michael lafargue - radically pluralist thoroughly critical

Journal of the American Academy of Religion LX/4

A New Theory of Religions

Michael LaFargue

1 HIS PAPER TRIES to reconcile and integrate what have historicallybeen two contrasting approaches to the academic study of religions.

On the one side, there are those who take up the study of religionsinto the quest for religious truth. In their general spirit, theseapproaches are close to thinkers and "holy persons" within individualreligions, who develop what are recognized as more ideal interpretationsof their respective traditions Today, when there is widespread familiar-ity with many different traditions, sophisticated versions of thisapproach have been developed, in which the search for a more idealinterpretation becomes identified with a search to find the common coreof various religions (as with John Hick), or in which one hopes to reacha better grasp of religious truth by means of dialogue between religions(as with W.C Smith)

On the other side, there are those whose first concern is simply togain an accurate understanding of the various religions of the world,whether this leads the researcher closer to religious truth or not Histor-ically these approaches are connected to the growth of nineteenth-cen-tury Romanticism, with its interest in the unique spirit of each differentculture and era Anthropological and sociological studies of religion (asin Geertz and Weber) are generally the clearest examples of this kind ofapproach today

Both these approaches have weaknesses when used as bases for theacademic study of religions. This paper takes as one starting point adissatisfaction with the first kind of approach well expressed recently byLangdon Gilkey

[The single "essence of religion" which this approach seeks] repre-

Michael LaFargue is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Massachusetts/Boston, Bos-ton, MA 02125

693

694 journal of the American Academy of Religion

sents—try as it may to avoid it—a particular way of being religious.Thus it has to misinterpret every other tradition in order to incorporatethem into its own scheme of understanding. In the end, therefore, itrepresents the same religious colonialism that Christianity used to prac-tice so effectively, the interpretation of an alien viewpoint in terms ofone's own religious center and so an incorporation of that viewpointinto our own system of understanding (35)'

Further theoretical reasons for rejecting this approach will be outlinedtoward the end of this article.

The second approach mentioned, however, is also limited. One ofits greatest limitations is that it lacks critical leverage It must confineitself to descnption, and hence accept at face value the interpretation ofany given religion that happens to be most common among the mem-bers of that religion. This approach puts one in a position similar to amusical anthropologist who can't tell good !Kung music from bad !Kungmusic. Without the addition of a cntical element, the descriptiveapproach also tends to leave us implicitly operating out of a position ofskeptical relativism when it comes to the substantive claims of religion 2

The present paper tries to provide some theoretical foundations foran approach to the study of religions that combines the strengths of eachof these approaches. It is an approach that tnes to be both cntical andpluralist "Cntical" refers in this context to a cntique of substantivereligious claims, a cntique of religion as religion. "Pluralist" refers tothe fact that the theory itself does not rest on the assumption that ulti-mately religious truth is one. It leaves open the possibility that theremay be a plurality of well-founded religions, which yet do not denvetheir well-foundedness from their relation to a common core The the-ory must be a critical theory without assuming absolutes And it mustbe a pluralist theory that is neither fideist nor relativist (in the usualsense of skeptical relativism). In a more general context, the ambition ofmy theory is to avoid the relativism which Allan Bloom's Closing of theAmerican Mind nghtly decnes, without lapsing into the belief in particu-lar absolutes which he implies is the only alternative.

Cntical-plurahst theory in this sense seems at first sight implausibleThe construction of a rationally founded cntical pluralism requires asomewhat complex strategy, which I would like to outline in bnef herebefore proceeding to discussion of the details

'Gilkey is here criticizing the approaches of F Schuon, H Smith, WC Smith, John Hick, andPaul Knitter

2 See Gardiner on the historical relation between relativism and nineteenth-century culture study

LaFargue Radically Pluralist, Thoroughly Critical 695

(1) The "pluralism" in question assumes that religions are viewsabout a single subject matter, but that different religious believers mayhave genuinely different but well-founded views on this subject matter.(As for example "geometry" is one subject matter, but there can be dif-ferent well-founded geometnes, Euclidian, non-Euclidian, etc.) A sim-plified description of the common subject matter would be: Eachreligion presents us with something which it claims ought to be of over-riding importance in life "Overriding" here needs to be understood ina purely descriptive way There is no strict line dividing this criticaltheory of religions from a general theory of value-based culture-cnti-cism, or from philosophical metaethics. (My argument is not part of acall for religious thinkers to unite against their common "secular" oppo-nents.3 The theory is applicable to non-religious cultures, to secular lib-eralism, Marxism, feminism, etc) What is needed is a critique thatderives from the nature of this kind of subject matter at the most generallevel The most general question is: What can serve as good evidencethat something merits to be taken as a matter of overriding importance?

(2) The emphasis of the theory is on the epistemology that derivesfrom this particular subject matter in general, rather than on substantivedoctrines, goals, or attitudes specific to some particular religion or reli-gions. The theory can be most definitive when it is being negative,pointing out the way in which the epistemology of this subject matter isunlike the epistemology of other fields (logic, physics, psychology, soci-ology), and so pointing out those kinds of considerations that should nothave any decisive weight in the evaluation of religions as such Thetheory makes room also for the development of positive cntena thatmight apply to several religions. But here it must be modest in its claimsand leave room for constant revision Positive criteria can only be devel-oped in the course of studying different specific religions, and one mustalways be prepared to come across a religion that is well-founded in away that the theory has not yet anticipated.

