PHYSICALISM
178Philosophy of religion has been carried
out from the beginning of philosophy
insofar as philosophers have engaged
religiously significant questions about
gods or God, the sacred, and so on. As
a special discipline or field, philosophy
of religion emerged in the West in
the seventeenth century when religious
beliefs became a special focus of inquiry.
PHYSICALISM. The belief that every-
thing is matter and / or energy, or that
everything that exists is explainable by
ideal physical sciences, usually identified
as physics and chemistry. “Physicalism”
and “materialism” are used equivalently
today.
PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, GIO-
VANNI (1493–1494). A Florentine
Platonist who argued that while Christi-
anity involved an ideal or paradigmatic
case of divine revelation, most religions
and philosophies contain some fragments
and important hints of the divine as well
as the truth, the good, and the beautiful.
His works include The 900 Theses (1486),
Apology (1487), Heptaplus (1489), On Being
and Unity (1491), Disputations against
Astrology (1496), and Oration on the
Dignity of Man (1496).
PIETISM, CHRISTIAN. Initiated by
Philipp J. Spener, author of Earnest Desires
for a Reform of the Evangelical Church
(1675), pietism was a Protestant move-
ment from the mid-seventeenth through
the eighteenth centuries that stressed the
interior life of the soul, the study of
the Bible, and the affective life. The term
“pietism” was originally (like the term
“Quaker”) used pejoratively to refer to
this movement which (according to its
critics) involved excessive preoccupation
with the law (hence the link between
pietism and legalism). But the movement
also fostered communities which made
grace, rather than the law, central.PLATO (c. 429–347 BCE). Along with
his student Aristotle, Plato has exercised
a profound influence on philosophy in
general, including metaphysics, episte-
mology, ethics, mathematics, and logic, as
well the philosophy of religion. A student
of Socrates, Plato’s early work consisted
of representing Socrates’ defense of him-
self in a court case on the grounds that
Socrates corrupted the young and was
impious (The Apology), and the record of
Socrates’ famous search for knowledge.
Socrates is described in dialogues seeking
the proper understanding and thus the
definitions of holiness, justice, courage,
friendship, art, and so on.
Plato’s later work involved a theory
of forms according to which there are
abstract ideal objects such as the form of
justice, the good, the beautiful, the circle,
and so on. Particular objects such as a
concrete case of justice are justice because
they participate in the ideal of justice.