Philosophy of (Lived) Religion

Of Philosophy, of Religion, and of ‘Of’

When we consider the future of the philosophy of religion, I think we should look critically at both the term ‘philosophy’ and the term ‘religion’ but also the sense of ‘of’ involved. Let me explain. While, in principle, neither term should be left unanalyzed, I want to propose a future for philosophy of religion that depends on revising the concept of religion with which we work. While taking note of the way philosophers of religion work in the Anglo-American analytic tradition, I do not propose to change this way of working so much as to change that with which they work. For good or for ill, I want to insist on trying to adapt classical analytic philosophy to a new task, rather than shifting to a different mode of doing philosophy. I well appreciate that philosophers from the various Continental or phenomenological traditions might complain that they will not, therefore, get a hearing. True, they have long made religion the object of their thinking. In the meanwhile, classical analytic philosophy of religion has fallen into something of a rut. While it has dealt with religion, it has not sufficiently scrutinized the concept of religion as commonly understood, at least in the West. What I propose, then, is not a new way of doing philosophy so much as a new product resulting from the application of philosophical techniques of analysis to a novel conception of religion.

The meaning of ‘of’ raises another matter, as Kevin Schilbrack pointed out in his response to my presentation at the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR). I also steer clear of that meaning of philosophy of religion where the sense of ‘of’ places emphasis on doing philosophy in some sort of ‘religious’ way. The ‘of’ of philosophy of religion is thus the ‘of’ that signals an application of philosophical methods to religion, not the ‘of’ signaling that this philosophizing one does bears religious characteristics. Choosing to make ‘religion’ a variable and philosophy a constant, so to speak, also means that I am not proposing anything like some new philosophical theology or speculative philosophy. In both those cases, in their respective ways, philosophy departs from the model of ‘garden variety’ analytic philosophy. I am, instead, proposing a relatively new notion of religion that will be the focus of a more traditional kind of philosophizing.

Of Religion

‘Religion’ for classic analytic philosophy of religion has typically been conceived as ‘beliefs,’ ‘doctrines,’ ‘theologies,’ and such. I shall call this conception of religion ‘cognitivist.’ As such, classical analytic philosophy of religion assumes religion primarily to be (or to be more interesting) in its propositional form. What matters in religion is religious thoughts or words. This point of view, I assume, is a relatively recent product of the modern historical phenomenon of religious confessionalism generated by Protestant and Roman Catholic Reformations. Historian Benjamin J. Kaplan has argued, for instance, that the modern stress on religion as belief came about during the early modern period around the time of the Protestant Reformation. Kaplan does not, however, deny that, at least for Christians, the command both to ‘believe’ and to ‘confess’ dates from the apostolic age (Pelikan, 2003). But, rather, Kaplan notes that Reformation confessionalism adds the most recent emphasis on and definition to an already well-entrenched trend in Christianity. The conditions set by the struggles over the Reformation intensified the insistence upon belief as the ultimate criterion of religiousness. In a divided Christendom, one was pressed to take sides in order to establish lines of loyalty with a degree of precision. Therefore, religion came ‘increasingly to mean belief in a particular creed, and a life lived in accordance with it’ (Kaplan, 2007: 31). The classical analytic philosophy of religion inherits this tendency.

Classical analytic philosophy of religion also, of course, reflects the dominance of Christianity in the West, and the resultant assumption of ‘religion’ in the Christian mode. Here, as I noted, the prominence of creeds—‘confessions of faith’—in both Latin and Eastern Christianity has made it easy to assume that beliefs are the essence of religion. And, even without the added tension created by the struggles of the Reformation period, Christianity always recognized its links to confessions of faith. Historian Jaroslav Pelikan has, for example, collected hundreds of creeds dating from the time of the early Church (Pelikan, 2003).

Likewise, Western philosophical traditions as a whole, rooted in medieval philosophical theology—Augustine, Aristotelianism, Scholasticism, Thomism—predispose Western philosophers of religion to make beliefs the focus of philosophical inquiry. Inquiries into the doctrine of original sin, the problem of evil, the paradoxes involved in Jesus’ dual divine/human nature, the validity of various proofs of God’s existence and so on—all have dominated Western philosophy of religion since the early middle ages. And though traditions of early modern Western philosophy of religion emerged in large part to rival the medieval world’s solutions to problems in the philosophy of religion, they actually maintained the medieval concern with such matters as doctrines and beliefs. Thus, since Descartes, the Empiricists and others sought—like the medievals—to reconcile Christian beliefs to new knowledge. In the case of the early moderns, the rise of modern science, skepticism and such challenged Christian belief. Thus, the philosophers stayed fixed in the world of religious beliefs.

Throughout its history, then, the precursors of classical analytic philosophy of religion presumed that what mattered about religion were the propositions it asserted. With these consisting of words, statements, not practices or feelings, this meant as well that ‘religion’ was, often, routinely identified with ‘theology.’ This identification lies at the basis of the frequent confusion between classical analytic philosophy of religion and ‘philosophical theology.’ By contrast, we might compare the way religion was conceived by a pre-modern like Francis of Assisi (1181–1226). Two aphorisms nicely capture Francis’ relegation of beliefs, dogmas and theologies to a place of secondary importance beneath something we might call ‘life.’ Francis is reported to have told his disciples that: ‘It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.’ ‘Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.’