(3) The theory argues that one can consistently speak of reality-con-straints on belief even if one does not think there is some uniquelystructured reality that is the object of those beliefs, and so only one set ofbeliefs that is ultimately well-founded. A bnef discussion of the parallelsituation in modem mathematics will illustrate this point.

(4) In avoiding any appeal to universal truths, the theory straightfor-wardly abandons the position that religious beliefs aim to represent for

31 would generally side with Donald Weibe against Charles Davis in saying that the study ofreligion should not presume a "confessional" stance at the outset

696 Journal of the American Academy of Religion

us reality as it exists apart from human consciousness, or that they arerooted in "necessary presuppositions" underlying all human experience.The objects of religious beliefs are objects located within reahty-as-exper-lenced, within the various Lebenswelten that constitute different culturaland religious worlds "Necessary presuppositions" have no privilegedstatus or decisive weight in religious epistemology In order to escapeskeptical relativism, I shall have to show that this position can be heldwhile also holding that these beliefs can and ought to be subject to gen-uine reality constraints—they are not "free creations of the humanmind."

(5) The theory accepts the extension of Saussure's model of a differ-ential system (a system of mutually defining elements) to all of exper-ienced reality. This is a position it shares with many semioticians andstructuralists. But it avoids the positing of universal truths by rejectinganything like Levi-Strauss' notion that all cultures are surface transfor-mations of some deep structures underlying all cultures Each culture,and each religion, is a non-reduphcatable system of mutually definingelements. The meaning of each element in a given religion is deter-mined exclusively by this relation to other elements in this same religion(rather than also to some "universal" categones) Thus semiotics hereprovides an important descriptive and explanatory principle withoutserving any cntical function at all—1 e , without reducing different reli-gions to a common core or deep structure that founds their validity

(6) Finally, the theory avoids the skeptical relativism often associ-ated with this non-universalist semiotics by incorporating as its centralcritical element a much broadened (non-Platonist) notion of "the good."I will use this term as a broad category of categories, which includes allpossible kinds or aspects of reality that make a claim on us or give nseto obligations A religion is well-founded to the extent that it presentsus with something which will stand up to questions about its goodnessin this sense The vanously structured Lebenswelten of which variousreligious beliefs serve as foundations are well-founded to the extent thatin them reality-as-expenenced is semiotically organized around concernfor something very "good." An acceptance of semiotics means that goodneeds to be defined in relation to some specific cultural context ratherthan in terms of universal "absolutes " (But "contextually" does notmean instrumentally or functionally) This dissociates my theory fromPlatonist ideas usually conjured up by mentioning "the good." My pri-mary point will be an epistemological one, the irreducible differencebetween the kind of evidence that could show that something makes a


valid claim on us, and the kind of evidence that shows logical necessity,physical causality, psychological influence, etc

A common thread in this rather complex strategy is that it selectivelyborrows elements of vanous thought-traditions, while rejecting thefoundationalism which has historically been an essential part of each.The foundations of my theory are complex, and omission of any oneelement would run it aground on the Scylla or Charybdis of absolutismor relativism. It is internally consistent, but it doesn't fit easily into onerecognized philosophical tradition. It takes up elements of different tra-ditions, while dissociating itself from other seemingly central aspects ofthese same traditions (The proposals were not initially developed as anexercise in theory, but in the course of close exegetical work with thetexts of several religions.4) For this reason I will not be able fully toargue my case in this short space, and will have to proceed rather dog-matically in places. What I can hope to provide is only some bare out-lines of a critical pluralist position that many would probably like tothink possible, but about which most will be initially skeptical.

REALITY-CONSTRAINTS IN THE ABSENCE OFSINGLENESS OF TRUTH: THE CASE OF

MATHEMATICS5

Euclidian geometry once formed the paradigm of completely certainknowledge a single, unified system of theorems derived by indubitablelogic from a small set of supposedly self-evident truths. The last twocentunes have seen the gradual erosion of this faith in geometry, and inmathematics generally, as a single system of certain truths. Currentlythe very nature of mathematics seems to be a matter of some debate 6

Adopting a "worst case" scenano, let us suppose the following:Mathematics is not about the matenal world at all, but explores the logi-cal properties of abstract objects. There can be abstract entities, andentire systems of mathematics, which have no application to the mate-rial world Further, the abstract entities mathematics investigates do notform a single internally unified and consistent set constituting "the

4 A hermeneuucs and exegetical practice connected with this theory are put forth in LaFargue(1985 1-9, 205-217, forthcoming)

5The final chapter of Davis and Hersh's book ("True facts about imaginary objects") provided theinitial inspiration for this section of my paper, though the point they make is slightly different fromthe one I'm making here

6For a detailed account of the collapse of both certainty and unanimity in mathematics see espe-cially Kline


truth" of which all mathematical systems must give an account. Allabstract entities exist relative to some system of logical terms and postu-lates. No single set of terms and postulates can claim to be more "self-evident" than the others, and none can claim to be clearly superior to allothers in generating a mathematical system free of contradictions.Mathematics consists in arbitrarily positing vanous fundamental sets ofaxioms, without regard for their "true" or "self-evident" character, andexploring the properties of the vanous systems of theorems that can begenerated by doing this

The notion that even this kind of mathematics would be "nothingbut a creation of the human mind" is an exaggeration. If something iscompletely a creation of the human mind, then there is nothing one cangenuinely "discover," nothing to resist the mind's free decisions, noth-ing to be mistaken about But this would not be true even in the kind ofcompletely "foundationless" and pluralist mathematics descnbed above

