Religion and Radical Empiricism

By Nancy Frankenberry

Rarely in modern times has religion been associated with empiricism except to its own peril. This book represents a comprehensive and systematic effort to retrieve and develop the tradition of American religious empiricism for religious inquiry.

Religion and Radical Empiricism offers a challenging account of how and why reflection on religious truth-claims must seek justification of those claims finally in terms of empirical criteria. Ranging through many of the major questions in philosophy of religion, the author weaves together a study of the varieties of empiricism in all its historical forms from Hume to Quine. She finds in James and Dewey; in Wieman, Meland, and Loomer of the Chicago School; in Whitehead; and in Abhidharma Buddhism constructive elements of a radically empirical approach to the controversial topic of religious experience. This work provides a strong counter-argument to critics of "revisionary theism," to caricatures of philosophy as "conversation," and to any collapse of the category of experience into its linguistic forms.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0887064094
• ISBN13: 9780887064098
• Release Date: July 1987
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Length: 226 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher