Der Beitrag diskutiert die Rezeption des Werks von Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi in den philosophischen und theologischen Debatten der sogenannten ‚Sattelzeit der Moderne‘. Vor dem Hintergrund von Jacobis Kritik am Gottesbegriff der rationalen Philosophie werden Johann Gottlieb Fichtes und Friedrich Schleiermachers Neubestimmungen von Religion und Gott thematisiert. Dabei zeigt sich, dass es in den Kontroversen über die göttlichen Dingen um die Sinngrundlagen einer sich modernisierenden Gesellschaft und Kultur geht.

The East has seen totality in a far more consistent and systematic way than the West; and India more so than any other civilisation in the East. When the Swami Siddheswarananda came to France to lecture on Vedic philosophy, he entitled his address, Outline of a Philosophy of Totality’. The expression could have been applied to the philosophies of India as a whole. But the world of thought, coextensive with culture, is far broader than philosophy. It is no exaggeration to (...) assert that India is the land of totality par excellence. Is it not even, according to one dictum, bigger than the world …? The notion of totality, implicit or conscious, poetic or theoretical, original or final, is present throughout Indian culture, both in its religion and in its arts, both in its customs as in its language. The Mahabharata, the largest epic poem ever conceived, proclaims: everything in the Mahabharata can be found elsewhere, but what is not in the Mahabharata cannot be found anywhere. Whilst the absolute beginning of a piece of Western music is in keeping with a dramatic time analogous to that of the Creation, Indian music seems to come from the eternity of a universe without transcendence. The body takes on a cosmic meaning through dance. By performing the tandava, the cosmic dance, Shiva Nataraja (‘Lord of the dance’) endlessly creates and destroys worlds. Indian art is an art of proliferation: both the reiteration of motifs sculpted in architecture and the litanies and metaphors spun out in epic poetry are symbolic attempts to capture the totality of the world. Every single element, being, movement or thing within this continuous space and time points towards all the others. The texts describe the sky of Indra with its web of pearls arranged in such a way that when one looks into one, one sees all the others reflecting in it; in the same way, each object of this world is not merely itself but comprises every one of the others and actually is all the others. The culture of India is one of plenitude, presence and continuity. At the opposite extreme, Japan developed a culture based upon the values of emptiness, absence and the interval. When a guru speaks, Valmiki and Vyasa know that it will take them many scores of verses. A Zen master's reply to his disciple takes up a single-line anecdote, or a word, or even a silence. At the other extreme, hundreds of statues line the gopuram of the temple at Madurai: not all of the thirty-three million gods ‘recognized’ in the writings are there, of course, but at least their unbelievable abundance gives us a plausible image of them. (shrink)

In this paper, Anselm’s argument for the uniqueness of God or, more precisely, something through which everything that exists has its being is reconstructed. A first reading of the argument leads to a preliminary reconstruens with one major weakness, namely the incompleteness of a central case distinction. In the successful attempt to construct a more tenable reconstruens some additional premises which are deeply rooted in an Anselmian metaphysics are identified. Anselm’s argument seems to depend on premises such as that if (...) two things have the same nature, then there is one common thing from which they have this nature and in virtue of which they exist. Furthermore it appears that infinite regresses are excluded by the premise that if everything that exists is through something, then there is something through which it is “most truly”. (shrink)

Interviewed by Christian Sheppard about Richard Kearney’s book The God Who May Be (2001), and speaking also of Kearney’s On Stories (2002) and Strangers, Gods and Monsters (2002), David Tracy remarks on Kearney’s development of the possible as a major philosophical and theological category. Showing the importance of the idea of the infinite, he speaks of the need for a hermeneutical moment to follow the initial encounter, and of a call for general criteria of judgment of the Other. He discusses, (...) too, the dangers and the rewards of doing both theology and philosophy at the same time. To him the category of the Impossible enters into the possible and is not only positive but desired. In a conversation that ranges widely - Derrida and Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Angelus Silesius, Kierkegaard, Nicholas of Cusa, Heidegger and Ricoeur, and, in the call for plurality, William James - the two speakers discuss both poetic sensibility and the call for justice. Reflecting on fragmentation, Tracy speaks of the need to focus on suffering and the importance of attaining a sense of ‘the entire story, all of the metaphors’. (shrink)

