TY - JOUR
T1 - Can Human Friendship Yield Knowledge of God?
T2 - Towards a Religious Epistemology Embodied in the Spirituality of Everyday Life
AU - Van Asselt, Willem J.
AU - Sarot, Marcel
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - While friendship is a perennial phenomenon, it adopts characteristic forms in contemporary culture. These are reflected in the contemporary revival of thought on friendship. The authors build on this revival by inquiring whether friendship could be developed into a key concept for religious epistemology. Does friendship contain an implicit knowledge that might be called religious, and that lends itself to explication by religious epistemology? The authors argue that it does, and that an embodied epistemology is capable of teasing out the spiritual dimensions of friendship. Thus, examining friendships between human beings may yield knowledge of God. Finally, the authors argue that since epistemology and spirituality are closely related, the move from a foundationalist epistemology to an epistemology embodied in friendship also involves a move to a different type of spirituality that is neither rationalistic nor fideist in nature.
AB - While friendship is a perennial phenomenon, it adopts characteristic forms in contemporary culture. These are reflected in the contemporary revival of thought on friendship. The authors build on this revival by inquiring whether friendship could be developed into a key concept for religious epistemology. Does friendship contain an implicit knowledge that might be called religious, and that lends itself to explication by religious epistemology? The authors argue that it does, and that an embodied epistemology is capable of teasing out the spiritual dimensions of friendship. Thus, examining friendships between human beings may yield knowledge of God. Finally, the authors argue that since epistemology and spirituality are closely related, the move from a foundationalist epistemology to an epistemology embodied in friendship also involves a move to a different type of spirituality that is neither rationalistic nor fideist in nature.
KW - Embodied epistemology
KW - Experience
KW - Friendship
KW - Postfoundationalism
KW - Religious epistemology
KW - Spirituality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85019721211&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1163/15743012-02401010
DO - 10.1163/15743012-02401010
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85019721211
SN - 1023-0807
VL - 24
SP - 180
EP - 202
JO - Religion and Theology
JF - Religion and Theology
IS - 1-2
ER -