ABSTRACT
In following chapters I shall be elaborating the terms of a metaphysical system based on the thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) and presenting arguments in favour of theism. I shall also be exploring issues concerning the human soul, its origins and destiny, and discussing aspects of value: spiritual, aesthetic and moral. I begin, however, with a chapter that is not an exercise in metaphysics, value
theory or philosophical theology, let alone a linear argument to a particular conclusion in support of theism, though I shall refer appreciatively to Aquinas’s epistemology and natural theology. Rather I wish to open with a set of reflections on the theme of the relation in contemporary thought of religion to philosophy. In very broad terms this might perhaps be conceived of as another attempt to traverse the terrain between the two peaks of faith and reason, but I suggest it may be more apt to think of it as an effort at reorientation in a changing cultural and intellectual landscape. For his 1999 Edinburgh Gifford Lectures, Charles Taylor chose the theme
Living in a Secular Age. He described his project as follows: ‘I want to examine what it means to live in a secular age … Put simply: why was it so difficult – almost impossible – not to believe in God in 1500, while in many milieu today that is easy, and it is often faith which is hard?’ In 2007 Taylor published a book derived from the Gifford’s and readers are now in a position to consider the details of his answer to that question.2 Those already familiar with his previous major work Sources of the Self 3 will not be surprised, however, to learn that his examination takes the form of looking at the history of ideas and the ways in which those ideas shape, and are shaped by, social practices and institutions. There is, of course, an implied context in all of this – one with which all readers
will be familiar, though it is not easy to specify it. Taylor has in mind, principally, liberal democratic Western societies. As we know, however, there are many
hundreds of millions of religious believers throughout the world and many of them live in Europe and North America in the midst of what is held to be postmodern secularity. Even so, the suggestion of a felt difficulty of belief in an intellectual milieu is certainly worth exploring. My own interest is related to this, but I am concerned with the exclusion or the ‘silencing’ of religion within philosophy rather than with its general absence from intellectual culture. In general terms philosophy is now more widely practised and studied than
ever before, and readers may be surprised at the suggestion that religion is excluded or silenced within a discipline that historically was closely aligned with it. Admittedly late-twentieth and early-twenty-first-century philosophy is neither narrowly a priori nor extensively verificationist, confining meaningfulness to what can be empirically tested. Nevertheless, religion has become an unwelcome presence and efforts to introduce it are generally resisted. I write this notwithstanding the rise of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology, and the fact that among those interested in fashioning a large-scale view of reality and of the human condition there is often a personal interest in religious ideas, as is the case with Charles Taylor. Further examples of this, to whose ideas I will return, include Michael Dummett, Hilary Putnam and Nicholas Rescher.
