Hick's pluralistic hypothesis

Hick introduced his pluralistic hypothesis by explaining that its starting point is what he referred to as ‘the religious ambiguity of the universe’, namely, ‘the fact that it can be understood and experienced both religiously and naturalistically’ (Hick Reference Hick2004, xvii). Given this ambiguity, Hick claimed that both religious people and naturalists can be rational in basing their belief about the nature of the world on their own way of experiencing it (see ibid., 233). On the basis of this ambiguity, Hick formulates a ‘religious interpretation of religion’, as distinguished from a naturalistic understanding of religious phenomena (ibid., 1). This religious interpretation of religion provides the wider theoretical context for his transcendental pluralistic hypothesis.

Hick argued that, as well as the fundamental ambiguity of the universe that allows for both religious and naturalistic interpretations, there is a further layer of ambiguity that permits different religious cognitions of the universe. These are the various ways of perceiving the nature of the universe presented by major world religious traditions. He believed that these traditions should be regarded as almost equally valid, principally because of the similar number and quality of the saints they produce (see Hick (Reference Hick, A. and Rue1991)).

Noticing different and contradictory claims among religious traditions, Hick adapted the Kantian concept of the noumena (things-in-themselves) and postulated the Noumenal Real (the Real in itself) as the ground and source of the diverse phenomenal realities of world religions. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant claimed that our cognition of things in themselves (that is, of the noumenal) is mediated by ‘concepts of understanding’ (Kant (Reference Kant, Guyer and Wood1998), 84). As a result, we are only ever able to cognize phenomena (the way things appear to us). In developing his transcendental pluralistic hypothesis, Hick applied the Kantian concepts of noumena (things in themselves) and phenomena (things as they appear to human consciousness) to the philosophy of religion. In applying Kant's terminology to this new domain, however, Hick departed in important respects from the way the terms had been used by Kant. For instance, Kantian noumena are plural (things in themselves), whereas Hick postulated his religious noumenon as a singular ultimate Real an sich (the Real in itself). Another difference is that while Kant was only concerned about the universal and invariable categories of perception, Hick held that human awareness and conceptions of the Real an sich are culturally relative and conditioned (see Hick (Reference Hick2004), 244).

In Hickian pluralistic philosophy, ‘noumenon’ was used to refer to a supposed transcendental divine reality, ontologically real yet epistemologically unknown. Hick held this noumenon to be the ineffable ‘ground of all authentic religious phenomena and religious experience’ (ibid., 236). Hick called the religious noumenon ‘the Real’ and he distinguished the Real as it is in itself (the noumenal Real) from the various phenomenal realities of the world religions, such as gods and other supernatural beings (see Harrison (Reference Harrison and Oppy2015), 261). This distinction forms the core of Hick's transcendental pluralistic hypothesis.

For Hick, the infinite and unlimited noumenal Real cannot be experienced as it is in itself, nor can it be fully conceived of by finite and limited beings such as ourselves. Hick followed Kant in emphasizing that the noumenon lies beyond our experiential and cognitive grasp. Hick held the Real to be unknown to such an extent that it can only be a postulate in human thought. For Hick, this postulated noumenal Real is trans-categorial and, therefore, always beyond human thought and perception; what appears to human consciousness is always and necessarily mediated through categories of sense perception and shaped by diverse cultural conditioning. ‘[T]he noumenal Real’, claims Hick, ‘is experienced and thought by different human mentalities, forming and formed by different religious traditions, as the range of gods and absolutes which the phenomenology of religion reports’ (Hick (Reference Hick2004), 242). As Hick explains, however, the noumenal Real ‘cannot be said to be one or many, person or thing, substance or process, good or evil, purposive or non-purposive. None of the concrete descriptions that apply within the realm of human experience can apply literally to the unexperienceable ground of that realm’ (ibid., 246).

Despite these claims about the ineffability of the Real, Hick believed that the Real can be experienced through its phenomenal expression either as personal or as impersonal and that both ways of experiencing can inform authentic, although radically incomplete, conceptions of the noumenal Real. He further claimed that ‘these divine personae and metaphysical impersonae . . . are not illusory but are empirically, that is experientially, real as authentic manifestations of the Real’ (ibid., 242). The proof of this authenticity, in his view, lies in the observable transformation from ‘self-centredness to Reality-centredness’ that those relating appropriately to the Real undergo (ibid., 240). Hick also held that, in light of the experience mediated through religious traditions, people can, to some extent, conceive and talk about the Real by deploying language mythologically and metaphorically.

