Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Until recently the philosophy of religion, as practiced in the West, has meant the philosophy of the Christian religion and has concentrated primarily on the Christian (or the Judeo-Christian) concept of God. However, it is clear that in principle the philosophy of religion has no confessional boundaries and is concerned with religion throughout the world and in its wide variety of forms. Also, during the last decade or so Western philosophers of religion have increasingly felt obliged to take note of the fact that Christianity is only one of the great world faiths and that monotheism is only one of the major types of religion, so that it is now common for new texts on the subject to include a chapter on the problems of religious pluralism. These problems, or areas for research, are of several kinds.There is the philosophical analysis of non-Christian, including non-monotheistic, religious concepts. Some work has been done on Eastern descriptions of unitive mysticism; on Hindu and Buddhist notions of reincarnation, centering on the question of personal identity from life to life; on such Buddhist ideas as anatta (“no self”), sunyata (“emptiness”); and on a number of other important concepts. But much remains to be done and many other major concepts await attention, both individually and comparatively. Indeed this area of philosophical inquiry has almost unlimited scope for development ... log in or subscribe to read full text