Philosophical Hermeneutic of/for Religious Pluralism: Some Methodological Considerations

Abstract

If heterogeneity is the case for existential pluralism, the epistemic issue is—to what extent is the philosophical sense-making of the social world epistemic–pluralistic so as to rationally enhance religious pluralism? This is the central issue while rethinking religious pluralism. The essay provisions a hermeneutics of philosophical sensibilities that enable religious pluralism anchored on an ethics of equality, justice and solidarity. The facticity of cultural and religious heterogeneity calls for a metaphysical, epistemic and ethical justifiability, especially in the context of the erosion of it (by modes of monolithic claims) as the only possible mode of human–cultural existence. Differencing ontological monism, ontological dualism, ontological pluralism and critical pluralism, and juxtaposing each with the other, I argue that monolithic centrism is (historically and socially) non-viable given the conditions of human existence. To consider being as one-and-only-one or even in terms of two ultimate modes, unfortunately, projects a life world that succumbs to autocracy, value degradation and appropriation of existential multiplicity. Critical epistemic and ethical pluralism provides the theoretical space enabling togetherness of theory and practice. Such pluralism provides the normative conditions of a pluralistic social life.