پژوهشنامه فلسفه دین (Oct 2013)

Ninian Smart and the Dialectic of Religious Beliefs and Experiences

  • Masoud Sadeghi,
  • Fatemah Qalkhanbaz

DOI
https://doi.org/10.30497/prr.2013.1478
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 2
pp. 99 – 122

Abstract

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In recent philosophical analysis of religious experience and discussion on the relation of beliefs and experiences, Ninian Smart is said to be, amongst such other philosophers as Katz and Hick, a maximal constructivist. Distinguishing theistic and non-theistic contexts of experiences, Smart suggests a two poles theory of religious experience, and draws attention to different levels of interpretation. He holds that cultural-religious contexts, including religious beliefs, influence religious experience, but it is not led to fully determine experience. Accordingly, he takes a position between essentialism and maximal constructivism. This position could call minimal constructivism.

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