Unanswerable Questions
Ambiguity and Interpersonhood
Imprint: Wipf and Stock
148 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.30 in
- Paperback
- 9781666717815
- Published: June 2021
$21.00 / £19.00 / AU$33.00
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Transcendence is commonly taken to be about another world, one that transcends this one. Instead, I would say that transcendence is about unanswerable questions, and unanswerable questions arise naturally in human life. We deal with them without answering them (or answer them only with irony), for example, in the comic strips, but philosophers are usually loath to admit that there even are any unanswerable questions.
Philosophy of religion usually starts with familiar questions such as ''Is there a God?'' and the like. (That's kind of like ''Do neutrinos exist?'' or ''Is there a luminiferous ether?'')
Begin instead with more basic questions: What is your idea of ultimate reality? What does it mean to ''succeed'' in life? Where does your ultimate reality show itself in life and the world?
Unanswerable Questions is the sequel to The Accountant's Tale.
Andrew P. Porter is a retired physicist and adjunct instructor in philosophy and theology in the Graduate Theological Union and other schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. Among his earlier books are Living in Spin, Basic Concepts of Biblical Religion, Unwelcome Good News, and others.
“Unanswerable Questions does not raise questions about God that have no answer. Andrew Porter argues that answers are less important than relating to God as a person, and that this way of relating constitutes our identity as human beings. Such an ‘answer’ is provisional and may not be completely satisfying because it has to do with a relationship rather than an object. But even an incomplete answer does not prevent people from relating to God.”
—Mark F. Fischer, St. John’s Seminary
“Exploring the fundamental question of how we understand our relationship to God, Porter presents a masterful ‘phenomenology of human action in speaking of God and in prayer to God’ (ix). Noting inherent ambiguities in our language and experience, he argues that our relationships with other people help us recognize our need for a transcendent Other as we ask our ‘unanswerable questions’ and call on ‘an ultimate reality that we cannot see or grasp’ (xi, 38-40).”
—Michael J. Dodds, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, California