Grammars of Faith : a Critical Evaluation of D.Z
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Grammars of faith : a critical evaluation of D.Z. Phillips's philosophy of religion Bloemendaal, P.F. Citation Bloemendaal, P. F. (2006, February 22). Grammars of faith : a critical evaluation of D.Z. Phillips's philosophy of religion. Philosophical Studies. Peeters, Leuven. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4454 Version: Corrected Publisher’s Version Licence agreement concerning inclusion of License: doctoral thesis in the Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4454 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable). 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina I Grammars of Faith A Critical Evaluation of D.Z. Phillips’s Philosophy of Religion P.F. BLOEMENDAAL 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina II 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina III GRAMMARS OF FAITH A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF D.Z. PHILLIPS’S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van Doctor aan de Universiteit Leiden, op gezag van de Rector Magnificus Dr. D.D. Breimer, hoogleraar in de faculteit der Wiskunde en Natuurwetenschappen en die der Geneeskunde, volgens besluit van het College voor Promoties te verdedigen op woensdag 22 februari 2006 te klokke 15:15 uur door Peter Frederik Bloemendaal geboren te Den Haag in 1969 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina IV Leden van de promotie-commissie: Promotor: Prof. dr. H.J. Adriaanse Copromotor: Prof. dr. mr. H. Philipse Referent: Dr. B.R. Clack Overige leden: Prof. dr. W.B. Drees Prof. dr. B.G. Sundholm De totstandkoming van dit proefschrift werd mede mogelijk gemaakt door de Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO). Van dit proefschrift is ook een handelseditie verschenen bij uitgeverij Peeters te Leuven onder ISBN 90-429-1744-X 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina V TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ................... XI Part I Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion ....... 1 1. The earlier period ............... 7 1.1 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ......... 7 1.1.1 Das Leben der Erkenntnis ......... 10 1.1.2 Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches ..... 14 1.1.3 The fusion of the logical and the ethical.... 25 1.2 A lecture on ethics ............. 35 1.2.1 Absolute and relative value ........ 37 1.2.2 Talking nonsense ............ 42 2. The later period................ 45 2.1 Philosophical Investigations .......... 45 2.1.1 The nature of philosophy ......... 47 2.1.2 Grammar, language-game, form of life ..... 52 2.2 Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough........ 70 2.2.1 Ritual and explanation .......... 72 2.2.2 Possibilities of religious meaning ...... 80 2.3 Lectures on religious belief .......... 83 2.3.1 Judgement Day ............ 84 2.3.2 An expressivist account of religious language? . 90 2.3.3 A passionate commitment ......... 93 Part II From Wittgenstein to Wittgensteinianism . .....101 3. The Wittgensteinian School of philosophy of religion . 105 3.1 The roots of the School ............105 3.1.1 Rush Rhees .............105 3.1.2 Peter Winch .............110 3.1.3 Norman Malcolm............115 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina VI VI TABLE OF CONTENTS 3.2 D. Z. Phillips: The Concept of Prayer .......120 3.2.1 The Concept of Prayer, Wittgenstein and Wittgen- steinians...............121 3.2.2 The Concept of Prayer and philosophical clarification 127 3.2.3 The Concept of Prayer and philosophical understanding 138 3.2.4 An unscholarly charge?..........145 Part III Phillips’s Philosophy of Religion . .......151 4. Philosophy, description, and contemplation .......155 4.1 The notion of contemplation ..........156 4.2 A contemplative philosophy ..........165 4.2.1 The independent nature of philosophical enquiry . 166 4.2.2 The disinterested nature of philosophical enquiry . 186 4.2.3 Philosophical wonder ..........203 4.3 From description to contemplation ........207 5. Religion and reductionism ............211 5.1 Hume’s legacy: Dialogues Concening Natural Religion . 214 5.2 The inheritors of Hume’s legacy .........231 5.3 Other possibilities of meaning..........253 6. Miracles ..................267 6.1 A miracle defined .............267 6.2 Miracles and testimony ............272 6.3 Miracles and laws of nature ..........278 6.4 The religious concept of a miracle ........287 7. Immortality .................297 7.1 The doctrine of the resurrection .........297 7.2 Our dislocated soul .............300 7.3 Pictures of the soul .............307 7.4 Our immortal soul .............311 7.5 Truth and descriptive adequacy .........315 8. The reality of God ...............327 8.1 Realism and non-realism ...........327 8.2 Theological realism is methodologically incoherent . 