Religious Hinge Commitments and Ideology

Bibliographic Data

ID3368230
AuthorsDuncan Pritchard (0000-0002-5997-0752, University of California, Irvine, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume16
Issue5
Pages631
Publication date2025-05-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel16050631
OpenAlexW4410440145
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited34

In his final notebooks, published as On Certainty, Wittgenstein articulated a radical conception of the structure of rational evaluation, one that had arational hinge commitments at its heart. This proposal has recently been extended to the religious case, in the form of quasi-fideism, which treats basic religious commitments as being hinge commitments. My interest in this paper is how religious hinge commitments relate to one's fundamental ideological commitments, such as the kinds of basic political or economic certainties that prevail in a predominantly capitalist society. While I argue that there are significant overlaps between fundamental religious and ideological commitments, there are also some significant divergences, which is why the former tend to be more plausible candidates to be genuine hinge commitments. In particular, I maintain that while allowing that there can be religious hinge commitments extends hinge epistemology beyond the paradigm, commonsense, cases that was Wittgenstein's focus in On Certainty, it doesn't thereby open the door to there being ideological hinge commitments, given the important ways in which religious and ideological hinge commitments diverge in their properties

Hinge · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Structural engineering · Engineering · Karl Barth and Christian Theology · Law · Philosophy · Religious Education and Schools · Religious studies · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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