Philosophical Investigations 29:4 October 2006

ISSN 0190-0536

REVIEWS

Paul Edwards, Heideggers Confusions (Prometheus Books, 2004). 129,

price $20.00

Paul F. Johnson, St. Norbert College

Heidegger is a philosopher who gives rise to strong responses. He

provokes a strongly negative response in readers who find the prose
inaccessible and heavy-handed and inspires a strongly positive response
in those who find that same prose stimulating and illuminating. The
title of Paul Edwardss book leaves no doubt as to which side he is on.
Edwards finds Heideggers writing not just impenetrable but culpably
obfuscatory.What there is of philosophical merit in Heideggers phi-
losophy could be expressed more simply and plainly, and after one boils
away the dross one is left with only a few platitudinous observations
about the human condition available to anyone with a little common
sense.The thrust of Edwardss critique is to show not that Heidegger is
wrong but that there is just a whole lot less here than what meets the
eye.The rest of it is either just so much philosophical jargon mongering
or outright nonsense that ought not be taken seriously in either case,
despite anything that his admirers might say to the contrary.
Though Edwardss critique ranges admirably across a wide selection
of Heideggers work early and late, his engagement with the Heideg-
gerians is restricted to works published in the 50s,60s and early 70s.One
searches in vain for any more recent scholarship that might offer a more
balanced interpretation than those of the early enthusiasts. The long
third chapter in Edwardss book Heidegger and Death is essentially a
reprint of a Monist monograph published in 1979. Edwards makes a
strong case for regarding the early commentaries and expositions as
uncritical and as all too infected by the same obscurity that permeates
Heideggers writing. But Heidegger scholarship does not end in 1979,
and the recent work is much more balanced and critical. Hubert
2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ,
UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
384 Philosophical Investigations
Dreyfuss commentary on Being and Time (1990) and George Steiners
Martin Heidegger (1991) offer sympathetic but hardly uncritical inter-
pretations,while The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger (1993) describes
the vast range of Heideggers influence.Edwards may be right that there
is less in Heidegger than his early admirers would have us believe, but
there is surely more than his dismissive and at times contemptuous
treatment of his work will admit. Edwards commits the same error of
going to extremes on the side of a negative response as Heideggers
admirers do on the side of a positive one. Edwardss acerbic style and
lively sense of humor (as the blurb on the back cover describes them)
may provide an entertaining reading for anyone predisposed to regard
Heidegger as a charlatan, but for anyone seeking a better-informed and
fairer approach to Heidegger, this is not the place to start.
Heidegger was seriously confused and deliberately and culpably
confusing on two main issues: the inquiry into Being and death.
Edwards begins his chapter on Heideggers Quest for Being with
a reasonably clear exposition of Heideggers concerns, marking
the distinctions between Being and beings and the ontological and the
ontic realms of inquiry. He explains how human awareness of the
world, the peculiarly human way of being-in-the-world, provides a
line of access along which the inquiry into Being can be pursued.
Undertaking this inquiry also gives rise to a wholly new idea about
the significance of human life and calls us back from the forgetful-
ness of Being into which we have fallen at our grave peril. The
expository work is not altogether unfair but it lacks the imaginative
depth and the generosity that might enable us to see what Heidegger
was getting at. Edwards takes the offensive against a Heidegger con-
veniently poised to suffer the kind of punch that Edwards knows how
to deliver.Heideggers belief, he writes, that is-ness or existence is
a mysterious characteristic of things . . . can be shown to be mistaken,
and as a result Heideggers entire quest does not get off the ground
(p. 34). Heidegger assumes that existence is the most basic character-
istic of existing things, but of course, as every schoolchild would
know through the slightest acquaintance with the teachings of Frege
and Russell, existence is not the most basic trait of existing things
because it is not a characteristic at all. Existence, we are instructed,
belongs to a class of what Russell and other pioneers of modern logic
call logical constants words like or,and,not and so forth.Anyone
who thinks that there is something mysterious about existence need
only brush up on the basics of first-order logic; there may indeed be
2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
 Paul F. Johnson 385
a forgetfulness concerning the question of Being but, gratefully, apt
