What is Philosophy? The Open Question

Someone who has different views about the subject matter of a particular science is simply not engaged in that particular field. And although there is methodological debate during scientific revolutions, someone with radically deviant methods, who for example totally disregards observation and experiment in favour of aesthetic considerations, simply ceases to be a scientist. In contrast, disparate intellectual activities, tackling different problems by incompatible methods and with different aims are still called philosophy. There are, for example, philosophers who would maintain that philosophy should strive neither for knowledge nor cogency or argument but for beauty and spiritual inspiration.

– Hans-Johann Glock, What is Analytic Philosophy? (2008), p.7

Long time readers of this blog will no doubt be aware that I’m intrigued by the question, ‘What is Philosophy?’ A brief glance over to the subject list will show that the ‘metaphilosophy’ cloud looms large over its little portion of the sidebar. I think the reason why this question is so interesting to me is that if we are going to delineate philosophy from theology and then have a theory about why the former is of value (a project I am quite interested in), then we ought to have some kind of conception of what philosophy is.

The remark above from Glock is the right first step to take. The question, ‘What is Philosophy?’ is an open one, because philosophy seems to have the unique characteristic of academic disciplines in having surprisingly large and porous borders – there is much more activity which passes for philosophy, then there is which passes for astronomy or medical research. Philosophy, somehow, is able to traverse an enormous ground of subject matter (mind, matter, medicine, morals, meaning, just to mention the ‘m”s) and deploy extremely different conceptual instruments to get its work done.

 

My Thesis Question or What I’ve Been Doing All Year

If you have asked me at some stage during this year what I am researching for my M.Phil thesis, chances are I rambled off something about Plato, Richard Rorty, Politics, or the very purpose of philosophy itself, and then subtly insisted that we change the topic. ‘How are things with you?’ I might have politely asked. The reason for this is because I had no thesis question, and this was quite the thorn in my side. Or at least the gumnut in my boot.

But thanks (a lot!) to  a couple of productive meetings with my supervisor over the past month, I am now at a position where I have a sketch of my thesis question. So here it is, recorded in black and white for your interest and my sanity: Tim’s M.Phil thesis proposal -

Edification and Excellence: On Richard Rorty’s Platonism

1. Myles Burnyeat has suggested that contemporary professional analytic philosophy is characterized by the practice of insulation. That is, the practise of inquiring into philosophical propositions and theories which the inquirer is not actually committed to living out. As a result of this, the contemporary analytic philosopher has no reason to suppose that the results of her inquiry will impact upon her life, or anyone else’s life, in any significant way. It is merely theoretical. Burnyeat suggests that this widespread practice of insulation is, for the most part, what sets contemporary analytic philosophy apart from ancient philosophy. It is important to notice that this is a metaphilosophical claim: it is claim which takes a step back from actual philosophical projects and aims to say something about the very act of philosophizing.
2. The work of American philosopher Richard Rorty (1931-2007) can be interpreted as a sustained attempt to critique and move beyond this practise of insulation. In this way, Rorty can be read as reclaiming an ancient philosophical paradigm in which philosophy ought to conceive of itself and be practised today.
3. A significant dimension to Rorty’s philosophy is that he calls for the abandonment of what he takes to be fruitless metaphysical inquires, and for philosophy to reconcieve itself as strongly, perhaps even pre-eminently, engaged in ’cultural criticism’.
4. However, for all his insight, I think Rorty undermines his own project and misconstrues what ‘cultural criticism’ is. Particularly, by insisting that philosophy and literature are basically two ways of doing the same thing – of helping people get by. Through an examination of Platonic philosophy, particularly it’s political, metaphilosophical and dialectical themes, as well as the idea of the philosopher as some sort of expert, I will seek to show how Rorty’s proposal can be mended and extended by drawing more deeply on the paradigm he implicitly re-introduces to contemporary analytic philosophy. First (and perhaps solely!) this will involve an investigation of: A) In what sense is a philosopher an expert? Is this necessarily a metaphysical claim? and B) What is ‘cultural criticism’ anyway? Ought this be a dimension of all philosophical activity.
5. In all this, I hope to defend and articulate a metaphilosophical position which develops and elucidates Rorty’s idea of philosophy as cultural criticism, and which makes room for a political dimension to all philosophical inquiry. In the process I hope to suggest what ‘Platonism’ and ‘ancient philosophy’ are, and how they may still be of importance to contemporary analytic philosophy. The thesis title is Edification and Excellence, since, in a nutshell, these two words respectively grasp on to what is central in Rorty and Plato’s philosophy. Rorty held that philosophy is meant to be therapeutic, it is meant to help you get by, it is meant to build you up; Plato held that philosophy is meant  to help you discover and realize what is best. I audaciously hope to offer a symbiotic synthesis of these two metaphilosophical ideas.

