Abstract

The ‘philosophy of religion’ is unusual as a branch of philosophy in foregrounding the question of whether it has a legitimate object of study to start with. ¹ 1

My thanks to Barbara Graziosi for invaluable comments on earlier draft s of this chapter, which was also improved in the light of comments from two anonymous readers.

At the same time, this question makes it programmatic for philosophy as a whole. Either philosophy will be, in the end, opposed to religion, and defined in some measure by that opposition (as a rational or scientific outlook is opposed to, and defined by its opposition to, fideism, perhaps), or else it will turn out that religion is what frames and gives meaning to the human pursuit of knowledge.