remembrance requires no greater effort than recalling where one had
lain that logic text. All that is left of Heidegger once Lord Russell has
dispatched the fogbanks of confusion is huge masses of hideous
gibberish reflective of a grotesque aberration of the human mind.
The results and the contemptuous tone do not change much when
Edwards turns his acerbic wit in the direction of Heideggers rumi-
nations on death. The third chapter comes basically to three conclu-
sions: (i) what Heidegger had to say could be expressed in a few
simple-minded platitudes, (ii) Heideggers manner of expressing
himself is philosophically unconscionable and (iii) his sycophants are
either seriously confused themselves or complicit in Heideggers
treachery. Here, it is less a matter of Heideggers being confused than
his being a man with very little of genuine interest to say and a
vocabulary that requires volumes to say it in. Edwardss treatment of
Heideggers theme of the aloneness of Daseins confrontation with
death concludes, The upshot of our discussion is that if the Heideg-
gerian statement is interpreted in such a way that it says something
interesting, then it is clearly false; and if it is interpreted so as to make
it true, it becomes nothing more than a rhetorical way of asserting the
exceedingly familiar fact that everybody dies someday. In the chapter
Double Talk about Life after Death, Edwards makes a good point
against Heidegger that it is difficult to gainsay. Heidegger maintains
two claims: that death is the impossibility of every way of comporting
oneself towards anything, of every way of existing, but also that this
analysis leaves the question of survival after death entirely open.
Edwards confesses, I find all of this extremely puzzling. It is hard to
disagree with Edwards and, to be honest, difficult to suppress a not-
altogether-wholesome snicker. Even the most sympathetic reader of
Heidegger will have experienced some measure of exasperation at his
unconcessive language. It is fun to have that pressure relieved through
a belly laugh at Heideggers expense.And Edwards, to give the man his
due, can be very funny indeed.
The book itself, however, is meant to be taken in dread earnest and
its message is not a happy one: Heidegger is an obnoxious charlatan
whose work ought not to be given the serious philosophical consid-
eration it has received. The fact remains that many people of sound
judgement have found things of real worth in Heideggers pages.
Serious and reasonable people may disagree on the question of
Heideggers merits, but it is an interesting philosophical question in its
2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
386 Philosophical Investigations
own right why they should do so and in this case why the disagree-
ment is so pointed and acrimonious. One suspects that there is some-
thing deeper going on.
Heidegger is not undeserving of the rough treatment that he suffers
at Edwardss hands.Heideggers language is obscure and heavy-handed.
Kants apology for the dryness and technicality of philosophical writing
cannot be stretched to accommodate prose so seemingly wilfully
impenetrable. But perhaps it is not the Kantian defence that is wanted.
Edwardss book is suffused with a positivistic spirit that demands
philosophy to be a rigorous discipline and an impatience for any
language that is the least bit allusive or poetic. Edwards writes in a
tradition in which metaphysics is a term of derision; Kant himself
laboured to mark the boundaries between constructive philosophical
discourse and metaphysical web spinning; Frege cautions us against the
poetical imprecisions in natural language; Wittgenstein was worried
about the liabilities that accrue when language goes on holiday.There
is a great value in all of this, but we take too restrictive a view of
philosophy reduce it to the underlabourer-of-science status famously
announced by Locke when we insist that it have no truck whatsoever
with language that is deliberately exploratory and creative. Richard
Rorty is perhaps best known for his insistence that philosophy is more
akin to poetry than to science. Putting Edwards on one side and Rorty
on the other and Heidegger in the middle as a man to be vilified or
valourised respectively, we may extract the lesson and be grateful to
Edwards for helping us to learn it that philosophy is capacious
enough to accommodate both a tough-minded insistence upon rigor
and clarity and creative explorations of the murky depths of the human
condition.The most serious liability to philosophy is that it should be
co-opted by either camp, a liability clearly discernable today in the
equally imperious claims of the scientistically minded philosophers and
the post-modern latitudinarians. It is good that philosophy should have
to struggle with this tension, good that there should be a Heidegger in
our midst, and good that there should be scathing critiques of his work.
But it is sad that we shall have no more books like Heideggers Confusions
from the pen of Paul Edwards, who passed away in December of 2004.

