Philosophy as/and/or Religion

Philosophy as/and/or Religion

1. In laying out the idea that there may be some value in thinking of philosophy as good for nothing, I drew comparisons between a certain way of conceiving of philosophy and what I take to be the best way to conceptualize Dōgen’s understanding of the practice of seated meditation or zazen. For Dōgen, you sit just to sit, not for some other end (wink wink). If we take seriously Socrates’ claim in the Apology that practicing philosophy is the greatest good, then we can see that in a certain sense, philosophy is good for nothing, i.e., its very practice, not its results, are what make it valuable, and life worth living. Here I want to consider a related aspect of philosophy, that is, the idea that we can fruitfully think of philosophy, or, better, the practice of a certain way of doing philosophy, as religious practice in a robust sense.

2. In my casual studies of religions over the years, and in my in depth study of Buddhism, I’ve found it helpful to think of religions as characterized, not by belief in god, gods, or spirits, but by the following. Generally speaking, religions take note of certain fundamental problems or issues with human existence/the world and then offer some form of salvation. This allows us to easily see both Christianity, a paradigm of religion in the West, and Buddhism as both religions. In Christianity, the fundamental problem is the fallen nature of the world and humanity. The world is full of various natural and human caused evils (pain, suffering, and death among the most prominent), and humanity itself seems flawed insofar as it is wont to “sin” and to produce injustice. Christ redeems all of this and it is through Christ, through worshiping and living in a Christ-like way, that salvation is possible. In Buddhism, the fundamental problem is suffering, both one’s own and that of others. The Buddha found the path to salvation, the path to the cessation of suffering through the middle way, a way that recognizes the root of suffering to be attachment underwritten by ignorance and delusion concerning the nature of existence, in particular the nature of the self.

In the last year or so, I’ve come to think of philosophy as well-characterized as the attempt to figure out the best way to respond to those aspects of experience/the world that are not settleable just by looking. We can’t just crack open a skull and look and see whether the mind is the brain, whether we do it literally or with something like and fMRI machine. This basic way of looking at philosophy allows that poets and scientists may be engaging in philosophy, and doing so quite often. Think of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” and how it can be considered what he took to be the best way to respond to the world he found in 19th century America, a way that both responds to and shapes experience of that world, one that doesn’t, and cannot, result simply by looking. Similarly, consider all of the various ways that theories in physics are not the result of simply looking. When Einstein was working out his special theory of relativity, a key was his thinking about how light, unlike other waves, e.g., sound waves, maintains a constant velocity regardless of whether you are moving toward or away from its source. While the physicist is, or at least ought, to be in conversation with experience/empirical experiments, a good deal of theory selection is a matter of doing philosophy.

3. What is the situation, what are the fundamental problems and issues with existence that I find confronting me? The earliest that seems to have stuck was the death of my paternal grandmother when I was 3. Viewing her in an open casket seems to be what started my obsession with death, which later became the catalyst for getting/going into philosophy. The inevitable cessation of my and everyone I know and love’s bodily existence is central for me. And it is one that very quickly calls into question the nature of the self, since bodily death does not tell you exactly whether the self dies with it. And here it is easy to draw other connections with Buddhism’s focus on old age, sickness, and death. As Nietzsche is so helpful about, the value of suffering, sickness, etc., are not self-identifying. Whether pain can be identified as this, i.e., that which results from a jab of a knife into the leg, is unclear, but the meaning, the value of pain can’t simply be read off of any sensation labeled as pain.Christianity and Buddhism, and other religions, deal with many of these issues, again, as Nietzsche is very good at emphasizing. But in the absence of one of the paradigmatic religions, and even in conjunction with them, philosophy can be a way to confront and figure out the best way to respond to the human condition, which is, again, something that can’t be known just by looking. In this sense, philosophy can be a form of salvation. When we combine this with the observation that philosophy can be viewed as good for nothing, then we can see that the very activity of philosophy is soteriological—part of philosophical salvation is simply the sincere and earnest practice of philosophy.

