This book analyzes the ideas central to the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard to show that they are biblical in origin, both ontologically and historically. Polka argues that Schopenhauer has an altogether false conception of the fundamental ideas of the Bible and of Christianity, which leaves his philosophy irredeemably contradictory.

The aim of this study is to show that, because the single individual, to whom Kierkegaard dedicates his entire authorship, is no less secular than religious, the secular does not exist outside of the religious and the religious does not exist outside of the secular. To this end four concepts central to Kierkegaard are examined: (1) authority; (2) the either/or decision or choice and its relationship to the concepts of stages and history; (3) indirect communication and the claim that truth (...) is subjectivity; and (4) metaphor as the language of spirit, both divine and human. (shrink)

In Between Philosophy and Religion Volumes I and II, Brayton Polka examines Spinoza's three major works—on religion, politics, and ethics—in order to show that his thought is at once biblical and modern. This book and its companion volume are essential reading for any scholar of Spinoza.

In Between Philosophy and Religion Volumes I and II, Brayton Polka examines Spinoza's three major works--on religion, politics, and ethics--in order to show that his thought is at once biblical and modern. This book and its companion volume will be essential reading for any scholar of Spinoza.

In Between Philosophy and Religion Volumes I and II, Brayton Polka examines Spinoza's three major works—on religion, politics, and ethics—in order to show that his thought is at once biblical and modern. This book and its companion volume are essential reading for any scholar of Spinoza.

Philosophy, when understood to embody the values that are fundamental to modernity, is biblical in origin, both historically and ontologically. Central to this idea is the question famously posed by Tertullian: What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? The answer – as based on a comprehensive and systematic discussion of the key texts and ideas of Spinoza, Vico, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche – is that we can overcome the conventional opposition between reason and faith, between philosophy and (...) theology, and between the secular and the religious only if we learn to see that, as Spinoza shows us, both philosophy (reason) and theology (faith) are based on caritas: love – on the divine command to do unto others what you want others to do unto you. Provided throughout is a commentary on how fundamentally different philosophy is in the Greek and in the biblical traditions (in Athens and in Jerusalem). Whereas Socrates argues that (human) desire and the (divine) good are contradictory opposites, Spinoza shows that it is human desire that truly constitutes the divine good of all. This book would be indispensable to courses (both undergraduate and graduate) in philosophy, religious studies, and the history of ideas – in interdisciplinary courses in the humanities, generally – that focus on the values that are central, both historically and ontologically, to modernity. (shrink)

Modernity between Wagner and Nietzsche argues that the operas and writings of Wagner contradict the values that are fundamental to modernity. Analyzing Wagner’s works in contrast to the philosophical thought of Nietzsche, Brayton Polka examines how Wagner breaks with Nietzsche and their common influencer, Schopenhauer.

Brayton Polka’s book, On Poetry and Philosophy: Thinking Metaphorically with Wordsworth and Kant, is unique in bringing poetry and philosophy together in a single study. The poet and the philosopher whom he makes central to his project are both revolutionary founders of modernity, Wordsworth of romantic poetry and Kant of critical philosophy. Both the poet and the philosopher, as the author makes clear in his study, found their principles, at once poetically metaphorical and philosophically critical, on the religious values that (...) are central to the Bible—that all human beings are equal before God. (shrink)

Paradox and contradiction constitute the two ways of the world. Polka traces these ideas and the way they have shaped the Western philosophical world view through close readings of Montaigne, Descartes, Spinoza, and Vico.

I argue in my paper that, when the ?twofold standpoint,? in terms of which Kant undertakes to set metaphysics upon the revolutionary path of critical reason, is truly assessed, we discover that the fundamental distinction that he makes between subject and object, between thinking (together with desiring and willing) and knowing, between thinking the thing in itself and knowing objects of possible experience, or between freedom and nature, recapitulates the ontological argument demonstrating the necessary relationship between thought and existence.

