now be the case in English-speaking academic philosophy, where certain presuppositions as to the proper aims and methods of philosophy are sometimes held as dogma” (Nye 2000, 102). Nye wants to introduce historical contingency into the profile of the philosophical enterprise as a whole. One of the background premises of Nye’s argument, formulated over a decade ago, is that philosophy in general, and particularly contemporary Western philosophy, maintains the fantasy, in evidence since the Greeks, of ahistorical, or suprahistorical, grandeur. The point is well taken, but in many respects inconsequential. Most philosophers today would recognize, even if they spend little time confessing it, that their own distinctive convention of problematizing certain issues and conversing about them within their own signature argot cannot be isolated completely from the temper of the times. For example, when Derrida made his first serious gestures toward the religio-political in the early 1980s, he broke in his essay “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy” from what had hitherto been an increasingly arcane and self-mystifying escapade with poststructuralist linguistic theory into acknowledging the sudden preoccupation with “endings” and revealings that might be described as the consequence of the radical historicism and revolutionary criticism of humanities scholars throughout the 1970s (see Derrida 1992).

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Laruelle and Derridean Indecision At the same time, what Derrida from his poststructuralist inaugural to his late reflections on “circumfession” and animality served to force upon philosophy—even if it dug itself in along the way and remained more or less unresponsive—is the recognition of difference at a deep level, a recognition that Laruelle has seized upon and radicalized as an invitation to the rehabilitation of a fundamental ontology of difference. For Laruelle, Derrida in his “indecision” of whether we are indeed Greek or Jews, ends up inscribing the differend as a form of ontological “indivision” within the immanent order of things, that is, “the self-postulating of Difference as already actual.” What Laruelle (2010, 111) calls “this pre-deconstructive naïvite” turns out to be “the secret of Deconstruction.” Deconstruction is not merely an ongoing disclosure and scandalous showing—for Derrida, the true implication of an apocalypsis—of what philosophy does with its own claims of linguistic sovereignty, its irreducible monology. It is a cipher borne of Derrida’s own indecision (even though he recognizes, according to Laruelle, that all philosophical positions are in fact decisions) when it comes to refuting decisionism in philosophy as a whole. Thus, so far as Laruelle is concerned, all types of identitarian, new historicist, or cultural-political philosophies, as we have seen in the past generation, that find themselves awash in a surging torrent of possible iterations arising from the discernment of a Deleuzian chaosmos of deep differences, primarily serve as symptoms of the great Derridean refusal, the refusal to affirm difference as singular unity, and vice versa. Laruelle, who constantly invokes Nietzsche, is of course not doing much more than taking the philosophical leap to an ontology of difference, which Deleuze himself foresaw in Difference and Repetition. His appeal these days has little to do with the originality of his insights and far more to do with his doctrinaire (a less polite façon de parler than the one he uses, which is “metaphysical”) convictions in stating what might be regarded as a sort of post-phenomenological rendering of a new species of distinctively French “positive philosophy,” which ironically he dubs “non-philosophy,” a stratagem which is only justified because he a priori asserts that philosophy is always based on a decision anyway, a decision that automatically generates a binary. If difference is indivisible, and therefore the pure proxy for unity itself, philosophy can never be “in-different.” It takes non-philosophy to ascend to that summit. I devote initial attention to Laruelle, not because he portends anything truly pace-setting for the future of philosophy or philosophy of religion. I

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devote attention to him because, in ontologizing difference, he functions as a telling, collective admission that the almost pathological, critical differentialism that has characterized the humanities in general and the diverse dissenting wings of the philosophical establishment overall—since Derrida first pointed out the “apocalyptic tone” of things in 1980 when he delivered the initial talk that became the essay—has come to a dead end. If philosophy as a whole, and philosophy of religion in particular, simply seeks to mime this sort of cultural-heterological differentialism, which finds its voice in endlessly rarefied “political” statements in the name of the academy, it will aptly be deserving of the easy, but damning, accusation that it is really nothing more than an infinitely refinable syntax of Nietzschean ressentiment. It knows only how “to talk the talk” without “walking the walk.” But this generational obsession with what might be termed even more precisely a cultural-identitarian heterology of pure difference is not by any means the “universal obsessional neurosis” (if I may borrow Freud’s infamous phraseology) of postmodern secular letters. Sociologists of knowledge in the late nineteenth century, inhaling the heady air of the Hegelianism of their era and seeking to refine further Marx’s own harsh heterology of social class as a dialectical system crystallizing the historical “relations of production,” anticipated the development of such a heterology by half a century. It was of course Gayatri Spivak’s discovery of the distinctive, postmodernist “hermeneutics” of the subaltern, a term she self-consciously lifted from Gramsci and to which she gave dynamic currency as an operative neo-Marxist corollary in certain respects to Derrida’s khora, that made deconstruction finally relevant and useful as a way of expressing the materiality of what previously had been the ubiquitous logical operator known as difference within the poststructuralist syntax. The odyssey of this term, especially in the formation of so-called “postcolonial theory” and its lingering controversy are interesting topics that could always be pursued to make this point in its fullness, if space permitted. But what makes this general discussion germane to a consideration of the future of philosophy of religion—or, more precisely, as our agenda has been crafted—of whether the philosophy of religion has any kind of meaningful future is the tacit proposition that the now quite ripe age of differentialism does not constitute a set of recognizable temporal markers for any master historical narrative so much as a curious symptomatology of an unacknowledged “unhappy” philosophical consciousness. Derrida himself offered the first fumbling diagnosis for the emergence of this consciousness in Specters of Marx, published at the dramatical transitional pivot between the collapse of communism and the short-lived

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triumph of neoliberalism, with his citation of Hamlet’s memorable phrase that “the time is out of joint” (see Derrida 1991, 23ff.). The “spectrality” of Marx, which for Derrida was a ghost of both history past and history to come, comes down to the forceful, wholly immanent, and “undeconstructible” demand within history itself for a universal justice that is never “universalizable” in the formal, ethical, Kantian sense. It is only universalizable as a majestic type of historical unconditional in the same way Yahweh’s name functions in his essay on the new apocalyptic tone of philosophy as the name that renders all “translation” of classic texts unconditionally impervious to any reductionism or historicism. It was early on that Derrida made it clear that he was not under any circumstances, as his conservative critics nattered on, a “nihilist” or “relativist,” and nor was he, conversely, as his leftist detractors insisted, an apolitical quietist. The universalizablity of justice stands under the sign of messianism in the same way that the signification of the text cowers before the tetragrammaton of “revealed” language concealed behind the production, in “Derridese,” of iterated apokekalummenoi logoi (Derrida 1992, 26). And, of course, it is for that very reason that the unhappy consciousness of philosophy is not overcome or “taken up” into a speculative self-reconciliation of the fractured subject. Rather, it is further confounded or discombobulated in its subsequent encounter with an even more powerful revenant, the specter that returns under the name of religion.

Speculative Realism and the Specter of Religion My own relatively recent book (Raschke 2012) is dedicated to a probing inquiry into what really lay behind the so-called “religious turn” in philosophy two decades ago that Derrida inaugurated, and it remains a quandary for us all today, particularly when pondering the tension between what we ordinarily consider philosophy of religion and what beckons to us a religious theorizing. But because that analysis can be found elsewhere, I will not belabor it here. Where I want to go with this conversation largely is to point out that when Derrida noted a long while back that the time is out of joint, he was really telling us that the signs under which we conduct our enterprise—the signs of the new discursivity that once codified the bolder dimensions of the religious turn as well as of our various strategies of enunciation when dealing with the attacks of outsiders—are outpacing the times in which we actually live. What do I imply by this statement? Derrida himself offers an insight when he clarifies why the specter that comes with the advent of the age of

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globalization is that of Marx, and no one else. Marx, according to Derrida, is both the prophet of universal justice—albeit, a justice that comes only when class divisions are once and for all abolished through the revolutionary process—and the radical critic of religion itself, the “premise of all criticism.” Prophecy and criticism, an instrumentality of the newly fashionably Enlightenment scientism in which Marx reveled, are therefore intimately mingled together. Derrida’s argument in the fifth chapter of Specters of Marx, entitled “Apparition of the Inapparent,” in which he makes the case for the relationship between Marxist criticism and a deconstructive insinuation of a profounder meaning for historical spectrality as a whole, follows a rather meandering and sometimes barely discernible trajectory. But what Derrida seems to be saying—altogether strikingly—in this chapter is that the revenant that Marx sought to exorcise through his historical-materialist inversion of the classical idealist position on religion, through a “critical but pre-deconstructive . . . ontology of presence as actual reality and objectivity” (Derrida 1991, 214)—the “substrate” of the capitalist forms of production—turns out to be an all-too-self-satisfied anticipation of the real eschatological specter of a messianic justice to come. The Marxian and religious “hauntings” then, like any revenant, “return” only in the sense that their intimation compels us to interrogate even further what is both ghostly and uncanny (unheimlich in Freud’s vocabulary) as well as “untimely” (unzeitgemäss, or “out of joint with time”) in Nietzsche’s sense, so that we may begin to construe these spectralized signifers as indices to something that are completely missing, something that has a genuine “apocalyptic” penumbra about it, if we may use that word in the way Derrida deploys it. It is no longer a Heideggerian case of es gibt, or “there is,” but for Derrida a matter of es spukt (best translated by the old Bob Dylan line that “something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?”) Such “spectral” signs have an “uncanny” connotation of thereness. They are always outpacing the times, because they have an inarticulable, eschatological resonance, something your standard average everyday academic philosopher—like the Pharisees Jesus berated for their obtuseness when it came to reading even the most obvious signs—find objectionable and easily worthy of dismissal. But the messianic intimations are always the most difficult, because they are intimations of undeconstructible justice. “If he loves justice at least,” Derrida (1991, 221) concludes the chapter, “the ‘scholar’ of the future, the ‘intellectual’ of tomorrow should learn it and from the ghost.” Specters of Marx, but also the revenant of Yahweh. If philosophy of religion cannot stand in awe before this revenant, it truly has no future. And that is why the whole notion of the postsecular is as “uncanny” as the secular

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itself. Both constitute the “present” and “absent” conjugations of the binary complex that is, as far as Saussure was concerned, the transcendental signified—except that what signifies, as Derrida understands from the beginning in his 1960s essay “Force and Signification” (which derived deconstruction from a radical rereading of Hegel’s Phenomenology) only becomes intelligible when we see it as the “apparition” of the inapparent force, what in my latest, forthcoming book on “political theology” I have come to call the force of God. The force of God is also the force of the death of God; it is the Kraft of difference, without which difference is no longer different. Hegel understood that well, though unfortunately Laruelle is like the worst of Pharisees in this—but that is a subject for a different occasion. The “disjointedness,” or untimeliness, of our times is communicated by the signs that outrace them. That is a more sophisticated way of arguing à la Deleuze that to philosophize in the normal way is simply to manufacture symptoms. Difference, as it turns out, is the dark driver behind, as Francisco Goya would have put it, our “dreams” of ever new enunciations of philosophical reasonableness. These dreams strike us as simply a yearning to give us that ol’ time fundamentalist religion of metaphysical incorrigibility, even if it still goes by the name of “Difference.” It is not unlike someone in the age of promiscuous sexuality who hopefully names their daughter Chastity. That kind of fundamentalist nostalgia goes a long way toward explaining the sudden post-Derridean appeal of philosophers like Laruelle and Quentin Meillassoux. T.S. Eliot said humanity cannot bear too much reality, but even in the age of difference we cannot bear too much difference as well. Yet the trend toward difference as difference is genuinely irreversible. If we can mangle Aeschylus a bit as well, we can say that “difference is king having cast out the philosophical Zeus we know as the One-and-the-Same.” The question for the future of philosophy of religion is how do we live, if not thrive, in a globalized world of difference, but more importantly, what differences truly matter? If all differences are indifferent to each other, then there is truly no difference that makes a difference, and the force of difference becomes negligible. We find ourselves surprisingly then wandering aimlessly but with trancelike fixation on all the blurred particulars in the white-mythological, neo-metaphysical fairyland of the speculative realists.

Postcolonial and Globalization Theory It is in this context that the rather complicated, multitextured, ideologically conflicted, and methodologically indecisive trajectory of thought and

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criticism that has occupied the academy, but been generally ignored by philosophy except in a few rare instances, becomes extremely important, as I have already indicated. I am referring, of course, to postcolonial theory, and what is more loosely configured as globalization theory. But, generally speaking, these separate, yet kindred moieties of theory amount to far more than praxes of “cultural criticism,” which our own grand Western intellectual narratives are used to subtracting from the real business of philosophical thinking. They become clear instances of what Deleuze termed “geophilosophies,” a concept he “constructs” along the lines of Nietzsche’s philosophy of the future. Deleuze’s demand for geophilosophical thinking in What Is Philosophy? is predicated simply on his recognition that the European philosophies of today—and that goes even more for the trendiest of French philosophies—lack a “plane” along which they can vitally project. Deleuze, of course, has a more attuned historico-cultural sense than did Heidegger, who broached a similar notion in his analysis of the history of metaphysics as Seinsvergessenheit. For Heidegger, the “real history” (eigentliche Geschichte) of the West is one of the progressive “oblivion” of Being, where philosophical representations become mere empty tokens, or simulacra, a seemingly innocent mask for the apocalypse of nothingness (Nietzsche’s “twilight of the idols,” or Göttzendämmerung). So far as Deleuze is concerned, the Heideggerian project of overcoming metaphysics, amounting to the quest for the reversal of nihilism, can be understood as the outcome of the death of God. “As for us, we possess concepts—after so many centuries of Western thought we think we possess them—but we hardly know where to put them because we lack a genuine plane, misled as we are by Christian transcendence” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 101). What Heidegger terms their “fatedness” or “sentness” (Geschick) becomes truly epochal for the present era within the Deleuzean context and therefore opens up the horizon for a future global philosophy that is no longer Western philosophy perhaps as we have known it. “Eternal philosophy, but also the history of philosophy, gives way to a becoming-philosophical. What becomings pass through us today, which sink back into history but do not arise from it, or rather that arise from it only to leave it. The Aternal, the Untimely, the Actual are examples of concepts in philosophy; exemplary concepts” (113). The plane through which the geophilosophies, or global theories, of the here-and-now as tomorrow become philosophical for the very reason they are “untimely” in both a Nietzschean as well as a Derridean idiom. The

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Deleuzean plan through which the new philosophy passes is not the twentieth-century, together with the poststructuralist, controversy over language, which we can begin to frame in Heideggerian terms as a sophisticated form of Seinsvergessen, nor is it simply a reaffirmation of the Graeco-ontological as the metaphysics of difference. Nor is it neo-phenomenological, neo-materialist, neo-theological, “new feminist,” speculative realist, Lacanian-Hegelian, postsecular, post-postmodernist, etc., etc. These are all pathways that slope down from the ancient alta plana of Mediterranean philosophy. Even the most “differentialist” of them, and that includes Derrida of course, as Ian Almond in The New Orientalists points out, are part of the same terrain, an effort to “reterritorialize” the Parmenidean impulse on the terrain of the West self-doubt about itself. Such an effort, in fact, may have something to do with our ongoing own inability to characterize the postmodern other than as a shibboleth. When one wants to ignore the vacuum at the center, like the Rabbinic scholars after the destruction of Jerusalem, one simply turns the rest into commentary. Almond leverages Said’s famous argument about the West’s obsession with the unconcretized Other, which the latter of course names “Orientalism,” to make this powerful point: “in attempting to write about the Other, we invariably end up writing about ourselves,” which he identifies as “a cliché of Orientalist studies” to which in fact most postmodern French thought belongs. The pursuit of the radical differential signification inexorably attached to the Other, therefore, according to Almond, re-territorializes a fatally decracinated Western philosophy in a similar manner that Nietzsche described ressentiment as an inverted, or what today following Derrida we would dub an “autoimmune,” exercise of the will to power. The theme is stressed by Said himself in the 1994 afterword to Orientalism. “There is no avoiding the fact that even if we disregard the Orientalist distinctions between ‘them’ and ‘us’, a powerful series of political and ultimately ideological realities inform scholarship today.” Said suggests, in fact, that the so-called identity politics of the academy is nothing more than a perpetuation of the false Orientalist bifurcation between the subject of enunciation and what is extrojected as pure theoretical alterity with the ironic reversal of the “Other” now as the Western colonialist hegemon. “An openly polemical and right-minded ‘progressive’ scholarship can very easily degenerate into dogmatic slumber,” a turn of events that is no more “edifying” than the more perverse dimensions of the Orientalist imagination itself (Said [1978] 1994, 327). Almond (2007, 203) argues that such a “­ progressivism” of

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c­ontemporary letters, derived as it is from frequently from poststructuralist critiques of the logocentric or “white mythological” canons of literature associated with Orientalism, illustrates broadly “how Western intellectuals unreflectively appropriate and manipulate the semantic residue of other cultures for their own purposes.” The irony is noted by Robert J.C. Young in his detailed historical account of the development of postcolonial theory from Jean-Paul Sartre and Frantz Fanon onward. “Structuralism” with its taboos against universalism, against which Derrida set his face in the 1960s, was originally intended by its Marxist inventors to provide a critical theory for the critique of colonialism and its Orientalist hermeneutic. It was “essentially democratic, egalitarian, deliberately unconcerned with the bourgeois esthetics of value, evaluation, discrimination, and taste, that have always been deployed in the west to shore up claims of cultural—and therefore class or racial—superiority” (Young 2001, 420). Poststructuralism, paradoxically, particularly as it became settled within the academy as an infinite demand for both differentiation and “inclusion,” all the while presupposing the white, male—and now of course we must add heterosexual—European as the vacuous sign of the other, has not emancipated thought from its Orientalist captivity, but institutionalized its own false flag as an invocation—and celebration—of difference that is in all truth an unquestionable re-inscription of the monolithic Western subject, the pure academic version of the cowbird in the nest syndrome. If we can begin to understand the epochal transformation wrought through Derrida’s influence, something for all our misplaced confidence in the meaning of what is called deconstruction, we slowly recognize that it is not so much about expanding the empire of the Other (the Orientalist option), but about theorizing and philosophizing the force of difference that discloses as the secret of a globalizing, new world disorder that we experience as an “untimeliness” compelling us to ask questions like the future of philosophy of religion, a new, still disjunctive narrative for a time out of joint. The theorizing of this force is not a straightforward proposition necessarily, even though the language that drives such an enterprise can be found throughout the entirety of Derrida’s writings and offers us a genuine, genealogical method, as I argue in my book Force of God: Political Theology and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy (2015). But we are not concerned here with the question of the political but the future—if it, of course, has a future—of the philosophy of religion. And, if we cannot abstract ourselves from the global world of difference that this force generates, what emergent discursive formations shall we honor and attend to? What are our most attractive options?

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A Philosophy of the Future In his critique of poststructuralism as the “new Orientalism,” Almond quotes Foucault’s prophecy that “if a philosophy of the future exists, it will have to be born outside of Europe, or as a consequence of the encounters . . . between Europe and non-Europe” (Foucault quoted and translated in Almond 2007, 198). Given the dominance of Western, that is, “Orientalist” discourse that has affected deeply over the last generation at least even those who often claim to be the voice of non-Europe, the latter turn of events is more likely. But we must ask the following question with a certain earnestness, rigor, and self-scrutiny that is probably a little awkward for our profession: How would such a Zukunftsphilosophie—or more precisely a Zukunftsreligionsphilosophie—achieve the maximal “escape velocity” from its ongoing Orientalist incarceration? One strategy, which has gathered quite a lot of interdisciplinary currency recently, can be found in the various historico-critical prospectuses and ventures in global discourse analysis that we find in the groundbreaking work of Walter Mignolo (2000). Mignolo takes advantage of the epistemic opening Deleuze offers with the concept of a geophilosophy and begins, quite cumbersomely yet fruitfully, to sketch the elements of what he designates as post-occidential reason. Without any elaborate or sophisticated philosophical inquiry into its genealogy, Mignolo identifies—as have putatively “Orientalist” thinkers from Kant to Heidegger to Žižek—the crisis of Occidental reason as due to its epochal failure to wiggle out of its centurieslong entrapment in the metaphysics of the subject, to escape even by what seem the slyest and most ingenious subterfuges from the prison house of linguistic self-referentiality. Such a self-referentiality reaches its own curious denouement, as far as the critics of both Orientalism and neo-Orientalism are concerned, in the Derridean aporia of the historical, or of the messianism without a realized messianic eventuality, in the very undecidability between the viens, the il vient, and the avenir. Even after deconstruction, we are still reminded of Almond’s (2007, 60) argument that it is the European confrontation with the tout autre, specifically the Islamic specter that defines Orientalism per se, that “works like an utterly unreachable subtext, forever receding before our interpretations, while remaining paradoxically the very condition of their possibility.” Derrida’s use of Islamic fundamentalism in what seems at first a slightly ambivalent manner—first as an invocation of resistance to the logo-techno-centrism of “globo-Latinity” (see Derrida 1998) then later, after 9/11, as our new, millennial obeisance toward an

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unanticipated, evental style of historical haunting that constitutes the “singular coming of the other,” as the “weak force” the “force without power” that serves to “open up unconditionally to what comes and comes to affect it” (Derrida 2005, xiv)—bears out Almond’s own sharp insight. It is because of the “impossibility” of breaking out of such a self-referentiality that Mignolo radically transposes the “I think, therefore I am” into the “I think where I am.” The exchange of the “where” for the “therefore” serves as an index for another subtle shift. This new post-Orientalist “Archimedean” point replaces the self-affirming—and endlessly self-referring—subjectivity, which includes both the dialectic and aporetic dyad of subject and not-subject. The new differance consists in the excision of the I from the post-deconstructive oui to generate the pure ou, the “where” in the world from which world can begin to be thought anew. But beginning with a site rather than a subject, or even a barred subject à la Lacan, poses its own perils of a different kind of self-referentiality. Mignolo’s site-based thinking is intimately tied up with what constitutes his signature contribution to contemporary discussions on globalization and the nature of philosophy in what is conventionally called the “postcolonial” context, that is, his claim that the real dynamic of methodological differentialism is what he terms the “colonial difference,” a theme he borrows from the Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano. The colonial difference comes into play historically when modernity morphs as the official ideology of global expansion during the age of exploration and its aftermath in Western military and commercial subjugation of everything—and everyone—beyond the European and North American perimeters. The “modern,” henceforth, is no longer a way of thinking but becomes a “world system” that draws on its own discursive originality and conviction of noetic sovereignty to reorganize political boundaries, languages, and ethnicities as well as gender markers and labor relationships. Everything is thought from the side of this administrative redeployment of communicative resources, according to Mignolo, in a sweeping analysis amounting to what might be compared with Foucault’s power-knowledge framework, except that former’s lattice of conceptual innovations stirs in an overwhelming dollop of cultural-anthropological relativism. Mignolo (2000, 87) characterizes thought that operates within the modern/colonial and is able to think the authentic difference between modernity as such and a modernity that can be simultaneously conceived from the “other side” of the equation as “border thinking.” “Border thinking structures itself on a double consciousness, a double critique operating on the imaginary of the modern/colonial

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world system, of modernity/coloniality . . . it establishes alliances with the internal critique, the monotopic critique of modernity from the perspective of modernity itself (e.g., Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Marx, Freud, Derrida) at the same time that it marks the irreducible difference of border thinking as a critique from the colonial difference.” What makes this “double critique” necessarily different from the Derridean doubling of the dyad of alterity itself, or of the Marxist inversion of the Hegelian subject to lay the groundwork for an emancipatory narrative dispelling the “false consciousness” inherent in this dialectical mode of signification? Mignolo’s contention is that what distinguishes border thinking, which interestingly in Local Histories/Global Designs he frequently depicts as offering entranceway to a “border gnosis,” is that even though it has no specific, established, strong discursive formation from which it operates (e.g., the “Western tradition”), even as an imagined site of otherness, it is a force, or complex forces, in its own right. It belongs to “the relocation of languages and knowledge in the current stage of globalization,” which in turn give rise to “the emergence of new local actions with an international agenda.” Furthermore, “these new social actors are, at once, contesting the idea that global designs can only emerge from one particular local history and resetting the rules of the game” (Mignolo 2000, 297). In his latest major book, The Darker Side of Western Modernity (2011), Mignolo is of course less sanguine about the capacity of border thinking, as he outlined it a decade earlier, to displace the colonial/modern economy of language and power. Modernity itself remains resistant to changes in this economy. Let us call it, following Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of global capital in Anti-Oedipus, a planetary Cartesian imperium of the conjunctive synthesis, a synthesis that tends toward totalization—even in the case of speculative realism toward a totalization using the very means of de-totalization Western metaphysics allows through the mechanism of difference. Hence, in place of “border thinking,” Mignolo sets forth what he dubs the “decolonial option.” Further refining its distance from all Cartesianisms, decoloniality is no longer about “I think where I am” but “I am where I do.” Mignolo (2011, 144) puts it quite bluntly. “A decolonial question would be: ‘Why would you like to save capitalism and not save human beings? ‘Why would an abstract entity be saved, and not the ecological and human lives that capitalism is constantly destroying . . . That is how modernity/coloniality works.” Mignolo distinguishes between what Deleuze would term two different “images of thought” that make decoloniality an almost moral-categorical imperative when it comes to rescuing human beings from the relentless

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expansion of the Cartesian imperium, in which even our favored “continental philosophies” today are ingloriously trapped. This relentless expansion takes place, as did the ancient Roman imperium, in the name of humanitas, according to Mignolo. Humanitas as the sign of the modernist imperium is an “epistemic zero point,” an unsurpassable site of self-transparency (even it is not true certitude), out of which arise “ ‘human concepts’ of natural reason,” the rage to construct through the disjunctive synthesis of relentless differentiation that runs all the way from Descartes through Kant to the identity theorists themselves. But this rage for “rational classification,” the secret addiction of modernity, also “meant racial classification,” that is, “who establishes criteria of classification and who classifies” (Mignolo 2011, 83). The rational sovereign who subjectifies also classifies, and in this process of classification determines what is the region of alterity for its sovereignty, the genuine silent subaltern that Mignolo distinguishes from humanitas as anthropos. As a prophetic challenge to my audience, I would ask if we are not indeed the “spoiled subjects” (what German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk identifies as die Verwöhnten, the “pampered of the earth”) who almost insouciantly and unwittingly strut about in our regalia of humanitas. If we are the elite of the “knowledge society,” then we are Mignolo’s aristocracy of humanitas without even the shame of our capitalist-materialist congeners, since we belong to one and the same imperial family. Is a philosophy of the future that hears the anthropos possible at all? Can the falcon ever hear the falconer?

Subalternity and the Religious Posing the question of philosophical subalternity at a time when our raison d’être is at stake may seem a bit odd, if not frivolous. But I would like to seriously propose here with some concluding remarks that the question of such a subalternity is in reality a question of the religious. What follows from this thesis, therefore, is that the philosophy of religion not only has a future, but in many respects it is the future, especially if we begin to view it as the genuine “decolonial option” proposed by Mignolo, which we have at our disposal. This angle of approach is perhaps rather intuitively difficult for us, if only because we cannot bring ourselves to look “philosophically” at anything except through the white mythological lens that poststructuralism set about from the start to remove from us. When Spivak sparked the postcolonialist movement with her fateful question “can the subaltern speak?”,

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she did so by confronting theorists in the humanities with the problem of “people whose consciousness we cannot grasp.” We not only fail to theorize, we “close off our benevolence,” Spivak (1994, 84) writes, “by constructing a homogeneous Other referring only to our own place in the seat of the Same or the Self. Here are subsistence farmers, unorganized peasant labor, the tribals and the communities of zero workers on the street or in the countryside. To confront them is not to represent (vertreten) them but to learn to represent (darstellen) ourselves. This argument would take us into a critique of a disciplinary anthropology and the relationship between elementary pedagogy and disciplinary formation. It would also question the implicit demand, made by intellectuals who choose a ‘naturally articulate’ subject of oppression, that such a subject come through history as a foreshortened  .  .  .  narrative”—in other words, the narrative of the academic as the only authorized voice that speaks in lieu of the subaltern. Elsewhere, Spivak (1996, 210) suggests that “religious consciousness” (particularly in its communal articulations) can, and should, function as a “positivistic project” of the philosophy of the subaltern. She cites how, for instance, “a religious idiom gave the hillmen [of the Eastern Ghats] a framework within which to conceptualize their predicament and to seek solutions to it.” Ironically, this gesture is precisely what Mignolo is driving toward with his argument that attention to a certain phronesis anthropou, an enunciated insightfulness of those who are ignored by the self-triumphal rhetoric coming from whoever is infatuated with the project of humanitas, counts as the essence of decoloniality. However, Mignolo deliberately refuses to mingle the communal with the religious, which he seems to identify solely with the confessional and theological heritage of Western missionaries and indirectly with the realm of humanitas rather than anthropos. The oversight betrays perhaps Mignolo’s own hyperrefined neo-Orientalist bias. For, as we know from numerous historians and social theorists, such as Philip Jenkins, Tariq Ramadan, and Eric Kaufman, among others, the so-called “religious option”—something we in the West actually fear more than we admit— has been systematically and collectively selected by many postnationalist renewal movements and by individuals of different social class background throughout what is now called the “global south.” As Kaufman (2010, xv) points out, forecasting a world turning religious in a way the educated West would find abhorrent because of the simple calculus of demographics, the “population explosion in the developing world creates many more religious people than secularism can digest . . . This means the world is getting more religious even as people in the rich world shed their faith.”

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Our aim is not to become immersed in any cauldron of controversy over the “future of religion,” but it is clear that if philosophy of religion has a future, it is not something re-enacting the so-called “religious turn” in philosophy a generation earlier, or lodged in any attempt to philosophize a “religion without religion” à la the later Derrida and Caputo. The fierce de-sacralizing trends in the West in recent years rule out that option. However, what is clear is that Western philosophy, and philosophy of religion in particular, has no choice but to go global and to “decolonize” in ways it has never imagined before. As we have already indicated, a philosophy of religion of the future would be centered on the subalternity of the religious (and here I am making the comparison with Spivak’s initial discussion in two closely related ways: the voicelessness of religious believers not allowed to speak their own language among the intelligentsia, and the indubitable historical fact that this voicelessness runs parallel to the social and economic subalternity of so many developing world rural collectives and their urban and immigrant diasporas everywhere on the planet). To decolonize, and thus to “postmodernize” in the most radical sense imaginable, would involve far more than any tiresome academic “diversity” program of recognizing privilege or learning to listen to the “other.” It would be to penetrate philosophically into what we wrongly consider as “naïve” symbolico-collective narratives of those whom we have not allowed to speak in the past, and whom we are used to dismissing with our familiar pan-Cartesian hauteur before we in our good Western “parental” attitude take it upon ourselves to “speak for” them. Perhaps, if I may steal a formula of James K.A. Smith, we should “take a philosopher to church,” but we are not talking about high Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Calvinist churches, by any means. A tent revival in Yucatan might be a good starting place. There is a deeper language on which we can begin to draw as we venture forth on that mission. As there is a deeper language in religious enunciation we know as “glossolalia,” so there is perhaps a “tongues” that needs to be interpreted by a future philosophy of religion. In The Revolution in Religious Theory, I offer the suggestion that what we have au fond in the engagement with the “religious” is something now apprehensible, if not comprehensible, in the current discourse of the event, and that our method may be somewhat tentatively expressed as a “semiotics of the event.” But I think even that insinuation, which constituted an effort to bring the entire arc of poststructuralist diction to its end point, represents only a port of embarkation for what we need to do. The language of force in philosophy that has given us the exploding recognition of difference,

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and also produced its own vague existential crisis, needs to be considered far more seriously. But whatever form of philosophical glossolalia we end up speaking, the one thing we have to recognize is that Western philosophy has, up until Nietzsche at least, been a struggle with time. That, of course, is Henri Bergson’s ingenious discovery, and it was Bergson who influenced the poststructuralists far more than we are aware. In coming to terms with religious subalternity, we recognize that the language we learn to speak—even if grudgingly—are languages of a strange temporality, as we say in Greek, a chronos that is unexpectedly interrupted by kairos. We know what this means, as did Leo Tolstoy after writing Anna Karenina, his great novel about the tragedies and triumphs of the Russian elite who yearn for the coming of kairos, but do not necessarily know how to go about finding it. Tolstoy discovered the subalternity of his own voice, which was not necessarily a great literary voice, but the voice of intellectual redemption. And so my recommendation to all of us is that we seek our subalternity. I close, therefore, with a quotation from Simone Weil (1970, 102) that seems quite apropos, particularly when we contemplate the “sins” of our ancestors and the crisis that bedevils and perplexes us. “All sins are an attempt to escape from time. Virtue is to submit to time, to press it to the heart until the heart breaks.” BIBLIOGRAPHY

Almond, Ian. 2007. The New Orientalists: Postmodern Representations of Islam from Foucault to Baudrillard. London: I.B. Taurus. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1994. What Is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1991. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge. ———. 1992. “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy.” Translated by John P. Leavey, Jr. In Derrida and Negative Theology, edited by Howard Foshay and Toby Foshay, 25–72. Albany: State University of New York Press. ———. 1998. “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of Faith and Knowledge at the Limits of ‘Reason’ Alone.” Translated by Samuel Weber. In Religion, edited by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, 1–78. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2005. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. Kaufman, Eric. 2010. Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? London: Profile Books. Laruelle, Francois. 2010. Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to NonPhilosophy. Translated by Rocco Gangle. New York: Continuum.

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Mignolo, Walter D. 2000. Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2011. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Nye, Andrea. 2000. “ ‘It’s Not Philosophy.’ ” In Decentering the Center: Philosophy for a Multicultural, Postcolonial, and Feminist World, edited by Uma Narayan and Sandra Harding, 101–109. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Raschke, Carl. 2012. Postmodernism and the Revolution in Religious Theory. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. ———. 2015. Force of God: Political Theology and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy. New York: Columbia University Press. Said, Edward. (1978) 1994 Orientalism. New York: Random House. Smith, James K.A. 2006. Who’s Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic. Spivak, Gayatri. 1994. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Colonial Discourse and PostColonial Theory: A Reader, edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, 66–111. New York: Columbia University Press. Spivak, Gaytri. 1996. “Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography.” In The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, 203–236. New York: Routledge. Weil, Simone. 1970. First and Last Notebooks. Translated by Richard Rees. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, Robert J.C. 2001. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. London: Blackwell.

