Abstract
If heterogeneity is the case for existential pluralism, the epistemic issue is—to what extent is the philosophical sense-making of the social world epistemic–pluralistic so as to rationally enhance religious pluralism? This is the central issue while rethinking religious pluralism. The essay provisions a hermeneutics of philosophical sensibilities that enable religious pluralism anchored on an ethics of equality, justice and solidarity. The facticity of cultural and religious heterogeneity calls for a metaphysical, epistemic and ethical justifiability, especially in the context of the erosion of it (by modes of monolithic claims) as the only possible mode of human–cultural existence. Differencing ontological monism, ontological dualism, ontological pluralism and critical pluralism, and juxtaposing each with the other, I argue that monolithic centrism is (historically and socially) non-viable given the conditions of human existence. To consider being as one-and-only-one or even in terms of two ultimate modes, unfortunately, projects a life world that succumbs to autocracy, value degradation and appropriation of existential multiplicity. Critical epistemic and ethical pluralism provides the theoretical space enabling togetherness of theory and practice. Such pluralism provides the normative conditions of a pluralistic social life.
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Notes
- 1.
For a detailed reading about pluralism in science, see Kellert et al. (2006).
- 2.
‘Radical empiricism’ is opposed to a more singular, monist position and absolutism. James argued that our experiences of empirical events diverge, and one explanation could never encompass all of those experiences.
- 3.
Descriptions are regarded as human creations, whose relationship with the true nature of the world varies from case to case. Two descriptions may overlap, and should ideally agree with each other when they do. Inadequacies of a description are handled by reducing either its domain of applicability or claims about its accuracy. The goal of scientific investigation is not to progress towards a single description of the world because the world may be too complex for this to be possible. One can however, realistically hope to understand better the domains of applicability of different descriptions, and to find a description appropriate for every type of physical phenomenon. Descriptions provide (partial) understanding of the world.
- 4.
There are varieties of ontological pluralism that include post-second world war or first generation of pluralism, and second generation of pluralism. Post-second world war pluralists used the concept of heterogeneity in a much more constricted sense to defend and promote self-interested interest groups. However, more recently, there has been a return to multiplicities, and Donna Haraway’s (1988) description of ‘situated knowledges’ and ‘embodied objectivity’, in which she argues for ‘epistemologies of location’ where claims of knowledge can only be considered partial, resurrects James. The argument here is that a return to such original notions of pluralism helps validate the diversity of experiences and knowledges that grow out of the variety of ways we are all situated in any number of experiences, including environmental degradation.
- 5.
The contributions of Jürgen Habermas; Axel Honneth, Richard Rorty, Donna Haraway and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari are of importance to the contribution of critical pluralism.
- 6.
This separation has been at the basis of those ethical theories that have not recognized moral statements as a truth-property. In other words, alternative reading to the “is/ought” relation have defended either a cognitivist approach (truth-validity of moral statements) or, alternatively, a non-cognitivist approach (no truth-validity), as in the case of Emotivism.
- 7.
Without this primary ‘salvation’ from our own attributed linguistic reality, one cannot speak or bring about ‘equality’ in social reality for we are linguistically ‘possessed’ of high/low deviations.
- 8.
See Rorty (1995) for his reinterpretation of deconstruction.
- 9.
Wittgenstein in continuation of Gadamer’s hermeneutics sees meaning as linguistically contextual revealed in its uses or what he calls ‘language games’.
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Lourdunathan, S. (2021). Philosophical Hermeneutic of/for Religious Pluralism: Some Methodological Considerations. In: Puri, B., Kumar, A. (eds) Re-thinking Religious Pluralism. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-9540-0_3
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