St. Norbert College

100 Grant Street
De Pere,WI 54115 2099

2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

 Olli Lagerspetz 387
Richard Norman: On Humanism (London: Routledge, 2004). 170, price
8.99pb.

Olli Lagerspetz, bo Academy

Humanism, according to one current usage, is the system of thought

that rejects religion and maintains that belief in human dignity and
value can sustain us. Richard Normans book, included in Routledges
Thinking in Action series, argues seriously and lucidly for the humanist-
cum-atheist case.
Balanced presentations like this are indeed welcome. Like their
Victorian predecessors, militant atheists today sometimes exhibit a
superstitious belief in the powers of science and confused ideas about
philosophy.
A secular humanist of Normans persuasion subscribes to the same
ethical views as a reasonable Christian, Muslim or Jew would, but
without the religious bit. Indeed, humanists claim that religions rather
clutter and obscure the values that support humanity. Chief among
those is belief in the unique value of the human being.
The author wants to present, not an official statement by the British
Humanist Association, but simply one possible way to organise ones
thought in a godless world.Yet these are not strictly personal reflec-
tions either. Norman is, perhaps, trying to formulate a modern con-
sensus for reasonable non-theists. We do not actually find out much
about him, nor about why these things matter to him.
In compensation, we are given excellent summaries of possible
humanist positions on the traditional proofs for gods existence, on
science, the philosophy of mind, animal rights, and ethics rounded
off with a chapter on the power of the narrative to give life meaning.
These summaries are consciously provisional. Very often, when I
thought of an objection, I found it was at least acknowledged in the
next paragraph or page.
Not quite always, however. Normans basic contention is that
religions are theoretical accounts of reality, and that todays sciences
just give us a vastly more probable account. Science does not directly
disprove religion, just as it does not disprove fairies or Father Christ-
mas; but the onus is on those who believe in a god to provide reasons
for that belief (p. 16).The Argument from Design might go some way
2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
388 Philosophical Investigations
towards a proof, except that the same facts are already explained more
plausibly by the Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Two objections spring to mind. Religions involve descriptions of
miracles. So it appears that their teachings are consciously not prob-
able (cf. 135). Perhaps the believer has other fish to fry? Secondly, is
it plausible in the first place to expect science to give us a comprehen-
sive picture of reality? Or are the sciences, rather, problem-solving
activities of a more limited scope? Scientific research addresses ques-
tions that face us in a world where we, by and large, already orient
ourselves quite independently of the sciences.
Unless one is violently anti-scientific, one will agree that the
sciences are important sources of knowledge. But this is not quite the
same as believing that science is the privileged route to knowledge
quite regardless of what the issue is. Do I love her? Can free will be
reconciled with determinism? What is on the menu in the refectory?
One need not denigrate science in any way simply by pointing out
that not all acceptable truth claims are scientific claims.
Disappointingly, Normans discussion of the status of science only
responds to actual attacks on science (by Creationists and unspecified
post-modernists), not to questions about the scope and limits of the
scientific endeavour. One would wish to know whether or not a
humanist position can be upheld independently of a de facto identifi-
cation of reason with scientific method.
Questions about god are, for Norman, not very different from ones
about life on Mars. For others, to discuss religion may be more like
discussing whether or not one should have children. But this does not
mean that there is no room for rationality here, no room for right and
wrong answers. Giving reasons is, in this context, not a matter of
showing that A always follows from B but perhaps of producing
persuasive samples that inspire a certain way of looking at things.1 One
might get clearer about the issue by focusing, not on the comparison
of different doctrines as such, but on encounters between believers and
non-believers. Not all differences between us demand solutions.Why,
or rather when, does it become important for someone to justify ones
belief or unbelief ?2

1. See John H.Whittaker, review of Basil Mitchell, Faith and Criticism. Philosophi-
cal Investigations 19 (1996) pp. 205208, 207.
2. Mari Lindman, Masters thesis (unpublished), Philosophy (bo Academy, 2005).