8

The Enecstatic Jig Personalizing Philosophy of Religion

Jim Kanaris

Only in the dance do I know how to speak the parable of the highest things. —Friedrich Nietzsche ([1883–1891] 1999) The tragedy in recent years has been the almost total eclipse of the philosophy of religion within the study of religion. —Carl A. Raschke (1999)

In this chapter I look to developments in and against phenomenology of religion as an opportunity to rethink the relationship of philosophy of religion to religious studies. A delicate balancing act is involved since the philosophical fault lines in religionist debates are not often clearly drawn or, in my opinion, self-critically reflexive. Further complicating my task are the philosophical horizons that roughly divide commitments typically identified as stylistically analytic or continental. My own bias becomes clear as I isolate the still-pressing topic of experience in religious studies and in what ways the poststructuralist ethos mitigates the methodological gridlock today surrounding the topic. I outline this in the first part of the chapter. The upshot is that the issue boils down to an agonistic concerning the nature and extent to which personal involvement is seen as integral to, or as a hindrance in, religious studies. In subsequent parts of the chapter I summon a certain reception history of Nietzsche and Heidegger whose visions of reflexivity I rework 173

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into a general philosophy of religious studies for the negotiation of standoffs that I outline in the first part. In a nutshell, I argue for the philosophical integrity of a deracinating form of personal reflection that I call “enecstatic.” While an explicitly philosophical stance, enecstatic reflection is pragmatically constituted and intends concrete dividends for the student of religion.

A Methodological Quandary as Bridge Philosophy of religion occupies a nebulous space in religious studies. It is circumscribed by numerous different concerns and a complex history predating its surrogate role qua theology in Religionswissenschaft. Despite his now infamous reputation, I believe Mircea Eliade was right about the philosopher’s role in the field, although shortsighted when limiting the discernment of religious meanings and their application to the historian of religions. According to Eliade (1959, 90), the role of the philosopher in the context of religion is to engage in “ ‘general theories’ about religion,” leaving the historical specificities of religions and the meaning of their varying symbologies to historians of religion (1959, 102–103). I should perhaps be upfront about my noncommittal use of Eliade and the specifics of his distinction. My purpose is strictly taxonomic. Eliade serves my delineation of philosophy in a religious studies environment where the topical focus of analytic philosophy continues to have remote relevance. He also serves me in terms of how he represents that stream in religious studies that distinguishes itself from partisan forms of theology. And yet it is the controversy over the nature of his program as crypto-theology that creates a fissure for my thinking. I’m not partial to Eliade’s view that philosophic engagement links with general theories about religion, whether humanist or social-scientific. Nor am I partial, a fortiori, to Eliade’s idiosyncratic philosophy, his so-called “creative hermeneutics.” More appealing to me in this connection is Wilfred Cantwell Smith. His personalist subversion of Eliadean essentialism shows greater promise. And yet Cantwell Smith’s personalism is also flawed for delineating what I imagine to be philosophy of religious studies. For all their differences, and there are many, both Eliade and Cantwell Smith, represent “personalist” advances beyond historicist comparative religion. It is this single aspect that binds them to the tradition that leads back to Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rudolf Otto, and William James. It is also what guides my project, albeit obliquely. While Eliade and Cantwell Smith are indifferent to phenomenology as a catch-all, they nonetheless subscribe

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to the view that religious studies involves, or ought to involve, more than historical and seemingly impartial social-scientific analysis. Where Eliade takes this to antihistorical heights of eidetic vision (the structure of religious symbols), Cantwell Smith moves in the direction of privileging the irreducible form of material meanings (faith). The two scholars appear to be on opposite sides of the phenomenological spectrum, and in a certain sense this is true. But a deeper look reveals that their differences, while substantive, are nonetheless bound by a similar desire for engaged “religious” thinking, which intrigues me. Cantwell Smith, in what I call his negative essentialism, guards the agency of the insider with respect to faith. Eliade, for his part, forges a prescriptive essentialism in which he promotes, contrary to his claim to be founding an objective science of religion, a very personal formulation of his own faith. As a maker of religion, which Eliade’s critics are quick to point out about him (McCutcheon 1997, 37–39; Strenski 2006, 317, 327), Eliade mitigates the potential broadside of Cantwell Smith that he (Eliade) merely indulges in reifying religion. If he does reify faith, it is primarily his own faith vis-à-vis the cumulative tradition of insiders, a point his critics put to an entirely different use (Segal 1983; Strenski 2006, 309–336). Eliade is as religiously invested as the person of faith whose right to renew her faith every morning Cantwell Smith (1959, 34) campaigns passionately for. None of this is news to critics of phenomenology. In fact, it is for their personalism, mobilized here for my argument, that critics essentially lump together Eliade and Cantwell Smith as equally problematic for religious studies. Russell T. McCutcheon (1997, 14), for instance, notes how Cantwell Smith is virtually in partnership with Eliade in a protectionist ideological strategy prioritizing “internal, intuitive, and essentially ahistorical categories over interpersonally available and historical categories.” Eliade is a more obvious target on account of his creative hermeneutics and his zany indictment against “the audacious and irrelevant interpretation of religious realities made by psychologists, sociologists, or devotees of various reductionist ideologies” (Eliade in Strenski 2006, 326). Talal Asad’s critique of Cantwell Smith is more telling. Asad (2001, 206) sees Smith as excluding the “materialities of religion” as constitutive of faith. The oversight is attributed to Cantwell Smith’s cognitive approach, which privileges a Protestant (“pietistic”) conception of religion as faith (220). Asad makes the connection almost two decades earlier with respect to Clifford Geertz, who proposes an essentialist definition of religion for anthropology; it overlaps with the cognitive propensity in Cantwell Smith’s definition for religion scholars. “[T]his effort of defining religion,” Asad ([1982] 1993, 28) writes of Geertz, “converges with the liberal demand in our time that [religion] be kept separate

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from politics, law, and science.” To the extent that anyone thinks religion in the space provided by the discursive formation of religious studies, the same may be said of Cantwell Smith. The individual approaches of Geertz and Cantwell Smith, then, illustrate different protective strategies contoured by the infamy of the subject–object dichotomy: the “secular liberal” strategy of confining religion, adopted by Geertz and critics of phenomenology (with completely different aims), and the “liberal Christian” strategy of defending religion informing Cantwell Smith and Eliade (again, with different aims). The strategy of confining religion circumscribes academic study of religion, oftentimes exclusively, to the examination of publically observable phenomena. It can also manufacture interpretations of the religious dimension intended for public consumption, that is, it reconstitutes the function of religious discourse primarily for the benefit of the outsider while coddling the progressive insider. Nonetheless, both strategies, the confining of religion and the defending of religion, assume the space of legitimacy provided by post-Enlightenment society, specifically “the right to individual belief ” (Asad [1982] 1993, 45). In other words, the separation of church and state, private and public spheres, frames each tendency. The strategy of defending religion protracts the frame of confinement while subverting the public dimension of religion as the exclusively normative domain for religious studies. The relationship is dialectical. Important for us is how both strategies are ideologically invested, in the descriptive (not pejorative) sense of self-conscious meaning-construction (see Roberts 2005, 371–372). Allow me to illustrate using the less obvious case of the strategy of confinement. I believe it is safe to assume that McCutcheon (1997, 49), in his exposé of the strategy of defending religion, advocates more than the now commonplace view that scholarly distillations of religion invariably legitimize or contest “present distributions of social, economic, and political privilege.” Whether we are talking about the “socially repressive functions” of fertility symbolism (40) or the ethnocentrism of cosmogonic myths (43)— two dimensions Eliade elides—we risk, McCutcheon (1997, 49) warns, “uncritically propagating the social patterns to which [such symbolisms] once contributed.” What staves off the possibility, McCutcheon (1997, 49, 194) acknowledges, is some form of participation in the discourse. The problem with McCutcheon’s answer is that it reflects a disposition that rarely becomes anything more than a token appreciation of the constitutive role of meaning-construction in the strategy of confining religion. Ivan Strenski comes close to the kind of self-critical reflexivity that I imagine in philosophy of religious studies. But even Strenski protracts the otherwise insightful social-scientific preoccupation with religion as object, as

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an explanatory force of what goes on in the world. “We . . . need to reform our notion of religion into a more usable comparative concept reflecting the many ways people the world over live in ways analogous to one another that can be called ‘religious’ . . . ‘religion is an appropriate name for a factor explaining what happens in the so-called political world” (Strenski 2010, 60, 61). However, it is important to be clear that Strenski is not party to McCutcheon’s (1997, 192–194) naturalistic foundationalism. In the conclusion to his important work, Thinking about Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion, Strenski is quite unequivocal of what both (McCutcheon and Strenski) imagine to be the “theologian’s game”: Where the founders felt compelled to link their pursuit of knowledge about religion—their “scientific” inquiry about religion—with their belief in the divine nature and purposes of human curiosity, McCutcheon feels he needs to link his naturalistic approach to religion with commitment to a naturalistic metaphysical ground. (Strenski 2006, 340) However, in his admirable desire to avoid the “dichotomizing pronouncements” in McCutcheon’s reductionist metaphysics, that is, that religion can be thoroughly explained as human without remainder, Strenski seems unable to negotiate his own metaphysical desire to exclude “metaphysics” from theorizing religion.1 The impasse of strategies I have outlined here is, to my mind, premised on an analytic effective history of the concept of (religious) experience that weaves together romantic hermeneutics and phenomenology of religion (Otto, Eliade, and Cantwell Smith) with Cartesian dualism (see Proudfoot 1985; Sharf 1993, 1995, 1998). A wall is thus erected that makes it virtually impossible for strategists of confinement to imagine reflexivity as something other than self-awareness of public or power knowledge. Strategists of confinement, whatever their differences, are faced with an aporia, according to which a consciousness-raising analysis is curtailed by a kind of spectral participation. We have seen indirect cases of this in McCutcheon and Strenski. It comes to a head, I believe, in the work of Robert Sharf. Sharf, a Buddhist scholar by trade, throws the deliberations of McCutcheon and Strenski into sharp relief by addressing the thorny issue of conscious experience directly. In his now infamous argument about how the so-called reality of religious experience is beset by the same problems that attach to reports about alien abduction, Sharf (1998, 113) feels he must concede that he is “not trying to deny subjective experience.” Indeed, he cannot even imagine

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the possibility. But in the same breath, Sharf (1998, 114, see also 110) tethers the words of Samuel Beckett to his conviction that references to religious experience are simply “well-meaning squirms that get us nowhere.” This wall within the strategy of confinement is so dense that even a recent critic of Sharf is unable to penetrate it. Stephen Bush argues that Sharf’s rhetoric of experience assumes that “experiences are universal across cultures and so predisposes us to miss the variety of effects experiences bring about.” This assumption further “privileges the interior subjectivity of the practitioner and so directs our attention away from social structures such as class, gender, race, and ethnicity in which experiences occur” (Bush 2012, 219–220). Attending to the experiences themselves, on this score, means attending “carefully to the experiences people have” and placing “these experiences in the context of the power structures inherent in the religious practitioners’ society.” In other words, Bush himself perpetuates the view that reflexivity in religious studies is primarily, if not exclusively, preoccupation with objects of knowledge. To borrow a characterization from the philosophy of mind, this entire project avoids the “hard problem” of self-reflexivity in religious studies. Accordingly, it is no great surprise that the term “new materialism” attaches to this post- and anti-phenomenological development, if ironic given my indictment of Bush. Like Bush (2012, 207), I believe the strategy of confinement attests to “our deep entanglement in the Cartesian program.” Unlike Bush, however, I believe his corrective merely replaces the Cartesian paradigm of consciousness, which emphasizes the epistemic, private subject, with the paradigm of language, which emphasizes “ ‘the public, signifying activities of a collection of subjects’ ” (Bush quoting Benhabib 2012, 200). Cartesian dualism, in a word, is not overcome. It provides as mortar of a new and improved stockade. More analytic philosophy or philosophy of language may clarify issues. But my interest in affirming the personalist accent of the strategy of defense intends to bypass this effective-historical musing. Something valuable is lost in the otherwise necessary critique of phenomenology of religion for which the strategy of confinement fails to compensate. Whether hard or soft (McCutcheon, Sharf, and Bush respectively), the new materialism in religious studies is, as I hope to have shown, so preoccupied with the phenomenological protectionist strategy that the level of reflexivity it presupposes not only elides an important dimension in the agenda of its nemesis but new materialism also feeds its own type of protectionism (see Roberts 2004). It is for reasons such as this that I look to the continental tradition. Its inclination for the existential in philosophy pushes past the stalemate reached by personalist phenomenology and impersonalist new materialism in the dash toward academic legitimacy.

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Philosophy of Religion as Enecstatic The function of philosophy of religion in religious studies is complicated by nomenclature and a history of concerns that predate comparative religion. Traditional topics of philosophical theology have broadened to include methodological issues pertinent to scholars of religion; I have discussed this element in the previous section in connection with the notion of experience. Distilled from German romanticism and transcendental idealism, the cradle of philosophy of religion, are the hermeneutical frameworks that continue to solicit interest in the field. Out of this tidal wave of different and overlapping concerns species of philosophizing in religion have emerged that manage the affairs of the field, sometimes appreciative and sometimes scathingly critical of this history. In my analysis, I feature the topic of personal involvement because it has a time-honored place in comparative religion qua phenomenology of religion; this foothold is crucial methodologically: the topic is both intrinsic to and general and foundational enough to be of concern to students and scholars of religion. Key is that philosophy on this score is not limited to its traditional theoretical role of adjudicating religious beliefs and practices or the scholarly status of methods, their objectivity. Beyond the thorny issue of epistemic hegemony, this approach also has setbacks when it comes to negotiating disputes within the field; the previous section provides only one example. Philosophy in the key that I am suggesting resembles, conveniently, the “spiritual practice” of Nietzsche. According to Tyler Roberts (1998, 17), it is a style of philosophizing that is “more than an academic discipline: it is a practice by which [one] cultivates, strengthens, and beautifies the self and its relationship to the world and cosmos; it is the spiritual exercise par excellence.” Alexander Nehamas has traced the practice back to Plato’s Socratic dialogues, which he describes in terms of “the art of living”: The study of philosophy as the art of living discloses our own ethical preferences and compels us to reveal part of ourselves. This personal type of philosophy reflects on our own person, and it is personal in that additional sense as well. To study it is also to practice it. (Nehamas 1998, 6) It announces a gnothi seauton (“know thyself ”), as Foucault (2005) reminds us, whose holistic thrust predates and transcends the cognitive configuration of the Cogito in terms of epimelea heautou (“care of self ”). As regards religious studies, the indicated shift in focus is from understanding those who practice religion to understanding oneself as practicing

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this understanding. Just to be clear, my use of the term “understanding” is deliberate and impartial to the reduction of the practical or personal to the ethical or moral. At any rate, adjustments in the study of religion, from substantive to hermeneutically pliable delineations of religion and ritual (see Roberts 1998, 10), seem to invite this level of intellectual and/or ethical engagement—especially in a culture grappling with and somewhat framed by the weighty saying of a madman. How does this translate into the terms of my discussion about personalist phenomenology and impersonalist new materialism? Where Eliade and Cantwell Smith neglect their role in imagining and reimagining religion in defense of the autonomy and legitimacy of studying the faith dimension academically; where McCutcheon and Sharf neglect a similar role but in the protection of descriptively political knowledge of religious behavior, the philosopher of religion, as I imagine her, self-consciously participates in the reconstitution of religion while negotiating these differences in a cultural matrix. (Asad’s observation, noted earlier, about the space of legitimacy provided to religion by post-Enlightenment society has a favorable connotation in my thinking.) There are basically two parts to my proposal. The first pertains to the background issue of a horizonal shift in academic culture indicated by my reference to Nietzsche and the artistic thinking it precipitates. It relaxes self-serving descriptions of academic legitimacy that divide phenomenologists and new materialists. “Culturalizing” religion and the academy or narrowing the divide between academic practices and the cultural practices scholars seek to study are apposite descriptions that have been proposed (see Davaney 2002, 147–148). The second part of my proposal pertains to the specific form of artistry that I find germane in this setting. I call it “enecstasis,” which involves a different set of philosophical problems that I will discuss shortly. As regards the first part, allow me to differentiate my perspective from that of Paula Cooey, whose proposal concerning theology as “a species of cultural studies” I find pedagogically compelling. Cooey’s (2002, 182) designation “co-makers of culture” continues to capture the current climate well, especially if we take religion to be a creative force that anticipates new values and meanings for the transformation of individuals and not simply reinforcing old ones (see Roberts 1998, 10). Cooey manages this challenge by what she calls, somewhat misleadingly, “academic theology,” which reconfigures Kant’s philosophical theology for today’s broader audience of liberal education. I share with Cooey (2002, 178), and incidentally with Kant, the view that philosophical engagement in religion is “devoted to questioning the presuppositions of religious life and thought for purposes of both critique and intentional construction.” But I part with Cooey methodologically in

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her laudable theological task of reconstructing specific religious symbol systems centered on “conceptual limit setters,” which she itemizes in terms of “God, Goddess, Brahman, Nirvana, Sunyata, and Tao.” Philosophy of religious studies, as I imagine it, is more general and philosophical in its contribution to the negotiation of one’s foundational horizon with respect to critique and intentional construction. The second part of my proposal dovetails with the first and marks my philosophical departure from Kant. Actually, it marks my departure from any endeavor that regulates foundational concerns via some explicit foundationalist method. My attitude is captured more or less in a statement by Michel Foucault regarding the cogito, which is properly basic in foundationalism: “I do not deny the cogito, I confine myself to observing that its methodological potential is ultimately not as great as one might have believed and that, in any case, we can nowadays make descriptions which seem . . . objective and positive, by dispensing with the cogito entirely . . . even though people were for several centuries convinced of the impossibility of analyzing knowledge without starting from the cogito” (Foucault 1999, 95). This echoes Nietzsche’s sentiment who, despite himself, could see what he would alternatively dub “methods of the spirit” (see Kaufmann 1974, 80). Congenital to foundational methods is how they suppress the act of self-fashioning by specific directives occasionally intended for self-fashioning. The subtle nature and entanglement of our desire in this process doubtless explains why conceptions of philosophy as an art are de rigueur these days. However, as much as I embrace this trend, I am not of the opinion that foundational concerns imply foundationalism, which is the difficult philosophical problem I mentioned earlier. My negotiating term for this is, again, “enecstasis.” As the term suggests, it positions the Heideggerian call for engaged thinking but in a quasi- or, better, hyper-transcendental regard for singularity. The compound prepositional prefix (en + ek) points to a tension that Heidegger himself underlines in the ontological difference of ecstatic relation: Dasein’s standing (“stasis”) in care as, simultaneously, equiprimordially, Dasein’s standing out for (i.e., in the openness of ) Being. The ek of ecstasis here is always already en and not fundamentally ek in the sense of “beyond” (Hinaus) or “away from” (Weg von) the primordial relationality suggested by the en of ecstasis. Moreover, the ek pertains to the objective genitive of Being’s openness presupposed in the horizonal vista of Dasein. This refiguration of ecstasis is one of the many ways Heidegger manages the disengaged perspective (vorstellendes Denken) intrinsic to Western metaphysics. Enecstasis commemorates this foundational concern but distills

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it, as a neologism, from Heidegger’s primary difficult task of fundamental ontology (andenkendes Denken). As such the compound prefix points to another tension, a philosophical one, concerning the possibility of a “transcendental interrogation of thinking” resigned to the “phenomenality of experience” as a singularity. The terminology is Charles E. Winquist’s (1995, 21). Winquist, whose name serves as a cipher here, stands out as one of the few postmoderns unencumbered by what he calls the “sham solution” of postmodern theory “to an unresolved set of experiential problems.”2 We may not like that foundationalism ghoulishly attaches to transcendental and/or phenomenological reflection, but nothing is gained by denying the revelatory potential of the latter on account of the totalizing ossifications of the former. If Heidegger and his quarreling disciple, Jacques Derrida, have taught us anything, an escape route is best left to dreamcatchers who insist on filtering out the bad tout court. This enecstatic form of artistry joins the convoy of contemporary theorizing that disrupts rather than stabilizes. As a post-phenomenological appreciation of the personalist concern, it takes the edge off such quibbles as McCutcheon’s that phenomenology of religion is a form of theology. Enecstatic artistry at the same time resists McCutcheon’s antidote that theorizing become exclusively crane-like, eliminating the need for skyhooks. The story has been told time and again to which I offer the brief retort that it leads down a rabbit hole where cranes become skyhooks. As such enecstasis waves in subjectivity through the gateway of ontological difference in its essence as singularity and not as ὑποκείμενον. And so if “the whole point of singularity is that there is something about the self that is uniquely irreducible to the totality of a person’s political relations” (Simmons 2011, 56), its thinking is necessarily allusive in its constructive modality of destabilizing discourse. I embrace Roberts’s (2004, 162) description in terms of a task, not of explaining or deciphering singularities but of opening discourse to them, “to interrupt or disturb ordinary ways of communicating and interaction with others and ways of ‘being ourselves’ in order to attend to disturbances caused by that which is ordinarily, and necessarily, excluded from consciousness or occluded by various discursive strategies.” Carl A. Raschke (2012, 84) is more definitive in words that commemorate Jean-François Lyotard’s differend: “a ‘theory’ of the singular is ipso facto impossible. We have only the ‘event horizon’ beyond which we cannot peer and where nothing is ‘presentable’ or ‘representable.’ ” Enecstasis, then, is Janus-faced. Its allusive function looks forward to the semantic content of discourse as it fissures for singularities and backward to the self-reflexivity in the task itself. When the disruptive logic plays up the singularities in discourse, when the carnival of terminology, in other

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words, is “God,” “sunyata,” “self,” or what have you, we get something like Raschke’s (2012, 84) “epicalic” semiotics of representation or John D. Caputo’s “radical theology.”3 To my mind, the artistic intent of selffashioning, while indirect, is nonetheless present. I basically endorse these discourses, which I see as object-constitutive, while wishing to highlight my own interest in enecstasis as subject-constitutive, a main aim of which is pedagogical. It marks a shift in emphasis from the notion as semiotic and hermeneutical vis-à-vis disrupting content to enecstasis as personal engagement in the “excess,” the self, being disrupted. This provides a platform in religious studies where individuals can concretize for themselves “the selfdeconstructive imperative” (Roberts 2004, 167). This imperative is nascent in the discourse itself but the decision to appropriate or participate in a specific construal is left up to the individual. Here my task hooks up again with Cooey’s, specifically her pedagogical aim. However, I wish to continue to maintain the philosophical generality of my proposal.4 In adopting the posture of self-critical reflexivity via academic theology, Cooey (2002, 182) provides her upper-level undergraduates with diverse literature dealing plainly with religious and existential themes. The goal is to get students to “think critically and constructively about religious meaning and value in ways that consider explicitly their own possible responsibilities and choices as ‘co-makers of culture,’ in relation to the culture in which they live.” In this way Cooey facilitates discussion in a climate that is theologically nonpartisan and whose principal rules of engagement presuppose the values and commitments of liberal education. Sheela Greeve Davaney (2002, 149–150) provides a useful enumeration of these liberal values and commitments in terms of “open inquiry, critical reflection, and public argumentation.” Enecstatic philosophy of religion, as I see it, has a similar aim but differs in form. For example, I provide students with select literature that exemplifies philosophy as the art of living, linking foundational concern with self-critical reflexivity in method and religion. In one context students navigate through writings of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Derrida and Foucault, Spivak and Irigaray, among others, to engage personally and directly in the problematics of an ethos that has provided for the current understanding of religion as “part of wider cultural interactions and mechanisms” (Davaney 2002, 148). This translates into the relevance of the art of living in enecstatic appreciation of religion with respect to the fundamental concerns of the thinkers. Derrida’s ([1996] 2002, 71) general description of it is: analysis concerned above all with pragmatic and structural and political functional effects, a proposal that really only provides surface support of the “postmodernism”

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of McCutcheon, Bruce Lincoln, Willi Braun, and others. For impersonal logocentrism, to sally a paraphrase of deconstruction, does not escape, nor should it think it overcomes, the aporia of personalism through negation. In another context I provide students with literature that interlaces the possibility of enecstatic discovery with the concept of religious studies, its history. It opens a space for personal negotiation of the celebrated insight of Jonathan Z. Smith (1978, xi) that “religion is solely the creation of the scholar’s study.” The benefits are many and more direct than we might suspect at first. Antipathy, should it exist, is often owed to students’ practical concerns about the pretense of philosophy or the fear of performing poorly outside their choice discipline. But specialized knowledge of philosophy, while beneficial, is not requisite for its enecstatic embodiment or is it its principal aim; such things usually emerge through protracted study. The advantage of enecstatic philosophy of religious studies, considered from a pedagogical point of view, is that students are invited to negotiate their complicity in this history, making up their own minds about the “cumulative tradition.” A desideratum of the practice is to forge a philosophy of religion, according to which philosophical artistry converges with spiritual practice. And should the adjective “spiritual” incite alarm, perhaps its evidence in so unlikely a cloud of witnesses as Nietzsche, Foucault, and Derrida can serve to mitigate it (Caputo 1997; Carrette 2000; Roberts 1998). Another desideratum endorsed by the enecstatic gesture is to keep intact the integrity of scholarly research. Students of religion are rightly wary of the imposition of categories potentially compromising the goals and techniques of their specific areas, which, needless to say, presupposes they even give the philosophical inclination the time of day. Enecstatic philosophy of religion accommodates this concern in theory as a practice whose task of application, if and when relevant, is left to the informed and developing perspective of the individual. It relaxes the ever-present temptation, too often ceded in past and present philosophy of religion, to march on the religious studies capital and assault its citadel.

Conclusion This enecstatic gesture of philosophy of religion replaces the protective strategy implied in sui generis religion and its negation by a topology within which individuals philosophize variant cultural forms, nurturing their own appreciation of and for “transcendence.” In the context of the debate outlined in the first section of this chapter, the understanding supported in the

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second part is the following. In the experience that Eliade and Smith rally in support of personal involvement in religious studies, as well as in the blockade that McCutcheon and Strenski aver in support of a naturalistic frame, is an interstice for thinking religion and power together in the context of “care.” The binary of religion and power in this enecstatic space is kept in productive tension. It is wary of the tendency to downplay the techniques of domination in constituting the personal and irreducible, as is done in phenomenological strategies of defense. But it is also wary of the tendency to overstate these techniques in excluding the same, which strategists of confinement in new materialism tend to do. The later Foucault managed this tension by coping techniques of domination with what he called techniques of the self. Jeremy Carrette (in Foucault 1999, 129–140) sees the potential of Foucault’s academic negotiation in terms of “political spirituality.” But my point is not simply to endorse Carrette’s thesis or whether the semiotic product of Foucault’s thought is to be emulated. Rather, it is the banal observation that someone as committed to the political as Foucault—as dubious about the faith dimension as he—nonetheless made it his lifework to be enecstatically engaged in his object of concern. Not only was he after a diagnostic of culture “out there,” as it were, he was also concerned preeminently with the reconstitution of the self. Whatever the peculiar form, Jemeinigkeit, souci de soi, or whatever, enecstasis is the personal expression in the service of a meaningful pedagogical outcome. Despite the whimsical reference of my chapter title, I really do mean the dance of enecstasis seriously. Like that to which one aspires in a skillful gyration, the proposal means to combine the grace of movement with the individuality of the interpreter. As disruptive agential self-possession, enecstasis speaks to both the artistic nature of the venture and the challenge in its execution. This is not a simple two-step. It is at once primal and passionate, spiritual even, if we follow Nietzsche. The terms Nietzsche conjures are a lexical train typical of the religious sphere. As he famously states in The Gay Science, the philosopher’s dance is not only his “ideal” and “art,” but also his “sole piety, his ‘divine service’ ” (¶381), a peculiar dance of “faith” (¶347). Roberts (1998, 12, 110) even describes it as a dance that is “worshipful” and “ecstatic.” For it is only in the dance that thought meets grace and skill meets concern. NOTES

1. The second edition of Strenski’s work (2006) requires qualification of this assessment. Retitled, with the content of the first edition significantly reworked,

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the second edition, Understanding Theories of Religion: An Introduction, suggests a development in Strenski’s thinking. Although it’s not wrong to say he “protracts the otherwise insightful social-scientific preoccupation with religion as object,” his endorsement in the conclusion of the holistic phenomenological approach of Ninian Smart mitigates simplistic associations of Strenski with the new materialist strategy of confinement. He’s actually more critical of McCutcheon in the second edition, who represents for Strenski a “post-modern vice” in religious studies, along with Timothy Fitzgerald, another “post-modern eliminationist” (see Strenski 2015, 243–244). Indeed, Strenski argues vehemently against those who want to eliminate the category “religion” in the academy—he includes, for instance, Talal Asad and Bruce Lincoln (232–238). Strenski advises, quippingly, that we should be “‘Smart’ about bringing ‘religion’ back in” (the changed title in the conclusion of the second edition). Ninian Smart, “one of the greatest contemporary religious studies scholars” (248), serves as an ideal interlocutor for Strenski in the task he considers requisite nowadays of thinking with religion and not just about it (244–245). Whether this is the case is beside the point here. My principal aim is to point out that Strenski is not fairly sized up as a new materialist. Rather, he becomes something of an advocate of what I might call neo-phenomenology in the sense of his desire to bring “classic phenomenology up to date in the work of . . . Smart” (248). And yet, also in line with my aim, is that Strenski continues to be preoccupied with religion as object supported by Smart’s form of phenomenology of religion, which incidentally features a concept analogous to epoché: the Focus. Focus brackets normative discussion about transcendent reality in religious studies roughly in the same way Strenski proposes to think with and not just about religion (see Smart 1996, 20–21). And so, while neither a new materialist nor a phenomenologist who lays out “the bits and pieces of religion—experiences, saviors, gods, powers, prophets, mystics, and such—as if they were items ‘etherized upon a table’” (250), Strenski’s brand of thinking that “brings ‘religion’ back in,” that tries “to come to a ‘common mind’ about religion” (250), differs significantly from proposals in this volume that advocate the introduction of normative reflection in religious studies as, for example, in this chapter and those by Tyler Roberts and John D. Caputo. 2. Charles Winquist is a crucial figure in the development of enecstatic philosophy of religion. See my discussion of his work, in conjunction with that of another crucial figure for enecstatic philosophy, Bernard Lonergan, in Kanaris (forthcoming). 3. See the chapter by John D. Caputo in this volume. 4. Here I share the views of Caputo regarding the function of “radical theology,” specifically the interstice it inhabits as a philosophical perspective between traditional philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and confessional theology (see Caputo’s chapter in this book). One sees elements of this as well in Roberts’s ideas of “critical responsiveness,” an interstice of critical awareness where the focus on alterity encourages subjective involvement in a dispossession of the divine and disruption of the stabilizing (religious) self (in this volume and Roberts 2013).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asad, Talal. (1982) 1993. “The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category.” In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam, 27–54. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 2001. “Reading a Modern Classic: W.C. Smith’s ‘The Meaning and End of Religion.’ ” History of Religions 40(3): 205–222. Bush, Stephen S. 2012. “Are Religious Experiences Too Private to Study?” The Journal of Religion 92(2): 199–223. Caputo, John D. 1997. The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without Religion. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Carrette, Jeremy. 2000. Foucault and Religion: Spiritual Corporality and Political Spirituality. New York: Routledge. Cooey, Paula M. 2002. “The Place of Academic Theology in the Study of Religion from the Perspective of Liberal Education.” In Religious Studies, Theology, and the University: Conflicting Maps, Changing Terrain, edited by Linell E. Cady and Delwin Brown, 172–186. Albany: State University of New York Press. Davaney, Sheila Greeve. 2002. “Rethinking Theology and Religious Studies.” In Religious Studies, Theology, and the University: Conflicting Maps, Changing Terrain, edited by Linell E. Cady and Delwin Brown, 140–154. Albany: State University of New York Press. Derrida, Jacques. (1996) 2002. “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone.” In Acts of Religion, edited by Gil Anidjar, 40–101. New York and London: Routledge. Eliade, Mircea. 1959. “Methodological Remarks on the Study of Religious Symbolism.” In History of Religions: Essays in Methodology, edited by Mircea Eliade and Joseph M. Kitagawa, 86–107. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Foucault, Michel. 1999. Religion and Culture. Edited by Jeremy Carrette. New York: Routledge. ———. 2005. The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981–1982. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Heidegger, Martin. 1992. “The Way Back into the Ground of Metaphysics.” In Primary Readings in Philosophy for Understanding Theology, edited by ­Diogenes Allen and Eric O. Springsted, 248–262. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press. Kanaris, Jim. Forthcoming. Personalizing Philosophy of Religion: An Enecstatic Treatment. Albany: State University of New York Press. Kaufmann, Walter. 1974. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. 4th ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McCutcheon, Russell. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Nehamas, Alexander. 1998. The Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich. [1883–1891] 1999. Thus Spake Zarathustra. Translated by Thomas Common. Mineola, NY: Dover. Proudfoot, Wayne. 1985. Religious Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press. Raschke, Carl. 1999. “Theorizing Religion at the Turn of the Millennium: From the Sacred to the Semiotic.” Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 1(1): 23. http://www.jcrt.org/archives/01.1/raschke.html ———. 2012. Postmodernism and the Revolution in Religious Theory: Toward a Semiotics of the Event. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press. Roberts, Tyler. 1998. Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. 2004. “Exposure and Explanation: On the New Protectionism in the Study of Religion.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72(1): 143–172. ———. 2005. “Rhetorics of Ideology and Criticism in the Study of Religion.” Journal of Religion 85(3): 367–389. ———. 2013. Encountering Religion: Responsibility and Criticism after Secularism. New York: Columbia University Press. Sharf, Robert H. 1993. “The Zen of Japanese Nationalism.” History of Religions 33(1): 1–43. ———. 1995. “Buddhist Modernism and the Rhetoric of Meditative Experience.” Numen 42(3): 228–283. ———. 1998. “Experience.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor, 94–116. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Segal, Robert A. 1983. “In Defense of Reductionism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 51(1): 97–124. Simmons, J. Aaron. 2011. God and the Other: Ethics and Politics After the Theological Turn. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Smart, Ninian. 1996. “Some Thoughts on the Science of Religion.” In The Sum of Our Choices: Essays in Honour of Eric J. Sharpe, edited by Arvind Sharma, 15–25. Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell. 1959. “Comparative Religion: Whither—and Why?” In The History of Religions: Essays in Methodology, edited by Mircea Eliade and Joseph M. Kitagawa, 31–58. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1978. Map Is Not Territory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Strenski, Ivan. 2006. Thinking about Religion: An Historical Introduction to Theories of Religion. Malden, MA: Blackwell. ———. 2010. Why Politics Can’t Be Freed from Religion. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ———. 2015. Understanding Theories of Religion: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Winquist, Charles E. 1995. Desiring Theology. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

9

Reverence as Critical Responsiveness Between Philosophy and Religion

Tyler Roberts

Critical reading is the pious labor of a historically unusual sort of person. —Michael Warner (2004) I have been given time to learn what to say, with the help of the language of praise: because this is a language in which my finitude and limit are affirmed at the same time as my freedom and value I may better learn from this how to speak to others without assuming their refusal, giving time to them and inviting them to give it to me. —Rowan Williams (1988)

Philosophy, Religion, Critique A major task of a future philosophy of religion will be to contribute to a postcritical ethos of participation. Such a contribution will depend on the ability of philosophers of religion to reimagine and rethink the critical relationship between philosophy and religion. By “participation,” I gesture with some hesitation and much qualification to philosophical and religious visions centered on the conforming of mind and body to God, cosmos, reason, or some other fundamental reality through active intellection and receptive contemplation. Today, the idea that we can identify such a r­eality

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is properly suspect and thus subject to various critical procedures that expose the historical and social construction that produces this “reality.” But are there limits to these critical perspectives beyond which we may still think about “participation” in something beyond the human? After all, we certainly are enmeshed with and depend on forces beyond our making and control—not everything we are and do is the product of human constructive activity. This brings me to the “postcritical.” Even if we agree that it is imperative to submit all claims for what is ultimately real and authoritative to historicist and other forms of criticism, the question of how we hold together incisive critical thinking and affirmative attachment to or participation in existence remains. Thinking anew about religion and its critical capacities is, I submit, one route to answering this question. Philosophers of religion, because they work at a site of crossing between the philosophical and critical, on the one hand, and the religious and participatory, on the other, have a crucial role to play in this effort. They can help us think, as William Desmond (2005, 106) puts it, in a “two-way intermediation or communication between religion and philosophy, not just a singular direction from religion to reason.” To do this, though, philosophers have to look beyond the modern, but by now well-worn idea that where philosophy and other forms of modern thought are critical, religious thought, based as it is on faith and reverence, is not. In other words, they need to consider reverence as a discipline of attention and thoughtful vigilance. If critical thought today is to avoid becoming ideological or mystifying, we need to see that it is not just a matter of analyzing, exposing, and debunking, but also a practice by which we discern and give ourselves to, with attention, intelligence, and care, what is beautiful, worthy, and meaningful—even divine or sacred. I’ll begin with David Wood’s account of philosophy after Heidegger: Philosophy is at war with the complacency of the concept. . . . The concept functions both to disclose and to conceal: its practical benefits obscure its selective operation. Where chaos threatens, philosophy may temporarily side with the concept, but when systematic conceptualization becomes the order of the day, eternal vigilance requires a liminal interrogation—probing, challenging, poking at the lines we have drawn on the map. (Wood 2002, 1) Wood poses some obvious questions. When and to what extent does chaos “threaten” such that conceptual determination and systematizing frees us

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from obscurity and mystification? But, also, when does conceptual stability produce its own kind of obscurity? How, in sum, do we negotiate or interrogate liminally between chaos, disorder, and deferral, on the one hand, and order, stability, and closure on the other? Especially in its Kantian, analytic, and pragmatic forms, philosophy of religion has typically sided with the concept, debating, for example, the validity of arguments for the existence of God or the epistemic value of religious experience. But all academic disciplines not only seek and produce stable concepts, they depend on them: for philosophy of religion, these concepts are, most importantly, “philosophy” and “religion.” At least since Kant, this stability has meant “philosophy” as an independent, secular method of inquiry that takes “religion,” as a set of “beliefs,” as the object of its inquiry. “Philosophy of religion” is thus one among other disciplines dedicated to thinking critically about and contributing conceptual clarity to—understanding and explaining—religious thought and practice.1 The critical thinking about religion made possible by this stability has been impressive. Yet we know that “philosophy” and “religion” have meant different things in different times and places, and nothing at all in others. This raises critical questions. What, for instance, is the role modern philosophy has played in the construction of these categories? And, more central for my purposes, what is obscured when we insist on drawing and policing a sharp boundary between philosophy, as a secular, academic discipline, and religion, as the object of that study?2 For many scholars, this boundary between religion and disciplines such as philosophy or sociology is precisely what makes the study of religion possible; because the academic legitimacy of the field is at stake, this boundary requires vigilant policing. But the zeal and suspicion with which at least some scholars guard the boundary may be the best indication that some liminal interrogation is needed, especially when we keep in mind those formative and contemporary theorists—from Marx to Bruce Lincoln and Stathis Gourgouris—who posit religion as the discourse par excellence of obscurity and mystification or as the heteronomous other to “critique.” Rather than remain content with the idea that religion is the “other” of critical thinking, I suggest we follow the advice of scholars such as Noah Solomon and Jeremy F. Walton (2013, 409): “instead of defending the critical study of religion as a secular privilege, we . . . think more critically about the relationship between religion and criticism itself.”

