Grammars of faith : a critical evaluation of D.Z. Phillips's philosophy
of religion
Bloemendaal, P.F.
Citation
Bloemendaal, P. F. (2006, February 22). Grammars of faith : a critical evaluation of D.Z.
Phillips's philosophy of religion. Philosophical Studies. Peeters, Leuven. Retrieved from
https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4454
Version:
Corrected Publisher’s Version
License:
Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the
Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden
Downloaded from:
https://hdl.handle.net/1887/4454
Grammars of Faith
A Critic
al
Eval
uation of
D.
Z.
Phil
l
ips’
s Phil
osophy of Re
l
igion
GRAMMARS OF FAITH
A CRITICAL EVALUATION OF
D.Z. PHILLIPS’S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Proefschrift
ter verkrijging van
d
e graad
van Do
c
to
r
aan d
e Univers
iteit Leid
en,
o
p
gez
ag van d
e Rec
to
r Magnif
ic
u
s
Dr. D.D. Breimer,
h
o
o
gl
eraar in d
e f
ac
u
l
teit d
er Wis
ku
nd
e en
Natu
u
rwetens
c
h
ap
p
en en d
ie d
er Genees
ku
nd
e,
vo
l
gens
b
es
l
u
it van h
et Co
l
l
ege vo
o
r Pro
mo
ties
te verd
ed
igen o
p
wo
ens
d
ag 2
2
f
eb
ru
ari 2
0
0
6
te kl
o
kke 1
5
:
1
5
u
u
r
d
o
o
r
Peter Fred
erik Bl
o
emend
aal
Leden van de promotie-commissie: Promotor: Prof. dr. H.J. Adriaanse Copromotor: Prof. dr. mr. H. Philipse Referent: Dr. B.R. Clack
Overige leden: Prof. dr. W.B. Drees Prof. dr. B.G. Sundholm
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface . . . XI
Part I Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Religion . . . 1
1. The earlier period . . . 7
1.1 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus . . . 7
1.1.1 Das Leben der Erkenntnis . . . 10
1.1.2 Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches . . . 14
1.1.3The fusion of the logical and the ethical . . . . 25
1.2 A lecture on ethics . . . 35 1.2.1 Absolute and relative value . . . 37 1.2.2 Talking nonsense . . . 42
2. The later period. . . 45
2.1 Philosophical Investigations . . . 45
2.1.1 The nature of philosophy . . . 47
2.1.2 Grammar, language-game, form of life . . . 52
2.2 Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough . . . 70
2.2.1 Ritual and explanation . . . 72
2.2.2 Possibilities of religious meaning . . . 80 2.3Lectures on religious belief . . . 83 2.3.1 Judgement Day . . . 84 2.3.2 An expressivist account of religious language? . . 90
2.3.3A passionate commitment . . . 93
Part II From Wittgenstein to Wittgensteinianism . . . 101
3. The Wittgensteinian School of philosophy of religion . . . 105
3.1 The roots of the School . . . 105
3.1.1 Rush Rhees . . . 105
3.1.2 Peter Winch . . . 110
3.2 D. Z. Phillips: The Concept of Prayer . . . 120
3.2.1 The Concept of Prayer, Wittgenstein and Wittgen-steinians. . . 121
3.2.2 The Concept of Prayer and philosophical clarification 127 3.2.3 The Concept of Prayer and philosophical understanding 138 3.2.4 An unscholarly charge?. . . 145
Part III Phillips’s Philosophy of Religion . . . 151
4. Philosophy, description, and contemplation . . . 155
4.1 The notion of contemplation . . . 156
4.2 A contemplative philosophy . . . 165
4.2.1 The independent nature of philosophical enquiry . . 166
4.2.2 The disinterested nature of philosophical enquiry . . 186
4.2.3 Philosophical wonder . . . 203
4.3 From description to contemplation . . . 207
5. Religion and reductionism . . . 211
5.1 Hume’s legacy: Dialogues Concening Natural Religion . . 214
5.2 The inheritors of Hume’s legacy . . . 231
5.3 Other possibilities of meaning. . . 253
6. Miracles . . . 267
6.1 A miracle defined . . . 267
6.2 Miracles and testimony . . . 272
6.3 Miracles and laws of nature . . . 278
6.4 The religious concept of a miracle . . . 287
7. Immortality . . . 297
7.1 The doctrine of the resurrection . . . 297
7.2 Our dislocated soul . . . 300
7.3 Pictures of the soul . . . 307
7.4 Our immortal soul . . . 311
7.5 Truth and descriptive adequacy . . . 315
8. The reality of God . . . 327
8.1 Realism and non-realism . . . 327
8.2 Theological realism is methodologically incoherent . . . 334
9. A revisionist account of religious belief? . . . 383
9.1 Descriptive license . . . 386
9.2 Superstition . . . 393
9.2.1 The nature of superstition . . . 395
9.2.2 Religious belief and superstition . . . 403
9.3 Grammars of faith . . . 412 Afterword . . . 423 Select bibliography . . . 429 Index . . . 439 Samenvatting . . . 445 CV . . . 449
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PREFACE
This book is divided into three parts. While it would be possible to read each part as a more or less self-contained unit, dealing with its own par-ticular set of questions, taken together they form a single study. Each part plays its own role in achieving the book’s main aim. That aim is to present a critical discussion of D. Z. Phillips’s philosophy of religion. Reading Phillips’s work, one can hardly fail to be impressed both by its sheer volume, as well as by the breadth of its scope. Phillips’s first book appeared in 1965, and the past four decades or so have seen the publication of well over fifteen titles. In addition, he has edited and annotated various works, including two collections of Rush Rhees’s papers, and has con-tributed numerous articles to philosophical journals. The subjects Phillips engages with cover a wide range of philosophy: from logic to ethics, from the philosophy of literature to the philosophy of education. By far the larger part of his writings, however, is concerned with the philosophy of religion, and it is for his work in this area that Phillips is best known.
