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Title: Remarks Regarding Religious Points of View and Religious Scholars' Points of View
Author(s): CORTOIS, Paul
Journal: Ethical Perspectives
Volume: 7    Issue: 4   Date: December 2000   
Pages: 300-311
DOI: 10.2143/EP.7.4.503816

Abstract :
Whatever the precise analysis of the notion of an `internal point of view', to talk about `religious traditions' is to imply that traditions of a certain kind primarily deploy an internal point of view. But what can be said about the notion of an intellectual tradition that would at the same time also be, or be connected to, a religious tradition? To some, such notions appear to border on contradiction. In accordance with the Cartesian criticism of coutume et exemple, we tend to think of an intellectual stance as the correlate of a detached view, with the rational remaining the enemy of the traditional. In that case, every application whatsoever of the predicate `intellectual' to a tradition would be flawed. According to a certain Enlightenment view, inspired by science, is it not of the very essence of the intellectual stance in general that one stand back at a critical distance from any tradition, especially one's own?

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