Classical analytic philosophy of religion, therefore, sees ‘religion’ as a ‘spiritual,’ disembodied, if not entirely intellectual, object. Of course, these philosophers know about religious feelings, bodily practices, modes of religious social organization, architecture and the like. But these are not the proper objects of philosophy. What matters about religion neither has weight nor takes up space. Religion as a temporal or a historical phenomenon is peripheral to philosophic inquiry into religion. Classical analytic philosophy of religion thus has nothing to do with calendrical matters, such as feast days, cycles of practical religious observance, days of atonement, holidays—‘holy-days.’ Nor with the part of religion that reflects temporal processes of change essential to religion. Philosophers may note how beliefs change from time to time. But what matters is the belief, not the ‘time,’ so to speak. Again, philosophers may take note of cultural, social, generational, or inter-subjective aspects of the beliefs under examination. But, it remains the beliefs themselves that matter, not their embeddedness in cultural or social networks.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the monotheistic heritage of Judaism and Christianity has had a powerful, and powerfully unexamined, effect on the conception of religion assumed by classical analytic philosophy of religion. Religion presumes a discrete, bodiless, personal and ‘interventionist’ deity at the center of religious life. Such a view of the nature of religion as centering on a superhuman power suggests that people are viewed as on the brink of calamity. ‘Nur ein Gott kann uns retten,’ one might say—‘only a God can save us.’ Thus religion’s salience resides in its dwelling at the extremes in human life, in ‘crises.’ Religious people are on the edge, lurching toward calamity. Given this vision of the human situation, it makes excellent sense to see religion as an interventionist practice, which offers salvation from these extremes of crisis, calamity and catastrophe. The logic of religion thus understood dictates that salvation becomes the business of a god or some other higher power. The tendency here is to see religion as something wheeled in to ‘intervene’ in crises. But, is this the only way to conceive religion?

Durkheim did not think so. He develops a sense in which religion is the presumed nurturing basis for normal life. I am asking whether this different conception of religion can be the basis for a different philosophy of religion. Once we presume life to be a series of potential catastrophes, religion as engaging a superhuman being swooping in for the rescue becomes logically inevitable, or as the CogSci types would say, ‘natural’ (sic).

Yet, one is tempted to ask about the rest of life—when we are not, for example, ‘white-knuckling’ it during a rocky bit of air travel? We need authority and value to inform our sense of human flourishing. Does anything worthy of the name ‘religion’ provide that? While it may be hard to let go of superhuman power, a god to intervene at times of crisis, perhaps we should consider the alternative of a non-interventionist ‘sacred’ that Durkheim developed. This ‘sacred’ was for him an abiding source of power, authority, legitimacy and purpose. The Durkheimian sacred lays the foundation for human flourishing. Durkheim provides a language of transcendence, a grammar facilitating ways ‘good to think’ about human flourishing, but one that does not demand Intervention-Man to swoop in with his red cape to save the day. Buddhist Nirvana is precisely such a sacred. Nirvana sets the limits of the ultimate, sacred value that has given Buddhist civilization the core values informing it for well over two millennia. To Buddhists, ‘interventionism’ is the job of lesser beings, such as the devatas. Not accidentally, here is precisely where Durkheim decided to expand the definition of religion beyond interventionist theism by defining religion as the administration of the sacred.

Another Kind of Philosophy of Religion: Some Examples of such an Inquiry

I thus offer the idea that this different conception of religion as the object of philosophy of religion would generate another sort of philosophy of religion. Why? Since the normal objects of philosophical inquiry would be themselves different from those typical of the past, the end result produced by this new philosophy of religion would be unlike that produced before by classical analytic philosophy of religion. In this respect, the model of analytic political philosophy can serve as a model for a new philosophy of religion. Isaiah Berlin, Charles Taylor, Ernest Gellner and others show how the skills of analytic philosophy can be, and have been, taken into the political domain. Their analytically sophisticated, as well as historically informed, studies of toleration, liberty, equality, diversity, secularism, power and so on—politics ‘on the ground,’ so to speak—should serve philosophy of religion with persuasive models of how the new philosophy of religion might look.

I propose that in this sense religion would be regarded as ‘the administration of the sacred.’ As an abiding source of energy, identity, legitimacy and purpose, as framing a world of meaning, this (Durkheimian) sacred lays the foundation for human flourishing. As a kind of language of transcendence, religion in the Durkheimian mode offers a grammar facilitating ways ‘good to think’ about human flourishing.

But how, precisely, would this kind of philosophizing look? What objects would it take up, and what questions or problems would it address? Here are the beginnings of an answer to such questions. Philosophy of religion would apply analytic skills to this non-interventionist sacred as, among other things, involving affiliation of various kinds, as material, as concerning practices, as bound up with the emotional life, as embodied, as expressed in cultural, social and inter-subjective formations. Let us take these in order.