Some reflections on existence and imagination in relation to interreligious dialogue and intercultural philosophy of religion

This article discusses notions of philosophical grammar, existence, imagination and reason in light of religious plurality in modernity and intercultural philosophy of religion. More specifically the first part of the article presents a model that aims to combine a central modern human experience – that there is a plurality of religious and non-religious 'non-reducible' ontologies and existential interpretations of them – with an awareness of the possibility of non-reductionist dialogical existential inter-subjectivity, specifically in relation to ontology, philosophy and religion. The second part of the article discusses briefly the definition of modernity as a global condition, and argues that the plurality of worldviews and a Kantian inspired focus on the individual's courage to use his or her own reason should be seen as central aspects of worldviews in modernity, but without the need necessarily to follow Kant's 'universalistic' approach to individuality. The third part of the article presents some views on 'existence' and 'essence' and how these notions are related in various ways to notions of imagination in some parts of the Muslim philosophical tradition. The fourth part of the article returns to the issue of how to conceive of what it means to be individual and the relation between the individual, communal reality and ontology. Keywords: Intercultural philosophyphilosophy of religionIslamic Philosophyspeculative grammarontologyexistenceimaginationreasondialoguesociology of religionIbn Arabi Notes An earlier version of this article was presented at the seminar 'Modern Islamic thought at the Faculty of Islamic Studies in Sarajevo, 24–25 May 2011. Derrida is, of course, another example of a philosopher interested in philosophical grammar. For more information regarding the notion of grammatical ciphers, my inspiration from the Modistae, the relation between the Modistae and Peirce and Heidegger's philosophy and, more generally, the idea of onto-dialogical interaction, see Garsdal (Citation2011, 45–6). Wittgenstein's On certainty includes a famous discussion on how we should understand logical and empirical sentences, suggesting that truth is always measured against a background of a special type of sentence, which could be considered to be 'mythological'; that is, sentences that are neither logical sentences nor empirical sentences that we can consequently declare to be true or false. This is not so with 'mythological sentences', which rather should be seen as sentences that set the horizon for our interpretational activities. Wittgenstein writes that the mythology expressed in such sentences 'may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between the movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the bed itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from the other' (Wittgenstein Citation1975, §97). This approach opens up the possibility for dynamic radical transformative interpretations of mythological sentences. However – perhaps despite Wittgenstein's intentions – this might also be problematic for 'insiders' of religious beliefs for both cognitive and not least existential reasons, for they could be understood as open to the possibility not only of 'deciphering' mythological sentences regarding, for example, the Qur'an or Christ, but also of dismissing them as mythological sentences – and he thereby begins to relate to issues regarding both ontology and existence as the idea of 'truth' itself becomes unclear – not in the various grammars, but in Wittgenstein's own philosophy. It might be argued that his views explain the possibility of conversion from one religion to another and 'in' and 'out' of religious worldviews in general, but the problem is that Wittgenstein's central notion here is 'grammar' and this makes unclear the role the person's 'existence-in-truth' has in relation to the transformation of mythological sentences that set up ontological 'references'. One could, from a religious worldview, perhaps say that the problem is that it is unclear how mythological sentences are related to the three modes of the Modistae. Wittgenstein himself, in another context, makes some remarks regarding the relation between 'system of coordinates', 'system of reference' and 'passion' in a religious belief: 'It appears to me that a religious belief could only be (something like) passionately committing oneself to a system of coordinates. Hence although it's belief, it is really a way of living, or a way of judging life. Passionately taking up this interpretation. And so instructing in a religious belief would have to be portraying, describing that system of reference and at the same time appealing to conscience' (Wittgenstein Citation1998, 73e). It should be obvious that the existential commitment to such a system of reference, if this is to be expressed in an interpretation of 'mythological sentences' in an existential moment, may result in tension between the faith such sentences might represent, and the Wittgensteinian take on the dynamic possibilities of change in mythological sentences. However, we will instead focus on something else, namely that when religious faith is characterized as being 'passionate', this might point to an ambiguity regarding the subject of the religious faith, which is somewhat hidden by the English term 'committing oneself'. 'Passion' does etymologically (as, likewise, is the case with Wittgenstein's original German equivalent, Leidenschaft) carry a connotation of being both an activity as well as a sort of 'passive' suffering. It can – if we elaborate on Wittgenstein's thought – be said to stand in dialectical tension between being 'a system of coordinates' (Koordinatensystem) and a 'system of reference' (Bezugssystem) mediated by 'passion'. In other words, the 'referential' aspect grows out of the passion of faith, so that who and what the subject(s) of this passion is/are can only be known within this referential system itself as a 'system of coordinates'. Even though ciphers 'install' a background for 'discourse' just as 'mythological sentences' do, it is not at all clear that every cipher takes the form of a sentence. One could perhaps think of ciphers such as the 'Qur'an', 'Christ' or 'freedom' as 'free-floating' colours – the cipher might be considered as 'free-floating' colour before it is 'connected' with anything, and when it makes its way into sentences one could perhaps say that the deciphering process of the cipher takes its first step. As soon as one says that 'Qur'an', 'Christ' or 'freedom' is this or that, or combines it with other words into sentences (see below) one could perhaps say that the deciphering process has begun. This is a good example of the way philosophers and theologians across religious (and non-religious) borders debated the notions of disenchantment and secularization in the 1960s, considering the role 'negativity' could and should play in religious ontology, in relation both to what has been called 'god is dead' theology, and to so-called 'secular theology'. The debate has become known to a larger audience through the Anglican Bishop John Robinson's admission that he could not truthfully preach about a theistic God 'out there', but the question regarding how one should perceive the dynamics between Being and Nothingness in relation to religion led to interesting theoretical and existential religious-philosophical reflections that were not only discussed in light of Christian theology (Cox, Altizer, Tillich) but also included Jewish Holocaust theology (Rubenstein), modern Mahayana Buddhist philosophy (the Kyoto school) and reflections on the sociology of religion (Peter Berger). Yavuz eloquently illustrates the strength of this social constructivist methodological position and its advantages over essentialist and contextualistic approaches in his analysis of how the Nasqhbandi worldview has functioned as a 'repository of tradition' for the development of the Nursi and the Gülen movements in new socio-political and economic contexts in Turkey and how this in itself has transformed the social imaginary. This paragraph owes its virtues to the work done by Corbin (Citation1969, Citation1980), Leaman Citation(1999) and Cheetham Citation(2003) and its vices to me. Another advantage of this position is that it is ultimately not clear that something is if does not have a real possibility of being realized, even though we ascribe qualities to it. On the other hand, this could lead to different Islamic theological problems, notably how to understand individual immortality and how to perceive the creation of the world

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