Praying Truthfully: Sincerity and the Inducing of Belief

Journal of Religious Ethics 50 (4):645-669 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In a Jewish context, it seems, it is a naïve consensus view that in praying liturgically one aims to express to God, in the manner of ordinary, interpersonal conversation, those thoughts stated by the text. But on this ordinary conversation model (OCM), a problem of insincerity arises when, as commonly happens, the text states a claim the practitioner does not believe. The idea of redeeming one's prayer by reinterpretation is, I argue, incompatible with OCM. Another strategy, which finds some encouragement in Jewish tradition, is to try inducing the missing belief. I further argue, however, that for one's expression of a belief to be proper, in the sense of being authentic, this belief must be corroborated by the evolving, diachronically largely‐coherent understanding distinctive of one's person—a requirement which an induced, otherwise‐missing belief cannot fulfill. This, I suggest, provides some reason to seek a model of liturgical prayer different from OCM.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,593

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Praying to Die.Jonathan K. Crane - 2015 - Journal of Religious Ethics 43 (1):1-27.
Sefer Bet Eloḳim.Moses ben Joseph Trani - 2005 - Ḳiryat Sefer: Avshalom Gershi. Edited by Avshalom Gershi.
Mu’tazilite Qadi Abdul Jabbar’s View on Prayer.Jenan Izadi & Hajar Mahvari Habibabadi - 2015 - Journal of Philosophical Theological Research 17 (65):45-70.
Sincerity and authenticity.Lionel Trilling - 1972 - New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Menorat ha-maʼor ha-ḳadmon.Israel ibn Al-Nakawa - 2010 - Yerushalayim: Hafatsah, ha-Sifriyah ha-Sefaradit. Edited by Yosef Elneḳaṿeh.
On Belief.Slavoj Zizek - 2001 - Routledge.
Jewish Liturgical Reasoning.Steven Kepnes - 2007 - Oxford University Press.
Assertion, Belief, and Context.Roger Clarke - 2018 - Synthese 195 (11):4951-4977.

Analytics

Added to PP
2023-01-14

Downloads
4 (#1,426,245)

6 months
2 (#668,348)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

On a confusion about a function of consciousness.Ned Block - 1995 - Brain and Behavioral Sciences 18 (2):227-–247.
The Concept of Mind.Gilbert Ryle - 1949 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 141:125-126.
The skeptic and the dogmatist.James Pryor - 2000 - Noûs 34 (4):517–549.
Compassionate phenomenal conservatism.Michael Huemer - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (1):30–55.
Studies in the Way of Words.Paul Grice - 1989 - Philosophy 65 (251):111-113.

View all 29 references / Add more references