philosophy

A R T I C L E

On distinctions

Ingolf U. Dalferth1

Received: 4 April 2016 / Accepted: 12 April 2016 / Published online: 25 April 2016

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract The paper discusses the importance of making distinctions for philos- ophy of religion. It argues that metaphysics is the philosophical attempt to draw out

a system of distinctions that help us to make sense of our life in the world. Meta-

physics is not a theoretical or speculative but a practical enter prise. Its task is not to

offer ultimate explanations and ‘‘explain the world’’ in terms of its fundamental

structure, but provide comprehensive orientation by unfolding a practice of orien-

tation such as everyday life or the life of faith or a religious practice.

Keywords Distinction � Orientation � Philosophy of Religion � Metaphysics � Explanation

What is metaphysics? The answer is that there is more than one answer to that

question. Not everything some of us deny is that which others of us assert. We not

only differ in the pros and cons of our views about metaphysics. We also differ in

the answers we debate. And we differ in the way we understand the question. There

is difference all the way down. This is significant. The only answer to the question

of metaphysics that seems beyond dispute is the debate about that question—the

debate about what it means to interpret something as metaphysics and to interpret

metaphysics as something. This is where I want to start. There is something that all

share who debate the question of metaphysics: They differ in so far as they make

different distinctions. Therefore, in order to explain some important but often-

A version of this paper was presented as the Presidential address at the annual meeting of the Society for

Philosophy of Religion in San Antonio, February 26, 2016. .

& Ingolf U. Dalferth [email protected]

1 Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, USA

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Int J Philos Relig (2016) 79:171–183

DOI 10.1007/s11153-016-9566-1

neglected truths about philosophy and in particular about metaphysics, I have

chosen distinctions as my topic.

II

I shall try to be brief. In a nutshell, my answer is this: Science explains, theology

orients, philosophy clarifies.

Sciences describe phenomena and seek to explain how they change from one

state to another. They differ in the kinds of phenomena they describe, they use

different methods of description and explanation, and scientists compete for the best

explanation. But there is an important requirement for all sciences: We can only

describe what makes a difference in experience, and we can only explain differences

that occur in experience in terms of something that also makes a difference in

experience (the principle of the homogeneity of cause and effect). If we describe

something as red, we mark it off from everything that is not red. If we identify

something as a chair, or a table, or a person, we distinguish it from everything that is

not a chair, not a table, not a person. If we seek to explain why the chair is broken,

we can do so by reference to the weight of the colleague who broke it or by

reference to the lousy material of which the chair was made or to some other cause

of a similar kind. But whatever we adduce as an explanation it must be something

located in experience, for only insofar as both the explanandum and the explanans

are phenomena of experience, we can describe and seek to explain such phenomena.

However we construe the details of how the principle of causation functions in

explanations, unless we can draw distinctions in experience, there are no

phenomena to be explained and no phenomena that explain, and hence nothing

accessible to science.

Now this approach may work with religion, but not with God. God is not a

phenomenon that is marked off in this way from other phenomena in our

experience. Therefore there is no explanatory science of God, either in the sense that

God is an explanandum to be explained or in the sense that God is an explanans that

explains something else. God is not a phenomenon that can be explained

scientifically, and reference to God is no help where the scientific explanation of

phenomena is concerned.

Explanations seek to show that, given what it calls ‘causes’, the occurrence of a

phenomenon is more likely than it would otherwise have been under the given

circumstances. They may do this in different ways. They may deduce the

description of a phenomenon (Socrates is mortal) from a general principle (All men

are mortal) taken together with information regarding a particular set of conditions

(Socrates is a man) (deductive); or they may trace it back reductively to a general

principle (inductively) or a specific condition (abductively). But they can only

succeed if they take into account a distinction between that which they (seek to)

explain and that which they do not (seek to) explain. Whenever an explanation

claims to explain everything, the concept of explanation loses its sense, and when,

in the realm of experience, it is impossible to demonstrate a distinction in relation to

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which an explanation can succeed or fail, the effort of explaining becomes

meaningless.

Philosophical discussions of God do not refer to any such distinction in the realm

of experience. God is not an object of experience; rather, God is—if at all and in a

philosophical and not a religious sense—the precondition for the possibility that

anything can be experienced at all, that is to say, that there is something that can be

experienced and someone to experience it.

