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Two Traditions and the Philosophy of Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Hugo Meynell
Affiliation:
Lecturer in Philosophy and Divinity, Leeds University

Extract

I want in what follows to suggest – it would take a great deal of space to argue the matter in detail – that each of the prevailing schools of philosophy, the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and the ‘Continental’, has its characteristic strengths and weaknesses; and that to make effective progress in the philosophy of religion, one needs the virtues of both.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1981

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References

page 267 note 1 After some hesitation, I have preferred the rebarbative epithet ‘Anglo-Saxon’ to the more euphonious ‘analytic’, since use of the latter has been thought to beg too many questions.

page 267 note 2 I use ‘conscious subject’ as approximately equivalent to Heidegger's Dasein and Sartre's pour soi.

page 268 note 1 Cf. Nielsen, Kai, Scepticism (London, 1973).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 269 note 1 Cf. especially Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1953)Google Scholar, and Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind (London, 1949).Google Scholar

page 270 note 1 This bizarre position seems approached by parts of Wittgenstein's On Certainty (e.g. sections 110, 204); but is set out frankly and fully in writings by David Bloor [e.g. Wittgenstein and Mannheim on the Sociology of Mathematics’ (Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 1973)Google Scholar], and Phillips, Derek L., Wittgenstein and Scientific Knowledge. A Sociological Perspective (London, 1977).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 270 note 2 Lonergan, B., Method in Theology (London, 1971), pp. 265, 292.Google Scholar

page 270 note 3 For a lucid brief account of Popper's view, see Magee, B., Popper (London, 1973).Google Scholar

page 272 note 1 Roughly, theologians work out the implications of sets of religious beliefs; while philosophers of religion pose general questions about the meaning and justification of such beliefs.

page 273 note 1 Pannenberg, W., Theology and the Philosophy of Science (London, 1976), p. 127.Google Scholar

page 273 note 2 Cf. Hirsch, E., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven and London, 1967), appendix II.Google Scholar

page 273 note 3 I am indebted to Michael Durrant for these objections.

page 274 note 1 It is of course true that the main hope of Christians has usually involved a resurrected body or reconstituted person.

page 274 note 2 To try to clinch the argument by such epigrams as ‘Death is not lived through’ or ‘One can survive anything but death’ is to neglect the possibility, or what may be the possibility, that though the organism perishes, the conscious subject, or some aspect of it, survives.

page 274 note 3 Philosophical Investigations, I, 243 ff.Google Scholar