Fatemah Qalkhanbaz

Ninian Smart and the Dialectic of Religious Beliefs and Experiences

پژوهشنامه فلسفه دین December 1, 2021 Masoud Sadeghi, Fatemah Qalkhanbaz

Ninian Smart's theory of religious experience occupies a middle ground between essentialism and maximal constructivism. While some philosophers label Smart a maximal constructivist, he actually proposes a two-poles theory distinguishing theistic and non-theistic contexts. Smart acknowledges that cultural-religious contexts, including religious beliefs, influence religious experience, but argues they do not fully determine it. This intermediate position can be called minimal constructivism.