Philosophy of religion's historical link to Abrahamic forms of theism

The current discipline of the philosophy of religion was not created ex nihilo within the modern university system but is the product of a long lineage of people who, in discussions with each other that extend across centuries, have reflected on religious beliefs, ideas, and sometimes practices. This lineage runs through early modern thinkers such as David Hume (1711–1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), connecting with the philosophical theology of seminal figures of the pre-modern European tradition, notably St Anselm of Canterbury (1033/34–1109) and St Thomas Aquinas (1224/5–1274). The intellectual tradition of the European mediaeval period, within which many of the formative debates of philosophy of religion took recognizable shape, was, of course, itself indebted to many earlier Christian thinkers, such as Augustine of Hippo (354–430), as well as to neo-Platonists and earlier Greek philosophers. It thus should be completely unsurprising that much philosophy of religion even today bears the imprint of the religious culture of mediaeval and early modern Europe, with its distinctive Greek philosophical roots. This culture was overwhelmingly theistic in religious orientation, although the forms which theism took were not uniform, having been shaped by different streams of Jewish,Footnote ² Christian,Footnote ³ and MuslimFootnote ⁴ thought. This heritage is still apparent in the continuing preoccupation of many philosophers of religion with those conceptions of God that are at home in intellectualized versions of Judaism, Christianity, and, to some extent, Islam, rather than, for example, within theistic forms of Hinduism,Footnote ⁵ Sikhism,Footnote ⁶ or African religions.Footnote ⁷

Despite its somewhat misleading name, in practice the philosophy of religion has never really been a discipline concerned with the study of religion in general, nor have philosophers of religion typically shown much concern with the study of specific religions. An analogy with the philosophy of language can be illuminating here. Philosophers of language study language at a very general level, discussing issues such as the nature and meaning of language. They do not usually study the details of specific languages, such as Latin, French, Chinese, or Arabic. If they were to study individual languages, they would probably be doing linguistics rather than philosophy (although the boundary between the philosophy of language and linguistics is permeable, with some theories informing both disciplinesFootnote ⁸). Unlike philosophers of language, philosophers of religion do not usually study the nature and meaning of religion in general. While there have been recent calls to make ‘religion’ rather than ‘God’ the key concept of the philosophy of religion (see Schellenberg (Reference Schellenberg2005), for instance), which on first sight would seem to bring the discipline more into line with practice in the philosophy of language and other sub-branches of philosophy, ‘religion’ seems to be too imprecise a concept to fill this role effectively without substantial elaboration (see Harrison (Reference Harrison2006) ). This problem runs deep because it is rooted in the concept ‘religion’. Religion is much harder to identify and define as an object of study than language.Footnote ⁹ No matter how different the languages of the world are, most people have very little difficulty recognizing them as languages (and the ongoing debate about whether or not non-humans have languages does not undermine this point). This easy recognizability does not occur with religions. In fact, the concept ‘religion’ has itself become a focus of disagreement and rival interpretation in many academic fields, such as the philosophy of religion, religious studies, and anthropology.Footnote ¹⁰

The philosophy of religion, then, is not accurately understood as the philosophical study of religion in general terms. The reality is that philosophy of religion has been, and largely remains, a discipline focused on the philosophical study of a limited range of religious ideas, religious beliefs, and, less frequently, religious practices. It is not improbable that many philosophers of religion only feel comfortable dealing with ideas abstracted from a single religious system (often Christianity with revelation and the trinity subtracted). It is as if a philosopher of language were to study only modern English, while passing herself off as an expert in language at a very general level (as if English just was language in general).Footnote ¹¹ The point here is that the philosophy of religion has typically neither been understood nor practised as the philosophy of religions.

That many of its practitioners continue to work within the narrow theistic framework provided by the Abrahamic religions has made the discipline of the philosophy of religion a target for excoriation. However, this western theistic focus does not strike me as problematic in itself. It only becomes problematic when it is coupled with the assumption that this narrow scope is somehow intrinsic to the discipline rather than a contingent feature of it. In my view, there need be no real tension between acknowledging the continuing importance of the historically informed focus of the philosophy of religion on western forms of theism, and responsiveness to the invitation to take the discipline beyond an Abrahamic framework by including within its scope religious conceptions that originated in other parts of the world.

Philosophy conceived as a global endeavour

Many voices have contributed to a growing chorus that advocates developing the philosophy of religion in a direction that will be more inclusive of ideas from a wider range of religions than it was in the past (for instance, Harrison (Reference Harrison and Harris2011) ). The case being made is compelling and no longer new. I would have liked to have been able to take it for granted in this article that there is no longer serious disagreement about either the intellectual legitimacy or the practical viability of the project that seeks to expand the cultural reach of the philosophy of religion by opening it to a more comprehensive range of religious ideas. However, this cannot yet be taken for granted, despite the fact that many philosophers of religion – myself included – have been involved in this project at least since the beginning of the current millennium (see, for example, Griffith-Dickson (Reference Griffith-Dickson2000) ), and also despite the impressive body of work that has been done by philosophers of religion under the banner of comparative philosophy of religion (for example, Levine (Reference Levine1994) ).Footnote ¹² There clearly are still issues in need of further discussion. One such issue concerns the relationship between the philosophy of religion and the broader western philosophical tradition.

Western philosophy is now generally, and rightly, acknowledged to be composed of multiple historical and modern intellectual traditions (Greek, Latin, German, French, Anglophone, etc.); nonetheless, it would be going against the stream to deny that it is a recognizable intellectual tradition distinct from other similarly long and multi-form world traditions (Indian philosophy and Chinese philosophy being key examples).Footnote ¹³ Because the philosophy of religion is part of, indeed a core part of, western philosophy, concerns have arisen about the viability of the project of expanding its disciplinary scope to include non-western religious ideas, religious beliefs, and religious practices. It has been objected that the intellectual tools of western philosophy are not appropriately deployed on ideas, beliefs, or practices at home within non-western religions.

It has been claimed that the project to expand the scope of philosophy by crossing cultural borders is intellectually illegitimate because ideas can only be engaged with from within the intellectual context in which they are (or were) at home. This claim strikes many as counter-intuitive and it is usually regarded as rather implausible by those not committed to a strong version of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis (which holds that the structure of a language determines to a high degree how native speakers experience and cognize the world, see Sapir (Reference Sapir1958) ). Notwithstanding its widely perceived implausibility, a robust arsenal of responses has been marshalled addressing this sort of objection to the project of making philosophy more culturally expansive. For instance, Mark Siderits introduces a culinary analogy, asserting, probably correctly, ‘that kimchi continues to be kimchi when it goes in a taco’ (Siderits (Reference Siderits and Ganeri2017), 79). He then rhetorically asks: ‘Why suppose we couldn't do the equivalent [to fusion cooking] in cross-cultural philosophizing, for instance putting the Nyāya concept of inherence to new work in the current debate between endurantists and perdurantists?’ (ibid.). I do not explore this objection further here, as it has already been widely discussed (for a survey of some of the main issues, see Connolly (Reference Connolly2015), 67–86). Instead, I focus on other concerns (which, as will become clear, I do not share) that have arisen over the viability of a more culturally expansive philosophy of religion.

The viability of the proposal to expand the philosophy of religion beyond its traditional range of study can be brought into question by noting that the religions of South and East Asia (for instance) evolved over a long period of time in the context of highly sophisticated cultures that had their own diverse and developed philosophical traditions. The mooted problem is that for a philosopher of religion fully to engage philosophically with the religious ideas of these cultures would seem to require that she performs the extraordinary feat of stepping outside her own western philosophical tradition and into an alien one. The suggestion that philosophers of religion need to step outside the traditional boundaries of western philosophy to cash out the promise of wider cultural reach for their discipline is what makes the whole project seem unviable to many. However, this way of presenting the problem relies on a host of assumptions, one of these being that the philosophy of religion is unredeemably wedded to one, and only one, specific philosophical tradition.

The notion of a philosophical tradition requires some elaboration to show that what is being proposed is not an extraordinary journey of cultural disassociation but can be more helpfully compared to learning a new skill, such as, to speak a new language, or to play a different musical instrument. Following Mark Siderits (Reference Siderits and Ganeri2017) and others, a philosophical tradition can be considered as constituted by the lineage of those who have contributed to it and those who are sufficiently well trained to be in conversation with them. Siderits illustrates this idea as follows:

The philosophical equivalent of monogamy used to be, and perhaps still is in many western universities, the dominant practice. However, a growing number of philosophers are now challenging, in theory and by example, the idea that philosophical work is always situated within a single tradition (the choices are usually Indian, Chinese, or Western). Seminal thinkers of the twentieth century, such as the Oxford-based philosopher Bimal Krishna Matilal (1935–1991), pioneered a way of doing philosophy that drew substantially on the resources of more than one tradition. With Matilal (Reference Matilal1986), the Anglophone analytic tradition and the Indian epistemological tradition were brought together to address philosophical issues.Footnote ¹⁴ Others, notable among whom are Jay Garfield (Reference Garfield2015), Jonardon Ganeri (Reference Ganeri2012), P. J. Ivanhoe (Reference Ivanhoe2018), and Mark Siderits (Reference Siderits2007), have adopted this strategy and provide a further practical demonstration that the practice of philosophy does not have to be confined within the boundaries of any single tradition.

This boundary-crossing philosophical work goes beyond the paradigm that has been provided by comparative philosophy, an appellation which many now reject on the grounds that, as Siderits explains, ‘implicit in that label is the suggestion that the Asian and Western traditions have their respective places in two distinct cultures, and that comparison and contrast are consequently the best we can hope for’ (Siderits (Reference Siderits and Ganeri2017), 77). The sort of philosophical activity briefly characterized and recommended here is not then a form of comparative philosophy understood in a narrow sense, as its goal is not limited to comparing ideas across traditions in their original historical contexts in order to understand the ideas and their contexts better. Indeed, the presumption is that the ideas and broader intellectual histories are already sufficiently well understood that they can be brought to bear on current philosophical projects.

Various names have been suggested for this new style of boundary-crossing philosophy, such as ‘fusion philosophy’, ‘engagement philosophy’, or ‘confluence philosophy’, but no single name has yet gained wide currency (although ‘post-comparative philosophy’ is increasing used as a maximally inclusive umbrella term). Arindam Chakrabarti and Ralph Weber (Reference Chakrabarti and Weber2015) prefer the term ‘fusion philosophy’, and they defend the view that fusion philosophy is an advance on comparative philosophy as it is a sign of a new stage of maturity within philosophy as a whole. Others, such as Michael Levine (Reference Levine2016), argue that fusion philosophy is not substantially different from comparative philosophy. Indeed, Levine strongly objects to the claim that fusion philosophy is the successor of comparative philosophy on the grounds that fusion philosophy just is comparative philosophy called by another name. I hold that there is a useful distinction to be made between fusion philosophy and comparative philosophy because, broadly speaking, the former is characterized by a higher degree of syncretic and creative philosophical work than the latter, yet I agree with Levine that the contrast between them has been overdrawn. In fact, I am sympathetic to Robert Allinson's (Reference Allinson and Mou2001) view that all philosophy is comparative, and that we usually overlook this because the comparisons being made are of ideas or patterns of thought within the same tradition (we might compare, for instance, John Locke's theory of perception with George Berkeley's). However, this discussion of terminology may be a distraction, for, as Siderits and others have noted, the lack of a commonly agreed on term is unproblematic because once this way of doing philosophy becomes normal rather than exceptional a special term will be unnecessary (Siderits (Reference Siderits and Ganeri2017), 76).

This wider philosophical trend in which the work of Jay Garfield, Jonardon Ganeri, P. J. Ivanhoe, Mark Siderits, and many others takes place is significant for the philosophy of religion in a number of respects. One is that it provides an effective challenge to the assumption that philosophical work can only take place within a single philosophical tradition that is somehow mysteriously connected to the cultural home (itself a questionable notion) of the philosopher. It challenges this assumption by demonstrating that philosophers actually can acquire expertise within more than one tradition. A philosopher has acquired expertise, in the relevant sense, when he or she can deploy the intellectual resources, including the range of argumentative techniques, of a philosophical tradition and contribute to the discussion taking place within that tradition. There is now abundant evidence that anyone who is so inclined, and has the available intellectual and financial resources, can become a student of any philosophical tradition. There is nothing in principle to prevent someone born and educated in the United Kingdom, for example, from studying and attaining expertise in Chinese or Indian philosophy, or of someone born and educated in China from becoming an expert in western philosophy. Indeed, many of the finest scholars of Chinese philosophy are European or North American and work in western universities, while many world-renowned scholars of western philosophy are Asian and work in Asian universities.

Yet another reason for the significance of this wider philosophical trend is that it has shed a light on the many conceptual pathways between what had previously been regarded as entirely separate philosophical and cultural traditions with firmly closed borders (see, for instance, Chakrabarti and Weber (Reference Chakrabarti and Weber2015) ). These pathways open where we find clusters of similar problems and questions that have been worked on in isolation within separate traditions (such as the problem of how to give an account of universals). These pathways provide new possibilities for creative, ‘convergent’ philosophical work (as exemplified by Ganeri (Reference Ganeri2012) ). This form of philosophical practice has a global reach insofar as a foundational presupposition of it is that any philosophical tradition can be regarded as potentially having something to contribute to an ongoing philosophical inquiry. The image of a philosophical tradition as a lineage of those who have been and are in conversation gives us a way of understanding what is involved in such inquiry. If one's philosophical tradition is constituted by those with whom one is in virtual or actual conversation, it is easy to imagine a philosopher with sufficient training choosing to take part in different streams of conversation (see, for instance, Ivanhoe (Reference Ivanhoe2016) ). They might, for instance, have been in conversation with the Sautrāntikas and the Naiyāyikas, yet choose to enter another stream of conversation in continuity with Plato and Descartes (to draw on the examples provided in Siderits (Reference Siderits and Ganeri2017), 77). Presuming that the philosopher is able to participate in both conversations, we can further imagine her engaging with conversation partners from different lineages simultaneously.

Fusion philosophy, as I (following Siderits and others) will call this form of philosophy for convenience, has demonstrated the viability of significant philosophical work that is both post-comparative and potentially global (in the sense that its practitioners are open to drawing on ideas, and bringing in conversation partners, from any philosophical tradition – no matter where in the world that tradition was formed). It is thus suggestive of how the philosophy of religion might evolve into a philosophically more expansive discipline with a wide geographical range and cultural reach. I propose that this expansive and more inclusive form of the philosophy of religion could be aptly termed global philosophy of religions.

As yet, there has been relatively little boundary crossing between philosophers of religion and those working in fusion philosophy, which is surprising given the extent to which pre-modern Asian philosophical traditions are concerned with religious ideas. Hence, the form of global philosophy of religions introduced here still stands in need of careful meta-philosophical articulation.

Characterizing global philosophy of religions

It needs to be stressed at the outset that a global approach to the philosophy of religions should not be perceived as a threat to methodological plurality within the current discipline. The form of global philosophy of religions I advocate here is not a methodology at all; therefore, it is not a candidate for recommendation as the single best methodological approach for all philosophers of religion to adopt (as someone might, for instance, argue that phenomenology is the most appropriate methodology to adopt within the philosophy of religion). Instead, the practice of global philosophy of religions is most helpfully contextualized within what is already a methodologically pluralist discipline. One of the most promising signs of the health of the philosophy of religion in the twenty-first century is the plurality of methodologies that now flourishes within it, and a global approach to the discipline can support rather than undermine this trend.

