In The Paradigm of Recognition. Freedom as Overcoming the Fear of Death Paul Cobben elaborates a paradigm of recognition based on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This framework enables fundamental criticism of Honneth’s three forms of social freedom.
Scope: theology, philosophy, ethics of various religions and ethical systems and relevant portions of anthropology, mythology, folklore, biology, psychology, economics and sociology.
Often referred to as the father of modern theology, F.D.E. Schleiermacher occasioned a revolution in theology having a decisive impact on all subsequent theology. In this original study, Jacqueline Mariña argues that Schleiermachers philosophical ethics constitutes a completely original project, and is arguably his most important achievement. Mariña examines Schleiermachers claim that the self relates to the whence of all that is through the ground of self-consciousness, and shows how this understanding allowed him to develop a philosophical system integrally linking religion and ethics. Because this whence relates to self-consciousness in the way of a formal cause, the most important criteria for what constitutes genuine religion are the ethical fruits expressive of a proper relation to the divine. In Christian Faith Schleiermacher argues that insofar as the personal self-consciousness has been transformed through openness to this whence, the actions that arise from it, too, will be different from those of the former self. This book is an analysis of how Schleiermacher conceived of this transformation, the conditions of its possibility, and the nature of its effects. This is accomplished through an examination of his metaphysics of the self, especially Schleiermachers understanding of the immediate self-consciousness and its relation to the divine causality, the nature of self-consciousness and personal identity, the nature of agency, and the relation between self and society. This book demonstrates that Schleiermachers achievement offers a compelling, live option for contemporary debates concerning the relation of religion and morality.
In an age of self-affirmation and self-assertion, "selfless love" can appear as a threat to the lover's personal well-being. This perception jars with the Biblical promise that we gain our life through losing it and therefore calls for a theological response. In conversation with the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich and the atheistic moral philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch, Selfless Love and Human Flourishing in Paul Tillich and Iris Murdoch enquires into the anthropological grounds on which selfless love can be said to build up, rather than undermine, the lover's self. It proposes that while the implausibility of selfless love was furthered by the modern deconstruction of the self, both Tillich and Murdoch utilize this very deconstruction towards explicating and restoring the link between selfless love and human flourishing. Julia T. Meszaros shows that they use the modern diagnosis of the human being's lack of a stable and independent self as manifest in Sartre's existentialism in support of an understanding of the self as relational and fallen. This leads them to view a loving orientation away from self and a surrender to the other as critical to the full flourishing of human selfhood. In arguing that Tillich and Murdoch defend the link between selfless love and human flourishing through reference to the human being's ontological selflessness, Meszaros closely engages Soren Kierkegaard's earlier attempt to keep selfless love and human flourishing in a productive, dialectical tension. She also examines the breakdown of this tension in the later figures of Anders Nygren, Simone Weil, and Jean-Paul Sartre, and addresses the pitfalls of this breakdown. Her examination concludes by arguing that the link between selfless love and human flourishing would be strengthened by a more resolute endorsement of a personal God, and of the reciprocal nature of selfless love.
Chapell puts good works and obedience in proper perspective. This book will challenge readers to discover the gracious source of joy and strength they will need for a lifelong pursuit of holiness.
This study is an attempt to examine the relationships between religious belief and the humanism of the Enlightenment in the philosophy of Hegel and of a group of thinkers who related to his thought in various ways during the 1840's. It begins with a study of the ways in which Hegel attempted to evolve a genuinely Christian humanism by his demonstration that the modern understanding of man as a free and rational subject derived its strength and validity from the union of God and human existence in the incarnation. The rest of this study is con cerned with two different forms of opposition to Hegel: first, the criti cal discipleship of the Young Hegelians and Moses Hess, who insisted that Hegel's notion of Christian humanism was false because religious belief was necessarily inimical to a clear consciousness of social evil and the determination to abolish it; second, the religious opposition to the Enlightenment in the thought of Schelling and Kierkegaard, which emphasized God's transcendence to human reason and the insig nificance of secular history. In the years leading up to the revolution of 1848, Hegel's synthesis was rejected in favour of the assertion of atheistic humanism or religious otherworldliness. Chapter One, after discussing the young Hegel's critique of the social and political effects of Christianity, examines the union of religi ous belief, speculative philosophy and the rational state in Hegel's mature system.
This book analyzes the writings of Karl Rahner, Karl Barth, and Vedanta Desika to disclose how each construes "piety" and "responsibility" as integral to each other. Each theologian expresses a fundamental unity of love of God and love of neighbour. Sheveland explores this unity in ecumenical and interreligious frameworks, showing how these authors privilege theology as practice, enactment, or simply as ethical. He uses the Renaissance genre of musical polyphony as a methodological tool by which to explore the aesthetic quality and the similarity-in-difference of the theological voices being compared. Polyphony's application to comparative theology includes the avoidance of caricature, domestication, and antagonism. In place of these is offered a fundamentally aesthetic paradigm by which to hear theological voices in terms of their unity-in-distinction.
This collection of essays investigates the notions of life, living organisms, and human nature in Classical German Philosophy from a historical and conceptual perspective. Its 19 chapters move from the peculiarities of organic life to the peculiarities of the distinctly human life form and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of naturalistic accounts of life. In light of the growing interest in nature within current philosophical debates, the book provides an overview of what the philosophical epoch of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Humboldt, the Romantics, Hegel, and others can contribute to our understanding of life today. The collection of essays represents a plurality of approaches that reflects the pluralism of the tradition itself – highlighting the liveliness and polyphonic nature of the issues at stake and the ways in which they were approached in post-Kantian thought.In combining historical and philosophical investigation, the collection constitutes a unique resource for scholars and graduate students working in various areas related to the study of nature in philosophy, contemporary theories of science, and the humanities more generally.