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Contemporary Philosophies of Religion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
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In the present essay I propose to compare certain typical religious philosophies, with a view to discovering what degree of religious hope they justify; or what, in view of the nature of reality, they make of religious ideals. Philosophy, viewing experience roundly, taking into account both the uttermost that man wants and the evidence of reality, has reached different conclusions as to the relation between the two, or as to the consequent status of religious values in the light of critical reflection. There seem to me to be four typical philosophical verdicts of this sort: first, that the ideals of religion are illusory and vain; second, that its ideals are self-sufficient, and independent of reality; third, that its ideals define, or coincide with, reality; fourth, that its ideals are progressively efficacious, or may be realized. These four philosophies of religion may conveniently be termed: disillusionism, symbolism, idealism, and progressivism.
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References
1 I do not mean to assert that any of these books is to be identified exclusively with that theory which I have chosen it to represent, but only that the theory in question is peculiarly characteristic of it.
2 Op. cit., pp. 72–74.
3 Philosophy of Religion, p. 93. Owing to our scientific ignorance of those ultimate matters to which our religious ideas refer, Höffding refers to his view as “Critical Monism.” He objects to the term “agnosticism,” so it appears, only because this view “is inclined to assert that ‘the Unknowable’ is entirely different from everything that appears in experience.” Cf. pp. 88, 89.
4 Ibid., p. 107.
5 Ibid., p. 384.
6 Ibid., p. 376.
7 Ibid., pp. 207, 208.
8 Ibid., pp. 199–203.
9 Ibid., p. 207. Poetry is the only means of access to the “highest,” and may be “a more perfect expression of the highest than any scientific concept could ever be” (p. 376). Were Höffding to claim to know what he here only ventures to suggest as possible, his philosophy of religion would pass over to the idealistic type.
10 Philosophy of Religion, pp. 208–209. Cf. p. 350.
11 Ibid., p. 207.
12 Kinds of Doctrine, pp. 32–33.
13 Cf. Santayana: op. cit., p. 45, note.
14 From the Sermon on Self Deceit, quoted by Arnold, St. Paul and Protestantism, p. 239.
15 Meaning of God in Human Experience, pp. 161, 572.
16 Ibid., pp. 214–215.
17 Ibid., pp. 280, 268, 269.
18 I do not wish here to examine the validity of this argument, except so far as to say that it appears to me to illustrate the characteristic idealistic fallacy of identifying objects of knowledge with their cognitive rôle, and then inventing a type of cognition that shall sustain them during the lapses of finite cognition. I am here concerned not with the constructive arguments but with the religious import of the conclusion.
19 Meaning of God in Human Experience, p. 218.
20 Ibid.., p. 331.
21 Ibid.., p. 222.
22 Ibid.., p. 331.
23 Meaning of God in Human Experience, pp. 332, 336.
24 Ibid.., p. 336.
25 Meaning of God in Human Experience, pp. 296, 317, 453–454.
26 Ibid.., p. 454.
27 James, Varieties of Religious Experience, pp. 425, 426.
28 Philosophy of Religion, p. 102.
29 Quoted by James, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 186.
30 Development and Purpose, p. 372.
31 Development and Purpose, pp. xxii–xxiii.
32 Development and Purpose, pp. 318, 319.
33 Ibid.., p. xxvi.
34 Ibid.., p. 372.
35 Chesterton's Bernard Shaw, pp. 102–103.
36 Three Essays on Religion, p. 116.