The Contribution of Philosophy to the Study of Religion

Arnaldo M.A. Gonçalves

IntroductionThe word philosophy is derived from the Greek words philia (love) and sophia (wisdom) and therefore means the ‘love of wisdom’. There are several perspectives we may use to approach the concept ‘philosophia’. One says that philosophy is a set of beliefs about life and death and the universe. Another says that philosophy is a process of reflecting and criticizing our deepest conceptions, opinions, and beliefs. An additional perspective implies that philosophy is a rational attempt to see the world as a whole. Another perspective claims that philosophy is the logical analysis of language and the elucidation of the meaning of

certain words and concepts. Finally, philosophy is a collection of problems in respect to people and for which the people we call philosophers give different answers. All these perspectives have two things in common: insight into humanity and questioning the world and logic behind the universe. What is the intent of religion? It is to connect humankind with the divine providing answers to the eternal questions: Why I am here? What is the origin of the universe? Is there a God and did he have any role in the creation of the world? Is there life after death? Therefore, this ‘feeling’ or domain of knowledge looks at the essentiality of humankind, our humanness, and the role (if any exists) of God and the divine in general in the destiny of humankind. Different religions, namely the three religions of the Book (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam), but also the so-called Eastern religions (Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Taoism) give different answers to these questions.1 All of them look to find answers to what are the role, function, and mission of humankind in the world. Hence ‘humankind’ is a common subject in the reflections of philosophy and religion. The field of philosophy that deals with religion is usually called ‘philosophy of religion’. We may define it as a philosophical examination of central themes and concepts that are involved in religious traditions (Taliaferro, 2007), a discipline of 200 years that debates the existence and nature of the divine, the relation of humankind with it, the nature of religion and the role that it has in human life (Wainright, 2007). We may also add that philosophy of religion blends with the history of philosophy (Ledure, n.d.).

1 Some of these religions don't feature any supernatural beings at all. Because they are objects of religious devotion (or fear), they are part of the natural order or God is identified with the totality of the natural order (See Murray & Rea, 2014).

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A Historical Account Hegel at the beginning of his Lessons about the Philosophy of Religion remarks that religion and philosophy have the same object, which is the ‘absolute’. To Hegel the role of philosophy is to develop and understand the necessity of religion, as philosophy and religion intervene in the same domain: the supra-reality. Aristotle argues in his Metaphysics that philosophy and theology have the same object, the Self in its inner form, as this one in its superior expression is no less than God. The Medieval philosophers (Anselm, Aquinas, and Augustine) looked to establish truths about God and the Absolute on the basis of unaided reason, arguing that God can only be known through revelation. Early modern philosophers like Descartes, Leibniz, and Locke have not given similar attention to theological questions but affirmed that some important truths about God can be established through philosophical enquiry. By the end of the 17th century, philosophers contend that one should only accept religious truths that can be established by natural

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reason: human reason can prove the existence of God and immortally and unveil fundamental moral principles. David Hume (1992) was more sceptical about the capacities of human reason and held that reason is unable to prove that God ‘exists’ or any other similar religious assertion. The only possible attitude for a reasonable person to have is disbelief or unbelief, he argued. Kant reacted to the aforementioned scepticism by emphasizing that although speculative reason cannot prove or disprove God’s existence or the validity of immortality, practical reason can, providing a firm basis for any religion that acts within the boundaries of reason alone.2 But he was even more clear when he said ‘everything that man believes he can do except good conduct, to be pleasant to God is simply a religious illusion and a false worship of God’ (Kant, 1794). Schleiermacher moved from intellectual belief and moral conduct to religious feelings and experience argued that the latter are the roots and grounds of humankind’s religious life and are appealing (Wainwright, 2007).

The 20th century presented contradictory signs about the relevance of philosophy of religion. Some philosophers reasoned that Hume and Kant already have made an 2Chandler and Harrison (2011) note that Hume’s influence in this area of philosophy is persuasive as contemporary discussions still take place within the terms he established.

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attempt concerning the truthfulness of God and the divine and there was nothing more to be added. Others reposition the focus of the philosophy of religion within the site of analytical philosophy (namely in the Anglo-American world) (Wainwright, 2007).3 According to Wainwright, five developments occurred in the past century: first, the impact of the works of Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Paul Tillich in speculative philosophy; second, the influence of religious existentialism via the studies on Sören Kierkegaard and his contribution to the study of religion; third, renewed interest in Thomas Aquino; fourth, the emergence of religious phenomenology by Rudolf Otto aiming to describe religious experience as it is experimented by believers; and finally, an effort to rethink religion by what is considered valuable within it (Wainwright, 2007). In the 1960s the resurgence of analytical philosophy originated through the works of Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore carried to the land of philosophy of religion. Victoria Harrison (2007) notes that metaphors, religious language, and religious experience configure the landscape for the relevance of analytical analysis of religiosity. By religious language she means written and speaking language used by believers when they talk about their experiences; this includes the language used in religious or sacred texts (Harrison, 2007). In her opinion there is a distinctive emphasis in the way believers and non-believers use words such as ‘God’, ‘love’, ‘fear’, or ‘passion’ that points to transcendental and metaphoric language. Analytical philosophy of religion aimed at reacting to the challenges posed by logical positivism and secularism that became prominent in continental philosophy and gradually overmastered intellectual circles in the United States, 3 By analytical philosophy we mean the approach to philosophy dominated with concerns of language, meaning, and logical analysis.

