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Religious ‘Seeing-As’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

William L. Reese
William L. Reese
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, State University of New York at Albany
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Extract

The conceptual framework of religion is more like the frame of a picture than the frame of a house; and what goes on within the frame is other than conceptual. This is the hypothesis motivating the analysis which follows. Given the hypothesis, the problem is to conceive what religion is - this other-than-conceptual enterprise which tends to attract conceptual frames. A possible answer is available in Wittgensteinian ‘seeing-as’. A number of philosophers of religion have recently exercised this option. The present paper adds to their work by comparing a number of types of religious seeing-as with the instances of visual ambiguity drawn on by Wittgenstein.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 73 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

page 73 note 1 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. Anscombe, G. E. M., I (New York: Macmillan, 1953), xii, 193e–198e.Google Scholar

page 73 note 2 For example, Hick, John, ‘Religious Faith as Experiencing-As’, in Talk of God, Royal Inst. of Phil. Lectures, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1967–1968), pp. 20–35Google Scholar; and Richmond, James, Theology and Metaphysics (London: SCM Press, 1970), pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

page 73 note 3 At least he suggests: ‘“Seeing as…” is not part of perception. And for that reason it is like seeing and again not like.’ Op. cit. p. 797e.

page 74 note 1 As Smart, Ninian says (The Concept of Worship, Macmillan: St Martin's Press, 1972, p. 15): ‘Let fire be brought into being and Fire is there.’CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 74 note 2 Indeed, what we have called the reversion to a simpler form is probably what Wittgenstein meant by perception. If seeing-as is not part of perception, perception must be the seeing of the yellow, the dapple of brown and green, the green in our examples, and the configuration of line relationships in the examples and in his duck-rabbit instance.

page 75 note 1 Black, Max, Models and Metaphors (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), p. 44.Google Scholar

page 76 note 1 The notion of ‘colouring’ is left vague deliberately as a place marker for an absent analysis. Perhaps, what happens is that I in some sense superimpose the image of an orange on the image of the sun so that I do have a superimposed double image.

page 78 note 1 Ricoeur, Paul relates this term to myth in Finitud y culpabilidad, trans. Gil, Cecilie Sánchez (Madrid: Taurus Ediciones, S/A, 1969), pp. 255–6Google Scholar (original title), Finitud et culpabilité (Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1960).Google Scholar

page 79 note 1 Evans-Pritchard, ‘Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande’, p. 64Google Scholar, quoted by Peter Winch in ‘Understanding a Primitive Society’, in Religion and Understanding, ed. Phillips, D.Z. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967), p. 17.Google Scholar

page 79 note 2 Malinowski, Bronislaw, Magic, Science and Religion (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954), pp. 28–9.Google Scholar

page 80 note 1 Q.v. Cassirer, Ernst, Language and Myth (N.Y., London: Harper, 1946)Google Scholar, and Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and the Profane (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1959).Google Scholar

page 80 note 2 Cassirer, , op. cit. p. 85.Google Scholar

page 80 note 3 Q.v. Frazer, , The Golden Bough (London: Macmillan, 1963), part I, vol. 2, ch. 10, p. 11.Google Scholar

page 82 note 1 Smart, Ninian, op. cit.Google Scholar

page 83 note 1 Adams, Henry, The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography (Boston: Houghton Miffin Co., 1961), p. 209Google Scholar

page 83 note 2 Adams, Henry, to be sure, termed the spiritual dimension illusory, and the naturalistic dimension real, but that is his evaluation. Our interest is in Adams' case, not in his evaluation of it.Google Scholar

page 84 note 1 The rule being that, as intension increases, extension decreases.

page 85 note 1 Weiss, Paul, ‘God and the World’, Science Philosophy and Religion: A Symposium (New York: Conference on Science, Philosophy, and Religion, 1941), p. 426.Google Scholar