1st Edition

Secular Cosmopolitanism, Hospitality, and Religious Pluralism

By Andrew Fiala Copyright 2017
    222 Pages
    by Routledge

    222 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book explores the idea of religious pluralism while defending the norms of secular cosmopolitanism, which include liberty, tolerance, civility, and hospitality. The secular cosmopolitan ideal requires us to be more tolerant and more hospitable toward religious believers and non-believers from diverse traditions in our religiously pluralistic world. Some have argued that the world’s religions can be united around a common core. This book argues that it is both impossible and inadvisable either to reduce religion to one thing or to deny religion. Instead, the book affirms non reductive pluralism and seeks to understand how we should live in a pluralistic world.



    Building on work in the sociology of religion and philosophy of religion, the book examines the grown of religious diversity (and the spread of nonreligion) in the contemporary world. It argues that religious toleration, hospitality, and compassion must be extended in a global direction. Secular cosmopolitanism recognizes that each person has a right to his or her deepest beliefs and that the diversity of the world’s religious and non-religious traditions cannot be reduced or eliminated.

    1. Introduction: From Civility to Hospitality



    PART I: The Logic of Diversity And a Pragmatic Philosophy of Religion



    2. One, None, Many: The Logic of Religion



    3. The Golden Rule of Hospitality, Agnosticism, and the Pluralistic Wager



    4. Naïve Religion and Philosophical Critique





    5. Should an Atheist Take Communion? Good Will, Kindness, Testimony, and Truth





    6. Pragmatic and Poly-Theistic Philosophy of Religion



    PART II: Explorations in the Depth of Diversity



    7. Toward a Secular Cosmopolitan Soteriology



    8. Love, Liberty, and The Good Samaritan





    9. Human Rights, Theocentrism, and Religious Diversity





    10. Militant Atheism, Pragmatism, and the God-Shaped Hole





    PART III: Hospitality and A Secular Cosmopolitan Ethic





    11. Hospitality, Civil Dialogue, and Cosmopolitanism
    12. Solidarity, Play, and the Pluralistic Wager



    13. Ethics for a Secular Cosmopolitan World

    Biography

    Andrew Fiala is Professor of Philosophy at California State University, Fresno. He is the author of The Bloomsbury Companion to Political Philosophy (2015), and the 8th edition of Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues with Barbara MacKinnon (2014). Fiala also writes a weekly column for the Fresno Bee.

    "In the wake of growing secularism alongside increasing fundamentalism, Dr. Fiala offers a sound, reasoned, thoughtful—and above all, ethical—vision of how we can live in a more tolerant, hospitable world."Phil Zuckerman, Pitzer College, USA