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Only by confronting such uncanny and difficult figures, de Vries claims, can one begin to think and act upon the ethical and political imperatives of our day.--Richard Rorty, Stanford University "MLN"
In this book the author suggests how Continental philosophy of religion can intersect with political philosophy, environmental philosophy, and theories of knowledge.
In this book, abstract intellectual argument meets ordinary human experience on matters such as the existence of God and the relation between religion and morality.
Who or what comes after God? In the wake of God, as the last 50 years of philosophy has shown, God comes back again. These essays represent responses to Richard Kearney's work on this topic.
Through a bold and historically rooted vision for the future of philosophy of religion, The Sacrality of the Secular maps new and compelling possibilities for a nonsecularist secularity. In recent decades, philosophers in the continental tradition have taken a notable interest in the return of religion, a departure from the supposed hegemony of the secular age that began with the Enlightenment. At the same time, anthropologists and sociologists have begun to reject the once-dominant secularization thesis, which both prescribed and described the demise of religion in modern societies. In The Sacrality of the Secular, Bradley B. Onishi reconsiders the role of religion at a time when secularity is more tenuous than it might seem. He demonstrates that philosophy’s entanglement with religion led, perhaps counterintuitively, to vibrant reconceptions of the secular well before the unraveling of the secularization thesis or the turn to religion. Through rich readings of Heidegger, Bataille, Weber, and others, Onishi rethinks what philosophy can contribute to our understanding of religion and the wider social and cultural world.
What do we talk about when we talk about "religion"? Is it an array of empirical facts about historical human civilizations? Or is religion what is in essence unpredictable--perhaps the very emergence of the new? In what ways are the legacies of religion--its powers, words, things, and gestures--reconfiguring themselves as the elementary forms of life in the twenty-first century? Given the Latin roots of the word religion and its historical Christian uses, what sense, if any, does it make to talk about "religion" in other traditions? Where might we look for common elements that would enable us to do so? Has religion as an overarching concept lost all its currency, or does it ineluctably return--sometimes in unexpected ways--the moment we attempt to do without it? This book explores the difficulties and double binds that arise when we ask "What is religion?" Offering a marvelously rich and diverse array of perspectives, it begins the task of rethinking "religion" and "religious studies" in a contemporary world. Opening essays on the question "What is religion?" are followed by clusters exploring the relationships among religion, theology, and philosophy and the links between religion, politics, and law. Pedagogy is the focus of the following section. Religion is then examined in particular contexts, from classical times to the present Pentacostal revival, leading into an especially rich set of essays on religion, materiality, and mediatization. The final section grapples with the ever-changing forms that "religion" is taking, such as spirituality movements and responses to the ecological crisis. Featuring the work of leading scholars from a wide array of disciplines, traditions, and cultures, Religion: Beyond a Concept will help set the agenda for religious studies for years to come. It is the first of five volumes in a collection entitled The Future of the Religious Past, the fruit of a major international research initiative funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research.
Originally published in 1999. If religion once seemed to have played out its role in the intellectual and political history of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. In Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, Hent de Vries argues that a turn to religion discernible in recent philosophy anticipates and accompanies this development in the contemporary world. Though the book reaches back to Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and earlier, it takes its inspiration from the tradition of French phenomenology, notably Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and, especially, Jacques Derrida. Tracing how Derrida probes the discourse on religion, its metaphysical presuppositions, and its transformations, de Vries shows how this author consistently foregrounds the unexpected alliances between a radical interrogation of the history of Western philosophy and the religious inheritance from which that philosophy has increasingly sought to set itself apart. De Vries goes beyond formal analogies between the textual practices of deconstruction and so-called negative theology to address the necessity for a philosophical thinking that situates itself at once close to and at the farthest remove from traditional manifestations of the religious and the theological. This paradox is captured in the phrase adieu (à dieu), borrowed from Levinas, which signals at once a turn toward and a leave-taking from God—and which also gestures toward and departs from the other of this divine other, the possibility of radical evil. Only by confronting such uncanny and difficult figures, de Vries claims, can one begin to think and act upon the ethical and political imperatives of our day.
What is the future of Continental philosophy of religion? These forward-looking essays address the new thinkers and movements that have gained prominence since the generation of Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, and Levinas and how they will reshape Continental philosophy of religion in the years to come. They look at the ways concepts such as liberation, sovereignty, and post-colonialism have engaged this new generation with political theology and the new pathways of thought that have opened in the wake of speculative realism and recent findings in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. Readers will discover new directions in this challenging and important area of philosophical inquiry.
This book explores the intellectual discourse in post-revolutionary Iran. It focuses on Abdolkarim Soroush, a leading Muslim liberal thinker, whose theory of religion is regarded as highly relevant to the current theological and intellectual dynamics in the Islamic world. The Philosophy of Religion in Post-Revolutionary Iran discusses why and how Soroush's thought has developed from an Islamic apologetic modernist theology in the 1970s to a liberal theory about religion in post-revolutionary Iran. Through a close and detailed analysis of Soroush's main theories, the book argues that Soroush's thought evolved, through reception of post-positivist epistemology and interaction with Islamism in practice, into a historicist and pluralist theory of religion, a theory that regards religion, including Islam, as being a contextual and historical dialogue between man and the Absolute. The book also highlights some shortcomings of Soroush’s reform project. Specifically, it notes that Soroush, consciously or unconsciously, has not yet admitted many extensive consequences of his theories, such as those relating to historicity of religious rituals (‘ibadat) or recognition of the post-Mohammadan revelations and religions. In addition, some other features and implications of Soroush’s thought, such as a historical-critical approach to the Koran, post-secular and post-Islamist theologies, and his dialogical approach that goes beyond the Orientalism–Occidentalism dichotomy, are discussed. Providing a detailed overview on this leading Muslim thinker, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Islamic Philosophy, Middle East Studies, and Philosophy of Religion.
Long past the time when philosophers from different perspectives had joined the funeral procession that declared the death of God, a renewed interest has arisen in regard to the questions of God and religion in philosophy. This book brings some of these philosophical views together to present an overview of the philosophical scene in its dealings with religion, but also to move beyond the outsider's perspective. Reflecting on these philosophical interpretations from a fundamental theological perspective, the authors discover in what way these interpretations can challenge an understanding of today's faith.