Religion without Transcendence?

291 Pages·1997·28.631 MB·English

by  D. Z. Phillips, Timothy Tessin (eds.)

RELIGION WITHOUT TRANSCENDENCE?
CLAREMONT STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
General Editors: D. Z. Phillips, Rush Rhees Research Professor,
University of Wales, Swansea and Danforth Professor of the
Philosophy of Religion, the Claremont Graduate School,
California; Timothy Tessin, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of
Wales, Swansea
At a time when discussions of religion are becoming increasingly
specialized and determined by religious affiliations, it is
important to maintain a forum for philosophical discussion which
transcends the allegiances of belief and unbelief. This series
affords an opportunity for philosophers of widely differing
persuasions to explore central issues in the philosophy of religion.
Titles include:
Stephen T. Davis (editor)
PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGICAL DISCOURSE
D. Z. Phillips (editor)
CAN RELIGION BE EXPLAINED AWAY?
RELIGION AND MORALITY
D. Z. Phillips and Timothy Tessin (editors)
RELIGION WITHOUT TRANSCENDENCE?
Timothy Tessin and Mario von der Ruhr (editors)
PHILOSOPHY AND THE GRAMMAR OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF
Religion without
Transcendence?
Edited by
D. Z. Phillips
Rush Rhees Research Professor, University of Wales, Swansea
and
Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion
The Claremont Graduate School, California
and
Timothy Tessin
Lecturer in Philosophy
University of Wales, Swansea
First published in Great Britain 1997 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London
Companies and representatives throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-349-25917-5 ISBN 978-1-349-25915-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-25915-1
First published in the United States of America 1997 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
ISBN 978-0-312-17630-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Religion without transcendence? I edited by D.Z. Phillips and Timothy
Tessin.
p. em.-(Claremont studies in the philosophy of religion)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-17630-3
I. Religion-Philosophy. 2. Transcendence (Philosophy)
L Phillips, D. Z. (Dewi Zephaniah) II. Tessin, Timothy.
III. Series.
BL5l.R3486 1997
210-dc21 97-13671
CIP
© The Claremont Graduate School 1997
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on the Contributors viii
1 Introduction: Appropriating 'Transcendence' 1
D. Z. Phillips
Part One Transcendence-A World Well Lost? 5
2 The Ambition of Transcendence 7
Barry Allen
3 Transcending Truth - A Reply 25
Timothy Tessin
Part Two Transcendence and Truth 39
4 Transcendence and Truth 41
John Hick
5 Transcendence and Truth-A Reply 60
Stephen Grover
Part Three After Transcendence-Alternative Ways
of the Spirit 71
6 After Transcendence: The Death of God and the
Future of Religion 73
Richard Schacht
7 After Transcendence - A Reply 93
Michael Weston
Part Four Transcendence and Pluralism 111
8 Transcendence in a Pluralistic Context 113
Ninian Smart
9 Transcendence in a Pluralistic Context - A Reply 122
Joseph Augustine Di Noia O.P.
Part Five Transcending Death? 131
10 Death and Transcendence 133
William L. Rowe
v
vi Contents
11 Death, Value and Transcendence 149
Gareth Moore O.P.
Part Six Transcending the Human? 175
12 Transcending the Human 177
Marina Barabas
13 Transcendence, Genealogy and Reinscription 233
Michael Hodges
Part Seven Voices in Discussion 249
14 Voices in Discussion 251
D. Z. Phillips
Index 288
Acknowledgements
The symposia published here are the products of the 1996
Claremont Conference on the Philosophy of Religion held at the
Claremont Graduate School.
I am grateful to the contributors to the collection, not only for
participating in the conference, but for their generous support of
the fund which contributes to the holding of future conferences. I
am indebted to Helen Baldwin and Jackie Huntzinger, secretaries
to the Department of Philosophy at Swansea and the Religion
Program at Claremont respectively, for their administrative assist
ance, and to those graduate students at Claremont who helped, in
various ways, to make the conference run smoothly. I am particu
larly grateful to my research assistant, Keith Lane, for preparing the
typescript of 'Voices in Discussion' and other material. I also grate
fully acknowledge the financial support for the conference pro
vided by the Claremont Graduate School, Pomona College and