To sum up Hick's key claims: (1) As the ultimate ground and source of religious experience, the noumenal Real is ineffable. (2) The various world religions have evolved in the context of different cultures as authentic responses to the manifestation of the noumenal. (3) The authentic cognitive relation to the Real facilitated by religious traditions can be expressed to some extent through mythological and metaphorical language.

Hick's transcendental pluralistic hypothesis has been enormously influential and has been widely discussed over the last several decades. As we shall see in the next section, however, Hick's characterization of the noumenal Real has attracted critical attention.

Major criticisms of Hick's theory

One key debate between Hick and his critics concerns the ineffability of his postulated noumenal Real (see for instance, Rowe (Reference Rowe1999), Yandell (Reference Yandell1999), and Plantinga (Reference Plantinga2000)). Alvin Plantinga expresses one familiar line of criticism when he objects: ‘If we know nothing about the Real, we have no reason to pick the personae Hick picks as authentic manifestations of it’ (Plantinga (Reference Plantinga2000), 59). Paul Eddy argues that, as a result of its ineffability, Hick's noumenal Real is ‘a purely unnecessary and unjustifiable construct’ (Eddy (Reference Eddy1994), 478). Hick's sharp distinction between the ineffable Real in itself and phenomenal realities, as Peter Byrne argues, ‘posits too great a gulf between belief and its object’ (Byrne (Reference Byrne1982), 299). Similarly, Victoria Harrison points out that in Hickian pluralism the permanent separation of all religious phenomena from their supposedly noumenal and ineffable source ‘appears to imply that all believers are to some extent mistaken in their belief’ (Harrison (Reference Harrison2006), 295). Perhaps summing up all of these objections, Gavin D'Costa remarks that ‘this “absolute incomprehensibility” regarding the nature of reality threatens Hick's whole pluralist project by further mystifying rather than illuminating the nature of the Real’ (D'Costa, Kellenberger and Hick (Reference D'costa, Kellenberger, Hick and Hewitt1991), 9).

Hick's response to all such critics is to bite the bullet and restate his claim that the noumenal Real is necessarily inconceivable because our concepts cannot apply to it. He emphasizes that, as a religious interpretation of religion, ‘the basic religious conviction is that in and through these humanly conditioned modes of awareness and response there has been a genuine impact of transcendent divine reality upon human life’ (Hick (Reference Hick1984), 230). Hick further explains that, in spite of the ineffability of the noumenal Real, mythological speech can rightly relate us to the ultimate reality. This claim is, however, further criticized. Harrison notes that regarding religious truth claims as mythological (or ‘practically true’) ‘appears far too weak’ and seems to deprive religious claims ‘of the ability to convey genuine information’ (Harrison (Reference Harrison2006), 297, see also Netland (Reference Netland1991)). Likewise, Robert McKim points out that, in Hick's account, all that can be said about the Real as a source of information ‘is just that it is a source’ (McKim (Reference Mckim2012), 9). Again, Eddy objects that ‘such non-informative “information” hardly offers hard data’, and he disagrees with Hick that a transcendent source of ‘information’ can be an essential constitutive element of religious experience (Eddy (Reference Eddy1994), 477). Also on a critical note, George Mavrodes remarks on the tension between the ineffability of the Real in itself and its causal, or quasi-causal, function in Hick's theory (Mavrodes (Reference Mavrodes and Hick2010), 67).

Hickian pluralism has also been criticized for its in-built ‘metaphysical–epistemological normative presuppositions’ (Barua (Reference Barua2015), 199), which threaten its ‘philosophical viability’ (Eddy Reference Eddy2018, 2). Hick could respond to such criticisms by appealing to his claim to be offering a ‘religious interpretation of religion’ (Hick (Reference Hick2004), 1). Harrison notes that this feature of Hick's theory, on the one hand, can make it more appealing to people with religious convictions and experiences, while, on the other hand, ‘it simultaneously exposes the theory to the criticism of philosophers who are trained to regard religious convictions not as premises within theories but as standing in need of independent support’ (Harrison (Reference Harrison and Oppy2015), 265).