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Critical Thinking and Practices of Subjectivity What do I mean by “criticism” or the “critical”? Although Michael Warner (2004, 13–15) warns of the difficulties involved with trying to define the “critical,” I will distinguish, without claiming to be exhaustive, between four kinds of critical operations. First, critical thinking is reflexively analytic. On a very basic level, all critical thinking is grounded in analysis that makes useful and illuminating distinctions with respect to the constitutive elements of concepts, arguments, literary works, practices, etc. Such thinking becomes properly critical when it becomes reflexive, that is, when one reflects on one’s own stance or perspective in relation to the object of analysis and the distinctions one employs. Second, critical thinking is “critique”—in the Kantian sense of the term—when it identifies the conditions of possibility and the limits of particular concepts and experiences. Third, there is “critique” as a demystifying procedure, originating with Marx and developing in many directions since, that employs historical, psychological, sociological, and linguistic methods to expose the workings of desire and power in the construction of concepts, values, and social relations.3 I pause here, before moving to a fourth meaning of the critical, to make a few generalizations about the first three. First, we can employ each of these modes of critical thinking, or various combinations of them, to stabilize or destabilize our conceptual maps. Further, and as Michael Warner (2004, 24) puts it with respect to “critical reading” or “critique,” these modes of critical thinking entail “a negative movement of distanciation, whether of disengagement or repudiation.” As “disengagement,” critical thinking is influenced by scientific ideals of dispassionate, objectivizing knowledge and guided by modern discourses of autonomy to bracket various “biases,” such as normative commitments and personal feelings, in order to examine its objects rigorously and methodically. And such disengagement is often a first step toward what Warner calls “repudiation,” in which critique, in the Marxist and post-Marxist sense of the term, is employed to show that particular ideals or particular claims to social authority function ideologically, that is, to mask their real sources and effects. It is relevant to my project here that at the intellectual origins of such repudiation, not just in Marx, but also in Nietzsche and Freud—Paul Ricoeur’s “masters of suspicion”—religion is the primary target. Warner also usefully explores the link between critique and subjectivity. Though it is often assumed that to read critically is a fundamental skill that can and should be learned and applied by anyone, Warner (2004, 35)

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argues that as it has developed in the modern academy, critique is tied up with a host of assumptions, values, and ideals and, most important, entails an “elaborate discipline of subjectivity.” This is the discipline of freedom as autonomy, the discipline of the modern, liberal, secular subject who can separate himself from his attachments, commitments and values in order to examine them critically and decide whether he wants to affirm them or not (20). Such subjects are suspicious of attachments that are not the products of “autonomous preference formation,” that are “imposed” from outside, whether from tradition, family, or even our uneducated, immediate desires, that are, in short, “heteronomous.” Once we recognize this link between critique and subjectivity, Warner concludes, we should agree with anthropologist Saba Mahmood’s claim that “the standard of the critical . . . could and should be parochialized in turn as an ethical discipline of subjectivity rather than as the transparent medium of knowledge.”4 In other words, we are not being critical enough about critical thinking. To critique the “critical” would be to think at the limits of critical thought, to ask, with Warner (2004, 16), whether there are other ways to “suture textual practice with reflection, reason, and a normative discipline of subjectivity.”

Criticism and Religion This brings me to the fourth kind of intellectual operation that we associate with the “critical.” I will use the term criticism to refer to critical thinking directed to the appreciation of cultural phenomena or, more generally, to the synthetic and constructive work of evaluation that makes judgments, negative and positive, about our aesthetic, moral, political, and religious commitments and values. Today, as Warner notes, criticism in this sense has become marginalized in modern academic culture and is more commonly the subject of popular writing and journalism. Academic critique tends to focus only on the exposure of cultural mechanisms and philosophical or literary first principles, without rendering “judgments of value” (Warner 2004, 24–25). Such critique can tell us a lot about our assumptions, perspectives, and the way these are informed by social and historical context, but—and this is a central concern of my argument—it is much less helpful when it comes to thinking about how we move from the self-consciousness gained thereby to the revitalization and redeployment of our commitments and values. Warner does note some resistance to this negative view of criticism,

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citing Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s distinction between “critical reading” and “reparative reading” (17), that is, between negative, distanced critique and practices of reading grounded in the “attachment” to a text, to its value and importance for informing and enlivening our lives. Though marginalized as “uncritical,” there are good reasons to think that “criticism,” as I am using the word here, deserves a more prominent place in the academy, perhaps particularly in the humanities: if we agree that critical thinking is constitutive of a particular normative discipline of subjectivity, if it is, in other words, itself a particular way of attaching ourselves to our lives, then we need to think more deeply about how we might think critically in and through, as opposed to or distanced from, our attachments. Scholars of religion often distinguish the “religious” from the “study of religion” by claiming that the former is uncritical because it locates ultimate authority for beliefs, values, and practices in divinely authorized revelation, thereby mystifying the human origins of these phenomena and placing limits on human autonomy (see, e.g., Lease [2000], Lincoln [1996], and McCutcheon [2001]). Noah Solomon and Jeremy Walton (2013) take issue with this common sense. They note that this perspective on religion and criticism frequently is correlated with a strong emphasis on the separation between “outsiders” to religious thought, practice, and tradition and “insiders.” The claim is not that religious adherents can never study their traditions critically, but that to do so “critically” instead of “theologically” requires a self-conscious detachment that adopts the position of the outsider. The study of religion thus becomes “a secular privilege” (409). “Indeed, our at times obsessive emphasis on the critical nature of the study of religion has even threatened a sort of intellectual patricide within the discipline itself as a variety of contemporary scholars have argue that the very founders of Religionswissenschaft were insufficiently detached from their objects of study, engaging instead in the culpable attempt to promote theological visions under the guise of cold objectivity” (403–404). In this, Solomon and Walton echo Catherine Bell’s (1996, 187) observation that contemporary scholarship on religion is characterized by a “nearly paranoid degree of anti-theology polemic.” And they echo Eve Sedgwick’s more general claim that dominant forms of academic criticism have drifted into an essentially paranoid suspicion of textual attachment (Warner 2004, 16–17). Does religious “attachment” necessarily compromise critical thinking, or is it possible to think critically with and through one’s attachments, religious or otherwise? Solomon and Walton (2013, 411) argue that scholars need to abandon “the axis of distinction that locates critical theory on one

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side and pre-theoretical practice on the other” and attend more closely to the ways that “disciplines of criticism” work within religious traditions. I agree, but what, exactly, do we mean by religious “disciplines of criticism”? Few would deny that religious discourse can be critical, if all we mean by that is that it negatively or positively evaluates ideas and practices on the basis of whether they conform or not with religious beliefs or customs. But such criticism is not necessarily “disciplined” for sometimes religious adherents simply invoke “scripture” or “doctrine” or “revelation” or “tradition” without further argument. In such cases, it does seem a kind of heteronomy is at work that precludes disciplined critical thinking. The question is, however, whether all appeals to, say, “revelation” entail that kind of heteronomy. Is there a way of thinking—and do we want to still call it critical?—between “autonomous preference formation” and the heteronomy of imposed and unreflective attachments? Is there a religious criticism that reflects on religious beliefs and practices, and on all issues to which these are relevant, not from the detachment of “cold objectivity” or “methodological atheism” but from reflective religious attachment? Or, to anticipate my argument below, is there religious criticism that thinks through religious attachment with an attentiveness and an openness that makes judgments only while also inviting critical response? Something like this I find in Rowan Williams’s account of “theological integrity.” Williams (2000, 5) writes that theology must show “in its own working a critical self-perception [by] displaying the axioms to which it believes itself accountable [and making] it clear that it accepts, even within its own terms of reference, that there are ways in which it may be questioned and criticized.” Terms and phrases such as discipline and critical self-perception do indicate some kind of distance and even autonomy. But we need a nuanced account of this. Does it really make sense to say of our most important attachments that they are simply “chosen,” the result of a process of intentional, methodical “preference formation”? Is this how we love or yearn or commit ourselves to a cause? It seems to me that there is always an element of something like “heteronomy” involved in our most important and meaningful attachments, some real sense in which words such as capture or compel are more appropriate than choose. How might we think about such attachments with “critical self-perception”? The point would not be to reject autonomy outright, but to ask whether the autonomy/heteronomy binary is a useful way to think about our most important attachments and about the way we participate in the world through them.5 Hent de Vries (2009, 14) has argued that “[e]nlightenment and its philosophical concept

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of critique can no longer be defined as being merely opposed to, rather than being traversed or haunted by faith and trustworthiness that borders on heteronomy.” The task, as I see it, is to think through this traversal by disrupting conceptual paradigms that link critique with enlightenment and autonomy and contrast these ideals with religion, heteronomy, and faith.

Philosophy and Critical Responsiveness This will entail thinking differently about both “religion” and “philosophy.” One way to begin to do this is to expand our perspective on both to include not just questions of belief and epistemology but also questions of practice and spiritual exercise. Traditionally, philosophers of religion have focused on religious belief, examining, for instance, arguments for the existence of God or the problem of theodicy. Because modern philosophy has been so focused on epistemological issues, and because the study of religion has tended to conceptualize “religion” on the model of Christianity as a discourse of belief, this is not surprising. Recent decades, however, have seen a decisive shift in the study of religion, as scholars have turned to explore, for instance, religious practice in everyday life and ritual as something more or other than the simple expression of belief. Scholars increasingly understand that “religion” (however uncertain and contested the concept itself becomes) is about much more than beliefs and propositions. But philosophers of religion not only need to think about religion as practice, including religious thought as practice, they also need to consider the practical turn in philosophy itself. By this, I refer, first of all, to the work of Pierre Hadot (1995, 265), who has made the influential argument that philosophy in antiquity was “a mode of existing in the world, which had to be practiced at each moment”; it was an existential practice or “way of life”—a set of spiritual exercises. Hadot argues that beginning with the scholastics, philosophers become increasingly detached from this existential vision of the love of wisdom and thus less “philosophers” than purveyors of “philosophical discourse” (270–271). In other words, they became academic philosophers focused on cognitive determination and conceptual stability. Hadot does note some exceptions to this trend, such as Spinoza and Nietzsche. Further, he has helped inspire others to read the philosophical past and present in a new light.6 Two contemporary philosophers who can be profitably read from a Hadotian perspective are Martha Nussbaum and Stanley Cavell, both of whom conceive philosophy in practical terms,

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Nussbaum as a form of “therapy” and Cavell as “moral perfectionism.” They both, that is, redirect philosophy toward “spiritual exercise” as critical work on self and community. Though neither is a philosopher of religion, they are helpful for my project because they both develop visions of what I call “critical responsiveness,” a form of criticism that departs in significant ways from the kind of distanced academic criticism Warner discusses and that I think is useful for thinking about some forms of religious criticism. “Critical responsiveness,” as I think about it, entails the view that we always think and critique as participants in particular social formations and histories and as enmeshed in the natural world. Nussbaum and Cavell articulate disciplines of thought and practice (and thought as practice) by which they reflect on, engage critically, and ultimately enliven such participation in and through attention to relations of dependence, mutual receptivity, and responsiveness. This means that they approach the objects of their criticism and the relations they constitute in and through such criticism not as objects of detached intellectual scrutiny, but as objects and people to which/whom they give themselves in the kind of exposure and trust that make genuine responsiveness possible (though, of course, such responsiveness may in any given case mean a withdrawal of trust). Trust and exposure allow or elicit response, requiring fine attention to oneself and to one’s tastes, desires, and attractions, but they also require a letting go of the self, a giving up of control and security in order to open oneself in a way that allows the other, whether an object such as a poem or a film or another person, a voice. For Nussbaum (1990, 278), this is “learning to fall,” as in deliberately falling with the faith that someone will catch you. Cavell, who criticizes empiricist epistemologies that view experience as mere “checkpoints in sensory prediction” urges a receptive, as opposed to a representational, thinking in which we “let objects become impressive to us, matter to us” (2005b, 13, 51, emphasis mine). The experience of “mattering”—someone that matters, some ideal that compels, some action that presses itself upon one—can of course be threatening, for it often places demands on us that require upsetting established habits and views or that provoke longstanding fears and anxieties. The difficulty of “letting” things matter, of cultivating a complex interaction between action and passivity by which one puts oneself in a position to receive and respond to others and to one’s culture, is central to what I’m calling critical responsiveness, for it requires critical work on both the self and one’s attachments. Where critical thinking is frequently understood as a mobilization of reason detached from passions and personal attachments,

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critical responsiveness unfolds in the midst of passion and attachment as they emerge in responsive relations with others and in our interaction with the world. Here, the discipline is as much a matter of distancing oneself from the desire for control over one’s feelings and attachments—control over oneself—than from the object of criticism. This makes possible the trust by which one gives oneself over to responsive relationship and thus to the possibility of finding oneself anew in that responsiveness. The payoff, for both Nussbaum and Cavell, is that criticism, as it deepens, expands, and shares, “enlivens” (Nussbaum 1990, 16) and “resuscitates” (Cavell 2005b, 252) our attachments to each other, to our culture, and to the world. Both Nussbaum and Cavell develop their views of philosophical criticism by means of an illuminating sensitivity to the way philosophy can be supplemented by other forms of knowing. For this, both turn to art: Nussbaum focuses on literature, and Cavell on film (and on “aesthetics” more generally). “Before a literary work,” Nussbaum (1990, 282–284) writes, we are humble, open, active yet porous. Before a philosophical work, in its working through, we are active, controlling, aiming to leave no flank undefended and no mystery undispelled.  .  .  .  But, to make room for love stories, philosophy must be more literary, more closely allied to stories, and more respectful of mystery and open-endedness than it frequently is. Philosophy needs to make room for love stories, she argues, in part because love is a kind of knowledge: it is in love that we learn to fall, be responsive. More generally, the idea is that detached, intellectual scrutiny is not the only route to knowledge, that aspects of our lives remain obscure when we insist that we must know everything by means of the active and grasping knowing of philosophical or scientific cognitive determination. Our knowledge of ourselves and others is more complete, then, when there is an alliance between literature and philosophy, when philosophy learns from literature to be porous and attend to the “multiplicity of the everyday” (283) and, reciprocally, when philosophy brings to our understanding of literature its conceptual and therapeutic capacities for classification, analysis, and the exposure of self-deception (239, 283). In other words, Nussbaum is less interested in “philosophical criticism” that “explains” literature than in an intermediation between the philosophical and the literary through which we come to a greater understanding of both and of ourselves. Working along similar lines, Cavell says that “the sort of emphasis I place on the criticism,

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or reading, of individual works of art . . . [let the] work of art have a voice in what philosophy says about it” (Cavell 2005, 10). As I note above, Desmond makes a similar point about the relation of philosophy and religion. Nussbaum and Cavell, though, present themselves as secular philosophers, each exhibits, at times, the kind of insensitivity to and impatience with religion that is one of the most unthinking reflexes of modern philosophy. Yet, each, when poised at the most delicate interstices of art and philosophy, especially at those points where they are brought up against the limits of autonomy, invokes concepts such as “grace,” “mystery,” “gratitude,” “praise,” and “God.” Nussbaum elaborates the idea of “learning to fall” with the idea of “aiming for grace,” as in handing oneself over to God in the act of “prayer.” These ideas help her to think about the stance of “porosity” necessary for love’s knowledge. For his part, Cavell (2005b, 67) describes cultural criticism as “a conduct of gratitude  .  .  .  a specification and test of tribute.” The language of praise and gratitude refers back, for Cavell, to the fundamental conditions, or “criteria,” in terms of which and through which our words, meanings, and values bind us together in forms of life: what matters to me and the meaning it has for my life is never just a matter of me and my taste but of us and our life together. Praise and gratitude, then, are not simple expressions of our recognition of this fact or of our acknowledgment of dependence. They are that, but because we so easily fall into habits of superficial conformity and unresponsiveness, in both language and act, praise and gratitude also are disciplines of attention to and recovery of these bonds, disciplines through which we recover and work out our participation in culture and world and thereby “resuscitate” our “aliveness to the world” (252). They also are practices through which we expand these conditions. Our forms of life are never simply given and static, but are ever-changing. Our words of praise and gratitude can thus take us beyond our agreements by expanding and refiguring them, like fresh metaphor that allows us to see things in a new way: “What makes metaphor unnatural,” Cavell (1988, 147) writes, “is its occasion to transcend our criteria; not as if to repudiate them, as if they are arbitrary; but to expand them, as though they are contracted.” From this perspective, criticism as gratitude and praise becomes an experiment with a kind of transcendence by which new forms of connection are engendered, identified, and cultivated. Cavell concludes the early essay “Knowing and Acknowledging” with an expression of “gratitude” toward poetry as the means by which human beings turn to the “unknown” and begin expanding, through new words and figures, our connections with each other and the world. “This sense of unknownness,”

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Cavell (1977, 266) writes, “is a competitor of the sense of childish fear as an explanation for our idea, and need, of God.” The point of this detour into Nussbaum and Cavell is not to argue that they, as philosophers, need to take religion more seriously. For their own purposes, they take it seriously enough, mostly. Rather, it is to suggest that the kind of philosophical criticism they practice might be developed at the interstices of philosophy and religion, that, specifically, forms of religious criticism might be instructive for thinking criticism beyond the binary of autonomy and heteronomy. Let me now elaborate by considering the idea of “reverence,” as I find it in theologian Rowan Williams and philosopher William Desmond, as a practice that “borders on heteronomy” and is constituted by “porousness,” “praise,” and “gratitude.”

Theology and Criticism Like Nussbaum and Cavell, criticism for Rowan Williams is fundamentally a matter of responsiveness. His links with Cavell are particularly strong since Williams, too, is indebted to Wittgenstein, nowhere more clearly than when he argues that we should understand interpretation and criticism not on the model of “science” but as a “social project” based in “responsive action” (Williams 1988, 47). And responsiveness is at the center of what I identified above as Williams’s view of discursive integrity, which is based on speaking “in a way which allows of answers,” that makes no claims to be “final” and does not “seek to prescribe the tone, the direction, or even the vocabulary of a response” (Williams 2000, 5). This means that theologians must acknowledge the humanness of their discourse—they should not claim a God’s eye-view (6)—but also that critics of theology and religion, such as Freudians, Marxists, and sociobiologists, should avoid totalizing strategies that claim to produce definitive general truths about “religion.” From Williams’s point of view, all interpretations of religious and other cultural phenomena are selective, ignoring some aspects of the matter at hand and highlighting others. Their value resides in the way they can illuminate particular, concrete phenomena in the context of social interaction, and thus further connection, conversation, reflection, and action. The selectivity of any interpretation and any critique means that a crucial element of critical consciousness and discursive integrity is the acknowledgment and reflection on one’s fundamental commitments, articles of faith, basic assumptions, or, as Williams puts it, “fundamental axioms.”

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Responsiveness and integrity entail making these axioms clear as axioms. What I find particularly suggestive in Williams as a theologian is that the fundamental Christian axioms to which he is committed, which constitute his Christian faith and theology, have less to do with definitive propositions about God, humanity, and world than with a process of questioning that is fundamentally both critical and enlivening. Or, to perhaps be more accurate, his most definitive propositions about God and Christ have to do with the way they put the Christian into question, including her views of “God” and “Christ.” For Williams, the basic idea that God is both truth (and so judgment) and love (and so salvation) always must be understood in the context of the Gospel, at the heart of which, for Williams (2000, 87), as it was for Rudolf Bultmann, is the “scandal of the cross,” or sacrifice and death. In other words, God shakes the Christian out of his world, disrupts his frames of reference and his “realities,” calling him to a life of dispossession. But the Gospel, and Scripture and tradition more generally, also offer a new frame of reference by which such dispossession is understood as a practice of reverence and the taking on a new self. In the celebration, praise, and worship of God, the Christian receives the language—from scripture and the tradition—through which he learns to become a lover of God, self, and others. Here, he engages in the “the struggle [elsewhere “the stammering” (38)] to voice how the directedness of my regard depends on, is moulded by, something irreducibly other than itself ” (9–10). Revering God, the Christian works out what it is to be a finite creature that loves. One way to get at what this looks like in Williams’s work, and at how it relates to questions of criticism and autonomy, is to consider his treatment of “contemplation.” For theology to have integrity, Williams claims, it must root itself in the silence and listening of contemplation and prayer. “Contemplation . . . is a deeper appropriation of the vulnerability of the self in the midst of the language and transactions of the world; it identifies the real damaging pathologies of human life, our violent obsessions with privilege, control and achievement as arising from the refusal to know and love oneself as a creature, a body” (2000, 12). Opening him- or herself up to God in prayer, and struggling with the difficulty of doing so, which includes the difficulty of genuinely turning toward and praising God (instead of the self ), the contemplative must confront the many ways that she is caught up in the powers and shaping forces of the world and comes to find her value and affirmation in “privilege, control, and achievement.” And confront as well the ways that these same “obsessions” work their way into the religious life, especially in the need to grasp God for one’s own purposes.

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As exemplified in Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross, Williams (1990, 172) argues, the illumination found on the mystical path is not a matter of “mystical trances, visions or ecstasies, but the sense of being drawn into a central magnetic area of obscurity” where language and thought “run out” and we encounter a reality ungraspable by our conceptual capacities. This invocation of mystery is neither triumphalist nor apologetic, nor is it part of a mystificatory effort to negate explanation. Rather, Williams means it to keep Christians attuned to the “questioning at the heart of faith” (Williams 1990, 11). John’s dark night of the soul is achieved only in ever-deepening confrontation with pain and suffering and with the propensity to disavow this pain—his own and that of others—in ideological mystifications, such as those that would lean on any particular experience to confirm God’s reality and favor or other forms of positive knowledge of God. “No experience that can be held on to, possessed or comprehended can have to do with God” (173). Here, faith is not a way of possessing God and securing the self, but a practice of dispossession through which we open ourselves to God’s love. And this is a process in which “the last enemy to be overcome is religion” (176). Thus theology’s particular critical intensity: “Language about God is kept honest in the degree to which it turns on itself in the name of God, and so surrenders itself to God: it is in this way that it becomes possible to see how it is still God that is being spoken of ” (Williams 2000, 8). Williams’s writing is full of references to and exemplifications of the difficulty of theological speech, references to silence, stammering, the ephemeral nature of theological claims. For him, how one speaks is as important as what one speaks about. The “experience” of the call or, perhaps more accurately, the practice of opening oneself to the call, is fraught with difficulty and temptation, which means that a certain critical consciousness with respect to the possibility and the danger of such opening—in particular the danger of illusion and self-aggrandizement—is built in. To have integrity, theology must not only open itself to other forms of critical discourse, it must give space and time, with contemplative silence and stammering speech, to God’s work and initiative, even as it recognizes that these manifest themselves only obscurely. This means that praising and expressing gratitude to God in acts of worship always entails also opening oneself to God’s judgment, stripping oneself of ego and illusion. The temptation here will be to make the Nietzschean argument that the deep critical moment of Christian theology is the life and self-denying opposite of modern critical autonomy. On this reading, the language of

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judgment strips us of our self-affirmations and imposes a heteronomous language of sin and submission. This is an argument to take seriously, one to which Christian thinkers need to respond; it is certainly borne out by some theological perspectives. But not, I would claim, in someone like Williams, for whom the language of sin has much more to do with directing our attention—as the symbol of the cross does above all—to the victims of our inability to face our own complicity in forms of oppression and exploitation than in a moralizing attack on worldly joy and pleasure. Another way to put this is that the language of judgment in Williams functions primarily to keep us alive to our finite condition, to “know and love oneself as a creature, a body” and to direct us to the love of God—and to the love of self, other, and world that flows from this love—and away from forms of “love” to which we are inordinately and self-destructively attached. Of particular interest here is Williams’s treatment of dogma and revelation, theological concepts that for many critics of Christianity and theology mark the limits of any claims to theologically informed critical consciousness. For such critics, to be dogmatic is precisely to refuse critical questions and arguments, to hold to a proposition “just because,” for instance, it was revealed by God. But for Williams, the primary goal of theological doctrine is not to pin down God or Christ in propositional form or to justify or defend the Church or the faith, but rather to hold “us still before Jesus” so that we can learn who we are in light of the questions he puts to us (Williams 2000, 8, 85–86). These are questions, for instance, about the way that our habitual desires for power and security close us off to love for and from others. When dogma serves as the “ground of final validation for the rights and authority of the new community,” Williams argues, it becomes “itself a sign of the dangers of religion’s self-enclosure and claims to final legitimacy, it has been domesticated into the community’s system of control. It has become ideological” (99). A similar, though more explicitly affirmative, dynamic is at work in Williams’s treatment of revelation, that is, “the loving and nurturing advent of newness in human life” (145). Disciplines of dispossession under God’s judgment open us to new possibilities, to “events or transactions in our language that break existing frames of reference and initiate new possibilities of life” (134). The “new”—the different, the other, the incongruous—is always both promising and painful. Faith in God, openness to God’s revelation, does not promise a certain future or an end to pain.7 It promises instead the “grace” that takes shape in the forgiveness that allows us to perceive the new possibilities entailed in God’s revelation and to move with them into a future of creativity and

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responsiveness. Put differently, the point of God’s judgment is not to leave us mired in the consciousness of sin and bound by past failures, but to practice a form of dispossession and surrender that enables us to break out of the kinds of self-isolation that keep us attached to destructive habits and modes of perception. In revelation, that is, in Jesus and in later events through which the Christian community “re-learns to interpret itself ” with reference to Jesus, Christians encounter a “radical renewing energy” (141). On this reading, dogma and revelation function to maintain theology’s critical intensity. They should, he argues, lead Christians to be suspicious of the kinds of comfortable complacency and self-aggrandizements so often associated with “blind faith” and various forms of religious triumphalism. Surely, there is an element of something like heteronomy here in that Christians are being called to open themselves to questions that come from outside themselves. Is this, from the perspective of critique, a weakness, or is it theology’s strength as a form of disciplined criticism? Williams offers, I contend, a sophisticated account of and means for critical thinking about and through our fundamental attachments as a way of deepening understanding of ourselves and engaging creatively and thoughtfully with life. In the self-critical nature of theological language, language that must always turn on itself in acknowledgment of God and God’s judgment and grace, we find what Williams, borrowing from Ricoeur, identifies as “nonheteronomous dependence.” “We speak because we are called and authorized to speak, we speak what we have been given, out of our new ‘belonging,’ and this is a ‘dependent’ kind of utterance, a responsive speech. But it is not a dictated or determined utterance; revelation is addressed not so much to a will called upon to submit as to an imagination called upon to ‘open itself ’” (Williams 2000, 146–147). For Williams, in other words, critical consciousness and imagination go hand in hand. Both are grounded in faith and come to expression in and through practices of contemplation, worship, and theological reflection.

Critical Reverence With the concept of “reverence,” William Desmond captures and develops much about Williams that I think is important in the context of thinking about religion, philosophy, and criticism. Reverence, he tells us, is the fundamental religious attitude or disposition. It is a kind of openness or “porosity of being” cultivated and enacted most directly in forms of prayer, medita-

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tion, and contemplation, a receptiveness or attunement to the givenness of being. Desmond (2005, 23, 13) describes this givenness as “the elusive mystery of things” and the “hyperbole of being.” One way to understand this is to consider that Desmond, like David Wood, is attending to “that” which is in excess of conceptual determination. Philosophy, for Wood, works between conceptual stability and chaos, order and disorder, for instance in a deconstructive or genealogical mode. As such, however, even in Wood, philosophy tends to a kind of negative or cautionary form of critical thinking. For Desmond, philosophy has not paid enough attention to reverence, and he wants to think a “post-philosophical reverence” that questions philosophy’s claim to critical authority and its privileging of conceptual determination or “univocalization” (266). “Philosophy,” he writes, “claims to wake us up from the sleep of common sense, sometimes treating religion as but another sleep, but what if philosophy falls into a new sleep, from which only a different sense of religious sleeplessness can wake us?” (25). Stanley Cavell (2005a, 6) wants art to have a voice in what philosophy says about it, a voice that “differently configure[s] intellectual and emotional avenues that philosophy is already in exploration of, but which, perhaps, it has cause sometimes to turn from prematurely.” Desmond wants philosophy, with its active, critical intellection, to wake to reverence’s receptivity. But is reverence precisely that which blocks such real critical thinking? If we revere God, are we not prevented from questioning God? Yes and no. We have already seen how for Williams the worship of God has its own critical dynamic and that even if in some way it does not question God, it certainly questions our efforts to articulate precisely what God is and what God demands—that is, it questions “God.”8 And Williams and Desmond both want critical thinking to do more than this. Desmond (2005, 128) asks us to consider the difference between questioning and criticism that begin in skeptical doubt and questioning and criticism that begin in “wonder” or “original astonishment.” The former (as in Descartes) isolates the questioning self in suspicion, moving out toward the world and others only when its questions are satisfied. The latter acknowledges (as in Heidegger or Wittgenstein) that it is already in the world, with others—open and attached to them. This is also to acknowledge that one is not isolated and self-contained, that one’s being is bound up with and depends on that which exceeds the boundaries of the self. Thus, Desmond treats the indeterminate flux of order as the “matrix of creative life” (35) upon which we depend and in which we need to learn to participate. “Mystery” or “hyperbole of being” is, he says, “the overdeterminacy of the indeterminate in the surplus

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of its transcendence” (112). Reverence, then, is a mindfulness attuned to and trusting in this surplus as “gift,” not “chaos,” even as it recognizes that the line between gift and destructive or nihilistic chaos is a very fine one that itself cannot be determined with any exactness and so is always a risk. Reverence, he says, is a “finesse” (265). How is this related to the “critical”? At least two points are worth considering here. First, if reverence is mindfulness with respect to the “givenness of being” (Desmond 2005, 226) and this givenness is overdetermined and transcendent, it cannot be the stuff of conceptual determination. Desmond invokes “mystery.” The secular, critical response at this point is often “Mystification!” But Desmond’s response, like Williams’s, is mystery without mystification: mystery, that is, not as part of an apologetic effort to protect dogma and doctrine from critical thought but as a commitment both to a fundamental generosity of being and to a generous response to this givenness that renounces controlling and manipulative efforts to unilaterally and finally determine the other—whether God, world, or other persons. In this respect, reverence entails criticism of the tendency of worldly interests and powers to absolutize identities and definitions; it exposes the limits of selfenclosed, subject- and human-centered ways of thinking; it makes possible awareness that many of our efforts to determine things conceptually or to insist on intelligibility can in fact hinder our efforts to know and to act, or at least to do so in a fitting manner; it allows us, therefore, to pose critical questions about the modern project of autonomy and to ask whether certain forms of heteronomy are freeing rather than enslaving and blinding. Reverence as mindfulness with respect to mystery or surplus thus takes shape as a phronesis by which we understand how and when to employ the determinate categories and concepts by which we work on our worlds as well as how and when to refrain from such labor, that is, how and when to let things be enough to receive them in their otherness. Williams treats this recognition of limits in terms of a fundamental trust in God’s creative power, a power that, because it is without need, is pure gift, helps us strip our worldly negotiations and relations of “violence-inducing anxiety.” But the critical value of reverence lies not just in the cautionary invocation of “mystery,” but in an openness to attachment and dependence. Desmond (2005, 225, 346) sees reverence as an offering of dependence, a generous response to the gift of being that absolves or releases one into a world of attachment and “works of love.” So even as reverence is a turning to God, it also is a constant turning to oneself to inquire into what it is we are loving, why we love it in the way we do, and whether it is worthy of

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our love and whether, if so, we are worthy of it. It is, in love, the working out one’s loves. We might put it like this: reverence, as the love for God, or for that upon which we ultimately depend, is a disposition and practice by which one explores, questions, and come to understands all one’s other loves. If philosophy is the love of wisdom, then reverence, as a critical discipline, is the wisdom of love. When this wisdom is brought to bear upon philosophy, it makes possible reflection on the kinds of wisdom that philosophers do and should love and on how they live and deploy such wisdom. Philosophers, in other words, will think critically and expansively enough about religion only when they also learn to think with religion. NOTES

1. I emphasize the word “typically” in the first sentence of this paragraph in order to indicate that there are versions of the philosophy of religion that explore religion from perspectives rather different from the ones I identify here. One example would be the work of Jeffrey Stout (2004), whose work on “secular” discourse and on democratic “piety” I find congenial with the argument I make in this chapter. And in many respects I see this chapter as an elaboration on Hent de Vries’s treatment of philosophy in, among other works, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (2009). With respect to the issue of participation, see Paul Griffiths’s (2009) distinction between knowledge that seeks to control and dominate, which he calls “curiosity,” and knowledge that takes joy in the participation with the objects and ideas it seeks to know, which he calls “studiousness.” 2. For a more extensive discussion of this question, which includes the interrogation of the concepts of the “secular” and the “academic,” see Roberts (2013). 3. See Wendy Brown (2009, 11). To follow up on my earlier point about religion as the other to critique, see specifically Brown’s discussion of “the intensity with which critique attaches itself to secularism, articulates itself as a secularizing project, and identifies itself with the dethroning of God” (11). 4. Warner (2004, 18). Warner refers to Mahmood’s Politics of Piety. Mahmood points out that even though the ideal of autonomy has been subject to numerous attacks and revisions, it is tenacious, even to be found in the tendency of poststructuralist feminists “to conceptualize agency in terms of subversion or resignification of social norms, to locate agency within those operations that resist the dominating and subjectivating modes of power” (Mahmood 2005, 14). In the previous sentence, the phrase “autonomous preference formation” is appropriated by Mahmood from political theorist John Christman, who argues that such formation is constitutive of freedom (11–12). 5. For a scintillating study of religious practice between autonomy and heteronomy, see Robert Orsi (1996).

