Religious Pluralism : Toward a Comparative Metaphysics of Religion

Ultimate reality is often characterized in terms of a variety of what are thought to be incompatible concepts, like God, Dao, Brahman, śūnyatā, etc. Matthew S. LoPresti suggests that if we shift to a process metaphysics, our horizon of pluralistic understanding shifts as well, allowing multiple religious ultimates, effective religious practices, and their respective salvific projects to simultaneously exist without contradiction. Religious Pluralism: Towards a Comparative Metaphysics of Religion examines the plausibility of a genuine religious pluralism, arguing in favor of the authenticity of a plurality of the world’s major religious traditions. Many philosophical responses to the challenges of religious diversity have been misidentified as forms of relativism or religious pluralisms, so a more robust taxonomy is provided to encourage the field to be more uniform and precise. John B. Cobb, Jr.’s Whiteheadian-based approach, known as “Deep Religious Pluralism,” is argued to function as a non-relativistic basis for a meta-theology of world religions. After discussing classical and contemporary South Asian philosophy, Western analytic philosophy, and process philosophy, in addition to the writings of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), LoPresti argues that a proper engagement with religious pluralism requires intimate knowledge of Western and non-Western traditions.