People come to philosophy from various 'places.' Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts. There are other termini a quis as well. In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy. What are the main types of reasons for those who are concerned with religion to take up the serious study of philosophy? I count five main types of motive.
1. The Apologetic Motive. Some look to philosophy for apologetic tools. Their concern is to clarify and defend the tenets of their religious faith, tenets they do not question, or do not question in the main, against those who do question them, or even attack them. For someone whose central motive is apologetic, the aim is not to seek truths they do not possess, but to articulate and defend truths that they already possess, if not in fullness, at least in outline.
2. The Critical Motive. Someone who is animated by the Critical Motive seeks to understand religion and evaluate its claim to truth, while taking it seriously. To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, evaluate, assay, separate the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable, the coherent from the incoherent. The critic is not out to defend or attack but to understand and evaluate. Open to the claims of religion, his question is: But is it true?
3. The Debunking Motive. If the apologist presupposes the truth of his religion, or some religion, the debunker presupposes the falsehood of a particular religion or of every religion. He takes the doctrines and institutions of religion seriously as things worth attacking, exposing, debunking, unmasking, and refuting.
The apologist, the critic, and the debunker all take religion seriously as something worth defending, worth evaluating, or worth attacking using the tools of philosophy. For all three, philosophy is a tool, not an end in itself.
The apologist moves to philosophy without leaving religion. If he succeeds in defending his faith with the weapons of philosophy, well and good; if he fails, it doesn't really matter. He has all the essential truth he needs from his religion. His inability to mount an intellectually respectable defense of it is a secondary matter. He might take the following view. "My religion is true. So there must be an intellectually respectable defense of it, whether or not I or anyone can mount that defense."
The critic moves to philosophy with the live option of leaving religion behind. Whether or not he leaves it behind depends on the outcome of his critique. Neither staying nor leaving is a foregone conclusion.
The debunker either never had a living faith, or else he had one but lost it. As a debunker, his decision has been made and his Rubicon crossed: religion is buncombe from start to finish, dangerous buncombe that needs to be unmasked and opposed. Strictly speaking, only the debunker who once had a living faith moves from it to philosophy. You cannot move away from a place where you never were.
4. The Transcensive Motive. The transcender aims to find in philosophy something that completes and transcends religion while preserving its truth. One way to flesh this out would be in Hegelian terms: religion and philosophy both aim to express the Absolute, but only philosophy does so adequately. Religion is an inadequate 'pictorial' (vortstellende) representation of the Absolute. On this sort of approach all that is good in religion is aufgehoben in philosophy, simultaneously cancelled and preserved, roughly in the way the bud is both cancelled and preserved in the flower.
5. The Substitutional Motive. The substitutionalist aims to find in philosophy a substitute for religion. Religion, when taken seriously, makes a total claim on its adherents' higher energies. A person who, for any reason, becomes disenchanted with religion, but is not prepared to allow himself to degenerate to the level of the worldling, may look to invest his energies elsewhere in some other lofty pursuit. Some will turn to social or political activism. And of course there are other termini ad quos on the road from religion. The substitutionalist abandons religion for philosophy. In a sense, philosophy becomes his religion. It is in her precincts that he seeks his highest meaning and an outlet for his noblest impulses.
What is my motive for the move from religion to philosophy?
It is (2), the Critical Motive. It is certainly not (1), the Apologetic Motive: I seem to be constitutionally incapable of taking the religion of my upbringing, or any religion, as simply true without examination. Independently minded, I can't suppress the questions that naturally arise. We have it on high authority that "The unexamined life is not worth living." A practiced religion, a religion lived, is a part of life. The examination therefore extends to religion and to everything else, and indeed also to this very examining. I am not appealing to the authority of Plato’s Socrates since his authority can be validated by the individual and for the individual critically and rationally.
My motive for moving from religion to philosophy is certainly not (3): I am not a debunker. The critical philosopher, like Socrates, is conservative: he respects that which criticizes. Whether or not he was right to do so, Socrates accepted the verdict of the polis and drank the hemlock.
Not (4) or (5) either. Neither transcensive not substitutional. Hegel is right in holding that both religion and philosophy treat of the Absolute. Hegel is wrong, however, in thinking that religion is somehow completed by or culminates in philosophy. Athens and Jerusalem are at odds with each other: there is a tension between them, on earth if not in heaven, indeed a fruitful, productive tension, one that accounts in part for the vitality of the West as over against the inanition of the Islamic world. To put it starkly, it it is the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith. Jerusalem is not a suburb of Athens. But neither is Athens a suburb of Jerusalem. In this world, the two cities subsist in a sort of sororal rivalry for the affections of the Lord. Did not God create us both to reason critically and to obey freely? Is not God both the God of the philosophers and the God of Isaac, Abraham, and Jacob? We may hope that in the next world the two cities will be unified or re-unified.
Nor do I aim to substitute philosophy for religion. Philosophy, with its "bloodless ballet of categories," is not my religion. Just as animal man does not live by bread alone, spiritual man does not live by the discursive intellect alone. The daily bread of the spiritual man is the panem supersubstantialis, not the bread of the mouth or the ‘bread’ of the mind.
There are four main paths to the Absolute: philosophy, religion, mysticism, and morality. They are separate and somehow all must be trod. No one of them has proprietary rights in the Absolute. How integrate them? Integration may not be possible here below. The best we can do is tack back and forth between them. So we think, we pray, we meditate, and we live under the aegis of moral demands taken as absolute. We may reasonably hope that on the Other Side we will have no need for philosophy (reason), religion (faith), or morality. We will then have no need for an approach “as through a glass darkly.” We shall see face to face. The four paths shall be aufgehoben in the mystical vision, the visio beata.