THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM OF THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS by Xavier Zubiri
Translator and Editor Introductions (i-v)

THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM OF THE
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS

(Outside back cover)

The history of religions is more than a simple catalog of successive forms of religions; it is the great experience of mankind, individual as well as social and historical, concerning the ultimate truth of the power of the real. The philosophical presuppositions of this thesis have been established by XAVIER ZUBIRI (1898-1983) in his trilogy Inteligencia Sentiente ("Sentient Intelligence", tr. by Dr. T. B. Fowler, Jr.), and in his study concerning El hombre y Dios (“Man and God“, tr. by J. A. Redondo). In these, Zubiri radically questioned the conceptualism and idealism, which burden both the classical Theory of Knowledge, and Theodicy, while at the same time proposing a new and important alternative. To the traditional primacy of subject, logos, and being, Zubiri has contrasted the “primordial apprehension of reality”. His approach, with respect to the problem of God, reveals a new way, neither anthropologic nor metaphysical: the way of religation. But religation necessarily adopts a concrete specific form, molding itself into religion. Zubiri now activates the central categories of his thought to outline, in the texts we present here, an original and penetrating analysis of the religious fact and its history. Because of this, the present volume of previously unpublished material constitutes not only the natural continuation of Man and God, but also a prime contribution to the study of a theme, which no great philosophy has avoided or can avoid. It will be followed, in a third volume, by a systematic study of Christianity, which will complete the analysis of what Zubiri called “The theological problem of man”.

XAVIER ZUBIRI




THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEM
OF THE
HISTORY OF RELIGIONS



Translated by Joaquín A. Redondo, M.E., M.A.(Phil.)
Critically reviewed by Dr. Thomas B. Fowler, Jr., Sc.D.



(From El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones,
Alianza-Fundación, First Spanish Edition, Madrid, November, 1993)

(Numbers in braces “{ }” refer to the
pagination of the above First Spanish Edition)

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

The second book of Zubiri’s trilogy about God brings all the intellectual precision of Zubiri to bear on the facts of historical religion. The proper introduction to this book has to be Man and God, with all its introductory remarks. There is no other. However, since Zubiri prepares his points carefully, this book can be tackled directly by those already aware of the problems. For these, my brief introduction to Man and God would probably suffice as a start.

Nevertheless, there is a definite point of departure for this book. In the last page of Man and God the point is clearly made by Zubiri that what we really have is fundamental theology, not præambula fidei. A knowledge that is theological, not theologic. Therefore, Zubiri has presented to us the intellectual way to discover God qua God “in” reality, where we are installed together with all real things. That is theological knowledge. If this is so, the encounter with real theologic knowledge “in” historical reality will not require gymnastic “leaps of faith”. It is precisely by removing the fundamental reality involved in this “preliminary” search for God qua God that “leaps” would have to appear everywhere. By not grounding intellectual steps “in” reality, the only God we could ultimately “conceive” would be a “leaping” God, something like an “infinite” super-being. From this to “super-man” is only a step, because the direction has been lost. Aberrant intellection. Zubiri recaptures the sense of direction “towards” God, and brings us to what is the “only” historical way to God. A way fundamented “in” reality, and our intelligence recognizing that God qua God has to be the absolutely absolute reality and ground of our own relatively absolute reality “in” Him. A God that really cares about each one of us, and comes to meet us, not only intellectually, but “in” reality.

One word of warning about the use of “yo” by Zubiri. The Spanish “yo” is rendered as “I” in English. There is no English “i”, just as there is no "Yo" in Spanish. However, Zubiri writes “Yo” to make a profound distinction. To keep this distinction alive in the English text we shall use “I” for the Spanish “Yo”, and “I” for the usual “yo”. With this, Zubiri is pointing to the difference between the I as the being of the substantive, a posterior act of the substantive I, and the I of the substantive reality. The I of the being of the substantive is a reaffirmation of the I of the substantive reality. Something Zubiri will explain. I mention it now so the reader may be prepared. It is an important metaphysical distinction that must be kept in the English text.