Despite the differences in the problems and questions Phillips addresses, his work reflects a unified approach, an approach which is derived, first and foremost, from Ludwig Wittgenstein. The extent to which Phillips’s work is inspired by Wittgenstein’s mature philosophy can hardly be exag-gerated. To be sure, Phillips makes no secret of this. He readily acknowl-edges that his conception of philosophy has been shaped by Wittgenstein’s work. He repeatedly refers his audience to Wittgenstein, quoting at length from his writings. Time and again he urges us to recognise the importance of Wittgenstein’s philosophical methods and insights. In part, he sees his task as one of promoting a Wittgensteinian approach within philosophy in general, and philosophy of religion in particular. This is true from his ear-liest to his latest work. The Concept of Prayer (1965) presents itself as the first extended essay in the philosophy of religion influenced by Wittgen-stein’s philosophy. In Phillips’s latest offerings, Philosophy’s Cool Place (1999) and Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation (2001) it is still Wittgenstein’s voice which is heard most forcefully.1
1 Since research on this book was completed, Phillips has published two further titles:
Quite a few commentators have remarked upon the manner in which Phillips has appropriated Wittgenstein’s philosophical legacy. Unfortu-nately, their reviews have tended to be rather narrow and one-sided. First, they have focused almost exclusively on the question whether Phillips can be said correctly to apply Wittgenstein’s later methods to the philo-sophical study of religion. This underestimates the fact that what counts as a correct interpretation of Wittgenstein’s philosophy is a matter of some dispute. If Phillips has appropriated Wittgenstein’s views, he has done so in a critical way, taking them in new directions, developing, expanding and transforming them. One of the merits of Phillips’s work is that it has contributed to our understanding both of the significance of Wittgenstein’s own writings on matters religious, as well as to our under-standing of what a correct application of Wittgenstein’s methods to the study of religion might involve.
Secondly, to date, and with few notable exceptions, discussions of Phillips’s work have been content to treat it as paradigmatic of a distinct and clearly identifiable approach within contemporary philosophy of religion. Discussions of ‘the Wittgensteinian interpretation of religion’, the ‘neo-Wittgensteinian School’ and ‘Wittgensteinian fideism’ readily come to mind. While such discussions are not without merit, they have tended to underplay the originality and uniqueness of Phillips’s work. The ‘neo-Wittgensteinian’ label may have served a useful purpose in referring to those authors who prepared the way for a more thorough investigation of the significance of Wittgenstein’s methods for the philo-sophical study of religion. By now, however, the term has become too imprecise and too heavily burdened with derogatory connotations. All too often, commentators have shied away from the task of properly examining Phillips’s own analyses, too readily assuming them to be in agreement with the perceived character of ‘neo-Wittgensteinian’ philos-ophy of religion. Where Phillips’s writings are explicitly referred to, dis-cussion has concentrated primarily on his earlier writings, displaying too little awareness of the way in which Phillips has, over the years, amended and developed his position. A more comprehensive and balanced study of Phillips’s work has not been forthcoming. This book hopes to fill that gap.
set a standard by which to measure any attempt at propounding a more comprehensive Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion.
In the second part of the book, I examine the way in which, in the late fifties and early sixties, Wittgenstein’s philosophy was made to bear on the philosophy of religion. After a brief discussion of the earlier works of Rush Rhees, Peter Winch, and Norman Malcolm, I turn to Phillips’s first published work, The Concept of Prayer. Here, my interest lies mainly in the book’s efforts at developing a more comprehensive Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion.
In the third and by far the larger part of this book, I turn away from the discussion of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, focusing on Phillips’s philosophy of religion instead. Phillips’s mature understanding of philosophical enquiry as a form of contemplation is examined, and his descriptive accounts of religious beliefs are subjected to closer scrutiny. It is my sincere hope that this study may contribute to a more balanced evaluation of Phillips’s contribution to contemporary philosophy of reli-gion, and may advance the debate concerning the significance of Wittgen-stein’s methods and insights for the study of religion. While I believe that the conclusions I reach show a number of dead-ends, as well as point out several directions that may be more fruitfully explored, they are in no way meant to be decisive. Rather, I hope that they shall be taken as an invita-tion to further discussion.
