RELIGION AND THE STANDARDS OF INFERENCE

I argued in Chapter 1 that religious understanding is not attained from a detached, external standpoint, but arrives as the culmination of a programme of praxis. Here, as in many other human endeavours, we learn through involvement and commitment, through immersion in a living tradition, rather than through abstract debate in the seminar room. But although what I have called the ‘primacy of praxis’ may be a feature of the human condition in general, there are still some very important distinctions of degree to be drawn between different areas of inquiry. In the area of religious understanding, as with the understanding of certain literary texts dealing with the emotions (and indeed as with the understanding of our own personal involvements and relationships), I have argued that the adoption of a detached critical stance can often function as an evasion, a way of resisting the vulnerability and receptivity on which true insight depends.