Claremont McKenna College.
As further evidence of the co-operation between Claremont and
Swansea, I welcome Timothy Tessin as co-editor of the series.
D.Z.P.
Claremont/Swansea
Swansea 1997
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Barry Allen teaches philosophy at McMaster University in Hamilton,
Ontario, Canada. He is the author of Truth in Philosophy and
assistant editor of the journal Common Knowledge.
Marina Barabas is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Charles
University, Prague. She has also taught at King's College,
London and at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Her
work is mainly in moral and political philosophy, and ancient
philosophy.
Joseph Augustine Di Noia O.P. is Executive Director of the Secretariat
for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices of the National Conference of
Catholic Bishops. He is also Professor of Theology in the
Pontifical Faculty of the Dominican House of Studies and
Adjunct Professor in the American campus of the John Paul II
Institute for Marriage and Family Studies, both in Washington
DC. He is the author of Diversity of Religions: A Christian
Perspective and co-author of the forthcoming, The Love That Never
Ends: A Key to the Catechism of the Catholic Church and Veritatis
Splendor and the Renewal of Moral Theology. He is editor in chief of
The Thomist.
Stephen Grover is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Queen's
College in the City University of New York and formerly a
Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. He has published papers in
the philosophy of religion and is engaged on a book on Leibniz
and the best of all possible worlds.
John Hick is Emeritus Danforth Professor at the Claremont Graduate
School and a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in the
Humanities at the University of Birmingham, England. His pub
lications include Philosophy of Religion; Evil and the God of Love;
Death and Eternal Life; God and the Universe of Faiths; An
Interpretation of Religion (Gifford Lectures 1986-7); Disputed
Questions in Theology and the Philosophy of Religion; The Metaphor of
God Incarnate; A Christian Theology of Religion.
viii
Notes on the Contributors ix
Michael Hodges is Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University.
He is the author of Transcendence and Wittgenstein's Tractatus and
of numerous articles. He is working with John Lachs on a book
on Wittgenstein and Santayana.
Gareth Moore O.P. is Prior of the Dominican Community of
Froidmont, Rixensart, Belgium and former tutor in Old Testament
and Philosophy at Blackfriars, Oxford. He is the author of Believing
in God: A Philosophical Essay and The Body in Context: Sex and
Catholicism.
D. Z. Phillips is Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion
at the Claremont Graduate School and Rush Rhees Research
Professor, University of Wales, Swansea. He is the author of
The Concept of Prayer; Faith and Philosophical Enquiry; Death and
Immortality; Moral Practices (with H. 0. Mounce); Sense and Delusion
(with Ilham Oilman); Athronyddu am Grefydd; Religion Without
Explanation; Dramau Gwenlyn Parry; Through a Darkening Glass;
Belief Change and Forms of Life; R. S. Thomas: Poet of the Hidden God;
Faith After Foundationalism; From Fantasy to Faith; Interventions in
Ethics; Wittgenstein and Religion; Writers of Wales: J. R. Jones; and
Introducing Philosophy. He is editor of Swansea Studies in
Philosophy, co-editor of Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of
Religion and editor of the journal Philosophical Investigations.
William L. Rowe is Professor of Philosophy at Purdue University. He
is the author of Religious Symbols and God; The Cosmological
Argument; Philosophy of Religion; Thomas Reid on Freedom and
Morality. He has held a Guggenheim Fellowship, has been a
Fellow at the National Humanities Centre and is a past president
of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association.
Richard Schacht is Professor of Philosophy and Jubilee Professor of
Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign, whe.r:e he has taught since 1967. He is the author of
Hegel And After; Nietzsche and most recently The Future of
Alienation and Making Sense of Nietzsche. He is the current
Executive Director of the North American Nietzsche Society.
His interests centre on issues relating to human nature, value
theory, social theory, and related developments in European
philosophy.