First, not just any set of primitive terms and fundamental axiomswill generate a consistent system of theorems. Moreover, to be logicallyinteresting a system needs to "employ a comparatively economical set ofprimitive terms and axioms and select these so that an appropnately ncharray of theorems can be deduced. . .If the axioms are too few. .thenthe theorems deducible. . .will be insufficient to make the system inter-esting. . .[But] a system that lacks economy cannot give us much insightinto the logical connection of its sentences" (Barker:25) One cannotbring such systems into being by fiat. Some foundations will actuallywork, and some will not. Which ones will work better and which willwork not so well is a matter of discovery, not free creation.7

Secondly, once primitive terms and fundamental axioms are chosen,which system of theorems follows from them, and what entities andoperations have a valid existence in the system, are not matters that thecreator of the system can freely decide (or even initially know about invery many cases).

My conclusion and main point The questioning of singleness of

7As Barker further remarks, "It would be too extreme to imagine that the mathematician isentirely free of restrictions Mathematicians are subject to the requirements of consistency,and cannot bring into being self-contradictions For example, suppose someone attempts to postu-late the existence of an entity answering to the description 'A natural number which is the cardinalnumber of the set of natural numbers' It might at first sight appear that a mathematician couldpostulate such an entity if he likes Yet if someone tnes to join the assumption that there is such athing to the normal axioms for the natural numbers, inconsistency results [The numberinvoked would have to be both finite and infinite I An attempted creative fiat like this would beunsuccessful at bringing us object into the world" (72-73)


truth in modem mathematics is not connected with a simple abandon-ment of the presentation of evidence and of critical argument and a reli-ance on pure creativity. On the contrary, if the picture of mathematicsset out above has any plausibility, it is only because rigorous adherenceto mathematical epistemology—to the reality-constraints proper tomathematical reasoning—may have itself turned out (contrary to theintentions of mathematicians) to undermine the belief in singleness oftruth in this field.8

CATEGOREAL REGIONS

Next, I want to propose a theory of "categoreal regions" to serve as asubstitute for now widely questioned "metaphysical" theones aboutnecessary, universally valid sets of categories and truths that wouldobtain in all possible worlds. There may be no "necessary" set of math-ematical categories and fundamental axioms, but there are constraintson the contents of categories used in mathematics, deriving from theepistemology of mathematics and the realities with which it deals. Onlycategones with certain kinds of contents can be given meaning in math-ematical thought, the kinds of content that can be made parts of somegiven mathematical system through adherence to the epistemology ofmathematics This is what constitutes mathematics as a "categorealregion "

There are also certain other reality-constraints operative in physics,and certain kinds of category-contents that are in accord with these con-straints Insofar as the constraints and the correlative allowable cate-gory-contents are different in physics from what they are in puremathematics, physics constitutes a separate "categoreal region." A cate-gory in physics has to be able to be operationalized in physical experi-ments that test the ability of theones to predict observable outcomesCategones become problematic in physics when they can't be so opera-tionalized (For example, suppose that no observable outcomes ofexpenments can settle the question as to whether there are such thingsas "substances" distinct from properties. This would not show that sub-stances don't exist, but it could eliminate this category from the cat-egoreal region defined by the epistemology of physics.)

8Georg Cantor's proof that infinite sets can vary in size is a case in point This counter-intuitivenotion required genuine proof, not just free creation He had to show that one is not free to accepttraditional mathematical postulates, and deny the existence of vanous-sized infinities See Kline(199-204), Wilder (111-148)


A key pnnciple related to this notion of categoreal regions is that thecharacter of the reality-constraints on categories and theories determines boththeir meaning and the valid range of their application. And conversely theintended meaning and the desired range of application of a theory determinesthe kind of reality-constraints to which it is subject. The "range of applica-tion" of a theory has to do with questions about the valid conclusionsone can draw from that theory: If we know that x theory is true, whatelse do we know? For example, if one wants to know truths about whatcauses what in the real world—if this is the desired "range of applica-tion" of one's theones—then one's categories and theories must be con-strained by tests showing powers of predicting observable outcomesOne must operate with the epistemology proper to physics rather thanthose proper to pure mathematics The modem formalization of mathe-matics has led to its independence from physics, but it has alsodestroyed the traditional assumption that mathematics shows us neces-sary truths about the physical world

THE CATEGOREAL REGION OF PHAINOMENA

My point so far is that, first, there are different categoreal regions,each defined by a particular epistemology and range of applicationproper to it. Secondly, the discussion of mathematics illustrates the pos-sibility that within a given region there can be a cntical epistemologyeven in the absence of one uniquely true theory in that region

To apply this theory to the study of religion, it is necessary to intro-duce a third categoreal region to which belong the objects of religiousbelief The region itself is very broad—I will call it the region of "phai-nomena" Greek for "appearances," from which the modem "phenome-nology" denves. The world olphainomena is the world as delivered tous in involved human expenence, apart from any explicit consciousreflection on or specialized theoretical inquiry into such experience. By"expenence" here I intend the Erlebnis of continental philosophy(Gadamer:58-63), rather than the "sense impressions" of Bntish empin-cism. People "expenence" not only color, weight, smell, etc They alsoexpenence love, insults, status, beauty, etc. The content of expenenceincludes not only objects and events; it also includes human meaningsattached to them

Speaking of phainomena as a special categoreal region means thatcntical thought can take place that employs categones derived fromhuman expenence taken in the broad sense just outlined We can anddo make mistakes about phainomena To say that we can have cntical