Comments very welcome.

What I’ve Learned From Teaching Philosophy

Philosophy has no history, one might say, any more than human nature does, or better, any more than human DNA does: philosophy is the DNA of thought, a twisting perpetual reshuffle of the same astonishingly sparse number of components, rotating around one another in a semblance of constant play.

– Arthur Danto, Danto and His Critics (1993), p. 193-194

This year I have had the great opportunity to work for the Philosophy Department at Sydney University as a tutor for their first year courses. Apart from thoroughly enjoying this and gettin’ real paid, this has given me occasion to reflect on what I think the purpose of philosophy is. The above ahistorical, metaphysically rich remark from Arthur Danto comes close to encapsulating my position. This came as quite a surprise to a me: an historically minded and metaphysically impatient/suspicious type.

Philosophy is an activity. Before it is an area of study or method of inquiry, before it is a received set of ideas or a canon of certain books, it is an activity that many people find themselves involved in. It is activity which involves reflecting on your life, it is an activity which attempts to synthesize all your beliefs and observations into a synoptic vision of how the world is, it is an activity which criticizes certain ways of going about life and attempts to conserve others.

Philosophy is an activity which accompanies other activities. In Plato’s dialogue, Ion, Socrates, with his tongue firmly in his cheek, criticizes poets and composers of stories because they have no craft of their own, and they claim to be a jack-of-all-trades, writing about chariot making one day, then about tactics of warfare then next, then about the inner workings of fate, the gods and romance. The irony here, is that philosophy too, finds it tricky to articulate exactly what it’s subject matter is. You can study Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Physics, Philosophy or Art and Philosophy of Language – what do politics, mind, physics, art and language all have in common? The tempting answer is – nothing. This is because philosophy is not a subject matter, but is something which accompanies other more concrete and meaningful thought. As you think about art, politics etc, philosophy pops its head up. This is what the Danto quote is getting at above – ‘philosophy is the DNA of thought’.

I think this (brief!) description fits with the impressions I have gotten from my students over the past year, and accounts for the mixture of curiosity, satisfaction and frustration I have seen in their faces. Philosophy is extremely satisfying when it opens up a subject area to you, when it clarifies another particular concrete discourse, or when it is orientated towards concerns you have felt pull on you and questions that have presented themselves to you in your everyday life. I think it can be frustrating when it is removed from concerns you have ever had, or discourses you think are particularly important. In this way, it actually requires quite a lot from its participants.

The promise of the Danto quote is that there is an astonishingly sparse number of components to philosophy. Once you get into it, there are thought patterns, concepts and reasons which are transferable and manage to crop up in a lot of other thinking. A comforting idea to those new to the game, and a promise that philosophy needn’t only be an academic activity!

Dogmatism, Anathema Theories, and the ‘Handmaiden of Theology’

A friend recently introduced me to an article by the Australian philosopher Bruce Langtry. Langtry is also a Christian, and in a brief piece attempts to sketch ways in which Christianity and philosophy may come together and come apart. Here is a quote I agree with:

The intellectual vice of dogmatism enters in only when one is unwilling to subject one’s beliefs to critical scrutiny, and when one is in principle closed to the possibility of abandoning one’s beliefs in the light of good objections. But there is no reason why a Christian must or should be dogmatic in this sense.

– Bruce Langtry ‘A Christian and a Philosopher’, The Briefing #121, p.7

I totally agree with this statement, and I suspect Saint Paul would too. Paul seemed open to abandoning his faith in the light of good objections. He wrote ,’If Christ has not been raised [from the dead] our preaching is useless and so is your faith…If only for this life we have hoped in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.’ (1 Corinthians 15.14, 19) If someone could convince Paul that Jesus did not in fact rise from the dead, then he says he would not be a Christian.