4. In my own experience, practicing philosophy has been both a primary source of both hell and of salvation. What I mean is that it is because of all of the long hours I’ve spent alone the last 20 or so years explicitly doing philosophy—reading, thinking, writing—that I’ve been made miserable. I’ve largely practiced philosophy in the context of a felt need for isolation (not dialogue) and I’ve spent that time in isolation ruminating about death, suffering, the self, and other aspects of the human condition, for the most part ignorant of the obsessive nature of my thinking and the intrusiveness of thoughts. Doing philosophy, in a sense, allowed me to have both obsessive tendencies in my thinking and intrusive thoughts without thinking that anything was amiss. Since I was well-motivated to figure out a response to my perceived (human) condition, it seemed natural to be thinking so much about those issues and for thoughts to come unbidden in regard to them. However, while it has been a great source of torment, it has also been through the careful practice of philosophy—often in conjunction with Buddhism—that I’ve gained insights that have saved me from myself and depression, insights that have allowed me some form of wisdom in confronting the day to day aspects of the human condition. In this way, philosophy is not “merely” good for nothing; but, of course, in order for philosophy to be truly good for nothing, its practice must set its eyes on certain ends, such as truth—ends that may not be achieved but that are a necessary condition of doing philosophy. If they are achieved, then all the better.

5. I can imagine there may be some doubts about thinking of philosophy as a religion; indeed it may well be an idea anathema to many/most Western philosophy folk. To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that all philosophical activity is religious activity. The kind of topics and motivations that I’ve gestured at and claimed as my own do count, I think; but whether Kant or Hume, for example, could be thought of doing philosophy that is also religion or religious practice in a meaningful sense, I’m more skeptical about. And I generally speaking do not see the philosophy done by the physicist as a kind of response to the human condition that would make it religion.One might wonder further about the question of whether or not religions require some form of ritual, as Christianity and Buddhism both involve, whether it’s going to Church or simply praying or meditating on a regular basis. I’m happy to include ritual as a central part of religion. And if we do, I think that my (and others’) daily practice of philosophy, my morning ritual of coffee and reading, thinking, and writing (in my journal), my regular walks where I think in an ambulatory way, and still other things, are ritual enough, and they are central to my practice of philosophy.It strikes me that “philosophy as religion” will leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth primarily if they cannot think of religion disconnected from, say, Christianity, or some other similar religion, as such religions are often disparaged by (Western) philosophers, particularly given the behavior and apparent inability to engage the world rationally of many of its most visible and vocal practitioners.

6. One thing we can possibly gain from viewing (some forms of) philosophy as religion is a fuller recognition of its significance in a lived human life, its centrality in engaging a life worth living. After all, if Plato’s representation is accurate, Socrates saw philosophy as caring for one’s soul, which, of course, need not mean an immaterial soul, but may simply mean one’s character, one’s very being and way of engaging the world. Philosophy as religion is not something that is laid down in a book, however large, nor is it merely the dissolution of certain puzzles. It is a way of imbuing life with meaning and significance, something that Nietzsche feared the loss of, something which motivated his proclamation of the death of God and the ensuing secularization of society with its incumbent nihilism. In this context Nietzsche offered an alternative to the ascetic ideal found, for example, in Christianity, namely his ideal of the Eternal Recurrence. In a similar vein one might say that I offer the idea of Philosophy as/and/or Religion.

 

Addendum (10.1.18)

There is much that was left out in the above brief discussion of philosophy as/and/or religion. Much could be said about the issue of faith, of trust, in philosophy, both what it is, its value, and its results. However, last night while thinking about what I’d written here, it struck me that an even greater issue than faith in philosophy is that of struggling with one’s “faith.” That is, it seems to me that in any sincere and healthy religious practice, you will have difficulties maintaining your trust in the path you understand to be before you. Faith, or trust, does not require, and, indeed is unhealthy if it is seen to require, blind and unquestioning adherence to doctrine and practice. And this is very much my experience with philosophy as a way of living, a way of working on living. There are times when I want to flee into the everyday or into something less thoughtful; there are times when I cannot see the usefulness of philosophy, times when I doubt its value, times when a life of philosophy is not enough to live well, and so much more. Perhaps it is the inertia of the years, or perhaps it is the inescapable human condition, but whatever it is, I cannot get away; and even though there are moments when I sincerely feel as though nothing would be better, I always come back to philosophy as that which cannot but be done and must be done. And I am grateful.

It is, we might note, supremely of the nature of philosophy that it is something that always brings itself into question. Moreover, if there is anything that should escape dogmatism it is the practice of philosophy (though it often does not). Philosophy is robust enough to handle our doubts and questions; after all, in our very doubting and questioning, the philosophy is at hand.

11 thoughts on “Philosophy as/and/or Religion

  1. Wonderful piece.

    I am curious about the starting point for the orientation of Philosophy as Religion (or Philosophy as/and/or Religion). Are we perhaps poisoning the well when we conceive of idea along the lines of A as B (or and, or or), which is to assume a binary. When we say A as B we are thinking of the two as being essentially (or functionally) separate and distinguishable.

    Perhaps we can conceive of philosophy/religion. The idea being (borrowing Heideggerian language) philiosophy is always-already religion (and religion is always-already philosophy).

  2. Kevin, thank you for your comment and pressing me further to think about. I ultimately agree that there is at least A sense in which we can think of philosophy as always-already religion. However, I was using the “as/and/or” as a way to signal that the relationship between philosophy and “non-philosophy” is not straightforward and, thus, neither is its nature as a part of a binary. I think we can distinguish forms of philosophical practice that are not religious where by “religious” we mean a practice centered around soteriology. The physicist doing philosophy as a part of the practice of physics, is not, it seems to me “doing” philosophy in a religious way. And while the religious practitioner, whether Muslim or Buddhist, ought to be doing their practice philosophically, at least insofar as they are navigating it thoughtfully, I’m not sure even in that context they’d be doing philosophy religiously, since the soteriology would be Muslim or Buddhist. Thus, we can have philosophy as religion (always-already), philosophy and religion (philosophy together with religion), and philosophy or religion (perhaps in the case of someone like David Hume, though I’m not sure). So philosophy can enter into binary relationships in some cases while in others there is not a clear binary. I think this all comes about, in part, due to the nature of philosophy being so open, as the question, “What is philosophy?” is a question of philosophy, and, thus, philosophy is always-already putting itself into question. Thoughts?

  3. “Generally speaking, religions take note of certain fundamental problems or issues with human existence/the world and then offer some form of salvation.
    by characterizing things this way and not say as characterizing religion as right relations to the supernatural you have reduced religion to philosophy not the other way around.

  4. Thanks for reading and commenting. I think that’s a bit too quick; but give me some reason for thinking that religion has to concern the supernatural?

  5. well you could ignore all the history (past and present) and invent something new, but why use the name if you just mean something like psychology or philosophy?

  6. Which history is that? Whose history? What specific reasons can you give against what I said? So far I feel like I’m talking with John Cleese in the Argument Clinic.

  7. the history of everything of humankind we have and do call Religion, are you really this unaware of the actual instantiations of the subject you have taken up?

  8. If it’s so obvious and easy, can’t you give some kind of detail? Give me a representative range of examples of things called “religion” across culture and history.

  9. your blog post was long and I dont have the time to read it carefully, but you might be interested in Edward Slingerland’s description as religion and philosophy as being the same type of work, and the distinction only emerging out of the French enlightenment — (source:https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.1x+3T2015/)

    DR. SLINGERLAND: So one the first large issues we have to deal with,
    in terms of framing the class, is what does it mean to study thought?
    So the class is called Foundations of Chinese Thought.
    What does that mean?
    So first of all, it’s important to see we’re
    going to be studying primarily thought rather than practice.
    And that’s partly because the thought travels better, in terms of time.
    Philosophical religious issues, at a thought level,
    are easier for people from other cultures
    to learn something from and grapple with than particular practices
    that people might be doing.
    The other important thing is we just don’t know that much.
    The period we’re studying– we don’t know very much
    about what people were doing on the ground.
    So we have these texts that we’ve received.
    So we know a lot about what people were thinking.
    We don’t know too much about practice.
    So this is one of the reasons we’re focusing on thought.
    Even when it comes to focusing on thought,
    there’s an issue of what do we mean by the word?
    So a lot of people look at this material and say, oh, it’s philosophy, looks
    like philosophy.
    Some people look at and say, oh, it’s religion,
    this is really religious studies.
    It’s both.
    So it is philosophy.
    It is religion.
    This whole distinction between religion and philosophy–
    one of the things I want to try to get across in this course–
    is itself a product of a particular cultural view.
    So the religion/philosophy distinction emerges in northern Europe
    at a particular period during the Enlightenment.
    And it’s the result of a particular problem that these French philosophes
    had, which was that they were trying to formulate an ethic that
    was free of religion, that was free of the Catholic church.
    So they wanted to be able to formulate a rational ethic that wasn’t theological,
    that wasn’t based upon Christianity.
    And so they called themselves philosophers to distinguish themselves
    from theologians and priests.
    But if you look at it– if you actually look at what they’re doing–
    there’s a hidden religious commitment in the background.
    I’ll talk a little bit about that.
    But it’s also important to see that, before the Enlightenment,
    there was no distinction between philosophy and religion.
    All the thinkers– early Greek thinkers, medieval thinkers,
    and certainly all the thinkers in China–
    were simultaneously philosophers and religious thinkers.
    So the distinction itself is not helpful.
    Anything that we’d want to consider important philosophy
    is also, at some level, religious thought.
    It really does straddle the boundary.
    The material we’ll be looking at is really hard
    to categorize in terms of saying it’s philosophy or religion.
    So I’m arguing that all philosophical thought is also
    religious thought, that philosophy– any kind of interesting philosophy–
    is actually religion.
    So that means we’ve got to get some sense of what religion is.
    So we’ve got to have a definition– a working definition– of religion
    that we’re going to use for this course.
    My Ph.D. Is in religious studies.
    That’s my main field.
    One of the odd things about religious studies
    is we don’t agree on what it is we study.
    There’s no agreed upon definition of religion–
    it’s a whole cottage industry– proposing definitions of religion
    but there’s not one that everyone in the field agrees upon.
    I’m going to settle on one that I find most helpful.
    So the definition of religion, for the purposes
    of this course we’re going to be working with,
    is that loosely modeled on that of Charles Taylor.
    So Charles Taylor is a very important Canadian philosopher.
    And he’s defining what he calls spirituality.
    But I think it works very well as the definition of religion.
    So according to Taylor, religion involves, first
    of all, ontological claims.
    So this is a very– ontological is a very wonky philosophical term.
    It basically means what exists, so claims about what exists.
    Now, another way to put this would be metaphysical claims
    because you typically don’t make claims about what exists if we can see them.
    I don’t typically claim, well, this rock exists,
    because we can all look and see that the rock exists.
    So really the type of ontological claims that Taylor’s talking about
    are metaphysical claims– claims about things you can’t see.
    So claims about God, claims about human nature in a very abstract way– these
    are ontological claims.
    So for Taylor, religions are, first of all, a network
    or a framework of these ontological claims that are, by their very nature,
    not empirically verifiable.
    In other words, they’re the kind of things
    you have to commit to as an act of faith.
    The second important component of Taylor’s definition
    is that this framework of ontological claims gives you normative guidance.
    So again, technical, philosophical term– normative
    has to do with norms– what is good, what is desirable,
    what is morally desirable.
    So normative guidance is guidance in how to live your life,
    how to live a good life, how to be a good person.
    So a religion is a network of ontological claims,
    metaphysical claims, that gives you normative guidance.
    And this normative component’s important because this
    is what distinguishes religion from science.
    So science makes metaphysical claims, in a way.
    You can’t see the law of gravity.
    But it doesn’t give you normative guides.
    The science doesn’t tell you what’s good or bad or right and wrong.
    It doesn’t tell you anything that ethics.
    It just describes, or purports to describe, the physical world.
    The third component in religious systems– and this
    is moving a little bit beyond Taylor but I
    think it’s an important one– is that they typically
    involve some sort of soteriological strategy.
    So soteriology is a wonky religious studies term
    we have to find– having to do with salvation,
    so having to do with being saved religiously.
    So there’s this normative order.
    We have this framework of ontological claims
    that tell us the right way to live.
    Every religion that I know of thinks that we’re not
    in harmony with that framework right now.
    They wouldn’t be a religion if they thought everything was cool
    and we should just keep doing what we’ve been doing.
    We have to do something new.
    So every religion that I know of postulates some kind
    of soteriological strategy, some strategy for moving us
    from a state where we’re not in harmony with that order
    to a state where we’re in harmony with that order.
    Conceivably, you could imagine other types
    of religions that believe we are harmony but we
    have to do things to stay in harmony.
    But all religions give you something to do,
    something to do that’s important and importantly related
    to this normative framework.
    What I like about Taylor’s definition of religion
    is that it’s not dependent on theism.
    I think the more common way of defining religion
    is a system of thought that depends upon, or is intimately tied up
    with, supernatural beings, gods of some kind.
    And gods are very common in religions.
    And the most common form, I think, of ontological claim that a religion makes
    is that these beings exist that we can’t see.
    And they want certain things.
    And we need to follow those things.
    But the power of Taylor’s view is that the ontological claims
    don’t have to be gods.
    And the advantage of this is it captures things
    that I think fall under– in a helpful way–
    fall under the definition of religion but fall out of a theistic definition.
    So for instance, some people might argue that certain forms
    of early Confucianism, as we’re going to see,
    are not religious in a theistic sense.
    So we’re going to talk about one thinker named
    Xunzi who, arguably, is a naturalist.
    He’s got a religious world view
    but it’s not populated by anthropomorphic supernatural beings
    in any significant way.
    It also captures things like early Theravada Buddhism.
    If you ask people, they’ll say, well, Buddhism is not theistic.
    That’s not an accurate statement in terms of Buddhism in general.
    As soon as the Buddha dies, they start deifying him
    and people will start worshipping bodhisattvas and all sorts of gods
    pop up.
    But, at least, if you want to take the earliest Theravada
    teachings and the Pali canon seriously as what a certain form of Buddhism is,
    you could argue that that’s not theistic.
    But we want to include that under our definition of religion.
    What I also find helpful is it also captures
    modes of thought that purport to be not religious.
    But if you look at them more closely, they are.
    So things like Marxism or even things like libertarianism–
    taken as global, normative stories about how to live your life,
    about what the meaning of life is, what our place in the world is,
    and what we should be doing next, what our soteriological strategy should be–
    then things like global Marxism or global libertarianism fit.
    It also captures, as I’m going to talk about in much more detail
    at the end of the class, modern Western liberalism.
    So we have this kind of myth of secularism–
    and this is something that Taylor has written on extensively–
    that we used to be religious and then we figured out science and rationality.
    And now we’ve emerged into modernity.
    And we no longer have religious beliefs.
    So there’s still religious people running
    around but we’ve managed to enter a state where we navigate
    the world solely based on evidence and rationality and self-interest.
    And I think that’s one of the most pernicious myths about ourselves
    that could be perpetrated.
    So one of things we’re going to do, at the end of the course,
    is talk about how that’s not the case and how
    all human beings– modern Western secular people– atheists,
    people like myself– are still, at some level,
    religious even if it’s at an unconscious level.
    So he’s arguing– and I think he’s right about this–
    that committing to some sort of normative framework, some sort
    of picture of how the universe is and how it should be
    and, therefore, committing to some kind of, at least implicit,
    soteriological strategy had to be in harmony with that system,
    is a basic feature of human cognition.
    It’s a basic feature of human psychology.
    And you can’t think your way out of it.
    And so, we’ll be talking a little bit about that at the end of this course,
    about how this broader definition of religion
    helps us understand both what modernity is and what secularism is
    and how this relates to more traditional forms of thought,
    like the ones we’ll be looking at in early China.
    Religion is about big questions.
    It’s about questions like what is my place in the universe?
    How do I relate to the culture that I’m a part of?
    Ethics– anything involving ethics– What should I be doing?
    What does it mean to be a good person is part of a religious world view.
    Flourishing– so what does it mean to live a good human life
    is going to be intimately tied up with metaphysical commitments, commitments
    you have about what things in the world are valuable
    and which things are not valuable and which are relevant to human goals
    and which are not relevant to human goals.
    So when we’re studying early Chinese thought,
    we’re going to be studying early Chinese responses
    to all of these basic big questions.
    And I’ll be arguing that their answers have a lot of relevance for us today.