2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

 Olli Lagerspetz 389
These remarks can no doubt be read as part of the retreat from
reason that Norman deplores in present-day theists. In order to
convince Norman, believers should give him a rational (scientific or
scientifically acceptable) argument. Otherwise, why should we take
them seriously? (p. 40).
Thus, apparently, unless we are deluded or self-deceived, a belief can
sustain us only if a proof can be formulated in scientific terms.
This invites the question of what it is for something in the first
place to sustain us. Norman stresses that the arts, literary narratives in
particular, can have this role.They give meaning to our lives by giving
them shape.They allow the disjointed pieces of our experience to fall
into place (p. 150). Here, one will obviously ask why a religion cannot
perform this task, too. Normans answer is, equally obviously, that
religions, unlike fiction, involve factual claims (p. 155).
This book also contains readable presentations of, perhaps, current
middle-of-the-road philosophical views on consciousness and ethics.
In the philosophy of mind, the author leans towards unspecified
versions of identity theory. Eliminativism is rejected. Dualism is
refuted with the standard arguments (chiefly concerning mind/body
interaction). In this connection, the author falls into an unanalysed
rhetoric typical of some materialist writing but less so of this
particular book. Conscious experiences, he asserts, must be accom-
modated within one world, the physical world in which embodied
human beings interact with other physical entities (p. 69). Dualism,
in contrast, is guilty of assigning them to a mysterious entity called
the mind existing in some ghostly realm separate from the physical
world (p. 70). However, I believe that dualists do not typically main-
tain that the mind substance is mysterious or ghostly. Descartes
insisted that it is easier to gain knowledge of the soul than of the body.
And, of course, dualism means that these two types of substance
exist, if you like, in one world but then the world has other than just
physical qualities.
In ethics, the authors aim is to demonstrate the viability, indeed the
superiority, of secular morality. Religious precepts will be either
redundant or immoral as they either coincide with ordinary moral
intuition or conflict with it. Norman believes that some combination
of utilitarianism and deontology should produce the essentials of a
secular morality. This will invite two objections. As theories, utilitari-
anism and deontology are essentially opposed. It would take a lot more
work to produce a stable synthesis. Furthermore, the resulting moral
2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
390 Philosophical Investigations
views would be open to Normans own accusation against religious
ethics. Either the theory will be redundant (if the result coincides with
what we already think) or it will be immoral (if it goes against our
morality).
The last chapter on the meaning of life and the need for stories
dwells on secular activities that, on the authors view, give life meaning:
art, science, human relations and, especially, stories. The chapter is
complete with the keywords of literary-minded philosophy from the
turn of the millennium: fragility, tragedy, particularity, narrative, the
Holocaust, Primo Levi. This is fine as far as it goes, but one wonders
if there is nothing new to be said about the topic.
A belief in humankinds inherent rationality and decency runs
through this book. With the help of reason, we can try to make the
world a better place. My first question is whether or not one is actually
helped (or sustained) simply by telling oneself this given the
countless ways in which human beings tend to make a mess of things
(as acknowledged on p. 84). Secondly, there is the fuzziness of the
attribute itself. Rationality is not a programme. Rather, it is an aspect of
widely different and often violently opposed human strivings. One
does not save the world just by bringing humankind to reason.
Ironically, Norman seems here to approach the early Enlightenment
thinking that he earlier describes as navely optimistic (p. 19, 24).
This brings out a negative sense, too, in which this work is a product
of traditional humanist ideals. It completely ignores political issues.
Some such analyses should be called for, given the authors contention
that reason will help us resist the cruelty and inhumanity that led to
concentration camps (p. 24). Was cruelty the main reason back in the
1940s? And is it the same in todays world? Genocides are still taking
place right before our eyes. But then of course, these will be contro-
versial topics. A certain wish to avoid controversy is understandable in
a tract with the possible ambition to become humanisms unofficial
manifesto (praise on the back cover). In any case, this points to
inherent limitations in works of this kind.
Nevertheless, this is a good book: a book to make one think. It is
enjoyable as such, but it might also be included as a reading for a
Philosophy of Religion course.

Philosophy, bo Academy
Fabriksgatan 2, 20500 bo, Finland

2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

 Antony Flew 391
Delos B. McKown, Behold the Antichrist: Bentham on Religion
(Prometheus Books, 2004). 417, price $32hb.

Antony Flew, Professor Emeritus, University of Reading

This is a massive work of critical scholarship consisting of three parts:

