Ph.D. Candidate, University College Dublin

By now, which is to say since Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, denunciations of the ‘metaphysics of presence’ are widespread. This context demands a radical rethinking of the image or appearance for a conception which does not rely on the value of presence to support its meaning. How should the image be understood in the wake of the disappearance of this grounding support? Does the significance of this uprooting of the image transform the image into the simulacrum? Drawing on Derrida’s Specters of Marx, I suggest the logic of the ghost—a hauntology—offers a conception of the image adequate to the demands of the post-metaphysical situation without falling into the nihilism of simulacra. Images, and more generally phenomena, as specters reverse the process of total depletion through the ethical injunction, calling us to reinvest the significance of images without certain knowledge. To be sure, this reinvestment requires interpretation, but an interpretation deprived of its end and without hope for itself. This unassured end would constitute the chance, which is the risk and promise, of justice.

Of particular comparative importance are the following elements. First, in both Montaigne and Zhuangzi one finds a movement away from a certain kind of skepticism towards an identification of the subject with a processual conception of nature. This affords both thinkers, not an indifference towards death, but instead a way of affirming it as necessary. Second, both Montaigne and Zhuangzi reject that entities have discrete essences, and instead argue that indication operates as a function of differentiation. For these reasons I nominate Montaigne’s thought as a resource for anti-ontological thinking within the Western philosophical tradition. In a manner which alienates him somewhat from others within his own intellectual tradition, Montaigne eschews ontological inquiry in favor of an approach to life as it is lived; not as mere being as opposed to non-being, but rather as movement, passing-through, never-being-the-same.

Researcher, Polish Academy of Sciences

Within religious epistemology, agnosticism has usually been discussed with reference to the existence of God of classical theism; it is only recently that J. S. Schellenberg’s so-called hiddenness argument for the non-existence of such God in the context of Schellenberg’s ultimist stance (cf. Schellenberg 2015) has contributed to opening a debate on agnosticism in a broader sense, taking into consideration many possible concepts of God or the Absolute. The aim of my paper is to discuss the possibility of agnosticism in an even broader sense of suspending judgement on what religion to embrace – in short, “agnosticism about religions” – with the focus on its spiritual consequences. With this goal in mind, I will ask: (1) Is agnosticism about what religion to embrace the same thing as agnosticism about what religion is true? If not, what does the difference lay in? (2) Is agnosticism about what religion to embrace the same thing as agnosticism about which existing religion to embrace? If not, how does it differ from it? (3) How does agnosticism about religions relate to different forms of agnosticism about God or the Absolute as broadly understood – e.g. Schellenberg’s ultimism (cf. Schellenberg 2016) or John Hick’s belief in the Real (cf. Hick 1989)? (4) Does agnosticism about what religion to embrace entail agnosticism about whether to embrace a religion? If yes, how does it differ from universal philosophical agnosticism – agnosticism about any philosophical claim? (5) What are the practical (existential, moral, spiritual) consequences of agnosticism about religions? How do they differ in different cases and what factors underlie the differences? Does the concept of practical agnosticism as spiritual inquiry (cf. Draper 2002) or apophatic spiritual mindset (cf. Kenny 2004) apply to agnosticism about religions? In order to provide a (tentative) answer to these questions, rather than employing any notion of the essence of religion as such, I will make use of (a.) Ronald W. Hepburn’s idea of “agnostic imaginative slant” (Hepburn 1958), broadened so as to be applicable to religions other than Christianity, (b.) the concept of existential perspective as developed by religious epistemologists inspired by late Wittgenstein, like D. Z. Phillips (1981) or, more recently, Blake McAllister (2018) and Chris Tweedt (2022).

Works cited: P. Draper, “Seeking But Not Believing: Confessions of a Practicing Agnostic”, in: D. Howard-Snyder, P. K. Moser (eds.), Divine Hiddenness: New Essays, OUP 2002, pp. 197-2014; R. W. Hepburn, Christianity and Paradox: Critical Studies in Twentieth-Century Theology, Pegasus 1958; B. McAllister, “The Perspective of Faith: Its Nature and Epistemic Implications”, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 92, Iss. 4, 2018, pp. 515-533; Ch. Tweedt, “The Perspectival Account of Faith”, Religious Studies, Vol. 59, Iss. 4, 2022, pp. 635-650; D. Z. Phillips, The Concept of Prayer, The Seabury Press 1981; J. Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, Macmillan Press 1989; J. L. Schellenberg, The Hiddenness Argument: Philosophy’s New Challenge to Belief in God, OUP 2015; J. L. Schellenberg, “God for All Time: From Theism to Ultimism”, in: A. A. Buckareff, Y. Nagasawa (eds.), Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine, OUP 2016, pp. 164-177; A. Kenny, The Unknown God: Agnostic Essays, Continuum 2004.

PhD Student, Divinity School, UChicago

In this paper, I trace Tsongkhapa’s integration of the pramāṇas into Madhyamaka philosophy. I examine how he justifies this project despite purported evidence in Candrakīrti’s writings (among certain Tibetan thinkers) that deny the validity of the pramāṇas in cognizing conventional phenomena. I show that Tsongkhapa recuperates pramāṇavādin epistemology by qualifying Candrakīrti’s statements to pertain only to the ultimate and not to phenomena in general, in this way accounting not only for a way to realize emptiness as an ordinary being, but also for a means to know the conventional. I further examine in brief a text that takes this union of Madhyamaka and epistemology to an extreme, framing itself explicitly as a Madhyamaka blo rigs—that is, a study of Madhyamaka using an overtly pramāṇavādin epistemelogical framework. My aim is to explore the intellectual antecedents in Tsongkhapa’s philosophy that legitimate projects such as these in modern Gelug philosophy.