However, I like this statement less:

Certain philosophical theories are incompatible with Christianity. For example, cultural relativism is the doctrine that moral statements correspond merely to the conventions of a particular society and possess no universal validity. We Christians must reject cultural relativism at many points, for example, in what we say about God’s nature and about sin.

Let me first say what doesn’t bother me about this, so that I’m not misunderstood. It is not that Langtry switches from a tolerant stance to a dogmatic stance; that at one moment is saying that Christians shouldn’t be dogmatic, and then at the next he is saying that there are views Christians can never endorse. I don’t think this second statement interferes with his earlier one about freedom from dogmatism. You can, of course, reject viewpoints thoughtfully and fairly without being a dogmatist – philosophers do this all the time.

What bothers me about this second statement is the way philosophical theories can cloud the message of Christianity, and can sneak their way into the centre. Since when was the message of Christianity: ‘that moral conventions are not merely the conventions of a particular society and possess universal validity’? Since when was Jesus concerned about cultural relativism? I thought he was on about the Kingdom of God being near.

This approach to Christianity and Philosophy carves the intellectual world into good and bad theories – good theories which explain and justify Christian belief; bad theories which are incompatible with Christianity or which call it into question. The picture seems far too simplistic to me, and rejects outright the possibility of the anathema philosophical theories calling into question the theories which the Christians happen to hold onto.

This approach mistakes theories which people formulate as an attempt to articulate their Christian belief with their Christian belief itself – they mistake their theories for gospel truth.

Imagine you are a Nineteenth-Century British Evangelical who is quite sure, though you have never really looked into it, that it is good and proper for women not to vote. Are you ever going to read John Stuart Mill’s The Subjugation of Women and think that it could have anything of value to tell you? Probably not, since it would most likely fall into the anathema philosophical theories camp.

I suspect that the reason something like this view gains any force is because many Christian philosophers and theologians think that the only purpose of philosophy is to help theologians to do their job – to clarify concepts and provide forms of reasoning. That is, it has no particular contribution to make, outside of how it can be helpful for theology. Langtry says something like this when he says:

Insofar as theology has this broad scope, it cannot avoid philosophy…Theologians have little option but to use philosophical premises in developing their theological theories…Theologians must have recourse to philosophical arguments.

In the same magazine another writer, Phil Dowe, writes:

Studying philosophy…can teach you to think logically. It can train you in the art of convincing people with reasons. It can unlock for you…the way people think.

– Phil Dowe, ‘Philosophy? You Mustn’t Be Serious?’, p.8

If your conception of the proper purpose and function of philosophy is limited to ‘helping theology do it’s job’, then it makes sense to divide the intellectual world up into good and bad theories. But what if philosophy is much more than this? Christians try to listen to scientists for reasons other than it will help them do theology, Christians often listen to political commentators and art critics for other reasons than it will help them do theology, Christians often listen to educational and medical theorists for reasons other than it will help them do theology – why is philosophy then mostly only thought of by Christians as being worthwhile and helpful insofar as it will help you do theology?

This, of course, begs far more questions than it answers. But don’t all good blog posts…

Johannine Philosophy: John Calvin and John Paul II on the Purpose of Philosophy

One of the reasons for my starting this blog was to try to think through what the best relationship between Christianity and an activity like philosophy could be. See my first post here. It’s my hope that this question interests not only those who dabble in philosophy, but other Christians who may be curious whether there is a relationship between their vocations or areas of work; their hobbies or ‘regular/neutral’ activity, and their belief that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is now Lord. Art, sport, commerce, music, law, government, medicine, media – you name it! – how should anything like this fit with my faith? This is the question of integration.

Anyway, this big question which motivates my blogging is sometimes obscured by all the small, fragmented posts which tip-toe around this issue and poke it with a stick.

But here is a quote which tackles this central question head on. And it’s from none other than – the Pope! Or at least, a previous Pope. Read this quote a few times, and think about whether

1) You think this is a good picture of faith and philosophy, and

2) Whether this principle that John Paul II is espousing is one that throws any other areas of your life into a helpful light. The quote is somewhat bizarre, but pretty stimulating I think.

