[Also on Substack] Recently, my philosophy sparring partner and friend, William F. Vallicella, PhD, gave me an excuse to clear up a misunderstanding to which academic philosophers are susceptible, one that systematically impedes understanding what I’m up to in Philosophy after Christ. At first, it may strike one as a “chicken-or-egg” dilemma: Which comes first? Argument? Or worldview? Is asking one’s interlocutor for his worldview a forensic dodge?
The serious thinker is self-critical [Bill writes]: his examination of life, without which his life is not worth living, is a self-examination, even unto a painful thinking against himself. . . . He is not an apologist for a ready-made worldview. He toes no party line. His watchword is ‘inquiry,’ not ‘worldview.’ He would have a worldview if he could, but he must inquire to find one.[1]
By nature, however, Bill cannot help but have a worldview, which is not a proposition or a series of propositions arranged syllogistically. A worldview is the view of God, man, and the cosmos that one brings, self-consciously or not, to a proposition. He can, if he is epistemologically self-conscious, “trade” it up or down for another. What is not available to anyone “above the age of reason,” however, is a worldview-free existence. One’s worldview can be rendered in propositions that are then criticized, modified, or reinforced, but it is not equivalent to them. It is the way one views or gazes upon the world.
It is good to recall that the German word for “worldview” is Weltanschauung, a calque of the Greek kosmotheoria. A worldview is a network of first truths that constitute our pretheoretical propensity to see (theoria) the world (kosmos), which includes God, mankind, and nature. The Greek theoreō (θεωρέω) means to look at; gaze; spectate; form a picture. “Theory” comes from the noun for “spectacle” and the verb “to behold,” theaomai (θεάομαι), from which we get “theater.” A theoros is a spectator. “When all the people who had gathered to witness this spectacle (θεωρίαν, theōrian) saw what took place, they beat their breasts and went away” (Luke 23:48). “He [Jesus] beholds (θεωρεῖ) a commotion with people crying and wailing loudly” (Mark 5:38).
As it pertains to the ontology of epistemology—its existence and the
conditions of our theorizing about knowledge—worldview precedes the latter: it comes first. It is “under the floorboards” of any framing of the problem of epistemology.[2] Therefore, I’m not going to argue for the primacy of worldview but rather disclose it by indulging in the guilty pleasure of self-quotation. You may have a better way of expressing my insight, but here is how I tried to do it in my book, to whose pages parenthetical numbers refer. Bill says the “watchword is [or should be] ‘inquiry.’”
I beg to differ:
Epistemic obligation itself only makes sense on the biblical worldview. In any other, it is a feeling floating in a void. In fact, sense-making itself only makes sense in terms of the biblical worldview. From the stance of pretended neutrality, the nonbeliever interprets Scripture according to what the world (i.e., the nonbeliever) requires. Failure to advert to one’s worldview, however, is arbitrary, and arbitrariness is incompatible with the pursuit of wisdom. (xii)
… the very proof-demanding exigency we bring to the question of God already presupposes the God of the biblical worldview. (xv)
… philosophical enquiry emerges in the unfolding of implications of the worldview we inherit at birth (along with our linguistic capability), but which we may or may not grow up to profess. Only at the level of worldview considerations may one sensibly explore tension between worldviews. (xxi)
… there’s also the problem of philosophy itself, one that philosophy raises implicitly, but cannot answer directly. That’s the problem of worldview. Do my answers to philosophical questions comport with one another? How much must I “take for granted” before I ask my first question? What kind of questions can I ask about those takings? When one is turning to the problem of “background worldview,” one is not trying to solve problems that arise on the latter’s terms. One’s worldview must be able to acknowledge worldview diversity. But where (or on what) is one standing when one does that? (3)
As my interest in the worldview problem increased, my interest in philosophical problems as such decreased. That’s because philosophical problems now seem to me a function of one’s basic, nonnegotiable stance toward the world. (And one’s interests shift over time; others who agree with me about that may experience no lessening of interest.) Once philosophers pay attention to it, they’re no longer “doing” philosophy. When they don’t advert to it, their philosophical work is susceptible to worldview-level criticism. (3-4)
Philosophers sharing the same worldview can agree or disagree fruitfully about, for example, the veridicality of sense perception. Those who do not, but are not conscious of their worldview disparity, may misunderstand both their agreements and disagreements, even when they share the same natural language. If they are conscious of that worldview difference, then it’s not clear what their apparent agreements or disagreements could mean. “God exists,” affirms the Christian, who thinks the idea of God important. “Yes, God exists!,” echoes the Buddhist, who deems the same idea a deflection from life’s real issues. (4)
If philosophical problems are embedded in a worldview, then the adjudication of worldview-conflict cannot be such a problem. The attempt to address such conflict also operates at the level of worldview. There is no worldview-neutral stance from which to undertake such a task. (4)
For decades, I had asked, “What is the evidence or argument for this or that worldview?” (for example, Marxism, Existentialism, or Christianity). It was the wrong question. I had been assuming that “worldview” always means an explicitly held ideology, philosophy, or theology, a system of ideas one is obliged to justify (or counter) with evidence and argument. One does not, however, argue for one’s worldview. Rather, one’s worldview—a network of nonnegotiable beliefs about one’s relationship to others, to the cosmos, and to God—is the foundation upon which one argues or asks questions. One’s basic worldview is implicated in the effort to argue or justify. It gets expressed in socially and historically conditioned ideologies, philosophies, and theologies. They are many, but the worldview-forming capacity, like the language-forming capacity, is anthropologically one.
One may vindicate rationally one’s theorized worldview by showing its superiority to another, but the worldview will even supply the criteria of evaluation. I’m developing the idea of a pretheoretical (yet theorizable) worldview which, without our effort, forms as we mature from infancy through childhood and adolescence to adulthood. It forms in tandem with our capacity for language (without which theorization can’t happen). (42-43)
For much more, get my book.
Notes
[1] William F. Vallicella, “Dark Nietzschean Thoughts,” June 19, 2026; emphasis added. I’m using Bill’s essay only as a foil for this one. About the rest of his stimulating essay, mine has nothing to say. The latter may be a challenge thereto, but it’s not a “refutation” thereof.
[2] Anthony G. Flood, “God: ‘behind the scenes’ (or ‘under the floorboards’) of every argument,” December 12, 2018. This blogpost is an ancestor of chapter 4 of Philosophy after Christ, 21-23.