Jean Ladrière on Science and Theology and Their Mediation by Philosophy

Abstract

The relationship of science and religion has for long been an issue of prime importance in philosophy. The importance comes mainly from the fact that both science and religion depict its own comprehensive picture of human existence. We, while tending to go beyond the limits beset by the finitude of human conditions, long for these pictures in order to be incorporated into the infinitude. Though philosophers undergo divergently theoretical schemes, they ceaselessly investigate the different pictures by resorting to various perspectives. Among these perspectives, Jean Ladriere's deserves to special attention because of two reasons: 1. It includes many other perspectives. 2. It is engaged with significant mediation of science and theology by philosophy. This paper is accordingly divided into two parts: 1. An exposition of Ladriere's perspective which includes all major philosophical positions regarding science and religion (i.e., 'anti-positivism', 'the ontological differentiation' and 'the emotive commitment'). 2. A reconstruction of Ladriere's structure in which the existential significance of relating oneself with the outside world becomes 'perceptual' by transcendental arguments which dissolve the apparent discrepancy between science and theology. In this dissolution, Ladriere intends to make explicit that theology also resorts to a sensible language which validates its statements by relying on a closed intelligibility and corresponding to a particular reality. The combination of the 'reliance' and the 'correspondence' together paves the way for the mutual enrichment between science and theology.