Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A. (Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D.Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
Mrs Sudha Rani Maheshwari, M.Sc (Zoology), B.Ed. FormerPrincipal, A.K.P.I.College, Roorkee, India
“Ever since Plato most philosophers have considered it part of their business to produce ‘proofs’ of immortality and the existence of God. They have found fault with the proofs of their predecessors — Saint Thomas rejected Saint Anselm’s proofs, and Kant rejected Descartes’ — but they have supplied new ones of their own. In order to make their proofs seem valid, they have had to falsify logic, to make mathematics mystical, and to pretend that deepseated prejudices were heaven-sent intuitions.”
( Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945. )
There is a wide misconception that philosophy is a kind of religion. Is religion just a type of philosophy? Is philosophy a religious activity? There seems to be some confusion at times over just whether and how religion and philosophy should be distinguished from each other — this confusion is not unjustified because there are some very strong similarities between the two. This misconception may be corrected at the outset.Philosophy is not religion, nor does it commonly attempt to take the place of religion. Philosophers may and do oppose religion, but they do not propose philosophy totake its place in kind. For example in philosophy we use the third person in speaking ofGod, but that in religion experience the third person is supplanted by the second person and we must say ‘Thou”.
There are atleast three essentials which might be described as constituting religion.
The first is the experience of worship,the feeling of union with God the believer enjoys as he prays privately or worship in the sanctuary. In it a sense of giving or adoration, and a sense of receiving or being blessed.
Second is the community of believers, the chosen people, the elect, the saved, the redeemed. It is company of persons varying, according to the occasion, from a small local gathering to alarge assembly in which far-removed geographic areas are represented. It is accompany which for the most part is united and agreed in certain essential beliefs.
The third is the constructive program of service and endeavour maintained by the religious groups. It may be movement of reforms, an evangelizing program, a charitable service, or a scheme of social reconstruction.
The major differences between religion and philosophy is the need for rituals. While almost all the religions in the world have certain set of rituals which are to be followed by the followers of the respective religions, philosophy does not have any sort of rituals, as it is only a way of thinking. So, while a person can be philosophical without having to do any sort of practices or rituals, it is almost impossible for him to be religious without doing any sort of rituals or practices stated in that particular religion. This is one big difference which makes people say that religion and philosophy are mutually exclusive and cannot co-exist.
Another fact is that philosophy tends to emphasize just the use of reason and critical thinking whereas religions may make use of reason, but at the very least they also rely on faith, or even use faith to the exclusion of reason. There are any number of philosophers who have argued that reason alone cannot discover truth or who have tried to describe the limitations of reason in some manner.
Applying this pattern to the case of philosophy may be an adherent of religion and participate in all of these essentials of religious experience. But in his philosophizing, strictly and narrowly defined, his worship, is an intellectual love of God or a thinking of the thoughts of God after Him. The philosopher’s fellowship with others of his own profession in philosophical societies, is based on the common ground of honest search for truth rather than upon agreement in specific beliefs. And this practical social endeavours, may be in religious uplift or in areas of everyday life other than religion. He may, however, cloister himself completely and prefer abstract thought to practical social effort.
Inter relationship among Philosophy and Religion
The questions discussed in both religion and philosophy tend to be very much alike. Both religion and philosophy wrestle with problems like: What is good? What does it mean to live a good life? What is the nature of reality? Why are we here and what should we be doing? How should we treat each other? What is really most important in life?
The fact that religion and philosophy are distinct does not mean that they are entirely separate. Because they both address many of the same issues, it isn’t uncommon for a person to be engaged in both religion and philosophy simultaneously. They may refer to their activity with only one term and their choice of which term to use may reveal quite a lot about their individual perspective on life; nevertheless, it is important to keep their distinctness in mind when considering them.
A-Philosophy examines the bases of belief upon which religion is founded and it may be virtue of its questioning contribute added intellectual basis for religion. Philosophy, specializes in the field of belief.It seeks to examine all beliefs and evaluates which are those whose foundations are firm. Because of this, it may seem to be antagonistic to religious faith.In the cases of many philosophers, this is ofcourse true. In philosophizing generally, however, this all-inclusive questioning is not necessarily biased; it is the result of the intention to inquire into truth with an attitude of impartiality. It is assumed, of course, that the truth is best discovered when the searcher is willing to subject his own predispositions to examination.
B- Since religion is a realm of experience in which the experiencing subject is related to reality greater tham and beyond himself, philosophy can scarcely ignore this area of human experience as on of the sources of data with which its interpretative activity must begin. Majority of philosophies hold that religion is an independent and unique realm of experience yielding its own facts.
C- One contribution which philosophy makes to religion is to offer help in understanding the receptacle into which divine truth and life come. For philosophy studies human thought, its categories and its various patterns of organization; and its human thought and experience which receive the impact of the divine; it is not something other than the human thought and experience. Just as the philosopher can not wisely overlook the data yielded by religious experience, similarly the religionist can not afford to exclude the analytically methods of philosophy and the helps toward integration implicit in the structure of philosophy. For philosophy deals with the structure of human thought and experience, which in turn are the recipients and bearers of the divine inspiration.
D- Philosophy may also do much to refine religious belief. Frequently there is little distinction between folklore on the one hand and essential truth on the other. So many times there are serious inconsistencies in religious thought. This is because the rational implications of beliefs are not followed through logically. Accordingly, the culling of truth from the religious heritage, and the resolving of inconsistencies in religious doctrine, are two of the important refinements of religion to which philosophy can contribute much.
E-Another contribution of philosophy to religion is the help it can offer in understanding the thought forms of people. Too commonly the gap between those who preach the massage of religion and the multitudes who listen to them is the result of misunderstanding. In part it is the old problem of speaking different languages; the vocabulary is common but the meanings are different. To the extent that those who profess and proclaim religion understand the systems of thought which have won and now hold the allegiances of men, they will be able to make their message understood. It is the study of philosophy which will provide this extension of understanding more than anything else.
F- But there is another significant way in which philosophy is related to religion. This is that religion may readily become the appropriate field of practical endeavour in which a given philosophy may find expression. Apparently the philosophy which normally finds its sphere of practice in religion would have to be atheistic one. That is, it must be a philosophy which having examined belief and inquired of truth, holds that reality is ultimately a Person. In other words, it must be a philosophy which believes in God in the sense indicated by the common usage of the word “God”. The religions have rituals. In religions, there are ceremonies for important life events (birth, death, marriage, etc.) and for important times of the year (days commemorating spring, harvest, etc.). Philosophies, however, do not have their adherents engage in ritualistic actions.
G- One of the major similarities between religion and philosophy is that they both deal with human life, human mind, its existence in the universe, the meaning of life, the ultimate truth, and so on. Both tend to make existence in this universe a lot less complicated by addressing issues such as knowledge, truth, life, and existentialism. Thus, one can always argue that both religion and philosophy are one and the same and we just call them by different names. But it is not entirely true.
H- Philosophies provide rational arguments — those arguments may not also prove valid or successful, but it is the effort which differentiates their work from religion. In religion, and even in religious philosophy, reasoned arguments are ultimately traced back to some basic faith in God, gods, or religious principles which have been discovered in some revelation.
I-Most religions tend to include some sort of belief in what can only be described as the “miraculous”, events which either defy normal explanation or which are, in principal, outside the boundaries of what should occur in our universe .Miracles may not play a very large role in every religion, but they are a common feature which you don’t find in philosophy. Certainly philosophers discuss the phenomena of religious awe, feelings of mystery, and the importance of sacred objects, but that is very different from having feelings of awe and mystery around such objects within philosophy.
There are enough similarities that religions can be philosophical and philosophies can be religious . Does this mean that we simply have two different words for the same fundamental concept? No; there are some real differences between religion and philosophy which warrant considering them to be two different types of systems even though they overlap in places.
Of course , as will be seen, there are contemporary thinkers having religious interests who use the word ‘God’ in a religious setting, but by it they refer in a general way to the object, or concept, collection of values, or composite of forces, as the case may be which is worshipped. Doing this, they of course apply some other philosophy of religion than that which harmonizes with the essential concept of God which the religious tradition has held.
Socrates said, “the un-examined life is not worth living.” The disciplines of philosophy and religion examine our lives by investigating the most basic concepts and categories of our self-understanding: true and false, right and wrong, real and imaginary, sacred and profane.