Explanatory theism, which competes with scientific theories for the best

explanation of the phenomenal world (the totality of what there is and can be

experienced by us), is thus based on a confusion, as is the socalled sciencereligion

debate. It compares apples to oranges even when it is couched in the slightly more

acceptable terms of a sciencetheology debate, for it mistakes the task of the

theologian with that of the scientist who seeks to describe and explain phenomena.

Such approaches confound theoria in the classical contemplative sense with

explanatory theories in the sense of modern science. But contemplation, in the

Augustinian tradition, is about drawing the right distinction between frui and uti,

between that which we can utilize for a given purpose (a sign that points to

something different from it) and that which we can enjoy and indulge in without

being referred to something else (the ultimate truth to which all signs point in the

end). This ultimate truth is God, and God is neither a signum nor a res significans

nor a res significata that functions as a res significans, but—from a human

perspective—the unique and singular res significata without which there wouldn’t

be any res or any signa. But if God—not the term ‘God’ !—is neither a signum nor a

res in our world of experience, then God is not a phenomenon, and theology is not

an explanatory enterprise.

On the contrary, not to be a science in the modern sense is what theology shares

with philosophy. They are one in what they are not. Philosophers do not describe

phenomena in order to explain them. They react to a different challenge and address

a different problem. They do not attempt to solve theoretical puzzles but practice an

intellectual way of life that doesn’t take things at face value but asks critical

questions about everything, including its own questions. Philosophers seek to shed

light on the dark and illumine the obscure, they stay in one place where others go on

ahead, 1

and they clarify confusions by exploring the grammar of distinctions—not

merely in the realm of concepts and ideas, but all sorts of distinctions that cause

confusions in human life and thought. They do so by analysis, argument and thought

experiments, but unless they are confused about themselves they do not aspire after

theoretical explanations or explanatory theories.

Philosophy is not a science. It is an art—the art of exploring and clarifying

distinctions that we make in different spheres of life and in different areas of

thought. We cannot think or describe or explain anything without making

distinctions. But often we fail to make the right ones, or mix different distinctions

in inappropriate ways, or mistake distinctions for descriptions, and then we create

confusions that block clear thinking and right living.

1 Cf. Wittgenstein (1980, p. 66e).

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III

So the first task for a selfcritical philosophy is to get clear about what it means to

make distinctions. As we all know, there are plenty of different answers to this

question. When George SpencerBrown laid out the formal ground for logic and

mathematics in his Laws of Form (1969), he argued in an operational way, giving

instructions or commands to the reader to perform certain actions. His first

command is: ,,Draw a distinction‘‘– a command that ,,can well be expressed as: Let

there be a distinction, Find a distinction, See a distinction, Describe a distinction,

Define a distinction, or: Let a distinction be drawn.’’ 2

Thus, drawing a distinction may take different forms and be expressed in

different ways. It may refer to natural differences (something given in experience)

or to cultural differentiations (the result of human doings). But it is always an action

that results in contrasting a marked state and an unmarked state by drawing a

boundary that separates something from everything else and that allows one to cross

from one side of the boundary to the other. You cannot cross a line if there isn’t a

line, and there is no line if nobody draws a line in the first place. Without that earlier

action there cannot be the later action. In short: The action of drawing a distinction

makes other actions possible that were not possible before.

Now whenever we draw a distinction between A and non-A we do it at a certain

place and at a certain time. Performing an action requires a place at which it is

performed, and it takes time to perform it.

However, if to begin with the beginning is to begin by drawing a distinction, as

George Spencer Brown suggests, then we create not two, but three places by doing

so: A; non-A; and the borderline between A and non-A. If that exhausts all the

possibilities, then the act of drawing the distinction takes place either at A or at non-

A. It cannot take place on the borderline between A and non-A because the

borderline results from drawing the distinction and doesn’t precede it. The place at

which we draw the distinction is the marked state where we distinguish between the

marked and the unmarked state, but in doing so we also create the ‘inbetween’ the

two states, the borderline between the marked and the unmarked state. And this

makes further moves possible that were not possible before.