Hickian pluralism is a reductive form of pluralism because it holds ‘that all major religions are somehow related to, or derived from, one thing’ and are ‘grounded in a more fundamental reality that transcends them all’ (ibid.). This aspect of his theory has also attracted criticism (see, for example, Lee (Reference Lee1998) and Burley (Reference Burley2018)). Harrison indicates that one disadvantage of a form of reductive pluralism like Hick's is that it is less ‘capable of making sense of the practice of philosophy of religion when it cuts across religious and philosophical traditions’ because it brings with it the specific metaphysical commitment (in Hick's case, borrowed from Kant) that fuels the reduction (Harrison (Reference Harrison and Oppy2015), 269).

As we have seen, many of Hick's critics have argued that he fails to give a coherent account of the noumenal Real. D'Costa is surely correct that Hick's failure here threatens to undermine his entire pluralist theory (D'Costa (Reference D'costa1996)). I suggest that we might find a way out of these difficulties afflicting Hickian pluralism by looking at how a parallel difficulty was handled in Mahāyāna Buddhist attempts to give a coherent theoretical account of the core concept of śūnyatā (emptiness). Interestingly, while Hick did discuss this concept, and recognized its affinity with his own core concept, he did not consider whether or not there might be resources within Buddhist philosophy to help with the defence of his own theory of religious pluralism. I return to this point later, after providing, in the next section, a brief account of Hick's understanding of śūnyatā.

Hick's understanding of śūnyatā

In attempting to relate his pluralistic hypothesis to Buddhism, Hick focused on the key concepts of nirvāṇa and śūnyatā. He was aware that in Mahāyāna Buddhism, the concept of nirvāṇa continued to evolve and its meaning was gradually brought closer to the meaning of śūnyatā. According to his interpretation of Buddhist intellectual history, nirvāṇa and śūnyatā both came, in Mahāyāna Buddhism, to refer to ultimate reality (Hick (Reference Hick2004), 284). This understanding of śūnyatā was well suited to the Kantian interpretation Hick brought to it, which was filtered through the lens provided by the philosophers of the Japanese Kyoto school.Footnote ² Hick concluded that what Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophers meant by śūnyatā was the same as what he meant when he used the term ‘the Real’. He wrote:

In Hick's understanding, then, śūnyatā in Mahāyāna Buddhism is functionally equivalent to the noumenal Real in his transcendental pluralistic hypothesis.Footnote ³ This can be seen clearly if we consider the following three features of Hick's interpretation of śūnyatā:

1. (1) Hick holds that śūnyatā is the Ultimate Reality of Buddhism. In relating Buddhism to his pluralistic hypothesis, Hick understood śūnyatā to be the metaphysical absolute of Buddhism. In An Interpretation of Religion, Hick explains that within most forms of Buddhism it is recognized that the terms nirvāṇa and śūnyatā both refer to the one ultimate reality, which is alternatively called the dharmakāya and the eternal Buddha nature (ibid., 284).

2. (2) Hick holds that, like the Real, śūnyatā is ineffable. On Hick's understanding, śūnyatā is ineffable because, like the noumenal Real, it is trans-categorical and beyond the range of human conceptual systems. He interpreted śūnyatā, emptiness, ‘not in the sense of being nothing at all but in the sense that no human conceptuality can grasp it’ (ibid., 187). He also remarked that the Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh and the Japanese Zen scholar and practitioner Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki had the same understanding, for they both held that śūnyatā lacks properties and is non-conceptualizable. Hick further explained, śūnyatā ‘is not a thing or object or entity or substance but rather reality itself, formless or “empty” from our point of view because not objectifiable by human thought’ (ibid., 290).