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Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Logical positivism argues that what distinguishes religion from philosophy is the central role assumed by revelation within religion. In numerous religious faiths (namely the three religions of the Book) belief in God and in the sacred is indisputable and cannot be denied or discussed; its justifications are basically non-useful or acceptable a posteriori.

The revelation is always exterior to reason and mostly to humankind (Anglaret, 2005). In contrast, philosophy concerns rationality, enquiry, and no revelation whatsoever. Philosophy cannot accept a truth without testing it and turning it into evidence or refuse to discuss an issue such as the truthfulness of the sacred. There are no ‘closed religious truths’ for philosophical enquiry. Hence, according to this view the only role open to philosophy or religion is to rediscover by practical reason what was already taught by faith. In the words of John Paul II (1998) in his encyclical Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason) ‘Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves’.

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The reaction to positivism in the field of philosophy of religion furthered three lines of investigation. Firstly, a sentiment of revival for the scholastics of the Middle Ages and the theology of the 17th and 18th century tracked by philosophers that practised the Christian and Jewish faiths. Secondly, the enlargement of the traditional subjects of discussion (God’s existence and nature, the nature of miracles, the problem of evil) to new themes: the doctrine of the Trinity, and Incarnation and Atonement (Adams, 1987).4 A third development was the recuperation of the epistemological discussion of Christian medieval philosophers (Anselm and Augustine). Stephen Evans (1992) claimed that faith may be a condition to discuss certain reasons for religious belief as the aim of philosophy of religion is not to convince nonbelievers of religious truths as personal feelings, emotions, and aims have an important role in the individual capacity to distinguish religious truths (Evans, 1992; Wainwright, 2007). The interest that began to emerge in the 1980s within the segment of religious epistemology led to the increasing study, within philosophy of religion, of the notion of evidence and of what is reasonable to believe, an evolution apart from the concerns with proof and certainty, a trajectory within the discipline that could have been predicted (Chandler & Harrison, 2011, p. 4). Another interesting development was the move from the old concepts (and discussions) of philosophical theology to more rational, universal, and secular enquiry. The demographic change occurring in most Western societies through movements of immigrants and refugees from less developed nations vulgarized the idea of ‘world citizenship’ and a set of moral rights and responsibilities based on minimal universal values. This

4 Robert Adams worked on the relationship of faith and morality.

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attracted novel interest across all the disciplines, and forcibly philosophy of religion.

Postcolonial philosophy of religion by the works of Andrew Irvine, Purushottama Bilimora, Makarand Paranjape, Bibhuti Yadav and others introduced a clever critique of the secular representation in modern philosophy of religion that provoked the transfer of the secular paradigm to societies that the West colonized but never understood. The views of religiosity, completeness, worship, and ethical values in Indian, Buddhist or Confucianist societies were dictated by what the first two authors call the Eurocentric paradigm, grounded in a male and ‘Omni-everything’ God that western philosophers of religious fantasy to extend the geographies they scarcely understand (Bilimora & Irvine, 2009, p. 4). This last development and the contributions of non-monist religions transformed the scope of philosophy of religion from a concentric Christian-Judaic investigation of the divine, religiosity, sacred texts, and institutional churches to a broader study adapted to modern times of cosmopolitanism, diversity, and religious tolerance. Final Commentary

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In the philosophical debate we part from the idea usually attributed to the philosophy of religion that everything in life revolves around the idea of the absolute. The methodology of philosophy has to do with conceptual clarification and propositional justification (Murray & Rea, 2014). It is not possible to transform the philosophy of religion into a religion of reason as the Aufklärung philosophers tried to do. It is only conceivable to try to understand the reasons why religions still exist in the 21st century and assess their necessity. One possible answer is to practise religion as an individual path, held by self-determination. But for most religious scholars if religion points to the absolute it would be imperative to interrelate religion to humankind’s liberty, seeing it in an understanding of the world that surrounds the believer. For the secularists and deists religion is a human singularity that is rooted in the human pursuit of the unknown. In itself, philosophy of religion has the fragility of complexity as it depends on two different methodologies: philosophical rationality and religious belief. This may be seen as a failure, but is rather an opportunity. To scorn rational coherence provided by philosophy would signify rejecting the validity of reason that guides every human endeavour. Each discipline, religion, and philosophy built a discourse with elements given by one and the others, a circular conceptualization that makes the philosophy of religion something different. By proposing the religious object as philosophical research we allow religion to not submit to philosophical falsification but to confront beliefs with human specificity, i.e. reason. Philosophy has no role in controlling the canons as it is constrained not to go beyond the limit of religion’s scope: the absolute. Sharing with religion the same image of infinity, philosophy preserves its highest requirement, i.e. to portray humankind with the divine. This challenge is the

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most ambitious as it transforms human adventure into a path to eternity.

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