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Constructive Dialogical Pluralism: A Context of Interreligious Relations

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Abstract

This article presents current philosophical reflections on religious diversity and concomitant attitudes towards the interreligious situation. The motive behind this presentation is to show that in order to deal more efficiently with the phenomenon of religious plurality, there is a need for a development of the philosophy of religion, where new perspectives are opened up and explored. The very concept of religion as a belief system is put into question, since it has caused philosophical reflections on religious diversity to be confined to certain metaphysical and epistemological concerns. Instead of focusing on the noun ‘religion’, the article suggests a way to understand the adjective ‘religious’ and view religious plurality as a plurality of ways of being religious. This opens up a certain context of interreligious relations and interreligious dialogue, where this very dialogue itself can contribute to the development of philosophical tools, concepts and categories for dealing with the fact of plurality. I call this context constructive dialogical pluralism.

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Notes

  1. Goodchild 2002, xiii.

  2. This typology is most widely used by the persons involved in the debate since Allan Race and Gavin D’Costa published pioneering works in the field (Race 1983; D’Costa 1986).

  3. Thus for example, in the opinion of Maura O’Neill, women are excluded (O’Neill 1990, ix–x). In a similar way that women have been marginalized so have non-Western subjects in the Orientalist’s construction of the Other. See for example King 2002, 111–117.

  4. Smith 1963, 50.

  5. The expression ‘interreligious dialogue’ is often contrasted with ‘intrareligious dialogue’, where ‘interreligious dialogue’ denotes dialogues between different religions and ‘intrareligious dialogue’ denotes dialogues between sub-traditions of the same religion. However, I will in the course of this investigation change perspective from one where the noun ‘religion’ functions as the basis, to one where the adjective ‘religious’ becomes the basis. The intension of the expression ‘interreligious dialogue’ will thus become dialogue between religious subjects and come to include dialogue between persons representing different ways of being religious within the same religion. In a sense, the term ‘polylogue’ would be more appropriate to denote what I am aiming at. However, since ‘dialogue’ is often used in this wider sense, I have decided to stick to that term.

  6. Yandell 1999.

  7. See for example Runzo 1993a.

  8. See for example Alston 1991 and Plantinga 2000.

  9. See for Example Hick 1989. The great world religions are in Hicks account all true in the sense that they foster a transformation from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness, but their doctrines are not literally true.

  10. Griffiths 1991.

  11. See for example Alston 1991, 274.

  12. Surin 1990, 200.

  13. See for example Cupitt 1997.

  14. See for example Milbank 1990.

  15. Smith 1963, 23. Smith is also referring to Cicero’s De Natura Deorum.

  16. Smith 1963, 39, 230–231.

  17. Smith 1963, 40–43, 231–235.

  18. Subaltern studies give attention to those without a voice in the public sphere.

  19. King 2002, 40.

  20. Radhakrishnan 1988, 18.

  21. King 1999, Ch.5–7. Smith 1963, Ch. 3.

  22. Smith 1963, 67–68.

  23. See for example Phillips 1995.

  24. Ward 1987, viii.

  25. Ward 1987, 156.

  26. Ward 1987, 157.

  27. Ward 1987, 158.

  28. This reflection is made by Conrad Hyers (Hyers 1995, 187).

  29. Someone who adheres to logical exclusivism will claim that if the world religions contain contradictory conceptions of God or ultimate reality, then at most one in each set of contradictory beliefs can be true. This definition is taken from Stenmark 2001, 28.

  30. Hyers 1995, 187.

  31. This is a point stressed by, among many others, Maura O’Neill (O’Neill 1993).

  32. The term ‘attunement’ will be of central importance in the development of my perspective and the sense of the term will be disclosed in due course.

  33. Streng 1995.

  34. Sherry 1977, 112–115.

  35. Hick 1989, 36–55, 299–300.

  36. Ward 1987, 63.

  37. DiNoia, 1997, 128.

  38. Hick 1989, ch.3.

  39. Schrag 1999, 69–70.

  40. Schrag 1999, 70.

  41. Heidegger 1996, 85 [92].

  42. Heidegger 1996, 86 [92].

  43. Heidegger 1996, 86 [92].

  44. DiCenso 1990, 34.

  45. Heidegger 1996, 90–91 [97–98]. The meaning of Da-sein will be given later in this text. Joan Stambaugh writes on page xiv in the Preface to her translation of Being and Time: ‘It was Heidegger’s expressed wish that in future translations the word Da-sein should be hyphenated throughout Being and Time, a practice he himself instigated, for example, in chapter 5 of Division One. Thus the reader will be less prone to assume he or she understands it to refer to ‘existence’ (which is the orthodox translation of Dasein) and with that translation surreptitiously bring along all sorts of psychological connotations.’ I will therefore adopt this practice and hyphenate Da-sein.