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6. See Hilary Putnam’s reading of Rosenzweig, Buber, and Levinas in Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life (2008). See also Sloterdijk (2013). 7. “[I]f we believe we can experience our healing without deepening our hurt, we have understood nothing of the roots of our faith” (Williams 1990, 11) 8. For a magisterial treatment see de Vries (2009). BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bell, Catherine. 1996. “Modernism and Postmodernism in the Study of Religion.” Religious Studies Review 22(3): 179–190. Brown, Wendy. 2009. Introduction. In Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, by Talal Asad, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood, 7–19. Berkeley, CA: Townsend Center for the Humanities. Cavell, Stanley. 1977. Must We Mean What We Say? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1988. In Quest of the Ordinary. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2005a. Cities of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ———. 2005b. Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. de Vries, Hent. 2009. Philosophy and the Turn to Religion. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Desmond, William. 2005. Is There a Sabbath for Thought? New York: Fordham University Press. Griffiths, Paul. 2009. Intellectual Appetite. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press. Hadot, Pierre. 1995. Philosophy as a Way of Life, edited by Arnold Davidson. Translated by Michael Chase. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Lease, Gary. 2000. “Ideology.” Guide to the Study of Religion, edited by Willi Braun and Russell McCutcheon, 438–450. London: Cassell. Lincoln, Bruce. 1996. “Theses on Method.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 8(225): 225–227. Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. McCutcheon, Russell. 2001. Critics Not Caretakers. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001. Nussbaum, Martha. 1990. Love’s Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Orsi, Robert. 1996. Thank You, St. Jude. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Putnam, Hilary. 2008. Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Roberts, Tyler. 2013. Encountering Religion. New York: Columbia University Press. Sloterdijk, Peter. 2013. You Must Change Your Life. Translated by Wieland Hoban. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

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Solomon, Noah, and Jeremy F. Walton. 2013. “Religious Criticism, Secular Critique, and the ‘Critical Study of Religion’: Lessons from the Study of Islam.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Study of Religion, edited by Robert Orsi, 403–420. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Stout, Jeffrey. 2004. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Warner, Michael. 2004. “Uncritical Reading.” In Polemic, edited by Jane Gallop, 13–38. New York: Routledge. Williams, Rowan. 1988. “The Suspicion of Suspicion: Wittgenstein and Bonhoeffer.” In The Grammar of the Heart, edited by Richard H. Bell, 36–53. San Francisco: Harper & Row. ———. 1990. The Wound of Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications. ———. 2000. On Christian Theology. Oxford: Blackwell. Wood, David. 2002. Thinking After Heidegger. Malden, MA: Polity.

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Radical Theologians, Knights of Faith, and the Future of the Philosophy of Religion John D. Caputo

My thesis is that the future of philosophy of religion is rooted in what I call “radical theology,” which, I maintain, is the very thing that motivates our interest in the philosophy of religion and repays all our work. In what follows I treat radical theology as a form of what Johannes Climacus called “hidden inwardness,” a religious passion which for the sake of propriety is kept discreetly out of public view, given that it is a mark of both bad taste and bad faith to wear one’s religion on one’s sleeve. On my hypothesis, were we ever to meet a radical theologian in the flesh, we would have the same reaction Johannes de Silentio describes upon finally finding a knight of faith: The instant I lay eyes on him . . . I jump back, clap my hands, and say half aloud, ‘Good Lord, is this the man, is this really the one—he looks just like a tax collector.’ . . . [I] watch his slightest movement . . . a glance, a facial expression, a gesture, a sadness, a smile that would betray the infinite in its heterogeneity with the finite. No! I examine his figure from top to toe to see if there may not be a crack through which the infinite would peek. No! . . . He belongs entirely to the world; no bourgeois philistine could belong to it more . . . No heavenly gaze or any sign of the incommensurable betrays him . . . one would take him for a mercantile soul enjoying himself.1

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As philosophy’s hidden inwardness, radical theology is what is going on in philosophy of religion while not being visible to the eye. It is “in” it not the way water is in a glass but the way an inner restlessness is disturbing something that gives the outward impression of stability. In radical theology we seek words for an infinite passion, for our deepest hopes and desires, for a faith that for all the world looks absurd. As such, radical theology is turned structurally toward the future, toward what is to come, for which we pray and weep, providing us with a way we say what we hope and pray is to-come (a-venir). In radical theology, the question is never what something is, but what it promises, what is promising, what is being promised in it, which requires a certain faith and hope in what seems absurd. Infinite hopes and desires do not sit easily with the business as usual of the world, where we are taken up with finite projects and we try to avoid bad investments. Infinite hopes and desires are elusive, enigmatic, and they resist objectification. That makes them suspect characters in the university, incommensurate with its methods and disciplines. But they are no less suspect to the “religion” of the confessional faiths, where a faith like this, a radical faith in the to-come, looks dark and dangerous, too unknowing and unorthodox. So the philosophy of religion—which harbors this infinite passion, this incommensurability—must for all the world appear to be a sober man, a mercantile soul, entirely commensurate with finitude and the world. It is asked to engage with infinite discretion in a covert operation, providing a cover of mundane respectability for radical theology, even at times offering it asylum from its persecutors. Philosophy of religion is asked to keep guard over a quasi-messianic secret, to keep it strictly to itself. Without the protection afforded by such a disguise, radical theology would always be too mad for the academy and too heretical for the confessions. Radical theology occupies a place that is inside/outside philosophy and inside/outside religion, adopting their outward demeanor while being inwardly exposed to the abyss, taking care not to lace too tightly the garments of the “philosophy of religion” it dons in public. So just as Climacus said that humor is the incognito of the religious, philosophy of religion (which could use a little humor) is asked to serve as the incognito of radical theology. Were we ever to meet a radical theologian, we would jump back and exclaim, “Good Lord, is this the man—he looks just like a philosopher of religion!” Were it not for radical theology, philosophy of religion would be a sober scholarly affair, at ease with itself and with the university, and even welcome in all the seminaries. Relieved of all suspicion, it would be left

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in peace, respected as a respectable discipline, a cool-headed inquiry into diverse bodies of beliefs and practices. As such, it would be a perfectly proper chap in the faculty club, completely commensurate with the protocols and good manners of the university. All of which is perfectly true—up to a point, outwardly, on its face.2 It is the destabilizing dislocating radical theology within that causes (I would say protects and preserves) the incommensurability—with itself, with the university, with confessional theology, with the world. The incommensurability lies in making a certain leap of faith, its faith in the to-come, which is its equivalent to the faith of the knight of faith in the absurd. Its faith is austere and groundless; its hope is quasi-messianic, the “quasi-” signifying both that this messiah does not actually show up and if per impossibile he did, we could not be sure that he will not be a monster. So the faith and hope to which radical theology gives form, a hope in a pure “to-come,” is a faith in “the impossible,” as Derrida likes to say. The to-come is not its “object” but what Heidegger calls its Sache, its deepest matter of concern, or what the New Testament would call its treasure and its heart, and this because it is not a matter of knowledge but of faith and hope and love. Striking the posture of an unorthodox Augustine who confesses before God, radical theology “circum-fesses” before God or death or the other, before I know not what (Derrida 1993b, 58), the radical restlessness of its heart, praying and weeping for the coming of a completely unheard of and heretical messiah, calling for a new species of theologians, a new humanities, and a university to come. The figure of these coming theologians in this coming university is the secret hope of the philosophy of religion, the future it is calling for, the faith in the future that it “harbors,” which means both to conceal and to keep safe, like a messianic secret, or like the hidden inwardness described by Johannes Climacus.

The To-Come (À Venir), the Event (Événement) In my accounting, philosophy of religion contains radical theology, but in doing so it contains something that it cannot contain; it contains something uncontainable, which is a characteristic mark of what Derrida calls the “event.”3 The event is something coming (venir), but something we cannot see coming (voir venir), something in-coming (in-vention), something that breaks in upon the present and shatters our horizon of expectation, doing what we never thought possible. When we are overtaken by an event we

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ask, “how was that possible?” (see Derrida 2007, 5–7, 23–47). Our hopes and desires are lodged in events, in-breakings, breakthroughs, which we hope will come and which we pray will make the world new without making it worse. So we are always saying, praying, “come” (viens) to events (Derrida 1993a, 117–171), keeping ourselves open to their incoming, with the unnerving realization that, as something unforeseeable, nothing guarantees that the event will not be a disaster. That is why the spiritual masters advise: be careful what you pray for—you might get it. We are asked—by whom we cannot say—to welcome the event, which means to be open to the future, to have a kind of faith and hope in the future. But the future here does not mean the “future present,” a foreseeable future time that we can and should plan for, like retirement or the education of our children, which is more a matter of prudence than of faith. It means the very structure of the “to come,” which is a bit easier to hear in languages like French or German, where the word for the future (Zukunft, avenir) derives from the infinitive (zu kommen, à venir), the to-come. The to-come does not signify a future that will become present, a coming time or era, but the very structure or the force of the future, let us say its “call.” The future thus means, on the one side (which Husserl would call the noematic side), the fetching call or solicitation of the to-come that presses in upon us and is none of our doing, and also, on the other side, on our side (noetic), the future we are calling for, the future for which we hope and pray. The tocome holds the promise of the future, the future of the promise. This force is already felt—whence the insufficiency of cognitive categories like “noetic” and “noematic”—in the present because it presses in upon the present, exposing the stability of the present to the instability of the promise, for the promise is no less a threat; if the future is structurally unforeseeable, then the future is risky business. When the unexpected arrives, we are never sure whether this is a breakthrough or the beginning of a terrible breakdown. I speak of the to-come as a call or a solicitation but not an imperative, because the force of the to-come is weak and non-imperial; we can always ignore it or distort it to our liking. If the promise of the future is a force, as I think it is, it is a weak force, a force without force, a force that lacks the police to enforce what it calls for. The to-come, let us say, the “absolute” future, as opposed to the future-present, is the object of our hope and desire, the stuff of a certain faith. But lodged as it is on the level of our elemental restlessness, this faith (foi) cannot be contained or housed within determinate beliefs (croyance).4 So too this desire is a desire beyond desire (Derrida 1991, 30), a desire for something I know not what,

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beyond any particular desire for a determinate present thing. By the same token, this hope is a hope for something unforeseeable, in which we hope with a hope against hope (Rom 4:18) for something we cannot quite say. This faith and hope and desire are barren, dark, deserted, groundless, only quasi-messianic. They cannot fall back on firm arguments, or divine assurances, or a long and standing tradition of shared beliefs. No wonder our knight of faith keeps all this to himself. In radical theology, the open-ended force of these desires and hopes, uncontained by disciplinary boundaries of religion, state, culture, or university, are given unsteady word and unstable form (which means they are always deconstructible). Beyond the “philosophy of ” or the “theology of ” this or that—religion or art or science—there lies the experience, the encounter, the engagement with the event that displaces and destabilizes any such stable formation. Radical theology accordingly is a theology of the event, its focus fixed on the event that stirs within the business as usual of theology or what I will call here “confessional” theology. Radical theology concerns itself with an obscure, restless, and unstable stirring going on in confessional theology, with matters from which confessional theology maintains a safe distance. Invited by the call of the event, of the to-come, confessional theology chooses the safer course; it is inclined to decline the invitation and to remain closer to the shore. Radical theology is the place where events seek words, or rather words and deeds, since it is not merely a discursive formation; or rather it is but one of several such places, as this radical restlessness is going on elsewhere. The event can happen anywhere, in any inquiry or practice, in theology or philosophy, in the humanities or the sciences, in art or politics. Radical theology sets sail on the open seas of the to-come, knowing that the other shore is never reached, seeking to think the promise, which is structurally futural, always already what is coming, which is why this messiah never shows up. Still better, it is the place, or one of the places, where the to-come impinges upon our lives, where what is to come breaks in upon us, provokes us, and calls for a response. Radical theology has to do with what Derrida (2007, 23–26) calls l’invention de l’autre in the double sense of invention, the in-coming or breaking-in of something unforeseeable and the coming-upon something we did not see coming. The being of radical theology is always being-in. If we seek the “place” of radical theology we will find it always elsewhere, in something else; its being is more in-sistent than existent or subsistent. It takes place in confessional theology, but it cannot be contained inside it, which is why it can also be found outside theology or religion—in literature, say, or politics.

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We might say that its place is to be structurally displaced, never quite at home in any one place, and never safe or peacefully in place, exposing whatever it inhabits to the impact of the to-come, to the impingement of the future. Radical theology never quite gains its footing, since by dealing in events it is a matter of expecting the unexpected. Radical theology thus is futural through and through, as a structural matter and not merely as a matter of fact. Radical theology arises in response to the promise and it calls for something new, for what I will call here a new species of theologians, adapting a phrase from Nietzsche, in a “university to come,” adopting a phrase from Derrida (2002, 202; 1997, 34, 41, 43). Of course, radical theology does have a certain place, or enjoy a certain presence on the scene today—just where and how is one of my main concerns in these remarks. But its place is always to be displaced, its home always provisional, always threatened by a certain homelessness, forced always to travel under an incognito. In Derrida’s discourse, we would say its state is spectral, “unheimlich,” meaning uncanny, a bit eerie, but literally “not-at-home,” wandering like a ghost. In the discourse of the New Testament, it is like the son of man, having nowhere to lay its head. “Spectrality,” says Derrida, is the subject matter not of ontology (what is) but of “hauntology” (the promise/threat).5 As usual, when Derrida makes a quip he is also being perfectly serious, because he is speaking of the event, humor being one of his favorite incognitos. The hidden inwardness of our knight of faith seems to be a matter of believing in ghosts. Look about and ask, where is radical theology to be found, here and now? Where and how does it have a place—in the confessional religions or in the university? To what extent is it able to acquire what the Greeks called ousia, meaning both substance or essence and real estate! To what extent does radical theology acquire solid and substantial institutional body? The answer is, it does not quite exist and yet it does not quite not exist; it is not quite living and not quite dead, like the “un-dead” of the horror movies. But like any ghost worthy of the name, the specter has a reality or a force of a different sort; for it, to be is to spook. “Es spukt,” Marx quipped, speaking of Max Stirner’s critique of religion (as opposed, let’s say, to Heidegger’s es gibt!) (Derrida 1994, 136). It spooks us, insinuating a ghostly force into the life-world all around it—into the confessional religions and the university, into philosophy and religion, and especially into the sober and respectable figure of “philosophy of religion,” which is our concern here—and it gives none of them any peace. Ghosts see to it that neither the living nor the dead rest in peace. Above all, as a discourse (logos) on

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God (theos), the spectral nature of radical “theology” causes a disturbance in the highest quarters, in God on high, in the name of God. For the name (of ) “God” is also inhabited and disturbed by the event that transpires in the name of God. The event haunts and displaces the very being of God with the specter of what is going in and under that name, what is coming, what is calling, what calls, and what is called for in and under the name (of ) “God.” Radical theology raises the spectral prospect of a coming God, and its prayers is a call for a God to-come. At bottom, its subject matter, its Sache, its deepest concern, is not the future of religion, or of philosophy of religion, but the future of God. Radical theology enjoys—unless it suffers from—an ambiguous mode of existing without existence, a confounding mode of insistence without enjoying a robust and full-fledged existence. Radical theology is not a wellformed discipline that can be comfortably housed in the university, where it is not respectable to believe in ghosts. It cannot be condensed into a definitive creed or reassuring set of assertions that could be approved at a council or assembly of a confessional religion, which wants to be sure that the spirits with which it has commerce have not been dispatched by Beelzebub. So, radical theology cuts a discomforting figure and it makes disconcerting call for a new species of theologians, for a university to come, for a religion to come, and even, God forbid, for a God to come. Nothing present, nothing here and now, satisfies it, which is the essence of its restlessness with the present and the essence of its quasi-messianic future, of the to-come by which it is always and already inwardly disrupted. By a religion or university to-come I do not mean a coming institution belonging to the future-present but the force or call or solicitation of the to-come that provokes religion and the university today, that gives them something to think, to desire, to hope for. The to-come is always to come, as a structural matter. All we expect from religion and the universities of the present is for them to become more open to the to-come, to the unexpected, more hospitable to the in-coming of the unforeseeable, more welcoming of specters, more willing to be disturbed and ill at ease with their categories and concepts, their doctrines and definitions, their divisions and departments.

The Place of Radical Theology In order to address the question of the future of philosophy of religion, I want first to sharpen the idea of radical theology, upon which everything hangs,

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by distinguishing it from confessional theology. The task of confessional theology is to reflect upon and conceptualize the beliefs and practices of the confessional community, its founding texts, its doctrines and their history, its institutional life and practices, in such a way as to clarify the community’s self-understanding. Confessional theology therefore has a proper place—in the community, to be the place where the confessional community does its thinking. Confessional theology reports back to the confessional community, which must be able to recognize itself in the theology; the community must be able to see its own reflection in this reflective discourse. If it does not, either the theology will wither and be marginalized or even actively persecuted, or else parts of the community will identify with the innovation introduced by the theology and break off from the mainstream community and form a new community, where the same dynamic is repeated. But the place of radical theology is much more problematic. Radical theology does not report back to any confessional community, but rather to the human community at large. The questions it raises are proposed to anyone and everyone who is interested in the meaning and significance of phenomena of a more universal sweep. Radical theology touches upon elemental issues of natality and mortality, of transcendence and finitude, of reverence, praise, and gratitude,6 purpose, hope, and love, joy and sorrow—all issues that Paul Tillich described as matters of ultimate concern, of common or universal interest, if not of common agreement. Radical theology belongs to what Derrida (2002, 202–203) calls the “new humanities” found in the “unconditional university,” the university to come, which reserves the right to ask any question, however dissident, however scandalous its questions may be to confessional authorities and traditions, to any authority, religious or secular. Radical theology claims access to anything and everything that is going on in religion, even if the confessional authorities build walls around certain things and declare them “mysteries” unattainable by reason. Radical theology is, on its face at least, cosmopolitan and universal (its modern face), free and unfettered (its postmodern face), remembering we should not accept things at face value. The “natural place” (as the ancients might have said) of confessional theology is the houses of worship and of learning conducted by the confessional community—its pastors at their preaching, its professors at their teaching in colleges and universities, seminaries and divinity schools—all highly respectable places where the “radical” in radical theology renders it suspect or unwelcome. Radical theology does not conform to confessional authority, does not regard the founding scriptures as having supernatural

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provenance or superhuman authority. It does not confess the confessional doctrines; it does not respect the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy; it does not promise to abide by the pronouncements of the confessional hierarchy. That suggests that the natural place of radical theology, by contrast, would be “secular” or nonconfessional institutions, like the “religion” or “religious studies” department of a secular university, where confessionalism is the cardinal sin. But even here radical theology is a bit out of place, not quite welcome, a questionable figure, not because of the “radical” but because of the “theology.” The ring of “theology” is spooky and unnerving in the ears of the secular university, where it turns out that cool-headed secular academics say they are not afraid of ghosts but they are afraid of people who believe in ghosts, the spirit-seers who worried Kant. That is why many secular institutions have no department of religion or religious studies at all, which they think would be out of place in a self-respecting enlightened university. Even the universities that do have such departments do so very cautiously, almost antiseptically, for fear of contamination. The theological and philosophical components of the department, which were dominant in the past, have been progressively displaced by anthropological, sociological, ethnological, and historical approaches to what is there called “religion.” In these departments, “religion” is constituted as a perfectly proper “scholarly object” of study, not unlike the way one might have a scholarly interest in the study of Roman coins. The difference between the confessional institutions and the secular ones is sharp; they adopt completely and symmetrically opposite positions in the matter of objectification. In a confessional institution, the working assumption is that it is necessary to believe in order to understand; if you are not “in” the confessional community, you will never quite “get it.” The confessional faith is a lived or existential matter that cannot be completely theorized or objectified. In secular institutions, the opposite is the case: if you are “in” a confessional community, then your “objectivity” becomes an issue, and if you do believe, you must conduct yourself as if you do not, practicing a kind of methodological agnosticism, and check your beliefs at the door if you wish to maintain your respectability. As a practical matter—a practice I am here trying to theorize—however, radical theology can and does gain entrance to these institutions, whether confessional or nonconfessional, by presenting its papers to the academic gate keepers as “philosophy.” To the members of the curriculum committee or the tenure committee or the acquisition editors of university presses, radical theology passes itself off as the “philosophy of religion.” Like

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the knight of faith, the radical theologian gives every indication of being a sober fellow. This is a strategic solution (don’t ask, don’t tell) and the most common one, and it allows radical theology a respectable—if covert—place in the philosophy department of most institutions of higher education and even in the religion department of secular ones. Philosophy of religion provides a cover for radical theology, an incognito. But this arrangement is far from perfect and, as I have been urging, even a bit of a ruse, and this for two reasons. First, there is the danger, which all too often is the reality, that in the confessional institutions, the “religion” in “philosophy of religion” will almost invariably mean the confessional one sponsored by the institution. That turns the whole thing into an exercise in apologetics, which is a compromised philosophy, and lends weight to Heidegger’s well-known (if ironically very modernist!) complaint that a Christian philosophy is a square circle and a sham; so if philosophy wants to raise serious questions it needs to practice a methodological atheism (Heidegger 1959, 7; 1985, 80). But there is a second and even more basic problem. Philosophy of religion concerns the beliefs and practices of the various “religions,” which is a legitimate, respectable, and even urgent business for the university, especially today in a world turned upside down by religious extremists. But the subject matter of radical theology is not precisely “religion”—its structure, history, beliefs, and practices. It certainly involves offering a theory of religion and, in my view, it finally isolates a certain religion that is nicely described as a “religion without religion” (Derrida 1995, 49). But it is of some importance to see that its subject matter is not exactly religious beliefs and practices but, as I have been saying, what is going on in religion, which I contend is best theorized in terms of what Derrida calls the event. The subject of radical theology is what is going on in “religion, the religions, the religious” (Smith 1998, 269–284), in what is called there God and the gods, gifts and grace, prayer and faith, hope and hospitality, love and compassion—in other words, what Husserl called the things themselves, die Sache selbst, the things that religion is all about. Radical theology is not about religion, but about what religion is about. In Tillich’s terms, its subject matter (Sache) is ultimately matters of “ultimate concern,” matters that it theorizes and interrogates, questions and analyzes, just like confessional theology, but without regard to confessional authorities and without observing the limits imposed by the orthodoxies. Radical theology really is theology, but it is not confessional theology; it really is philosophical, but it is not precisely philosophy

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of religion. Consequently, it is a suspect character for both confessional theology and the university. This, in turn, suggests that radical theology is, most precisely of all, philosophical theology and that too is true enough and part of the working agreement that is struck with the institutional gate keepers. Radical theologians behave like philosophers, but ones who are literate in religious traditions and theological texts, the way philosophers of science need to be literate in physics or biology. They interrogate theological matters with a critical eye; they want to see for themselves; they cannot be put off by being told that it is all a mystery and a matter of supernatural revelation; they are not intimidated by either bishops or the Bible. But this approach too has its limits. The very idea of what we call philosophical theology is constructed by distinguishing between “revealed” or “sacred” theology and “rational” or “philosophical” theology,” where philosophy is restricted to the rational content of theology while leaving matters of faith and revelation to the doctors of sacred theology. The result is that the “radical” in radical theology is compromised by being inscribed within a “regional” distinction—natural reason over here, supernatural revelation over there. In its most familiar form, philosophical theology takes up the question of the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, the freedom of the will, and the problem of evil. Although Aquinas’s “five ways” are meant to avoid an “infinite series,” philosophical theology has resulted in precisely that, an infinite series of anthologies that include Aquinas’s five ways, Anselm’s “ontological argument,” Hume’s critique of miracles, and so on ad infinitum, maybe even ad nauseam. In short, “philosophical theology” is a God-forsaken line of work. It is too thin, barren, and abstract an undertaking to serve as a fitting characterization of radical theology. As Hegel said, rational theology is just so much Verstand (“understanding”), which is pretty much a term of abuse for Hegel, signifying an abstract, ahistorical, disembodied, one-sided rationalism, which allows itself to be distracted by the busy work of proofs, propositions, and entities. Verstand lacks the concrete robust life of the spirit accessible only to the full-bodied embrace of Vernunft, which has its eye on what is going on in the proofs and propositions. It results in pale and anemic creatures like Kant’s reduction of religion to ethics or the modernist scholasticism of Christian Wolff, which Kant criticized under the name of cosmo-theology and onto-theology, the latter of which Heidegger—and on this point we are forever in his debt—set out to “overcome.” Unlike philosophical theology, a

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radical theology is like Vernunft; it takes every interest in the “revealed” contents of theology, in its characteristic doctrines and concrete practices, in just the way that Hegel was above all interested in the Trinity and Incarnation and was, in that sense, a great Christian, even Trinitarian theologian—but in a radical mode (Hegel [1827] 1988, 84–85, 92, 402–404). So if radical theology is a kind of philosophical theology, which is true up to a point, it is a rogue, an outlaw, an illegal immigrant, or maybe even like one of those old Cynics who performed outrageous things in public. It refuses to observe the distinction between “revealed” and “rational,” sacred or supernatural and natural theology, which defines philosophical theology.

Radical Theology and Radical Hermeneutics What we learn from Hegel, who is the pivotal figure in the formation of radical theology, is that the “radical” in “radical theology” is not a regional marker but a modal one. Radical theology cannot be staked out as a regional subject matter whose borders are drawn by a critical distinction between rational and revealed, or the “natural light” and a supposedly “supernatural” light to which reason lacks access. In virtue of its very radicality, there is nothing in theology or religion—be it “faith,” “mystery,” or “revelation,” “grace” or “prayer”—that is not accessible to radical theology, nothing in which it is not interested, no question it does not have the right to ask, no text or matter for which it does not seek an interpretation. The “radical” in radical theology is not a marker of a regional theology but of a modality of thought, a way of understanding, an interpretative mode. Radical theology is a hermeneutics of what takes place in and under the name of God, of everything, be it a belief or a practice, a “revealed” truth or one born of “reason alone,” be it an institution, a liturgy, or a politics. Radical theology is deeply interested in the founding “sacred scriptures” of the confessional traditions, in their parables and narratives and injunctions. These are all treated as so many serious meditations upon the human condition, and even as “revelations,” that is, as profoundly revelatory of our condition without the mystification of supernaturalism. Radical theology thus requires a taste for reading books of revelation, which requires a taste for literature, which in turn requires not only literary sensitivity to religious texts but also a historical-critical study of the origin and form of these texts. Radical theology is in no small part a meticulous history, genealogy, and phenomenology

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of what is happening in and under the name (of ) “God,” in everything that is written, made, and done under this name. But if radical theology is deeply interested in revelation, it avoids the mystification of “Revelation,” with a capital R, where these narratives are treated as a gift from on high, a heavenly message delivered by angels, beyond human scope—whose proper interpretation is handed over to their institutional overseers. (These are the very people who in fact have constituted these texts as revelation to begin with [canonization] and often redacted them to their own liking, not to mention the abyss of accidents to which they are vulnerable in being transmitted, at first orally and then by copyists.) It respects every revelation as “special,” as idiosyncratic, tout autre. It simply denies that any special revelation is “definitive” or “exclusive”—as if it comes at the cost of the “special” quality of other revelations, as if revelation were a zero sum game, as if someone has won a game of guessing the secret name and the others have lost, as if the secret name was “revealed” to the former but not to the latter. (One indication of how gratuitous a construction “special revelation” is, is the regularity with which it turns out that the “special” revelation was granted especially to “us,” while it is the “others” who were left by God in the dark.) For example, in radical theology the “Sermon on the Mount” is treated as having a special revelatory force that consists in the shock it delivers to the sensibilities of a greedy and selfish world, in the topsy-turvy vision of the world it puts forth, one that is most unlike the wisdom delivered by Greek philosophy or the so-called enlightened self-interest of commonsense or the invisible hand of market forces, where greed is good. Such a special shock is the mark of any and every “revelation,” which is therefore recast in radical theology as a “poetics”—an evocative discourse, calling upon all the resources of syntax and semantics, to work up a unique sense of the human condition, of its magic, mystery, and misery. But radical theology thinks that revelations like this happen in every tradition, that this sort of poetics of our condition is pretty much what makes for a tradition in the first place. Radical theology thinks that there are many such traditions, each of which is uniquely and idiomatically itself. If we speak of “special” revelation, that can only mean that every revelation is special, each one having a special character of its own. But if special revelation means enjoying a special privilege when it comes to having revelatory force, a privileged access to the truth, then no revelation is special, no more than there is one true culture, language, or work of art. But this does not mean that all such

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revelations are the same in the style of the old comparative religion; to say a revelation is special is to insist upon its difference. We might say that as a mode of inquiry radical theology follows the example of Jesus who, to the great scandal of all, dined with sinners and associated with tax collectors. Radical theology, to the scandal of “philosophical theologians” or practitioners of “rational theology,” does not fear to traffic in sacred scriptures, sacred doctrines, liturgical forms, etc. That would be like a philosopher of science who feared trafficking in physics or biology. At the same time, radical theology, to the scandal of the confessional theologians, does not respect the suprahuman and exclusive authority the confession claims for its “revelation.” As a result, again like Jesus, the foxes have their holes, the birds their nest, but radical theology has nowhere to lay its head (Matt. 8:20). If confessional theology has its place, radical theology is structurally out of place, displaced. For radical theology, these texts, traditions, and practices are not gifts delivered from on high. Instead, they make up a characteristic form of life (Wittgenstein), a mode of being-in-the-world (Heidegger), or a particular historical experience of the world (hermeneutics). Such forms of life take place in multiple ways, constituting multiple forms of experience, a multiplicity that is quickly bruised and ultimately foreclosed by speaking too easily in Christian Latin of “religion.” A revelation is a poetics, and radical theology is the hermeneutics of such poetics, a radical hermeneutic of its underlying experiences, whose predecessor is not Kant’s abstract, rationalist, and reductionistic approach to religion, but Hegel’s embrace of the concrete and historical.

Radical Theology as a Heretical Hegelianism Radical theology belongs to the tradition launched by Hegel, not by Kant. Kant practiced a kind of philosophical regionalism, undertaking the “critical” task of marking off separate domains of inquiry and of enforcing a rigorous control of the borders it draws, the touchstone of which is found in his guiding axiom that he has found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith. The upshot of Kant’s approach in philosophical theology is to take a defensive approach to religion and theology: one defends the rights of faith by holding the claims of knowledge at bay, thereby constructing a region of faith that is forever safe from being encroached upon by science. For the Kantians, giving up metaphysics in general, materialist or idealist, is a small price to pay to keep the powders

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of faith dry, safe from the rising waters of materialist metaphysics. They are willing to settle for a draw in matters of metaphysics in order to free up the space of faith. Kantianism ultimately serves the interests of that branch of confessional theology known as “apologetics.” The Kantians keep building bigger and stronger levees as the tides of science rise. They provide a set of arguments that show that no matter how fierce the winds of materialism blow above on the sea of appearances, faith is safely quartered away down below, nestled deep down in the dark among the noumena.7 Radical theologians, on the other hand, are a hardier Hegelian lot who enjoy riding the surf of science and historical pluralism. They do not seek to sequester appearances from reality, or to locate supernatural revelation safely beyond the reach of the missiles of natural reason. The radical in radical theology is moving in exactly the opposite direction of an “apologetics.” Far from mounting an apologetic defense of confessional theology that keeps it safe, they seek to expose the danger, the groundlessness, the restlessness by which confessional theology is disturbed. That means that radical theologians differ from Hegel in a crucial and defining way. Hegel’s hermeneutic has been well described by Catherine Malabou (2005, 167) as a “speculative hermeneutic.” That is, Hegel held that everything in religion (not just its “rational” content) is of interest to philosophy and requires an interpretation—that is his breakthrough—an interpretation that can only be supplied by what he called “speculative thought”—that is the problem. Ultimate matters submit to an ultimate thinking that determines what they ultimately mean. So Hegel proposed to expose the speculative or metaphysical meaning of God and religion as a “Vorstellung,” meaning an imaginative presentation by us (the “subject” side) of the Absolute’s sensuous self-presentation to us (the “substance” side) of the life of the Absolute. “God” and “religion” are the sensuous, pictorial, and narratival form taken by the absolute Spirit on its journey to absolute self-knowledge. We radical theologians, however, living in a post-metaphysical world, have no head for such heady Hegelian heights. We lack the logos, are bereft of the Begriff, and fear flying too close to the sun of the absolute and final account with which Hegel purports to lay things out (auslegen) in his speculative hermeneutics. We agree with Hegel that religion is a “Vorstellung,” not of some metaphysical absolute, however, but of what unfolds in and under the name of God, of what we call the event, a word we have adopted here in order to do the least injury to our subject matter. Radical theology, then, is a theology of the event, a hermeneutics of the event, where hermeneutics is not “speculative” but “radical.”

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By the radicality of this hermeneutic I do not mean an interpretation that keeps things safe, or that finds the ground on which we stand, or attains the unshakeable foundation of phenomena, which is the classical sense of “radical.” I mean the opposite, one that expounds our radical exposure to groundlessness, our irreducible vulnerability to risk and uncertainty and to a certain unknowing, a certain uncertainty. Radical theology is not foundational theology; it does not propose the ground but exposes the groundlessness that goes all the way down. Radical hermeneutics means that interpretation goes all the way down and that there are neither uninterpreted facts of the matter nor a speculative penetration of phenomena that expounds their essential law. By hermeneutics, I mean a search for an interpretation that proceeds from the willingness to put our own presuppositions at risk, as Gadamer says. By radical hermeneutics, I mean that the exposure is without limit, the risk is unrelenting, and so the homelessness is irreparable. Classical Hegelianism, as Kierkegaard complained, is too knowing, too Gnostic, too much a know-it-all, and too much in league with the classical Christian theology of omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. Classical theologians were scandalized by Hegel and could not decide whether Hegel was a pantheist or an atheist; they failed to appreciate how much he was on their side. So by radical, I mean a radical cut, a confession more circum-fessional than confessional, of which no one knows the “Secret.” No one is somehow or other hardwired to the speculative essence of Being or God, of History or Spirit, all in the uppercase. Radical hermeneutics is conducted exclusively in the lowercase. The interpretation is not a spin or an angle put on a prior and somehow uninterpreted truth. When radical hermeneutics finds itself in a theological context, the result is a radical theology, which means that its attention is taken up with the groundlessness that unfolds in and under the name of God, with the abyss that inhabits and disturbs the name of God, exposed to a groundlessness that I have contracted to what I, like Derrida, call the “event.” That is why I insist that, as a hermeneutic of a certain (or uncertain!) groundlessness, such a hermeneutic can take the form only of a poetics. A “poetics” is a constellation of metaphors and metonyms, of parables and prose, of miraculous stories and historical memories, of myths and mysteries, of parables, paradoxes, and paradigms, in short, a discursive form that makes use of every resource possible in order to give words and deeds to an event, to give the insistence of this event existence in the world, allowing it to become a mundane word and deed. So, by a “poetics” I do not

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mean the artistic adornment of a pre-constituted idea, a literary illustration of a pre-given logos, a literary or artistic flourish added to an autonomous philosophical concept. I mean the very attempt to form, to forge, to constitute (poiesis) the event, to give it words and sensuous form, to constitute the mundane existence of the event. A poetics is always a work in progress, a repetition forward that is continually producing the actuality it tries to repeat, which is never fully constituted but is always in the making. A poetics gives the event a name, while the event, being essentially open-ended and to-come, graciously declines the nomination. A poetics consequently cannot be kept confined in a disciplinary cell. It requires making use of all the departments of the university, the “humanities,” the “social sciences” and, today more than ever, the natural sciences, where the most wondrous and miraculous things of all seem to be taking place. It is not enough simply to demythologize the old cosmology but to engage the new and every changing cosmologies emerging almost daily. Its transdisciplinary character requires all the resources of the humanities—the literary capacity to interpret narratives, the historical resources required to understand the origin, genesis, and mutation of the founding stories and the institutions. It furthermore requires knowledge of contemporary particle physics and astrophysics, which have forever transformed the pre-Copernican imaginary in which traditional religious and doctrines were born and nurtured, and of contemporary life sciences, evolutionary, genetic, which have utterly transformed the humanistic presuppositions of traditional theology. I think we are still absorbing the point made by Bultmann in the middle of the twentieth century, that the religious imagination of classical theology remains under the spell of a pre-Copernican worldview, where the mythic split between heaven above, Hades below, and the Earth in the middle merged with a Hellenistic metaphysics of the transcendent, unchanging, eternal, and supersensible being (above) and the immanent, changing, temporal world of becoming (below). That split was forever discredited by Hegel, which is Hegel’s greatest achievement, and the beginning of radical theology, which means that the future of the philosophy of religion is tied up with the future of its philosophy of science (the lack thereof ). Finally, this poetics cannot be confined to academic quarters. It insinuates itself into pastors and their preaching (Snider 2012) and, beyond the religions and the groves of Arcadia, it wends its way into the interstices of the world, into the quotidian and micrological structures of everyday life and popular culture, which is another story and one I cannot take up here.

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Deconstructing the Distinction between Radical and Confessional Theology Before proceeding to a conclusion, I must make a confession, a circumfession, one that is central to my argument. The distinction upon which everything thus far has depended—between confessional theology and radical theology—does not quite hold up. That does not grieve me; it is as it should be. Just as I warned, the “radical” in radical thinking does not provide a ground but an exposure to groundlessness. Like any distinction worthy of the name, this distinction deserves deconstruction. If a distinction is worth making at all, it is also worthy of being deconstructed. Otherwise it is a form of exclusionary terror. I have two things in mind in saying this. First, the claim that radical theology is universal and cosmopolitan is a modernist fiction. Radical theology does not drop from the sky; it is not an exercise in the so-called absolute autonomy of thought, which is as much a myth as is pre-Copernican theological supernaturalism. To begin with, radical theology is a characteristically Western and philosophical undertaking, a work of Greco-European conceptualization in the tradition of Western philosophy, from which it cannot be separated. Outside the Western philosophical tradition, such an undertaking might have little resonance. Furthermore, without ignoring or underestimating the presence of radical theology in preaching, it tends mostly to be found in the work of academics. When that happens, it must submit (camouflage) itself to all the protocols of academia—the objectifying discourse, the rites of academic passage, the normalizing standards to be met for acquiring and maintaining an academic position, the disciplinary mechanisms of refereeing publications in the various academic journals and university presses. It is a creature of “Western philosophy” and a product of Western academic disciplinary protocols. Second, each side of the distinction bleeds into the other side, which is why I said above that radical theology takes place in confessional theology, which also means that a fair amount of confessional theology still clings to radical theology. As we should not entertain any illusions about the purity of radical theology, we must also be careful not to caricaturize confessional theology, not to reduce it to the reactionary religious right, or fail to realize that the most courageous and radical work is undertaken there. On the one side, radical theologians are by and large ex-patriots of the various confessional theologies, often even recovering fundamentalists. They are usually people trained in a confessional theology from which they distanced themselves, with the result that everything they say about radical

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theology is the issue of the radicalization of the confessional theology that is always in the back of their heads, the way someone who learns a foreign language retains their accent. Sometimes even this confessional point of departure is first and foremost on their minds. No one illustrates this better than Hegel himself, who went so far as to say that religion is Christianity, that Christianity is the absolute religion, and that every other religion is a predecessor form that only imperfectly approaches or foreshadows absolute religion, a dialectical step along the way to the emergence of consummate and perfect revealed religion. Consequently, Hegel, the grandfather of the radical theologians, is also the greatest of the Christian philosophers, not because he was more pious than the philosopher-saints of the middle ages, but because his philosophy is an undisguised, unapologetic, and overt conceptualization of the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation. The freedom of radical theology is always already compromised because it cannot be what it wants to be without pretending to some ahistorical transcendental status, claiming for itself something that contradicts the very meaning of “radical” as radically exposed to contingency, chance, and uncertainty. On the other side, a fair amount, perhaps most, of what I am calling radical theology already takes place in the confessional theologies, the best indication of which is the frequent trouble in which confessional pastors and theologians find themselves with their bishops or the administrative hierarchy of confessional institutions, which leads some of them to simply give up and abandon their confessions. When theologians working in confessional institutions exercise the freedom to think, the right to “ask any question” that I attribute to “radical theology,” they do so at great personal peril. In the past, if they incurred the wrath of the Inquisition, that could have cost them their lives. Today, it can cost them their livelihoods. Confessional theology is of an inherently unstable nature: the commission to think through its confessional commitments requires that it be an exercise in thinking, and thinking cannot be what it is without reserving the right to ask any question, up to and including questioning its confessional presuppositions. Under the sheer force or pressure of thinking, confessional theologians frequently break through to radical theology. Or, to put the same point from another point of view, once the work of thinking is undertaken, the underlying “events” that nourish radical theology will inevitably burn through and show up in the work of confessional theologians, exposing the contingent, constructed, and deconstructible makeup of the confessional community, whereupon the confessional theologians attract the disapproving attention of the powers that be.

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The fact that this distinction breaks down, that there is all this mutual interaction and contamination, is what interests me above all. After all, the confessional theologies are for the most part the only theologies that exist, upon which the insistence of radical theology is largely parasitical. They are the only theologies that have an institutional home (like the foxes and the birds of Matt. 8:20), while radical theology is largely homeless, like the son of man. Except for occasional exercises like the present conference, radical theology does not exist. Radical theology is not a competing religion, not a rival in a battle for confessional membership, does not engage in fundraising. Still, it would be a sorry thing if the only place we find radical theology is in panels at the American Academy of Religion dedicated to the topic, where the participants read papers at one another written in a jargon that challenges the divine omniscience itself and keeps it safe from comprehension by other mortals down here on Earth.

The Future of the Philosophy of Religion But if radical theology does not exist, what then? All that remains to it is to insist—to persist as a hidden but insistent inwardness concealed by an outward existence whose demeanor betrays nothing of its incommensurability with the world. Radical theology insists—both as a spectral disturbance hovering in the space between the mercantile business of the university and the madness of its concealed faith, and as a not-so-holy ghost between the confessional theologies and a theological thinking to come. In radical theology, to be is to promise to be, to be as a maybe, a perhaps, to hover as an odd kind of quasi-messianic promise/threat. That brings us back to the future, to the to-come, which has been the guiding question all along. Radical theology is concealed from the world; it can never be robustly present and realized in existing institutional bodies; it smacks of madness and dark spirits. That is because it deals not with what is but with what is always coming, and it is constantly stealing away to its chambers where, with prayers and tears, it softly sighs come, viens, oui, oui, for something coming, which is the messianic secret it keeps to itself. It is not of this world because it is irreducibly “futural,” structurally turned to the world to-come. That does not refer to the difference between the temporal world and another eternal world behind the changing scenes of this one, as in the old Augustinian metaphysical dualism, but to another time, the hidden time, the hidden future of this world, a wholly other coming of the only

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world we know, a renewal of the world, a new worlding of the world, a hope in the promise of the world. All of this is to say that it is concerned with events, with what is going on in what is present, with the promises that are being made by what is present. The future of the philosophy of religion depends upon providing a place for radical theology, offering it asylum from its persecutors, giving it a cover, which means that the philosophy of religion will be, will have been, the place we do our thinking about the future, where we pray and weep over an unforeseeable messianic disturbance we cannot quite make out. Radical theology whispers in the ear of the confessional theologies, proffering asides from off-stage like a theological souffleur, tempting confessional theology with the forbidden fruit of radical thinking, like the dwarf on Zarathustra’s back, whispering, “you know it but, you will not say it.” It tempts them to look down at the abyss over which they are suspended, reminds them of the contingency of their appearance in time, of the constructedness of their ancient narratives, of the violence of their origin. It haunts them with the spooky thought that had we been born in another time and place we would sing songs to other gods and in other languages, call for comings of an entirely different sort. It tempts them like Satan tempting Jesus, taunting them with the thought that what theology calls “grace” is, more austerely considered, the gratuitousness of an accident of birth. We are born without having been consulted, in a situation not of our own making, and the songs we sing salute our contingent circumstances, behind or beneath or within which lies something, we know not what, which we signify here as the event. Just so, radical theology proves no less unnerving to the philosophers, who faithfully believe that they do not depend upon grace but credit themselves with an autonomy of thought that rises above contingency altogether, which is the future of an illusion if ever there were one. This lingering philosophical myth undergoes the most rigorous and unrelenting demythologization by being reminded of the historicality and constructedness of what it calls “philosophy” and “religion.” What then is the future of the “philosophy of religion”? Its future, I am arguing, depends on providing radical theology with a cover, offering it safe passage, serving as an incognito for what would look like messianic madness to the university and its protocols. In just the way that Johannes de Silentio said that humor must be the incognito of the religious—a joke about the inevitability of death and taxes, for example, is deadly serious— the philosophy of religion is asked to be the incognito of radical theology.

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It must give this mad quasi-messianic faith a professional demeanor, make it look respectable, even a little boring and humdrum, like a tax collector, like nothing more than a philosopher of religion. Of itself, if it has a “self,” radical theology has no place to lay its head. No decisive “death of God” allows it to rest in peace, nor can it settle easily amidst the comforts of the institutional life-world of the religions or the university. Its incommensurability with the world consigns it forever to wander the world as a spirit. Its only refuge then is subterfuge. Underneath the propriety that the philosophy of religion maintains as a respectable player in the world, a scholarly chap of even temperament, there lies concealed something wild, lost, restless, uncertain, reeling under the blow of the to-come, trembling with the event of things unseen and unheard of, which sends it into the world as a sheep among the wolves of worldly institutions. The philosopher of religion is saying one thing, but something else is going on behind the scenes, a messianic secret that the philosopher keeps from the world. All the standard essays in the anthologies—collecting all the arguments about God and the soul, miracles and immortality, freedom and the problem of evil—are allegories of something else, a cover for something quite other, tout autre, for what is going in the philosophy of religion, which makes it interesting and a matter (Sache) of radical concern. Radical theology makes discreet, passing appearances in the philosophy of religion, like a strange fellow whom no one knows who keeps showing up in old photographs. The work that is done in the philosophy of religion looks for all the world like the business as usual of philosophy, but it is of another provenance and has another mission. It arises in response to a wild and strange call, which calls for what is to come, even as it itself arises as a call, calling come, viens, oui, oui. The philosophy of religion harbors, conceals, nurtures, and keeps safe the event of the call, a call that whispers a reminder of the may-being of being. This weak and uncertain voice of “maybe” wends its winding way into everything that we would otherwise have liked to describe in stable philosophical categories like substance, essence, and presence, as matters of knowledge, science, and truth. The philosophy of religion contains the event of radical theology in the mode of being unable to contain it. Seen from the point of view of the disciplinary structure of the university, radical theology is a hybrid and a misfit, an incommensurable. Its defiance of confessional authority has an unmistakably philosophical character, but its defiance of philosophy’s prohibition on matters of “revelation” reflects its unmistakably theological character. It even defies the disciplinary

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boundaries that would separate it from literature, history, and the social sciences and today more than ever before from the natural sciences. Radical theology belongs everywhere and nowhere, lacking a proper home, even a proper name. It keeps several passports in its drawer depending on the country to which it seeks to gain illegal entry. It occupies the halls of philosophy and theology and secular religion departments, infiltrating them with an insistent, insidious unease about the constraints of their concepts, the insufficiency of their categories, and the limits of every project of objectification. It whispers in the ears of these disciplines that “religion” is a construction, as are “God” and “the gods,” and that underlying these constructions lie the nonobjectifiable events that lay claim to us, that defy philosophical definition, scholarly objectification, and institutional codification, events that hold the promise of what is being promised in words of elemental evocativeness, which nothing guarantees will not be monsters. The “objects” of which we have undertaken a scholarly study, and such study is indispensable, are more deeply considered inescapable issues (Sachen) of life and death, of suffering and joy, of passion and compassion, which together make up the promise and the threat of the human condition, which cannot be more important and cannot be understood otherwise. The university today, which is threatened by a massive reconfiguration under the combined impact of global capitalism and revolutionary information technologies, also holds out the promise that the present disciplinary distribution of academic bodies can be deconstructed. Deconstructed does not mean destroyed but disseminated and disturbed in such a way as to allow the formation of new objects and modes of inquiry. It means finding ways to invent the event, or to allow the incoming of the event, instead of preventing the event. Religion today, which is threatened by the ongoing polarization between fundamentalism and secularism, also holds out the promise that the practice of preaching and the constitution of doctrine and institution would allow the invention (in-coming) of the event, instead of preventing it. A religion to come and a university to come do not signify a future home—the “to come” does not mean a future-present—but the very structure of the call and a structural openness to the event. Philosophers of religion are asked to maintain the cool-headed calm of a stockbroker of the finite, negotiating deals within the institutions that house them. But inwardly they are as mad as the knight of faith who lives in virtue of the absurd; secretly they are tossed about by an infinite passion, ready for anxiety, exposed to the groundlessness that gives life its intensity and the future its promise. What they know, but will not say, is that it may

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very well be, perhaps, that their very subject matter is the “perhaps” itself, the promise/threat of the future, the “might be” that even works its way into God “al-mighty,” the “maybe” in being, the force of the to-come that presses in upon everything that poses as present, as already here. Adopting the outward demeanor of the university, being inside/outside philosophy and religion, they think unthinkable thoughts, affirm the possibility of the impossible, dream of things completely unheard of, still to come, while looking for all the world like a philosopher of religion.8 NOTES

1. Kierkegaard ([1843] 1983, 38–39). For “hidden inwardness” and humor as the incognito of the religious, see Kierkegaard ([1846] 1992, 499–501). 2. I recommend the chapter in this volume by Wesley J. Wildman, which makes a splendid case that there is a perfectly proper role for the philosophy of religion that the university should respect and the college curriculum committee should welcome. 3. The event in Derrida is what is unprogrammable, meaning that it is not a particular instance of a general rule or law or program. It therefore has two principal features: (1) it is what is uniquely or idiomatically itself, like an untranslatable poem, which he calls its “singularity”; (2) in its singularity, it is unpredictable, unforeseeable, taking our horizon of anticipation by surprise, which he calls its structural “messianicity,” which is the feature I am stressing here. He gives his best explanation of the latter in Specters of Marx (Derrida 1994, 65). When I say the event is not what happens but what is going on in what happens, that is the Deleuzian side of the event that I also employ (see Deleuze 1969, 149). 4. See Derrida (1998, 1–78), for his austere faith and its contrast with belief. 5. I will draw throughout upon the motif of “specter” and “hauntology” found in Derrida (1994, 10 and passim). 6. See the chapter in this volume by Tyler Roberts. 7. I made my case against the Kantians, who were criticizing my use of the idea of religion without religion, in Caputo (2012, 271–353). 8. For further development of this thesis, see Caputo (2016, 2013). BIBLIOGRAPHY

Caputo, John D. 2012. “On Not Settling for an Abridged Edition of Postmodernism: Radical Hermeneutics as Radical Theology.” In Reexamining Deconstruction and Determinate Religion: Toward a Religion with Religion, edited by J. Aaron Simmons and Stephen Minister, 271–353. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.

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———. 2013. The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2016. The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional. Salem, OR: Polebridge Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1991. Given Time, I: Counterfeit Money. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1993a. “On a Newly Arisen Apocalyptic Tone in Philosophy.” In Raising the Tone of Philosophy, edited by Peter Fenves, 117–71. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 1993b. “Circumfession: Fifty-Nine Periods and Periphrases.” In Jacques Derrida, by Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge. ———. 1995. The Gift of Death. Translated by David Wills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1997. Politics of Friendship. Translated by George Collins. London & New York: Verso. ———. 1998. “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of Faith and Knowledge at the Limits of ‘Reason’ Alone.” Translated by Samuel Weber. In Religion, edited by Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo, 1–78. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2002. Without Alibi. Edited and translated by Peggy Kamuf. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ———. 2007. Psyche: Inventions of the Other. Vol. 1. Translated by Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Deleuze, Gilles. 1969. The Logic of Sense. Edited by Constantin V. Boundas. Translated by Mark Lester and Charles Stivale. New York: Columbia University Press. Hegel, G.W.F. (1827) 1988. Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. One Volume Edition: The Lectures of 1827. Edited by Peter Hodgson. Berkeley: University of California Press. Heidegger, Martin. 1959. An Introduction to Metaphysics. Translated by Ralph Mannheim. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ———. 1985. History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena. Translated by Theodore Kisiel Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kierkegaard, Søren. (1843) 1983. Kierkegaard’s Writings. Vol. VI, Fear and Trembling and Repetition. Translated and edited by Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ———. (1846) 1992. Kierkegaard’s Writings. Vol. XII.1, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to “Philosophical Fragments.” Translated and edited by Howard and Edna Hong. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Malabou, Catherine. 2005. The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic. Translated by Lisabeth During. New York: Routledge. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1998. “Religion, Religions, the Religious.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor, 269–284. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Snider, Phil. 2012. Preaching after God: Derrida, Caputo, and the Language of Postmodern Homiletics. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, Wipf and Stock.

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What Can Non-Philosophy Do for Philosophy of Religion? Non-Science and Non-Religion in the Work of François Laruelle

Clayton Crockett

Continental philosophy takes its lead from the philosophy that is practiced on the European Continent, primarily France and Germany. Traditionally, continental philosophy of religion applies continental philosophy to religious phenomena in a North American context, although there persists a tension between continental philosophy as such and philosophy of religion, which is a more Anglo-American analytic category. Continental philosophy of religion emerges along with attention to the religious themes and relevance of so-called postmodern philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, and Gilles Deleuze, and can be associated with writers in English such as John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney, and Merold Westphal. As the generation of “68ers” leave the stage and are replaced with other philosophers—for example, Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Catherine Malabou—new questions and themes arise, including a renewed emphasis on various forms of science and mathematics. This chapter is concerned with assessing the philosophy of François Laruelle from the perspective of a continental philosophy of religion, and suggesting some potential relevance for religious studies more generally. Many of Laruelle’s works have just now been translated into English over the last few years, starting with Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy (2010) and including his important book Principles of Non-Philosophy (2013). In 237

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Deleuze’s last book, What Is Philosophy?, published in French in 1991, coauthored with Félix Guattari, Deleuze writes in a footnote that “François Laruelle is engaged in one of the most interesting undertakings of contemporary philosophy. He invokes a ‘One-All’ that he qualifies as ‘nonphilosophical’ and, oddly, as ‘scientific,’ on which the ‘philosophical decision’ takes root. This One-All seems to be close to Spinoza” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 220). Deleuze appreciates the effort to construct a non-philosophy along Spinozist lines, but he hesitates before Laruelle’s evident scientism, commenting that “we do not see why this real of science is not nonscience as well” (234). The question of science, and of scientism, applies more broadly to the difference between the more traditional postmodern philosophies and many of the newer ones. Here we should note the explicit presence of mathematical set theory in Badiou, a kind of mathematical logic in Meillassoux, brain sciences in Malabou, and the significance of cognitive science and psychoanalysis for Žižek. These scientific or objectivist discourses somewhat counter the apparent subjectivism of stereotypical postmodern philosophy, and this is a crucial component of the Speculative Realism that has emerged in the United Kingdom and United States, associated with Graham Harman, Ray Brassier, Levi Bryant, and others. Laruelle’s philosophy coincides with this turn to science, or a renewed emphasis on science in contemporary continental philosophy, although it is easy to forget how deeply engaged with the sciences philosophers such as Derrida, Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, Michel Serres, and others were, not to mention the significance of Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalysis. Part of this forgetting is due to the translation of poststructuralist French philosophy into a North American context, and it is appropriate to keep in mind the occasion of Lyotard’s book The Postmodern Condition ([1979] 1989), which was a report on the condition of knowledge to the government of Quebec. The term “postmodernism” has largely been a more (North) American appropriation of French poststructuralist philosophy. In Laruelle’s philosophy, however, we see a kind of outbidding of postmodernism, where alterity and difference, being and difference, cannot capture the Real, which is understood in broadly Lacanian terms. Laruelle radicalizes Heidegger, Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze, arguing that one must break with philosophy itself in order to do justice to the Real. The work of “non-philosophy” is not simply a phenomenological attention to immediate experience, but an attempt to formalize it in a way other than the way that philosophy generally goes about constituting and conceptualizing

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experience. Two conclusions follow from this effort: first, the only way for Laruelle to ground or express what he is doing as non-philosophy is in terms of science; and second, this discourse cannot help appearing naïve from the standpoint of sophisticated continental philosophy. Take for instance Laruelle’s debate with Derrida in 1988, where Derrida suggests: Then you went on to oppose to this description [of the sufficiency of philosophy] this new science, which you distinguished from its political, social, etc., appropriations, and there, obviously, I had the impression that you were reintroducing philosophemes—the transcendental being only one of them—into this description, this conception of the new science, the One, the real, etc. There, all of a sudden, I said to myself: he’s trying to pull the trick of the transcendental on us again, the trick of auto-foundation, autolegitimation, at the very moment when he claims to be making a radical break. (Derrida and Laruelle 2010, 77) And Laruelle replies by acknowledging that from a philosophical standpoint what he is doing appears crude and contradictory, but that he allows himself “the right, the legitimate right, to use philosophical vocabulary non-philosophically.” Laruelle claims that although Derrida uses philosophy against itself, against its own pretensions to absolute knowledge, he still does so in the name of something like philosophical logic itself. And Laruelle appeals to science, which “makes a non-positional, non-thetic use of language” to think outside of and beyond philosophy itself (89). For Laruelle, science understood in generic terms has the capacity to think the Real, whereas philosophy always distorts it by appropriating and representing the real as being or as difference or as the other of language. Here Laruelle is somewhat influenced by Louis Althusser, who attempted to develop a scientific Marxism that would correct distorting ideologies, even though Laruelle calls his positive conception of Marxism a non-Marxism. In Introduction au non-marxisme (2000), Laruelle focuses on the notion of “determination-in-the-last-instance” as a way to read Marx in an immanent and non-philosophical way (see pp. 10–13). The determination-in-the-lastinstance for Marx is the genuine material cause or determination of a situation as opposed to the ideological condition that is usually taken for a cause. As Katerina Kolozova explains, “The immanent way of re-reading Marxism or its non-Marxist re-appropriation consists in the search for the cause-inthe-last-instance of Marxism by way of using its transcendental material in

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accordance with the pre-established goal of isolating the radical concepts.”1 The cause-in-the-last-instance is correlated with the determination-in-thelast-instance, which accounts for both the importance of Marxist thought as well as its failure in revolutionary political terms. For Laruelle, the force of Marx’s thought as determination-in-the-last-instance is the idea of the workforce or labor force, although Kolozova (2007, 18) suggests that a better term might be the “poor.” I will return to this question of the political implications of Laruelle’s work at the end of the chapter. But first, what does Laruelle’s appeal to science do for philosophy, including philosophy of religion? His major theoretical move is to shift the trajectory of thought from an attempt to get to the Real, which is strictly speaking unthinkable, to an effort to think from the Real. Philosophy, according to Laruelle, attempts to think the Real, and posits the sufficiency of philosophy to be able to think the Real, whatever stratagems or contortions it is forced to undergo. Laruelle isolates and rejects what he calls the Principle of Sufficient Philosophy. I think that Laruelle’s rejection of the sufficiency of philosophy as a discipline, which is critical in subtle and significant ways of philosophers like Derrida and Deleuze (both of whom Laruelle admires), is also a powerful tool for contesting the sufficiency of contemporary analytic philosophy, including its neopragmatic forms. In a move that is counterintuitive to those readers immersed in poststructuralist philosophies of difference, Laruelle equates the Real with the One as opposed to Difference. He proposes “to think the One ‘itself,’ independently of being and the other, as that which is non-commensurable with them and non-determinable by thought and language” (Laruelle 2012a, 25). In his study from the mid-1980s, Philosophies of Difference, Laruelle analyzes and critiques Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Deleuze as representative philosophers of difference. He argues that difference is capable of thinking itself by means of a transcendental operation, but it thereby loses the ability to think the One. He says: Difference, in thinking itself, thinks everything that it is possible to think of Being as soon as one no longer wishes to think it ontotheologically. On the other hand it thinks next to nothing of the One and is content merely to make it “function.” (Laruelle 2010c, 174; italics in original) This claim appears naïve and incoherent so long as the One is the object of thought. But Laruelle’s reversal is to make the One the starting point, or the

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subject of non-philosophy. We think from the One, not to it, and this means that we start with a “vision-in-One,” which is “the transformation of the One as object of philosophy into vision-in-One and into a phenomenality capable of determining knowledge” (Laruelle 2012a, 27). A vision-in-One is not a totalizing vision but the starting point for non-philosophical thinking. Another major concept for Laruelle is unilateral duality, which means that we think dually, in dual terms or distinctions, but this is a one-directional process that resists symmetry and return. The One cuts thought in two, in a one-way direction. We can only think from the One or the visionin-One, but not back to it. It’s a one-directional or unilateral operation. Laruelle says that non-philosophy works in the following manner: everything is processed through a duality (of problems) that does not constitute a two or a pair, and through an identity (of problems, and hence of solution) that does not constitute a unity or synthesis. This way is known as that of the “unilateral duality” which is just as much an “identity.” (Laruelle 2012a, 27) Laruelle’s terms are highly technical and appear somewhat idiosyncratic, so we need to get a handle on what they mean in the context of his thought, if we want to understand it. As a mathematical example, consider a Dedekind cut, named after the mathematician Richard Dedekind. A Dedekind cut partitions rational numbers into two nonempty sets, A (which contains every number smaller than the cut) and B (which contains every number greater than the cut). The cut itself may be a rational or an irrational number, depending on where it intersects the continuum of rational numbers. The representation of the cut is a vertical line that is perpendicular to the horizontal line of numbers. The horizontal line of rational numbers can be compared to the ordinary thinking of philosophy, in continuous, logical, and sufficient terms. The Dedekind cut is a scientific operation that unilateralizes a duality, the two sets A and B, and it is non-philosophical in relation to a philosophy that proceeds only on the ground from one number to another along the plane of rational numbers. There is a similarity between Laruelle’s non-philosophy and Alain Badiou’s ontology, despite Laruelle’s recent critique of Badiou in Anti-Badiou (2013). Instead of endorsing the non-absolutism of grounds for postmodern theoretical discourse, both resort to science to provide a privileged standpoint from which to philosophize. For Badiou ([1988] 2005), mathematical set theory offers an ontological knowledge that grounds his monumental

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project Being and Event, whereas Laruelle resorts to science more generally, and more recently to quantum physics. Both appeal to scientific operations as a way of axiomatizing knowledge, but they do so for different reasons. According to Laruelle, Badiou treats set theory mathematics as material for philosophy. Laruelle claims that “the principles of OV [Ontology of the Void] are predominantly philosophical, but are effectuated with regard to and in science (set theory).”2 Science is here placed in the service of philosophy, a sufficient philosophy that presupposes a principle of sufficient mathematics with which to think. Non-philosophy, on the contrary, places philosophical materials under the aegis of a generic science, which takes the form of algebra and quantum physics. Laruelle develops a non-philosophical method that he associates with science, and this gives him leverage to think otherwise than philosophically. Non-philosophy is not anti-philosophy, and Laruelle makes use of philosophical texts and authors as materials for non-philosophical thinking. These materials, however, are torn away from or dissolved out of the philosophical structure in which they appear. This is a quasi-scientific operation that renders philosophical concepts inoperable in terms of their systems, but frees them for other uses and theoretical practices. More recently, in his book Philosophie Non-Standard (2010b), not yet translated into English, Laruelle has made explicit use of concepts from quantum physics to explicate non-philosophy. He argues for a more quantum-theoretical conception of the Real, and suggests that the waveparticle complementarity of quantum physics offers a better model for theoretical thinking than atomic entities. Laruelle says that non-philosophy does not intervene directly in quantum physics, but rather takes the same relation to philosophy as quantum physics does to classical physics, which is less one of inclusion and more one of generalization along reconstituted lines.3 In an essay from 2010 entitled “From the First to the Second NonPhilosophy,” he claims that “two principles of non-philosophy have an affinity with the two main principles of quantum physics: radical immanence with what is called ‘superposition,’ and unilateral duality with what is called ‘non-commutativity’ ” (Laruelle 2012a, 306). Superposition means the super-imposition of waves on top of each other, which do not simply sum up in an additive way, but they compose a new wave form. In their overlapping, depending on their respective wavelengths these waves can either add to constructively double their crests or troughs, or subtract more destructively to zero out their amplitudes. They superpose upon one

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another, or form “superpositions”—structures that are different from classical “positions.” In quantum terms, superposition refers what is often termed wave/particle duality, the fact that subatomic particles like photons and electrons exhibit fundamental characteristics of waves and of particles. For example, light exhibits characteristics of a wave and a particle (composed of distinct packets, or quanta, of photons) at the same time. This phenomenon was demonstrated early in the twentieth century by the famous double-slit experiment in which photons were directed through either of two small slits, and they showed an interference pattern. Physicists are still grappling with the implications of this aspect of quantum mechanics, and recent experiments appear to confirm that photons are both waves and particles at the same time (see Barad 2007). Traditional philosophy deals with discrete, corpuscular objects and concepts, but it is deformed by the implications of wave superposition. Laruelle wants to superpose philosophical concepts together, which is a scientific operation, or what he calls “the unity of a fusion of science and philosophy under science” (2010b, 125; my translation). This fusion is the result of superposition, which constitutes a radical immanence, not absolute in the sense of being opposed to transcendence, but radical in the sense of being composed immanently by super-imposing concepts and seeing how they amplify or reduce each other. Nonstandard philosophy works with superposed terms, rather than simply discrete classical ideas. These are complex ideas as opposed to simple ideas, in the way that complex numbers include not only real numbers but also an imaginary component, which is the square root of –1, written as i. Laruelle says that an imaginary number can be thought of as a “quarter-turn” backward from a circle, which is an immanent subtraction from the binary doublet of immanence/transcendence (see Laruelle 2010b, 142). Laruelle (2012a, 307) explains that what occurs in the process of superposition is an “idempotent result (1 + 1 = 1), a result that is neither analytic nor synthetic.” In Philosophie Non-Standard, he uses the formula, A + A = A, which is an unconventional notation for idempotence, because mathematical idempotence is often expressed in terms of multiplication, or A x A = A. The general idea of idempotence is that any term expressed as a power of itself produces itself, so 1 raised to the first power, 1¹, is always 1. Laruelle (2010b, 302) claims that in idempotence, the function of addition of elementary linear vectors comes first, and precedes multiplication, which is second. One practical example of idempotence is an elevator button, where if you press a number, say 4, it doesn’t matter how many times you

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press the button, the signal always produces the same idempotent result, which is to move the elevator to the fourth floor. I don’t fully understand how Laruelle is applying idempotence to superposition, because the adding together of wave-forms either amplifies them, producing higher peaks and troughs, or they cancel each other out. This phenomenon is expressed by the equation A + A = A, referring to the generation of a new, singular wave, but the equation does not capture the alternative of amplification or interference/destruction. He does say that it is a single wave each time (1 + 1 = 1) that constitutes the superposition and that “superposition signifies that the waves add together or compensate by interference” (2010b, 303). Laruelle may also be thinking about the Schrödinger wave equation, which is a summation of all the possible states of a quantum system. Laruelle’s second important term, non-commutativity, is both a mathematical and physical term. In mathematics, commutativity refers to changing numbers around in an equation, like in addition or multiplication, that provide the same result. It doesn’t matter whether one adds 5 + 7 or 7 + 5, one always gets 12. For other operations, like subtraction and division, the sequence of the numbers to be manipulated changes the result, so these operations are non-commutative. In subatomic particle physics, non-commutativity is an expression of the famous Heisenberg “uncertainty principle,” where you cannot pinpoint a particle’s position and momentum at the same time. The more precisely you measure one aspect, the more uncertain you are about the other. Commutativity would mean that both the momentum and the position could be established with equal certainty, but physical commutativity does not apply in quantum physics. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle illustrates a basic indeterminacy at microscopic levels of reality. This indeterminacy is also an example of what Laruelle means by unilaterality, that non-commutativity leads to an intrinsic and asymmetrical uncertainty. These terms—superposition, idempotence, and non-commutativity— are extremely complex, in themselves and in Laruelle’s theoretical usage of them. Furthermore, Laruelle does not provide references in his works to other texts to show where he is getting his ideas, which makes them harder to track. The larger issue here, which applies to his earlier work on nonphilosophy and his newer, nonstandard philosophy, is that Laruelle is not simply conforming philosophy to science in a crudely reductionistic way. In his more recent work, he is developing a “generic matrix” that would constitute nonstandard philosophy. The generic is not the same as the univer-

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sal, which is a more conventional philosophical term. For Laruelle, generic always has a pragmatic quality to it, where philosophy is thought in relation to—or under—science, but both science and philosophy are understood to be in the service of humanity as such, which is a generic humanity. Finally, it is helpful to note that the word standard in the phrase “nonstandard philosophy” also refers to the standard model of particle physics that has recently been supported by the proposed discovery of the Higgs boson by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. I want to endorse the need to engage with and think deeply about science and scientific understanding in ways that are genuinely transformative rather than simply applicative or appropriative, and I think Laruelle’s work helps us read other philosophers, including Derrida and Deleuze, in non-philosophical terms. At the same time, Deleuze’s question remains relevant; that is, to what extent is Laruelle’s (2012a, 309) appeal to and use of science itself non-scientific, particularly when he claims that his “injection of quantum means into the former non-philosophy imbues it with the air of a physics, but paradoxically, one that is not mathematical or calculative”? What does non-philosophy mean for philosophy of religion, and how does Laruelle’s understanding of science relate to his understanding of religion? In Future Christ, Laruelle argues for “a heretical or non-Christian science distinct from historical Christianity and religion in general” (2010a, 3; emphasis in original). To free the notion of Christ from the religion of Christianity is to see how every human can function as in-human, or messianically as a future-Christ. Laruelle presupposes a Jewish and Christian religious context for philosophy, and for contemporary continental philosophy’s engagement with religious issues, but he attempts to open up this religious framework for recent philosophical thinking by introducing the concept of heresy. Heresy refers to the “being-victim” of the heretic as such, who could be any or every human being who does not conform to the predominant form of religion, or the “Principle of Sufficient Church” (see Laruelle 2010a, 27, 33). Laruelle is interested in historical Gnosticism, as well as extracting a contemporary form of knowledge or gnosis, that frees us from the constraints of philosophy and allows us to model an understanding of God for humanity. Heresy is a transcendental force that gives us the idea of a “non-Christian Messiah” beyond philosophy and religion (41). In Future Christ, the materials of Christianity, Gnosticism, and Judaism are mined for the construction of a non-religion of humanity based on a profound heresy, or the choice of and for human beings as such. We are given concepts

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and figures that are framed in certain narratives and ideologies, justified by certain authorities and hierarchies, and Laruelle wants to tear them out of their presumed chain of being and give them back to us as materials to model a non-religion of humanity. He claims that he substitutes for the givenness of these elements “the non-theological non-dialectical duality of the Christ-world and the Future Christ intended, by its construction, to destroy the sufficiency of the system of Christian theology” (118; emphasis in original). Of course, the materials still bear the traces of their Christian-GnosticJewish origins, and the question is whether it would be possible to construct a more generic form of non-religion, as Anthony Paul Smith suggests in a provocative essay on non-Islam. Smith (2014, 163) asks: “So in order to understand Christ as generic subject we must understand him as radically separate from Christianity. What better way to do so than by considering Christ from the perspective of a Gnostic-Islamic Christology?” (see also Smith 2013). An Islamic Christ is different from a Christian Christ, and Smith helps draw out a more generic or secular thinking of Christ in Laruelle. So there is this potential to develop non-philosophical readings of non-Christian and non-Western religions, as Smith demonstrates, both with and even possibly beyond Laruelle. At the same time, Laruelle is critical of the attempt by Gilles Grelet to develop a conception of non-religion that would abandon non-philosophy as being too closely linked to philosophy. Grelet radicalizes Laruelle’s idea of gnosis beyond and against philosophy, and Laruelle then condemns it as a new form of orientalism. The valorization of non-religion by Grelet culminates in “the concept of ‘oriental philosophy’ or religion which either excludes occidental philosophy or includes it as an incomplete moment” (Laruelle 2012b, 187; see also Grelet 2002). The problem is that this is both orientalizing and remains “a philosophical operation.” Laruelle (2012b, 188) claims that what is needed is “a unified theory of philosophy and religion,” that appears under the name of non-philosophy rather than non-religion. There remains a need for non-philosophy to stay related to philosophy, according to Laruelle, and there is a profound tension concerning this identity and this relation. On the one hand, to lose the relation to philosophy, which is still generally considered in its European, Westernized form, is to lose the ability and possibility of a comprehensive non-philosophy understood as a unified science or theory. On the other hand, to let go of philosophy and radicalize gnosis in fundamentally religious terms as nonreligion is still to maintain a subtle conception and privilege of philosophy to determine what religion is and means outside of the West in oriental-

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izing terms. Science becomes Laruelle’s way to organize a non-philosophical understanding of science and religion, and therefore the rejection of science as universal can be viewed as the real problem with Grelet’s non-religion. In broader terms, science can be seen as a kind of vanishing mediator in the operation of suturing philosophy to religion or a form of religion in the modern period. The rise of modern science in Europe stimulates a philosophical attempt to organize and categorize experience, including religious experience, in scientific terms. The problem is that scientific knowledge is interpreted in positivistic and scientistic ways, whether one supports or opposes modern science, again in religious terms. Science is viewed as a reductive attempt to explain complex phenomena in terms of the smallest building blocks. With Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, who writes in the wake of Newtonian physics, academic knowledge acquires a taxonomy that is revised but not jettisoned up to the present. Today we have a split between neo-Kantian positivism, which puts knowledge to work in powerful ways, and a quasi-Kantian ethics, which tends toward applied ethics in practical terms or a relatively impotent and self-absorbed theoretical reflection. The discipline of religious studies emerges in the North American academy in the 1960s as an attempt to liberate academic religious studies from the confines of the (Protestant) confessional church and church-related seminaries. There is an effort to make religious studies respectable by making it more scientific, usually in more social scientific terms but still incorporating a reductive naturalism. The problem is not only that it fails to do justice to religious experience—it also fails to incorporate an adequate or up-todate scientific method and worldview. The revolutions in twentieth-century physics remain under-theorized, and Laruelle helps us try to come to terms with quantum physics in his work. We need more and better engagement with the so-called hard sciences, and more awareness of how religion and philosophy cannot be segregated from studies in neuroplasticity, epigenetics, quantum gravity, molecular biology, and other areas of knowledge. The key is that quantum physics as understood by Laruelle is nonreductive. We need a nonreductive view of contemporary science, as well as a non-anti-reductionist opposition on the part of religious proponents. It is not a question of whether religion is right or wrong, but how we can understand it and make sense of it as a complex and human phenomenon. The reaction against naturalist reductionism is just as limiting as the reductionism it opposes. And as I see it, the prefix, non-, that Laruelle employs, means a loosening up of our categories regarding these disciplines. We need a superposition of the respective wave-forms of critical suspicion

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and recuperative appreciation of religion and religious phenomena, not an opposition or even a synthesis. We currently exist in a state of crisis not only in philosophical and religious terms, but also in economic, environmental, and hence scientific terms. Human civilization is reaching real limits to growth and faces an increasing scarcity of natural resources at multiple levels—of fresh water, cheap energy, arable land, rare-earth metals, and the ability of the atmosphere to absorb carbon and methane emissions without generating largescale climate change. This crisis is also a political crisis, because it concerns collective social action. Laruelle’s non-philosophy articulates a political subject who acts as generic human being. This subject is a rebel-subject or Stranger who struggles with and against the world for a new universal and utopian situation. As Katerina Kolozova (2014, 9) explains, “such a ‘universal,’ one that is not based on a particular civilizational model usurping the status of universality, is a non-reified purely categorical and minimally transcendental universal that does not cancel out its accountability for and to the particularities of different cultural, socio-economic and political contexts.” According to Kolozova’s profound interpretation of Laruelle in Cut of the Real, Laruelle’s vision-in-One of a stranger-Subject is compatible with a revitalized feminist subject as understood via the influence of Judith Butler and Drucilla Cornell. In Future Christ and some of Laruelle’s other previous books, this struggle for a new “universal” subject takes the form of rebellion (see 2010a, 4). In his more recent work, a genuine non-philosophical struggle is a kind of insurrection. For Laruelle, Christ is less a referent to a supernatural being within a Christian religious framework and more the name for a generic human being, the Human-as-Human freed from all religions and all philosophical characterizations, including humanism. The Human-as-Human is the Subject of non-philosophy, and Laruelle’s version of “science fiction” concerns the future of humanity as such, “which tears it away from its traditional foundational tasks in the World and consecrates it to utopia” (4). This Human-as-Human is named Future Christ and given a messianic status to-come, rather than the divine or Resurrected Christ who is the subject of Christianity. Laruelle claims that religions and philosophies make war, and this is true in a way, insofar as they are part and parcel of past and present human being. In contrast, Laruelle wants his vision of non-philosophy to bring or make peace by constructing a generic or universal science of humanity

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that overcomes differences. This peace is not an endorsement of the status quo but an overturning of it, so it is a radical political and also a (non-) religious vision. What is common to humanity as seen in the heretic is the ability to be oppressed, victimized, ostracized, and murdered. The victim is the present status of the Human-in-Human and the situation of Christ, Christ as victim rather than as redeemer. In Théorie générale des victims, Laruelle claims that the victim, like Christ, exposes what is purely and solely human about humanity, or the Human-in-Human. The Resurrection is not the revival of a corpse, but the coming to life of a human by means of an Insurrection. Humanity is insurrectionary, it revolts against its relegated ontological status, and this is a political and non-philosophical insurrection. Laruelle says that “resurrection is a specifically generic and human operation” that brings the victim to the condition of the “future-in-person” (2012d, 158; my translation). This operation is not a bestowal of immortality but occurs by means of an insurrection, which is the heart of resurrection. Insurrection results from the superposition of the two waves of life and death in such a way that it produces a resurrection of the victim as future person, or future “Christ.” Despite the Christocentric language, Laruelle is by no means endorsing or universalizing Christianity—but he is universalizing a form of humanity. One question is whether this vision of the human as future Christ can be dislodged from Christianity. Rather, if we can perceive the historical continuity, does that compromise or invalidate the use to which Laruelle puts it? As already mentioned, I think the difficult question here is the universal status of science rather than the status of religion, although scientific and religious questions cannot be completely disentangled from each other or from philosophy, even non-philosophy. In conclusion, I think that non-philosophy does something that conventional philosophy of religion does not and cannot do, although non-philosophy raises its own unique questions along with its liberating possibilities. Non-philosophy of religion makes use of philosophical ideas and concepts as material for reflection and construction rather than imports philosophical systems whole as a way to understand religious phenomena. Non-philosophy of religion maintains a closer link with science and scientific ideas and methodologies even as it works against the dangers of scientism. Non-philosophy of religion works to liberate the human-in-human, which Laruelle calls Christ, from the framework of a metaphysical explanation and a political subjugation.

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Laruelle is well worth the effort to read and work through, despite the forbidding vocabulary and the self-referential quality of his thought. As Marx challenges us in his Theses on Feuerbach, we want philosophy to change the world, not just interpret it. The problem is that, as Laruelle (2012c, 221) points out, “it is difficult to maintain that philosophy transforms the world. It is the world that attaches itself to regional representations as the very ‘dimension’ of the world.” By attending to the nature and structure of philosophy, non-philosophy seems caught up in this meta-discursive realm, where it can affect only philosophy, not the world. But, while nonphilosophy “cannot ‘transform’ (produce, engender, create, etc.) the objects of philosophy or the entities of the world,” it can transform “philosophy as a whole which is a self-presenting hybrid of identity and difference” (Laruelle 2012a, 38). And if philosophy is the world, then a transformation of philosophy itself constitutes a transformation of the world. It is not just changing philosophy, it is a trans-differential transformation of difference according to the One, the vision-in-One, and the Real. This is something that non-philosophy of religion can do, in an insurrectionary way. NOTES

1. Katerina Kolozova (2007, 7; see also 2015). 2. Laruelle (2013, 86). Laruelle also says that despite Badiou’s opposition to the One, he ends up valorizing the One in a different form as the empty set: “So what is the status of the empty set? Is this One not conserved as One, obviously no longer that of calculation but that of the set-form as such, in the empty set which is always, however empty, at least full of its form?” (171; emphasis in original). 3. “Reste que la non-philosophie ne prétend surtout pas intervenire directement dans la physique quantique, mais se tenir en revanche à la philosophie dans le même rapport que la physique quantique à la physique classique, rapport qui est moin d’englobant que d’une certaine généralisation” (Laruelle 2010b, 13). BIBLIOGRAPHY

Badiou, Alain. (1988) 2005. Being and Event. Translated by Oliver Feltham. New York: Continuum. Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the En­tanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Derrida, Jacques, and François Laruelle. 2010. “Controversy over the Possibility of a Science of Philosophy.” Translated by Ray Brassier and Robin Mackay. In The Non Philosophy Project: Essays by François Laruelle, edited by Gabriel Alkon and Boris Gunjevic, 74–92. New York: Telos Press.

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Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1994. What Is Philosophy? Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. New York: Columbia University Press. Grelet, Gilles. 2002. Déclarer la Gnose: D’une guerre qui revient à la culture. Paris: L’Harmattan. Kolozova, Katerina. 2007. “The Project of Non-Marxism: Arguing for ‘Monstrously’ Radical Concepts.” Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory and Practice, 1–20. http:// clogic.eserver.org/2007/Kolozova.pdf ———. 2014. Cut of the Real. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2015. Toward a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism: Marx and Laruelle. Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books. Laruelle, François. 2000. Introduction au non-marxisme. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ———. 2010a. Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy. Translated by Anthony Paul Smith. London: Continuum. ———. 2010b. Philosophie Non-Standard: Générique, Quantique, Philo-Fiction Paris: Éditions Kimé. ———. 2010c. Philosophies of Difference: A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy. Translated by Rocco Gangle. New York: Continuum. ———. 2012a. From Decision to Heresy: Experiments in Non-Standard Thought. Edited by Robin Mackay. Translated by Miguel Abreu, Taylor Adkins, Ray Brassier, Christopher Eby, Robin Mackay, Nicola Rubczak, and Anthony Paul Smith. Falmouth: Urbanomic. ———. 2012b. Struggle and Utopia at the End Times of Philosophy. Translated by Drew S. Burk and Anthony Paul Smith. Minneapolis: Univocal Press. ———. 2012c. The Non-Philosophy Project: Essays by François Laruelle. Edited by Gabriel Alkon and Boris Gunjevic. New York: Telos Press. ———. 2012d. Théorie générale des victims. Paris: Mille et une nuits. ———. 2013. Anti-Badiou: On the Introduction of Maoism in Philosophy. Translated by Robin Mackay. New York: Bloomsbury. Lyotard, Jean-François. (1979) 1989. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Vol. 10, Theory and History of Literature. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Foreword by Fredric Jameson. Oxford: Manchester University Press. Smith, Anthony Paul. 2013. A Non-Philosophical Theory of Nature: Ecologies of Thought. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2014. “Nature Deserves to Be Side by Side with the Angels: Nature and Messianism by Way of Non-Islam.” Angelaki 19(1): 151–169.

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Reforming Philosophy of Religion for the Modern Academy Wesley J. Wildman

Introduction Skepticism within university religion and philosophy departments, and in allied disciplines, regarding the value or possibility of inquiries in philosophy of religion currently runs rampant. This skepticism has produced a notable contraction in academic positions in philosophy of religion, particularly in research universities, over the past twenty years. This contraction reflects the need of religious studies departments and philosophy departments, for different but overlapping reasons, to distance themselves from anything that might be understood by the wider university or by themselves as ideologically biased or culturally parochial. Philosophy of religion has been so closely associated with Christian interests and perspectives that it was natural for these departments to fill vacated lines with specialists in other areas. This overall trend is understandable: religion departments found a natural home in the secular academic world by focusing on the historical and social sciences, subordinating and slowly eliminating philosophical and theological approaches. Yet the underlying skepticism is arguably hasty and reductive in that it treats certain activities within philosophy of religion—in relation to which such skepticism may be appropriate—as representative of all activity in the field, whereas in fact the operative approaches and methods

Some of the material in this essay derives from, or is related to arguments in, Wildman (2010).

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have important differences. In particular, philosophy of religion understood as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry has a natural and vital place in modern universities because its secular morality of inquiry comports well with the principles of open and unbiased inquiry that, to varying degrees, guide and inspire the modern university. It is time to reassess the place of philosophy of religion within the modern university, accordingly. This reassessment, I contend, requires a reformation within the field of philosophy of religion. In Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion (2010), I addressed skepticism toward traditional philosophy of religion by presenting a theory of inquiry that shows how it is feasible to interpret philosophy of religion, understood as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry, as capable of producing important insights and reliable knowledge. I showed how, even though the era of confidence in knock-down proofs and dismissals has passed for epistemic post-foundationalists, philosophy of religion understood as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry could still advance inquiries in important ways. In that book, I also explained the diverse styles of philosophy of religion, including the phenomenological, comparative, historical, analytical, literary, theoretical, and evaluative styles. I presented an array of distinctive cross-cultural traditions of philosophy of religion, including the ontotheological tradition (focusing on being), the cosmo-theological tradition (focusing on the universal features, general conditions, and intelligibility of reality), the physico-theological tradition (focusing on the detailed arrangement of the physical world), the psycho-theological tradition (focusing on human nature), the axio-theological tradition (focusing on value), and the mystico-theological tradition (focusing on experiences of cognitive breakdown). I pointed out the other tasks and traditions within philosophy of religion, properly understood, and noted that a stronger orientation to religious studies should yield new traditions oriented less to theological concerns about ultimate realities (as above) and more to mundane dimensions of human religiosity (e.g., food, ritual, sociality). All of this indicates the variety of inquiries possible within philosophy of religion, understood as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry. I drew contrasts with other conceptions and practices of philosophical work in relation to religion, so as to make clear what philosophy of religion as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry is not, as well as what it is. Further, I argued that the more controversial theoretical and evaluative styles of philosophy of religion yield inquiries consistent with the values of

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the modern university. This is because these styles of inquiry, when pursued in the multidisciplinary comparative way that is definitive for the reformed philosophy of religion that I defend, have six important virtues: (1a) they do not conform to the authority structures of religious communities; (1b) they do not operate within the ambit of assumptions about putatively supernaturally authorized revelatory information that pervade confessional forms of theology; (1c) they do not serve the institutional or intellectual interests of any particular religious groups; yet (2a) they function in full awareness of these and other features of religious traditions; (2b) they incorporate every kind of naturally derived human knowledge as it bears on religious subject matters; and (2c) they strive for consistency with the less theoretically aggressive styles of philosophy of religion (especially the phenomenological, comparative, historical, and analytic styles). In this chapter—a chapter free of critical apparatus and endnotes—I briefly consider skepticism about the value of philosophy of religion, particularly in relation to the question of its place within modern universities. This involves recapitulating some of the rebuttals to skepticism I dealt with in detail in my 2010 book. It involves taking account of the wider intellectual scene in a way that university administrators have to do and disciplinary specialists often do not. It involves asking about the place of philosophy of religion in the educational, research, and public missions of the diverse kinds of modern universities. Finally, I identify specific steps that would reform philosophy of religion and bring us closer to reclaiming its rightful place—properly chastened—in the modern university.

Rebutting Criticisms of Philosophy of Religion I am aware of no direct criticisms of philosophy of religion in the precise sense of “multidisciplinary comparative inquiry,” which is the way it is articulated here and in my book. It will be interesting to see if the idea of comparative multidisciplinary inquiry operating in the ambit of a secular morality of inquiry, once clearly articulated as a way of framing research in philosophy of religion that includes theoretical and evaluative tasks, provokes more specific criticisms. But there’s no questioning the veritable horde of criticisms of philosophy of religion in other senses, and also of fields allied with and overlapping the various tasks of philosophy of religion. One compelling practical reason to define philosophy of religion as “multidisciplinary comparative inquiry” is specifically to draw a contrast

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between the kinds of inquiry this phrase entails and the kinds of inquiry that appear to induce justified anxiety in some scholars and university administrators. Reforming philosophy of religion in the direction of “multidisciplinary comparative inquiry” enables us to acknowledge what is sound in those criticisms while clearly distinguishing philosophy of religion from intellectual activities that may well merit such criticisms. One criticism of philosophy of religion is that it threatens religious piety. These religious criticisms might well be correct in what they assert, though they appear to construe piety in a rather narrow and fragile way. But concerns about the psychological and social impact of inquiry are not central to the native procedures of philosophy of religion, when conceived as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry. They are, however, secondary issues for assessing the morality of inquiry and for deciding which kinds of inquiry to pursue. Thus, such concerns properly figure in the calculations of educational institutions as they consider whether supporting philosophy of religion is consistent with their institutional missions. As I shall point out below, such calculations produce significantly different results depending on the heritage and interests of the educational institution in question. Another criticism of philosophy of religion arises from postcolonial awareness and poststructuralist critique, and poses a special problem for the few philosophers of religion who pay serious attention to religious studies. For these philosophers, crypto‐theological approaches within philosophy of religion can no longer pretend to ignore their cultural‐religious specificity. Comparative approaches can no longer pretend that key terms and categories are free from the influence of contextual conditioning and questionable translation decisions. Speculative approaches can no longer pretend that the natural and human sciences have nothing relevant to say about religious life‐worlds and philosophical cosmologies. The result of this multifaceted challenge has been abandonment of the rollicking high‐seas adventures of philosophy of religion and the confinement of research effort to the relatively safe harbors of historical and analytical approaches. But even historical and analytical approaches can no longer pretend they are immune from the infection of critical self‐awareness. The way forward for philosophy of religion in this situation is to exchange the paralysis that comes with critical self‐awareness for the productivity of seeking correction of hypotheses wherever possible. If philosophers of religion already always operate in the postcolonial aftermath of potentially poisonous cultural blindness and lazy interpretative habits, then we should surrender the delusion of epistemic foundationalism with its heartwarming

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but false moral reassurances and launch into inquiries without apology for the determinate and flawed character of their leading hypotheses. Thereafter, we should ceaselessly strive to correct those hypotheses with as much energy and as many comparative and disciplinary engagements as possible. This is the post‐foundationalist, correctional shift in theories of inquiry, and implies conceiving philosophy of religion not as a discipline but as a family of loosely related multidisciplinary comparative inquiries exploiting whatever modes, techniques, and resources prove relevant for advancing inquiry. A fleet of related criticisms of philosophy of religion float around institutions of higher education but are rarely voiced with much precision. Scholars and administrators within colleges and universities can be deeply biased for or against activities that they name with a phrase such as “philosophy of religion” or “philosophical theology.” They expect others to understand what they mean by these terms, even if they do not possess a clear idea of what they themselves mean by them. Merely uttering such a phrase can efficiently trigger profoundly consensual reactions, whether negative or positive. Yet the articulated reasons for these reactions can sometimes prove to be paper-thin rationalizations for biases that warrant closer scrutiny. This has become evident to me during a number of memorable conversations about the possibility and prospects of philosophy of religion, under whatever name works in context to suggest the tasks involved. Those conversations go something like this. I say, “I have been listening carefully to you. You seem suspicious of philosophy of religion. Why?” They say something like, “Because it is anti-intellectual nonsense and covert ideology.” I say, “Please be specific. What is wrong with this particular instance of philosophy of religion?” and furnish an example. They say, “Well, I guess nothing is wrong with that example.” I say, “Then why do you say that philosophy of religion is anti-intellectual nonsense and covert ideology?” This is where things get interesting. They say, “But the way you do it in that example is not representative of the nonsensical way it is usually done.” Or they say, “I don’t immediately know what is wrong with that example of philosophy of religion, but I know it is impossible because of Kant” (or Comte, or Ayer, or Heidegger). Or they say, “If religious studies and philosophy are to have any credibility in the secular university, we have to distance ourselves from anything that has been historically tainted with theological interests, which includes philosophy of religion, because such activities tolerate unlimited speculation in place of evidence, and they suggest greater commitment to religious special interests than to impartial inquiry.” Or they say, “We have to mount a political attack on philosophy

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of religion to overcome the lamentable pattern of bias in favor of institutional religious interests. What happens to legitimate forms of philosophy of religion is acceptable collateral damage.” (That last response at least frankly acknowledges the possibility that an injustice is occurring.) The root causes of the widespread bias against the tasks of philosophy of religion are hinted at in these conversations: (1) The academy is devoted to goals, including following honest inquiry wherever it may lead, that sometimes conflict with the institutional interests of organized religion. (2) The morality of rational inquiry in a secular academic context means refusing to honor claims of supernaturally derived information or supernatural authorization of particular religious beliefs. (3) The perpetual disagreements in metaphysics and religious thought, together with the secular academy’s interest in efficient economics of inquiry, jointly suggest that academic research will be better off focusing its efforts on tractable parts of reality, even if that means a brutal departure from tradition in the form of cutting off support for anything that smacks of metaphysics or theology. And, finally, (4) the prospects of religious studies achieving credibility in the academic world crucially turn on being able to demonstrate that it is not infected by the special interests of religious institutions. Each of these four causes of suspicion taints intellectual activities even vaguely associated with religion, and philosophical work in relation to religion is affected. Sometimes suspicion is warranted, and indeed I have articulated some of these same criticisms in my book. For example, certain ways of doing theology are so geared into to the special interests of religious institutions, so vulnerable to special pleading, and so immune to correction from other disciplinary insights that they really do not conform to the morality of inquiry that pervades the academic world. While these kinds of activities may be legitimate forms of inquiry in their proper institutional contexts— private seminaries, perhaps—and they may enjoy special advantages of efficiency and productiveness in such places, I believe they have no claim on a native place within the secular academy because the associated moralities of inquiry are deeply at odds. Importantly, however, not all religiously related intellectual activity is vulnerable to charges of excess abstraction, disciplinary parochialism, and ideological bias. In particular, philosophy of religion as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry can rise above the difficulties that provoke such criticisms of some other forms of religiously related intellectual work, including other forms of philosophy of religion. Moreover, the advent of comparative philosophy and the emergence of novel multidisciplinary approaches jointly

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open new possibilities for a reformed philosophy of religion, so long as it operates as a form of multidisciplinary comparative inquiry. Neither the morality-of-inquiry nor the futility-of-effort arguments have much to commend them in relation to philosophy of religion understood in this sense. This is not to defend as fully realizable the ideal of untainted knowledge, free of inefficiency and ideology, in philosophy of religion or in any other intellectual activity; such an ideal would be grossly idealistic. But it is to defend the value of striving for impartiality and efficiency of inquiry in philosophy of religion by seeking correction in every possible form and by making inquiries vulnerable to every corrective resource that has the power to advance them.

A Positive Case in Support of a “Reformed” Philosophy of Religion The constructive part of my case argues that philosophy of religion properly belongs within modern universities because of its intrinsic value, its native characteristics, and its morality of inquiry. This positive half of the case has two sides. One side refers to the native purpose of philosophy of religion, understood as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry. Existentially potent questions about the meaning of life and the wellsprings of value arise constantly within intellectual work. The preeminent task of philosophy of religion is to pursue such questions as far as possible, not necessarily in service to the identity interests of any particular religious community, but drawing on insights from numerous wisdom traditions and all relevant academic disciplines, and penetrating into the very ground of nature and experience in search of the most compelling answers. I have already mentioned the decline over the last decade or so in philosophy of religion positions in North American secular university philosophy and religion departments. Evidently, leaders of the relevant departments and university administrators are not convinced of the value of philosophical work on religious themes. But a steep price is paid for this neglect. One way or another, the sorts of problems taken up in philosophy of religion constantly arise in universities, both at the borders of research in other disciplines and in classrooms and passionate hallway discussions. These issues keep coming up because they are existentially vital, historically important, and intrinsically interesting. It is no wonder that they pervade the

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great philosophical and literary traditions of Western, South Asian, and East Asian civilizations. The standard university demands for excellence require that such issues be addressed as knowledgably and intelligently as possible. Even if answers to some of the questions of philosophy of religion remain elusive, the modern university must supply experts to pursue them, as it would in any other area of fundamental inquiry. The worrying question for university administrators should be whether these questions will be discussed in amateurish or expert fashion. Philosophers of religion—at least those who view their work as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry—are the experts, and any college or university that cares about standards needs them. The other side of the constructive case concerns the efficiency of such inquiries. University administrators are rightly concerned to support research and education that both makes a difference and is cost-effective. Now, research in philosophy of religion is relatively cheap in the way that all humanities research is cheap, though anything involving libraries, offices, and students is not cheap in the normal sense of that word. So the question of effectiveness comes down to the tractability of such inquiries. How far can philosophy of religion as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry go? Signs suggest that philosophy of religion is entering a new era of sophistication and progress. Existing multidisciplinary and comparative efforts in philosophy make contemporary inquiries in philosophy of religion markedly different from traditional forms of philosophy of religion in both appearance and substance, even while remaining continuous with them. (My book Religious Philosophy ventures a lengthy appraisal of the health status of philosophy of religion.) So, the question of the prospects for reformed philosophy of religion is wide open in an extremely promising way. And that should be exactly what university administrators curious about supporting philosophy of religion need to know.

Philosophy of Religion and the Diversity of Higher Education How does this argument about the place of philosophy of religion in modern universities relate to the diversity of higher educational institutions? Obviously, each college or university needs to sort out what the place of philosophy of religion is relative to its own distinctive mission. The kinds of considerations that prove relevant will be quite different depending in particular on whether the institution in question claims a secular or a religious mission.

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In the secular context, after the arguments refuting criticisms and affirming the value of philosophy of religion as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry have been processed, the question remains of where to locate research and teaching in philosophy of religion. Sadly, this discussion might turn out to be more like throwing a live grenade from hand to hand than jostling for the bridal bouquet. I argued in Religious Philosophy that philosophy of religion is both a form of philosophy and form of religious studies, and that it has a natural home in both departmental locations. It can also fit within divinity schools that promote academic identity alongside denominational religious identity. In all cases, however, a comfortable home only exists where the possibility and legitimacy of philosophy of religion as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry is acknowledged. Such acknowledgment is not always easy or natural because of the internal disciplinary hostilities that I have discussed. At some point, however, university administrators must demand an accounting of this hostility and then subject departmental explanations of opposition to philosophy of religion to thorough public scrutiny in light of a wider and less jaundiced intellectual viewpoint. At this point, the paucity of objections to philosophy of religion as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry will become evident, no matter how strong these objections may be when leveled against other intellectual ventures, such as parochial forms of traditional philosophy of religion or confessional theology. It must be admitted openly that the idea of a “secular” social location for academic work is somewhat ill defined. The secular academy has an indeterminate heritage and lacks a completely consistent and coherent self-interpretation. In fact, such perplexity surrounds its basic principles that scholars are beginning to speak of the “post-secular academy” and the “return of religion.” These complications notwithstanding, my references to the morality of inquiry in the “secular academy” are relatively straightforward: inquiry is unbridled by religious or other ideological institutional interests, it does not indulge special pleading or favoritism, it is fully responsive to the insights of whatever disciplines have a claim in the subject matter, and it earnestly and assiduously seeks out sources of correction wherever they may be found. In this sense of “secular academy,” philosophy of religion as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry properly belongs there. The situation is quite different in universities with strong religious identities. After all, philosophy of religion that has a natural home in the secular academy does not accept starting assumptions for its intellectual work that are familiar and often demanded within many institutionally religious

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contexts—assumptions such as revealed sacred scriptures or authoritative sources of religious teachings. Moreover, the results of inquiry in philosophy of religion may conflict with some of the vested interests of academic institutions with explicitly religious missions. Given this, representatives of religious educational institutions might choose to turn their backs on philosophy of religion, opting instead to engage the relevant issues on terms better suited to their internal confessional institutional interests. Any significant degree of engagement with philosophy of religion requires academic institutions with religious missions to balance their customary concerns for maintaining corporate religious identity with the uncomfortable challenge of remaining open to learn about themselves from less familiar disciplinary perspectives. For instance, the gap between what Buddhist thinkers say about the nature of the san.gha (Buddhist community) and what sociologists of religion say about it can be quite striking. For Buddhist faithful operating an institution of higher education, paying attention to external perspectives of other religions and a variety of academic disciplines in some cases may be neither natural nor comfortable. This exemplifies the challenge that experts in philosophy of religion pose to academic institutions with essentially religious missions. In actual fact, many universities and colleges with explicitly religious missions are typically not only open toward but also eager for the kind of farreaching inquiries pursued within the framework of philosophy of religion of multidisciplinary comparative inquiry. Indeed, it is this very impulse that gave birth to most of the private universities in the Western world: regardless of their contemporary missions, almost all have origins in religious intellectual leaders who sought the best and most impartial knowledge about every subject, including disciplines that impinge on their own religious beliefs. Do secular and religious academic institutions have different obligations in relation to the support of philosophy of religion? For example, must a public university in the United States refuse to host philosophy of religion due to separation of church and state policies? Or can a private university with an explicitly religious mission refuse to host philosophy of religion because it is likely to challenge its prevailing religious outlook and thus perhaps disrupt the religious faith of students whose fee-paying parents are relying on the college specifically to nurture that faith? A private academic institution such as a Jewish or Christian or Muslim or Buddhist university has the right to make its own decision on whether to support research and teaching into topics that are important to it. More

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than that, the leadership of such religious educational institutions must also decide which approaches to the study of religion they can live with. For example, will they permit intellectual endeavors that conform to the traditions and expectations of the secular research university? When push comes to shove, will their scholars have academic freedom to follow inquiry wherever it leads? Will the religious institution protect its own welfare with requirements to sign statements of faith and with punishments for scholars who stray from the narrow ideological path laid out for them? To the extent that such institutions select policies that enshrine the secular morality of inquiry, philosophy of religion has a natural home. If the policies venture in a more parochial direction, it will be impossible for inquiries in philosophy of religion to be pursued openly in such locations. Public academic institutions with secular missions do not have the same ideological basis for excluding philosophy of religion, and I can see no basis for exclusion apart from considerations of economic survival, should severe economic hardship exist. In particular, church-state separation is not a relevant concern in relation to philosophy of religion, even though it may be for other educational issues, such as whether to include a religious seminary as a professional school within a public university. I presume professional religious leadership training in state universities would remain rare in the United States for the foreseeable future. It is interesting to note, however, that affiliations between public universities and denominationally specific religious education have recently become more common in other Western nations, where universities are seeking every ounce of government financial support they can get—support that depends on the number of registered students in classrooms regardless of subject matter. As is so often the case in life, economic considerations trump ideological consistency. Private universities with secular missions sometimes choose to offer support to religious institutions for their own reasons. Many do this when they host divinity schools or seminaries, Christian theology or Bible departments. Often this honors their heritage as a religiously affiliated university, despite their explicitly secular mission in the current era. Such hosting decisions may also honor the tradition of research universities supporting professional training, particularly in the fields of medicine, law, and divinity. Sometimes university support is more or less unconditional, and offered on whatever terms an affiliated religious institution wants to set, perhaps because the religious institution in question pays the university for educating its seminary students. At other times, the college or university institution supporting the interests of a particular religious group will insist on the

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same academic standards and morality of inquiry that apply throughout the university. In all cases, the resulting religious-academic institutional relationships can potentially be valuable for both institutions, but they can also produce misunderstanding among university faculty, with little sympathy for the leadership’s conception of the university’s wider mission. This in turn can make life difficult for philosophy of religion, which is often tainted by association with religious institutions, despite the fact that it can produce results that those religious institutions find difficult to digest. In general, I would argue that a religious institution such as a living religious denomination is not entitled to unconditional support for its religious interests from secular academic institutions. Again, universities may offer such support for compelling reasons, such as maintaining the intellectual integrity of the leaders of religious institutions, which are vital strands within the social fabric that a university might see itself as committed to protecting and strengthening. By contrast, philosophy of religion as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry is entitled to support from secular academic institutions. In fact, philosophy of religion in this sense is a form of inquiry whose only natural home and principal nurturing tradition is the secular academy. Religious institutions and thinkers may learn from philosophy of religion and participate in it but, conceived as a field of multidisciplinary comparative inquiries, it remains essentially a secular academic intellectual project. This concreteness of social location and heritage is limiting in some respects, of course, as I have noted, particularly in the discussion of theological critiques of philosophy of religion (Wildman 2010); philosophy of religion simply can’t take on all of the inquiries that confessional theology can. But this secular social location is enabling in other respects, including by freeing philosophy of religion from the burdensome constraint of supporting the institutional demands and vested interests of religious traditions.

Reforming Philosophy of Religion With this interpretation of the situation facing philosophy of religion in place, what concrete steps might help to reform philosophy of religion so that it comfortably holds its natural place in the modern academy? What must philosophers of religion agree on to stabilize a field identity? On what issues can they safely disagree without harming the standing of the field in the modern academy?

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Steps toward Reforming Philosophy of Religion STEP 1: ACKNOWLEDGE THE PROBLEMS

There is shrinkage of jobs in philosophy of religion, especially in research universities, because the field strikes decision makers in philosophy and religion departments as (1) lacking in objectivity, (2) not about religion, and (3) ravaged by internal conflicts. Much of this perception is not due to misunderstanding. STEP 2: TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

Take back the name “philosophy of religion” for philosophical reflection on religious ideas and practices in all their complexity and variability. Withhold the name from covert or explicit apologists for one particular tradition (e.g., Christianity, theism, etc.). Such intellectual work may be legitimate when appropriately institutionally framed, but those pursuing it should call it Christian philosophy or theistic philosophy, or just theology—not philosophy of religion. STEP 3: GIVE UP THE DISCIPLINARY IDEAL

Philosophy of religion is not a discipline. It is a field of multidisciplinary comparative inquiries using numerous styles and contributing to several traditions. Philosophy of religion is less like sociology or history, where methods and subject matter are delimited with tolerable vagueness, and more like religious studies, where both methods and scope of subject matter are all over the map. Holding the ideal that philosophy of religion is a discipline is an error of judgment that artificially constrains the field. STEP 4: ENCLOSE INTERNAL DEBATES WITHIN A PUBLICLY INTELLIGIBLE FRAME

The more philosophers of religion openly battle one another over legitimacy of methods, scope of subject matter, and the very possibility of their field, the more they seem unready for a place in contemporary research-focused universities and colleges. Such debates are important, but they need to be enclosed within a structure that enables philosophers of religion to present to university administrators and colleagues in philosophy and religious studies departments a unified front.

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STEP 5: ADOPT “PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH INTO RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES”

This phrase uses words that university and college administrators already use (philosophy, religion, research, belief, practice). It doesn’t rule out anything philosophers of religion care about and is vague enough to enclose internal debates about method and scope. Simple approaches communicate best. STEP 6: REWRITE THE TEXTBOOKS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

This framing helps define the “Philosophy of Religion 101” class—and the intro class is the main way administrators comprehend any university field. Each of the major topics in religion—from religious beliefs such as samsara, gods, enlightenment, salvation, etc. to religious practices such as ritual, meditation, social activism, food, etc.—is amenable to philosophical reflection in the various styles of work that philosophy of religion employs. Such texts can produce a new generation of religiously articulate philosophers. STEP 7: CONDUCT INTERNAL DEBATES QUIETLY, MINDFUL OF THE CHALLENGES

Every field has internal debates that are necessary for critical self-awareness. But we are not alone; the way those debates are conducted influences the way the field is interpreted by those who overhear.

Consensus Required To be able to function within the enclosing frame of “philosophical research related to religion,” philosophers of religion must settle some questions by consensus. The questions that require consensus resolution relate to the social viability of philosophy of religion as an academic field and as a partner in contemporary university and college education. Question 1: Does philosophy of religion promote any religion, belief, or practice? The answer must be no, or else philosophy of religion is dead in researchoriented institutions of higher education. An argument that samsara is real and driven by a universal karmic law of moral cause and effect is appropriate, but it should not lead to promotion of samsaric-karmic religions, beliefs, or practices.

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Question 2: Can arguments in philosophy of religion consider only one worldview? Again, if we want to keep philosophy of religion alive and vital in research-oriented universities and colleges, the answer must be no. An argument for the existence of a disembodied personal divine agent is appropriate, but only if it compares the soundness of that argument with the soundness of arguments that lead to contrary conclusions. Anything short of this sort of comparative care rightly creates the impression of bias. Question 3: Does philosophy of religion address first-order religious questions? Here the answer must be yes, lest we put the rationale for including philosophy of religion as a component of education in religion or philosophy in grave danger. Limiting philosophy of religion to neutral analysis of arguments or neutral description of religious phenomena rejects the main commonsense rationale for including philosophy of religion in institutions dedicated to research and inquiry. Question 4: Does philosophy of religion play a vital function in religious studies? Here again the answer has to be yes, on pain of making philosophy of religion irrelevant to the academic departments that do most of the hiring in the field. And what is that vital function? Students naturally ask questions about religious concerns, and philosophers of religion are most qualified to answer them. Other professors, no matter how expert in their fields, tend to be mere amateurs on such questions.

Consensus Not Required On questions such as the following, battles can rage, as they do in many disciplines. The key is for the disputes to be conducted within the consensus enclosure described above. That is sufficient to convey to outsiders, such as university administrators, the sense of a well-organized field that is capable of rigorous, productive research. Question 1: Is there a preferred theory of inquiry governing philosophy of religion? In Religious Philosophy, I present a unitary pragmatic theory, rooted in species-wide biological commonalities and evolutionarily stabilized cognitive and social endowments. But the point there was to present one p ­ articular

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theory of inquiry, so as to establish the possibility of a reformed philosophy of religion conceived as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry, not to announce a necessary condition for that kind of reformation. Indeed, there are alternative theories of inquiry, and debating these theories is an important aspect of critical self-awareness within a reformed philosophy of religion. Question 2: Which methods are most important within philosophy of religion? Above, I identified seven methods or styles particularly important for demonstrating the diversity of activities that actually occur within philosophy of religion construed as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry. But philosophers of religion need not agree on which methods are most important. The efficacy of methods can and should be debated, and might ultimately remain a matter of personal preference. Question 3: Does philosophy of religion inevitably include a theological impulse? This pointed question deserves to be as controversial as it is. A lot turns on the meaning that people attach to “theological impulse” and “inevitably,” but a debate should occur in which those meanings are parsed and their significance assessed. A reformed philosophy of religion might be able to embrace a certain understanding of theology—one that is also compatible with the secular academy and operates independently of any particular religious tradition or institution. But that usage of “theology” is unfamiliar to most people who use the word. So the debate must continue.1 Question 4: Should philosophy of religion aim or avoid aiming to be existentially relevant? This question is in dispute within philosophy generally, and remains a sharp point of contention within philosophy of religion. Debating this classic issue need not damage the ability of a reformed philosophy of religion to sustain a conceptually coherent and institutionally viable field identity. Question 5: Can philosophy of religion legitimately lead to a political philosophy? Here again we have a topic that is hotly disputed within philosophy of all kinds, not just moral philosophy, and including philosophy of religion. So

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long as this dispute is conducted civilly and within the boundaries of the consensus described above, the debate is good for keeping razor-sharp the field’s self-critical awareness.

Conclusion I conclude with a pointed observation. Philosophy of religion understood as multidisciplinary comparative inquiry is a rigorous and vigorous area of research, nurtured in secular academic institutions, with which its morality of inquiry comports well. But philosophy of religion also has a complex heritage and sustains affiliations with disciplines such as religious studies that have fought for a viable academic identity partly by distancing themselves from intellectual activities that espouse a morality of inquiry at odds with that of the secular university. The leaders of disciplines represented within philosophy, religious studies, and theology departments may therefore remain wary of philosophy of religion, despite the lack of any real cause for concern. In these cases, such leaders should lift their eyes beyond the parochial identity politics of their own disciplines and consider the place of philosophy of religion amid the wider intellectual currents and social challenges of our troubled world. And when disciplinary leaders have difficulty doing this, university academic leadership should demand to know why, and if necessary do it for them. Philosophy of religion lies precisely as close to the beating heart of every secular university’s native mission as the existentially potent subject matter of philosophy of religion is vital for human life. NOTE

1. See the chapters in this volume by Tyler Roberts and John D. Caputo for theological forms of reflection crafted to be compatible with the secular academy and to operate independently of any particular religious tradition or institution. —Ed. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wildman, Wesley J. 2010. Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Notes on Contributors

Pamela Sue Anderson was Professor of Modern European Philosophy of Religion, University of Oxford Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy, Regent’s Park College. She died prematurely of cancer in 2017 at the age of sixty-one during the production of this volume. She authored numerous publications, including Ricoeur and Kant: Philosophy of the Will (1993), A Feminist Philosophy of Religion (1998), Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love and Our Epistemic Locatedness (2012), and a forthcoming monograph “In Dialogue: with Michèle Le Doeuff.” She has published articles in various journals, including The International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, Sophia, and Feminist Theory. Maurice Boutin is John W. McConnell Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Religion, McGill University, since June of 2010. He received a State PhD from the University of Munich, Germany, with a dissertation published in 1974 in the series “Beiträge zur evangelischen Theologie” with the title Relationalität als Verstehensprinzip bei Rudolf Bultmann (Munich: Chr. Kaiser— “Relationality as Understanding Principle in Rudolf Bultmann’s Thought”). From 1981 to 1987, he was President of the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion. Proceedings of a symposium held in 2010 at McGill University on his thought and work have been published as Polyphonic Thinking and the Divine (2013). John D. Caputo, Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus (Syracuse University) and Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus (Villanova University), writes and lectures in the area of postmodern theory and theology for both academic and general audiences. His latest books are Hoping against Hope: Confessions of a Postmodern Pilgrim (2015); The Folly of God: A Theology of the Unconditional (2015); The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps (2013); and Truth: Philosophy in Transit (2013). 271

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Clayton Crockett is Professor and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Central Arkansas. His recent books include Deleuze Beyond Badiou (2013), a collaborative book called An Insurrectionist Manifesto: Four New Gospels for a Radical Politics (2016), and Derrida After the End of Writing: Religion, Politics, Materialism (2017). Morny Joy is Professor in the Department of Classics and Religion at the University of Calgary, Canada. She researches and has published in the areas of philosophy and religion, postcolonialism, and intercultural studies in South and South-East Asia, as well as in diverse aspects of women and religion. Professor Joy has served from 2005 to 2015 on the Executive Committee of the International Association for the Study of Religion. In 2011, she received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Helsinki. Her recent publications include: Continental Philosophy and Philosophy of Religion (2011) and After Appropriation: Explorations in Intercultural Philosophy and Religion (2012). Jim Kanaris is CAS Assistant Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the School of Religious Studies, McGill University, where he teaches courses on theories of religion, continental philosophy of religion, and what he describes as philosophy of religious studies. Besides this volume, he has edited Polyphonic Thinking and the Divine (2013) and co-edited In Deference to the Other: Lonergan and Contemporary Continental Thought (2004). He is author of Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophy of Religion: From Philosophy of God to Philosophy of Religious Studies (2002). He is currently working on a monograph entitled “Personalizing Philosophy of Religion: An Enecstatic Treatment” (forthcoming). Timothy Knepper is Professor of Philosophy at Drake University, where he chairs the Department of Philosophy and Religion and directs The Comparison Project, a public program in comparative philosophy of religion. He teaches and publishes in the philosophy of religion, comparative religion, late ancient Neoplatonism, and mystical discourse. He is the author of books on the future of the philosophy of religion (The Ends of Philosophy of Religion, 2013) and the sixth-century Christian mystic known as PseudoDionysius the Areopagite (Negating Negation, 2014). He is currently working on an edited collection on “Comparative Grammars of Ineffability,” a textbook on “Global Philosophy of Religion,” and a photo-illustrated book on the “Religions of Des Moines.”

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Jin Y. Park is Professor of Asian and Comparative Philosophy and Founding Director of Asian Studies Program at American University in Washington, DC. Professor Park is also Founding Co-director of International Society for Buddhist Philosophy and currently serves as President (2016–2017) of North American Korean Philosophy Association and Vice-President (2016–2017) of Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy. She specializes in Buddhist philosophy, East–West comparative philosophy, Buddhist ethics, philosophy of religion, and modern East Asian philosophy. Her book-length publications include Women and Buddhist Philosophy (forthcoming); Reflections of a Zen Buddhist Nun (2014); Makers of Modern Korean Buddhism (2010); Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayan, and Possibility of Buddhist Postmodern Ethics (2008); and Buddhisms and Deconstructions (2006). Carl A. Raschke is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver. His most recent books include Critical Theology: An Agenda for an Age of Global Crisis (2016), Force of God: Political Theology and the Crisis of Liberal Democracy (2015), and Postmodernism and the Revolution in Religious Theory (2012). He is senior editor of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (http://www.jcrt.org/) and associate editor for Political Theology Today (http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog). Tyler Roberts is Professor of Religious Studies at Grinnell College, where he teaches courses on modern Western religious thought, religion and politics, and theory and method in Religious Studies. His publications include Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion (1998) and Encountering Religion: Responsibility and Criticism after Secularism (2013). He also has published articles on topics ranging from religion in the work of Jacques Derrida to modes of critique in Christian theology. N.N. Trakakis is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University. He has authored The God Beyond Belief: In Defence of William Rowe’s Evidential Argument from Evil (2007) and The End of Philosophy of Religion (2008). He has also co-edited, with Graham Oppy, the five-volume History of Western Philosophy of Religion (2009) and the two-volume History of Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (2014). He also writes, edits, and translates poetry; his publications in this area include the edited volume Southern Sun, Aegean Light: Poetry of Second-Generation Greek-Australians (2011), the translation of The Blind Man with the Lamp by Tasos Leivaditis (2014), and several collections of his own poetry, including Appearance and Reality (2015) and After Life (2016).

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Notes on Contributors

Wesley J. Wildman is Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics, at Boston University School of Theology. He is also Research Scientist, Veteran Affairs Health Care, Boston (www.wesleywildman.com); Convener of the PhD Program in Religion & Science, Boston University Graduate School (www.bu.edu/gdrs/); Founding Director of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion (www.ibcsr.org); and Founding Co-Editor of the journal Religion, Brain & Behavior (www.tandfonline.com/RRBB). His publications include Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion (2010) and Religious and Spiritual Experiences (2011).

Index

absolute, 87, 89, 90, 93, 134, 136, 140, 142, 144, 225 action, 10–11, 26, 40, 43, 48, 88, 121, 140, 145, 200 Advaita Vedanta, 82, 84–85, 87, 89, 91n8, 94–95, 126n26 Aeschylus, 161 afterlife, xii, 4, 14, 57, 83, 122n11 Agamben, Giorgio, 237 agency, 26–27, 175, 207n4 disruptive, xvii, 74, 182, 185 agnosticism, 219 Almond, Ian, 163, 165–166 Almond, Philip C., 17 alterity, 106, 163, 167–168, 186n4, 238 Althusser, Louis, 239 Anderson, Pamela Sue, xii–xiii, 21–25, 27, 29n11, 29nn14–15, 68nn3–4, 106, 122n9, 123n15, 271 angels, 83, 92n15, 223 anthropology, ix, 19–20, 37–38, 114, 169, 175 anthropomorphism, 18, 28n2 Antigone, 23 antinomies, 142, 147 apologetics, 220, 225 appearance(s), 38, 43, 79, 84–85, 92, 95, 225 appropriation, 15, 28n1, 44–45, 201

Aquinas, xi, 86–87, 92n15, 221 Arendt, Hannah, x–xii, 26, 30n16, 30n19 Arianism, 74 Aristotle, 81, 92n13 art, 78, 181, 185, 198–199, 205, 215, 223. See also living, art of Asad, Talal, 17, 175, 180, 186 atheism, 59, 77, 107, 112–113 methodological, 73, 195, 220 naturalistic, 107 Atman, 84, 87 Augustine, 94n25, 126n26, 213 Austin, J.L., 85 authority, 19–20, 45, 84, 106, 108, 118, 125n24, 192, 194, 203, 205, 218–219, 232, 255 autonomy, 5, 9, 87–88, 143, 180, 192–196, 199–202, 206, 207n4, 228, 231 avenir, a-venir, à venir, x, xix, 165, 212–214. See also to-come awareness, 6, 107, 134, 177 critical, 105–106, 186 global, ix postcolonial, 256 religious, 146 self-, 12, 177, 256, 266 self-critical, 268–269 Ayer, A.J., 257

275

276

Index

Badiou, Alain, 82, 237–238, 241–242, 250n2 Beauvoir, Simone de, 57, 60, 62, 68, 69n5 Beckett, Samuel, 178 Being, being, xiii, xv, 10, 24, 36, 50, 67, 73, 77, 81, 84, 86–89, 90n3, 92, 93n17, 94nn22–23, 106, 110, 131, 135–147, 162, 181, 205– 206, 217, 224, 226–227, 232, 234, 238–240, 246, 248, 254 belief, xx, 14, 39, 47, 76, 103, 106–107, 133, 135, 139, 145, 176, 191, 194, 196, 213–215, 218–219–220, 222, 234n4, 266 Christian, 73–74, 124 monotheistic, 22 religious, xx, 75, 114, 122n11, 124n18, 179, 195–196, 258, 262 theistic, 110, 121n9 theological, 68n1 Bell, Catherine, 194 Bennett, Jane, 61–62 Bergson, Henri, 57, 60, 62, 64–65, 68 Bible, 121, 221, 263 biology, 221, 224, 247 body, 25, 27–28, 36, 44–45, 56, 62, 64, 66, 69, 83, 104, 126, 139, 189, 201, 203 Bosanquet, Bernard, 80 Boutin, Maurice, xii–xiii, 271 Bradley, F.H., 76–77, 79–80, 90, 91nn9–11, 92n14, 93n16, 94n22, 95n26 Brahman, 84–85, 87–89, 91, 93–95, 181 Brassier, Ray, 238 Braun, Willi, 184 Brown, Wendy, 207n3 Bryant, Levi, 238 Buddha, 134–140, 142–143, 148n6

Buddhism, 94, 133–137, 141–143, 145–146, 148n5 Bultmann, Rudolf, 201, 227 Bush, Stephen, 178 Butler, Judith, 24, 248 Caird, Edward, 80 call, 202, 214, 217, 232 capitalism, xvi, 155, 167, 233 Caputo, John D., xviii, xix–xx, 71, 106–107, 114, 122n9, 126n25, 170, 183, 186n1, 186nn3–4, 237, 269, 271 Carrette, Jeremy, 185 Cavell, Stanley, xviii, 196–200, 205 certainty, 6, 13, 88, 226, 229, 244 change, 62, 86, 89, 95, 109, 136, 145 Chidester, David, 17 Christ, Jesus, 36, 83, 94, 107, 160, 203–204, 224, 231, 237, 245–246, 248–249 Christianity, 15, 18–20, 37, 73–74, 76, 78, 84, 86–88, 90n6, 102, 105, 107, 110–111, 116, 123n12, 124n17, 125n23, 137–138, 140, 145, 196, 203, 229, 245–246, 248–249, 265 Christman, John, 207n4 Christology Gnostic-Islamic, 246 church, 72, 74, 85, 170, 176, 203, 247, 262–263 Principle of Sufficient, 245 circumfession, 157 Cixous, Hélène, 18 Clack, Beverley, 77–78, 91n12 class, 20, 24, 28, 60, 101, 105, 158, 160, 164, 169, 178 Clifford, James, 19 colonialism, coloniality, 10, 18–20, 164, 167

Index communism, 158 comparative studies. See studies, comparative Comte, Auguste, 257 conatus, 66 concept, xii–xiii, xv, xviii, xx, 4–5, 15–16, 23, 27, 40–41, 55–61, 63, 65–68, 77, 79, 86, 90n5, 91n8, 104–107, 111, 113, 116, 120–121, 123, 135, 141, 143– 144, 162, 165, 168, 177, 184, 186n1, 190–192, 195–196, 199, 203–204, 206, 207n2, 217, 227, 233, 240–243, 245–246, 249 Connell, R.W., 29n8 consciousness, 5, 8, 38, 44, 48, 126, 143, 154, 158, 167, 169, 178, 182, 204. See also self, -consciousness critical, 200, 202–204 double, 166 philosophical, 158 religious, 169 self-, ix, 38, 44, 80, 193 undifferentiated, 84–85 unhappy, 199 Cooey, Paula, 180, 183 Cornell, Drucilla, 248 Craig, William Lane, 90n1 creation, 42, 59, 83, 86–87, 89, 95n25 creativity, 26–27, 50, 76, 139, 203 creator, 67, 83, 87, 89, 94n23, 126n26, 137–139 Crenshaw, Kimberlé W., 29n9 Crisp, Oliver D., 90n5 critical, xiii–xiv, xvi, 8–9, 21, 23, 29n16, 67, 68n4, 73, 77–78, 99, 101–102, 105–106, 108–115, 123, 124n19, 125nn21–22, 12, 127, 142, 154, 158, 160, 165,

277

186n4, 189–190, 192–195, 200–203, 205–207, 221–222, 224, 240, 247, 255 consciousness, 200, 202–204 discourse, xviii post-, 189–190 reason, ix reflection, 109, 111, 183 responsiveness, 186n4, 189, 195, 197–198 reverence, xvii, 206 self-awareness, 266, 268–269 self-perception, 195, 256, 266 theory, 154, 164, 194 thinking, xiv, xviii, 58, 125, 190–195, 197, 204–205 criticism, xviii, 4, 21, 28n1, 73, 81, 154, 156, 160, 162, 190–195, 197–198, 200–201, 204–206, 255–258, 261 academic, 194, 197 cultural, 162, 199 feminist, 4 philosophical, xviii, 198, 200 popular, 227 religious, 195, 197, 256 critique. See critical; thinking, critical Crockett, Clayton, xix–xx, 122, 272 culture, xvi, 16, 18–20, 56, 61–62, 68n1, 100, 120, 125, 155, 164, 178, 180, 185, 197–199, 215 academic, 180, 193 Christian, 62 co-makers of, 180, 183 true, 223 Dallmayr, Fred, 14, 111, 122, 126n26 Dasein, 5, 181 Davaney, Sheela Greeve, 183 de Vries, Hent, 122, 195, 207n1, 208n8

278

Index

death, xii, 14, 26, 30nn18–19, 37, 41–42, 56, 63, 65, 68n1, 68n4, 72, 76, 83, 92n12, 115, 122n11, 138, 146, 201, 213, 231, 233, 249. See also afterlife; God, death of decolonial, decoloniality, xvi, 155, 167–168 deconstruction, 22, 25, 81, 118, 157– 158, 161, 164–165, 184, 228 Dedekind, Richard, 241 deism, xi Deleuze, Gilles, xvi, xx, 5, 56–57, 59–60, 62, 64–65, 68, 81, 155–157, 160–163, 165–167, 205, 237–238, 240, 245 demons, 83 denouement, 165 Derrida, Jacques, xi, 25, 29n16, 105, 111, 121, 154, 156–161, 163–165, 167, 170, 182–184, 213, 215–216, 218, 220, 226, 234nn3–5, 237–240, 245 Descartes, 29n13, 40, 126n26, 140, 168, 205 desire, ix, xii, xvii, 12–13, 29n14, 36, 39, 41, 44, 67, 94n21, 95, 104, 175, 177, 181, 186, 192, 198, 214–215, 217 Desmond, William, xviii, 190, 199–200, 204–206 Deutsch, Eliot, 14 devotion, 85, 88–89, 93 diastema, 83, 87 differance, 166 difference, ix, xix, 106, 154, 157– 158, 161, 163–164, 170, 224, 238–240, 250 colonial, 166–167 ontological, 138, 181–182 philosophies of, 240

differentialism, 158, 166 discursive regimes, 154 disengagement, 192 disproportion, 38–41, 48 distanciation, 9, 28n1, 192 doctrine, 74, 93n18, 104, 114, 137– 138, 195, 203, 206, 217–219, 222, 224, 227, 229, 233 dogma, dogmatic, dogmatism, xiv, xviii, 72, 75, 77, 156, 163, 203–204 Donaldson, Laura E., 17 doubt, 35, 75–77, 88, 137, 163, 205 dualism, duality, xix, 48, 84, 87, 111, 126, 134–136, 138, 177–178, 230, 241–243, 246 non-, 84, 86, 134–135, 138, 148n6 Dube, Musa, 17 Dylan, Bob, 160 Eckhart, 88, 94n25 eidetic, 8, 175 Eliade, Mircea, 174–177, 180, 185 Eliot, T.S., 161 empiricism, 80 enecstasis, enecstatic, xvii, 174, 180–185, 186n2 energiai, 88 Enlightenment, enlightenment, x, 25, 29n16, 119, 134, 142, 160, 176, 180 epoché, 176, 186n1 episteme, xvi, 155 epistemology, 6, 22, 196 Ereignis, 5. See also event essentialism, 104, 174–175 Esteva, Gustavo, 29n6 ethics, 5, 11, 13, 65, 221, 247 ethnocentrism, 18, 104, 176 ethnography, 19–20 Eurocentrism, 154

Index event, 11, 170, 182, 213–217, 220, 225–227, 231–233, 234n3 semiotics of, 170 evil, xii, xv, 4, 10–11, 13, 25, 38, 42, 45, 48, 78, 84, 89–90, 110–111, 117n3, 125n22, 126n26, 137– 139, 144 problem of, 11, 13–14, 25, 74, 77–78, 89–89, 100, 110, 221, 232 experience, x, xiii, 5, 27, 39, 42, 55, 62, 80, 86, 89, 93n16, 94n22, 114, 134, 143, 147, 156, 173, 179, 182, 185, 192, 197, 202, 208n7, 215, 224, 238–239, 247 conscious, 177 religious, 91n7, 103, 114, 134, 148n4, 177–178, 191, 247, 259 rhetoric of, 178 subjective, 177 faith, xi, xviii, 28n1, 73, 90n6, 103, 105, 133–135, 137, 139–141, 143, 145, 147, 169, 175, 180, 185, 190, 196–197, 200, 202– 204, 208n7, 211–215, 221–222, 224–225, 230, 234n4, 263 Christian, 74, 93n18, 107, 116– 117, 201 confessional, 212, 219 knight(s) of, xviii, 213, 215–216, 220, 233 messianic, 232 mystical, 100 nonbelieving, 76 postreligious, 116 rational, 143 religious, 76, 108, 262 fall, 48, 122 fallibility, xii, 11, 37–41, 43, 49, 143–144 Fanon, Frantz, 164

279

Fazang, 136 feeling, 38–39, 44, 46–48, 93n16, 133–134, 192, 198 philosophy of, 39 feminism, feminist, 4, 18, 22, 25, 29nn15–16, 56–57, 60, 63–65, 67–68, 69n6, 106, 123nn15–16, 207n4, 248 new, 163 finite, xii–xiii, 35, 39–41, 43–44, 49–50, 64–65, 85, 133, 211 sadness of the, xiii, 41, 47 finitude, 40, 43 Fitzgerald, Timothy, 186n1 Flood, Gavin, 84 Focus, 186n1. See also epoché Foucault, Michel, xvi, 5–6, 25, 29n16, 154–155, 165–166, 179, 181, 183–185 foundationalism, 117n1, 177, 181– 182, 256 fragility, 11, 36, 38–39, 48–49 Framarin, Chris, 29n5 freedom, xii–xiv, 13, 27, 35, 37, 44–45, 48–49, 63, 66, 68, 88, 138–141, 144, 189, 193, 207n4, 221, 229, 232 academic, 263 Freud, 5, 8, 28n1, 158, 160, 167, 192, 200 Froese, Katrin, 29n5 fundamentalism, 165, 233 future, x–xi, xiii–xiv, xvi, xviii, xix, xxi, 11, 13, 37, 48, 55–63, 65, 67–68, 72, 99, 103, 119, 122, 136, 153, 155, 157–158, 160–162, 164–165, 168, 170, 189, 203, 211–214, 216–217, 227, 230–231, 233–234, 249 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 226

280

Index

Geertz, Clifford, ix, 175–176 gender, 19–21, 24, 26–28, 58, 60–61, 64, 67, 101, 105, 119, 146, 154, 166, 178, 199, 250 re-visioning, xiii, 58, 63, 64–65 genealogy, 107, 165, 222 geophilosophy. See philosophy, geoglobalization, xvi, 18, 79, 155, 160, 162, 166–167 globo-Latinity, 165 glossolalia, 170–171 gnosis, xx, 10, 126n26, 167, 245–246 Gnosticism, 126, 245 God, god(s), xii–xv, 4, 13, 21, 24–25, 28, 37, 42–43, 56–59, 61–62, 64, 67, 73–74, 76–78, 81–83, 87–90, 90n3, 92n15, 93n16, 94n25, 95, 100, 107–108, 114, 117n1, 117n3, 118n4, 121n9, 122n11, 123n16, 135, 137–140, 142, 161, 181, 183, 186, 189, 199–206, 207n3, 213, 217, 220–223, 225–226, 231, 233–234, 245, 266. See also Absolute; Atman; Being, being; Brahman; Nature, nature; Self, self; reality, ultimate attributes of, 59, 121n9 Christian, 10, 85, 107 City of, 45 concept(s) of, 59, 77–78, 104, 225 death of, 5, 57, 59, 67, 161–162, 232 Hebraic, 110 incarnation of, 36–37 Kingdom of, 45, 106 love of, 201, 203, 207 proofs of, xii, 4, 13–14, 57, 59, 104, 121n9, 140, 191, 196, 232 theistic, 59, 65, 76, 104, 107, 110, 121n9 worship of, 201, 205

Goddess, 181 good, goodness, xii, 4, 12–13, 25, 57, 61, 74, 77, 84–85, 89–90, 110, 112, 126n26, 137–139, 223. See also evil Gospel, 122n9, 201 Gourgouris, Stathis, 191 Goya, Francisco, 161 grace, 13, 144, 185, 199, 203–204, 220, 222, 231 Gramsci, Antonio, 18, 29n7, 158 Grant, Sara, 85–88, 94nn20–25, 95n27 gratitude, xviii, 199–200, 202, 218 Green, T.H., 80 Gregory of Nyssa, 87 Grelet, Gilles, 246–247 Grice, H.P., 79 Griffiths, Paul, 207n1 Guattari, Félix, 60, 156, 167, 238 Guha, Ranajit, 29n7 Hadot, Pierre, 196 happiness, 38, 40 Harding, Sandra, 22 Harman, Graham, 238 Haslanger, Sally, 60 hauntology, 216, 234n5 having, 44–46 heart, 38–39, 47, 67, 171, 213 Heaven, 67, 118, 138, 223, 227 Hegel, xix, 10, 12, 28n2, 29n15, 80–82, 140, 148n10, 158, 161, 163, 167, 221–222, 224–227, 229 hegemon, hegemony, 26, 154, 163, 179 Heidegger, Martin, xvii, 5, 7, 9, 26, 73, 75, 81, 90n3, 160, 162–163, 165, 167, 173, 181–183, 190, 205, 213, 220–221, 224, 238, 240, 257

Index Heisenberg, Werner, 244 Hell, 138 heresy, xx, 219, 245 hermeneutic(s), 5–8, 11, 28n1, 91, 222, 224–225 creative, 174–175 philosophical, 9 radical, 226 romantic, 177 speculative, 225 heterology, 158 heteronomy, heteronomous, 191, 193, 195–196, 200, 203–204, 206 heterosexualism, 154 Hinduism, 84–85, 91 historicality, 231 historicism, 154, 156, 159 history, 3, 10, 20, 35–36, 45, 56, 60, 62, 67–68, 83, 91, 93, 114, 122, 159, 162, 167, 169, 173–174, 177, 179, 184, 218, 220, 222, 226, 233, 265 intellectual, xv Japanese, 141 Hobbes, Thomas, 12 hope, xix, 212–215, 217–218, 220, 231 hospitality, 220 humanism, 18, 90n3, 248 humanitas, 168–169 humanities, xvi, 155–156, 158, 169, 194, 215, 227, 260 new, xix, 218 humanity, 7, 12, 28, 39, 46, 83, 111, 161, 201, 245, 248–249 Jesus’s, 36 non-religion of, 245–246 universal science of, 248 Hume, 80, 221 Husserl, Edmund, 5, 7–8, 48, 75, 141, 214, 220

281

idealism, 7, 37, 76, 80, 82, 91n8, 92n14, 93n16, 136 absolute, 80, 84, 95n26 German, 80 transcendental, 179 ideas, xiii, 38–39, 43, 46–47, 69n6, 78, 80, 94n23, 103, 108, 112, 124n18, 126, 135, 139, 144, 195, 200, 207n1, 243 metaphysical, 81 philosophical, 145, 249 religious, xx, 71, 91n8, 110, 112, 118n5, 120n7, 265 scientific, 249 idempotence, 243–244 identity, 9, 10, 19, 24, 29n14, 87, 89, 93, 95n26, 135–136, 138, 144, 148n6, 153, 241, 246, 250, 259. See also relation, relationality academic, 261, 264, 268–269 narrative, 11 politics, 163, 269 religious, 261–262 theorists, 168 ideology, ideological, xi, 6, 28n1, 75, 90n6, 105, 107, 109, 115–116, 123, 166, 175–176, 190, 192, 202–203, 239, 257–259, 261, 263 illusion, 28, 43, 84, 86–87, 120, 126n26, 202, 228, 231. See also maya imaginary, 22–23, 26–27, 30n17, 94n22, 166, 227 imagination, 9, 22, 45, 76, 204 Orientalist, 163 religious, 227 transcendental, 38 immanence, xiii, 35, 49, 243 planes of, 60–61 radical, 243

