Approaching Philosophy of Religion

An introduction to key thinkers, concepts, methods and debates

Anthony Thiselton, Anthony C. Thiselton

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780281076765
• eBook ISBN: 9780281076772
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The book opens with an engaging history of the subject, mapping the major landmarks and outlining the main issues of current debate. The rest of the book falls into three parts:

Part 1: Approaches. Descriptions of the main approaches developed by scholars to study the subject, with lively case histories and working examples showing the approaches in action, and assessing their lasting value.

Part 2: Concepts and Issues. Brief introductions to their origins and evolution, highlighting their significance in the work of major thinkers.

Part 3 Key Terms. Concise explanations of all the words and phrases that readers need to know in order to fully grasp the subject.

Part 1

APPROACHES

1

Analytic philosophy

(a) Analytic philosophy in the British or Anglo-American tradition began with G. E. Moore (1873–1958), his rejection of idealism in favour of realism, and his defence of common sense. His work had affinities with that of Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and the earlier thought of Ludwig J. Wittgenstein (1889–1951). As the movement came into full flower it stood increasingly in contrast to what British philosophers called ‘continental philosophy’. This latter movement included existentialism, phenomenology and deconstruction (see below, Continental philosophy). In the 1950s the lack of interaction between British and continental departments or faculties of philosophy found expression in continental admiration of Martin Heidegger, and Gilbert Ryle’s blistering review of Heidegger’s Being and Time. One side stressed the need for linguistic precision, logic and realism; the other explored metaphysics, subjectivity and human consciousness.

Moore and Russell vigorously rejected the philosophy of Hegel, together with that of Hegel’s British and American exponents, namely F. H. Bradley (1846–1924) with his notion of the Absolute and ‘the Whole’, J. M. E. McTaggart (1866–1925) on the unreality of time, and the American, Josiah Royce (1855–1916). Moore responded to Bradley and McTaggart with an appeal to common sense: if time is unreal, ought we not to be allowed to have lunch before breakfast? If ‘reality’ is spiritual, does it not follow that chairs and tables are far more like us than we think? Warnock recounts his response in this way, and comments, ‘He [Moore] was far more exacting in his standards of clarity and rigour’; i.e. than Bradley and McTaggart.1

In 1925 Moore published ‘A Defence of Common Sense’.2 In this article he began with a list of ‘truisms’, including, ‘I have a human body’; ‘the earth has existed for many years’; and ‘here is my hand’. In 1903, he had published ‘A Refutation of Idealism’3 and Principia Ethica.4 Here he argued against the ‘naturalist fallacy’. We know intrinsically, he said, what good and evil are. In 1911 he became a lecturer in Cambridge; in 1921 edited Mind; and in 1925 he became a professor at Cambridge, with considerable influence.

Moore’s collaboration with Russell further enhanced his influence. Russell is said to have remarked that Moore’s influence worked on him as ‘emancipation’.5 His background was in mathematics, but he soon turned to logic. From earliest times, he had expressed reservations about metaphysics, regarding this area of philosophy as largely ‘unscientific’. ‘Facts’, he argued, are to be ‘analysed’ into atomic states of affairs, which, in turn, can be translated into simple propositions. Many believe that this approach was reflected in the early Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). But it has been shown conclusively that the Tractatus was not simply a version of Russell’s logical atomism.

Nevertheless Russell, like the earlier Wittgenstein, believed that complex propositions could be reduced to simple ones. Indeed with the addition of ‘and’, ‘or’ and ‘not’, Russell regarded the first complex layer of propositions as ‘molecular’ ones. An example suggested by Warnock is, ‘This is red, and that is brown’, which combines two simple propositions into a molecular one.6 ‘Atomic propositions’, for Russell, constituted the conclusion of analysis, and thereby yielded ‘truth’ or ‘facts’. Thus Russell introduced into logic his notion of the existential quantifier. He examined such negative propositions as ‘A round square does not exist.’ Such a proposition, Russell pointed out, is not to be taken to imply that there is such an entity as ‘a round square’, for which ‘existence’ is denied. An existential quantifier may be expressed as ‘It is false to assert that an x exists which is such that “round” and “square” can simultaneously be predicted of it.’ The logical notation ‘Ǝx’ simply means ‘for all x’, without implying that x needs to exist (see also Part 2, Ontological argument). Russell aimed at clarification, logical precision and analysis.

