Abstract

Since critical standards impose restraints, inappropriate standards can over-restrain. Might there then be claims we can only assess satisfactorily with the aid of a less restrictive and detached approach than is current among philosophers of the present day? This article takes up a particular suggestion, put forward by John Cottingham, that this is indeed the case -- that there are regions of thought, particularly in regard to religion, which we can only explore with the aid of emotional sensitivity and immersion in practices. I argue that sensitivity and immersion of this kind would be all too apt to lead us astray, and that the promised gains in what is (rather dubiously) called religious understanding would hardly be sufficiently interesting to be worth the risk