God and Skepticism: A Study in Skepticism and Fideism

198 Pages·1983·5.815 MB·English

by  Terence Penelhum (auth.)

GOD AND SKEPTICISM
PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES SERIES
IN PHILOSOPHY
Editors:
WILFRED SELLARS, University ofP ittsburgh
KEITH LEHRER, University of Arizona
Board of Consulting Editors:
JONATHAN BENNETT, Syracuse University
ALLAN G IB BA RD, University ofM ichigan
ROBERT STALNAKER, Cornell University
ROBERT G. TURNBULL, Ohio State University
VOLUME 28
TERENCE PENELHUM
University of Calgary
GOD
AND SKEPTICISM
A Study in Skepticism and Fideism
D. REIDEL PUB.L..I.S HING COMPANY
II
A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP
DORDRECHT/BOSTON/LANCASTER
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Peneihum, Terence, 1929-
God and skepticism.
(Philosophical studies series in philosophy; v. 28)
Includes index.
1. Skepticism. 2. Faith. 3. Faith and reason.
I. Title. II. Series.
B837.P45 1983 149'.73 83-6791
ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7085-4 e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-7083-0
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-7083-0
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada
by Kluwer Academic Publishers,
190 Old Derby Street, Hingham, MA 02043, U.S.A.
In all other countries, sold and distributed
by Kluwer Academic Publishers Group,
P.O. Box 322, 3300 AH Dordrecht, Holland.
All Rights Reserved
© 1983 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1983
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
For Edith, for Claire,
and in gratitude for Andrew
CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi
CHAPTER 1: TWO KINDS OF FIDEISM
Introduction 1
Skepticism, Classical and Modern 3
Skepticism and Fideism 14
CHAPTER 2: CONFORMIST FIDEISM - I 18
Erasmus, Montaigne, and Bayle 18
Skepticism and Faith 31
CHAPTER 3: CONFORMIST FIDEISM - II 40
The Coherence of Pyrrhonism 40
Belief and Will 43
The Pyrrhonist Stance 52
The Clash with Reason 56
Summary 59
CHAPTER 4: EV ANGELICAL FIDEISM - I 62
Pascal 62
Kierkegaard 75
CHAPTER 5: EV ANGELICAL FIDEISM - II 88
The Rejection of Proof 88
The Hiddenness of God 106
Faith, Reason, and the Heart 113
CHAPTER 6: SKEPTICISM, PARITY, AND RELIGION - THE
CASE OF HUME 120
Skepticism and Naturalism in Hume's Philosophy 120
Skepticism and Religion 131
Hume and the Parity Argument 139
vii
viii CONTENTS
CHAPTER 7: FIDEISM AND SOME RECENT ARGUMENTS 146
Evangelical Fideism - A Recapitulation 146
Two Recent Versions of the Parity Argument 147
Conformist Fideism and Contemporary Philosophy 158
CHAPTER 8: THE NATURE OF FAITH 169
INDEX 183
PREFACE
This book is an exercise in philosophical criticism. What I criticize are some
variations on a recurrent theme in religious thought: the theme that faith and
reason are so disparate that faith is not undermined, but strengthened, if we
judge that reason can give it no support. The common name for this view is
Fideism. Those representatives of it that I have chosen to discuss do more,
however, than insist on keeping faith free of the alleged contaminations of
philosophical argument. They consider the case for Fideism to be made even
stronger if one judges that reason cannot give us truth or assurance outside
the sphere of faith any more than within it. In other words, they sustain
their Fideism by an appeal to Skepticism. I call them, therefore, Skeptical
Fideists.
Skeptical Fideism is not a mere historical curiosity. Richard Popkin has
shown us how wide its impact in the formative period of modern philosophy
has been; and its impact on modern theological and apologetic reasoning has
been immense. In my view, anyone who wishes to assess many of the assump
tions current in the theologies of our time has to take account of it; I think,
therefore, that there is a topical value in examining the figures whose views
I discuss here - Erasmus, Montaigne, Bayle, and more importantly, Pascal
and Kierkegaard. So while I have taken some pains to present their arguments
in their own contexts, I have tried to evaluate them in a fashion that has
application to philosophy of religion now, and I have also tried, in the last
two chapters, to look at positions of contemporary philosophers that are
similar to theirs, and to suggest how the lessons we can learn from their
successes and failures can assist a better philosophical understanding of what
faith is.
The structure of the book is as follows. In the first chapter I attempt to
set the stage by a short historical discussion of Skepticism, which was seen by
the Skeptical Fideists not as a creature of Descartes' imagination, but as an
ongoing philosophical movement with its roots in antiquity. I then distinguish
two kinds of Skeptical Fideism, which I call Conformist and Evangelical.
Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the Conformist kind, found in Erasmus, Montaigne,
and, I think, Bayle, and try to argue that its appeal to thinkers of considerable
acumen can be explained, though not justified, in a way that deepens our
ix
x PREFACE
understanding both of Skepticism and of faith. In Chapters 4 and 5 I examine
the Evangelical Fideism of Pascal and Kierkegaard (as we find him in the
Philosophical Fragments), and try to show that, for all their insights, they are
deeply mistaken to suppose that the Skeptical critique of reason does faith
a service, even an unwitting one. The only argument we find in their writings
which has sufficient merits to support their case is one which I call the Parity
Argument - the popular argument which says, roughly, that the Skeptic
shows us that our common-sense beliefs lack intellectual foundations, and in
showing us this makes it clear that the assent that faith requires is analogous
to the assent we give, without resistance, to the tenets of common-sense. In
Chapter 6 I examine Hume's philosophy of religion, which can be viewed as
a sustained attempt by someone who takes this bleak view of common-sense
to fend off the Parity Argument and reject faith. I claim that Hume fails, but
in Chapter 7 I look at some recent versions of the Parity Argument in order
to show that its value for the Fideist is very limited. In the final chapter I
indicate some of the implications of what has gone before for our understand
ing of what sort of state faith is.
This study is limited in two important ways. I have, first, made no attempt
to argue the wider philosophical question of how far the Skeptics' assessment
of the powers of human reason is correct, although it has been necessary to
discuss the question of the coherence of classical Pyrrhonism. The issue that
concerns me is the narrower one: should a skeptical assessment of reason be
welcomed, rather than resisted, by the religious apologist? The second limita
tion on the study is that I have confmed myself to the Christian religious
tradition, which is of course the one which the writers I am examining were
defending or attacking. As scholarly knowledge of other traditions grows,
such a restriction may look parochial. I think, however, that questions about
the rationality of a religious tradition, and about the value of philosophical
enquiry or speculation to a religious tradition, have to be considered in rela
tion to each such tradition, before issues of higher generality about religion
in-general can be considered profitably. My competences, strained already
(as will be obvious) in what follows, do not extend to non-Christian traditions
sufficiently for me to go beyond the topics of this book at the present time.
In a work that discusses the limits of reason so often, this is, I hope, an
acceptable excuse.
Calgary, October 1982 T.M.P.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No philosopher can hope to identify all the sources of his reflections, but
there are two people without whose work I could never have made any
progress on the topics I deal with here. The first is Richard Popkin, whose
writings on the Skeptical tradition in modem times have been indispensable.
The second is Myles Burnyeat, whose scholarship and philosophical insight,
encountered in print, in lectures, and in conversation, must take all the credit
for any understanding of classical Skepticism that this work may show.
A good deal of the work for this book was done during two recent half-sab
baticalleaves, spent in Cambridge University. I am grateful to the University
of Calgary for those leave periods, and to the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada for Leave Fellowship support. I would also like
to express thanks, from my wife and myself, to the Master and Fellows of
Corpus Christi College, and particularly to Dr and Mrs Barry Cross, for the
warm welcome we received into their Leckhampton community on the first
of these visits; and to the President and Fellows of Clare Hall, who did so
much to make us a congenial academic environment on the second. I am
much indebted also to the members of the Divinity Faculty at Cambridge
for their many kindnesses and the stimulus of association with their work.
And our special thanks to Dr Joan Cooper and Jean Smith for the home
away-from-home we had at Wytherton while these things were happening.
Some passages in the chapters have appeared previously in print, and I am
happy to acknowledge the permissions given for me to use them again here:
'Human Freedom and the "Will to Believe"', in 1979 Transactions, Fourth
Series, Vol. XVII, and 'David Hume 1711-76; A Bicentennial Appreciation',
in 1976 Transactions, Fourth Series, Vol. XN, © The Royal Society of
Canada; "Hume's Skepticism and the Dialogues" in McGill Hume Studies,
edited by D. Norton, N. Capaldi and W. Robison, © 1979, Austin Hill Press.
I should add that some earlier reflections on the historical themes con
sidered here are to be found in my essay "Skepticism and Fideism" in the
volume The Skeptical Tradition, edited by Myles Burnyeat, to be published
in 1983 by the University of California Press.
Thanks are due, in addition, to the following for the approval of quota
tions: Selections from Pierre Bayle's Historical and Critical Dictionary,
xi