Abstract
Can a contemplative philosopher describe a particular religious practice as superstitious, or is he thereby overstepping his boundaries? I will discuss the way in which the Wittgensteinian philosopher of religion D. Z. Phillips uses ‘Superstition’ as a contemplative term. His use of the distinction between genuine religion and superstition is not a weakness as is often supposed, but a necessity. Without contemplating ‘Superstition’ and ‘genuine religion’ Phillips would not have been able to elucidate the meaning that religious beliefs have in the lives of both the faithful and their critics. I will defend the aptness of Phillips’s use of this term and illustrate his approach using examples such as the concept of genuine friendship or gratitude, and then I apply this approach to the question whether, from a philosophical point of view, particular Christian practices such as the prosperity gospel are genuinely religious or should be called superstitious.
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Notes
Bloemendaal (2006, p. 410) dismisses the possibility that the distinction between genuine religion and superstition is made from within religion, for either so-called superstitious practices are part of religion and therefore just as genuinely religious, or they are not part of religion, but then within religion there is no distinction to be made, for then there is no superstition within religion. The problems with this argument will be discussed towards the end of the next section.
Clarity about a relationship may lead to changes in the relationship or it may not—someone might say ‘Okay, our friendship is not entirely what we would call ‘genuine friendship’ but we carry on nonetheless.’
Showing that something is fake friendship may lead to changes in a relationship, but that does not imply that describing it as fake friendship was not purely descriptive in the first place.
Not everything that looks like friendship lives up to the standards of genuine friendship set by De Montaigne, some may even claim that this kind of friendship does not exist in real life.
Bloemendaal suggests that Anselm, Augustine and Aquinas do not seem to fit Phillips’s descriptions of Christian faith. To see whether this really is the case, we need to check, not the words they use, but the way they use them.
Phillips does not, for example, rule out a belief in bodily resurrection or in miracles, as Bloemendaal (2006, p. 413) suggests, but shows which differences should be accounted for, if these beliefs are to count as genuinely religious: like the one that Bloemendaal (2006, p. 301) approvingly quotes from an encyclopaedia: that immortality in the Bible is ‘not a condition simply of future existence.’ A contemplative philosopher points out such differences which are part of our shared practices, whatever a believer may tell someone conducting a Gallup poll concerning his own beliefs.
It is not true, as Bloemendaal (2006, p. 200) suggests, that everyone wants to see the conflicts in which he is engaged, ‘in a truer light’, for clarity may jeopardise his cause.
As mentioned above, even if someone says ‘friendship is an illusion’, he presupposes that De Montaigne’s concept of friendship is what real friendship is, or would have been.
Note that these discussions are not intended to suggest that Phillips presents a theory about superstition. He would not want to present any theory. I have just deduced from his work some aspects that we might look at when we discuss religious practices and superstitions. The philosopher has to look to the practice to see what these perspectives on superstition come to in specific cases. Phillips’s suggestions are meant to help us looking at practices, not to be part of a theory that can be studied in itself, apart from practice.
Bloemendaal (2006, p. 397) notices that there seems to be a development within Phillips’s work moving from the second to the third criterion: ‘Phillips’s later analysis does not deny that [superstitions] involve a belief in some queer causal connection. However, it emphasises that such beliefs are not so much mistakes as confusions.’
I thank Ingolf Dalferth for pointing out this possibility.
That the prosperity gospel is so popular in Africa, might tempt us to think in this direction. However, they would have to account for the many American teachers of the prosperity gospel who visit Africa: they appear to speak the same language and use the same concepts as these teachers who live in the Western, American society.
When Phillips (2004b, p. 186) tries to give a contemplative description of a genuinely religious response to evil, he is dissatisfied when he finds that: ‘There still seems to be a predictive element in the religious belief I have described.’ The genuinely religious response Phillips wants to contemplate does not have any predictive element.
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Kroesbergen, H. ‘Superstition’ as a contemplative term: a Wittgensteinian perspective. Int J Philos Relig 77, 105–122 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9496-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-014-9496-8