Paradox and the Ways of Religion

Dissertation, University of Notre Dame (1989)
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Abstract

The prominence of paradox in diverse philosophical enterprises and religious traditions suggests the difficulty of completely and consistently knowing and articulating the objective, intersubjective, and subjective dimensions of reality. Although this study examines the nature of such paradox, its motivating concern is the exploration of the conceptual and contextual dynamics which contribute to both the enduring power of paradox and the diverse ways of responding to it. In particular, the focus of this study concerns the ways in which paradox is understood and responded to in the religious context, and thus it involves two distinct yet interconnected projects. Part I investigates the general nature of paradox and stipulates two identifying criteria. The content and context of several kinds of paradoxes are analyzed, leading to the construction of typologies of form, composition and method. Reflections on the role of the objective, intersubjective and subjective in paradox give rise to my central typology, the response to paradox as problem, riddle, or mystery. Part II examines more explicitly the relationship between paradox and the religious. After defining the religious and explicating what it means to respond to paradox as a problem, riddle, or mystery in the specifically religious context, I examine three cases of the religious response to paradox. Advaita Vedanta is analyzed as exemplifying the problematic response, Zen Buddhism as representative of the riddlic response, and Soren Kierkegaard as characteristic of responding to paradox as mystery. These case studies reveal what it has actually meant to respond to paradox in a particular manner and what effect that orientation has on the understanding of the source, nature, description and assessment of paradox. This conjointly analytical and empirical study provides a typological framework which reveals three distinct modes of responding to paradox, thereby expanding the traditional philosophical preoccupation with merely the form and formal resolution of paradox, and suggest some insights into the relationship between paradox and the religious. No attempt is made to adjudicate among problem, riddle, and mystery, for it is this author's contention that the manner in which one responds to paradox is as much a complex choice or commitment as a logical conclusion

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