Table Of ContentRECOVERING RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS
SWANSEA STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY
General Editor: D. Z. Phillips, Rush Rhees Research Professor,
University College of Wales, Swansea and Danforth Professor of
Philosophy of Religion, Claremont Graduate University
Philosophy is the struggle for clarity about the contexts of human
discourse we engage in. What we need is not theoretical
explanation, but clarification and elucidation of what lies before us.
Recent returns to theory in many fields of philosophy, involving
more and more convoluted attempts to meet inevitable counter
examples to such theories, make this need all the more urgent. This
series affords an opportunity for writers who share this conviction,
one as relevant to logic, epistemology and the philosophy of mind,
as it is to ethics, politics, aesthetics and the philosophy of religion.
Authors will be expected to engage with the thought of influential
philosophers and contemporary movements, thus making the
series a focal point for lively discussion.
Titles include:
Lilli Alanen, Sara Heinamaa and Thomas Wallgren
COMMONALITY AND PARTICULARITY IN ETHICS
David Cockburn
OTHER HUMAN BEINGS
John Edelman
AN AUDIENCE FOR MORAL PHILOSOPHY?
Raimond Gaita
GOOD AND EVIL: An Absolute Conception
D. Z. Phillips
WITTGENSTEIN AND RELIGION
RECOVERING RELIGIOUS CONCEPTS
Closing Epistemic Divides
Rush Rhees (edited by D. Z. Phillips)
MORAL QUESTIONS
Recovering Religious
Concepts
Closing Epistemic Divides
D. Z. Phillips
Rush Rhees Research Professor
University of Wales, Swansea
and
Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion
Claremont Graduate University, California
First published in Great Britain 2000 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmil!s, 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 978-1-349-41139-9 ISBN 978-0-230-59563-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230595637
First published in the United States of America 2000 by
ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC.,
Scholarly and Reference Division,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Phillips, D. Z. (Dewi Zephaniah)
Recovering religious concepts : closing epistemic divides I D.Z.
Phillips.
p. em. - (Swansea studies in philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Religion-Philosophy. 2. Knowledge, Theory of (Religion)
I. Title. II. Series.
BL51.P519 1999
210-dc21 99-30116
CIP
© D. Z. Phillips 2000
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 2000 978-0-333-74852-7
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made
without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with
written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to
criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and
sustained forest sources.
10987654321
09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00
To my Claremont colleague
Jack Verheyden
on the occasion of his retirement
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Contents
Acknowledgemen ts viii
Preface x
1 Where We Are: at the Mercy of Method 1
2 Return of the Monstrous Illusion 16
3 Epistemic Practices: the Retreat from Reality 24
4 From World to God? Searching for Mediation 45
5 The Friends of Cleanthes: a Case of Conceptual Poverty 63
6 Revelation and the Loss of Authority 82
7 Turning God into one Devil of a Problem 103
8 Miracles and Open-Door Epistemology 129
9 The Dislocated Soul and Immortality 138
10 The World and T 157
11 The Radiance of a False Eternity 171
12 In the Beginning was the Proposition -
In the Beginning was the Choice -
In the Beginning was the Dance 191
13 God and Concept-Formation 211
14 Where Are the Gods Now? Time for Judgement 227
15 Anglo-American Philosophical Culture:
Religion and the Reception of Wittgenstein 242
Notes 260
Index 21Q
vii
Acknowledgements
All but two of the essays in this collection were written in the
1990s. The essays have been modified, since their original publi
cation, to emphasise the continuity between them. I am grateful
to the editors and publishers indicated below for permission to
reprint.
'Where We Are: at the Mercy of Method' was first published
as 'At the Mercy of Method' by Claremont Graduate School, where
it was my inaugural lecture as Danforth Professor of the Phil
osophy of Religion. It was reprinted in Philosophy and the Grammar
of Religious Belief, edited by Timothy Tessin and Mario von der
Ruhr, Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, 1995.
'Return of the Monstrous Illusion' was first published as 'Notes
on a Monstrous Illusion', in Philosophy and Theological Discourse,
edited by Stephen T. Davis, Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, 1996.
'Epistemic Practices: the Retreat from Reality' was first pub
lished as 'Epistemic Practices', in Topoi, December 1995.
'From World to God? Searching for Mediation' was first pub
lished as 'From World to God', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
Supp. Vol. 1967, reprinted in my Faith and Philosophical Enquiry,
Routledge, 1970.
'The Friends of Cleanthes: a Case of Conceptual Poverty' is a
fusion of two papers, 'The Friends of Cleanthes' and 'The Friends
of Cleanthes - a Correction', first published in Modern Theology,
1985 and 1987, respectively.
'Revelation and the Loss of Authority' was first published as
'Authority and Revelation' in the proceedings of the Enrico Castelli
Conference in Rome on Philosophy and Revelation, Archivio di
Filosofia, 1994.
'Turning God into one Devil of a Problem' was first published
as 'Mysticism and Epistemology: One Devil of a Problem', in Faith
and Philosophy, 1995.
'Miracles and Open-Door Epistemology' was first published in
Scottish Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, Spring 1993.
'The Dislocated Soul and Immortality' was first published as
'Dislocating the Soul', Religious Studies, reprinted in Can Religion
Vlll
Acknowledgements IX
Be Explained Away? edited by D. Z. Phillips, Macmillan and St.
Martin's Press, 1996.
'The World and "I"' was first published in Philosophical Inves
tigations, 1995.
'The Radiance of a False Eternity' was first published as 'William
James and the Notion of Two Worlds', in Religion, Reason and the
Self: Essays in Honour of Hywel D. Lewis, edited by T. A. Roberts
and Stewart Sutherland, University of Wales Press, 1989. Included
in this paper is a portion of 'Between Faith and Metaphysics',
first published in Christian Faith and Philosophical Theology: Essays
in Honour of Vincent Brummer, edited by Gijsbert van den Brink,
Luco J. van den Brom and Marcel Sarot, Pharos, The Nether
lands, 1992.
'In the Beginning was the Proposition - In the Beginning was
the Choice - In the Beginning was the Dance' was first pub
lished in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 21, 1995/6.
'God and Concept-Formation' was first published as 'God and
Concept-Formation in Simone Weil', in Simone Weil's Philosophy
of Culture, edited by Richard H. Bell, Cambridge University Press,
1993.
'Where are the Gods Now? Time for Judgement' was first pub
lished in Religion and Relativism, edited by C. Lewis, Macmillan,
1995.
'Anglo-American Philosophical Culture: Religion and the Re
ception of Wittgenstein' was first published as 'Wittgenstein,
Religion and Anglo-American Philosophical Culture', in The Pro
ceedings of the 18th International Wittgenstein Symposium.
I am grateful to Helen Baldwin, secretary to the Department
of Philosophy at Swansea, for preparation of the texts, and to
Timothy Tessin for help with the proofreading.
DZP
Claremont/Swansea
