عنوان مقاله English
نویسنده English
This article critically examines postmodern critiques of William P. Alston’s account of religious experience through an analytic–critical methodology. Drawing on the concept of doxastic practices, Alston interprets religious experience as analogous to sense perception and defends its epistemic legitimacy. Within this framework, religious experience is understood as a source of non-inferential justification that may be considered valid within a given epistemic system. His approach is grounded in reliabilism while simultaneously attempting to avoid the limitations of classical foundationalism. However, postmodern critiques raise significant challenges to this position. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutical perspective, with its emphasis on the inevitability of pre-understanding, and Paul Feyerabend’s epistemological anarchism both suggest that epistemic systems—such as those underpinning religious experience—cannot be evaluated from an external or neutral standpoint. Furthermore, Jean-François Lyotard’s critique of meta-narratives challenges the claim that religious experience can function as a universal mode of apprehending the divine. Feminist approaches add another layer of critique by highlighting the entanglement of religious experience with structures of power, gender, and ideology.
The article concludes that, although Alston takes an important step toward rationalizing religious experience within analytic epistemology, his account remains vulnerable to contextualist and interpretive critiques. Consequently, it requires reconsideration in light of hermeneutical and phenomenological approaches.
کلیدواژهها English
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