This paper explores Thomas Aquinas’ and Richard Swinburne’s doctrines of simplicity in the context of their philosophical theologies. Both say that God is simple. However, Swinburne takes simplicity as a property of the theistic hypothesis, while for Aquinas simplicity is a property of God himself. For Swinburne, simpler theories are ceteris paribus more likely to be true; for Aquinas, simplicity and truth are properties of God which, in a certain way, coincide – because God is metaphysically simple. Notwithstanding their different (...) approaches, some unreckoned parallels between their thoughts are brought to light. (shrink)

This audio recording contains a lecture led by Dr. William Christian, Dr. Shirley C. Guthrie, and Dr. Stanley R. Hopper on November 20, 1965 as a part of the America and the Future of Theology Lecture Series. Dr. William Christian discusses the possibility of interaction between metaphysics and theology, the concept of God in Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics, the relation of Whitehead’s metaphysics to Platonism, and the relation of Whitehead’s metaphysics to Christian theology. Dr. Guthrie responds to Dr. Christian by (...) accepting the interaction of metaphysics and theology as a possible subject and how metaphysics is necessary to theology, but only as an instrument not a dictator. Dr. Stanley responds to Dr. Christian by posing two questions: Can the relationship between theology and philosophy or theology and metaphysics be adequately represented when the concept of God has a strong family resemblance according to Whitehead, and What is the relationship between metaphysics and theology? Lastly, Dr. Christian responds to both Dr. Guthrie and Dr. Stanley. (shrink)

Erstmals thematisieren die Beiträge dieses Bandes Friedrich W. J. Schellings Münchener Akademievortrag »Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrake« (1815) in ihrem problem- und zeitgeschichtlichen Kontext und werfen so ein neues Licht auf dessen philosophische Entwicklung zwischen 1812 und 1817. In die Untersuchung werden Schellings Zeitschriften-Projekt »Allgemeine Zeitschrift von Deutschen für Deutsche« von 1813 sowie der von ihm im Jahre 1817 herausgegebene »Bericht über die Aeginetischen Bildwerke« Johann Martin Wagners einbezogen. Auf diese Weise entsteht anhand der kleineren Schriften Schellings ein bislang nur (...) wenig beachtetes Bild seines Schaffens in seiner ersten Münchener Zeit. The contributions in the volume deal for the first time with Friedrich W. J. Schelling's Munich Academy Lecture »Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrake« (1815) in its problem- and contemporary historical context, thus shedding new light on its philosophical development between 1812 and 1817. The study includes Schelling's journal project »Allgemeine Zeitschrift von Deutschen für Deutsche« from 1813 as well as the »Bericht über die Aeginetischen Bildwerke« by Johann Martin Wagner, which he published in 1817. In this way, Schelling's smaller writings provide a picture of his work in his early Munich period that has received little attention so far. (shrink)

The present collection of essays is devoted to the Christian philosophy of the most prolific and most speculatively ambitious of the Cambridge Origenists, Henry More. Not only did More revere Origen, whom he extolled as a "holy sage" and "that miracle of the Christian world", but he also developed a philosophical system which hinged upon the Origenian notions of universal divine goodness and libertarian human freedom. Throughout his life, More subscribed to the ancient theology of the pre-existence of souls and (...) took issue with the early modern philosophies of Thomas Hobbes, René Descartes and Baruch de Spinoza. His vision of God's goodness, experienced in his early school years at Eton, became the cornerstone of an Origenist rationalism which envisaged an extended world animated by divine thought and inhabited by self-moving rational agents. More's philosophy is the crowning attainment of the early modern rediscovery of Origen as well as a neglected major rationalist system in its own right which went on to exert decisive influence upon all subsequent western metaphysics. The essays collected in the first part provide a detailed introduction to More's voluminous writings. After a comprehensive general overview of his metaphysical and ethical system, the essays expound More's historical context and his philosophical development from his early poetry in the 1640s to his mature philosophical and theological prose works of the 50s, 60s and 70s. In addition, the reception of More and Origen in the later Cambridge Origenists and in Isaac Newton is outlined. The second part contains several excerpts from More's influential Latin works first translated into English by the editor. (shrink)

Thanks largely to the work of Robert Adams and Philip Quinn, the second half of the twentieth century witnessed a resurgence of interest in divine command theory as a viable position in normative theory and meta-ethics. More recently, however, there has been some dissatisfaction with divine command theory even among those philosophers who claim that normative properties are grounded in God, and as a result alternative views have begun to emerge, most notably divine intention theory (Murphy, Quinn) and divine motivation (...) theory (Zagzebski). My goal here is to outline a distinct theory, divine desire theory, and suggest that, even if it is not clearly superior to these extant views, it is at least worthy of serious consideration.1 As far as this paper is concerned, the discussion will be limited just to the deontic status of actions (obligatory, permissible, forbidden), and so no attempt will be made to also account for axiological properties such as goodness or evil. In order to get oriented to the range of deontological views in this area, consider the following three rough characterizations. (shrink)

