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Wer darüber nachdenkt, ob und wie religiöser Glaube begründet oder kritisiert werden kann, muss auch darüber nachdenken, welche Rationalität und welche Denkregeln bei einem solchen Unternehmen vorausgesetzt werden. Die Frage nach der Rationalität und nach den Denkregeln ist dabei als Frage eines dem Menschen und seiner Lage angemessenen Denkens zu begreifen. Blaise Pascal hat dazu einen Beitrag geleistet, der philosophiegeschichtlich beachtenswert ist und im Horizont moderner religionsphilosophischer Begründungsmodelle weiterführendes Potential bereithält. Erkenntnistheorie und Begründungstheorie werden zurückgebunden an anthropologische Reflexionen über die Fähigkeiten und Grenzen des Menschen und über die Kontextualität seines Daseins.

Much of the writing in Anglo-American epistemology in the twentieth century focused on the conditions for beliefs being'justified.'In a book that seeks to shift the ground of debate within theory of knowledge, William P. Alston finds that the century-long search for a correct account of the nature and conditions of epistemic justification misses the point. Alston calls for that search to be suspended and for talk of epistemic justification to cease. He proposes instead an approach to the epistemology of belief that focuses on the evaluation of various'epistemic desiderata'that may be satisfied by beliefs.Alston finds that features of belief that are desirable for the goals of cognition include having an adequate basis, being formed in a reliable way, and coherence within bodies of belief. In Alston's view, a belief's being based on an adequate ground and its being formed in a reliable way, though often treated as competing accounts of justification, are virtually identical. Beyond'Justification'also contains discussions of fundamental questions about the epistemic status of principles and beliefs and appropriate responses to various kinds of skepticism.

Richard Swinburne offers an original treatment of a question at the heart of epistemology: what makes a belief a rational one, or one which the believer is justified in holding? He maps the various totally different and purportedly rival accounts that philosophers give of epistemic justification ('internalist'and'externalist'), and argues that they are really accounts of different concepts. He distinguishes (as most epistemologists do not) between synchronic justification (justification at a time) and diachronic justification (synchronic justification resulting from adequate investigation) -- both internalist and externalist. He argus that most kinds of justification are worth having because (for different reasons) indicative of truth. However, it is only justification of intermalist kinds that can guide a believer's actions. Swinburne goes on to show the usefulness of the probability calculus in elucidating how empirical evidence makes beliefs probably true: every proposition has an intrinsic probability (an a priori probability independent of empirical evidence) which may be increased or decreased by empirical evidence. This innovative and challenging book will refresh epistemology and rewrite its agenda.