By Schubert Ogden
Is philosophy "hot" (religious) or "cold" (contemplative)?
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But does this mean, then, that philosophy has only one purely analytic, "descriptivist" function, as distinct from another properly existential, "prescriptivist" function--as function—as Phillips at least appears to infer? Mulhall seems to me to argue convincingly that, insofar as philosophy of religion distinguishes, as it must, between "superstition," on the one hand, and "a more genuine religious attitude," on the other, it is inevitably functioning prescriptively, not merely descriptively. But I see nothing in allowing this that would warrant supposing that philosophy must therefore be "hot," rather than "cold"--whether —whether or not Mulhall would agree with Phillips in supposing this.
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