(b) The second distinct stage of analytical philosophy was the logical positivism of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. In Anglo-American circles the leading name of this phase was Sir Alfred J. Ayer (1910–89), who made his name through the publication of Language, Truth, and Logic (1936; 2nd revised ed., 1946). He explains this book first originated in 1933 as part of his argument against the possibility of metaphysics. The heart of Ayer’s argument was the principle of verification as the criterion of meaning.7 Later, partly in the face of criticism, he modified this to the principle of verifiability.

Language, Ayer believed, consisted of two types of propositions. First, there were analytical statements, which Ayer called a priori propositions. These, in effect were logical tautologies. They are necessarily true by definition. If I say, ‘The three angles of a triangle add up to 180°,’ or ‘Water boils at 100°C,’ these statements tell us nothing about the world, but make explicit some definition, or some principle of logic.8 All other language, Ayer insisted, second, consists of synthetic statements, or empirical propositions.9 The meaning of such statements must be established by the principle of verification (or verifiability). If they cannot be verified by sense-observation, Ayer dismissed them as ‘non-sense’.

Verifiability applies to those statements which are, in principle, verifiable if we are in a position to make such verification. Ayer was writing when, as yet, there were no space rockets going to the moon. Hence, ‘There are mountains on the moon’ was understood to be verifiable on principle; i.e. I could verify them if I had scientific and technological equipment to make such verifications. Ayer includes a chapter in which he argues that ethics and theology cannot be tested by his criterion of meaning.10 He concludes, ‘The sentence “There exists a transcendent God” has, as we have seen, no literal significance.’11 On the other hand, ‘All propositions which have factual content are empirical propositions,’ and therefore can be verified.12 Metaphysics are eliminated, alongside theology and ethics.13 Ayer is content to describe his method as philosophical analysis.

Ayer’s brand of analytical philosophy dominated much positivist philosophy in Britain and America for twenty years, through the 1930s to the 1950s. But critical voices were emerging in the 1950s, especially in the philosophy of religion. One such voice among many was H. J. Paton in his The Modern Predicament (1955). He discussed Ayer’s principle of verification, and concluded that this principle itself could not be verified. He wrote, ‘The principle of verification itself is not obviously either one [analytic] or the other [synthetic] . . . As he [J. L. Evans] puts it, we do not expect a weighing machine to weigh itself . . . The principle . . . is not . . . an empirical generalization.’14 It is not really a ‘serious’ argument, for it is simply positivism or materialism ‘in a linguistic dress’.15

The 1950s witnessed a host of reappraisals of logical positivism from its beginnings in Rudolf Carnap. In 1950 Friedrich Waismann, among others, proposed modifications to the principle of verifiability. He restricted its application more narrowly and focused on the value in showing how language was used.16 Further, towards the beginning of his Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who had ruthlessly used ‘analysis’ in his earlier Tractatus, now argued for its futility as such. He argued, ‘The speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life.’17 There are ‘countless kinds’ of sentences, not just analytic or synthetic. What is a simple’ proposition? ‘It makes no sense at all to speak absolutely of the “simple parts of a chair”.’18 He adds, ‘When I say: “my broom is in the corner”, is this really a statement about the broomstick and the brush? . . . I meant to speak neither of the stick nor of the brush in particular.’19 ‘If I said, “Bring me the broomstick and the brush which is fitted to it”, ...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chronology
• Introduction: Landmarks in philosophy of religion
• Part 1
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• 7
• 8
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Select bibliography
• Search names for authors
• Search items for subjects
• Notes