John Powell Clayton: Religions, Reasons and Gods: Essays in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion.
Walter, Gregory A.
John Powell Clayton
Religions, Reasons and Gods: Essays in Cross-Cultural Philosophy of
Religion.
New York: Cambridge University Press 2006.
Pp. 291.
CDN$115.95/US$100.00
(cloth ISBN-13: 978-0-521-42104-1).
Theistic arguments not only have many uses specific to religions,
traditions, and intellectuals, but also seem to have no success in their
pre-modern use in providing unimpeachable and universal reasons for the
existence of divinity. This observation drove much of Clayton's
contributions to the philosophy of religion, here collected in his final
work before his death in 2003. He argued that failure to attend to the
purposes and contexts in which religious intellectuals use theistic
arguments prevents a fulsome appreciation of their significance and
possible truth. When one vaults prematurely over these purposes or
situations in order to evaluate the truth of such arguments, one has
neglected important matters. This volume collects many of his essays on
this subject, together with adaptations of his Stanton Lectures.
Philosophers of religion, comparative religion, and other interested
readers should consider this book.
Analysis of religious arguments and their uses appropriately begins
the book. Clayton's purpose emerges from his consideration of the
uses to which thinkers put theistic arguments. His many analyses,
ranging from Sankara to Thomas Jefferson, from Anselm of Canterbury to
Immanuel Kant, all support the idea that theistic arguments have
wide-ranging uses. Almost none of them, in Clayton's view, offer
universal reasons that would convince any rational person. Even the
Enlightenment thinkers whom Clayton engages--and this includes
Kant--demonstrate sensitivity for uses of these arguments that serve to
do more than convince. In short, Clayton thinks that theistic arguments
have and still serve many purposes beyond offering unimpeachable proof
of God's existence.
Even though it seems that Kant closed the door to any use of
theistic proof to create conviction, Clayton notes that many of the
pre-modern uses of the proofs survive his critical turn. Though stripped
of its power to command conviction, the ontological proof still offers a
purified form of the concept of God. It shows what is at stake. Many
religious intellectuals scorn Kant's evaluation of God's
existence as a postulate of practical reason, but according to Clayton
in doing so Kant merely used theistic proof as many pre-modern thinkers
did. Al-Ghazali presented proofs in order to educate faithful Muslims.
On Clayton's reading, no pre-modern, not even Anselm it seems, ever
sought to fashion reasons that would survive the immediate use to which
it was put. These writers perhaps thought that the context in which they
fashioned their argument would extend beyond their own day, but never to
all times and places. Clayton identifies several uses for theistic
arguments: hermeneutical, edificatory, apologetic, and polemical. These
all are directed to specific situations where a range of reasons justify
their use that could not apply in other situations. Thus, for instance,
Anselm's famous argument does not do what Kant thought it does but,
in fact, is an attempt to interpret the Bible and make sense of why the
fool can deny God's existence (as is frequently stated in the Book
of Psalms). Only subsequent thinkers in modernity excavated the argument
to do different work.
These observations require Clayton to step back and develop his
method and approach to reasons in religious traditions. He first
distinguishes between giving reasons in three situations: within
traditions, between religious traditions, and extra religiously. In each
of these situations, Clayton urges philosophers of religion sensitively
to distinguish further between these several situations. Some arguments
for God's existence operate within a space shared between two
traditions; others can fit only within the bounds of the religious
tradition in which they are offered.
Clayton justifies these distinctions by appealing to what he called
a 'maxim of reticence', that is, a sort of pragmatic version
of Edmund Husserl's epoche or bracketing. However, he does not
advocate these three distinctions as permanent boundaries, as some
followers of Wittgenstein have done. If that sort of incommensurability between communities held, the question of the truth of any religious
claim would be forever deferred, or would be significant only within
each tradition, and would be arcane to the other situations, publics,
and arenas of interrelation. All religious communities would be
incommensurable to each other.
In place of the search for common ground or mutual
commensurability, Clayton advocates that each community seek defensible
differences. He follows the example of medieval Indo-Tibetan vada
traditions, in which intellectuals of many religious schools disputed in
public. Of course, participants wanted to 'win' such debates
but, Clayton claims, the actual result was a further clarification of
the logic and position proper to each school. Positions that survived
became worthy darsannas, schools that can stand in public. Disputants
tested each other's claims relative to the merits of their own or
other positions. This approach differs considerably from the demand to
test religious claims from the perspective of universal reason. One does
not give up one's convictions unilaterally but only in the context
of a back-and-forth engagement with another intellectual tradition.
There is no completely neutral space; the price of entry into
Clayton's view of public conversation is conviction, not
neutrality, and one must bring a willingness to have one's
convictions contested.
Clayton's chapter on Anselm merits close attention. Originally
published separately, this article brings together Clayton's method
of reasoning and his attention to the goal, use or purpose of proof. He
proposes, first of all, that in shaping a judgment about a conclusion,
one attend to the argument's use. In Anselm's case it turns
out that the purpose of the argument is edificatory and hermeneutical.
This, he tells us, circumscribes the scope of Anselm's claims and
alters the grounds on which his argument is evaluated by philosophers of
religion.
As indicated by the editors in a marginal note, all of this directs
Clayton more towards the orbit of pragmatic views about religion than
views involving the correspondence theory of truth or what some
philosophers of religion call 'critical realism'. Clayton
states in a shorthand note completed by the editors: 'Not committed
to holding that correspondence theory of truth is adequate in
rel(igious) contexts, pragmatic theory may be more appropriate. Not
everyone will be happy with this. Not even all pragmatists, some of whom
deny that prag(matisim) offers a "theory" of truth' (3).
It lies now to others to develop his maxim of reticence and defend it in
ways that follow through on this note. Clayton's approach to making
sense of religious claims and inter-religious dialogue requires Clifford
Geertz's 'thick descriptions' of not just culture but
argumentation, and it requires a more pragmatic approach. This approach
merits further investigation and attention. Clayton seems to have
attempted a middle position between modern foundational reason and
sectarian non-foundational reason.
Anne M. Blackburn and Thomas D. Carroll prepared this posthumous
volume, some of the papers of which Clayton had already published. In
all but a few sections, Clayton speaks for himself. Blackburn and
Carroll in many cases completed the scholarly documentation of the text.
They describe the history of the texts and introduce each section of
essays. The resulting volume is widely accessible for undergraduates and
interested general readers, and is highly recommended for all scholars.
Gregory A. Walter
St. Olaf College
