The Autonomy of Religion and Religious Pluralism in Linguistic Philosophy and Phenomenological Study of Religion

Abstract

The article addresses the views on the nature of religious pluralism taken by N. Smart and D.Z. Phillips who elaborated two separate versions of linguistic philosophy of religion. Both versions share the idea of linguistic philosophy of religion as a form of conceptual descriptivism, which demands religious pluralism as its basic premise. On one hand, religious pluralism makes it possible to comprehend religion philosophically by relating the mechanism of empirical diversity of religion to the principle of religious autonomy, i.e. of rational independence of religion. On the other, pluralism enables the philosophy of religion as specific intellectual practice aimed at describing the conceptual life, which expresses itself in a variety of ways. It has been shown that the versions of linguistic philosophy of religion elaborated by Smart and Phillips, while initially allied, became conflicted due to the shift in assessing religious pluralism. It is by the end of the 1960-s that Smart explained religious diversity as resulted not from the plurality of discourses, in which conceptual life takes place, but from the multiplicity of grounds for a religion. Thus, linguistic philosophy of religion forfeits its privileged position of the most effective way of understanding religion and becomes in Smart’s view a discipline among others (e.g. anthropology, history) in the phenomenological religious studies; in turn, the notion which becomes central here is that of “experience” instead of “concept”.