LaFargue Radically Pluralist, Thoroughly Cntical 701

thought about phamomena as such is to say that cntical corrective thoughtcan take place using categories derived from expenence We do nothave to reformulate questions in some relatively specialized and restric-tive set of categories in order to think critically about them. Forinstance, in order to discover whether we are "really depressed" or"really angry," we do not have to dismiss the meaning-content of"anger" delivered in our expenence (anger as a phainomenon) and for-mulate what "being angry" would mean in the categones offered by thescience of neurobiology. Both anger and depression are phamomena,and we can think critically about which one is occurnng without goingoutside the categoreal region oi phainomena altogether

For any given person, there is a world of interrelated and mutuallydefining phainomena that constitutes the basic honzon within which allexperience takes place, and which determines the content of all particu-lar experiences In the case of any given person, and for groups of peo-ple sharing a common way of expenencing things, this experience-world (Lebenswelt) has a determinate character It is something thatother people can be mistaken about—as frequently happens when aperson from one culture misinterprets the statements and expenence ofsomeone in another culture It is also possible to be mistaken aboutphainomena given in one's own expenence. There is a prereflective layerof expenence that a person's conscious thought and speech9 can fail toaccurately represent (It is not, however, an uninterpreted layer of "rawdata.")

On this account cntical thought about phamomena must necessanlybegin with a "hermeneutical" moment—a stnving to make explicit theimplicit contents of one's own or of others' expenence in a way thatremains as true as possible to the expenenced contents of these phai-nomena To this extent, the remarks above stand largely within the phe-nomenological tradition. One crucial place where I would differ,however, from Husserl's foundationalist phenomenology is my proposi-tion that here again cntical thought can take place in the absence ofsingleness of truth The cntical thought about phainomena I have pro-posed so far does not have as its object finding some absolute groundingfor the categories given in anyone's expenence in the form of Husserl's

'This differentiates the present theory from those theories of religion (such as Lindbeck's) whichplace all the emphasis on the way that the actual language religious people use shapes their experi-ence, and so in some way becomes self-authenticating While not denying this, 1 think it is alsoimportant to point out the way in which "dead" religious language fails religiously because it failsto correspond to the shape of live expenence Thus religious language is not self-authenticating,but needs to reflect the shape of actual expenence, and can be cntically examined in this light


hoped-for universal set of categones, which necessanly shape everyone'sexpenence at some deep level. The phainomena appeanng in any givenperson's expenence have a determinate character even in the absence ofany such ground.10

RELIGION AND "THE GOOD"

"Religion" is a broad term, which can refer to concrete social groupsand institutions, as well as to an ideal set of beliefs, expenences, atti-tudes, and practices It is religion in the latter aspect that I intend hereas an object of cntical inquiry In this respect I take as a central given acertain "range of application" claimed for religious beliefs—namelytheir claim to descnbe what ought to be of ovemding importance inhuman life The question is then: What kinds of reality-constraintsought to govern our beliefs in this area? In the present view, the cat-egoreal region involved here is included in the more general region ofphainomena. Categones depicting ideals, obligations, importance,deserving, etc., are a subset of the set of possible categones describingthe contents of reality-as-expenenced

I will call the sub-region to which this kind of reality belongs theregion of "the good." But this term needs immediately to be qualifiedhere, especially to distinguish what I mean from the classical Platonistnotion of the good I will use "the good" here as a most abstract logicalcategory of categones, to refer to whatever deserves our respect or ourservice for what it is in itself

One faces a dilemma in the formulation of a theory of the good atthe necessary level of generality One needs a description narrowenough to distinguish the good from other kinds or aspects of reality.But it is important to define it otherwise in the broadest possible way, soas not to tie the theory down to one particular notion of the good (suchas "the obligatory," "the deserving," "the meaningful," etc) Wittgen-stein's strategy of providing a representative list is appropnate here, andone actual list he gave will do fairly well. We are dealing here with'"What is valuable . . . what is really important . . the meaning of life

what makes life worth living . . . the nght way of living" (641).Adding a few more notions To show that something is "good," one

10Calvin Schrag's Expenence and Being provides some important theoretical foundations for a non-foundationahst phenomenology Ninian Smart's version of phenomenology, emphasizing the par-ticularity of different religious traditions (see esp 49-73), also tends toward pluralism, in contrast toHusserl


would have to show that it can be grounds for respect or admiration, foran obligation we have toward another, or valid grounds for being proudof ourselves.

Religious/ethical categories depict some realities or ideals that"make a claim" on us. It is true there are a great variety of realities andideals that might make a claim on us But it is not true that just anythingcan justifiably be regarded as making a claim on us There is a certainway in which reality does constrain our beliefs about what we ought todo with our lives, and such constraints can exist in the absence of sin-gleness of truth in this area.

