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From Coffee to Carmelites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

D. Z. Phillips
D. Z. Phillips
Affiliation:
University College of Swansea
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Extract

In his paper, ‘The Aroma of Coffee’, H. O. Mounce wants to expose what he takes to be a deep prejudice in philosophy, one which is at work in our culture more generally. Philosophers are reluctant to admit that there is anything which passes beyond human understanding. Of course, they are quite ready to admit that there are plenty of things that they fail to understand but this they would say simply happens to be the case. It does not mean that what they fail to understand is something which is beyond human understanding. Thus even when they fail to understand something, that ‘something’ remains, in principle, within the reach of their understanding. For Mounce this prejudice flies in the face of what is platitudinously obvious: that there is much that passes beyond human understanding.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 65 , Issue 251 , January 1990 , pp. 19 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1990

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References

1 Mounce, H. O., ‘The Aroma of Coffee’, Philosophy 64, No. 248, 159–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Phillips, D. Z., Faith After Foundationalism (London: Routledge, 1988), 242.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., 329. For a development of the distinction between ‘misunderstanding’ and language not getting off the ground with someone, see Rhees, Rush, ‘Wittgenstein on Language and Ritual’, in Wittgenstein and his Times, McGuinness, Brian (ed.) (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982).Google Scholar

4 Phillips, D. Z. and Mounce, H. O., Moral Practices (London and New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, and Schocken Books, 1969).Google Scholar

5 Holmer, Paul, The Grammar of Faith (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), 194.Google Scholar

6 This was pointed out to me by R. W. Beardsmore.

7 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980), Vol. II, 684–685.Google Scholar

8 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), Vol. I, 267.Google Scholar

9 Kenny, Anthony, Reason and Religion (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987).Google Scholar