Suchergebnisse

I propose, in partial response to the rich essays by Millican & Thornhill-Miller and Salamon that religious traditions are too diverse to be represented either by a cosmological core or even (though this is more plausible) an ethical. Religious sensibility is more often inspirational than explanatory, does not always require a transcendent origin of all things (however reasonable that thesis may be in the abstract), and does not always support the sort of humanistic values preferred in the European Enlightenment. A widely shared global religion is more likely to be eclectic than carefully 'rational', and is likely to be opposed by a more overtly 'supernatural' project founded in revelation.

The Hindu Brahmanas record that God's reply to the question 'Who are you?' was simply 'Who': 'Who is the God whom we should honour with the oblation': an indicative, as well as interrogative! Might this also be what Aeschylus intended by his reference to 'Zeus hostis pot'estin' (Zeus, whoever He is): not an expression of doubt, but of acknowledged mystery? The name by which He is to be called, perhaps ('if it pleases Him'), is not 'Zeus' but, exactly, 'Whoever'. And most famously the God that Moses encountered, asked who He is, answered only 'I am'. What does this apparently evasive response imply for worship and theology in the light of David Hume's enquiry, how an unknowable God differs from an equally unknowable non-God? Rather than asking what God is we can investigate instead what worship is, perceiving our response to the Unknown as itself a revelation. In Orthodox terms, what we can share with God is not His Essence, but His Energeiai: not what He Is, but what He does.

Good reasons to "give up reason" are (i) naturalistic reasons that downplay the likely effectiveness of human mentation - these lead to contradiction if naturalism itself is reckoned "really true"; (ii) there are pragmatic reasons to license and enjoy imaginative stories that conflict with principles elevated as "rational"; (iii) mystical reasons, which take account of the revolutionary aspects of certain "religious" disciplines, and throw doubt on what we "naturally" take for granted.

Clark reviews 'African Philosophy: An Anthology' edited by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze.