Can Anything be Beyond Human Understanding?

Abstract

The answer to the question of my title, if anything could reasonably count as an answer, depends in large part on how we take ‘can’ and ‘beyond understanding’. I will come to this. But my discussion also takes place against the background of D.Z. Phillips’s remarks about ‘the vicissitudes of human life being beyond human understanding’ and about the ‘limits of human existence’. All, in turn, take place against the background of thinking about religions in a non-rationalistic Wittgensteinian manner. I will argue that there are senses in which Phillips is right in his claim that there are vicissitudes in human life which are beyond human understanding, but that these senses are of little philosophical interest. In the senses that might deliver philosophical gold, the claim is at best false.KeywordsHuman LifeHuman ExistenceReflective EquilibriumMystical ExperienceHuman UnderstandingThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.