RN17

Thinking with Pamela
Virtuous Dialogue and the Philosophy of
Religion. Pamela Sue Anderson is well
known for her work on the feminist
philosophy of religion; her 1997 book on
that subject being one of the first in the
discipline. In the last two years before
her death, however, her work focused
on the themes of vulnerability and love.
Drawing on Anderson’s as-yet
unpublished ‘Introduction’ to a volume
of Michèle Le Doeuff’s philosophy
(edited by Anderson and to which I
contributed as translator), I will outline
the ways in which her vision for the
philosophy of religion – and her
methodological ideals for philosophy in
general – are encapsulated by a desire
for virtuous dialogue of the kind her
most recent work discusses.
From her earliest work, Anderson
was concerned to reject a model of the
‘empirical realist philosopher of religion’
that I’d like to call by the shorthand
homo philosophicus. By this term, I mean
to denote a negative exemplar, and thus
it is important to clarify that I do not
take it in the same sense in which it has
recently been used by Quassim Cassam
– that is, as a ‘model epistemic citizen
who can discover what his beliefs and
other attitudes are by establishing what
they ought rationally to be’ (Cassam,
Self-Knowledge for Humans¸ 2015).
In the case of religion,
determining what our beliefs and
attitudes ‘ought rationally to be’ is, of
course, much disputed. But Anderson’s
work criticized homo philosophicus
precisely for the confidence he placed in
disembodied reason (or formal
rationality) to answer our questions. On
Anderson’s account, homo philosophicus
– historically male, white, and privileged
– claimed a god’s-eye view that failed to
acknowledge the experiences of less
privileged others, especially women and
the marginalized. In doing so, Anderson
argued, homo philosophicus endangered
the philosophy of religion by
downplaying the importance of ‘desire,
need, ethical truth, and justice’; and
assuming ‘the status quo of patriarchal
beliefs’ (Anderson, A Feminist Philosophy
of Religion (1997), 16). As such, one of
the aims of her work – frequently
reiterated in the decades that followed
– was to transform ‘the focus and the
conceptual scheme in contemporary
philosophy of religion’ (Anderson, in
Cornwell and McGhee, eds, Philosophers
and Gods (2009), 167).
In 2009, she argued that the
required transformation involved not
only concerning ourselves [that is,
philosophers of religion] ‘with knowing
[…], but with thinking, acting, and
making reflective judgements which
would be creative, spiritually’ (adapted
from ibid., 171). She appealed to
philosophers of religion to examine and
exhibit ‘spiritual virtues’, calling her
readers to be ‘creative’ ‘for a world in
need of love, trust, respect, and hope’
(ibid., 171). These virtues, she argued,
should become characteristic of
reflective subjects, shaping the way we
imagine and interact with the world.
This was needful, on Anderson’s view,
because ‘[i]n a time when the world is
increasingly aware of global diversity,
the tradition of philosophy of religion
seems disinclined (or, is it simply afraid?)
to scrutinize its own practices not only
for epistemic injustice, but more
positively for the passion implicit in
yearning for the virtuous life’ (ibid., 176).
She followed Robert Solomon in
claiming that the virtuous spiritual life
should be understood in terms of the
transformation of the self (see ibid.,
173). This is significant because, on
Anderson’s view, ‘the spiritual life
directs reason’ towards a telos. In a
world increasingly divided by difference,
the telos towards which the spiritual life
directs us is an exploration of ‘love’ as
openness to others, the world and our
natural being; ‘trust’ as a coming
together of uncertainty and confidence;
‘respect’ as an active responsibility to
join love and trust in attention to life;
and ‘hope’ in past, present, and future
(see ibid., 176).
Anderson is no naïve optimist
about the realization of these ends,
however. In her recent work on
vulnerability she wrote about the
human tendency to shut itself off to the
danger of being wounded – to the
possibility of pain that can ensue from
openness gone wrong. But even so,
through the practice of virtuous
dialogue, Anderson proposed that she
had ‘found a transformative strategy for
refining philosophy’s self-definition, in
order that philosophy itself becomes far
more inclusive, and not just ‘western’,
not largely elite, and not largely for
certain privileged men alone’ (Anderson,
‘Introduction’ to In Dialogue with Michèle
Le Doeuff (forthcoming), 8). Instead of
paradigms of discipleship – in which
powerful masters instruct their
disciples, inducting them into readymade
worlds of thought – Anderson’s
dialogical approach invites others –
including marginalized others – to think
with us for themselves. It is a condition
of such a method that we are vulnerable
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