A Primal Perspective on the Philosophy of Religion

What am I trying to accomplish through the exercise which I have undertaken, namely, to examine the philosophy of religion in the light of primal religions? If to choose someone elses expression to characterize ones own intellectual endeavour is an indication of ones own lack of imagination, then I must plead guilty to that charge; but not to that of lack of gratitude, for I have to thank Robin Horton for describing, better than I can, what I have attempted in the book. It is an exercise in what he calls translational understanding. I quote him now: By translational understanding, I mean the kind of understanding of a particular thought-system that results from the successful translation of the language and conceptual system that embody it into terms of a language and conceptual system that currently enjoy world status. In talking of translation, of course, I am not just talking of the provision of dictionary equivalents for individual words or sentences. I am talking about finding a world-language equivalent for a whole realm of discourse, and of showing, in world-language terms, what the point of that realm of discourse is in the life of the people who use it. Translation, in this broader sense, can be very arduous. There may be no realm of discourse in the world language that exactly fits the bill. We may have to bend and refashion existing realms, and even redefine their guiding intentions.