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Religious Certainty: Peculiarities and Pedagogical Considerations

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Abstract

This paper presents the concept of ‘religious certainty’ I have developed by drawing inspiration from Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘certainty’. After describing the particular traits of religious certainty, this paper addresses two difficulties derived from this concept. On the one hand, it explains why religious certainty functions as such even though all its consequences are far from being absolutely clear; on the other hand, it clarifies why, unlike the rest of certainties, the loss of religious certainty does not result in the collapse of the world-picture made up of all certainties. Subsequently, it analyzes to what extent the teacher can teach religious certainty by acting as a facilitator for its acquisition–if desired—particularly bearing in mind that religious certainty cannot be attained at will. These basic teaching guidelines have several advantages. First, they make it possible to know the nature of religious certainty even better. Second, and most importantly, the fact of having adopted the perspective of a teacher who tries inculcating a religious certainty contributes to detecting and preventing forms of indoctrination that, arguably, might go unnoticed even when attempting to properly present religious certainty—or rather, this way of being religious—in current schools to foster understanding thereof.

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Notes

  1. My intention is to focus only on Wittgenstein’s remarks entitled On Certainty—written between 1949 and 1951—leaving aside his Lectures on Religious Belief—held in 1938—because although Martin (1984) and Vasiliou (2001) do not hesitate to relate the latter to the former, I consider that they arose in very different contexts, to the extent that Wittgenstein does not refer to certainties in his Lectures. Hence, I will later mention—and with due reservations—only one remark from Wittgenstein which does not appear in On Certainty, as such comment was written in 1947 and has to do with religious education.

  2. Both problems thus reveal that, as Kusch (2018) suggested, there are different kinds of certainties.

  3. Other authors—e.g. Ortega (2007)—have presented concepts which are very similar to what Wittgenstein called ‘certainty’ (Ariso 2011). More information about Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘certainty’ can be found in Kusch (2018), Malcolm (1986), Moyal-Sharrock (2004), Rhees (2003) and Stroll (1994). There are also further developments or variations of Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘certainty’, e.g. Ariso (2017).

  4. Henceforth, when I use the term ‘certainty’ I will be referring to objective certainty, whereas I will only make reference to subjective certainty when I explicitly indicate so.

  5. Martin (1984, p. 608) pointed out that certainties are shared worldwide, so that religious certainties “command the kind of massive human consensus so characteristic of the judgements which interested Moore and Wittgenstein”. However, there are also local hinges or certainties that constitute the world-picture of “some human beings at a given time” (Moyal Sharrock 2004, p. 136). Proof of this is the fact that Wittgenstein (OC 262) referred to the use of “persuasion” between people who wish to convince each other but have different world-pictures—and, by extension, different certainties – as is the case “when missionaries convert natives” (OC 612).

  6. Though clearly such a life or upbringing is not sufficient, it should not be forgotten that it usually constitutes the first step in the acquisition of religious certainty.

  7. This remark indicates that an immersion process may make it possible for the child not only to realize what things exist, but also to conclude which ones do not. Nonetheless, Wittgenstein refers, on the one hand, to things that do exist—books and armchairs—and, on the other hand, to a thing that does not exist—unicorns. Meanwhile, I am referring to God, whose existence, as seen above, is admitted in some world-pictures, whereas it is denied in others. Indeed, it may even be the case that, after having experienced the same immersion process in religious practices, one child becomes certain that God exists, while another believes that God does not exist.

  8. As Martin (1984, p. 609) pointed out, the neophyte confronts then a “momentous decision”.

  9. Augustine’s account of conversion constitutes a clear example of this. According to his own words: “there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away” (Augustine, 1955, VIII, p 29). Therefore, the acquisition of religious certainty is something that happened to him, not something that he did or decided.

  10. Of course, issues on indoctrination regarding religious certainty might and should be analyzed in further publications with due extent. Anyway, as Ariso (2019c, p. 408) has recently shown, the term ‘indoctrination’ is too ambiguous in its meaning, to the extent that he recommends dispensing with it. Far from concealing a problem, this would simply avoid a troubling concept with numerous associated prejudices, “thereby giving priority to case-by-case analyses free of such prejudices and ambiguities over focusing on whether a particular case fits within a specific conception of indoctrination”.

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Ariso, J.M. Religious Certainty: Peculiarities and Pedagogical Considerations. Stud Philos Educ 39, 657–669 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-020-09735-8

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