Writing a new book

I’ve been very busy the last few months, hence the gap in posts. To a large extent, this was due to teaching a revamped class on Technology and Ethics. While the class has been deeply rewarding, it's also been very time intensive given the relevance of current events and technological developments (e.g., AI chatbots). I plan to write more about this course in the future, but today I want to post about the research project that has been occupying my thinking the last several months.

I’ve been working on a new book, Rethinking Philosophy of Religion with Wittgenstein. It builds on my previous book, Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion. WWPR developed my reading of Wittgenstein on religion in light of studies of Wittgenstein’s corpus alongside biographical and historical studies of Wittgenstein’s life and social/historical contexts; the core idea that emerged from WWPR is that Wittgenstein’s philosophical sensibility—what I call his “ethic of perspicuity”—is the lens through which his remarks on religion should be read. Here's how I put it:

Thus, Wittgenstein's remarks on religions—mainly in sources like the "Lectures on Religious Belief," "Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough," various private diaries, and Culture and Value—should be read as clarificatory remarks on religion (often with an imagined interlocutor who has perhaps mischaracterized some feature of religion). Wittgenstein’s remarks on religion thus often emphasize the ineptitude of evidentialist approaches to epistemology (whether religious or not) for grasping what is important about religious beliefs; in addition, Wittgenstein is often strongly critical of the unwarranted arrogance that can enter into critiques of religious ideas and practices. Above all, one sees Wittgenstein reminding interlocutors (including perhaps himself) of the importance of looking to the actual contexts in which people say or do the things that one is trying to investigate. 

For the new book, I’m working on articulating some new insights about the application of Wittgenstein's ethic of perspicuity to rethinking philosophy of religion, focusing on two somewhat narrow topics:

(1) the very idea of philosophy of religion in China, & 

(2) the intertwining of religion and racism in the United States. 

Paying close attention to these two areas has the potential to significantly alter how one frames the field of philosophy of religion, and indeed how one goes about doing philosophy of religion. It also alters which areas of philosophy one might see as adjacent to or potentially cooperative with philosophy of religion (e.g., Chinese and comparative philosophy, political philosophy and philosophy of race). As a result of working on this book, I remain convinced--perhaps more than ever--that philosophy of religion has the potential to be one of the critically important areas for philosophers and others seeking to understand better culturally and religiously diverse societies. There is both intrinsic and instrumental value in that understanding.

While some of the material making up the new book has already been published, most of it has not (for example, on Chinese religious diversities). In many ways, I have been thinking about the ideas for the new book since WWPR was published. Close in my mind have been questions like: 

• How might Wittgenstein's ethic of perspicuity be helpful for cross-cultural, comparative, and inter-religious encounters and conversations? 
• How can it help one understand religions or borderline forms of religiosity in particular cultural contexts, such as China or the United States? 
• How might Wittgenstein's philosophy be helpful for thinking about critically important concepts such as "race" and "religion"? 
• What is ethical about searching for perspicuity when it comes to religions or forms of religiosity? 

Along the way, I have frequently remembered a remark from Wittgenstein's diaries from the 1930s (now known as "Movements of Thought"):

The new book is my attempt to listen those "soft voices" when it comes to contemporary philosophy of religion and religiously and culturally diverse social contexts.