  10. (repost for brevity)
    your blog post was long and I dont have the time to read it carefully, but you might be interested in Edward Slingerland’s description as religion and philosophy as being the same type of work, and the distinction only emerging out of the French enlightenment — (source:https://courses.edx.org/courses/course-v1:UBCx+China300.1x+3T2015/)

    DR. SLINGERLAND:
    This whole distinction between religion and philosophy–
    one of the things I want to try to get across in this course–
    is itself a product of a particular cultural view.
    So the religion/philosophy distinction emerges in northern Europe
    at a particular period during the Enlightenment.
    And it’s the result of a particular problem that these French philosophes
    had, which was that they were trying to formulate an ethic that
    was free of religion, that was free of the Catholic church.
    So they wanted to be able to formulate a rational ethic that wasn’t theological,
    that wasn’t based upon Christianity.
    And so they called themselves philosophers to distinguish themselves
    from theologians and priests.
    But if you look at it– if you actually look at what they’re doing–
    there’s a hidden religious commitment in the background.
    I’ll talk a little bit about that.
    But it’s also important to see that, before the Enlightenment,
    there was no distinction between philosophy and religion.
    All the thinkers– early Greek thinkers, medieval thinkers,
    and certainly all the thinkers in China–
    were simultaneously philosophers and religious thinkers.
    So the distinction itself is not helpful.
    Anything that we’d want to consider important philosophy
    is also, at some level, religious thought.
    It really does straddle the boundary.
    The material we’ll be looking at is really hard
    to categorize in terms of saying it’s philosophy or religion.
    So I’m arguing that all philosophical thought is also
    religious thought, that philosophy– any kind of interesting philosophy–
    is actually religion.
    So that means we’ve got to get some sense of what religion is.
    So we’ve got to have a definition– a working definition– of religion
    that we’re going to use for this course.
    My Ph.D. Is in religious studies.
    That’s my main field.
    One of the odd things about religious studies
    is we don’t agree on what it is we study.
    There’s no agreed upon definition of religion–
    it’s a whole cottage industry– proposing definitions of religion
    but there’s not one that everyone in the field agrees upon.
    I’m going to settle on one that I find most helpful.
    So the definition of religion, for the purposes
    of this course we’re going to be working with,
    is that loosely modeled on that of Charles Taylor.
    So Charles Taylor is a very important Canadian philosopher.
    And he’s defining what he calls spirituality.
    But I think it works very well as the definition of religion.
    So according to Taylor, religion involves, first
    of all, ontological claims.
    So this is a very– ontological is a very wonky philosophical term.
    It basically means what exists, so claims about what exists.
    Now, another way to put this would be metaphysical claims
    because you typically don’t make claims about what exists if we can see them.
    I don’t typically claim, well, this rock exists,
    because we can all look and see that the rock exists.
    So really the type of ontological claims that Taylor’s talking about
    are metaphysical claims– claims about things you can’t see.
    So claims about God, claims about human nature in a very abstract way– these
    are ontological claims.
    So for Taylor, religions are, first of all, a network
    or a framework of these ontological claims that are, by their very nature,
    not empirically verifiable.
    In other words, they’re the kind of things
    you have to commit to as an act of faith.

  11. Thank you! I haven’t had a chance to read through the Slingerland’s material, but I look forward to it! I appreciate it. My thoughts and Slingerland’s aside, what are yours on the topic?

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