David Phillips

Many analyses of belief in the soul ignore the soul in the words. Dislocations of concepts occur when words are divorced from their normal implications. The 'soul' is sometimes the dislocated utterer of such words. Pictures, including pictures of the soul leaving the body, may mislead us by suggesting applications which they, in fact, do not have. But pictures of the soul may enter people's lives as desires for a temporal eternity. Contrasting conceptions of immortality and eternal life depend on a willingness to say farewell to life. Atheistic denials of temporal eternities, do not appreciate these other possibilities.

Leading philosopher of religion D. Z. Phillips argues that intellectuals need not see their task as being for or against religion, but as one of understanding it. What stands in the way of this task are certain methodological assumptions about what enquiry into religion must be. Beginning with Bernard Williams on Greek gods, Phillips goes on to examine these assumptions in the work of Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Frazer, Tylor, Marett, Freud, Durkheim, Le;vy-Bruhl, Berger and Winch. The result exposes confusion, but also gives logical space to religious belief without advocating personal acceptance of that belief, and shows how the academic study of religion may return to the contemplative task of doing conceptual justice to the world. Religion and the Hermeneutics of Contemplation extends in important ways D. Z. Phillips' seminal 1976 book Religion Without Explanation. It will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, anthropology, sociology and theology.

Whether one agrees with him or not, there is no avoiding the challenge of Hume for contemporary philosophy of religion. The symposia in this stimulating collection reveal why, whether the discussions concern Hume on metaphysics and religion, "true religion," religion and ethics, religion and superstition, or miracles. For some, Hume's criticisms of religion cannot withstand them, while others claim that Hume can be answered on his own terms. All responses to Hume determine the style and spirit in which one pursues philosophy of religion today.

Ludwig Wittgenstein established a "cool" stance for philosophy, contemplating the world without meddling in it. D. Z. Phillips explores this position, focusing on its implications for philosophical authorship and the philosophical investigation of the nature of reality. Influenced by the views of Wittgenstein and his pupil Rush Rhees, Phillips—who is one of Rhees's own students—first contrasts Wittgenstein's methods with Kierkegaard's religiously oriented dialectic. He describes the difficulty in sustaining a contemplative view of philosophy and discusses efforts to go beyond it in the work of Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Annette Baier, and Martha Nussbaum, who, in different ways, propose to make philosophy a guide to living. A provocative and challenging work, Philosophy's Cool Place is one of the few books that addresses the discipline as an enterprise and explores its relation to moral values, religious belief, and the nature of Reality. By advancing the cause of neutrality, it will stimulate debate and foster discussion of what philosophy is to become in the postmodern era.

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.

This extended discussion of the timeless argument of faith and reason, began between D. Z. Phillips and Kai Nielsen in 1965 with the publication of D. Z. Phillips' The Concept of Prayer, one of his first books, and the first time that the influence of Wittgenstein's thought in the philosophy of religion was truly exposed. Two years later, in 1967, Kai Nielsen published his famous article 'Wittgensteinian Fideism' in the journal Philosophy. Their respective philosophical work has developed over the years, with Phillips becoming known as the leading proponent of Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion and with Nielsen returning to renew his investigation of what he believes is the fideistic implications of this mode of philosophizing. These exchanges are further enhanced by a clarifying introduction from Bela Szabados and two further critiques from Nancy Bauer and Stephen Mulhall within the text.

I argue for an interpretation of Hume on practical reason different both from the traditional instrumentalist interpretation and the more recent nihilist interpretation. Both involve reading Hume as making normative claims. On the nihilist interpretation, Hume denies that either passions or actions can violate authoritative norms of reason; on the instrumentalist interpretation, Hume denies that passions can violate authoritative norms of reason, but holds that instrumentally irrational actions violate the one such authoritative norm. I argue instead for a purely psychological interpretation of T 2.3.3 and parallel passages in T 3.1.1. As I interpret him, Hume does not here even address the question whether passions or actions can violate authoritative norms. His conclusion is merely that a person’s beliefs cannot conflict with her passions.