Kierkegaard, Ficino and Pseudo-Dionysius on the philosophical insignificance of ‘religious diversity

Paul Tyson (Australian Catholic University)

Abstract. This paper is constructed in three sections. Part One, via Talal Asad, looks at why the notions of ‘religion’ and ‘religious diversity’ are not conceptually valid. Part Two looks at the manner in which three Christian thinkers – Kierkegaard, Ficino and Pseudo-Dionysius – account for variety within unity and incompleteness within truth, without assuming the modern notion of ‘religious diversity’. Part Three briefly explores the manner in which the inclusivist Christian notion of catholicity is one that most satisfyingly accounts for what the discourse of modern Western thinking tends to call ‘religious diversity’ without taking either ‘religion’ or ‘religious diversity’ as being of any real philosophical significance.