With respect to the quotations in Hebrew, Arabic, and Greek, I have decided to use transliterations in this website, to avoid their loss due to lack of proper fonts to read them. In some cases Zubiri also provided transliterations, and in others he just gave the transliteration. For other languages Zubiri only used transliteration, as the editor indicates. On these I have avoided the more complicated phonetic diacritic marks which would require special phonetic fonts to read them. I mention it because Zubiri had mastered all the languages he quotes, and his quotations are fully accurate. The decision to accomodate has been my own in order to make the terms somewhat understandable even without those diacritic marks. I know the experts will extend their benevolence.

My thanks to Dr. Thomas B. Fowler, Jr., President of the Zubiri Foundation of North America for his valuable suggestions.

{i}

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Religions and their history constituted one of the most important intellectual preoccupations of Xavier Zubiri. As he did with other intellectual disciplines, Zubiri did not wish to keep in mind for his philosophical reflections only the results of the investigations of other disciplines, but was also interested in acquiring a direct contact with their methods and activities. Besides knowing the work of the historians and sociologists of religion, of the phenomenology of religion and of theology, Zubiri dedicated himself, primarily during the 1930’s, to the study of oriental languages and cultures, and to the direct translation of their texts, first in Rome and afterwards in Paris. The article of 1935 En torno al problema de Dios (“In regard to the problem of God”, incorporated into Naturaleza, historia, Dios, 9ª ed., Madrid, 1987, pp. 417-454) [Nature, History, God, tr. by T. B. Fowler, Jr.], where Zubiri introduces the concept of religation; the “Note sur la Philosophie de la Religion“ (“Note about the Philosophy of Religion”) (Bulletin de l’Institut Catholique de Paris, vol. 28, no. 10, 1937, pp. 333-341), written for a course at the Catholic Institute of Paris; and the paper “A la mémoire du P. Lagrange, O.P., Docteur de la tradition biblique“ (“To the memory of Fr. Lagrange, O.P., Doctor of Biblical Tradition”) (Chroniques du Foyer des Ètudiants Catholiques, no. 9, 1938, pp. 3-7) display the first philosophical and theological fruits of these investigations.

His interest in studies of this type did not disappear {ii} during Zubiri’s years of maturation and intellectual plenitude. There are, in addition to some isolated publications such as the article Zurvanismo (Zoroastrianism) written for the Gran Enciclopedia del Mundo ("Great World Encyclopedia") (Bilbao, 1964, vol. 19, pp. 485-486), and his participation in the III Convegno di Studi di Filosofia della Religione (III Conference of Studies about the Philosophy of Religion) at Peruggia, many unpublished manuscripts, mostly written for the non-university conference seminars dedicated to philosophical reflection about religions.

In 1965 Zubiri approached the theme of religions philosophically in two seminars, one at Madrid (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones) (The philosophical problem of the history of religions), and a shorter one at Barcelona (El problema de Dios en la historia de las religiones) (The problem of God in the history of religions). In the 1968 seminar on El hombre y el problema de Dios (Man and the problem of God) there appeared again, not only the theme of religation, but also several references to the history of religions as a philosophical and theological problem. In 1971 Zubiri delivered a wide ranging seminar on El problema teologal del hombre: Dios, religión, Cristianismo (The theological problem of man: God, religion, Christianity). This seminar presented the three part division into which Zubiri placed the problem of religions. A first part, entitled El hombre y Dios (Man and God), was the object of a new seminar in 1973 at Rome, which would result in the publication of his posthumous work with that title (El hombre y Dios, Madrid, 1984). The third part, dedicated to Christianity, recapitulated the themes of the seminar Reflexiones filosóficas sobre algunos problemas de teología (Philosophical reflections about some problems of theology) given in 1967. The content corresponding to one of these conferences, greatly developed afterwards, was published in 1981 in the article "Reflexiones filosóficas sobre la Eucaristía" (Philosophical reflections on the Eucharist) (Estudios eclesiásticos, no. 56, 1981, pp. 41-59). The conferences of the second part of the 1971 seminar, entitled Religión y religiones (Religion and religions) have remained unpublished up to now except for brief references to them in the article {iii} El problema teologal del hombre (The theological problem of man), published in 1975 and incorporated into El hombre y Dios (pp. 369-383).

