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Taking the appearances seriously: architectural experience and the phenomenological case for religious belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2010

MARK WYNN
MARK WYNN*
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religion, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4RJ
*
e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper explores some implications of the idea that religious thoughts can enter into the sensory appearances of things. I begin by clarifying this idea, using some examples drawn from Roger Scruton's discussion of the phenomenology of architectural experience. Then I consider the bearing of the idea on the case for religious belief in pragmatic and epistemic terms. More exactly, I explore how the idea of an internal relation between religious thought and the sensory appearances of things can be used (1) to state William James's case in ‘The will to believe’ with new nuance, and (2) to set out an epistemic case for religious belief whose central claims seem quite commonly to weigh with believers, but which has not been much discussed by philosophers.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 3 , September 2011 , pp. 331 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

Notes

1. Roger Scruton The Aesthetics of Architecture (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 74–75.

2. Ibid., 109.

3. Ibid., 119.

4. Ibid., 93–94.

5. William Alston ‘Audi on nondoxastic faith’, in M. Timmons, J. Greco, & A. Mele (eds) Rationality and the Good: Critical Essays on the Ethics and Epistemology of Robert Audi (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), ch. 11, 133. For another instructive account of these matters, see John Schellenberg Prolegomena to Philosophy of Relgion (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press), 143–147.

6. Alston ‘Audi on nondoxastic faith’, 134.

7. Alston allows for the possibility of evidence which is insufficient for belief but too strong for propositional faith; ibid., 134.

8. William James ‘The will to believe’, in J. McDermott (ed.) The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 717–735.

9. Ibid., 718–719.

10. Ibid., 718.

11. Ibid., 731–732.

12. Ibid., 732.

13. Ibid., 718.

14. Gordon Graham The Re-Enchantment of the World: Art versus Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 134.

15. Compare Kant's account of what he calls ‘dependent’ beauties, where knowledge of the purpose of a thing is presupposed in an appreciation of its beauty. See Immanuel Kant Critique of Judgement, tr. J. H. Bernard (London: Hafner Press, 1951), 65–66.

16. Famously, Thomas Aquinas maintains that the creation considered as an integrated whole images God: see Summa Theologiae 1a. 47. 1.

17. Benjamin Cordry has recently defended a somewhat similar proposal, by arguing that if theism is true, then we should expect the world to exhibit a kind of ‘cosmic architecture’, though Cordry's concern is with the physical structure of the cosmos, rather than its presentation in appearance. See Cordry, Benjamin S., ‘Theism and the philosophy of nature’, Religious Studies, 42 (2006), 273–290CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. William James The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910), 151. See too Erazim Kohák The Embers and the Stars: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Moral Sense of Nature (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984).

19. See, for example, Del Ratzsch ‘Perceiving design’, in N. A. Manson (ed.), God and Design: The Teleological Argument and Modern Science (London: Routledge, 2003), ch. 6.

20. This thought is central to John Hick's picture of religious experience, for example. See his An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (London: Macmillan, 1989), ch. 14.

21. I am grateful to Professor Peter Byrne and to an anonymous referee for the journal for some very instructive comments on an earlier draft of this paper. I am fortunate to have had the opportunity to present drafts of the paper at the D Society in the University of Cambridge, at the Natural Theology Group convened by Douglas Hedley, and at the Glasgow University Philosophy of Religion conference, and I have benefited from suggestions that I received on each of these occasions. I am especially grateful to Gorazd Andrejč, Sarah Coakley, John Cottingham, Stuart Foyle, Victoria Harrison, Douglas Hedley, Joe Houston, Graham Howes, Tim Mawson, Anastasia Scrutton, and Giles Waller.