(i) Analysis of the Influence of Natural Religion on the Temporal Happiness
of Mankind, how Bentham upended Deism, (ii) Not Paul but Jesus, how
Bentham exposed the would-be president of Christianity and (iii)
Church-of-England Catechism Examined, how Benthams Philosophy of
Language undercuts theology.
Each part is divided into three chapters. In the first part, Chapter 1
provides an Introduction and Distillation with Commentary. Chapter
2 is a Defence and Chapter 3 contains Criticisms. The subject of the
first part is abbreviated throughout as AINR.The book under this title
was originally published under a pseudonym in 1822 by George
Grote, who later became a founder president and vice-chancellor of
the University of London. But there is, of course, a dispute as to how
much of this publication was actually the work of Bentham who, not
being employed as an academic, had no material interest in the number
and quality of his publications.
It is important for readers today to realise that in arguing against
natural religion, Bentham was arguing against a kind of opponents
who no longer exist. These were people who, when they said such
things as The heavens reveal the glory of God, tacitly assumed that
the occurrence of cosmological phenomena provided sufficient con-
firmation of the Christian Revelation. It was, as the author maintains
in Chapter 2 of Part 1, the Golden Age of natural theology and
deistical freethinking. He goes on to insist that At a deeper level of
theorizing than that required to explain how the consciousness of
modern humans evolved from what Jaynes calls the bicameral mind of
archaic humans, lies the larger questions of how modern humans as a
biological species evolved from simian stock.
The high point of McKowns defence of Bentham is his quotation
of the doctrine of the Trinity as expressed in Canon I of the Fourth
Lateran Council in 1215: We firmly believe and openly confess that
there is only one true God, eternal, beyond measure and unchange-
able, incomprehensible, omnipotent and ineffable, the Father, the Son
2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
392 Philosophical Investigations
and the Holy Spirit: Three persons but a single essence, substance, or
nature that is wholly: the Father proceeding from none: the Son
proceeding from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit from both in
like manner; without beginning and having no end forever: the Father
begetting, the Son having been begotten, and the Holy Spirit pro-
ceeding: . . . This Holy Trinity, undivided in regard to its essence
which is common to all in regard to the attributes of the persons, gave
the doctrine of salvation to the human race in due process of time.
McKown comments that Millions of worshippers have uttered this
unintelligible absurdity under the mistaken impression that they were
uttering profound metaphysical truths. His own criticism of Bentham
starts from his conviction that The AINR is, quite simply inadequate
as philosophy of religion. He proceeds to recommend as a new
beginning his contribution to a symposium on Religion as a Huma-
nising Influence in Mans History at the 1970 annual meeting of the
American Academy of Religion.
The subject of Part 2 is Not Paul but Jesus, how Bentham exposed
the would-be president of Christianity. That the person known as St
Paul changed from being a destructive persecutor of the Christian
movement within Judaism to being a collaborator, largely it would
seem on his own terms, is surely a point of ancient history as well-
established as any. Although this is indisputable, there remain the
questions of whether or not the three accounts in Acts of his conver-
sion allow us to infer that it was inner as well as outer.And even if we
become persuaded that it was indeed inner as well as outer, we still lack
any independent testimony to support St Pauls claims about the
allegedly miraculous elements in his conversion.
McKown makes the most of the allegedly miraculous event in St
Pauls conversion. It is one thing for a person, bathed in a light
brighter than any known to exist at the time, to converse with a
disembodied voice; it is quite a different thing for that persons
companions to see the light too, or hear the voice, or both. Such
occurrences, however, pale in comparison with coordinated voices
addressing two individuals, unknown to one another, at a distance, and
over a period of several days.Yet that is what Acts 9: 818 would have
us take as historical.While Saul lingered in Damascus in darkness, with
