Kenneth Rose

The insight that everything arises through the generosity of being is a metaphysical claim and an intellectual intuition. It is not merely the conclusion of a thought-experiment or of an exercise in conceptual analysis but of the intellectual intuition of being. This long-neglected faculty of philosophical insight is an immediate, intuitive discerning of being as it parcels itself out into the ideal intellectual forms (eidē, ta katholou, jāti) providing the underlying nonphysical arrangement of the physical and mental worlds. Its neglect in Western philosophies over the last millennium has led to a forgetfulness of being, with a corresponding loss of meaning and ontological grounding of contemporary globalizing culture. Reviving Intellectual Intuition in Metaphysics: Contemplative Philosophies and Being seeks, long after its banning by Kant, to revive the use of intellectual intuition in metaphysics as essential to the development of an ontology that depends not only on conceptual analysis and logic but also on intellectual intuition, which is cultivated through contemplative practice. The cultivation of what is named pratibhā in Sanskrit, theōria in Greek, contemplatio in Latin, and intellectual intuition (intellektuelle Anschauung) in more recent European philosophy is the primary method and probe that I will apply in the following considerations. In contrast to the procedure in most contemporary metaphysical treatises, the intellectual intuition of being precedes arguments for metaphysical claims about being in this book. Reviving Intellectual Intuition in Metaphysics, as a work of contemplative metaphysics drawing upon historical sources across multiple Eastern and Western philosophical and religious traditions, has the potential to ameliorate divisions between science, philosophy, and religion and between diverse cultures and divergent worldviews.

John Hick’s An Interpretation of Religion was first delivered as lectures over thirty years ago, yet it is still relevant as a comprehensive pioneering attempt to clarify the general or metaphysical basis of human religiosity from a pluralist perspective. Two familiar criticisms of the pluralistic hypothesis are, first, that it is a covert form of exclusivism, and, second, that it leads to transcendental agnosticism. These clever but ultimately indefensible claims effectively deadlocked the quest for a pluralistic understanding of religious diversity in the theology of religions in recent decades. In refutation of the charge of covert exclusivism, Kenneth Rose argues that, as Hick often pointed out, the pluralist hypothesis is a philosophical hypothesis and not a theological claim. It is not a replacement theology, since it doesn’t seek to replace the vivid teachings of the world’s religions with a pale abstraction. It seeks instead to understand the transcendental categories of human consciousness, which, when schematized or concretized, are the source of humanity’s varied responses to what is ultimately real. In defense of Hick’s pluralist hypothesis against the claims of transcendental agnosticism, Rose argues that Hick’s noumenal Real is translucent, or leaky, because it can be experienced, as is the testimony of the worlds’ religious traditions, although, as simple and infinite, it cannot be fully, finally, and normatively mapped in historically conditioned languages and experiences, a conclusion in harmony with apophatic theologies, philosophies, and mysticisms in numerous religious and philosophical traditions.

In this thesis, I critically explicate two themes central to John Hick's thought: the cognitivity of religions and religious pluralism. The first theme runs through all of this writings, while the second is a newer interest. Hick challenged the claim of logical positivism that religious language is meaningless by proposing that such utterances as "God exists" are indeed meaningful, or factual, since they may be verified eschatologically. I argue that this proposal founders on the problem of adequately specifying the eschatological verificandum--that which would count in the eschaton as a verification of the claim "God exists." This outcome is inconsistent with Hick's belief that religious language is cognitive. ;The problem of adequately specifying the eschatological verificandum as well as encounters with people of faiths other than Christianity led Hick to take up the issue of religious pluralism. He called for a Copernican revolution in theology in which Jesus would be replaced by God at the center of the universe of faiths. In response to criticisms of the theocentricity of this proposal, Hick developed a philosophical approach to religious pluralism, which he calls the pluralistic hypothesis. This hypothesis is grounded upon the quasi-Kantian distinction between the ineffable, unknowable Real an sich, or the noumenal Real, and its phenomenal manifestations as the various impersonal and personal conceptions of deity in the religions of the world. However, this hypothesis lends support, contrary to Hick's intentions, to religious noncognitivism, since the noumenal Real, being beyond human experience, is otiose and expendable. ;To avoid this unwanted outcome, I propose a recasting of the pluralistic hypothesis along lines suggested by other concepts that have been central to Hick's thought from the beginning: the cognitive ambiguity of the universe, human cognitive freedom, faith as interpretation, and the rationality of trusting one's experience. I suggest that had Hick developed these ideas rather than inexplicably modelling the pluralistic hypothesis on Kant's First Critique, his recent views on religious pluralism might have been more persuasive than they have proven to be