D. Z. Phillips

The World and ‘I’

‘What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world!’ 109 ‘What brings the self into philosophy is the fact that “the world is my world.”’ 110 So wrote Wittgenstein in his Notebooks and the Tractatus , respectively.

Religious Beliefs and Language-Games

Many philosophers of religion have protested against the philosophical assertion that religious beliefs must be recognised as distinctive language-games. They feel that such an assertion gives the misleading impression that these language-games are cut off from all others. This protest has been made by Ronald Hepburn, John Hick, and Kai Nielsen, to give but three examples. Hepburn says, ‘Within traditional Christian theology … questions about the divine existence cannot be deflected into the question, “Does ‘God’ play an intelligible role in the language-game?”’1 Hick thinks that there is something wrong in saying that ‘The logical implications of religious statements do not extend across the border of the Sprachspiel into assertions concerning the character of the universe beyond that fragment of it which is the religious speech of human beings.’2 Nielsen objects to the excessive compartmentalisation of modes of social life involved in saying that religious beliefs are distinctive language-games, and argues that ‘Religious discourse is not something isolated, sufficient unto itself’.3 ‘Although “Reality” may be systematically ambiguous … what constitutes evidence, or tests for the truth or reliability of specific claims, is not completely idiosyncratic to the context or activity we are talking about. Activities are not that insulated.’4

R. S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God

Preface - Introduction - Gestures and Challenges - Earth to Earth - Testing the Spirits - An Inadequate Language? - Waiting for God - Gods Reflections - Presence and Absence - Gods Dialectic - Betwixt and Between - A Sacrifice of Language? - Selective Biography and Bibliography - Bibliography - Index

On Really Believing

It is widely assumed in contemporary philosophy of religion that if a philosopher wishes to give an analytic account of religious belief, one which seeks to clarify the grammar of that belief, he must choose between realism and non-realism. These, it is thought, are the only philosophical alternatives open to him. According to Terence Penelhum, ‘Most atheists and agnostics are theological realists, and obviously most defenders and apologists for faith are also.’1 Most, but not all, for, it is said, on the margins of the dispute between belief and unbelief are those philosophers and theologians who give non-realist accounts of these alternatives. According to realists, the non-realist analyses fail to capture the essence of belief and atheism.

Can Religion be Explained Away

Acknowledgements - List of Contributors - Introduction - PART 1: ANIMISM AND RELIGION - Is Animism Alive and Well? R.Eldrige - Is Animism Alive and Well? A Response to Professor Eldrige M.von der Ruhr - PART 2: IS RELIGION THE PRODUCT OF PROJECTION? - Is Religion the Product of Wishful Thinking? L.Hertzberg - Projection: A Metaphor in Search of a Theory? V.A.Harvey - PART 3: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND RELIGION - Psychoanalysis as Ultimate Explanation J.Deigh - Psychoanalysis as Ultimate Explanation of Religion i.Dilman - PART 4: RELIGION AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT - Sources of the Selfs Sense of Itself: A Theistic Reading of Modernity S.Mulhall - Doing Justice or Giving the Devil His Due? P.Winch - PART 5: RELIGION AS THE OPIUM OF THE PEOPLE - Is Religion the Opium of the People? K.Nielsen - Is Religion the Opium of the People? A Reply to Kai Nielsen D.McLellan -PART 6: IS IMMORTALITY AN ILLUSION? - Dislocating the Soul D.Z.Phillips - Immortality Without Metaphysics J.Hyman - PART 7: VOICES IN DISCUSSION D.Z.Phillips - Index

On Not Understanding God

Theodicies are an extreme example of the philosophical reluctance to accept that there may be something beyond human understanding; not something accidentally or temporarily beyond it, but something necessarily beyond human understanding. Secular explanations, offered as alternatives to theodicies, exemplify the same reluctance. That something could be necessarily beyond human understanding seems to be an intolerable thought, the denial of a philosophical vocation. Surely, it is said, the philosopher must seek to understand anything. But, then, might not a philosopher come to understand that there is something beyond human understanding? My aim in this essay is to show that the great divide in contemporary philosophy of religion, is not between those who offer religious explanations, and those who offer non-religious explanations, of the limits of human existence, but between those who recognise and those who do not recognise, that the limits of human existence are beyond human understanding.

Bad Faith and Sartre's Waiter

What is one to make of Sartres treatment of his waiter in one of his famous analyses of bad faith? The example is supposed to be an obvious one, but the more we examine it, the less obvious it becomes. Let us remind ourselves of Sartres example: Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He comes toward the patrons with a step a little too quick. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with a recklessness of a tight-rope walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand.

Philosophy, Theology and the Reality of God

What kind of philosophical and theological account does the concept of divine reality call for? To answer this question one must determine the grammar of the concept to be investigated. All too often in the case of the reality of God this requirement has been overlooked or taken for granted. Because the question of divine reality can be construed as ‘Is God real or not?’ it has often been assumed that the dispute between the believer and the unbeliever is over a matter of fact. The philosophical investigation of the reality of God then becomes the philosophical investigation appropriate to an assertion of a matter of fact. That this is a misrepresentation of the religious concept is made obvious by a brief comparison of talk about facts with talk about God.

Faith after foundationalism : Plantinga-Rorty-Lindbeck-Berger : critiques and alternatives

Can There Be A Religious Epistemology? * Foundationalism and Religion: A Philosophical Scandal * The Reformed Challenge to Foundationalism * Preliminary Criticism of the Reformed Challenge * Basic Propositions: Reformed Epistemology and Wittgensteins On Certainty * Epistemology and Justification by Faith * Religion and Epistemolgy * A Reformed Epistemology? Religious and Non-Religious Perspectives * Philosophy, Description and Religion Manners Without Grammar * The Hermeneutic Option * Optional Descriptions? The Hidden Values of Hermeneutics * The Sociologising of Values * Religion in the Marketplace Grammar And Theology * Grammar and the Nature of DoctrineGrammar and Doctrinal DisagreementGrammar Without FoundationsGrammarians and Guardians Religion And Concept-Formation * Epistemological MysteriesA Place for MysteryMorality, Grace and Concept-FormationReligious Concepts: Misunderstanding and Lack of Understanding

Religion in Wittgenstein’s Mirror

There is a well-known remark in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations which even some philosophers sympathetic to his work have found very hard to accept. It reads: Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it. For it cannot give it any foundation either. It leaves everything as it is. (PI, i, para. 24) Surely, it is said, that is carrying matters too far. Wittgenstein’s hyperbole should be excused as a harmless stylistic flourish.