3. (3) Hick holds that śūnyatā, ‘as the formless self-emptying ground or source of everything’, is the Real an sich. He agrees with Masao Abe's suggestion that ‘all particular things – including the experienced personal deities and presumably also the experienced non-personal absolutes – are manifestations of’ śūnyatā (ibid., 291).Footnote ⁴

Encouraged by the philosophers he was reading, such as Suzuki and Abe, Hick is clearly interpreting śūnyatā in Kantian terms. This interpretation, on the one hand, provides a convenient understanding of śūnyatā, and, on the other hand, it strongly supports the view – to which Hick was already sympathetic – that Buddhism has a family resemblance with the other world religions. However, as one of the central concepts of Buddhism, śūnyatā has been discussed within various Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions for millennia. In these discussions we can find ways of interpreting śūnyatā that Hick did not fully consider.

The Madhyamaka interpretation of śūnyatā

While Hick's Kantian interpretation of śūnyatā fits seamlessly into his pluralistic hypothesis, other significant accounts of śūnyatā found in Buddhism do not fit quite so easily, although, as I suggest later, they may in the end contribute to the defence of a reconfigured version of Hick's theory. Here I concentrate on the account of śūnyatā found in the Madhyamaka tradition of Buddhism.Footnote ⁵

Madhyamaka was founded by the Indian philosopher Nāgārjuna (c. 150–250 ce) and is well known for its distinctive interpretation of śūnyatā. Madhyamaka thought had a major influence on the subsequent development of other Mahāyāna Buddhist traditions, and it has remained the dominant interpretation of Buddhist philosophy within Tibetan Buddhism. The eight Chinese Mahāyāna Buddhist schools all regard Nāgārjuna as their patriarch. I will introduce three aspects of the Madhyamaka interpretation of śūnyatā that can serve as critical responses to the three features of Hick's Kantian interpretation of śūnyatā that were highlighted above.

(1) According to Madhyamaka, śūnyatā is neither the metaphysical ultimate ground for existence nor the source of phenomena. Against the backdrop of philosophical commitment to impermanence and to the thoroughgoing interdependence of all phenomena, the Madhyamaka school was critical of the strand of earlier Buddhist metaphysics which tended to reductively analyse all phenomena to an ultimate substance that could not be further analysed. In response to this, Nāgārjuna claims in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way):

In denying that anything exists that is not dependently arisen, Nāgārjuna also denies that there is any ultimate independent ground supporting the appearance of the phenomenal. For him, emptiness is not an Absolute reality distinct from, yet somehow supporting, the appearance of the empirical world. Instead, Nāgārjuna holds that emptiness lies at the core of the phenomenal. It is important to note that Nāgārjuna did not take this to entail that all phenomena are merely mental constructions.

The founder of the Tibetan Gelug school, Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), interprets Nāgārjuna to be saying that we should avoid the ‘metaphysical commitments of both essentialism and nihilism’ (Thakchöe (Reference Thakchöe2007), 97, and see Tsongkhapa (Reference Tsongkhapa, Samten and Garfield2006)).Footnote ⁷ To take emptiness to be a reality exempt from dependent co-arising (pratītyasamutpāda), and to take emptiness to be ultimately real while taking everything else to be merely conventionally real, would be, as Tsongkhapa puts it, to fall into both extremes simultaneously. Śūnyatā, in Tsongkhapa's interpretation, which closely follows that of Nāgārjuna, is not an alternative to phenomenal existence, but rather the analytical tool through which we can understand it. Consequently, like Nāgārjuna, Tsongkhapa does not reify śūnyatā as an ultimately existent substratum of phenomena, nor does he deprecate conventional reality as not fully real or illusory.

In Wittgenstein and Buddhism, Chris Gudmunsen criticizes interpretations of emptiness that, like Hick's, rely on a Kantian understanding. He explains: ‘Once emptiness is made into a hidden reality, the essential idea of it has been lost . . . A Kantian approach to emptiness leads to just such an “absolute ground”’ (Gudmunsen (Reference Gudmunsen1977), 51). He points out that this misunderstanding is a result of not realizing that emptiness, too, is empty. This is not a trivial point, for the Madhyamaka doctrine of the ‘emptiness of emptiness’ has been described by Jay Garfield as ‘one of Nāgārjuna's most profound innovations’ (Garfield (Reference Garfield2015), 65).

We might also note that the Madhyamaka interpretation of śūnyatā is not presented as an ultimately true theory, since if Madhyamaka arguments are successful there are no ultimately true theories (Garfield & Westerhoff (Reference Garfield and Westerhoff2015), 9). In fact, for Madhyamaka, śūnyatā is not a theory or a point of view at all, but a position the realization of which has the potential to liberate us from grasping onto a ‘grand narrative that unlocks the final secrets of the universe’ (Siderits (Reference Siderits2016), 50–51). Christopher Ives observes that through such realization we become aware that all views, including our own, are tentative and partial. . .and we begin to serve each other as we inter-act and inter-create in the open context of emptiness. We shift from a svabhavic, self-centered outlook to a holistic, organic view of actuality. (Ives (Reference Ives and Eshleman2008), 58)Footnote ⁸ This underlines the pragmatic dimension of all Madhyamaka teaching.

(2) According to Madhyamaka philosophy, śūnyatā is neither entirely ineffable nor incomprehensible. Unlike Hick's understanding of śūnyatā as the ineffable Real itself, in the Madhyamaka interpretation, śūnyatā is an analytical tool which aids understanding of the teaching that all things lack svabhāva (this Sanskrit term is difficult to translate into English; serviceable approximations include ‘own being’, ‘intrinsic existence’, or ‘inherent nature’) (see Williams (Reference Williams2008), 68, and Siderits (Reference Siderits2016), 38–44). Therefore, emptiness should be understood as the emptiness of something very specific, namely, the determinate metaphysical property of svabhāva. As Tsongkhapa indicates, the identification of the object of negation is always important when using the concept of śūnyatā (Garfield (Reference Garfield2015), 56). Understood this way, far from being ineffable, śūnyatā is linguistically expressible and conceptually knowable.

(3) According to Madhyamaka, śūnyatā lacks svabhāva. Any emptiness is only the emptiness of a particular phenomenon, and in being dependent upon that phenomenon emptiness has no being of its own. Tsongkhapa's interpretation, as it is elaborated by Elizabeth Napper, is that:

Hick's understanding of śūnyatā as the Real in itself clearly misses much that is important in the Madhyamaka understanding. This is partly due to his reliance on an unfaithful translation into Japanese and then into English of the Chinese text of Tan Luan's (476–542 ce) Annotation of the Rebirth Treatise (往生论注Footnote ⁹). In this work, Tan Luan, who was an influential Chinese Pure Land Buddhist,Footnote ¹⁰ discusses his interpretation of the two aspects of dharmakāya, namely, dharmatā dharmakāya and upāya dharmakāya. Here is the key extract from the version used by Hick, which comes from an English translation of a much earlier work by the Japanese Buddhist Shinran (1173–1263):Footnote ¹¹

The following is the Chinese text by Tan Luan, which Shinran translated into Japanese in the thirteenth century and used in the development of his own style of Buddhism:

The English translation of Shinran's text, by Yoshifumi Ueda, that Hick was dependent on has departed significantly from the meaning of the Chinese original. We can see this by considering the two Chinese characters ‘生’ and ‘出’, which describe the relationship between dharmakāya-as-suchness and dharmakāya-as-compassion. The two characters are very often used together as one word ‘出生’, meaning ‘giving birth to, arising out of’. Therefore, Tan Luan's text literally means that they give birth to each other or arise out of each other. This is rather different from the impression we are given by Ueda's English translation: ‘dharmakaya-as-compassion arises out of dharmakaya-as-suchness, and dharmakaya-as-suchness emerges into [human consciousness through] dharmakaya-as-compassion’, which gives ontological priority to the dharmakāya-as-suchness. Taking this translation uncritically to represent the Mahāyāna understanding, Hick simply explained dharmatā dharmakāya (dharmakāya-as-suchness) as dharmakāya an sich, which he regarded as equivalent to the Real an sich, and he explained upāya dharmakāya as dharmakāya characterized, which he equated to the phenomenal real (Hick (Reference Hick2004), 236). However, as we have seen, this translation is not consistent with Tan Luan's original meaning or with the Madhyamaka understanding. Actually, even Ueda's English translation of Tan Luan's concluding remark on the relation between the two aspects of dharmakāya as differing but ‘not separate . . . one but not identical’ reveals an understanding of these concepts that is quite different from Hick's (Shinran (Reference Ueda1979), 5). In the following section, I will explain this understanding further by setting it in the context of the Buddhist discussion of the doctrine of the two truths.

Two truths

In Buddhist texts, śūnyatā is often associated with the central Buddhist teaching that there are ‘two truths’. This is a teaching that is usually traced back to the earliest strata of Buddhism, although different Buddhist traditions have understood and employed the distinction in diverse ways. The core idea is that there is a principled distinction between truth about the ultimate (paramārtha-satya) and truth about conventional reality (saṃvṛti-satya) (for an excellent discussion, see Thakchöe (Reference Thakchöe2007)). This led early Buddhists, particularly those in the Abhidharma tradition, to talk about two ways in which statements can be true, or two perspectives – one ultimate and one conventional – from which reality can be described. Ultimate truth concerns ultimate reality, while conventional truth characterizes reality as we are ‘conventionally’ aware of it.

Garfield explains that in early Buddhism the relation between the two truths was often cast in a reductive mode: truths about conventional realities were thought to be reducible to truth at a more ultimate level. However, Garfield describes how this early understanding of the relation between the two truths changed in, what he calls ‘the Mahāyāna revolution’ (Garfield (Reference Garfield2015), 59). He sums up the new view as follows: ‘[N]othing turns out to be ultimately real, everything is conventionally real, and the ultimate and conventional truths, while radically different in one respect, are in fact identical in another. That is the profound doctrine of the emptiness of emptiness’ (ibid.; the italics are in the original).

In this new understanding, conventional truth is held to be empirically valid as it applies to the world that we experience. It is determined and characterizable in conformity with mundane practices. It is always deceptive, however, as it appears to be more than merely conventional when it is not. In contrast, ultimate truth is not deceptive. It is arrived at by reflective examination and philosophical analysis of what is conventionally true. As Garfield notes, for the Madhyamaka philosophers, conventional and ultimate truth are ‘an exhaustive, mutually exclusive partition of the modes of existence of things’ (ibid., 80). Supporting Garfield's interpretation, Tsongkhapa holds that the compatibility of the Buddhist theory of dependent-arising at the conventional level, and their theory of emptiness at the ultimate level is, in fact, secured by the compatibility of the two ways in which things can be true. As Napper observes, the ‘compatibility of emptiness and conventional presentations is the uncommon characteristic of Mādhyamika’ (Napper (Reference Napper1989), 149).

Another important Mahāyāna text, the Prajñāpāramitāhṛdaya (Heart of Wisdom Sūtra), emphasizes the sense in which what is true ultimately and what is true conventionally are identical. Perhaps the most well-known lines of the Sūtra are these:

Differing from Hick's preferred account of śūnyatā, which, as we have seen, is cast in terms of a sharp distinction between the noumenal Real and phenomenal realities, the emptiness and form account of śūnyatā emphasizes the relations of mutual reinforcement and entailment between the ultimate and the conventional. The ultimate truth is emptiness, and emptiness is dependent origination, which – according to Buddhist convictions – is the fundamental nature of the conventional world; the ultimate truth is that there is no intrinsic nature to things, only their conventional nature, and so there is nothing other than that nature; and emptiness is dependent on empty things, and so only conventionally real. Since the only way that anything can exist is conventionally, and that is the ultimate truth, the ultimate truth is the conventional truth (Garfield (Reference Garfield2015), 80). In this sense, everything that is unsayable from the ultimate perspective is assertible from the conventional perspective. ‘It is emptiness that makes sense of conventional reality, and conventional reality that explains emptiness’ (Garfield (Reference Garfield, Liu and Berger2014), 53).

This paradoxical identity and non-identity of the conventional and the ultimate reflects the principled and compatible relation between the ‘two truths’. Graham Priest notes that it is through these means that the duality between the conventional and the ultimate is transcended in Buddhist thought. He remarks that ‘interpenetration can be seen as a natural understanding of what it means to transcend this duality. Each side of the duality is not distinct from the other, but intermingles with it in a most intimate way’ (Priest (Reference Priest2018), 124).Footnote ¹² As Tsongkhapa interprets this relation, the two truths are ‘ontologically identical but conceptually distinct’ (Thakchöe (Reference Thakchöe2007), 17) and neither can be reduced to the other (ibid., 2). This standpoint of both supposing and suspending claims about ultimate truth deconstructs śūnyatā as the ground, source, or external reality of phenomenal forms. This position also denies the possibility of reductively analysing phenomena into their supposedly more fundamental nature of śūnyatā, for śūnyatā itself is nature-less. This paradoxical identity of the conventional and the ultimate ‘saves Madhyamaka from reifying emptiness as a non-apparent absolute and from deprecating the conventional world as unimportant’ (Garfield (Reference Garfield2015), 80). It also ‘saves Madhyamaka from collapsing into another version of an appearance–reality distinction’, while preventing it from falling into the distinction between inaccessible reality and a pointless empirical world (ibid.).

Garfield notes that with this account of the relation between the ‘two truths’, Nāgārjuna can be regarded as advancing a metaphysical theory from a conventional, non-ultimate, perspective that recaptures reality by virtue of ‘rejecting the idea of a fundamental nature of reality’ (ibid., 68). This account suggests that, as Garfield also notes, the heart of reality is deeply paradoxical; as such, we might expect the Madhyamaka position, and other Buddhist views that are akin to it, to align well with a high tolerance for contradictions (see ibid., 80). Perry Schmidt-Leukel has in fact noted that in Mahāyāna Buddhism there is an ‘openness to diversity’ that is probably the result of commitment to the notion of two truths (Schmidt-Leukel (Reference Schmidt-Leukel2017), 83).

The idea that the heart of reality is deeply paradoxical should alert us to the fact that the ‘two truths’ are not simply two alternative ways of conceptualizing a single reality. If this were the case, the paradoxical identity and non-identity between them could be dissolved into a two-level or two-theory account. On the Madhyamaka account, however, it is essential to preserve both conventional and ultimate truth as they together point us to a reality that is aptly characterized in both conventional and ultimate terms. On this view, the conventional account of reality requires the complementary, yet contradictory, ultimate account. Likewise, the ultimate account of reality requires the complementary, yet contradictory, conventional account. With this in mind, we should not be too hasty to interpret Tsongkapha, and others in the Madhyamaka tradition, as committed to an ontological-conceptual distinction that could then be cashed out into a Kantian distinction between things-in-themselves and things-as-they appear to be. As we shall see later, one advantage of the Madhyamaka account over the Kantian is that it avoids the implicit high valuation of the ultimate over the conventional.

From the above discussion, it can be seen that the fundamental difference between Hick's account of the noumenal Real and a Madhyamaka interpretation of śūnyatā lies in the Madhyamaka's critical attitude towards the necessity of positing an ultimate, ontologically separate, transcendental Real at all. Consequently, Madhyamaka accounts of the relation between the mooted ultimately Real and conventional realities differ considerably from Hick's account of the noumenal Real and phenomenal realities. Capitalizing on this discrepancy, in the next section, I engage in conceptual experimentation to explore what a more nuanced understanding of śūnyatā might bring to Hick's pluralist theory.

Can śūnyatā help Hick?

As we have seen, many criticisms of Hickian transcendental pluralism stem from his characterization of the noumenal Real as what somehow generates ‘the phenomena recognized within world religions’ (Harrison (Reference Harrison2006), 297). Some commentators have suggested that we can recast Hick's theory in a more plausible light if we go beyond his Kantian tendency to define the Real by contrasting it sharply with phenomenal reality (see, for example, Rose (Reference Rose1996)). I propose that we might be able to do so by grafting the Madhyamaka understanding of śūnyatā, with its framing in the theory of ‘two truths’, onto the stem of Hickian pluralism. Doing so might allow us to detach the noumenal Real from its familiar normative and cognitive associations, and thereby to present the idea of ‘the Real’ under a more comprehensive umbrella. I now suggest four areas where this approach seems particularly promising.Footnote ¹³

(1) Understanding the noumenal Real and phenomenal realities within the conceptual framework provided by the Madhyamaka claim that the heart of reality is deeply paradoxical provides a way of conceptualizing a closer connection between the Real and the phenomenology of world religions than Hick managed to establish. In the inter-dependent relation of emptiness (śūnyatā) and form, emptiness does not stand on its own as an independent entity but relies on form for its manifestation. In the same way, ultimate truth is also dependently arisen, depending on conventional truth for its arising. Therefore, we can improve on Hick's sharp distinction between the noumenal Real and phenomenal realities with the Buddhist-inspired observation that the ultimately Real is dependent upon the conventionally real, and vice versa. Hick's pluralistic hypothesis, in effect, created an unbridgeable gap between the ultimately Real and the ways in which it is conceptualized in the world religions. It is this gap that creates many of the problems Hick's theory encounters. For religious believers, Hickian pluralism reduces their own primary objects of worship to conceptual constructs, while the ineffable and inaccessible ‘Real’ is elevated to the status of supreme reality. The reconfiguration of pluralism proposed here dissolves the gap that causes this problem. In this Buddhist-inspired pluralist account, conventional objects of worship and religious devotion are not entirely distinct from ultimate reality, but nor are they identical to it. Likewise, following the teaching, discussed earlier, of the Heart of Wisdom Sūtra, we can understand ultimate reality as manifesting in religious phenomena, while not being ontologically separable from them. The Madhyamaka account of the inter-dependent relation of form and emptiness, conventional and ultimate truth, allows us to preserve pluralism while avoiding reductionism.Footnote ¹⁴

(2) An inevitable result of Hick's account of the relation between the ultimately Real and phenomenal realities was a high valorization of the Real in comparison to the phenomenal. This ontology has generated a host of objections from those sympathetic to religion on the grounds that Hick seems to devalue the convictions of religious people about what they take to be ultimately real (see Harrison (Reference Harrison2006)). We have seen how Madhyamaka ontology, which developed around the concept of śūnyatā, gives equal importance to ultimate truth and conventional truth. Grafting this equalizing ontology onto a broadly Hickian approach to religious diversity may encourage a more sensitive attitude towards the different accounts of the Absolute found in world religions. These accounts do not need to be read as depicting a phenomenal reality that is on a different ontological level from the distant and unreachable Real. By adopting an account of the relation between noumena and phenomena, ultimate truth and conventional truth, inspired by the emptiness and form understanding of śūnyatā, we can arrive at a more horizontal understanding of religious diversity than Hickian pluralism, in its current form, provides. The world religions might then be more appreciated for their phenomenal diversity rather than for the relation to the Real thought by the Hickian pluralist to underlie this diversity.

Against a potential objection, it should be noted that the current proposal does not seek to ‘empty’ religious forms of all reality beyond that which is conceptually constructed (as Hickian pluralism has been charged with doing). Rather, by removing the valuational hierarchy of the Real and the merely phenomenal, Madhyamaka philosophy prevents us from retreating to an unreachable conceptual ideal of the Ultimate and instead affirms the objects of our worship and devotion.

(3) Hick's account of the relation of the noumenal Real and phenomenal realities relies heavily on religious experience, despite his claim that we cannot actually experience the Real in itself. The Madhyamaka account of śūnyatā, and of the connection between ultimate truth and conventional truth, in contrast, relies heavily upon reflective analysis of experience.Footnote ¹⁵ This can be seen prominently in both Nāgārjuna and Tsongkhapa. The Madhyamaka account might thus seem to be more promising than Hick's to motivate philosophical analysis that remains tied to religious experience.

(4) Finally, integrating the Madhyamaka understanding of śūnyatā into Hick's theory may yield a more radical and flexible account of Ultimate Reality. Nāgārjuna points out that with respect to ‘Ultimate truth’ any concept taken by itself could be both a ‘skilful means’ to aiding understanding and, at the same time, a constraint to understanding (Westerhoff (Reference Westerhoff2009), 12). Our commitment or attachment to a concept of the Ultimately Real might prevent us from understanding the actual Ultimate. The Madhyamaka's critical attitude to the concept of ultimacy and their account of the nature of ultimate truth can remind us to examine the presuppositions behind a normative understanding of truth. In order to attain a cognitive grasp of the Ultimate, Nāgārjuna would advise us to go a step further than Hick did by transcending the idea of transcendence. Taking his advice and replacing Hick's account of the noumenal Real with an account modelled on the Madhyamaka understanding of the interpenetrating and mutually entailing relation between ultimate reality and conventional reality can allow us to develop a non-reductive pluralist theory. This opens the way for a more flexible attitude to contradictions within and between religions (Garfield (Reference Garfield2015), 81).