David Phillips

Philosophical romanticism is the view that, in maintaining out forms of life, we are engaged in the endless task of “acknowledging the human” in reading and being read by others. Winch's discussions of “human nature” and the principle of universalizability in ethics should discourage us from imputing such romanticism to his work. On the other hand, his discussions of generality in “the human” and the human neighbourhood might tempt one to do so. Winch's contemplative conception of philosophy should, in the end, count against this temptation. His work is a passionate example of doing conceptual justice to different readings of “the human”.

The concern of this book is the nature of religious belief and the ways in which philosophical enquiry is related to it. Six chapters present the positive arguments the author wishes to put forward to discusses religion and rationality, scepticism about religion, language-games, belief and the loss of belief. The remaining chapters include criticisms of some contemporary philosophers of religion in the light of the earlier discussions, and the implications for more specific topics, such as religious education, are investigated. The book ends with a general attempt to say something about the character of philosophical enquiry, and to show how important it is to realise this character in the philosophy of religion.

Foundationalism is the view that philosophical propositions are of two kinds, those which need supporting evidence, and those which in themselves provide the evidence which renders them irrefutable. This book, originally published 1988, describes the battle between foundationalism, which places belief in God in the first category, and various other approaches to the problem of faith – ‘Reformed Epistemology’, hermeneutics; and sociological analysis. In the concluding section of the book, an examination of concept formation in religious belief is used to reinterpret the gap between the expressive power of language and the reality of God.

Many contemporary philosophers assume that, before one can discuss prayer, the question of whether there is a God or not must be settled. In this title, first published in 1965, D. Z. Phillips argues that to understand prayer is to understand what is meant by the reality of God. Beginning by placing the problem of prayer within a philosophical context, Phillips goes on to discuss such topics as prayer and the concept of talking, prayer and dependence, superstition and the concept of community. This is a fascinating reissue that will be of particular value to students with an interest in the philosophy of religion, prayer and religious studies more generally.

This collection of papers is from the Ninth European Conference on the Philosophy of Religion held at the University of Aarhus, Denmark in August 1992. The theme of the conference was theism and its modern alternatives. Why alternatives? There is no agreement on the answer to that question. Before outlining the nature of the disagreements, there is a need to distinguish theism, where it means some belief in God, and theism as a certain kind of philosophical response to that belief. If theism is to be spoken of in both contexts, the following question arises -- is philosophical theism an adequate response to religious theism?