To illustrate this point, consider the proposal of Anytus in Plato'sMeno (71e). (I offer this philosophical example only because of its sim-plicity and brevity. It does not exemplify the more complex treatmentgenerally necessary for religions.) Anytus wants to define virtue {arete)in such a way that actual political success in governing is its prime con-stituent. But if Anytus wants to use arete as a validating concept, suchthat one will be able to say that if so-and-so has arete he has a genuineclaim on our respect, then this places a constraint on the content of theconcept itself. In this case Anytus' concept can be criticized by simplypointing out that a malicious tyrant might achieve actual political suc-cess by force, without truly deserving anyone's respect If validation ofsomeone's claim to respect is to be included in the range of applicationof a concept, then there are certain constraints on the formation of theconcept

In considenng what such constraints might be, one might be able toamve at some modest generalizations that are useful in the cntique ofother cases But one must avoid claiming any special "necessary" statusfor such generalizations, or assuming that all valid generalizations mustbe connected to some single set of correct concepts. Especially whenthey are cast in positive terms, they are most safely regarded as provi-sional inductive generalizations, which depend for their validity on intu-itions about concrete cases.11

To say that religions need to be grounded in something "good" isnot to say that religion can be "reduced to ethics"—especially if this is

"Many will object thai moral intuitions are unreliable, and none has any validity unless it implic-itly appeals to some necessary and universal "first principle" that has us justification in itself, andcan found the validity of the intuition But it has proved to be at least as difficult to find a self-evident "necessary first principle" as it is to find relatively non-controversial intuitions about someconcrete cases The present theory shares John Rawls' general strategy (46-53) of solving thisproblem by proposing a more dialectical relation between concrete intuitions and generalprinciples


taken to mean that there is some single system of ethical principles inthe light of which religions ought to be evaluated. Religions and systemsof philosophical ethics (like different systems of geometry) are differentsystems of categones occupying the same categoreal region.

But to place the crucial objects of religious belief in the region of thegood is to insist that beliefs about what we ought to do with our livescannot be grounded in some realities lying outside the region of thegood. The "necessity" we are under to anything that makes a claim onus is suigenens It cannot be reduced to physical/causal necessity, nor tological or "metaphysical" necessity 12 The only crucial consequence offailing in the respect we owe to the good as such is being in the wrong.The grounds of religious beliefs can be "transcendent" in the sense thatthey make claims that go far beyond relatively mediocre conventional("worldly") conceptions of the good. Contrary to metaphysically-tingedreligious apologetics, they cannot "transcend" the region of the gooditself (and the overarching region of phainomena) without ceasing tomake a claim on us.

This theory of the good leads to a criticism of certain mistakes thatreligious people sometimes make in the connections they suppose toexist between different facets of their beliefs, and in the conclusions theydraw from their beliefs For example, many Christians suppose that theauthority of God—the valid claims he has on human obedience—restson his physical power and the fact that he created the world Correla-tively, they think they can know "by faith," apart from any scientificevidence, that such a physically powerful being exists

From the point of view of the present proposals, both these assump-tions are false On the first point, imagine a science-fiction scenano Aworld of people has been created by an all-powerful but maliciousbeing, whose purpose in creating this world and its people was to seepeople torture each other It would be at the very least problematic forthe people in such a world to take this being's purposes as authontativefor their lives Physical power, even on the largest imaginable scale, issimply not a good ground for claims someone might make on ourrespect or service.

On the second point, we have to ask about the grounds of Chnstianbeliefs about God's causal power—whether these beliefs have been sub-

12This is how 1 would translate, and accord partial validity to, Kierkegaard's insistence in thePostscript on existential decision vs reliance on what he calls "objectivity " 1 would of course notagree with him that such decisions are based literally on "uncertainty," in the sense that one cannotreflect on them and give supportive reasons for them


ject to those kinds of reality-constraints that would entitle us to drawconclusions from them about what causes what in the universe."Faith," I take it, is generally a response to an experience of being relig-iously moved by something (reading religious writing, undergoing somemoving experience or witnessing some moving event, etc.). Insofar assuch experiences can claim to be experiences of something that makes avery strong claim on us (something very "good"), they can be very goodgrounds for knowing what we ought to do with our lives. But can theyserve as good grounds for knowing about the causal interactions thatbrought our present physical world into existence7 Clearly not. Thereare certain kinds of constraints on beliefs from which one wants to drawconclusions of this kind These are constraints of the sort commonlyused in astrophysics We have no good reason to suppose that experi-ence of the good gives one any privileged information about physicalcauses in the world Following the above definition of "faith," then, onewould have to say that religious faith as such, like pure mathematics,must give up its claim to give knowledge about what causes what in thephysical world.13

The present proposals rest on a radically expenential theory of reli-gion Knowing that Chnstian salvation is the one thing necessary, orthat Buddhist Enlightenment is the one thing necessary, is ultimately amatter of experiencing the overwhelming importance of one or the otherof these One who doesn't experience this can be "converted" to exper-iencing things this way But genuine conversion is a thoroughgoing per-sonal change effected by a concrete encounter with somethingoverwhelmingly good that one expenences as such—not through intel-lectual proof and consciously controlled choice. Such personal conver-sion is subject to criticism A person can critically examine herexperience of the overwhelming importance of salvation or enlighten-ment and discover that the conclusion about overriding importance isill-founded, that what motivates it is not something truly "good" (e gthat it only represents a flight from the psychological discomfort of ano-mie) But cntical reason ought to come as a second-order cntique of

13This includes claims to know, purely on the basis of religious experience itself, that this experi-ence "eludes natural explanation," and must be due to a supernatural "cause " Many believers doof course in fact regard such claims as both warranted by religious experience, and warranting theimportance of what is given in these expenences On the present theory, neither of these impres-sions is valid, if one takes "cause" in the usual sense it is given in modern science This is whyProudfoot seems to me mistaken in emphasizing the issue of the causal explanation of religiousexpenences as central to any test of their validity (209-221) This is connected with his advocacy ofa causal theory of perception (177), with which I would also disagree


expenence, capable of falsifying the deliverances of expenence, not asfirst-order discovery establishing the one true set of beliefs to which allmust adhere no matter what their expenence

THE OBJECTIVITY OF PHAINOMENA

The world-as-expenenced is clearly a world that is organized in theprocess of perceiving it, and this organization cannot be regarded as aproperty of things as they are apart from human consciousness Themost common interpretation of this situation is to say that the mind atleast partially "creates" the world that it perceives. Thinkers of a posi-tivist bent typically take this to mean that what the mind adds to realityis not really there and does not deserve senous attention Others in the"idealist" tradition, like Hegel, Cassirer, and Sartre, exalt the "creativespirit" of man that does the organizing of the world and urge us to stillgreater "creative" activity

In either interpretation, the idea that phainomena are a creation ofthe human mind creates a major problem for a theory of religion thatfounds religion on phainomena of any kind It makes religion sound likethe rules of football If they have their origin in the mind, how can theymake senous claims on this mind? They only have whatever "authonty"the mind wants to give them, and it can withdraw this authonty in thesame way we withdraw from a football game.

In answer to this senous objection to my theory, I would like toborrow an argument from Henry Allison (14-34), in a recent reinterpre-tation and defense of Kant's position vis-a-vis Berkeley 14 (It is impor-tant to distinguish my proposals from Kant's position in other respects,particularly from other attempts that have been made to defend religionon Kantian grounds ) In Allison's view, Kant's objection to Berkeley isessentially that Berkeley's idealism was not radical enough It takes asits starting point the fundamental difference that we experience betweentwo categories, "the human mind" and "the external world." It is atheory about their relationship, saying that the latter really exists only"inside" the former. What is needed is a theory that situates more radi-cally the very distinction between the human mind and the externalworld

One needs to realize that both of these categones, the external worldand the mind, are already "appearances " The mind we perceive our-

14 Hilary Putnam's interpretation of Kant is also very close to the position taken in this section


selves as having is itself already part of "reality as perceived by humanconsciousness," not "reality as it is in itself" In this view, the difficultywith Berkeley's theory is not so much that it doubts the real existence ofthe external world, but that it is overconfident in according a "morereal" status to the perceiving human mind.

This same point can be stated in different terms as a distinctionbetween two senses of the word "objective " In one sense of the word,"objective" refers to the world perceived as "out there," in contrast tothe "subjective" reality of internal ideas, feelings, etc., perceived as "inhere " In another sense, "objective" refers to reality as it is in itself,entirely apart from the way it appears in human cognition It is a mis-take to conflate these two senses of the word "objective" and assumethat trying to understand the "objective reality" that we are confrontedwith in our ordinary lives is the same thing as trying to find out whatreality is like apart from human cognition. Science has brought aboutan awareness that many of the kinds of things that appear to be outthere cannot be verified as properties of things as they are in themselvesShould we conclude from this that we are mistaken about their "objec-tivity" in the first sense?

This would be a mistaken conflation of two different senses of"objective," which need to be kept separate. In a world consisting ofphainomena already structurally differentiated into "subjective" mentalreality (a "self"), and an "objective" reality which this self encounters, itis inaccurate to think of the latter as a product of the former, to think ofthe reality objectively encountered as a creation of the human self Thehuman self is itself a phenomenon, whose perceptual content is largelydefined relationally vis-a-vis other phainomena that it encounters "in theworld." There is no warrant for a wholesale removal of all reality fromone group of phainomena (appeanng in the external world) and itsplacement in another phainomenon (the mind)

There are of course specific cases, like hallucinations, in which expe-rience itself gives us reason for doubt But to say that phainomena as awhole are not real would be to say that "the world," in the sense wenormally use that word, is not real This is partially a verbal poinr sofar as actual knowledge goes, "reality as it exists apart from conscious-ness" is an empty category Nothing we can know belongs in this cate-gory Those things which belong to reahty-as-expenenced are both theordinary and the only knowable referents for the term "reality." But thepoint is also a substantive one in the present context The empirical "I"facing a world in which certain things make an authontative claim on itdid not itself create the basis for these claims These claims do not have


the same status as the things which it can see itself creating, like therules of football

There is a sense in which this "real world" is partly constituted byan expenencing consciousness, which is not merely passive in us expe-rience. If there were no human consciousness the "real world" thatactually appears in our expenence would not exist (It might be properto say that there would still be some existent world, but we could notimagine it—to do so would be to bring it into the region of phainomena )But the "human consciousness" spoken of here is not the same as thephenomenal self The phenomenal self creates the rules of football, andit has a choice whether to do so or not do so, to formulate them in oneway or another way, to play or not to play football The "human con-sciousness" that is partially responsible for the constitution of the worldof phainomena is not like this It has done its work before "I" (the phe-nomenal mind) come on the scene. "I" arrive on the scene alwaysalready too late to regard myself as the one who creates the scene.15

Following this argument, my thesis about the good as a sub-regionof phainomena can be formulated as follows:

Contrary to Kant, there are no particular categones concerning thegood that are a given and necessary part of reality for us. But there issomething necessanly given about the region of the good: what is agiven is the fact that our own being, and the external reality we expen-ence, have a dimension of good/not-good. Take for example the ques-tion of "life's meaning." The word "meaning" can refer simply to thefact that some proposition makes sense in some consistent scheme ofconcepts But to say that there are facts in the world having "meaning"in this sense is not yet to say that the world is a "meaningful" place tolive in the more ordinary sense of that word. To say that "life is mean-ingful/meaningless" is to make a statement about "the good" in life. Ameaningful world "deserves" our participation, it "makes life worth liv-ing." A meaningless world does not.

