The approach to reading Wittgenstein on religion advanced in this book is a variation on the ethical-therapeutic interpretations developed by Stanley Cavell, James Conant, Cora Diamond and Stephen Mulhall.Sounds good to me.
Friday, October 17, 2014
The concept of prayer
In case you don't always read everything at Jon Cogburn's blog I thought I'd draw your attention to the comments on this post. Thomas Carroll makes good points, in response to some of which Jon mentions Carroll's new book, which looks like essential reading. In the introduction Carroll writes:
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sounds suspect to me as long as prayer somehow involves a higher-authority.
ReplyDelete-dmf
Well, I don't pray myself, and for all I know Carroll doesn't either. But I agree with him when he says this:
DeleteRegarding prayer, [...]. The main thing I wanted to stress is that there may be a variety of practices (all called "prayer"), where some of them reflect a desire to change the will of God while others come from a very different place (e.g. internalization of scripture or creed, private or public expressions of solidarity-with/care-for those who are suffering, etc.).
[...] All of which is to say: I think context matters a great deal to interpreting a text, argument, practice, etc.
sure at least as many expressions of prayers as people who pray, I was responding more to "ethical-therapeutic"
DeleteOh, right. I generally like that kind of interpretation as developed by Cavell, et al. I'll have to see how Carroll does it.
DeleteThanks for the interest in the book and mentioning it on your blog.
ReplyDeleteFor what it’s worth (in connection with dmf's concern), the book is itself is not about prayer, per se, and it is not advancing any kind of theory of prayer, such as one that might re-interpret prayers through an ethical and/or therapeutic lens that would preclude the addressee of prayer actually being God (for example). I do, however, enjoy reading Jon Cogburn’s blog (as well as this one), and Cogburn’s post prompted me to form some thoughts on the interpretation of particular instances of prayer.
The ethical-therapeutic approach taken in the book is directed instead toward the practice of philosophy itself (and in particular, philosophy of religion); I tried to frame the remarks I made on Cogburn’s blog, i.e. those quoted above, as being in line with the sort of perspicuous philosophy of religion that I develop in the book.
Yes, I should probably have avoided using such a misleading title for the post. Thanks for the clarification.
DeleteDear D. An update on the disco situation. Looks like the owners plan to set fire to it themselves and claim the insurance. Take care.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2014/10/trouble-bankland-video-blog/
Sigh
Delete