334 8.3 Theological realism is descriptively inadequate ....352 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina VII TABLE OF CONTENTS VII 9. A revisionist account of religious belief? .......383 9.1 Descriptive license .............386 9.2 Superstition ...............393 9.2.1 The nature of superstition .........395 9.2.2 Religious belief and superstition .......403 9.3 Grammars of faith .............412 Afterword ..................423 Select bibliography ................429 Index ....................439 Samenvatting .................445 CV.....................449 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina VIII 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina IX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Although most books are written by a single individual, no book is the work of but a single person. This book is no exception. There are numer- ous persons who have, directly or indirectly, helped to give it its shape and substance. In particular, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Leiden Institute for the Study of Religion (LISOR) and at the Netherlands School for Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion (NOSTER). Their comments on my work were sometimes critical, often encouraging, and always rewarding. Also, I am deeply grateful to Dr. P. M. S. Hacker who was kind enough to read an earlier draft of the first part of this book. His comments were of great help, and have kept me from committing a number of grave errors to paper. Any mistakes that remain are, needless to say, of my own making. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) which funded this research project. 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina X 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina XI PREFACE This book is divided into three parts. While it would be possible to read each part as a more or less self-contained unit, dealing with its own par- ticular set of questions, taken together they form a single study. Each part plays its own role in achieving the book’s main aim. That aim is to present a critical discussion of D. Z. Phillips’s philosophy of religion. Reading Phillips’s work, one can hardly fail to be impressed both by its sheer volume, as well as by the breadth of its scope. Phillips’s first book appeared in 1965, and the past four decades or so have seen the publication of well over fifteen titles. In addition, he has edited and annotated various works, including two collections of Rush Rhees’s papers, and has con- tributed numerous articles to philosophical journals. The subjects Phillips engages with cover a wide range of philosophy: from logic to ethics, from the philosophy of literature to the philosophy of education. By far the larger part of his writings, however, is concerned with the philosophy of religion, and it is for his work in this area that Phillips is best known. Despite the differences in the problems and questions Phillips addresses, his work reflects a unified approach, an approach which is derived, first and foremost, from Ludwig Wittgenstein. The extent to which Phillips’s work is inspired by Wittgenstein’s mature philosophy can hardly be exag- gerated. To be sure, Phillips makes no secret of this. He readily acknowl- edges that his conception of philosophy has been shaped by Wittgenstein’s work. He repeatedly refers his audience to Wittgenstein, quoting at length from his writings. Time and again he urges us to recognise the importance of Wittgenstein’s philosophical methods and insights. In part, he sees his task as one of promoting a Wittgensteinian approach within philosophy in general, and philosophy of religion in particular. This is true from his ear- liest to his latest work. The Concept of Prayer (1965) presents itself as the first extended essay in the philosophy of religion influenced by Wittgen- stein’s philosophy. In Phillips’s latest offerings, Philosophy’s Cool Place (1999) and Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation (2001) it is still Wittgenstein’s voice which is heard most forcefully.1 1 Since research on this book was completed, Phillips has published two further titles: Religion and Friendly Fire (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004) and The Problem of Evil and The Problem of God (London: SCM Press, 2004). Unfortunately, these could not be taken into consideration for the present study. 8558-05_Bloemendaal_prschrift 01-02-2006 11:00 Pagina XII XII PREFACE Quite a few commentators have remarked upon the manner in which Phillips has appropriated Wittgenstein’s philosophical legacy. Unfortu- nately, their reviews have tended to be rather narrow and one-sided. First, they have focused almost exclusively on the question whether Phillips can be said correctly to apply Wittgenstein’s later methods to the philo- sophical study of religion. This underestimates the fact that what counts as a correct interpretation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy is a matter of some dispute. If Phillips has appropriated Wittgenstein’s views, he has done so in a critical way, taking them in new directions, developing, expanding and transforming them. One of the merits of Phillips’s work is that it has contributed to our understanding both of the significance of Wittgenstein’s own writings on matters religious, as well as to our under- standing of what a correct application of Wittgenstein’s methods to the study of religion might involve.