Now as is wellknown to anthropologists, the place ‘inbetween’ is a tricky one and

to live and act there turns you into a trickster like the Flying Dutchman, who

belongs to neither here nor there but to none of them or to both, as the case may be,

at different times and in different ways, or Holy Saturday that is neither part of the

‘old time’ nor of the ‘new time’ but either the one (if Christ’s decent into hell is the

last stage of his status exinanitionis as the Calvinists argue) or the other (if Christ’s

decent is the first stage of his status exaltationis as the Lutherans hold). However,

for a trickster to be possible, there must be a borderline, but there is no borderline

unless there is a distinction between two states or spheres or places, and this

presupposes that a distinction is drawn in the first place. Thus a trickster can never

be the first, but always only the second.

2 Spencer-Brown (1969), notes to Chap. 2.

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However, even a trickster cannot act or do anything without time. We need time

to move from one state to another and back, and time changes everything, even in

logic. This is why Hegel concluded that logic oversimplifies matters if it accepts the

law of double negation in a nonSwabian sense: If you negate A, you get non-A; but

if you negate non-A, you don’t get A again but arrive at something like non(non-A)

that is different from A because time has elapsed since you started with A. Double

negation does not cancel the first negation but intensifies it—just as in Swabia we

say when we receive a gift: ‘O thank you, that really hasn’t been unnecessary’—not

because we want to say that the gift was necessary, but rather because we want to

say that it was more than necessary. In short, to draw a distinction makes possible

further actions that do not merely allow us to move back and forth between the

marked and the unmarked states, but go beyond that distinction to new and further

distinctions.

IV

It would be easy to show from here why Hegel sought to replaced traditional

syllogistic logic by his own version of a dialectical logic that uses inference to move

beyond what is stated in the premises of the argument. But this is not what I want to

explore tonight. Rather, I want to ask why we should draw any distinctions at all.

Why should anyone follow Spencer Brown’s command ‘Draw a distinction’’?

Well, because we cannot avoid reacting to it if we hear such a command and

understand it. As Niklas Luhmann has rightly pointed out: In situations of

communication we cannot not communicate. We may ignore the question

somebody addresses to us; but we couldn’t call what we do ‘ignoring the question’

without understanding it against the backdrop of the question that has been asked.

The same is true with commands. We may ignore the command to draw a

distinction. But if we understand what we do against the backdrop of the command,

then we in fact respond to it—whether we obey it or not. The command does not

force us to follow it, but it makes it (pragmatically or contextually) impossible for us

not to respond to it.

This helps to explain a lot of what goes on in social situations. We constantly

react to behaviors of others that do not force us to do something but cast a kind of

spell on us from which we cannot escape—if not in our own eyes, then in the eyes of

others. We are held accountable for what we do even though we may not have been

aware of doing anything of that sort at all. We may not intentionally ignore the

command addressed to us but even if we don’t obey it we still react to it in fact and

we cannot avoid it—not because of what we want or intend, but because of how the

situation imposes itself on us and informs us, that is, gives a specific meaning to

what we do or don’t do. Communication gives meaning to a situation and makes it

impossible for us not to continue the communicative sequence, whatever we do.

Now communication is different from drawing a distinction but it presupposes

distinctions and uses distinctions. We can only communicate because we know how

to make and to understand distinctions. This is not only true at the linguistic level,

but at every level of our interaction with our social, cultural and natural

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environments. We cannot live without making choices, we cannot make the

appropriate choices without orienting ourselves, and we need distinctions in order to

orient others and ourselves in a vast and multitudinous world that is more complex

than we can understand or comprehend.

In his rich and seminal essay ‘‘What does it mean to orient oneself in thinking?’’

(1786) Kant outlined how we orient ourselves in a complex and more and more

diverse reality. Before him, Moses Mendelssohn had already pointed out that

orientation is necessary for the process of enlightenment. Orientation allows us to

place knowledge, and to experience autonomy. That is to say, before we can explain

anything, we must know where we are, what we seek to explain and why we want to

explain it, and before we can know our autonomy, we must orient ourselves in a

given situation and find that we are not only unable not to act but not able not to act

freely.

Explanation presupposes orientation, and orientation results from the way we

seek to overcome ignorance or confusions by drawing distinctions. Thus, the way in

which we distinguish between explanandum and explanans depends on the kind of

problem we seek to solve; this in turn depends on the scheme of orientation in which

we move; and schemes of orientation are not merely sets of differences, but systems

of interconnected distinctions that we use to orient ourselves and others in the world

in certain respects.

