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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Is the existence of God a reasonable metaphysical hypothesis? So asks A. C. Ewing in his important posthumous work, Value and Reality. Thus the topic of the book is theistic religion, not in its entirety, but rather merely in its intellectual part. That it does have such a part, and further that it makes claims ‘to objective truth in the field of metaphysics’ (p. 24), is defended on the grounds (a) that a fictional ‘story’ about God has what religious or ethical impact it may have because, or at least mainly because, it is taken precisely not as fictional, but as expressing an objective theological truth; and (b) that a story, or an account, can constitute a good reason for one's acting in a certain way only if the account is, in fact, objectively true. Bearing on both points is Ewing's observation that ‘emotion, at least except in pathological cases, requires some objective belief about the real, true or false, to support it for long, and if it exists without knowledge or rationally founded belief with which it is in agreement, it is to be condemned as irrational or unfitting, as it would be unfitting to rejoice at something disastrous or be angry with an inanimate thing’ (p. 27). The claim is not, we are told, that religious statements are literal as distinguished from symbolic. The door would seem to be left open, in fact, to their all being symbolic. What is essential is that some of them symbolise distinctively metaphysical truths, or truths ‘going beyond the realm of science’ and ‘throwing some light on the general nature of the real’ (p. 30). We should indeed distinguish, Ewing notes, ‘belief in’ from ‘belief that’. Yet the former is not possible without the latter. ‘Unless I believe that God exists I cannot believe in God’ (p. 28). So in Ewing's opinion, statements of metaphysics—if not concerning God, then at least concerning certain general aspects of reality—are most important for religion as a whole, and are, in being true, conceptually necessary to its validity, or to its ‘fittingness’.
page 229 note 1 Ewing, A. C., Value and Reality: The Philosophical Case for Theism (London and New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., Humanities Press Inc., 1973)Google Scholar. Future page references will be to this work, unless indicated otherwise.
page 230 note 1 To be found in Ewing, A. C., Nonlinguistic Philosophy (London and New York: George Allen & Unwin, Humanities Press, 1968), pp. 15–33.Google Scholar
page 230 note 2 To be found in Lewis, H. D., ed., Clarity is Not Enough (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1963), pp. 147–69.Google Scholar
page 231 note 1 ‘The Linguistic Theory of A Priori Propositions’, H. D. Lewis, op. cit., p. 68.
page 235 note 1 Ewing, A. C., Idealism: A Critical Survey (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1934), pp. 318–19.Google Scholar
page 236 note 1 Of course, ‘explain’ has many senses. As it is used by Ewing in these sections, the word is understood principally by analogy with deductive explanation in science. But in a more general sense, to ‘explain’ is to give a cause or a reason. In this general sense, explanation is indeed an important criterion of truth in metaphysics; but it would appear to be reducible either to a priori necessitation alone (as it would function in the ontological argument), or to such necessitation plus the other criteria just mentioned.
page 236 note 2 For further arguments, Ewing refers us to his ‘Mental Acts’ and ‘The Relation between Mind and Body’ in Nonlinguistic Philosophy, to his ‘Professor Ryle's Attack on Dualism’ in Clarity is not Enough, and to H. D. Lewis, The Elusive Mind.
page 237 note 1 Ewing, A. C., The Fundamental Questions of Philosophy (New York: Collier Books, 1962), pp. 120–8.Google Scholar
page 240 note 1 Ewing, A. C., Second Thoughts in Moral Philosophy (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1959).Google Scholar
page 252 note 1 We are referred by Ewing to his book Ethics, pp. 42 ff.
page 254 note 1 For a very impressive attempt to provide it see C. A. Campbell, On Selfhood and Godhood, chap. IX, and In Defence of Free Will, chap. II.—Ed.