The Future of Religion. By Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo

Abstract

This volume brings together two prominent contemporary philosophers to reflect on religion in its relation to ethics, society, and politics. The book is well-structured, with an introductory overview by the editor, an essay by Rorty, another by Vattimo, and finally a lively dialogue. Since both Rorty and Vattimo also discuss each other's work in their respective essays, the book provides an excellent opportunity for these major representatives of continental thought and contemporary American pragmatism to engage in constructive and fruitful discussion. Zabala's introduction sets up the contributions of the two major thinkers by defining some key terms and concepts, and by sketching some of the general parameters of current philosophical analyses of religion. The main tenor of this piece is surprisingly optimistic: the end of metaphysics, also called the “death of God,” has, he states, “cleared the ground for a culture without those dualisms that have characterized our western tradition” (2). This means that a form of “weak thought” has emerged that eschews the grandiose claims of metaphysics, while providing re-conceptualizations of religion that are less power-laden and authoritarian. Zabala also views this de-essentializing approach to religion as correlated with a de-essentialized way of doing philosophy, “the ultimate goal of philosophical investigation after the end of metaphysics is no longer contact with something existing independently from us, but rather Bildung, the unending formation of oneself” (4). This captures a key feature of both Rorty's and Vattimo's emphases on the human ethical influences of religion, also shared in varying ways by a range of recent theorists. In a post-metaphysical approach, religion is interrogated as a vital element of the historicity of human existence and thought, rather than as something static, disconnected from the specific features of lived time and place.