Abstract

This chapter considers the nature of the philosophy of religion (in relation to both philosophy generally and other areas of the study of religion) in the context of a pragmatist and transcendental articulation of issues of realism and transcendence. The chapter suggests that philosophers of religion should not unproblematically assume that they can simply refer to the transcendent, speaking of, e.g., God’s existence and non-existence as something that concerns the world as it is in itself, independently of human conceptualization and inquiry. Metaphilosophical debates on how philosophy of religion should be understood are thus not independent of the fundamental problem of realism.