The Notion of trust in J. Schellenberg’s Philosophy of Religion: a Historical Investigation.

Abstract

The reception of Schellenberg’s philosophy of religion is concentrated on his skeptical approach, on his evolutionary conception of human beings and on his principle of imagination, consistently with his own presentation of his thought. Instead, I feel the role that the concept of trust covers in his proposal, is quite neglected. Herein I propose, on the one hand, to fill this gap showing how a study of the use of the notion of trust by Schellenberg is decisive in order to understand his criticism of traditional philosophy of religion, and to appreciate his proposal of a religious skepticism. On the other hand, I intend to underline his conception about trust to better understand the relevance and the potentiality of this notion in the contemporary philosophical debate. I will use a historical method, paying attention to the context in which Schellenberg writes his works, to his more or less express sources and to the more and more well-constructed distinctions he suggests in his studies, without leaving out any terminological ambiguity.