Religion and hermeneutic philosophy

Abstract

What kind of philosophy is philosophy of religion? This question suggests that there are other kinds of philosophies, or at least that there are different ideas of what philosophy is. Philosophy of religion conceived as religious philosophy is multi-interpretable.1 A genitive can be a genitivus objectivus or a genitivus subjectivus. In this contribution, I would like to discuss both. The genitivus subjectivus places philosophy within religion; philosophy is, as it were, the derivative of religion. Religion is considered first and philosophy unfolds that which religion says by means of a hermeneutics. Therefore, I will also consider philosophy as a hermeneutical philosophy; I will elucidate this when I discuss the genitivus objectivus. Philosophy conceived as hermeneutical philosophy contemplates and makes explicit the phenomenon of religion and asks specific philosophical questions in relation to it. Philosophy of religion is first and foremost philosophy and is concerned with the specific questions, difficult to formulate, that are inherent to philosophy. A person's conception of philosophy will therefore co-determine his conception of philosophy of religion. The meaning of philosophy of religion will have to be discussed taking a person's background in philosophy as a starting point. Philosophy, in my view, is a thinking movement that asks questions about being. Formulated in this way, it sounds rather massive. Questions about being seem to have become discredited in the past century. They seem likewise to have disqualified metaphysics as an ontology. Heidegger therefore very appropriately begins his Being and Time with a reference to Plato's Sophist: "For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression 'being'. We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed" (Plato, The Sophist, 244 a). After this quotation, Heidegger continues: "Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being'? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of Being."2