Abstract
For philosophers who would think “with” religion, rather than simply to
theorize “about” it, the question of the relationship between religious
imagination and philosophical rationality is a matter of constitutive
importance. The way we answer this question would have far reaching
implications for how we understand the work we do as philosophers who
take religion seriously, and how we situate ourselves within broader
academic contexts. Indeed, the answer to such a question –insofar as we can
give any sort of definitive answer to it –would convey us to the core of what it
means for us to “philosophically” appropriate religious and theological
materials. We could do worse, I think, than to phrase the question in these
terms: do religious imaginaries –representations, narratives, gestures,
sacraments, etc. –anticipate a pure, conceptual reflexivity, or do they
represent the impossibility of such a standpoint? This question is not only
constitutive for philosophical reflection on religion. It is of a more general,
formal relevance as well; it effectively raises the additional question as to
whether the limits of conceptuality can themselves be conceptually articulated
or whether they must be representationally displayed in such a way as to lead
thought, obliquely, to an encounter or an experience of its limits. We can
distill the question further: does philosophy comprehend religion, or does
religion serve to mark the limits of what can be conceptually expressed by
philosophy? Is religion the scene of the concept’s satisfaction? Its infinite
longing? Or its transcendental frustration?