I list four suggestions for ways Gash might consider refining and advancing his target article: D... more I list four suggestions for ways Gash might consider refining and advancing his target article: Defending RC as being needed, attending more to mystical traditions, clarifying mystical traditions …
In ‘The Will to Believe’, the religious hypothesis for William James says, first, ‘that the best ... more In ‘The Will to Believe’, the religious hypothesis for William James says, first, ‘that the best things are the more eternal things’, and second, ‘that we are better off now if we believe her first affirmation to be true’ (p.26) He later qualifies the first affirmation: ‘The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having personal form’ (p.27).
... [Access article in PDF] Buber's Blunder: Buber's Replies to Scholem... more ... [Access article in PDF] Buber's Blunder: Buber's Replies to Scholem and Schatz-Uffenheimer.Jerome Gellman. ... Who can blame him? 53. Ben-Gurion University Of The Negev. Jerome Gellman is Professor of Philosophy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. ...
In her important work, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic T... more In her important work, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, the late Rivkah Schatz-Uffenheimer depicted early eighteenth-century Hasidism as a movement with pronounced ‘quietist tendencies’. In this paper I raise several difficulties with this thesis. These follow from social-activist features of early Hasidism as well as from a selection from the writings of leading early Hasidic masters. I conclude that a major stream of thought in early Hasidim was not quietist in tendency. Finally, I compare the intentions of the masters I cite to some non-quietist themes in Eastern mystical thought.
In modern usage, “mysticism” refers to mystical experience and to practices, discourse, instituti... more In modern usage, “mysticism” refers to mystical experience and to practices, discourse, institutions, and traditions associated therewith. The term “mystical experience” enjoys a great variety of meanings, retaining some of that variety among philosophers. There is no choice but to stipulate meaning for the purposes of this article. A wide definition of “mystical experience” will be more in the spirit of how it figures in general culture, and a narrow definition will echo a meaning common among philosophers. In the wide sense, mystical experiences occur within the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Indian religions, Buddhism, and primal religions. In most of these traditions, the experiences are allegedly of a supersensory reality, such as God, Brahman, or, as in some Buddhist traditions, Nirvana.
Religious Studies 37, 109-122 Printed in the United Kingdom C 2001 Cambridge University Press ...... more Religious Studies 37, 109-122 Printed in the United Kingdom C 2001 Cambridge University Press ... Matthew C. Bagger Religious Experience, Justification, and History. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Pp. ix + 238. ?37.50 (Hbk). ISBN 0 521 62255 7.
In what follows I wish to make a contribution to the clarification of the logic of the name ‘God’... more In what follows I wish to make a contribution to the clarification of the logic of the name ‘God’. I will do so in two stages. In the first stage I will be investigating the meaning of names in general, and how names refer. In the second stage I will attempt to apply the findings of the first stage to the name ‘God’, in light of the way that name functions in religious discourse.
In this paper I defend the possibility that a ‘contented religious exclusivist’, will be fully ra... more In this paper I defend the possibility that a ‘contented religious exclusivist’, will be fully rational and not neglectful of any of her epistemic duties when faced with the world’s religious diversity. I present an epistemic strategy for reflecting on one's beliefs and then present two features of religious belief that make contented exclusivism a rational possibility. I then argue against the positions of John Hick, David Basinger, and Steven Wykstra on contented exclusivism, and criticize an overly optimistic conception of rationality. Finally, I describe a contented exclusivist who might very well not be fully rational in the face of religious diversity.
This article argues that everlasting God can be in boredom, but cannot fall into boredom. Hence, ... more This article argues that everlasting God can be in boredom, but cannot fall into boredom. Hence, the argument by Andric and Tanyi (2017) in this journal that God could not be everlasting in time, because God would fall into boredom, is shown to be unsound, since it is logically impossible for God to fall into boredom.
Hasidism would seem to be a most unlikely place to find a hook on which to hang a contemporary Je... more Hasidism would seem to be a most unlikely place to find a hook on which to hang a contemporary Jewish theology that takes into account biblical criticism. Yet that is exactly where I am going to go in what follows, to present what I take to be a position that ...
We are now in a position to present our argument for the strong ratio¬ nality of the belief that ... more We are now in a position to present our argument for the strong ratio¬ nality of the belief that God is really and truly experienced and hence exists, based on alleged experiences of God. There are certain principles about how to connect experience with real¬ ity which we all implicitly recognize as authoritative. We all regularly ap¬ peal to these rules when attempting to rationally determine the connection between experience and reality in contexts other than the experience of God. In our argument here, these principles will simply be assumed to govern correctly the relevant, rational deliberations. Thus, the argument starts with these principles. The principles to which we here are going to appeal do not only give conditions under which a certain kind of belief that p is weakly rational, under which conditions, that is, not only is the belief that p rational, but also the belief that not-p is rational. These principles yield strong rationality, showing that a belief that p is rational while a belief that not-p is not. At the same time, though, at least because of the clause "everything else being equal" which these principles contain, not every reasonable, proper appli¬ cation of them, even when considering the same evidence, need yield the same results. Reasonable, informed human beings could conceivably reach different conclusions from these same principles even though they all agreed on the principles and on the relevant evidence to which the princi¬ ples were to be applied. They could reasonably differ over whether every¬ thing else was equal. Hence, we do not claim that all reasonable, proper applications of these principles would show, with regard to a belief that p, Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief 46 ] that it was rational and that the belief that not-p was not. So our principles do not serve to show that a belief possesses "universal" strong rationality.
