Towards the Unification of the Faiths (Comparative Religion)

Abstract

In a period of positivism, skepticism, and existentialism, systematic speculation may be frowned upon. And when this speculation starts by taking religion seriously and ends by calling itself naturalistic, it may find itself attacked not only by the traditional idealists and spiritualists but also by positivists, logical empiricists, and critico-naturalists. Thus it is that, at the present time, a full-blooded speculative naturalism may find itself, like the social liberal, criticized by both the right and the left for not being either consistently right or consistently left. This time it is G.P. Conger who gives us a systematic, speculative naturalism. As such it is easy to criticize, particularly from a narrowly empirical point of view. But before rushing in with a critical axe, it is well to remind ourselves that philosophy in its most characteristic form, from Thales to Whitehead, has been speculative; and thus philosophers who, at the present time, shun speculation as if it were poison (or at least in execrable taste) may be exhibiting not so much insight as failure of nerve. It is clear that the traditional questions of philosophy are questions to which both meaningless and misleading answers can be (and have been) given; but it does not follow from this that the questions are either meaningless or impertinent. A burnt child may shun the fire, but only a fool will put all fires out on the ground that they are potentially dangerous and that it is better to shiver than to burn. And so we may begin this review by thanking Conger for helping to keep some rather important fires going; and yet we must also warn him that a work of this kind invites many kinds of criticism. Conger's problems are the problems of traditional philosophy, both East and West: the generic nature of the universe, the nature of man, the place of man in the universe, and the nature of the good life for man. Willing to accept the contributions of the sciences and unwilling to reject in toro the spiritual insights of the great religions (Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), his over-all goal is, one might say, similar to Spinoza's: that of reunderstanding the nature and goal of religion against the background of the undeniable achievements of an age of science, a reunderstanding which, once more, attempts to separate the spirit of religion from the magic, superstition, and folklore which the common man (and even the parish priest) tends to identify, rightly or wrongly, with religion itself. His conclusions, however, are by no means identical with Spinoza's conclusions, partly because Conger has responded profoundly to post-Spinozistic evolutionary thinking, both scientific and philosophical. All in all, Conger is looking for a world view which is in accord with the major scientific findings of the last one hundred years and which will provide a place for religion without reducing religion to a watered-down and washed-out ethical humanism. His method is that of arguing from fact and presumption to a picture of phical judgment. The cr ticisms he offers are usually rather general in their scope, t an analytically trained reader may fnd in them hints toward ways of more precise structive reformulations f some of the problems with which and the Indians concerned. -KARL H. POTTER, Un versity of Minnesota. BOOK REVIEWS 149