Stephen Kaplan, Different Paths, Different Summits: A Model for Religious Pluralism.

Allen, William C.

Stephen Kaplan, Different Paths, Different Summits: A Model for Religious Pluralism. Lanham, MD; Boulder, CO; New York; and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2002. Pp. 187. $72.00, cloth; $27.95, paper.

This groundbreaking work moves the discourse on comparative religion beyond a single common ground to many higher grounds, whose diverse paths do not all lead to a single mountain peak; there are many mountains, paths, and peaks. In this book Kaplan invites the reader to envision how more than one religious tradition may ultimately be true, each leading to an utterly different ultimacy and each equally valid. The book presents a distinctive form of religious pluralism. It is a cogent and compelling presentation of the logical framework in which ultimate reality may be conceived of as plural, not singular; many, not one.

Kaplan proposes a different form of religious pluralism. He calls it an ontological and soteriological pluralism. The truth of a religion is distinctly defined in terms of its soteriological efficacy: Can it deliver the salvation it promises? In this model of religious pluralism, different individuals with different beliefs and different religious practices reach different ultimate conclusions to human existence, different salvations. His model shows us how it is possible to imagine that salvation for some people can be discovered in an I-Thou relationship with the Divine Other, while others achieve liberation when they realize that there is no other and no Other, just the one Self; still others realize ultimate truth by realizing that there is neither self, nor Self, only no-self. Kaplan's basic thesis is that each religious tradition that is following a specific path may discover an ultimate reality that is coextensive with all other ultimate realities.

The book entertains the idea that there could be multiple forms of salvation or liberation. In this form of religious pluralism, there are different paths and different summits. To reach one of these ultimate realities, one must choose a particular path and pursue it diligently. There are real commitments to be made, which may have real consequences. In Kaplan's model, individuals can strive for and achieve that which they seek. There is more than one ontological option. One's ultimate "state of existence" is not metaphysically dictated, nor is it ontologically limited. One's ultimate "state of existence" is a matter of choice.

Kaplan's proposal is a democratization of metaphysics. Democracy, understood as the ability and freedom to choose, is encoded, as it were, in the ontological structure of the universe. One has freedom of "Being," the freedom to choose the type of "Being" that one wishes to be. Kaplan's model is not metaphysical idealism. One does not create a metaphysical world of one's own choosing; rather, one can come to know and experience that which one intends to know. If successful, one becomes what one wants to become. Intentionality becomes ontology. In this model, oneness, emptiness, and individuality are ways of being that one chooses--not metaphysical impositions from a monolithically structured universe.

This book is a new look at the relationship between religious traditions. Kaplan's model of religious pluralism raises new questions that are as important as the new ideas his book brings to the roundtable of religion.

William C. Allen, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA