The Future for Philosophy of Religion?

An exploration of recent 'turns to the human in thinking about religion

HEYTHROP COLLEGE CENTRE FOR PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
ANNUAL ONE-DAY CONFERENCE, SATURDAY 15TH JUNE 2013
The past decade has been marked by significant shifts in the in the Philosophy of Religion.
A discipline long characterised by close analysis of a limited number of topics, and focusing mainly
on arguments for and against traditional theistic belief, has broken new ground, both in its subject
matter and its methodology. Much work by contemporary philosophers of religion has taken on an
increasingly humanistic shape: to supplement abstract argument and analysis there has been an
increasing interest in religion as a response to the problems of lived human experience. This interest
has manifested itself in a focus on the relation between religious belief and moral and aesthetic
experience; the role played by religion in the struggle for self-awareness and psychological maturity;
the contributions to religious awareness made by the emotions, the body, and the disciplines of
spiritual praxis; and the way in which a deeper engagement with poetic and literary resources may
develop and deepen religious sensibility and also enhance our understanding of the religious outlook
itself.
Recent works that echo the aims of the conference include John Cottinghams The Spiritual
Dimension (CUP, 2003); Mark Wynns Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding (CUP,
2005); Raimond Gaitas Good and Evil: an Absolute Conception (Routledge, 2nd edition 2007);
Susan Neimans Evil in Modern Thought (Princeton, 2002), William Schweikers Dust that Breathes:
Christian Faith and the New Humanisms (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), and James Carter and Daniel
Whistlers edited volume Moral Powers, Fragile Beliefs (Continuum, 2011).
Among the possible themes to be addressed by the Conference are the following:
1. Criteria for evaluating a religious outlook. Is a religious outlook to be assessed in terms of the
intellectual plausibility of the claims it purports to make about the origins or workings of the cosmos,
or should it be understood instead as an attempt to articulate an appropriate emotional and moral
response to the puzzle of the meaning of human life and the how it should be lived?
2. Methodology. What is the appropriate mode for religious philosophizing? Should the philosopher
of religion aim at detached intellectual scrutiny of certain truth claims, in the manner of a scientist, or
is religious truth a domain that is more fruitfully investigated from a standpoint of emotional and
moral commitment?
3. Theoretical implications. Does the humane turn in philosophy of religion lead to, or lend support
to, so-called noncognitivism about religious claims (the view that religious assertions are not really
descriptions of states of affairs but express passionate commitments to a certain form of life); or does
it need to preserve a cognitive core of essential truth-claims?
4. Theological and anthropological dimensions. Should theology operate primarily at the level of
abstract metaphysical doctrine, or does it need to do more to accommodate the perspective of the
human subject, and an examination of the nature of what the religious life means for those who are
actually involved in the practice of religion, or belong to its institutions?

Speakers: John Cottingham (analytic philosophy); William Schweiker (theological ethics and
hermeneutics); Mark Wynn (philosophy/theology and the emotions); Christopher Hamilton
(philosophy and literature).