Put your thinking caps on…

Just as the Virgin was called to offer herself fully as human being and as woman that God’s Word might take flesh and come among us, so too philosophy is called to offer its critical and rational resources that theology, as the understanding of faith,  may be fruitful and creative. And just how in giving her assent to Gabriel’s word, Mary lost nothing of her true humanity and freedom, so too when philosophy heeds to the summons of the Gospel’s truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed it is then that philosophy sees all its enquires rise to their highest expression. This was a truth which the holy monks of Christian antiquity understood well when they called Mary ‘the table at which faith sits in thought’.

– John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998)

To my lights, this quote walks a tightrope which many theories of integration walk. On the one hand, it affirms that God exists, and that all good things are created by God – including abstract human activities like philosophy. On the other hand, it wants to say that this human activity is at its best when it is orientated towards God, when it is talking about Christianity, when it is coming to the aid of the more important activity which is theology. This amounts to saying: created things are kinda good, but they need to be explicitly and fruitfully giving themselves over to the causes of God to be their best. From my (quite limited) reading, the most well-known Christian philosophy buys into this approach – such as Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Norman Geisler etc.

What troubles me about this is the small place that this theory has for philosophy qua philosophy as a part of life. What troubles me about this is the implicit spiritual elitism which carves the world up into ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ categories and then maintains that the secular things are actually only good when they get a bit of the religious in them, or when they subordinate themselves to the religious. Implicit in this view is the idea that if you aren’t working full-time in ministry, theology, charity or some such endeavour, then you are doing something second rate.

This is a view which can then colour a whole outlook on life.

I think Calvin’s mysterious, restrained and humble remark is gesturing more in a direction I’m comfortable with. Calvin wrote,

Shall we say the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably?

– John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), II.ii.15

On Living Your Philosophy

Nowadays, if a philosopher finds he cannot answer the philosophical question ‘What is time?’ or ‘Is time real?’, he applies for a research grant to work on the problem during next year’s sabbatical. He does not suppose that the arrival of next year is actually in doubt. He insulates his ordinary first order judgments from the effects of his philosophizing

– Myles Burnyeat, The Original Sceptics (1998), p. 92

I recently attended an open lecture at the Presbyterian Theological Centre, in which UK philosopher/theologian/blogger Paul Helm spoke about the intellectual biography of John Calvin. One of his central points was that although Calvin wrote in the sixteenth century, his writings are much more at home in and indebted to the world of ancient thought, rather than modern thought. Helm suggested that it makes more sense to read him in light of Plato, the Stoics and Augustine, then it does to read him in light of medieval, early modern or Enlightenment figures. Helm used the above quote from the brilliant classicist and philosopher Myles Burnyeat to bring all this into focus.

Burnyeat argues that what classified the ancient philosophers was a commitment to live their philosophy.  These days, he says, philosophical activity is thought to be more theoretical inquiry then it is life guiding wisdom. Philosophers are expected to write logically tight, rigorously argued, interesting and abstract papers, rather than wander the market place in search of an honest man (like Diogenes did), or heroically stare death in the face because you are convinced of the maxim that nothing can harm a good man after death (like Socrates did).

Helm’s point was that Calvin bought into this ancient conception of philosophy, and it permeated his thinking about religion. Religion is far from a theoretical, cool, abstract, detached type of inquiry (at one point, Helm surprisingly stated that Calvin derisively refers to this kind of activity as ‘theology!’), but religion is meant to energize and guide your life, it is meant to be the practical wisdom that you consult in all things.

I found this to be a really interesting suggestion from Helm, and one I will keep in mind as I read Plato and (hopefully!) Calvin/Calvinists. But I suspect that his allegedly neutral-historical-lecture had an implicitly pointy provocation.

I felt like Helm was suggesting that those Christians who claim to stand in Calvin’s legacy ought to think about whether they are of a similar frame of mind. Do we tend to insulate our first order beliefs from our religious convictions? Do we live our religion? Are we more like the ancient philosophers whose knowledge and thoughts led them to do certain (crazy!) things? Or are we more like the insulated academic who professes to be a specialist in radical theories of time, but has no doubts that tomorrow will come like it always has? Are we insulating ourselves from our knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ?

We Don’t Solve Philosophical Problems, We Just Get Over Them.

Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply engrained attitudes of aversion and preference. Moreover, the conviction persists – though history shows it to be a hallucination that all the questions that the human mind has asked are questions that can be answered in terms of alternatives that the questions themselves present. But in fact intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of questions together with both of the alternatives they assume - an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and a change of urgent interest.

We don’t solve them: we get over them.

– John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays (1910), p. 19

The philosophical approach known as Pragmatism, of which John Dewey was a famous proponent, holds that not every philosophical questions is a good question. In fact, philosophical questions should not be seen as timeless logical problems which demand to be solved, but as issues which arise for a specific people, at a specific time. Philosophy should address the actual felt needs of a society.

In reading this quote it occurred to me how this could be a helpful insight into a possible relationship between Christian theology and philosophy. If we follow this pragmatist kind of method, Christians are free to reject many questions which philosophy may wish to bother it with. Next time a pointy-headed person presents you with a tangential problem which distracts from the actual felt need which Christianity addresses, tell them that you are so over answering questions like that.

This way of thinking is helpful in keeping Christianity from attempting to provide comprehensive answers to every philosophical question – some of which are ridiculous and outdated – and reminds it to keep focused on the present needs of real people. People that Christianity claims to have good news for.

John Rawls the Theologian?!

All his life, John Rawls was interested in the question whether and to what extent human life is redeemable – whether it is possible for human beings, individually and collectively, to live so that their lives are worth living…So long as we are justifiably confident that a self-sustaining and just collective life among human beings is realistically possible, we may hope that we or others will someday, somewhere, achieve it – and can then also work towards this achievement. By modeling a realistic utopia as a final moral good for our collective life, political philosophy can provide an inspiration that can banish the dangers of resignation and cynicism and can enhance the value of our lives even today.

– Thomas Pogge, John Rawls: His Life and Theory of Justice (2007), pp. 26-27

Many Christians are particularly suspicious of politics. We hold that God is remaking this world, saving it, and so perhaps political work for progress is a way of not having faith to let God do his work. We believe that, in the words of one poet (let the reader understand), “there is a Kingdom and there is a King”, and it is not of this world, so perhaps working for any kind of here and now political improvement is pointless, or is not committing ourselves to the right type of task. Any talk of achieving utopia is certainly out. (For the record, I have reservations about all three sentences.)

What I like about this fairly gushy biographical remark from one of John Rawls’s students, Yale philosopher Thomas Pogge, is the way in which he characterizes the energy and motivation behind one of the Twentieth Century’s best political philosopher’s work. Inspiration and redemption. Rawls hoped that political philosophy could redeem human life, and could inspire activity towards that end. He hoped it could present people with a picture of how just, good and fulfilling life could be, and that this picture would inspire people to get involved in attempting to be agents of change for this in their communities, working against institutionalized injustice, evil and the damaging of human life.

Do you think those goals are too audacious for an activity like philosophizing about collective life to achieve? Do you think that Christianity could make exactly the same claim, perhaps an even stronger claim – to, in the words of Pogge, hold out that ‘human life is redeemable’, and to hold out an inspiring picture which banishes resignation and cynicism, and inspires people to get involved, to get on board, and ‘enhance the value of their life’?

It’s sometimes said that Christianity is outdated, irrelevant, or blind to the needs of contemporary society and modern life. The words in which Pogge summed up the project of the most celebrated political philosopher (at least in the anglo-phone world) of the Twentieth Century suggests otherwise to me.

What do you think?

Kierkegaard on Faith and Philosophy: I. Knowledge

Even if one were able to convert the whole content of faith into conceptual form, it does not follow that one has comprehended faith, comprehended how one entered into it or how it entered into one…Philosophy cannot and must not bestow faith but must understand itself and know what it has to offer and take nothing away and least of all trick people out of something by making them think that it is nothing.

– Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (1843: Cambridge UP, 2006) p. 5, 27

The Danish Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard thought a great deal about the relationship between Christianity and philosophy. In the next few posts I’ll be putting up some quotes of his that shed unique light on what the relationship could be between Christianity and various fields of philosophy. There will be four posts: knowledge, politics, ethics, and the practise of theology. Kierkegaard is an extremely unique and rich thinker, both as a Christian and a philosopher, and he has exerted considerable influence over various streams of Christianity from Karl Barth and neo-orthodoxy to the current New Calvinists in the United States.

The above quote shows Kierkegaard’s firm belief in the limitations of philosophy and therefore it’s inability to scrutinize Christianity. Whilst he no doubt believed that philosophy was a worthwhile activity to pursue (himself churning out scores of philosophy books and papers) he held strongly to the notion that the religious sphere was an area of life and experience that human thinking, no matter how profound or comprehensive, would never be able to fully grapple with. For Kierkegaard, the being of God, the Christian experience, and the act of a faith commitment are the kind of things which are not able to be analyzed by or taken apart by philosophy’s tools.

The reason for all this is because Christianity involves choice and subjectivity. Kierkegaard coined the now famous phrase ‘a leap of faith’, and he held that this is what real Christianity demands of a person. It requires an individual to personally choose to commit to propositions which are beyond the realms of certainty, and it involves a radically personal choice to become a certain type of person and live in a certain way. Christianity demands an individual make an intensely personal decision about the kind of individual they will commit to becoming and the kind of life they will lead, and it requires them to do so not on the grounds of certainty (which philosophy likes to think of as its turf), but in asking the individual to throw themselves before God, and in the same motion, to throw away their all too human ways of knowing.

I think this is what Kierkegaard is getting at when he says ‘Philosophy cannot and must not bestow faith but must understand itself and know what it has to offer and take nothing away and least of all trick people out of something by making them think that it is nothing.’

Philosophy, for what it can do, is a valuable thing. But it should never be in the business of criticising people’s faith commitments or attempting to adjudicate on theological propositions. When it does this, it often tells people of the epistemological weaknesses of their beliefs, or the contingency, predictability or transparent nature of their faith experience and so convinces people that where they thought they had beliefs, they in fact have nothing, and where they thought that they made a crucial individual choice, they were in fact just slotting themselves into a certain psychological type. I think Kierkegaard wants to limit philosophy from doing this as it is stepping into an arena of life in which it is not apt to function.

Perhaps it is a little like a physicist and a chemist getting together and convincing a pair of lovers that where they thought they were in love, they are in fact only experiencing certain chemical reactions which are explainable through reference to a causal network of neurons and stimuli, and where they thought they were taking in a glorious sunrise together, they are in fact only seeing particular light rays bouncing off particular particles of random matter (pardon the amateur science!).

I think Kierkegaard is saying that just as the physicist and the chemist aren’t the best ones to describe what is going on as two lovers watch the sunrise, so a philosopher is not the best one to describe what is happening when someone becomes a Christian, or says something like ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’.

What do you think? Are you attracted to this view of faith and knowledge? Do you think Kierkegaard (as I’ve construed him) is off target in any way?

Reflexivity: The ‘Essence’ of Philosophy?

Positing that any one idea, aim, method or habit is the essence of philosophy will never be a popular move. Philosophers are particularly capable of pointing out the exceptions to the rule, and resisting generalisations. But one of the more promising suggestions I have heard which I am currently entertaining is that reflexivity is the essence of philosophy. The dictionary on my Mac defines this as:

Re.flex.ive. GRAMMAR. Denoting a pronoun that refers back to the subject of the clause in which it is used, e.g., myself, themselves.

To take the normative realm as an example, philosophy asks questions about whether a certain knowledge claim is justifiable, whether a method of thinking is reasonable, and whether certain acts are right and good, without having immediately deployable conceptions of exactly what it would take for a knowledge claim to be justifiable, or what it would take for a method of thinking to be reasonable, or what it would take for certain acts to be good or right. I’ve come across this idea most strongly in Immanuel Kant, who embarked on a Critique of Pure Reason, and encourage others to join him, without explicitly setting up what it would be to constitute ‘reason’, instead taking off down the path of critique and amending definitions, aims and methods along the way through a process of clarification and analysis of new findings.

Perhaps this is one reason for the antagonism between a discipline like theology and philosophy. Philosophy is more inclined to leave a lot of premises, methods, ascriptions and categories open and fluid, and to proceed down a dark and foggy path of clarification and self-scrutiny, whereas much theology is written with strong claims about objectivity and value in place – that is, it has a good idea of what it thinks it would take for something to be justifiable, reasonable, good, right etc. For theology to be continually pulled back to these abstract and foundational categories can be frustrating.

What do you think about this view? Do you think this is a significant source of friction between the two disciplines?