In this essay I examine the relation between religious non-realism and religious pluralism. Religious pluralism is celebrated by it's adherents, to be benevolent and tolerant towards other religions truth claims and practices. Religious non-realism is also, by its adherents, praised for its including way to look upon truth claims and differing opinions about reality. When it comes to questions like what there is and what is not, does God exist or does he not etc. the religious non-realist is prone to less dogmatism and definite answers than metaphysical realists. Or at least so does the non-realists themselves like to think. What I examine in this essay is whether religious non-realism pragmatically implies religious pluralism, or if a non-realist judiciously can dismiss religious pluralism and instead adopt a form of confessional view of a specifik religion. Religious exclusivism, like the one Alvin Plantinga defends, rejects the possibility of x being both true and false. If a religious claim is taken to be true then incompatible claims have to be considered false according to this view. This fits poorly whith religious non-realism since the latter does not embrace a correspondance theory of truth. Religious pluralism is strongly criticized, among others for leaving “God” or other religious entities empty and whithout characteristics or content. This, because if God is litterally indescribable and unreachable, we would have no reason to believe that God has the chatacteristics we think he has. If religious pluralism cannot answer to the criticism, and if non-realism can not help pluralism evade the problems, then we are in need of a religious inclusivism that does not depend on metaphysical realism. I propose, what I have called, a pragmatic non-realistic inclusivism as an answer to the problem. This is a non-realistic theory that evades metaphysical realism and reductionism of religion, but nevertheless can prefere one religion before others. Not because one religion is concidered to have metaphysical and objective truth while others do not, but because one could prefere a specific religious language and consider that religion to be the most adequate response to human life

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Dans cette thèse, je propose une lecture renouvelée de l’itinéraire philosophique d’Hilary Putnam concernant la problématique du réalisme. Mon propos consiste essentiellement à défendre l’idée selon laquelle il y aurait beaucoup plus de continuité, voir une certaine permanence, dans la manière dont Putnam a envisagé la question du réalisme tout au long de sa carrière. Pour arriver à une telle interprétation de son oeuvre, j’ai essentiellement suivi deux filons. D’abord, dans un ouvrage du début des années 2000, Ethics without Ontology (2004), Putnam établit un parallèle entre sa conception de l’objectivité en philosophie des mathématiques et en éthique. Le deuxième filon vient d’une remarque qu’il fait, dans l’introduction du premier volume de ses Philosophical Papers (1975), affirmant que la forme de réalisme qu’il présupposait dans ses travaux des années 1960-1970 était la même que celle qu’il défendait en philosophie des mathématiques et qu’il souhaitait défendre ultérieurement en éthique. En suivant le premier filon, il est possible de mieux cerner la conception générale que se fait Putnam de l’objectivité, mais pour comprendre en quel sens une telle conception de l’objectivité n’est pas propre aux mathématiques, mais constitue en réalité une conception générale de l’objectivité, il faut suivre le second filon, selon lequel Putnam aurait endossé, durant les années 1960-1970, le même type de réalisme en philosophie des sciences et en éthique qu’en philosophie des mathématiques. Suivant cette voie, on se rend compte qu’il existe une similarité structurelle très forte entre le premier réalisme de Putnam et son réalisme interne. Après avoir établi la parenté entre le premier et le second réalisme de Putnam, je montre, en m’inspirant de commentaires du philosophe ainsi qu’en comparant le discours du réalisme interne au discours de son réalisme actuel (le réalisme naturel du commun des mortels), que, contrairement à l’interprétation répandue, il existe une grande unité au sein de sa conception du réalisme depuis les années 1960 à nos jours. Je termine la thèse en montrant comment mon interprétation renouvelée de l’itinéraire philosophique de Putnam permet de jeter un certain éclairage sur la forme de réalisme que Putnam souhaite défendre en éthique. / In this dissertation I propose a new reading of the philosophical itinerary of Hilary Putnam on the matter of realism. In essence, my purpose is to argue that there is much more continuity than is normally understood, and even a degree of permanence, in the way in which Putnam has viewed the question of realism throughout his career. To arrive at this interpretation of Putnam I essentially followed two veins in his work. First, in a volume published in the early 2000s entitled Ethics without Ontology (2004), Putnam establishes a parallel between his conception of objectivity in the philosophy of mathematics and in ethics. The second vein comes from a comment he made in the introduction to the first volume of his Philosophical Papers (1975) to the effect that the kind of realism he presupposed in his work of the 1960s and 70s was the same that he upheld in the philosophy of mathematics and wished to argue for at a later date in ethics. Following the first vein makes it possible to better grasp Putnam’s general conception of objectivity, but in order to understand how such a conception of objectivity is not unique to mathematics but is instead a general conception of objectivity one must follow the second vein. There, in the 1960s and 70s, Putnam adopted the same kind of realism in the philosophy of science and in ethics as he had in the philosophy of mathematics. Following this path, one realises that there exists a very strong structural similarity between Putnam’s first realism and his internal realism. After establishing this connection between Putnam’s first and second realism, I draw on Putnam’s remarks and compare the internal realism discourse to his current realism (the natural realism of ordinary people) to demonstrate, contrary to the prevalent interpretation, that there has been a great deal of consistency in his conception of realism from the 1960s to the present day. I conclude the dissertation by demonstrating how my new interpretation of Putnam’s philosophical itinerary makes it possible to shed light on the kind of realism he wishes to champion in ethics.

The main purpose of this dissertation is to answer the question of how one can understand the fact that we mean very different things when we say that God exists and when we say that chairs, mountains and trees exist, and that it is still a matter of existence. On the one hand it seems that we talk about the same thing when we say that something exists, irrespective of what it is, on the other hand it seems to be a question of very different things depending on what it is we are talking about as existing. This dissertation seeks to give an understanding of the relation between the concept of truth and the concept of reality. The conclusion is not only that we presuppose these concepts in everything we do, say, believe and think, but that we presuppose a specific understanding of these concepts, namely a concept of objective truth and a concept of an external and mind independent reality. In this dissertation it is also argued that our use of these concepts and that we use them in everything we do – that they are as basic as they are – says something about how it is, about reality. The use of these concepts does not only say something of what we conceptually presuppose but it also says something about what we assume in relation to reality. The conceptual aspect, in this way, has consequences ontologi.