We often fail in seeking to orient ourselves and then we have to check if the

failure is due to the scheme of orientation we follow or to the way we locate or fail

to locate ourselves in the world in terms of the parameters of that scheme. I may

have perfect map of San Antonio but the map is useless to orient myself if I don’t

know where I am and cannot locate my place on the map. Conversely, I may know

exactly where I am, but I have no scheme that allows me to relate this place to other

places in a way that helps me to find my way to the airport. Orientation may fail

because we don’t know the order in which we move or because we don’t know our

place in that order. But in either case it fails completely.

V

If things go wrong, we need help, and this is where philosophy comes in. Philosophy

is the art of orienting us about orientations by exploring and clarifying the

distinctions we use, it is not (as the sciences) a discipline of explanation or, as

theology, a discipline of a particular normative orientation in life, and this is true of

all branches of philosophy, including metaphysics. To explain something is to

identify reasons (for actions) or causes (for events) that make these actions or events

more probable than in the circumstances they would have otherwise been. We orient

ourselves, on the other hand, by locating others and ourselves in schemes of

orientation that structure not the world but our relations to the world. But when

things go wrong and our orientations fail, then we need philosophical reflection to

help us to clarify the issues at stake and probe the systems of distinctions in terms of

which we orient ourselves in the world in different respects and in differing ways.

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Both explanations and orientations are indispensable in life. But they are not to

be confused. They are distinct because they seek to solve different problems. We

regularly find ourselves in situations where we cannot help asking ourselves Why-

questions. However, Why-questions can be of different kinds, and Why-questions of

explanation are different from Why-questions of orientation. If we have to cope with

evil in our lives, or in the lives of others, we often ask questions like Why her? Why

this? Why me? Why the unthinkable? We may know all the facts about the kid who

was killed in the gun attack on the school down the street, they may be crystal clear,

and yet still we fail to understand. It remains utterly meaningless, pointless, and

evil. That horrifying things like this happen in our very neighborhood is a disturbing

and dislocating experience. We ask Why? and How? and What for?, not because we

seek further explanations but in order to find a way back into life. We are in need of

orientation, not explanation, and that is a more complex matter.

Orientation may involve explanations, but explanations are not sufficient. The

question asked is not about a lack of information or a failure to explain in full detail

what has happened, but about the need to help those who seek to cope with a

breakdown of order, meaning and intelligibility in their lives—whether due to a

positive surprise of winning the lottery or a negative shock of losing their job or of

experiencing and suffering evil. What is needed here is not more information or

better explanation but a supportive environment that helps persons hit by luck or

disaster to relocate themselves in schemes of orientation that give meaning to their

lives and structure their relations to the world.

Thus, questions of orientation are quite different from questions of explanation,

and they call for different answers. 3

Whereas questions of explanation relate to the

‘why’ or ‘how’ of a phenomenon (Why does something occur? Why does

something occur in this manner?), questions of orientation do not focus on the

phenomena themselves, but on the conduct of human life when dealing with the

phenomena. They are not questions of being, but questions of meaning, they

explain, not why something is as it is, but what it signifies for us. We live, not in

an abstract world of facts and laws, but in the rich emotional world of everyday

life full of shared experience, personal memories, affective involvement and

cultural meaning. This meaning is always precarious. It has to be lived in order to

exist. It is not a fixed given but only a reality by being permanently appropriated

and reconstituted by us.

This is not as easy as it sounds. It is not like picking up a book over which we

stumble. We cannot appropriate any meaning without at the same time disclosing

the unstructured and disordered, the inaccessible and confusing, as the permanent

reverse side and concomitant of our human life. Our lives are islands of meaning in

oceans of meaninglessness, but sometimes they are flooded with a torrent of

meaning that overwhelms us. All the meaning that we appropriate must be wrested

time and again from the meaningless, nonsensical and paradoxical, but sometimes

we have to pare down the flood of meaning to something with which we can cope.

3 On the concept of orientation employed here cf. Dalferth (2003, Teil I, 2010) and Dalferth and Berg

(2011), Stegmaier (2005, 2008).