Both seminars of 1965, and the second part of the 1971 seminar display a similar structure, which is also revealed in an index, which Zubiri himself prepared for the 1965 Madrid seminar. In some instances the seminars are almost identical, since Zubiri was using the typed pages of a transcript from an earlier seminar, corrected by himself, as a departure point for the new seminar. The differences primarily have to do with the length assigned to each of the points into which Zubiri divided his analysis, and also, naturally, to the progressive maturity and precision of some of the concepts. The latter seemed to suggest that the best way to edit the unpublished material was to take the text of 1971 as a base, supplementing it with references in notes or appendices to the previous seminars. However, several reasons militated against it. First, the second part of the 1971 seminar presupposes —as part of the analysis of the problem of God in the first part of the seminar— the important exposition of religation, which appears in the seminars of 1965, and therefore does not include it. In the second place, the transcript of the two 1965 seminars had been carefully corrected by Zubiri, including the insertion of texts at some important places, hand-written or typed by Zubiri himself; while the second part of the 1971 seminar was not revised. Finally, the elaboration of some concrete problems is much more extensive and precise both in the seminars of 1965, and in some sections of the 1968 seminar dealing with religions.

The foregoing led us to the following option. As an outline of the present work we have followed the index prepared by Zubiri {iv} for the 1965 Madrid seminar. However, we have not taken any of the seminars as the only basic text, but in each instance we have chosen what we considered the most finished text, placing in notes and appendices those observations and reflections of Zubiri stemming from the other seminars. Of course, the reader is always informed about the origin of each of the passages, so that those studying Zubiri, even though not facing a critical edition in the strictest sense, will be able to judge by themselves the differences between seminars. The result is a work whose structure and text belong to Zubiri, and only to him. Even the titles of the chapters and sections, as well as the transitions among them, proceed from Zubiri himself. The only responsibility of the editor has been the preference in each case for one the seminars, the inclusion of particular texts of Zubiri as notes or appendices, and the slight corrections implied by the change from the oral to the written style, keeping in mind that the great majority of these corrections had been made by Zubiri while revising the typed pages of the seminars.

As will be noted, the quotations in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic have been kept in their original form, since this is the one Zubiri used while correcting the typed pages of his seminars. In the case of other languages like Arabic or Iranian we have preferred, following Zubiri, the use of transcription. Also, the Hebrew terms in frequent use, for example Yahweh, have been transcribed. The notes at the foot of the page are the work of the editor unless the contrary is indicated.

For the correct reading of this work one must not forget that it constitutes in a certain way the continuation of Man and God. Indeed, the first part of the present {v} book, dedicated to the exposition of religation, gathers and partially condenses some of the key points of that work. However, the philosophical consequences of many of the theses in the present volume will only be evaluated correctly if one keeps in mind Man and God, and the other philosophical writings of Zubiri, especially the three volumes of Sentient Intelligence. The reader is referred to them by notes placed at the most critical points. On the other hand, the meditations of Zubiri throughout these pages provide many clues towards the understanding of the evolution, and perhaps even the genesis of several fundamental concepts of his philosophy. In addition, the present work, which makes several excursions into the field of theology, comprises a necessary preparation for the study of Christianity, which will be the subject of a new volume of unpublished manuscripts soon to be published. This will finally provide in three volumes, the three parts of Zubiri's examination of the “theological problem” in which man consists.

Finally, I would like to thank Carmen Castro for her valuable help and suggestions, the Xavier Zubiri Foundation —especially Asunción Medinaveitia and Diego Gracia— for all the assistance provided to the present publication, and Gabino Uríbarri for his detailed revision of the text.

Antonio González
Madrid, February, 1993