ABSTRACT
Secular cosmopolitan philosophers of religion will be kind, gracious, and open-minded. They will inquire into the complexity of religious practices without succumbing to the tendency to reduce this complexity to a cognitive matter of justified true belief. They will be devoted to discovering truth-but they will be reluctant to question and criticize when it is possible to simply leave others alone. We discussed this in the previous chapter, where we considered the sorts of virtues that are needed for cosmopolitan social life. Here, I pursue the matter further by considering the plural or polytheistic nature of “religious” experience. Of course, there is an open question about what counts as religion. We will discuss this in more detail here. But let’s begin by highlighting a point I have been making throughout the previous chapters, which is that religion (and politics) is a response to vulnerability. This point was noted by William James, who once said that death and suffering are a “worm in the core” of life. 1 There can also be life-affirming religions. But religious superstructures and institutions-as well as political structures and legal edifices-are best understood as bulwarks against suffering and vulnerability. Thus, religions speak of life as suffering (Buddhism and South Asian traditions) or talk about sin (Abrahamic religions) while offering a path to salvation (as we will discuss in the next chapter).
