Panel: PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION TODAY: TOPICS - METHODS - APPROACHES



155.2 - DIVERSIFYING PERSPECTIVES: THE RELIGIOUS-PHILOSOPHICAL DEPTHS OF MEANING

AUTHORS:
Watson B. (University of Münster ~ Münster ~ Germany)
Text:
What does it mean for something to mean something? Or what does meaning mean? How does meaning arise? Is meaning something individually created or are there several factors contributing to different layers of meaning? For some, like Harry Frankfurt, meaning is directly correlated with concern. For others, like Hilary Putnam, "meaning just ain't in the head" and depends on causal networks between extension and intension. This type of concern and the relationship between words, externality, and extensions are certainly relevant when thinking of any form of religious or philosophical understanding of meaning and meaning-making. For a contemporary approach like Karen Barad's agential realism understood as an ethico-onto-epistomology, the entanglement of meaning and matter complicates how one might conceive of religious meaning especially. The paper will first outline various philosophical approaches on the topic of meaning and the complicated networks arising from entanglement theory. The paper then uncovers a universal conception of religious meaning, one made popular by the twentieth century philosopher of religion, Paul Tillich. For Tillich, meaning is derived from an "ultimate" concern. However, religion provides all human activity with depth. One might say then, that for Tillich religion is the adverbial qualification (or modality, à la von Sass) of all human activity. For Tillich then, religion is not a particular aspect of one's individual life but a universally real area of human existence that arises from the interactions of other persons, matter, and psychological development. The paper considers Tillich's approach in detail before deriving a way of conceiving of philosophical approaches to religion that are not self-imposing or self-limiting but create a form of diversifying perspectivism whereby religion thrives as an essential dimension of human existence.