something like scales on his eyes (a condition unknown to medicine)
a certain Ananias was said to have encountered the Lord ( Jesus? God?)
in a vision (v. 10).The Lord of the vision ordered him to go to Straight
Street (v. 11) to ask for the house of a certain Judas, a house that
2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
 Antony Flew 393
harboured the sightless Saul. Saul, meanwhile, with prodigious fore-
sight had seen (in a vision?) a hitherto unknown man named Ananias
coming to him that he might, in this magical way, regain his sight
(v. 12).
The main impact of Benthams Not Paul but Jesus is its challenge to
St Pauls claim to be the main authority on authentically Christian
theology. For, as G. A. Wells wrote in his Who was Jesus? A Critique of
the New Testament Record (in a passage quoted by McKown), None of
the letters ascribed to St Paul that are now accepted as genuinely
written by him make any reference to Jesuss parents, let alone to the
virgin birth.They do not refer to a place of birth or residence (e.g. by
calling him of Nazareth). They mention neither John the Baptist
(even though Paul stresses baptism), nor Judas, nor Peters denial of his
master (they do, of course, mention Peter but do not imply that he, any
more than Paul himself, had known Jesus while he had been alive).
They give us no indication of the time or place of Jesuss earthly
existence.They never refer to his trial before a Roman official, nor to
Jerusalem as the place of his execution.
The first chapter in Part 3 begins: In 1818 there appeared in
England an eight-hundred page book whose full title was Church of
Englandism and its Catechism Examined preceded by Strictures on the
Exclusionary System as pursued in the National Societys Schools: inter-
spersed with Parallel Views of the English and Scottish Established and
Non-Established Churches: and concluding with Remedies Proposed for
Abuses Indicated: and an Examination of the Parliamentary System of
Church Reform pursued and still pursuing: Including the Proposed New
Churches.
To this massive, rambling, turgid but incendiary work, Bentham
boldly affixed his name, even though he had been advised not to
publish it, and even though he knew that its appearance could jeop-
ardise him legally. Some protection was gained, perhaps, by the fact that
he never, in this book, criticised either Jesus or the religion of Jesus.
Moreover, he identified himself neither as an agnostic (a name not yet
invented) nor as an atheist. An outraged theist could have written this
book, though not an orthodox Christian theist.
McKown goes on to assure the reader that Church-of-Englandism
as a whole will not concern us in part 3 but, rather, an eighty page
segment of it. This segment, in addition to its original appearance in
1818, was published independently of the rest in 1824 and again in
1868, bearing the title The Church of England Catechism Examined
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394 Philosophical Investigations
(hereafter referred to as CECE). Seldom if ever has the catechism
of an established church been examined more logically and found
more wanting. However, given the works stilted, forbidding lan-
guage, its small circulation, and the distaste of the average Anglican
for applying logic to his religious beliefs, it achieved no more, in
practical terms, that a popguns volley against one of His Majestys
gunboats.
But for those who, like Bentham himself, care about truth and who
have therefore accepted the imperative which Plato scripted his
Socrates to utter, We must follow the argument wherever it leads, it
was intolerable to be required, in order to be admitted as an under-
graduate student in the University of Oxford, to swear acceptance of
two logically incompatible propositions.
The young Bentham was required to swear that be believed both
that the Christian religion doth not prohibit, but that a man may
swear when the magistrate requireth, and that he accepts the teaching
of Jesus in Matthew V: 3437 But I say unto you, Swear not at
all . . . But let your communication be Yea yea, Nay nay . . .
Any reviewer of this massive and stubbornly and persistently thor-
ough work of scholarship is bound to speculate that its publishers are
scarcely likely to recover their costs, much less to make even the most
modest profit. All credit to them for recognising that scholarship is a
good in itself, and accepting on its account the likelihood of financial
loss.