The extent to which God grounds normativity within natural law theory is analyzed. I examine Hugo Grotius’s understanding of natural law and human nature and show that Grotius makes few explicit metaphysical commitments which makes his view open to development in at least two different ways. Then a Thomistic view of natural law and human nature is developed. It is shown that Grotius’s position could be developed as a proto-new natural law theory, but this leaves it open to powerful objections (...) from Fulvio Di Blasi and other Thomistic philosophers. Finally, I argue that a view can be developed in such a way as to take on certain elements of the Thomistic view, particularly its metaphysics, but still maintain the famous Grotian claim that human nature can establish normativity without God. The key to this is the distinction between the order of knowing and the order of being. (shrink)

Anselm of Canterbury’s so-called ontological proofs in the Proslogion have puzzled philosophers for centuries. The famous description “something / that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is part and parcel of his argument. Most commentators have interpreted this description as a definition of God. We argue that this view, which we refer to as “definitionism”, is a misrepresentation. In addition to textual evidence, the key point of our argument is that taking the putative definition as what Anselm intended it (...) to be – namely a description of a content of faith – allows getting a clear view of the discursive status and argumentative structure of Proslogion 2–4, as well as making sense of an often neglected part of the argument. (shrink)

On his website, Robert Cummings Neville makes an interesting remark: My serious intellectual life began in 1944 at the age of five when a kindergarten classmate told me that God is a person. I checked with my father about this, and he said, “No, Jesus was a person but God is more like electricity or light.” This seemed reasonable and triggered in me a decisive love of God. Electricity makes things go, like my electric train, and my father explained that (...) God makes everything go, which remains my theology to the present day.1 The question I want to discuss in this paper goes back to the very early beginnings of Neville’s outstanding academic career. Over.. (shrink)

Cet article réexamine la totalité des témoignages sur la pensée démocritéenne de l’origine du culte divin. Une étude approfondie de ces témoignages nous autorise à affirmer que, dans l’esprit de Démocrite, le culte des dieux ne dérivait pas seulement d’une peur des phénomènes naturels hostiles, mais aussi de la reconnaissance pour les événements favorables à la survie des humains. Il est à présent possible de réinterpréter cette conception selon un point de vue polémique : Démocrite n’aurait pas nié l’existence des (...) dieux, mais plutôt exposé les mécanismes psychologiques qui conduisent les hommes ordinaires à croire dans les dieux traditionnels. Contre la croyance superstitieuse, il démontre, en s’aidant également de la théorie des εἴδωλα, que les seuls dieux qui existent sont pourvus de la même « raison » que celle à l’œuvre dans la nature et grâce à laquelle les hommes peuvent comprendre ses phénomènes aussi suprenants que variés. (shrink)

Cet article analyse le problème de l’« athéisme » prétendu de Prodicos. Un ré-examen des sources à notre disposition et, surtout, une nouvelle reconstruction des témoignages fournis par le Sur la piété de Philodème, dont l’un est consacré à la théologie du stoïcien Persaïos, démontre que Prodicos n’était pas un athée mais un critique virulent de la conception traditionnelle des dieux.

This paper reconstructs and discusses a proof of God’s existence by Anselm of Canterbury’s friend Ralph of Battle, developed in his recently edited De nesciente, a fictitious dialogue between a Christian and an atheist. Without precedent in antiquity and the Middle Ages, Ralph’s proof has never been examined in detail. It combines a “cogito” argument with a two-part cosmological argument. The paper first presents the textual basis and an exegetical interpretation of Ralph’s reasoning, classifies the parts of the proof historically (...) and systematically, and then compares these with the proofs of God’s existence as well as other arguments in Anselm’s Proslogion and Monologion. Finally, it points out some similarities between Ralph’s “cogito” argument and a passage in the Liber pro insipiente, which may suggest that this anonymous critique of Anselm’s Proslogion proof was authored not by Gaunilo, as traditionally thought, but by Ralph. (shrink)

This book contains new work on character from the perspectives of philosophy, theology, and psychology. From a virtual reality simulation of the Milgram shock experiments, to understanding the virtue of modesty in Muslim societies, to defending soldiers’ moral responsibility for committing war crimes, these chapters break new ground and significantly advance our understanding of character. The main topics covered fall under the heading of our beliefs about character, the existence and nature of character traits, character and ethical theory, virtue epistemology, (...) the nature of particular virtues, character development, and challenges to character and virtue from neuroscience and situationism. The book significantly shapes discussions of character in scholarship. (shrink)

