Pragmatic Pluralism and the Problem of God [Hardcover]

Pragmatism mediates rival extremes, and religion is no exception: The problems of realism versus antirealism, evidentialism versus fideism, and science versus religion, along with other key issues in the philosophy of religion, receive new interpretations when examined from a pragmatist point of view. Religion is then understood as a human practice with certain inherent aims and goals, responding to specific human needs and interests, serving certain important human values, and seeking to resolve problematic situations that naturally arise from our practices themselves, especially our need to live with our vulnerability, finitude, guilt, and mortality.Sami Pihlstrom develops here a pragmatic philosophy of religion enriched by Immanuel Kants insight that belief or faith in God is motivated chiefly by ethical considerations. He illumines important connections between Kants writing on religion and that of William James and John Dewey, and shows how attention to both can provide resources for a conception and analysis of religion that is pluralistic and takes normativity seriously. Pihlstrom has been a leading interpreter of the pragmatists and it is good to have this important constructive contribution to the philosophy of religion.The book is a study of pragmatism and pragmatic pluralism in the philosophy of religion. Through critical examinations of Jamess, Deweys, and recent neopragmatists ideas, it argues that key issues in the field  including the debate between evidentialism and fideism, and the problem of evil  need rearticulation from a pragmatic pluralistic perspective.. . . a solid work of scholarship, well-argued and insightful.Pihlstr?m does an amazing job of sorting the metaphysical remnants of Kant in James and in the process restores questions of metaphysics to American pragmatism. This excellent work of scholarship calls for a deeper examination of pragmatist metaphysics and its challenge to religion and its reformulation.