26 Alexandra Road
Reading
RG1 5PD

2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

 Ben Tilghman 395
D. Z. Phillips and Mario von der Ruhr (eds.), Biblical Concepts and Our
World (Palgrave, 2004). xi + 283, price 50.00hb; and D. Z. Phillips
and Mario von der Ruhr (eds.), Language and Spirit (Palgrave, 2004).
vii + 153, 50hb.

Ben Tilghman, Kansas State University

These two volumes are the collected papers from the Claremont
Conferences on Philosophy of Religion in 2001 and 2002. Biblical
Concepts, the volume from 2001, consists of six parts. Each part con-
sists of a main paper and a response to it together with a summary
of the discussion that followed. In Culture and Value Wittgenstein
says that

Christianity is not based on a historical truth; rather, it offers us a

(historical) narrative and says: now believe! But not, believe this
narrative with the belief appropriate to a historical narrative, rather
believe through thick and thin, which you can only do as the result
of a life.

This remark, which is cited by more than one participant, could well
serve as the epigraph for this volume. The issue that dominates these
papers is the tension between the results of critical and historical
biblical scholarship, particularly concerning the Gospels on the one
hand and Christian faith on the other.
In Part I, The Bible and Our World, Gareth Moore presents a
very clear account of the tension that arises from reading the Bible
from the point of view of biblical scholarship and reading it for its
religious significance.The following paper by James M. Robinson tries
to understand this in terms of Bultmanns project of demythologising
the Bible to reveal the kerygma, but only succeeds in misunderstand-
ing much of what Moore was getting at. For this, he is criticised in
detail in the discussion.
Alastair Hannay, Part II, Faith and Reason examines what he
argues is a misreading of Kierkegaard to raise questions about the
relation of faith to history. No conclusion drawn from history can be
totally immune to doubt, and Kierkegaard says that is why such
investigations have nothing to do with faith. Hannay says that this is
best read as a grammatical remark that he says should be understood as
2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
396 Philosophical Investigations
distinct from the position of Fideism that faith needs no support from
history (as if it could have such support).
JackVerheydens response is that much more needs to be said about
the importance of history for Christianity and cites both Schleierma-
cher and Tillich who have claimed an importance for history.
In Part III, Biblical Authority and Philosophy, Simo Knuttila
examines the difference between reading the Gospels as having
divine authority and reading them from the point of view of critical
scholars. Some would claim that religious experience, the work of
the Holy Spirit or the like, must be added to the reading to get at
the religious significance. Sceptical questions can be raised about the
reliability of these allegedly divine sources of inspiration. He con-
cludes, The studies of the Bible in which the theistic assumptions
are given an important role do not add to the probability of the
truth of Christianity. They only show that when people have a
certain theological conception, they can construct a coherent and
logically possible interpretation of the picture of the historical
Jesus . . . (p. 125).
Alvin Plantinga wants to forestall this sceptical question.The ques-
tion about the veracity of the religious experience does not automati-
cally arise any more than does scepticism about sense experience.That
there is snow in the backyard is a belief that one forms immediately
from the experience.What Plantinga does not see, however, is that in
ordinary circumstances, doubts about seeing snow in the backyard are
unintelligible. Someone may say with all sincerity that there is snow
when everyone else can see clearly that there is not. It would require
very special circumstances for that claim to make sense. It strikes me
that there are no analogous ordinary or standard circumstances these
days in which alleged religious experiences are assessed. Some of this
is taken up but not driven home in the discussion.
In Part IV, Looking for Jesus and Finding Christ, Rowan Williams
examines some of the attempts to discern the historical Jesus behind
the Gospel accounts and the Churchs teaching about Christ. Once
again, this is a matter of the relation between history and faith. He
concludes that There is no path to a secure portrait of Jesus inde-
pendent of how he has been responded to . . . Part of the reality we
seek is that the history of Jesus did indeed begin the process that led
to the definition of faith in the Christian sense; the issue is whether we
are willing to participate in, not merely to note the presence of this
aspect of his reality (p. 151).
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 Ben Tilghman 397
Stephen T. Davies asks us to assume, as a thought experiment, that
historical scholarship shows that the Churchs view of Jesus is true.
What difference would that make to Christians? For some, it would be
a consummation devoutly to be wished. But Davies goes on to point
out that scholarly agreement on this could well change. There is the
danger that people could think that history is the only source of
knowledge of Christ to the exclusion of religious experience, tradition
and community. Davies seems to be assuming that there is knowledge
of Christ apart from historical knowledge of the life of Jesus. Does this
beg a question?
Part V, The Resurrection: The Grammar of Raised, sees Sarah
Coakley worrying about how the risen Christ comes to be recognised
and what flavour of epistemic apparatus and epistemic transforma-
tions beyond ordinary sense perception may be necessary for the
believer to achieve this recognition. She makes an appeal to Origins
notion of a spiritual sense and suggests that there may be something
like that in Wittgenstein.
Ingolf U. Dalferth provides a lengthy and careful examination of
Coakleys thesis. He points out how she gets Wittgenstein wrong and
makes clear that she has misunderstood what it is to recognise the risen
Christ. It is not a matter of locating a spiritual perception analogous to
sense perception; it is not a matter of epistemology at all. In the New
Testament view, seeing the risen Christ is not something that we do,
but something that is done to us. It marks a change in ones life and
ones place in the world.
The last part, Is There an Audience for Miracles? I found the
most philosophically satisfying.Walford Gealy begins by reminding us
that the biblical miracles are reported from the background of a world
view that is not ours. He goes on to dismiss characteristically modern
discussions of miracles as violations of natural laws, extraordinary
events caused by God and the like. Causation was not a part of those
ancient world views.There are interesting references to Roy Holland,
Peter Winch and especially to Rush Rhees concerning the idea of the
unity of language and the intelligibility to be found in diverse realms
of discourse and the relevance of that for thinking about miracles. An
established religion may not need signs from God to support its beliefs.
He concludes that faith is itself a miracle.
The response is from D. Z. Phillips who comes off the bench as a
last-minute substitute. The discussion keeps returning to the unity of
language. Language gets its sense in the stream of life, but the stream
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398 Philosophical Investigations
of life in the biblical world in which miracles are familiar is not our
stream of life with its scientific world view and we are left won-
dering whether or not we and our language can make contact with
that world of the past. Can we find the right spirit in the biblical
miracles? Phillips thinks we can, but that conclusion seems secondary
to the conceptual interconnections introduced between miracles, lan-
guage and life, and it is through those interconnections that the
question must be pursued.
While not all these papers are successful in what they set out to do,
they are uniformly thoughtful and there is always something to be
learned from them.
The later book in the series Language and Spirit does not follow
quite the same format as the previous volume.There are six papers, but
no responding papers.There are the usual summaries of the discussions
following each presentation.The question that the participants address
is that of trying to understand what it means to believe in God as Spirit
and to make sense of speaking of God as Spirit. In his introduction to
the volume, Phillips calls attention to a tension between theology and
ontology. Must theology presuppose an ontology stating what exists in
the world, God and Spirit, for example? He illustrates a problem about
ontology with the example of Pythagorean mathematical units. He
says, . . . mathematics does not spring from ontological units, but
rather, itself gives sense to them.Without mathematics, how would one
know that they were mathematical units at all (p. 2).The lesson I would
draw from this is that theology does not rest on an ontological
foundation. Rather, it is theology that gives sense to talk about God.
We would do well to keep in mind Wittgensteins remarks about
ontology as grammar and theology as grammar.
In the first paper, Hegels Dialectic of the Spirit: Contemporary
Reflections on Hegels Vision of Development and Totality, Anselm
Kyongsuk Min seeks to explain Hegels ideas about the history of
religions and then to show the contemporary relevance of some of his
views.This is a tall order. It is by no means obvious that Hegels notion
of spirit, . . . the absolute or the truly infinite Spirit, the divine
Spirit who does not remain merely infinite or transcendent but posits
the finite as its own other, maintaining self-identity in that other and
reconciling the finite with itself (p. 8) is going to shed light on
anything. Be that as it may, Hegel was aware that every philosophy is
a product of its own time.What Min wants to milk out of this is a plea
for modesty and a reminder that our philosophies too will pass away
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 Ben Tilghman 399
and that our philosophies should take account of that. Min seems to be
thinking of philosophy as speculative philosophy, which seeks to con-
struct general metaphysical pictures of things.A more modest concep-
tion of philosophy may avoid this angst of arrogance.
Min says nothing about spirit as it enters into the language and
practice of religious people and thus fails to give us what we thought
we were looking for. This is the result of trying to investigate a
question through the lens of what some philosopher says about it
rather than directly approaching the problem on the grounds where it
arises. No light is shed upon what was happening when the Spirit of
God moved across the face of the waters or when the disciples began
to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Some-
thing similar is the case with Merold Westphals contribution,
Kierkegaard on Language and Spirit. He says that Kierkegaard offers
us an alternative to Hegels account of spirit. If one believes, as I do,
that the intelligibility of what Hegel says is questionable, then one may
also have suspicions about the intelligibility of any alternative account.
Westphal concludes: For Kierkegaard to be spirit is to exist before
God and to exist before God is to be caught up in an asymmetrical
language game in which the agenda is set by Gods promises and
commands . . . (p. 81). Abraham is the example of one entering into
such a language game when God commands the sacrifice of Isaac.This
may be stretching the notion of a language game. How is the game
learned? How is a distinction between sense and nonsense to be made?
While the discussion gives some mention to this question of language,
nothing at all is said there about spirit.
Schubert M. Ogden is another one who attempts to talk about
spirit as filtered through anothers thought, that of Rudolf Bultmann.
He begins by pointing out the ambiguity in the phrase the language
of spirit. Spirit may refer to God or to the human spirit and the
language of spirit can mean either that spoken by spirit/Spirit or that
spoken about these things. These distinctions promise a good begin-
ning, but it soon founders on the obscurities of Bultmanns existen-
tialist way of putting things. Skipping the details of all that we are told
that . . . the sole reason for theologys existence, finally, is to provide
the critical reflection and proper theory requisite to securing the
adequacy of Christian witness . . . (p. 96). So religion needs philo-
sophical foundations and the discussion brings out that the foundation
is an ontology. I am inclined to agree with Phillipss comment that an
appeal to ontology is radically confused (p. 111).
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400 Philosophical Investigations
The papers by Mario von der Ruhr, Patrick Sherry and James
Kellenberger stand in contrast to the previous three. Each seeks to
come to grips with relevant issues without trying to salvage whatever
they can from the theories of others. Sherry, for example, points out
that the term spirit has been used in many different contexts and
how later philosophical and theological uses have gotten far from
biblical and even everyday uses of the word. In this fact resides, I
suggest, one of the main difficulties with this volume. Given the many
facets of this word, it is not always easy to figure out just what is being
talked about when the subject is spirit.
In his introduction to the volume, Phillips charges the participants
in the conference to speak to the question about God as Spirit and
what might be meant thereby. Unfortunately, too many of the partici-
pants do not succeed in addressing this question specifically.

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2006 The Authors. Journal compilation 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.