In this paper it is argued that, while the case that Antony Flew makes against philosophically invalid arguments for the existence of God is generally sound, he fails to comprehend the power and cogency of the ontological argument. Thus, his conception of the grounds of morality, separate from the biblical tradition of theology, is by no means compelling. This paper aims to show that the rational concept of morality that Flew rightly claims to uphold is not only consistent with but (...) also presupposes, paradoxically, the ontological argument for the existence of God. Central ideas of Kant and, above all, of Spinoza are called upon to show that the nexus between morality and theology, between philosophy and God, is that central to the ontological argument. The conclusion of the paper is that, just as philosophy without God is empty, so God without philosophy is blind. (shrink)

In my essay I argue that the critical distinction that Spinoza makes between two concepts of desire, as also between two concepts of the good, captures the distinction that Tertullian makes in posing the question: What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? In identifying the good with desire—desire with the good—and in denying that desire is dependent on the good in itself, Spinoza shows us that philosophy, as ethics, belongs to Jerusalem, to the Bible, and not to Athens. We (...) see, then, that the distinction between Athens and Jerusalem is not the distinction between philosophy and the Bible, between reason and faith, between the secular and the religious. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 1, Page 87-94, February 2012.

The European Legacy, Volume 17, Issue 4, Page 529-536, July 2012.

Visions: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1930–1934. By C.G. Jung. Ed. Claire Douglas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997) 2 vols., xl + 1,458 pp. $125.00 cloth.

The European Legacy, Volume 16, Issue 5, Page 649-652, August 2011.

In my paper, I undertake to show that the God of the Bible is the subject of modern philosophy, i.e., that philosophy is biblical and that the Bible is philosophical. Central to the argument of my paper is an analysis of the fundamental difference between the philosophy of Aristotle, as based on the law of contradiction and thus on the contradictory opposition between necessity and existence, and the philosophy of, in particular, Spinoza and Kant, as based on the transcendental logic (...) of the necessary relationship of thought and existence. Thus, I argue that the ontological argument demonstrates the necessary existence of the thinking subject and of the subject thought, at once human and divine. In short, metaphysics is practical reason, the practice of doing unto others what you want others to do unto you, and reason is metaphysical practice, the practice of proving that there is one thing that you, a subject, cannot think without it necessarily existing, and that is the other subject. (shrink)

This study argues that Shakespeare's aim in Coriolanus is twofold: (1) to depict the ancient world of Rome as dominated by contradiction; and (2) to signal to us moderns, in the biblical tradition, that we can comprehend or, in other words, interpret the contradictory world of the ancients solely on the basis of a paradoxical world elsewhere, beyond contradiction. Shakespeare thus shows us how important it is to distinguish between the contradictory values of antiquity, from which the Romans (like the (...) Greeks) know no exit, and the paradoxical values of modernity, whose interpretive basis, the love of neighbor—interpret others as you would have others interpret you—provides us moderns with a world of otherness (Augustine's City of God) by which we can overcome the earthly contradictions dividing us. (shrink)

The critical issue that I examine in my study, which is divided into two parts, is how we are to interpret, within what Kierkegaard regards as “the present age,” his concept of the single individual when viewed in light of the hermeneutical distinction that he makes between Christianity and Christendom. Since the distinction between Christianity and Christendom is not one between the religious and the secular or between faith and reason but one between what he calls indirect communication and direct (...) communication, we find that the single individual of the present age of modernity is at once religious and secular. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 16, Issue 7, Page 969-975, December 2011.

In Part 2 of my study I focus on Works of Love of Kierkegaard in analyzing his concept of the single individual in light of what I call the hermeneutics of the relationship of the religious and the secular. I continue to emphasize that the hermeneutical distinction that Kierkegaard critically makes between Christianity and Christendom is the distinction, not between the religious and the secular but between, rather, a true understanding of the relationship of the religious and the secular, on (...) the one hand, and an idolatrous conception of that relationship, on the other. (shrink)

The European Legacy, Volume 16, Issue 4, Page 527-529, 01Jul2011.

The prolific philosopher Mark C. Taylor, in his book, Abiding Grace, appears to be bringing his distinguished career to an end. The final chapter of his book is entitled “Ending Ending.” Taylor int...