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Therefore, in order to get our bearings in confusing life situations, we need

orientation strategies in our precarious worlds of meaning. Those that have stood

the test of time in relevant practical situations are core components of our

culture. They must serve two purposes: they must order the world for us in a

meaningful way, and they must make it possible for us to find our place in this

ordered world. We need schemes of orientation and procedures to anchor those

schemes in our own life.

Such schemes are established in communities and cultures by drawing relevant

distinctions and by paying attention to important contrasts in common areas of life

and practice. Thus we orientate ourselves in space in terms of spatial distinctions

(left, right, behind, in front of, above, below); or in time in terms of temporal

distinctions (today, tomorrow, yesterday, past, present, future, earlier than, later

than, simultaneous with); or in communicative contexts in terms of personal

pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they); or in social contexts in terms of family

relationships (mother, father, sister, brother, uncle, aunt), or professional functions

(teacher, student, professor, administrator, fellow, provost); or in life in terms of

distinctions such as good/evil, good/bad; pleasant/unpleasant (painful); to be

strived for/to be avoided etc. or in the universe by distinguishing between

immanence/transcendence; the world as a brute fact or the world as a divine factum

(creation). A need for orientation can spring up at any time in every area of life and

practice—some even want to distinguish between different shades of grey.

But orientation in life is called for when the ordinary run of things breaks down,

when what we took for granted falls to pieces, when the normalities of our life

slowly erode or suddenly disintegrate. Then we have to reassert the scheme of

things in which we move and redetermine our place in that scheme of things, i.e. ask

where we are, who we are, and how we can continue to live a human life. And we do

so not by seeking for explanations but by making distinctions that help to reorient

our lives.

Now life is a complex matter, and so are the worlds of meaning in which we live,

as the various schemes of distinctions indicate. They clearly differ, but there are

some common features that they all share. On the one hand, we cannot use any

particular distinction of a given scheme without using the whole scheme of

distinctions. 4

We cannot say ‘left’ without bringing all the other spatial distinctions

into play. And we cannot say ‘you’ without employing the whole scheme of

personal pronouns. Thus, orientation, based on schemes of distinctions, is holistic,

plural and pragmatic. On the other hand, we cannot use such schemes to orient

ourselves without locating ourselves in the respective scheme or in the world in

terms of that scheme. Without concretely anchoring ourselves we cannot orient

ourselves. Location or anchoring is local, specific, and reflexive. Thus, orientation

requires two basic things: a scheme of distinctions and a capacity to anchor oneself

in the world in terms of those distinctions and thus ‘ground’ the scheme of

distinctions in a way that allows me to make practical use of it.

In the most basic sense, as Kant’s successor at Königsberg put it, ‘‘To orient

oneself means to find the orient [the East] or place on the horizon where the sun

4 Cf. Dalferth (2003, pp. 463–466, 493–509).

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rises at the time of the solstice, hence, we can determine the other world regions.’’ 5

This geographical procedure can be extended to other regions or metaphorical

spaces in which we need to orient ourselves, as Kant set out to show in his paper: to

mathematical space, logical space, metaphysical space, but also—beyond Kant—to

moral space, aesthetic space or religious space. In each case we do so by performing

the two operations mentioned: by specifying a scheme of distinctions that structures

the space under consideration in a meaningful way, and by locating ourselves in the

respective ‘space’ in terms of those distinctions.

VI

Now we can see more clearly what distinguishes science, theology and philosophy,

and what we do when we practice metaphysics and philosophy of religion. Science

searches for explanations, theology unfolds the orientation implicit in the practice of

faith, philosophy clarifies the schemes of distinctions and procedures of location that

we use in different spheres of life and areas of thought, and philosophy of religion

does so in the sphere of our religious practices and ultimate existential orientations.

Neither theology nor philosophy continue what science does, rather they have their

own agendas. But when it comes to unfolding the schemes of orientation implicit in

the practice of faith, theology outlines normative systems of doctrines (that seek to

direct and improve the practice of faith), whereas philosophy explores metaphysical

schemes that claim to make ultimate sense of the world of everyday life.

The important point here is that metaphysics—ontology, philosophical psychol-

ogy, philosophical cosmology, philosophical theology—is not an extension of an

explanatory science such as physics, but rather an unfolding of a practice of

orientation such as everyday life or the life of faith or a religious practice.