282

Index

immaterial, immateriality, 83–84, 92, 175 immortality, 25, 27, 35, 92n15, 221, 232, 249 incarnation, 36–37, 44, 83, 90n5, 93, 222, 229 incoming, 214, 233. See also invention indecision, 157 indeterminacy, 244 individualism, 49 infinite, xii–xiii, xix, 24, 39–43, 48–49, 87, 105, 111, 133, 141, 211–212, 221, 233. See also Absolute; infinitude infinitude, xii, 39–41 injustice, 64, 258. See also justice social, 24 Inoue, Enryō, xv, 131, 133, 136, 144 inquiry, ix, 73, 100, 102, 105–106, 108–109, 115, 117, 120n8, 183, 191, 213, 215, 224, 233, 255–259, 261–263, 267–268 academic, 100, 108, 116 epistemic, 28 fundamental, 260 logical, 105 metaphysical, 92 multidisciplinary comparative, ix, xvi, 254–256, 258–262, 264, 268–269 philosophical, xix, 106, 165 rational, 258 scientific, 177 secular morality of, 254–255, 258–259, 261, 263, 269 skeptical, 77 instrumentality, 49, 160 Insurrection, xx, 248–250 intellect, 75, 133–134, 205 interpersonal, 46, 85, 175 intersubjectivity, 24, 44

intuition, 134 invention, 215, 233. See incoming inwardness, 38, 45, 47 hidden, xviii, 211–213, 216, 230, 234n1 Irigaray, Luce, 22, 25–26, 30, 183 Islam, 17, 108, 125n23, 165 non-, 246 James, William, 148n4, 174 Janicaud, Dominique, 73, 90n4 Jantzen, Grace, x, xii, 3–4, 18–19, 21, 24–27, 29n16, 30nn17–19, 63–65, 68n3, 69n6, 114–115, 122n9, 123n15 Jenkins, Philip, 169 Johannes Climacus, 211–213 Johannes de Silentio, 211, 231 John Paul II (pope), 68n1 John of the Cross, 202 John of Damascus, 92n15 joy, 47, 62, 65, 67–68, 95, 203, 207n1, 218, 233 Joy, Morny, xi–xv, xvii, 17, 272 Judaism, 123, 245 judgment, 138, 193, 195, 201, 203, 265 God’s, 202–204 justice, 7, 25–28, 105, 159–160, 238. See also injustice epistemic, 21 ethical, 11 messianic, 160 universal, 159–160 Kahlo, Frida, 91n12 Kanaris, Jim, xvii, 120n7, 122n9, 186n2, 272 Kant, xix, 3, 9, 13, 46, 80, 103–104, 126, 142–143, 159, 165, 168, 180–181, 191–192, 219, 221, 224–225, 234n7, 247, 257

Index Kaufman, Eric, 169 Kearney, Richard, 237 kenosis, 36. See also God, incarnation of Kessler, Gary, 14 khora, 158 Kierkegaard, Søren, x, xviii, 105, 167, 226, 234n1 Kim, Iryo˘p, xv, 131, 137–139, 146–147 King, Richard, 17 Klostermaier, Klaus, 94 Knepper, Timothy, xiv–xv, 272 knowable, 133–134. See also unknowable knowledge, x, 6, 12, 17, 28, 38, 43, 66, 73, 81, 89, 93n18, 107, 112, 116, 117n1, 154, 158, 166– 168, 177–178, 181, 184, 193, 198–199, 202, 207n1, 213, 224, 227, 232, 238, 241, 245, 247, 254–255. See also power absolute, xix, 239 academic, 247 axiomatizing, 242 divine, 56 objective, 24, 117n1, 192 ontological, 241 political, 180 religious, 24 scientific, 56, 247 self-, 225 Kolozova, Katerina, 239–240, 248 kosas, 87 Kristeva, Julia, 18 Kuhn, Thomas, 155 Kwok, Pui-Lan, 17 Kyoto School, 139, 141, 146, 148n11 Lacan, Jacques, 22, 26, 30, 163, 166, 238 language, 16, 41, 71, 76–77, 80, 100, 103, 125, 132, 134, 148n5, 155,

283

159, 163, 167, 170–171, 178, 189, 199, 201–203, 214, 223, 229, 231, 239–240 Christocentric, 249 Eurocentric, 19 games, 80 geo-philosophical, xvi ordinary, 80, 85 philosophy of, 178 theological, 204 Larson, Gerald J., 14 Laruelle, François, xix–xx, 156–157, 161, 237–250 Le Doeuff, Michèle, 22–24, 29n13, 56–57, 60, 64, 68 Ledure, Yves, xii, 35–37 Levinas, Emmanuel, 5, 90n4, 105, 111 Levine, Michael, 91n7 life, xii–iv, 4, 12, 22, 30nn18–19, 35–36, 44, 55–68, 76, 84, 86, 122n11, 138–139, 156, 196, 199, 203–205, 216, 221, 224–225, 227, 233, 249, 259, 269 culture of, 68n1 religious, 180, 201 re-visioning, xiii, 55, 68 sciences, 227 -world, 216, 232, 256 limitation, xii–xiii, 38, 40, 42–43, 48–49 Lincoln, Bruce, 184, 186n1, 191 linguistic, 86, 114, 148n6, 157, 165 behavior, 124n18 methods, 192 objects, 126n24 practices, 80 reality, 81 research, xvi theory, 156 turn, 80 liturgy, 222

284

Index

living, 57–60, 66, 68n4, 216 art of, 179, 183 Lloyd, Genevieve, 29n12 Locke, John, 156 logic, 100, 105, 134, 135–136, 138, 182, 238–239 logocentrism, 154, 184 logo-techno-centrism, 165 Lonergan, Bernard, 186n2 longing, 24 love, xii, 29n14, 41, 58, 85, 93, 118, 195–196, 198–199, 201, 203, 206–207, 213, 218, 220 divine, 95, 202 infinite, 105, 111 intellectual, 65–67 Long, Eugene T., 14, 102, 122n9 Lopez, Donald, 17 Louth, Andrew, 92n15 Lowe, Walter J., 37, 40 Lyotard, Jean-François, 182, 238 Mahmood, Saba, 193, 207n4 Maimonides, xi Malabou, Catherine, 225, 237–238 Malkovsky, Bradley, 93n18 Maraldo, John, 133, 141 Marcel, Gabriel, 7 Marcos, Sylvia, 17 Marshall, P.J., 17 Marx, Karl, 5, 8, 18, 28n1, 158–160, 164, 167, 191–192, 200, 216, 239, 240, 250 Marxism, 239 masculinism, 68n2 material, 27–28, 47, 55, 57, 59–61, 63, 66, 82, 84–85, 92n15, 239 materialism, 61–62, 91n10, 136, 160, 168, 224–225 new, 82, 163, 178, 180, 185, 186n1 mathematics, 237, 242, 244

matter, materiality, xiii, 56, 59, 61–63, 84, 136 maya, 86. See also illusion McCutcheon, Russell T., 175–178, 180, 182, 184–185, 186n1 McTaggart, J.M.E., 80 meaning, 19, 28n1, 45, 49, 56, 81, 106, 122n11, 176, 218, 259 religious, 183 Meillassoux, Quentin, 82, 238 messianic, messianicity, x, xix, 160, 165, 212–213, 215, 217, 230–232, 234n3, 248 messianism, 159, 165 metanoesis, 144 metanoetics, 143–144, 146 metaphysics, xiv, 5–6, 9–10, 77–82, 86, 92, 111, 156, 162–163, 165, 177, 224–225, 258 Christian, 82, 84, 89 dualistic, 84 Eastern, xiv, 72 Hellenistic, 227 materialist, 225 monist, 89 reductionist, 177 Western, 167, 181 method, xi, 3, 6, 23, 39, 42, 71, 76, 90n5, 100, 105, 108, 110–112, 156, 170, 179, 181, 183, 253, 265–266, 268 comparative, xii, 4 definitive, 17, 23 foundationalist, 181 genealogical, 164 linguistic, 192 non-philosophical, 242 rationalist, xi scientific, 247 secular, 191 methodology, 5, 73

Index Midgley, Mary, 60 Mignolo, Walter, 165–169 mind, 27–28, 44–45, 64–68, 80, 84, 104, 118, 126, 133, 136, 139, 189 philosophy of, 178 religious, 139 mindfulness, 206 miracles, 14, 83, 221, 232 modality, 44, 47, 81, 182, 222 modernism, modernity, 3, 5–6, 17, 28, 140, 146, 166–168, 220–221, 228 Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, 18, 29n6 monism, 84, 87, 111–112, 126n26, 136 Moore, G.E., 80, 92 morality, xiii, 55, 104, 121, 132, 256, 258–259, 261, 264, 269 secular, 254–255, 263 Muirhead, J.H., 91n11 Murthy, B. Srinivasa, 14 Musil, Robert, 154 mystery, 88, 109, 198–199, 202, 205–206, 221–223 mysticism, 88, 148n4 natality, 26, 30n16, 218 Nagarjuna, 121 naturalism, 247. See also supernaturalism Nature, nature, xii, 36, 41, 56–57, 60–62, 64–67, 83, 86, 259 angelic, 83, 92n15 divine, 83, 88, 177 human, 64, 83, 86, 89, 254 negation, 41–42, 125n21, 142–144, 184 self-, 143–144 Nehamas, Alexander, 179 neoliberalism, 159 Neoplatonism, 91, 109, 125n21

285

Nestorianism, 74 Newman, John Henry, 93n16 Nietzsche, Friedrich, xvii, 5, 8, 28n1, 57, 59–60, 64, 68, 153, 156–158, 160, 162–163, 167, 171, 173, 179–181, 183–185, 192, 196, 202, 216, 240 nihilism, 141, 162 Nirvana, 181 Nishi, Amane, xv, 132, 147n1 noema, noematic, 48, 143, 214 noesis, 48, 143 non-duality. See dualism, duality, nonnon-philosophy. See philosophy, nonnonstandard philosophy. See philosophy, nonstandard nothingness, 139–140, 142–147 Nussbaum, Martha, 196–200 Nye, Andrea, 155–156 object, 40, 43–44, 48, 80, 84, 89, 111, 125n24, 134, 143, 176, 183, 185, 186n1, 197, 207n1, 213, 219, 233, 240–241, 243 -constitutive, 183 objectivity, xx, 6, 22, 24, 38, 43–44, 46–48, 100–101, 106, 114–115, 117n1, 122, 147, 160, 175, 179, 181, 194, 219, 265 One, 19, 83, 238–241, 248, 250, 250n2 ontology, 5, 40, 82, 90n3, 92, 157, 160, 182, 216, 241–242 Orientalism, xvii, 17, 163–164, 246 neo- (new), 165 orientalizing, 246 Orsi, Robert, 207n5 other, otherness, xiii, 10–12, 22, 44, 49, 74, 89, 106, 142–144, 163–164, 166–167, 197, 203, 206, 207n3, 213, 239–240

286

Index

othering, 18–19 Otto, Rudolf, 135, 174 Ousia, 88, 216 Padmavyūha, 135 Palahniuk, Chuck, 91n12 pantheism, 83 paradigm shift, 78, 155–156 Park, Jin Y., xiv–xv, 120n7, 148n7, 148n10, 148nn12–13, 273 participation, xvii, 19, 103, 176–177, 189–190, 197, 199, 207n1 past, 48, 57–58, 60–63, 159, 170, 184, 196 Pears, D.F., 79 personalism, 7, 174–175, 184 phallocentrism, 154 phenomenology, xvi–xvii, 5–8, 12, 16, 22, 72–73, 161, 173–180, 182, 185–186, 222, 238, 254–255 anti-, 178 neo-, 163, 178, 186 personalist, 178, 180 post-, xvii, x, 157, 178, 182 philosophy, x, xii, xv–xvi, xviii–xx, 6, 9–16, 19, 23, 27, 38–40, 49, 55–59, 61–63, 66–68, 71–73, 75–77, 79, 82, 85, 90n3, 91n11, 92n14, 118n4, 120n7, 131–135, 140–143, 145–147, 147n1, 155–159, 162, 170, 174, 178–179, 181, 184, 189–191, 196–200, 204–205, 207, 207n1, 212, 215–216, 219–221, 225, 231–234, 238–247, 249–250, 253, 257, 259, 266, 268–269 academic, 156 analytic, xvii, 3, 59, 67, 71–72, 74, 76, 78, 80–82, 90n5, 91nn7–8, 99–100, 102, 104–106, 109, 112–116, 117n1, 118n4, 119n6, 120n7, 120n8, 127n32, 174, 240

Anglo-American, 62, 64, 71 anti-, 242 Asian, x–xi, xv, 131–133, 136, 140, 144–145, 273 British, 80 Buddhist, 133, 141 Christian, 58, 61–62, 73, 90nn1–2, 95n27, 220, 229, 265 comparative, 15–16, 258, 260 contemporary, xvii, 27, 57, 66–67, 71, 82, 99, 101, 109, 115 continental, xii, xv–xvii, xix, 4, 59, 72, 78, 80–82, 99, 101–106, 109, 111, 113–116, 118n4, 119–120nn6–9, 123n14, 127n32, 155, 237–239, 245 enecstatic, 183–184, 186nn1–2 Enlightenment, 119n6 “eternal,” 162 European, 71 feminist, 57, 60, 63–65, 69n6 first, 92n13 French, 59, 64, 157, 238 genre of, 145 geo-, xvi, 162, 165 global, xiii, 55, 59, 63, 127n32, 162 Greek, 223 Indian, 84, 86 Japanese, 141, 146 Mediterranean, 163 meta-, 71 modern, 81, 191, 196, 199 modernist, 140 moral, 268 Neoplatonic, 125n21 neopragmatic, 240 new, 163 non-, xi, xix–xx, 156–157, 238–239, 241–242, 244–246, 248–250 nonstandard, xix, 244–245 occidental, 246 “ordinary language,” 85

Index

“oriental,” 246 patriarchal, 63 political, 61 postmodern, 100, 238 poststructuralist, 238 Principle of Sufficient, 240 “reformed,” 255–256, 259–260, 264, 268 religious, 62, 260–261, 267 speculative, 28n2 traditional, 243, 254, 261 theistic, 265 Western, xv–xvi, 14, 16, 23, 56, 60, 62, 67–68, 81, 107, 154–156, 162–163, 170–171, 228 phronesis, 169, 206 physics, 221, 224, 247 classical, 242 Newtonian, 156, 247 particle, 227, 244–245 quantum, 242, 247 Plantinga, Alvin, 73, 121n8 Plato, 27, 39, 94, 122n9 Plotinus, 93–94 poetics, 106, 223–224, 226–227 politics, 176, 215, 222 gender, 154 identity, 163, 269 polytheism, 122n9 positivism, 74 logical, 80 neo-Kantian, 247 postcolonialism, 17–19, 154–155, 158, 162, 164, 166, 168, 256 postcritical. See critical, postpostmodernism, postmodernity, 116, 120, 158, 183, 238. See also philosophy, postmodern post-, x, 163 postsecular, 102, 160, 163, 261 poststructuralism, 164–165, 168. See also philosophy, poststructuralist

287

power, 6, 20, 28, 44–46, 74, 144, 146–147, 163, 166–167, 177– 178, 185, 192, 203, 206, 207n4 praise, xviii, 189, 199–201, 218 Prakash, Madhu Suri, 29n6 prayer, 93, 137, 199, 201, 204, 217, 220, 222, 230 presence, present, 8, 58, 60, 89, 106, 114, 160–161, 184, 196, 213– 214, 217, 230–231, 232–233, 234, 248 Protestant, 3, 133, 175, 247 psychoanalysis, 22, 30n17, 77, 115, 238 psychology, 91, 175, 192 race, 21, 24, 28, 60, 101, 105, 123, 178 Radical Orthodoxy, xi Rahner, Karl, 42, 50n1 Ramadan, Tariq, 169 Raschke, Carl A., ix–xi, xv–xvii, 120n7, 173, 182–183, 273 rationality, xiii, 5, 19–20, 24, 41, 100, 110, 115, 117n2, 124n17, 126n26, 134, 143, 147 Rea, Michael C., 90n5, 99 Real, the, xix, 85, 94n22, 107, 118, 190, 238–240, 242, 248, 250 realism, speculative, 82, 159, 167, 238 reality, 25, 37, 40, 42–43, 79, 83–85, 89, 92, 93n16, 94n22, 95nn26– 27, 120n8, 124n18, 125n21, 133–135, 137, 142, 161, 177, 202, 225, 244, 254, 258 actual, 61, 142, 160 deep, 148n4 divine, 117–118n3, 118n5, 202 extra-linguistic, 81 fallible, 142 finite, 146 fundamental, 189–190

288

Index

reality (continued) historical, 141 intersubjective, 44 nonfoundational, 143 ontological, 83 salvific, 75–76 transcendent, 58, 100, 117n2, 186n1 ultimate, 76–77, 79, 80, 82, 84–85, 87–90, 91n8, 93n16, 95n26, 107, 114, 126n26, 134 virtual, 61 reason, x–xi, xviii, 9–10, 13–14, 23, 25, 28n2, 38, 40, 43, 47, 58, 64, 66, 80, 100–103, 105–106, 108– 110, 112–116, 118n5, 120nn7–8, 124n18, 124n20, 125n24, 127n32, 132, 134, 141–144, 147, 189–190, 193, 197, 218, 222 critical, ix Enlightenment, 25, 29n16 natural, 221, 225 Occidental, 165 philosophical, 28n2 post-occidental, 165 rebirth, 143, 146 reciprocity, 12, 24, 44–45 redemption, 26, 171 reductionism, xii, 159, 224, 247 reflection, 13, 27, 39, 46, 101, 174, 193, 200, 207, 218, 249, 269n1 critical, 109, 111, 183 eidetic, 8 enecstatic, 174 phenomenological, 182 philosophical, xx, 265–266 practical, 39 rational, 125 self-, 144 theological, 86, 204 theoretical, 247 transcendental, xvii, 39

reflexive, reflexivity, xvii, 9, 22, 67, 173, 177–178, 192. See also self, -reflexive, -reflexivity relation, relationality, 12, 44, 46–47, 84, 86–87, 89, 95, 137, 140, 144, 181, 246. See also identity ecstatic, 181 enecstatic, 185 relative, the, xxi, 42, 86, 95, 136, 144–145 relativism, 166 religion, ix–xi, xiv–xv, xviii–xx, 4–6, 9–10, 12–13, 15–16, 19, 21, 28n1, 55, 58, 60, 67, 71, 75–77, 91n8, 93, 101–105, 107–109, 111–112, 114–115, 117nn1–2, 118n5, 120n8, 121n9, 122nn9– 11, 123n12, 131–135, 139–143, 145, 147, 159, 174–177, 180, 183–184, 189–192, 194, 196, 199–200, 202, 205, 207, 207n1, 207n3, 211–212, 215, 217, 219–220, 225, 229, 231, 233–234, 234n7, 246–249, 254, 258, 266–267 absolute, 229 academic study of, xiv, xvii, xviii, 101–102, 105, 108, 113, 115, 117, 118n4, 120n7, 173, 176, 180, 186n1, 191, 194, 196, 263 American Academy of, 99, 230 analytic philosophy of. See philosophy, analytic Anglo-American, 56 Anglo-American philosophy of. See philosophy, Anglo-American Christian, 56, 61–62, 148n3, 229, 245 comparative, 15–16, 116, 174, 179, 224 confessional, 217 continental phenomenology of, xvii

Index continental philosophy of. See philosophy, continental criticism of, 28n1, 160, 216 “culturalizing,” 180 department(s) of. See religious studies enecstatic philosophy of. See philosophy, enecstatic essence of, 67 feminist philosophy of. See philosophy, feminist fundamentalist, 161 genre of, 136, 145 global philosophy of. See philosophy, global historians of, 174 historical, 103 Japanese, 132 non-, xx, 245–247 non-philosophy of. See philosophy, non nontheistic, 104 organized, 258 oriental, 246 patriarchal philosophy of. See philosophy, patriarchal phenomenology of, 177–178, 182, 186n1 philosophy of. See philosophy Protestant models of, 133 rational, 122n9, 143 “reformed” philosophy of. See philosophy, “reformed” return of, 159, 261 revealed, 229 scholars of, xvii, xxi, 17, 100, 126n30, 174–175, 179, 184, 194 science of, 175 skeptical, 76 sociologists of, 262 specter of, 159 sui generis, xvii, 184

289



theories of, 114, 174, 220 theorizing, xvii, 177 thinking, 185, 186n1, 190–191, 196 Western philosophy of. See philosophy, Western Religionswissenschaft, 174, 194 religious studies, 173–176, 178–179, 183–185, 186n1, 219–220, 233, 237, 247, 253–254, 256–259, 261, 265, 267, 269 philosophy of, 174, 176, 181, 184 repentance, 105, 111, 143–144, 146 representation, 46, 183 responsibility, 24, 27, 65, 105, 111 responsiveness. See critical, responsiveness ressentiment, 158, 163 Resurrection, 83, 104, 121, 249 revelation, xviii, 36, 50n1, 133–134, 194–195, 203–204, 221–224, 232 special, 223 revenant, 159–160 reverence. See critical, reverence Ricoeur, Paul, x, xii–xxiii, 4–13, 28nn1–2, 37–49, 64–65, 68, 68n4, 192, 204 rights, xiii, 12, 49, 73, 203, 224 Roberts, Tyler, xvii–xviii, 120n7, 179, 182, 185, 186n1, 186n4, 207n2, 234n6, 269n1, 273 romanticism, 179 Ruparell, Tinu, 29n5 Russell, Bertrand, 80, 92n14 Ryle, Gilbert, 85–86 Said, Edward, 154, 163 salvation, 13, 26, 105, 111, 201, 266 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 164 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 161 Schellenberg, J.L., 75–76, 91n8, 103, 107, 121–122n9, 123n13, 123n16, 124n17, 126n27

290

Index

Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 174 Schrödinger, Erwin, 244 science(s), xix–xx, 80, 92, 104, 148n7, 155, 176, 200, 215, 224–225, 232, 237, 238–245, 247, 249 cognitive, xvi, 238 contemporary, 247 empirical, 100 fiction, 248 hard, 247 human, 256 life, 227 modern, 136, 247 natural, 141, 227, 233 new, 239 non-, xix–xx, 238 non-Christian, 245 objective, 175 ontic, 90 positive, 73 philosophy of, 221, 224, 227 social, 227, 233, 253 unified, 246 universal, 248 scientism, 160, 238, 249 scripture, 90n5, 195, 201 Buddhist, 134, 148n6 secular, secularism, secularity, x, xviii, 5, 68, 158, 160, 169, 176, 191, 193–194, 199, 206, 207nn1–3, 218–220, 233, 246, 253–255, 257–264, 268–269, 269n1 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 194 Self, self, xi, 7–8, 10, 12, 19, 25, 38, 46–48, 84, 87–88, 126n24, 135, 142–147, 169, 179, 182–183, 185, 186n4, 197, 201–203, 205, 232. See also other, otherness absolutist, 7 -affirmation, xi, 37, 66, 144, 166, 203 -aggrandizement, 202, 204

-awareness, 12, 177, 256, 266, 268–269 care of, 179 -confidence, 153 -consciousness, ix, 38, 44, 80, 176, 193 -deception, 198 -deconstruction, 183 -emptying, 144 -fashioning, 181, 183 independent, 146 -isolation, 204 -knowledge, 225 limited, 146 -manifestation, 88–89, 225 modern, 146 -negation, 143–144, 147 -perception, 195 -permanence, 35 phenomenal, 146 -possession, 17, 185 -power, 142 rational, 81 -realization, 12 -reconciliation, 159 -referentiality, 165–166 -reflection, 144, 153 -reflexive, -reflexivity, 9, 11, 173, 176, 178, 182–183 -renewal, 147, 156 -sufficiency, xix -surrender, 144 techniques of, 185 -transparency, 168 -understanding, 7–8, 28n1, 218 Serres, Michel, 238 sex, 21, 28, 58, 154 Shankara, xi, 84, 86–87, 89, 94n20, 94n23 Sharf, Robert, 177–178, 180 Shiva, 88 sin, 105, 111, 146, 203–204, 219

Index singularity, singularities, xi, 156, 181–182, 234n3 skepticism, 75–76, 91n8, 253–255 religious, 75, 91n8 Sloterdijk, Peter, 35, 168, 208n6 Smart, Ninian, 14, 186n1 Smith, Anthony Paul, 246 Smith, James K.A., 170 Smith, Jonathan Z., 110, 184 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, 174–177, 180, 185 sociology, 114, 191, 265 Socrates, 155 Solomon, Noah, 191, 194 sorrow, 14, 95, 218. See also finite, sadness of the soul, 41, 56, 83–84, 88, 202, 232 space, 23, 41, 81, 126, 146, 185, 202, 225, 230. See also khora specter, spectral, spectrality, 100, 158– 160, 165, 216–217, 234nn3–4 speech, 38–39, 48, 85, 202, 204 Spengler, Oswald, xvi, 155 Spinoza, Baruch, x, 41, 57, 60, 62, 64–68, 68n4, 69n6, 196, 238 spirit, 82, 92n15, 221, 226, 230, 232 absolute, 225 methods of, 181 spiritual, 44, 72, 82, 84, 86, 117n2, 134, 184–185, 214. See also immaterial, immateriality beings, 83 body, 83 exercise(s), 179, 196–197 life, 56 political, 185 practice, 179, 184 realm, 82–83 spirituality, 85, 93 substance, 84 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, 18, 29n7, 154, 158, 168–170, 183

291

Stirner, Max, 216 Stout, Jeffrey, 207n1 Strawson, P.F., 79 Strenski, Ivan, 176–177, 185, 185– 186n1 structuralism, 164 studies, 17, 116, 247. See also religious studies Asian, 273 comparative, 14–15, 18 cultural, 114, 154, 180 gender, xi intercultural, 272 masculinity, 20 Orientalist, 163 subaltern, subalternity, 18–19, 29n7, 158, 168–171 subject, 5, 8, 11, 24, 27, 44, 60, 65, 84, 89, 105, 107, 114, 134–135, 141–144, 147, 159, 164–166, 168, 176, 178, 207n4, 220, 225, 241, 246, 248 -constitutive, 183 feminist, 248 metaphysics of, 165 political, 248 religious, 135 secular, 193 stranger-, 248 universal, 248 Western, 164 subjectivism, 49, 238 subjectivity, 5, 7–8, 43, 48, 80, 142– 144, 146–147, 166, 177–178, 182, 186, 192–193, 206 discipline of, 193–194 intellectual, 92 monism, 84 substance, 64, 82, 84, 89, 147, 216, 225, 232, 260 transcendental, 5 Sueki Fumihiko, 146

292

Index

suffering, 7, 10–13, 25, 28, 61, 72, 78, 92n12, 138–139, 202, 233. See also evil Sunyata, 143, 181, 183 supernaturalism, 222, 228. See also naturalism superposition, 242–244, 247, 249 Surin, Kenneth, 78 symbol, symbolic, symbolism, 7, 9, 11, 26–27, 30n17, 30n19, 170, 174–176, 181, 203 Swinburne, Richard, 24, 90n1 Tanabe, Hajime, xv, 131, 140–147 Tao, 181 Taylor, A.E., 93 Taylor, Charles, 6, 26, 30n17 Teresa of Ávila, 202 text, textuality, 7–11, 28n1, 81, 109– 110, 118n4, 159, 194, 222–224 theism, theists, xi, 20–21, 60, 64, 73, 76, 82, 100–101, 104–105, 107, 109–110, 112, 116, 120, 121–122n9, 123n12, 124n17, 125n23, 126n27, 127, 265 Christian, 58, 73, 89, 103, 107, 116 masculinist, 65 process, 95n27 Western, 14, 113 theodicy, 25, 91n7, 100–111, 117nn1– 3, 121n9, 122n9, 196 anti-, 95n28 theologian, radical, xix, 211–213, 216– 217, 220–221, 225, 228–229. See also faith, knight(s) of theology, x, xv–xviii, xxin1, 20, 42, 73, 81, 88, 90n3, 91n8, 92n14, 94n23, 174, 180, 182, 194–195, 200–204, 215, 218–220, 222, 224, 227, 231, 233, 258, 265, 268–269



academic, 180, 183 analytic, 74, 90n5 apologetic, 116 apophatic, 88, 93, 111 axio-, 254 Christian, 37, 42, 82, 84–85, 88–89, 94n20, 104, 202, 226, 246, 263 confessional, xix, 186n4, 213, 215, 218, 220–221, 224–225, 228– 229, 231, 255, 261, 264 cosmo-, 221 crypto-, 174 foundational, 226 mystico-, 254 natural, 90n1, 222 negative, 109, 125n21 onto-, 5, 9, 37, 81, 221 orthodox, 91n10 philosophical, 101, 179–180, 186n4, 221–222, 224, 257 physico-, 254 political, 161 psycho-, 254 radical, xvii–xix, 183, 186n4, 211–213, 215–233 rational, 221, 224 regional, 222 revealed, 221 sacred, 221 systematic, 90n5 theory, xviii, xix, 17, 162, 182, 184, 246, 254, 267–268 Buddhist, 135 critical, 154, 164, 194 decolonial, xvi, 155 feminist standpoint, 22 globalization, xvi, 155, 162 linguistic, 156 postcolonial, xvi, 4, 17, 155, 158, 162, 164

Index postmodern, 182 set, 238, 241–242 unified, xix, 246 thing, 38–39, 43, 84, 87, 94n22, 95n26, 144 itself, 38 thinking, x–xi, xiii–xiv, 16, 22, 25–26, 28n2, 43, 49, 56, 58–60, 62–63, 65, 75–78, 82, 125n21, 142–147, 182, 185, 186n1, 195, 197, 204– 206, 218, 225, 229, 240–242 artistic, 180 border, 166–167 Christian, 61 critical, xviii, 190–195, 197, 204–205 engaged, 181 geophilosophical, 162 imaginative, xiv metaphysical, 80 non-philosophical, 241–242 philosophical, 57, 162, 245 radical, 228, 231 religious, 56, 175 representational, 197 secular, 246 theological, 230 Tillich, Paul, 218 time, 57–58, 81, 89, 106, 126n24, 159–160, 171, 202, 214, 230–231 to-come, xix–xx, 212–217, 227, 230, 232, 234, 248 Tolstoy, Leo, 171 totality, xii, 39–41, 43, 127n32, 138, 182 totalization, 10, 39, 167 Tracy, David, 3 tradition, 193–195, 201, 223, 258, 265 Advaita, 87 analytic, 71–72, 74, 77, 99–100

293

axio-theological, 254 Buddhist, 134, 139, 141 Christian, 9–10, 83, 140 continental, xvii, 109, 119, 178 cumulative, 184 East Asian, xv, 131, 133, 144 Greek patristic, 82 mystico-theological, 254 philosophical, x–xi, xiii–xiv, xxin1, 22–23, 59, 72, 109, 119, 140, 228 physico-theological, 254 psycho-theological, 254 religious, 26, 135, 268, 269n1 theological, 254 Western, 140, 154, 167, 228 Trakakis, N.N., xiv–xv, xxi, 95n28, 99, 114, 117, 117–118nn1–4, 120n7, 273 transcendence, xiii, xvii, 35–37, 43, 48–50, 184, 199, 206, 218, 243 Christian, 162 divine, xiii, 43 human, xii, 40, 43 transcendent, xiii, 24, 36, 47, 50, 58–59, 60, 67, 100, 117n2, 135, 186, 206, 227 values, 60–61 Tremblay, Jacynthe, 50n1 Trinity, the, 85, 90n5, 222, 229 truth, 6, 48, 73–75, 90n3, 100, 103– 104, 113, 115, 117n2, 118n4, 120n8, 124n18, 125n21, 136, 141, 143, 148n13, 201, 222–223, 226, 232, 265 absolute, 20, 117n1 -claims, 115 degrees of, 94n22 ultimate, 24 universal, 8 ultimism, 76, 91n8

294

Index

uncertainty, 226, 229, 244. See also certainty uncertainty principle, 244 unconditioned, 42–43, 47, 82, 84, 93 understanding, ix, xiv, 7–8, 49, 81–82, 94n25, 104, 125n20, 180, 191, 221 Advaita, 82 hermeneutical, 28n1 scientific, 245 self-, 7–8, 28n1, 218 university, universities, xvi, xix–xx, 212–213, 215–221, 227–228, 230–234, 234n2, 253–256, 259–267 secular, 219, 257, 259, 269 unknowable, 88–89, 133–135 Urban, Keith, 17 utilitarianism, 80 value, 81, 138, 164, 183, 189, 193–194, 201, 206, 254, 259. See also transcendent, values Van Inwagen, Peter, 79 Vimalakīrti, 134, 148n6 Vishnu, 88 vitalism, 55 Christian, 61–62 naïve, 55–56 Yahweh, 160 yearning, 23–24, 29n14 Walton, Jeremy F., 191, 194 Warner, Michael, 189, 192–193, 197, 207n4 Weil, Simone, 60, 171 Westphal, Merold, 122n9, 237 Wildman, Wesley J., ix, xv, xx, 120nn7–8, 234n2, 253, 274

will, 13, 40, 76, 83, 142, 163 free, xiii, 73, 81, 85, 173, 221 Williams, Rowan, xviii, 189, 195, 200–206 Winquist, Charles E., 182, 186n2 wisdom, 13, 65, 76, 100, 196, 207, 223, 259 witness, 145 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 80, 200, 205, 224 Wolff, Christian, 221 Wood, David, 190, 205 world, xix, 7, 11, 25–26, 30n19, 48, 59, 63, 76–78, 83, 87, 89, 111, 133, 136, 138–139, 143, 166, 169, 179, 196, 198–199, 201, 203, 205–206, 211–214, 224, 227, 230–231, 248, 250 academic, 253, 258 angelic, 83 Christ-, 246 created, 83–84, 89, 93n18 eternal, 230 life, 156, 216, 232 natural, 197 noumenal, 135, 144, 225 outer, 94n25 phenomenal, 140 physical, 83–86 94n22, 254 political, 177 post-metaphysical, 225 religions, 14, 101, 108–110, 112, 116, 124n20 system, 166–167 temporal, 230 timeless, 92n14 worldview, x, 137, 267 Christian, 74, 82 dualist, 82 masculinist, 27

Index pre-Copernican, 227 religious, xx scientific, 247 worship, 88–89, 93, 139, 201–202, 204–205, 218

Young, Robert J.C., 164 Zarathustra, 231 Žižek, Slavoj, 82, 165, 237–238 Zizioulas, John, 93n17

295