I list four suggestions for ways Gash might consider refining and advancing his target article: D... more I list four suggestions for ways Gash might consider refining and advancing his target article: Defending RC as being needed, attending more to mystical traditions, clarifying mystical traditions …
In ‘The Will to Believe’, the religious hypothesis for William James says, first, ‘that the best ... more In ‘The Will to Believe’, the religious hypothesis for William James says, first, ‘that the best things are the more eternal things’, and second, ‘that we are better off now if we believe her first affirmation to be true’ (p.26) He later qualifies the first affirmation: ‘The more perfect and more eternal aspect of the universe is represented in our religions as having personal form’ (p.27).
... [Access article in PDF] Buber's Blunder: Buber's Replies to Scholem... more ... [Access article in PDF] Buber's Blunder: Buber's Replies to Scholem and Schatz-Uffenheimer.Jerome Gellman. ... Who can blame him? 53. Ben-Gurion University Of The Negev. Jerome Gellman is Professor of Philosophy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. ...
In her important work, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic T... more In her important work, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, the late Rivkah Schatz-Uffenheimer depicted early eighteenth-century Hasidism as a movement with pronounced ‘quietist tendencies’. In this paper I raise several difficulties with this thesis. These follow from social-activist features of early Hasidism as well as from a selection from the writings of leading early Hasidic masters. I conclude that a major stream of thought in early Hasidim was not quietist in tendency. Finally, I compare the intentions of the masters I cite to some non-quietist themes in Eastern mystical thought.
In modern usage, “mysticism” refers to mystical experience and to practices, discourse, instituti... more In modern usage, “mysticism” refers to mystical experience and to practices, discourse, institutions, and traditions associated therewith. The term “mystical experience” enjoys a great variety of meanings, retaining some of that variety among philosophers. There is no choice but to stipulate meaning for the purposes of this article. A wide definition of “mystical experience” will be more in the spirit of how it figures in general culture, and a narrow definition will echo a meaning common among philosophers. In the wide sense, mystical experiences occur within the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Indian religions, Buddhism, and primal religions. In most of these traditions, the experiences are allegedly of a supersensory reality, such as God, Brahman, or, as in some Buddhist traditions, Nirvana.
Religious Studies 37, 109-122 Printed in the United Kingdom C 2001 Cambridge University Press ...... more Religious Studies 37, 109-122 Printed in the United Kingdom C 2001 Cambridge University Press ... Matthew C. Bagger Religious Experience, Justification, and History. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). Pp. ix + 238. ?37.50 (Hbk). ISBN 0 521 62255 7.
In what follows I wish to make a contribution to the clarification of the logic of the name ‘God’... more In what follows I wish to make a contribution to the clarification of the logic of the name ‘God’. I will do so in two stages. In the first stage I will be investigating the meaning of names in general, and how names refer. In the second stage I will attempt to apply the findings of the first stage to the name ‘God’, in light of the way that name functions in religious discourse.
In this paper I defend the possibility that a ‘contented religious exclusivist’, will be fully ra... more In this paper I defend the possibility that a ‘contented religious exclusivist’, will be fully rational and not neglectful of any of her epistemic duties when faced with the world’s religious diversity. I present an epistemic strategy for reflecting on one's beliefs and then present two features of religious belief that make contented exclusivism a rational possibility. I then argue against the positions of John Hick, David Basinger, and Steven Wykstra on contented exclusivism, and criticize an overly optimistic conception of rationality. Finally, I describe a contented exclusivist who might very well not be fully rational in the face of religious diversity.
This article argues that everlasting God can be in boredom, but cannot fall into boredom. Hence, ... more This article argues that everlasting God can be in boredom, but cannot fall into boredom. Hence, the argument by Andric and Tanyi (2017) in this journal that God could not be everlasting in time, because God would fall into boredom, is shown to be unsound, since it is logically impossible for God to fall into boredom.
Hasidism would seem to be a most unlikely place to find a hook on which to hang a contemporary Je... more Hasidism would seem to be a most unlikely place to find a hook on which to hang a contemporary Jewish theology that takes into account biblical criticism. Yet that is exactly where I am going to go in what follows, to present what I take to be a position that ...
We are now in a position to present our argument for the strong ratio¬ nality of the belief that ... more We are now in a position to present our argument for the strong ratio¬ nality of the belief that God is really and truly experienced and hence exists, based on alleged experiences of God. There are certain principles about how to connect experience with real¬ ity which we all implicitly recognize as authoritative. We all regularly ap¬ peal to these rules when attempting to rationally determine the connection between experience and reality in contexts other than the experience of God. In our argument here, these principles will simply be assumed to govern correctly the relevant, rational deliberations. Thus, the argument starts with these principles. The principles to which we here are going to appeal do not only give conditions under which a certain kind of belief that p is weakly rational, under which conditions, that is, not only is the belief that p rational, but also the belief that not-p is rational. These principles yield strong rationality, showing that a belief that p is rational while a belief that not-p is not. At the same time, though, at least because of the clause "everything else being equal" which these principles contain, not every reasonable, proper appli¬ cation of them, even when considering the same evidence, need yield the same results. Reasonable, informed human beings could conceivably reach different conclusions from these same principles even though they all agreed on the principles and on the relevant evidence to which the princi¬ ples were to be applied. They could reasonably differ over whether every¬ thing else was equal. Hence, we do not claim that all reasonable, proper applications of these principles would show, with regard to a belief that p, Experience of God and the Rationality of Theistic Belief 46 ] that it was rational and that the belief that not-p was not. So our principles do not serve to show that a belief possesses "universal" strong rationality.
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