Rarely in modern times has religion been associated with empiricism except to its own peril. This book represents a comprehensive and systematic effort to retrieve and develop the tradition of American religious empiricism for religious inquiry. Religion and Radical Empiricism offers a challenging account of how and why reflection on religious truth-claims must seek justification of those claims finally in terms of empirical criteria. Ranging through many of the major questions in philosophy of religion the author weaves together a study of the varieties of empiricism in all its historical forms from Hume to Quine. She finds in James and Dewey; in Wieman Meland and Loomer of the Chicago School; in Whitehead; and in Abhidharma Buddhism constructive elements of a radically empirical approach to the controversial topic of religious experience. This work provides a strong counter-argument to critics of revisionary theism to caricatures of philosophy as conversation and to any collapse of the category of experience into its linguistic forms.
Published Date:
01/07/1987
Author:
Nancy K. Frankenberry
Publisher:
State University of New York Press
Format:
Paperback / softback
Dimensions:
152 mm x 229 mm