The present proposals do not assert that the world is meaningful insome particular way, or even that it is meaningful rather than meaning-less "Meamnglessness" is negative meaning. It is a category stillbelonging to the categoreal region of the good What is given as part of

15This can be regarded as an interpretation of Kant's distinction between the "transcendental ego "and the "empirical ego" (Kant 253-58) But this interpretation must be distinguished from the onethat stems from the "Romantic" interpreters of Kant (see Korf) To make the transcendental egopart of a worldview, as they did, is in my terms to bring it into the world of phainomena, erasing thefundamental distinction


the phenomenal world is simply that this world has a dimension mean-ingful/meaningless It is possible for the world to be genuinely mean-ingful, or meaningless, in different ways for different people. What isnot possible is that a human being experience the world in a way that iscompletely neutral in respect to meaningfulness, in which the dimen-sion meaningful/meaningless is completely absent.

The meaningfulness of the world is something that one can be mis-taken about. One can for example hold onto the idea that the world ismeaningful simply out of fear of entertaining the opposite view. Onecan mistake a feeling of mere pleasantness for a perception of genuinemeaning Conversely, a person could be attracted to the view that theworld is meaningless out of mere egocentric resentment that she has notbeen given a more important place in the scheme of things. These kindsof considerations make for "ill-founded" views about the question of theworld's meaningfulness. But, since meaningfulness is a categorybelonging to the general categoreal region oiphainomena, one cannot gooutside one's experience to try to correct one's mistakes. One can onlybase such corrections on appeals to other experienced phainomena.

RELIGIONS AS DIFFERENTIAL SYSTEMS

Religions are ways of organizing the world meaning-wise The plu-ralist theory argued here holds that different religions constituteirreducibly different ways of organizing the world, genuinely differentultimate accounts of "the meaning of life," which assign different mean-ings to life expenences and actions. The formal model that is best ableto make explicit the meaning-structure of such different Lebenswelten isSaussure's model (99-120) of a "differential system "

The charactenstic of a differential system is that all of its elementsare mutually defining No single elements have their meaning com-pletely in themselves, so that they can serve as self-contained founda-tions for the meaning of other elements. A differential system has thecircular structure of a dictionary, in which each word is defined by otherwords, in a circle with no end. A painting is another example of adifferential system' the aesthetic value of each element depends on itsrelation to all the other elements in the same painting.

Religions are also best regarded as "differential systems," each ele-ment of which gets us essential meaning from its relation to other ele-ments of the respective system The "God" Paul believes in gets hisessential meaning from his relation to other key Pauline concepts andexperiences sin and fallenness, faith, salvation by Chnst's crucifixion


and resurrection, the contrast with salvation by works, etc.—and fromhis relation to the rest of Paul's culture and worldview. The meaning ofNirvana in the Pah Canon needs to be analyzed similarly, in relation toother Buddhist concepts and themes in these writings, and to the culturefrom which they stem The reason that "God" and "Nirvana" have tobe regarded as irreducibly different realities is that they belong to sepa-rate differential systems. (To be consistent, one must also say that theGod of Paul and the God of Aquinas are irreducibly different realities,for the same reason.) Giving full weight to the differential-system modelmeans regarding differential definitions as the only crucial and essentialdeterminants of the meaning of the elements of a given religion.

This last point also distances my theory from the ambition of manystructuralists and semiotic theonsts who have taken up Saussure'smodel. Their ambition has been to construct a semiotic theory that willbe like theory in physics, having a single set of categones in terms ofwhich all cultures and cultural phenomena can be analyzed This is inconflict with the way I would apply Saussure's model In this view, theonly important directive of Saussure's model is the general one that themeaning of any given element in a religion needs to be understood byconsidering its relation to other elements of this same religion. Theseare the only relationships that are essential. Every differential system isirreducibly different from every other one, so the validity of a universalset of categones for analyzing them all is always questionable.16

This appropnation of Saussure's model implies a contextual notionof the good. "Good" is a property of systems, or of elements consideredwithin systems, never of any given element considered outside the sys-tem that gives it its meaning and therefore its goodness But here onemust be careful to distinguish a semiotic (differential) system from acausal system To illustrate by analogy: A machine is a causal system inwhich parts physically interact to produce something outside them-selves. Each part has an instrumental value in producing this extnnsic

16Though semiotics is commonly associated with the ambition to find universals, many theonsts inthis tradition are critical of it on precisely this point See for example Demda's criticism of Levi-Strauss (discussed in LaFargue 1988) Umberto Eco also questions the thesis of a universal "GlobalSemantic System" (83-84, 93-95, 100, 112) Note that this would greatly reduce the supposedopposition between the hermeneutic and semiotic traditions Semiotic analysis of someone else'sreligion would no longer necessarily be a substitute for empathic verstehen It would rather be ameans of making explicit the meaning-structure of that religion, which empathic understandinggrasps in an implicit way Geertz, another semiotic theonst cntical of cultural universals, seems toagree here "The whole point of a semiotic approach to culture is to aid us in gaining access tothe conceptual world in which our subjects live so that we can, in some extended sense con-verse with them" (24)


effect. A painting is by contrast a semiotic system. The meanings of itsvanous elements are contextually defined in relation to each other Butthey don't interact causally as instruments to produce something differ-ent from themselves. What the elements of a painting "produce" is astructured semiotic system made up of these same elements.

