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Philosophy believes in
rigorous investigation into the nature of
reality just because it loves knowledge to be
certain and indubitable. There can be no area of
knowledge which can be excluded from such an
enquiry. Religion as an area of experience thus
comes under the scrutiny of philosophy.
Philosophy at present
considers that the enquiry is to be carried on
so as to make clear to our reason the nature of
the processes of religious experience, its
content, its effect, its cause and so on. The
apparatus of inquiry or rather the means has
been defined by some as an ‘intellectual
enquiry’ for that is all that so far as man
knows, helps him to make clear to him the nature
of reality. That this limitation of the enquiry
to intellectual enquiry is a serious limitation,
has been affirmed by thinkers who have come to
the conclusion that our intellect cannot probe
into reality for it is an instrument of
practical and limited action, secondly it
misunderstands the very scope of reality by
limiting it to human status and action, thirdly
that it is limited by its own assumptions and
categories of experience which exceed it,
fourthly that it is sense-dependent and has the
ideal of sense-certainty or finite-logic
certainty.
Notwithstanding these
limitations some thinkers proceed to utilize
philosophical intellectual method as a
justification of transcendent experience on
grounds of need for belief. Probability is
certainly a better thing than nihilism or
scepticism.
The claim that religion
should be independent of philosophical
investigation is of course unfounded. Though
religious experiences are immediate (even like
sensations), though they are as subjective as
sensations themselves, and even the ultimate
object of religious experience is beyond our
knowledge even like the matter and self of
ordinary consciousness (cognitivity), yet they
are facts which cannot be dismissed. However to
utilize intellectual to measures and determine
the nature of the religious experience and
value-experiences may not satisfactory, even
when the intellect is trained to the new area of
‘facts’.
Brightman and other
philosophers of Religion in America hold that
since we have not accustomed to use a
philosophical method in a certain manner in
certain areas and got skill in it could be used
here too. This naturalistic method is vastly
used in recent times and has had many votaries
who would make religion intelligible to all men.
The religious values
pose a philosophical problem in the sense
whether they are part of and constitute reality.
A belief in a hierarchy of values would make one
determine the hierarchy. We have already been
shown that there are instrumental as well as
intrinsic values and ultimately the reverse
process as to how the intrinsic sustains and
operates through the several instrumental values
in many ways. Indeed one of the most important
problems would be to determine in the light of
the intrinsic, the utility and function of the
instrumental and to determine their
instrumentality itself. Secondly no philosopher
of religion at present is prepared to consider
the instruments of knowledge themselves as to
how far any of them is the means to determine
value. We have yet to discover the
value-pramana, or that means of knowledge which
will grant us the value-cognition so to speak.
To say that this is a problem of philosophy is
correct, and this cognitivity-instrument has to
be detrmined by one’s consciousness as
knowledge-securing is also true. But is the
human intellect with its adaptation to human
values and practical interests capable of
deciding or discovering it is a philosophical
question.
That religion, science
and philosophy refer to the same world it is
true and one believes that they refer to the
same set of facts, which is not so true, they do
demand different areas for their operation in so
far as sciences seek the material sensate
knowledge, which is limited obviously, religion
seeks the spiritual non-sensate value knowledge
and philosophy seeks an omniscience about all
facts of science and values of religion and any
other too.
The real question for
philosophical investigation in religion seems to
be based on the extraordinary presence of
contradictory views about values and claims
allegedly religious. It is the attempts to solve
these value-claims that requires the
philosophical approach: this is its reason for
entering into the field of religion.
A candid analyses the
scope of this enquiry from the empirical
standpoint of inductionor collection of data,
analysis and synthesis, hypothesis, verification
of how far these are coherent. Finally
reinterpretation is necessary.
The philosophical
criterion to be used is coherence. Coherence is
explained as (i) consistency with the whole of
reality or body of facts. (ii) consistency with
all the known facts of experience, (iii)
consistency with all the propositions known as
true, (iv) explaining all facts and interpreting
them as related to one whole or Reality which is
assumed to be a Coherent Whole and One. This
coherence is stated to be something that is not
a static one, as new facts and value-experiences
about the Whole are coming in all the time, and
perhaps the Whole itself is no block universe so
that there is constant need for reinterpretation
of the Nature of the Whole or Reality. Thus a
static concept of coherence becomes nugatory in
a wolr or Reality that is apprehended as always
growing or expanding.
What has this to do with
certainty which is one of the claims of
Philosophy? Deway cautions not to seek
certainty for, that is impossible, since in a
changing and self-making universe the only
certainty is uncertainty itself : the Nature of
Reality becomes uncertain, indeterminate though
it could be tried to be made certain only by
being untrue to its basic nature. This
conception of coherence is a working hypothesis
and different from the idealistic coherence in
an Unchanging Reality within which changes take
place but not in the whole.
Current Philosophy of
religion thus clearly postulates that ‘there is
no way of securing objective truth except by
ways of subjective conviction’, secondly that
"it is only from beliefs that objective over
individual validity attaches to many of our
subjective institutions and experiences, and
that all proof is relative and not
absolute".Thus, it is
claimed that one has "theoretical relativism
united with practical absolutism”
How far this approach is
limited, is clear; the ground of beliefs is
rationality but the rationality being itself
thoroughly grounded in relativism we have here a
perfect spectacle of theoretical skepticism
combined with practical belief-certainties and
these are in turn based on intellectual
hypotheticals, based on sense-data, value-data
and so on. |
