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Understanding Understanding Religious Belief
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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I try in this article to shed some light on what it is and what it is not to understand certain kinds of beliefs, of which religious belief is the most prominent instance. Much has been written on the subject, and I make no apologies either for taking for granted a context for discussion, or for disregarding a number of familiar issues. I try, in particular, to explain why a rather curious thesis about understanding religious belief has found wide acceptance when, on the face of it, it cannot possibly be correct. I begin with one or two points about belief; I then take what I hope is a fresh look at two theses about understanding religious belief; and finally I draw some tentative conclusions about puzzlement, understanding and understandability.
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References
page 458 note 1 I shall not subject the reader to yet another exposition of a notion which has rightly become a stock-in-trade of the philosopher. Any one who finds this a serious omission should refer to Professor Gilbert Ryle's Concept of Mind, in particular chapter II.
page 459 note 1 Page 68, Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding, collected in Religion and Understanding, ed. by D.Z. Phillips. (I find no suggestion in the text that Phillips regards the passages as setting out importantly different requirements.)
page 459 note 2 Op, cit., page 69.
page 462 note 1 See, in particular, Wittgenstein's Remarks on Frazer's ‘Golden Bough’ (Synthèse, Vol. XVII, 1967, PP. 233–53).Google Scholar
page 463 note 1 Contemporary writing about understanding and religious belief either overlooks this distinction, or else fails to see its significance and develop its implications. I suspect that anyone who comes to think that religious belief and practice raise special (though perhaps not unique) problems about the nature of understanding must initially have been prompted, however obscurely, by considerations of congruity and incongruity of belief. Reflexion upon and conclusions about cultures where religious belief is congruous with other beliefs must be of limited and problematic application.
The reader is referred to Professor Peter Winch's article Understanding a Primitive Society (A.P.Q., 1964, collected in Religion and Understanding, edited by D.Z.Phillips) and to the literature it has provoked. Winch does not draw, or use, the distinction as I do.
page 464 note 1 Para. 336, page 43e of On Certainty, Blackwell, 1969 (Wittgenstein's italics).Google Scholar
page 464 note 2 In Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief, edited by Barrett, Cyril, Blackwell, 1966. See especially pp. 53–9.Google Scholar
page 464 note 3 Op. cit., p. 55.
page 466 note 1 Chap. VII, In a World I Never Knew, George Allen & Unwin, 1967.