  46. The most common translation of vorhanden is present-at-hand. Dreyfus uses occurrence for Vorhandenheit. Objective presence is the term employed by Stambaugh in her translation, which is the translation I am mainly using, and therefore I apply her terminology.

  47. The most common translation is ready-to-hand. Dreyfus uses available. Handy and handiness, for Zuhandenheit, are the terms used by Staumbaugh.

  48. Heidegger 1996, 65 [69].

  49. DiCenso 1990, 34–35. DiCenso capitalizes the term ‘being’. About this Staumbaugh writes that ‘although it has the dubious merit of treating ‘being’ as something unique, it risks implying that it is some kind of Super Thing or transcendent being. But Heidegger’s use of the word ‘being’ in no sense refers the word to something like a being, especially not a transcendent Being. Heidegger does not want to substantivize this word.

  50. Heidegger 1996, 10 [12].

  51. DiCenso 1990, 41.

  52. Gall 1987, 10.

  53. Gall 1987, 28–29.

  54. Gall 1987, 15.

  55. Gall 1987, 27.

  56. Gall 1987, 26–27.

  57. Gall 1987, 135.

  58. Streng 1995.

  59. Streng 1995, 205.

  60. Streng 1995, 222–223.

  61. ‘Experience’ is here to be understood in a very broad sense, including all the characterizations I have made earlier, i.e., experience of/aspiration after/call for/faith in the possibility of decisive transformation.

  62. Heidegger 1996, 124 [131].

  63. In Heidegger 1996, 126–131 [134–140] an elaborate characterization of attunement can be found.

  64. Heidegger 1996, 139 [148].

  65. Heidegger 1996, 140–141, [150].

  66. Heidegger 1996, 142 [151].

  67. Heidegger 1996, 144–147 [153–157].

  68. DiCenso 1990, 52.

  69. Heidegger 2001, 15–79.

  70. Heidegger 2001, 17.

  71. Heidegger 2001, 17.

  72. Kockelmans 1984, 172.

  73. Dickey Young 1995, 106–129.

  74. Rorty 2005, 33. A few pages earlier (30) this expression is revealed as originating from Max Weber.

  75. Heidegger 1996, 207 [225].

  76. DiCenso 1990, 58.

  77. Mohanty 1992, 288.

  78. Chakrabarty 2000, 253.

  79. Feyerabend 1975, 218–219.

  80. Balagangadhara 1994, 482.

  81. See, for example, Phan 2003.

  82. Vroom 2000, 198–200.

  83. Green 2000, 77. Quoted in Vroom 2000, 208.

  84. Vroom 2000, 207–221. See also Vroom 1994, 193 and Vroom 1998 regarding the difference between holistic and non-holistic theories of religion.

  85. Runzo 1993b.

  86. O’Connor 1993, 179.

  87. Heidegger 1996, 126 [134].

  88. Heidegger 1996, 129 [136].

  89. Mulhall 1996.

  90. Mulhall 1996, 191.

  91. Nussbaum 1990.

  92. Cavell 1981, 125.

  93. Mulhall 1996, 202.

  94. Mulhall 1996, 210.

  95. Mulhall 1996, 193.

  96. Dreyfus 1993, 169–170.

  97. Jonsson 2002, 33.

  98. See for example Suzuki 1975.

  99. These observations are often made by feminist philosophers of religion. They claim that if women’s religious experiences are considered, a new dynamics of interreligious dialogue will follow. See, for example, O’Neill, 1990, 1993 and Dickey Young 1995.

  100. Milbank 1990, 190.

  101. Quoted in Knitter 2005, 41.

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  1. Study of Religions, Södertörn University, SE-14189, Huddinge, Sweden

    Willy Pfändtner

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Pfändtner, W. Constructive Dialogical Pluralism: A Context of Interreligious Relations. SOPHIA 49, 65–94 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-009-0156-x

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