Metaphysics is the philosophical attempt to draw out a system of distinctions that

help us to make sense of our life in this world. It is never merely a descriptive

account of the world, neither of the actual world nor of the possible worlds that are

not—not yet or no more—actual. Rather, it is always a meaningoperation, a critical

exploration about our place in this world and how we (can) relate to other persons

and other phenomena from there.

Understood in this sense, metaphysics is not a theoretical or speculative but a

practical enterprise. Its task is not to offer ultimate explanations and ‘‘explain the

world’’ in terms of its fundamental structure, 6

but rather provide schemes of

ultimate existential orientation in terms of which we seek to orient ourselves in the

complex situations of our life. We don’t need one scheme for all problems, but are

quite able to handle different schemes in different areas of our lives. The point of

such schemes of orientation is not description but mental mapping and indexical

5 Traugott Krug (1833): ‘‘Orientiren (sich) heißt eigentlich den Orient oder den Ort im Horizonte suchen,

wo die Sonne zur Zeit der Tag- und Nachtgleiche aufgeht, wodurch dann auch die übrigen Weltgegenden

leicht bestimmbar sind’’ (131). Or as Kant put it, ‘‘To orient oneself, in the proper sense of the word,

means to use a given direction—and we divide the horizon into four of these—in order to find the others,

and in particular that of sunrise.’’ (AA VIII 134; Reiss 2003, p. 238). 6

Sider (2012).

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location. Schemes of indexical orientation do not need to be compatible and

consistent with each other as systems of descriptive propositions must be if they are

to be useful. They do not outline the ultimate furniture of the world or the basic

principles governing the world but indicate the structure of our relations to the world

in specific areas of our lives: We use personal pronouns to orient ourselves in

communicative situations alongside names and definite descriptions. But the use of

‘I’, ‘You’ and ‘We’ does not add anything of descriptive content to talking about the

situation in terms of names and descriptions. There is no change of truthvalue

between ‘Dalferth is speaking’ and ‘I am speaking’. The difference is not in

semantic content but in pragmatic point, not in what I say but how I say it, not in

content but in communicative import. In short, schemes of indexical orientation

work precisely because they are not based on descriptive distinctions in the world

but on pragmatic distinctions in our relations to the world.

This is also true where Christians talk to, of, or about God. They do not engage in

explanatory metaphysics, but try to live their lives as creatures in God’s creation. In

the practice of such a life ‘God’ is not a name or a descriptive term of an entity

among entities, whether the ens perfectissimum of the Platonic tradition or the ens

necessarium of the Aristotelian tradition. God is not the most perfect of all beings or

the most necessary being distinct from all contingent and finite beings in the

universe, and if the term ‘God’ is employed in this way it is misemployed. Rather,

that to which the term ‘God’ refers in Christian practices and their theological

elucidations and elaborations is ‘more than’ the most perfect and most necessary

entity, not by being more of the same kind but by being different from everything

else in principle: God is the creator, and not a part or mode or entity of creation;

God is the one than which nothing greater can be thought because without God there

would be nobody to think and be nothing to be thought at all. To orient one’s life by

reference to God is not to turn to an entity among entities, not even to the most

perfect and necessary one, but to place oneself in relation to the one without whom

nothing else would and could be.

Therefore, Christians who know what they are doing use ‘God’ not as a

descriptive term that can function in explanations, but as an orienting term that

functions when human life is (re)oriented to that without which it couldn’t be. To

speak of God is to speak of oneself as God’s creature, and to speak of God as

creator is to speak of everything we can experience as creation. To speak to and of

God in this way is not to refer to an entity among entities or a phenomenon among

phenomena, but rather to manifest a mode of existing and living and understanding

that expresses itself in thanking God for one’s existence and in calling upon God in

times of bliss and in times of suffering as the one without whom one cannot

meaningfully live a human life in the light of the evil one is suffering or the good

luck one is experiencing.

