John Valk: Worldviews: A Comprehensive Account to Knowing Self and Others. Cham: Springer, 2021, xiv+307 pp.

John Valk's book Worldviews (2021) is a fine addition to the current debate on worldviews in the philosophy of religion and epistemology.Recently, the discussion on worldviews has been driven by the goal of widening traditional philosophy of religion and religious education to become more of a general philosophy of world-views and worldview education (see e.g.Stenmark 2022).There is also an older tradition of the philosophy of worldviews, by authors like Wilhelm Dilthey and David Naugle (2002), who perceive worldviews as cognitive and moral frameworks.The book in question relates to both of these traditions.Additionally, the book offers an account of worldviews as frameworks for understanding ourselves, others and the world.This is done through addressing questions about identity, the cultural dimensions of a world-view, existential and ultimate questions, of ontology and epistemology and lastly about the interpretation of universal values.The first chapter of the book concerns definitions and aspects of a worldview.As a starting-point, Valk takes Naugle's and Dilthey's accounts of world-views as signsystems formulated as: "frameworks by which we understand others, ourselves, and the world in which we live.They are the integrative and interpretative frameworks by which order, and disorder are judged, and the standard by which reality is managed and pursued" (13).This means that worldviews include a belief-system that offers a view of life closely related to ways of action, for example, the practices of worship in Abrahamic traditions.Furthermore, worldviews are associated with communal ways of life.Belief-systems, practices and community on the one hand, and beliefs, values and behaviours on the other hand, therefore, go together in world-view frameworks.Worldviews give starting-points for inquiries, and therefore they are first accepted on faith.Accepting world-views on faith does not, however, lead to relativism.The world does not reduce to a world-view, and one cannot live according to an "anything goes" relativism in practice.Finally, in the first chapter Valk introduces five groups of worldviews and classifies them on a religious-secular continuum.These are capitalism, consumerism, exclusive humanism, spiritualism and monotheism.The immanent worldviews include capitalism, consumerism and varieties of exclusive humanism, like scientism.Religious worldviews divide into monotheistic and spiritual ones.Each worldview has six aspects: identity, culture, ultimate questions, ontology, epistemology and the application of universal values in particular cases.