252 religious revolution nowHow should we most usefully understand the vocation of philoso-
phy? What is the relation of philosophy, so understood, to the religions
of the past? What does it have to contribute to the religion of the fu-
ture? What light do these conceptions of philosophy and of theology
throw on the argument of this book?
For much of its history, philosophy in the West has been a super-
science in the ser vice of self- help. As a super- science, it has claimed to
pass judgment on par tic u lar forms of life and par tic u lar modes of
thought from the vantage point of higher insight. In this sense, it is a
denial— a false denial— of our groundlessness. Its true ambition—
sometimes declared but more oft en hidden— has been to defeat nihilism.
Th is would- be foundational science has been ordinarily deployed for
the sake of self- help. Th e point has been to arm us against the defects
of the human condition— not just our groundlessness (directly denied
by the program of super- science) but also our mortality and our insa-
tiability. Even at its most pessimistic (as in the work of Schopenhauer),
philosophy has never ceased to provide us with reasons for hope. How-
ever, while it has habitually promised to solve the enigma of existence
and off ered to teach us how to escape our insatiability, its response to
our greatest terror, fear of death, has been indirect. Denied the author-
ity of revelation, it has used what ever arguments it can marshal to help
us compose ourselves in the face of death.
Th ere is, however, no such super- science. We can never defi nitively
avert the threat of nihilism, presented by the prospect of death in the
context of the enigmatic character of our existence and of the reality of
the world. We can no more escape our mortality, our groundlessness,
and our insatiability through philosophy than we can do so through
religion. A feel- good metaphysic is no more justifi ed and persuasive
than a feel- good theology, with the additional disadvantage that it is
unattached to a community of faith and of ritual. Such a community
may have less need of seducing the imagination into wishful thinking;
it has other means to elicit belief and loyalty.
Th e idea of a super- science in the ser vice of self- help has now been
largely discredited and abandoned. One of its contemporary successors
is the abasement of philosophy into the unwanted role of thought po-
lice, professing to teach us how to think and how to argue.