Response to Dirk-Martin Grube

Abstract

This paper responds to an essay by Dirk-Martin Grube published in this same journal issue. Special attention is drawn to issues such as tolerance, respect, and the recognition of otherness regarding religious beliefs. Grube interestingly suggests that the focus on religious truth should be replaced by a focus on justification. Some critical remarks on these suggestions are made.

Keywords:

• religion
• truth
• justification
• tolerance
• respect
• recognition
• acknowledgment
• pluralism
• otherness
• bivalence

Notes

1. I will cite Dirk-Martin Grube’s essay by providing the page numbers in the text. The emphases, unless otherwise indicated, are in the original.

2. In modern philosophy, the discussion of recognition basically starts from Axel Honneth’s, Charles Taylor’s, and Nancy Fraser’s seminal contributions (largely indebted to Hegel). The Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki currently hosts an Academy of Finland ‘Centre of Excellence’ on ‘Reason and Religious Recognition’ (2014–2019), led by Risto Saarinen (with Dirk-Martin Grube as one of its international collaborators); in this comprehensive research unit, the concept of recognition is extensively studied in relation to theology and philosophy of religion. Saarinen’s own book manuscript, Recognition in Religion, explores the matter in historical detail. The concept of acknowledgment, on the other hand, is more widely used in the Wittgensteinian context developed in, for example, Cavell, The Claim of Reason. For my own brief attempt to emphasize the difference between recognition and acknowledgment in relation to the problem of evil in the philosophy of religion, see Pihlström, Taking Evil Seriously.

3. As defended, for example, in Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism.

4. Cf., for example, Pihlström, Pragmatic Pluralism.

5. See, for example, Putnam, The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy.

6. Both classical works by James are available in The Works of William James. Cf. Pihlström, Pragmatic Pluralism.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sami Pihlström

Sami Pihlström received his PhD at the University of Helsinki in 1996 and is since 2014 Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He was previously the Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä (2006–2014) and the Director of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (2009–2015). His recent books include Transcendental Guilt: Reflections on Ethical Finitude (Lexington, 2011), Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God (Fordham University Press, 2013), Taking Evil Seriously (Palgrave, 2014), and The Bloomsbury Companion to Pragmatism (edited, Bloomsbury, paperback ed., 2015; 1st ed. 2011).