When people who are not philosophers turn to God, they normally do not do so

because they look for an explanation of something, but because they need to come

to grips with the breakdown of their ordinary course of life in times of happiness or

in times of suffering. They try to find a way back into a life whose thin surface of

meaning has been torn and shattered, and they use the term ‘God’ as a term of

practical (re)orientation, not of theoretical explanation. They do not compete with

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the medical explanation of a disease when they turn to God for help, and they do not

offer a better explanation than a scientific theory of the processes in the universe

when they thank God as their creator for the beauties of this life or when they cry to

God for help and consolation in the face of the immense amount of meaningless

suffering in this world. In praising and blaming God they locate themselves as

creatures among creatures in the universe of meaning of God’s creation, and they

cannot do so without living a life that takes the dignity of other creatures seriously

and safeguards the distinction between creator and creature at every point, including

the attempt to find ever better and deeper explanations of the phenomena of their life

and world.

Thus, we must indeed explain the phenomena of this universe etsi deus non

daretur if we want to explain anything at all, but not in order to not speak of God,

but to speak of God in the right way: as the creator to whom we owe our life as

creatures among creatures, as the one to whom we give thanks in good times, and in

whom we hope in bad times. From a religious point of view God is much more

important than any scientific theory or explanation can ever be. Scientific

explanations are designed to be replaced by better ones, but God is there to stay

so that human life can reliably orient itself towards God and towards fellow

creatures in the ups and downs of a life, not only today but also tomorrow.

Philosophy of religion should bring out and help to clarify such distinctions, but not

compete with scientific explanations by constructing an explanatory metaphysics

that nobody needs and that helps nobody.

VII

Debates about the pro and con of metaphysics may be less acrimonious and abstract

if we could agree on the practical purpose of metaphysics as a set of cultural

schemes of existential orientation in the world: They do not describe the world, but

help us to orient ourselves in the world in specific ways—and some ways are more

supportive for leading a human life than others.

Therefore we must critically reflect on the basic distinctions that we use to orient

ourselves in the world, how to use them appropriately and how not, were they help

us to find our way and where they go on holiday and mislead us into confusion

(Wittgenstein). Those distinctions define how we construe and describe our world,

they are the parameters of our ways of worldmaking—of making the world a place

in which we can orient ourselves in human ways so that the world becomes a place

in which human life can flourish. And for precisely this reason we must be ready to

change them if they fail to make sense of the phenomena we experience and thus

fail to deliver the orientation that we need in order to be able to live a human life

together with others.

This is why philosophers must be sensitive to scientific, social and cultural

changes. They cannot simply continue or defend the old ways of worldmaking as if

everything new can be forced into the Procrustean bed of some ancient metaphysics.

Schemes of orientation can ossify if the world changes in ways that they cannot

make sense of. Then they are no longer helpful for leading a human life in a rapidly

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changing world. And then we better look for more useful schemes of orientation that

deliver what they are used for.

Philosophers must not be defenders of obsolete ideas but rather be critically open

to explore new ways that are more helpful to us to live a human life together with

others in a world that is not very friendly towards life and human achievements. We

are not practitioners of a philosophia perennis, but finite thinkers entangled in

infinite problems. We cannot expect that all the answers we seek can be found in the

past. Rather, we have to draw the right sort of distinctions here and now. We cannot

always tell beforehand which distinctions are the right ones in a given case. That’s

why we need philosophical thought experiments to avoid disasters in life. But in the

end of the day philosophers have the same problems as everybody else: we have to

live our life and not merely reflect upon it.

So—to return to the other sense of distinction—the distinction of philosophers

cannot be to live a life of thought divorced from the labors, sorrows and joys of

everyday life. On the contrary, we know—or should know—that our thinking goes

astray if it gets lost in the maze of possible worlds and doesn’t lead us back into

life—the ordinary life of ordinary persons in ordinary universities facing infinite

problems with finite or no resources.

We are human, and nothing of that which is human is alien to us, as we can learn

from the ancients. 7

David Hume famously concluded from this that there is a point

where playing backgammon is more important for a philosopher than writing yet

another Treatise of Human Nature. We need the company of friends to overcome

our reflective impasses and argumentative ossifications. We need to talk, to walk, to

play, and to dine. And—as we know—:

Wherever lovers of wisdom dine,

There is laughter and much good wine.

So even in San Antonio

Where we did dine

Without any wine:

Benedicamus Domino! 8

References

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7 ‘‘Homines sumus, humani nihil a nos alienum putimus,’’ (Terrence).

8 Modelled on some well-known lines by Hilaire Belloc.

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