Religious Experience and Rational Certainty*: ROBERT A. OAKES

Religious Studies 12 (3):311-318 (1976)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to clear up the long-standing veritable mountain of misinterpretation, perpetuated from critic to critic, concerning the admittedly problematic concept of self-authenticating religious experience. While it may well be the case, as many have argued, that a sort of ‘experience’ about which one could not be mistaken is simply a logically impossible state of affairs, this cannot be known to be the case so long as what is under attack is a bogus concept, obviously absurd, having nothing whatsoever to do with the correct interpretation of ‘self-authentication’. Hence, my mission herein is essentially that of philosophical analysis or clarification of meaning. Only upon suitable clarification of this concept will we be in a position to consider the question of its possible application, i.e. whether or not there could be an instantiation of such experience. I might point out that my central concern is somewhat more explicatory than historical, though I believe that the account developed in this paper is essentially congenial with the intent of those who have been proponents of the view that there can be self-authenticating religious experience. Let us begin, then, by turning to some representative criticism of the concept in question

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

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

Religious Experience and Rational Certainty.Robert A. Oakes - 1976 - Religious Studies 12 (3):311 - 318.
Reply to Michael Levine.Robert Oakes - 1983 - Religious Studies 19 (2):235 - 239.
The rhetoric of experience and the study of religion.Robert H. Sharf - 2000 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 7 (11-12):11-12.
Lewis on Experience, Reason, and Religious Belief.Eugene Thomas Long - 1981 - Review of Metaphysics 35 (1):87 - 109.
F. David Martin's "Art and the Religious Experience". [REVIEW]Robert A. Oakes - 1974 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 34 (3):444.
Numinous Experience and Religious Language.Leon Schlamm - 1992 - Religious Studies 28 (4):533-551.
The epistemology of religious experience.Keith E. Yandell - 1993 - New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-02-05

Downloads
65 (#225,534)

6 months
7 (#175,814)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Religious experience.Mark Webb - 2011 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references