Más Putnam

Hace poco publiqué un link al debate entre los eminentes pensadores Hilary Putnam (judío)y Alvin Plantinga (calvinista) sobre la relación entre la filosofía y la religión. Ninguno de los dos filósofos es un filósofo de la religión sensu strictu. Es más, ambos pertenecen a la escuela analítica, muchas veces vista (por radicales como este servidor) como una colección de positivistas ateos e inconformes. Por ello mismo es bastante interesante escuchar a dos pensadores brillantes discutir temas morales y religiosos sin partisanismos ni excesivo apego doctrinal.
Hoy, rebrujando en la biblioteca del seminario, encontré un Festschrift reciente dedicado al eminente rabino y filósofo israelí David Hartmann (Editor Jonathan Malino, Judaism and modernity :the religious philosophy of David Hartman /Aldershot, Hants, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, 2004). David Hartmann es uno de los filósofos religiosos judíos más influyentes e importantes de la última mitad del siglo xx. Su visión filosófica, basada en una reintrepretación de la filosofía de Maimónides para la era actual, trata de reconciliar la Ortodoxia con los desafíos morales y teóricos de la modernidad.



Putnam, escribió para este Festschrift, un bellísimo ensayo de diez páginas titulado "The Pluralism of David Hartman". En éste, Putnam compara su propia visión del pluralismo religioso y de cómo él, como filósofo, vive su vida religiosa como un judío liberal observante con el concepto de pluralismo de Hartman, también filósofo pero ortodoxo.
En este artículo, esta joya:

For me, however, it [religious pluralism] means more than that. Not only do I believe that no religion has a monopoly on religious value; I also reject the "containment" model, the model on which the value and virtue that the pluralist finds in the other religions are all supposed to be already "contained" in one´s own religion (or one´s religion at its best anyway). One reason this model is wrong is that all perception, including religious perception, is dependent on concepts, and concepts, as we have learned from Wittgenstein, depend on practices and on whole ways of life. Buddhists, whom I mentioned before, have been meditating on the meaning of compassion for more than two millennia, and living a way of life which focuses that meditation and provides concepts for it. To suppose that they have failed in all that time to see anything about what it means to live a compassionate life that Jews and Christians have not seen is arrogance and worse than arrogance- it is a form of blindness. Each great religion, at its best, provides forms of religious perception which are less developed in other.
On the other hand, being a religious pluralist does not mean that one has to give up one's own tradition or one's own views as to how that tradition is to be interpreted, unless those views are themselves inherently intolerant. (If it did, religious pluralism would just be a new universalistic religion.) For example, belief in a single personal God is dear to me (a fact that shocks some members of my minyan [Jewish prayer community]). I disagree with some views of other traditions- for example, I do not myself agree with the Buddhist idea that the eschatological goal of human existence is "non-attachment". But, as I just indicated, my contacts with Buddhists have convinced me that there are profound moral and spiritual resources in that tradition, resources I can admire and respect and learn from. And I am also convinced that whether one has the right or wrong view on theological questions is far less important to God than whether one shows compassion, cheerfulness, and makes a contribution to enriching human spiritual and material life. pp. 241-242.