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Faith and Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Donald Evans
Donald Evans
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto
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Extract

The next contrast, like that between grammatical beliefs and non-grammatical beliefs, has to do with what is believed. My labels for the contrast may be misleading, but I have not found better ones. Some beliefs are ‘existential’, others are ‘non-existential’. You will be misled if the labels suggest my earlier contrasts between intentional and non-intentional or attitudinal and non-attitudinal, or the contrast often made between what exists and what is non-existent. The existential/non-existential contrast is a contrast made in terms of conditions of understanding. By an ‘existential’ belief I mean a belief where what is believed can only be understood to the extent that one has fulfilled certain existential conditions—that is, conditions which existentialist philosophers emphasise, conditions having to do with the personal depth and authenticity of one's commitments, attitudes and general life-experience. A non-existential belief is one which has no such conditions for understanding (though it is often a belief concerning what exists).

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 199 - 212
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1974

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References

page 199 note 1 A similar distinction is discussed in Donald Evans, The Logic of Self-Involvement, and in ‘Differences between scientific and religious assertions’ in Science and Religion (pp. 115–17 and 127).

page 205 note 1 Farrer has influenced my account of analogy of activity considerably, but in this paper I have not confined myself to his version of the form of that analogy, still less to his version of its content.

page 210 note 1 Wittgenstein, L., “A Lecture on Ethics”, Philosophical Review, 1965, vol. 74, p. 8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 211 note 1 Erikson, Erik, Insight and Responsibility, London: Faber, 1966, chapter 4Google Scholar; cf. Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1950) chapters 2, 7Google Scholar, and Young Man Luther (New York: Norton, 1958).Google Scholar Concerning ‘basic trust’, Erikson influenced Niebuhr, who in turn influenced Ogden and Keen.