When categories related to "the good" are defined in relation tosemiotic systems rather than functional systems, this allows for a differ-ent sense to be given to the phrase "good in itself" It allows for some-thing to be "good in itself," in the sense that it is not instrumentallygood for something else, and yet not "good in itself" in the sense that itis good in all (semiotically construed) contexts Thus while the claimwhich "God" and "Nirvana" have to overriding importance is contextu-ally dependent, it is still possible for believers to entrust themselves toGod, or strive for Nirvana as a response to claims made by some realities"good in themsleves," not as an instrumental "means" to achievingsomething desirable on other grounds.

This is not to deny that individuals and groups do very often usereligion primarily as an instrument to "fulfill certain needs" that theyhave (for comfort, social cohesion, etc.) This may in fact be true inmost cases of what people call "religion," but this instrumental use ofreligion is not the ideal case. Deciding what the ideal case should con-sist in is one of the chief goals of the religious cntique of religions I amadvocating here. When people effectively treat religion as a means tosomething else, they are not regarding it as something of overridingimportance (One proper response in this case would be to turn to acritical consideration of what is actually of overriding importance forthem, to examine whether it deserves this status.)

What religiosity amounts to in the ideal case can be descnbed asfollows

Religions as differential systems are not just collections of elements,but structured arrangements of these elements. Any given group of ele-ments can be structured in several different ways, and this will give riseto separate differential systems, because the relations between elements,and the way they mutually define each other's meaning, will be differ-ent The semiotic organization of any given person's Lebenswelt is influ-enced very greatly by her dominant interests and concerns. In thepresent view, a particular person's religious views are well-founded tothe extent that they represent an organization of the world that resultsfrom an overriding concern for something very good Genuine religious"conversion" (whether sudden or gradual) always consists in a mark-edly increased turning toward something good When religious beliefs


have indeed been molded by concerns other than the concern for thegood, this is to be accounted a defect in them, grounds for just cnticism

At this point one can see how the cntique of religions suggested hereis similar to the internal cntiques conducted by religiously advancedmembers within each religious tradition That is, the critique whichthese proposals envisage, like that of more idealistic members of eachreligion, would tend toward an ideal interpretation of a given religion ABuddhist who construes the karma-reincarnation idea as an invitation tostnve for personal rewards in the next life has a perspective dominatedby pursuit of self-interest rather than concern for something that makesa claim on us, and this interpretation of Buddhism deserves religiouscnticism on these grounds (as it is actually cnticized in early Buddhistwntings [Homer: 320]). The same is true of a Chnstian who construesChnstian afterlife-beliefs as an invitation to bargain with God Suchbelief would remain religiously defective even if one could show thatthere is an all-powerful being with whom one could bargain about after-life rewards (Self-interested reward-seeking is not of course in all caseswrong, but it is something totally different from placing ourselves inservice to something that makes a valid claim on us)

This is the sense in which there are reality-constraints that ought togovern the contents of one's beliefs about God, Tao, Brahman, Nirvana,etc That is, when taken together with some entire system of Chnstianbeliefs, the meaning that "God" has in the context of this system mustbe such as to represent something very "good" and deserving of single-hearted devotion. Cnticized by this standard, some conceptions of Godcan fare much better than others, and some can be completely discred-ited as the basis for a valid religion On the other hand there might beseveral different concepts of God that fare more or less equally well,especially when the way one construes the remainder of Chnstianbeliefs are also altered, as has actually happened frequently in the his-tory of Chnstian (and Muslim, and Jewish) belief Similar things can besaid of Tao, Brahman, etc.

There are fairly clear negative cntena by which certain religious con-ceptions can be ruled out Positive critena vary between religions, andcan only be fully developed by studying any given religion as a total"system" (hence the difficulty of treating this topic adequately in thispaper) "God" represents a different kind of good than "Nirvana," andthe ideal relation in which the respective Chnstian and Buddhist believ-ers stands to these two realities is also quite different (Smarr68-69)Hence the grounds on which God and Nirvana might be shown to rep-resent something "good" might differ. The theory thus allows for the


development of internal cntena for criticism proper to each religion,while not accepting just any cntena some religious people might want touse.

In this view "God," "Nirvana," "Tao," etc. have irreducibly differentmeanings These are not meanings possessed by realities (or a singlereality) that can be defined apart from the meanings These meaningsare the foundation of the valid claims made by these realities on thedevotion of believers To this extent they, are constitutive of the being ofGod, Nirvana, and Tao as objects deserving religious commitment.

This theory displaces the emphasis religious apologetics has tendedto place on supenor religious certainty about ultimate norms, andreplaces it with an emphasis on the superlative "goodness" which theserealities represent for the ideal believer. For formal analysis, these reali-ties do not have a logically foundational status similar to the axioms ofEuclid's geometry. They have a formal status more similar to aestheticcategones like the "climax" of a musical piece or the "centerpiece" of awell-decorated room.17

Tao, Brahman, and God can potentially be as much a part of realityas the rest of the world people encounter in everyday life The theoryproposed here would allow their actual reality to be cntically substanti-ated only in concrete cases for specific individuals, and for groups shar-ing a common expenence

17This is the kind of observation for which I would claim a modest generality rather than univer-sality Heunstically useful in the analysis of some religions, it implies no deficiency in thoseworldviews without strong single "centers," such as polytheistic religions or early Confucianism, towhich it would not apply


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