Incommensurability: Can Comparative Religious Ethics Help?

Abstract

Although the fact of religious incommensurability cannot be gainsaid, the language of difference and commonality often gets in the way of true interreligious understanding. One way of avoiding this impasse is to emphasize the dynamic character of traditions, even as we use the language of difference and commonality as a bridge to dialogue. If comparative religious ethics recognizes this dynamic character of all religious traditions, it represents one of the most fruitful approaches to avoiding the dangers of overemphasizing incommensurability. The author ends with ten theses to encourage further discussion. The title of my article has a question mark at the end. That question mark opens up the issue of there being religious incommensurables or, at least, raises questions about what incommensurability means in this context. But I fear the question applies only to the bridging capacity of comparative religious ethics. The reality of religious incommensurables seems to be presupposed on the authority of postmodernists and postliberals, and this seems to mean that members of one religious tradition cannot understand those of another. The idea that comparative religious ethics might be a bridge suggests that the propounders of the question do not take the incommensurability as absolute. They think we may live in a common world and face common problems. By seeing how different traditions respond to common problems, we may be able to find points of contact with our own that will enable us to understand some features of an otherwise incommensurable way of thinking and being. The point, I think, is that action more obviously relates us to a common world than do ideas. There is a tension between the belief that there is a common world of any kind and the belief that the languages of the several traditions are incommensurable. The latter belief grows out of a tendency to follow the linguistic turn to the conclusion that language constitutes the horizon of human being in the world. In this view, words and phrases have their meaning only in relation to other parts of the language or to the linguistic Buddhist-Christian Studies 16 (1996). ? by University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.203 on Thu, 20 Oct 2016 04:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms