Introduction: Questions for Contemplative Philosophy of Religion

• Published in: D. Z. Phillips' Contemplative Philosophy of Religion pp. 1 - 11
• Main Author: Sanders, Andy F.
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2007; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Aspects of religions (non-Christian); Philosophy of religion; Theology; Walter Van Herck; Wittgensteinian Philosophy; Good Life; Petitionary Prayer; Theological Pluralism; Prometheus; Draws Back; Philosophical Theology; Mario Von Der Ruhr; Von Der Ruhr; Joseph Runzo; Phillips Points; Wittgensteinian Fideism; Philosophy's Cool Place; Radical Pluralism; Agnostic; Contemplative Philosophy; Passionate Version; Sich Zeigt; Conceptual Justice; Ingolf Dalferth; Underlabourer Conception; Van Herck; Swansea
• ISBN: 9781032099682; 1032099682; 9780754662853; 0754662853
• DOI: 10.4324/9781315575773-1

Over the past forty-five years, D. Z. Phillips has developed, with constant reference to Wittgenstein, Rhees, Winch, Kierkegaard and Simone Weil, a mature philosophy of religion in a substantial oeuvre of more than twenty books and countless articles. Phillips gives an extensive account of the radical pluralism that is implied by his contemplative philosophy. Distinguishing between theological pluralism and radical pluralism, Phillips says that, unlike the latter, the former is a specific attitude to religions that has no particular interest in doing conceptual justice to them. Paying attention to the question of how contemplative philosophical enquiry into religion is practised, and what its goals are, inevitably evokes background ideas and assumptions about the nature and aims of philosophy of religion. Ingolf Dalferth begins his essay by distancing himself from the idea that understanding religions is not a matter of a fideist moving in closed circles of religious meanings.