Table Of ContentBELIEF, CHANGE AND FORMS OF LIFE
LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
General Editor: John Hick
Danforth Professor, Claremont Graduate School
Claremont, California
Already published
Masao Abe ZEN AND WESTERN THOUGHT
William H. Austin THE RELEVANCE OF NATURAL SCIENCE TO
THEOLOGY
Paul Badham CHRISTIAN BELIEFS ABOUT LIFE AFTER DEATH
Paul and Linda Badham IMMORTALITY OR EXTINCTION?
Patrick Burke THE FRAGILE UNIVERSE
Margaret Chatterjee GANDHI'S RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
William Lane Craig THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT FROM PLATO
TO LEIBNIZ
Stephen T. Davis LOGIC AND THE NATURE OF GOD
Lynn A. de Silva THE PROBLEM OF THE SELF IN BUDDHISM AND
CHRISTIANITY
Padmasiri de Silva AN INTRODUCTION TO BUDDHIST PSYCHOLOGY
Ramchandra Gandhi THE AVAILABILITY OF RELIGIOUS IDEAS
J. C. A. Gaskin HUME'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
H. A. Hodges GOD BEYOND KNOWLEDGE
J. Kellenberger THE COGNITIVITY OF RELIGION
Hywel D. Lewis PERSONS AND LIFE AFTER DEATH
Julius J. Lipner THE FACE OF TRUTH
Eric Lott VEDANTIC APPROACHES TO GOD
Geddes MacGregor REINCARNATION AS A CHRISTIAN HOPE
Hugo A. Meynell AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF
BERNARD LONERGAN
F. C. T. Moore THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BASIS OF MORALITY
Dennis Nineham THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE BIBLE
D. Z. Phillips BELIEF, CHANGE AND FORMS OF LIFE
Martin Prozesky RELIGION AND ULTIMATE WELL-BEING
Bernard M. G. Reardon HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
John J. Shepherd EXPERIENCE, INFERENCE AND GOD
Patrick Sherry RELIGION, TRUTH AND LANGUAGE GAMES
SPIRIT, SAINTS AND IMMORTALITY
Ninian Smart CONCEPT AND EMPATHY
Wilfred Cantwell Smith TOWARDS A WORLD THEOLOGY
Shivesh Chandra Thakur RELIGION AND RATIONAL CHOICE
Robert Young FREEDOM, RESPONSIBILITY AND GOD
Further tides in preparation
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BELIEF, CHANGE
AND
FORMS OF LIFE
D. Z. Phillips
M
MACMILLAN
© D. Z. Phillips 1986
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1986
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
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
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First published 1986
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
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Typeset by
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Phillips, D. Z.
Belief, change and forms of life.—(Library
of philosophy and religion)
1. Religion—Philosophy
I. Title II. Series
200'. 1 BL51
ISBN 978-1-349-07920-9 ISBN 978-1-349-07918-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-07918-6
To
Rush Rhees
Contents
Preface IX
Acknowledgements XIV
1 Wittgenstein and Religion: Fashionable Criticisms 1
2 Knowing Where to Stop 17
3 Reminders of What We Know? 42
4 The Challenge of What We Know: The Problem of
Evil 52
5 Belief, Change and Forms of Life 79
6 Can There Be a Christian Philosophy? 104
Notes and References 120
Bibliography 131
Index of Names 137
Index of Subjects 139
Preface
With the present book, a certain cycle has been completed in
my work. In The Concept of Prayer, I first began to urge that,
in order to explore the grammar of the Reality of God, we
should look to the contexts of prayer and worship. Unsurpris
ingly, most of the discussions of this essay since 1965 have
concentrated on what they take to be its epistemological
presuppositions. Very little attention has been paid to the
analyses of the prayers, despite the fact that the whole burden
of the book was to show that epistemological considerations
cannot be divorced from such contexts.
In Death and Immortality, I tried to provide conceptual
reminders of contexts in which the notion of the immortality
of the soul has its home. I emphasised the essential differ
ences between talk of eternity and talk of duration.
In providing conceptual reminders, a philosopher must also
be aware of the reactions of his critics, and of differing
philosophical developments in contemporary philosophy. In
the essays in Faith and Philosophical Enquiry and
Athronyddu Am Grefydd, I tried to come to terms with such
criticisms and developments.
Religion Without Explanation marked a change of direc
tion. I turned from contemporary philosophy of religion to
examine influential attempts in early anthropology, sociology
and psychoanalysis to explain religion away. Their efforts
turned out to be misconceived even in terms of the
methodologies of their own disciplines. In that book, I also
explored Wittgenstein's discussion in On Certainty of
Moore's truisms. I suggested that there are close parallels
between Wittgenstein's treatment of fundamental proposi
tions which are held fast by all that surrounds them, and the
way in which the fundamental beliefs of religion should be
discussed.
lX
X Preface
Yet, if fundamental beliefs in religion too are held fast by
all that surrounds them, what happens when what surrounds
them changes? It is evident that the meaningfulness of
religion has been challenged in a host of different ways. In
Dramau G wenlyn Parry, a discussion of the work of a con
temporary Welsh dramatist, and in Through a Darkening Glass,
I was concerned, in the main, with the various ways in which
religion and other ways of thinking may lose their hold on us.
The possibilities of meaning and loss of meaning in religion
are also one of my major concerns in the present essay.
It is highly probable that many philosophers will approach
Belief, Change and Forms of Life armed with certain
philosophical assumptions about the mode of argument they
expect to find in the essay. This is because there are
widespread philosophical theses concerning views which
philosophers of religion influenced by Wittgenstein are
supposed to hold. Over and over again it is said that these
philosophers discuss religion as though it were an esoteric
game, logically cut off from other features of human life. This
game, according to the critics, is said to be understood only by
those who play it, since the players themselves determine
what does and what does not make sense in relation to it.
According to the critics, it is said that the game cannot be
criticised from the outside, and cannot be affected by any
possible changes in personal, social or cultural life. No
advance can be made to more substantive matters until these
theses are refuted, since, surprising though it may seem, little
effort has been expended to check whether anyone has ever
held such views. That is why it has been necessary to begin the
essay by showing that, so far from holding any of the theses
which others have so confidently attributed to me, I have
actually argued against every one of them!
Textual refutations in face of persistent misunderstandings,
however, are no more than a preliminary step. The persis
tence of the misunderstandings itself needs explaining. It is
important to see how Wittgenstein's own terminology con
cerning language-games has misled philosophers, tempting
Preface XI
them to frame the unfounded theses I have referred to.
Rightly understood, however, nothing Wittgenstein says
rules out the possibilities of dialogue, understanding, criti
cism, change or decline where religious beliefs are concerned.
Confusion may or may not be present in religious practices.
Wittgenstein considers examples piecemeal; he does not
indulge in a priori theorising. He rescues us from misleading
tendencies of thought by the rearrangement of what we know
when not philosophising.
So far, we have done enough, but no more than enough, to
answer the often repeated criticisms of Wittgenstein's influ
ence on the philosophy of religion. But further complexities
must be faced. Wittgenstein's philosophical methods are
relatively straightforward when what he discusses in rescuing
us from our misunderstandings is the language we use when
not philosophising. What happens, however, when the discus
sion of the language 'we' use is one of a use of language in
which we do not participate? Here, Wittgenstein's methods
would involve discussion of uses, possibilities of meaning,
which, perhaps, we have never recognised, or which perhaps
we have distorted by imposing alien criteria of meaningful
ness on them. Such discussions are sorely needed in con
temporary philosophy of religion.
When religious possibilities of meaning are threatened in a
culture, some may take it upon themselves to remind the age
in which they live of the possibilities it is growing away from.
This can only be done when there are resources available to
do so. Such resources cannot be taken for granted. Where
they are absent, it may not be possible to provide religious
reminders in a straightforward way. Nevertheless, in such
situations, the task of philosophy remains unchanged: as
always, it has to endeavour to understand what lies before it.
'Leaving everything where it is', not adding anything to it,
involves giving an account of cultural turbulence as much as it
involves giving an account of cultural stability. Charges of
anti-intellectualism and conservatism against Wittgenstein in
this context are entirely misplaced.
