I'm participating in a symposium in Boston in two weeks called The Future of the Philosophy of Religion: A Symposium of Younger Scholars. While one might just take the title to be a description of the eight of us bright young(ish) things presenting - lookit us, we're the fyooture! - I've decided to take the title literally and think about more distant futures. How often does one get a chance to play the futurologist? It's structured like a European symposium - each participant submits a paper in advance, which all others read, and the actual symposium involves extensive discussion of the papers. Should be fun.
But what is there to say about the philosophy of religion? I'm really a religious studiesist, not a philosopher of religion. Part of me thinks the field is hidebound and hopeless. But perhaps this is the setting for a jeremiad and a call for renewal, and I should play the gadfly! That, in any case, is the strategy of my position paper, where I shoot the moon imagining futures our philosophy of religion is incompetent to address, then try to find a way back to philosophy of religion. Here's how it opens:
The question of the future of the philosophy of religion is really a faith question. Not just about our faith in philosophy, but our faith in the future of religion itself. Is Maitreya coming soon? Before or after we become as God? Will the god-gene win out over secularization? I am excited about this symposium because the way I’ve learned to think about almost everything is shaped by the narratives and explanations, disappointments and compensations of secularization theory—and suddenly, all bets are off. The future of religion beckons, and I find myself unprepared for it.
Out of professional scruple I will dodge the faith question, but professional scruple also enjoins me to name it here at the outset. One thing I’ll be proposing for our discussion is that the philosophy of religion is a backwards-looking discipline (forward-looking present company obviously excepted!), and often reactionary in its implications. I know about the owl of Minerva, but many an evening and a morning have passed since Hume, Kant, Hegel…! Our problems and problematics come from past religious formations, some of them long dead, and it is high time we acknowledged how small a part of the history of human religious articulations they scan.
But the challenges I’ll name apply to all of philosophy, and indeed to all of the humanities as practiced in western universities. Philosophy of religion may have no future, but in the future everyone will be doing philosophy of religion. In the following, I gather reflections around 12 theses concerning ways in which we might rise to the challenge. The philosophy of religion is dead; long live the philosophy of religion!
Invoking a book by Freeman Dyson I read a few years ago, I go on discuss imponderable futures - thousands and tens of thousands of years from now - when all bets well and truly are off. The religious traditions we study are barely a few thousand years old. I'll send you the rest if you're interested (it's about 3600 words in all)... but let me show you the one longish passage I quote from Dyson; it's a stunner, quite sufficient seed all by itself for many a fascinating discussion:
On a time-scale of ten thousand years, the mismatch between our past and our future becomes even more acute. Ten thousand years ago we were still a single species, not noticeably different in physical and mental qualities from the people of today. We were living in hunter-gatherer societies, and learning slowly how to adapt to a warmer climate after the rapid ending of the last ice age. Our loyalties were fixed to family, tribe, and local culture. Ten thousand years in the future, who knows what we shall be? On the ten-thousand year time-scale, qualitative changes dominate quantitative changes. On that time-scale, our values and ideals are totally plastic. The battle ground of human evolution will move from biology to philosophy. Science may or may not still exist. Beings that we would recognize as human may or may not still exist. I hope that our human shape and our ancient human loyalties will be preserved in some fraction of our future territory. Even if our descendants in other regions have achieved immortality, as they well may, it would be wise to keep a population of mortal humans on Earth, so that some contact with the reality of death will not be lost. Imagined Worlds (Harvard UP, 1997), 160-61
Should be a good time, if my fellow symposiasts prove to have the right sense of humor and seriousness! We might actually have some breakthroughs!
But what is there to say about the philosophy of religion? I'm really a religious studiesist, not a philosopher of religion. Part of me thinks the field is hidebound and hopeless. But perhaps this is the setting for a jeremiad and a call for renewal, and I should play the gadfly! That, in any case, is the strategy of my position paper, where I shoot the moon imagining futures our philosophy of religion is incompetent to address, then try to find a way back to philosophy of religion. Here's how it opens:
The question of the future of the philosophy of religion is really a faith question. Not just about our faith in philosophy, but our faith in the future of religion itself. Is Maitreya coming soon? Before or after we become as God? Will the god-gene win out over secularization? I am excited about this symposium because the way I’ve learned to think about almost everything is shaped by the narratives and explanations, disappointments and compensations of secularization theory—and suddenly, all bets are off. The future of religion beckons, and I find myself unprepared for it.
Out of professional scruple I will dodge the faith question, but professional scruple also enjoins me to name it here at the outset. One thing I’ll be proposing for our discussion is that the philosophy of religion is a backwards-looking discipline (forward-looking present company obviously excepted!), and often reactionary in its implications. I know about the owl of Minerva, but many an evening and a morning have passed since Hume, Kant, Hegel…! Our problems and problematics come from past religious formations, some of them long dead, and it is high time we acknowledged how small a part of the history of human religious articulations they scan.
But the challenges I’ll name apply to all of philosophy, and indeed to all of the humanities as practiced in western universities. Philosophy of religion may have no future, but in the future everyone will be doing philosophy of religion. In the following, I gather reflections around 12 theses concerning ways in which we might rise to the challenge. The philosophy of religion is dead; long live the philosophy of religion!
Invoking a book by Freeman Dyson I read a few years ago, I go on discuss imponderable futures - thousands and tens of thousands of years from now - when all bets well and truly are off. The religious traditions we study are barely a few thousand years old. I'll send you the rest if you're interested (it's about 3600 words in all)... but let me show you the one longish passage I quote from Dyson; it's a stunner, quite sufficient seed all by itself for many a fascinating discussion:
On a time-scale of ten thousand years, the mismatch between our past and our future becomes even more acute. Ten thousand years ago we were still a single species, not noticeably different in physical and mental qualities from the people of today. We were living in hunter-gatherer societies, and learning slowly how to adapt to a warmer climate after the rapid ending of the last ice age. Our loyalties were fixed to family, tribe, and local culture. Ten thousand years in the future, who knows what we shall be? On the ten-thousand year time-scale, qualitative changes dominate quantitative changes. On that time-scale, our values and ideals are totally plastic. The battle ground of human evolution will move from biology to philosophy. Science may or may not still exist. Beings that we would recognize as human may or may not still exist. I hope that our human shape and our ancient human loyalties will be preserved in some fraction of our future territory. Even if our descendants in other regions have achieved immortality, as they well may, it would be wise to keep a population of mortal humans on Earth, so that some contact with the reality of death will not be lost. Imagined Worlds (Harvard UP, 1997), 160-61
Should be a good time, if my fellow symposiasts prove to have the right sense of humor and seriousness! We might actually have some breakthroughs!
