Abstract
This chapter discusses Hick’s pluralism in the overall context of his critical realist interpretation of religion and his defence of a religious worldview as rooted in religious experience. The distinction between the “Real an sich” and “the Real as humanly thought of and experienced”, which is central for his version of pluralism, is analysed in light of his understanding of the Ultimate’s ineffable unlimitedness (as a teaching found in many religious traditions) on the one hand, and his epistemology on the other. I argue that Hick’s position on divine ineffability or transcategoriality is not the result of his “Kantianism”, but should best be understood as a first order claim about the Ultimate (as being such that no human categories apply). In Hick’s case, Kantianism does not account for the apophatic aspect but rather refers to the cataphatic dimension of religious language. It is thus distorting and misleading to accuse Hick of an agnosticism that sets him apart from all major religions. In contrast, Hick is far more in line with major strands of traditional religious thinking on the Ultimate than those among his critics who presuppose that the divine is a reality within the range of conceptual understanding. Hick’s main achievement is to point out a way that retains divine ineffability while at the same time makes cataphatic language meaningful as related to different human experiences of the divine. Finally, I address the question of what kind of interreligious learning is encouraged by Hick’s approach.
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Notes
- 1.
For a detailed discussion of the most common objections against Hick see Schmidt-Leukel (1997: 398–492).
- 2.
On my view that exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism can only be stated as tradition-dependent positions, see Schmidt-Leukel (2017b: 7).
- 3.
A concise overview of Hick’s philosophical and theological development is offered in Schmidt-Leukel (2019b).
- 4.
The philosophical context in which Hick develops his pluralist hypothesis and in which this hypothesis gains its argumentative force has completely escaped the notice of a work being such dismissive of Hick as Burley (2020). Suggesting, as Burley (2020: 16) does, that “Hick, by putting forward his hypothesis, imagines himself to have argued for its veracity”, exhibits an unlucky combination of negligence, ignorance and arrogance.
- 5.
It is therefore not only misleading but simply false if Mikel Burley states: “For Hick, the unifying principle is ‘the Real’—a principle that no religion explicitly recognizes but which, according to Hick, all the ‘great religions’ are implicitly directed towards” (Burley 2020: 3). On the contrary, the “Real”—in Hick’s use—is not a “principle” but a transcategorial reality that all major religions explicitly recognize. The reference that Burley gives (Hick 2004: xix) is far from saying what he reads into it.
- 6.
In as much as “transcategoriality excludes the attribution of properties either positively or negatively”, Hick distinguishes it from “a negative (apophatic) … doctrine” (Hick 2004: xx). He affirms that such transcategoriality “is in fact taught by virtually all the great thinkers of the different tradition” (ibid.). However, traditional apophaticism has actually often been understood in the sense of Hick’s transcategoriality and it is in this sense that I will use the term “apophatic” in the present chapter.
- 7.
The traditional attempts to solve the problem that Hick considers are Aquinas’ model of analogy, symbolic interpretations in their traditional and more contemporary forms, and the Buddhist theory of upāya (for the latter see Hick 1993: 119–136).
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
I am grateful to Paul Knitter and Alan Race for their helpful comments and suggestions on a draft version of this chapter.
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Schmidt-Leukel, P. (2023). Religious Pluralism and Critical Realism. In: Sugirtharajah, S. (eds) John Hick's Religious Pluralism in Global Perspective. Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11008-5_3
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