Justifying Interreligious Pluralism

This chapter explores the philosophical justification for religious pluralism and provides a critique of religious exclusivism. The crucial challenge to religious exclusivism is what can be called ‘Hume's dilemma’. The source of Hume's dilemma is the existence of mutually incompatible religions; it conveys the problem evoked by interreligious pluralism. The chapter presents two central strategies for dealing with this problem. The first offers a modified version of validation in general and of religious justification in particular. The second offers a modified version of the concept of religious truth. These strategies make pluralism a position more defensible than exclusivism. The chapter then looks at the concept of religious loyalty, and assesses whether the endorsement of pluralism implies the breakdown of religious traditions in general and of Jewish tradition in particular. It argues that endorsing pluralism requires a religious revolution and while it exacts a heavy religious price, it is pluralism more than toleration that is compelling to contemporary Jews living in a modern democratic world.