To engage in global philosophy of religions, then, is not to adopt any specific philosophical methodology, but to allow one's philosophical reflection to be informed by relevant ideas and concepts from an expansive repository of human thought, ranging over the past and present religious and philosophical traditions of India, China, the West, and beyond.Footnote ¹⁵ A global philosopher of religions can draw on the intellectual resources found within not only a range of religious traditions but also the world's philosophical traditions (finding their philosophical conversation partners therein). Using the world's philosophical and religious traditions as resource banks for philosophy today involves bringing ideas that were developed within specific cultural and historical contexts into relation with categories of thought that are alien to those original contexts (see, for an example, Burley (Reference Burley2016) ). Doing so can allow us to set familiar problems into new contexts and investigate unexpected connections with other domains of inquiry. For a philosopher of religion trained within the western tradition, thinking globally about philosophy of religions can reveal a host of important philosophical questions that have received little attention because they have, perhaps, seemed too distantly related to religion conceived in broadly Abrahamic terms.

The questions that provide the focus for the work of a global philosopher of religions may (and probably will) have arisen in the context of several religious traditions. They include, but are not limited to, the big philosophical questions that typically arise wherever there are reflective human beings. For example: Can something exist without a cause of its existence which is outside itself? Is everything impermanent? Is there anything more to the self than consciousness? These are basic but important philosophical questions that have been asked, and continue to be asked, by people in many parts of the world. They are also at the heart of several religious and philosophical traditions, so a philosopher of religion can expect to find relevant concepts and ideas (and acute conversation partners) within a range of religious and philosophical contexts.

Global philosophy of religions, as it is conceived here, is to a certain extent detached from the constraints imposed by the typical topics and range of questions that formed, until recently, the standard content of the discipline of philosophy of religion. To illustrate how this approach to the subject might help with curriculum revision, consider someone teaching a section of a philosophy of religion course on the problem of evil who wants to expand the cultural reach of her teaching by including some Chinese material. If she asks herself ‘How is the problem of evil addressed in Chinese thought?’, she will probably go to the Chinese material with the usual range of questions discussed in relation to the problem of evil (for example, ‘Why does an omnipotent and omnibenevolent God permit evil to occur?’). However, this approach would not get her very far because early Chinese philosophers were not trying to answer these questions, nor were those working in later schools of Chinese philosophy. An alternative strategy would, then, be for her to engage directly with the Chinese textual material and see what philosophical issues concerning evil and suffering arise from it (see Perkins (Reference Perkins2014) ). Once she has become familiar with the Chinese material, she will be well positioned to consider how the reflections of Chinese thinkers relate to philosophical discussions concerning western theism. The results of this inquiry may not initially seem to align neatly with familiar topics found in a standard philosophy of religion course, but this is exactly what she will be looking for if she is seeking to reorientate her teaching (and the discipline) in a more diverse and inclusive direction.

The practice of global philosophy of religions may currently seem hopelessly out of reach to those trained within only one philosophical tradition, for it seems to require familiarity not only with several philosophical traditions (notably, the various forms of Indian, Chinese, and non-Asian philosophy) but also with religious streams of thought from around the world. While philosophy of religion reconfigured to be global offers the philosopher an immense body of material to work with, the challenge this poses to any individual are undeniably significant. However, it is worth remembering that philosophy is, or at least can be, a collaborative process. A single philosopher practising global philosophy of religions should not be expected to be competent in (or even familiar with) all of the world's philosophical and religious traditions. Rather, individual philosophers can bring their varied ranges of competencies and expertise to the task at hand, and thereby participate in a diverse and open intellectual culture (to which the contributions of those whose research is exclusively specialized within any one of the world's religions or philosophical traditions will also be welcome).

It might also be objected that the philosophy of religion will become unrecognizable as philosophy of religion if it is transformed into the form of global philosophy of religions characterized here. It will potentially deal with such a wide range of ideas that it will be in danger of merging into the wider stream of fusion philosophy. In response, the global philosophical project, as I understand it, will inevitably involve the practitioner with religious ideas simply because the world's philosophical traditions are permeated with them. One cannot engage, for example, with the philosophical traditions of India without also engaging with Indian religious thought. The global philosopher, on my view, will inevitably be a global philosopher of religion because ‘big’ metaphysical and existential questions have traditionally been addressed in the context of religious reflection. It therefore seems apt to call the form of philosophical practice outlined in this article ‘global philosophy of religions’, rather than just ‘global philosophy’.