Although Ibn Sina’s metaphysics is heavily indebted to Aristotle’s, with regard to the substantiality of the rational soul and God, Aristotle and Ibn Sina take opposite positions: Aristotle holds that theos is a substance, while Ibn Sina denies that God is a substance; Aristotle holds that the soul is not a substance, while Ibn Sina claims that it is. In both of these regards we observe the movement toward greater abstraction in Ibn Sina. The concept of God is more abstract (...) when considered outside the categories, and the soul is understood more abstractly, not merely as the form of an organism, but as independent of any materiality. God is freed from the constraints of substantiality while the soul is freed from the constraints of corporeality. Ibn Sina argues that since God transcends the categories, God is not a substance. Another argument is that everything that falls under the categories is contingent in its existence, God, however, is necessary in His existence. Hence, God is not a substance. Ibn Sina’s main argument, however, is that a condition for being a substance is, according to Arsitotle, not to be in a subject. This condition should be understood in such a manner that it does not imply the existence of what satisfies it. The existence of a necessary being, however, is implied by such a condition. Hence, God does not have the condition, and, thus, is not a substance. (shrink)

Due largely to the work of Mark Murphy and Philip Quinn, divine will theory has emerged as a legitimate alternative to divine command theory in recent years. As an initial characterization, divine will theory is a view of deontological properties according to which, for instance, an agent S‟s obligation to perform action A in circumstances C is grounded in God‟s will that S A in C. Characterized this abstractly, divine will theory does not specify which kind of mental state is (...) supposed to ground S‟s obligation; it could be God‟s desires, beliefs, intentions, or emotions. My purpose here is not to challenge this view. Rather, I want to examine the decision by Murphy and Quinn to base their version of divine will theory on God‟s intentions, and argue that this may have been an unwise move. As an alternative, I suggest that those who are initially attracted to divine will theory would be better served to develop the view with a focus on God‟s desires rather than intentions. (shrink)

Nothingness plays an essential role throughout the work of Meister Eckhart. The function of this concept, however, changed during the development of his thought. Despite this change nothingness remains always associated with the theory of analogy which lies at the core of Eckhart's attempt to explain the radical difference between God and creation and the complete dependency of all being on its unitary and transcendent ground.

The article examines how Reimarus reorients concepts borrowed from Leibniz and Wolff – the principles of perfection, harmony and continuity – in order to feed his own natural religion project. Teleology is understood as a doctrine aiming at proving not only God’s perfections, but also the effects of the divine wisdom on creatures. Consequently, recourse to final causes in natural philosophy cannot remain at the level of general reasons, as Maupertuis’s principle of least action does, but rather ought to be (...) used in the explanation of the specific purpose of beings. (shrink)

This textbook chapter briefly introduces and defend a way of thinking about the relationship between God and morality. Section one explains how “God” is meant to be understood. Section two then introduces the position that morality depends in some way upon God. Section three turns to some of the leading arguments for this view. Finally, we will conclude with the most powerful challenge to this approach, namely what has come to be called the Euthyphro Dilemma.

The key to understanding Dionysius is the methodical acceptance of the literary fiction involved in reading an author who tries to recreate the immediateness of the first encounter of pagan wisdom and Christian doctrine. Dionysius’s method consists of the presentation of a Platonic ontology by way of biblical theonyms. These theonyms express whatever we can grasp of God by His self-communication toward us, yet they ultimately cannot reveal Him as He is. It is rewarding to compare biblical theonym and author’s (...) allonym at this point: the allonym “Dionysius Areopagita” expresses how the author wants to be read and received but not who he really is. Th us the Dionysian writings present themselves as if they were the communication of an early Christian author whose objective it is to proclaim the “unknown God” to philosophically educated Greeks, naming Him with the biblical theonyms and explaining them in a Platonic way. (shrink)

In his account of his Düsseldorf conversations with G.E. Lessing shortly before the latter’s death in 1781, F.H. Jacobi records the Enlightenment poet and philosopher’s allusion to the Kabbalistic philosophy of Henry More, whom he cited in support of his shocking Spinozist creed of the hen kai pan. Origen’s first Christian philosophy hinges upon a conviction of universal divine goodness which cannot but share its riches with beings capable of participating in it by virtue of their own free will. From (...) this first Christian truth flow the infamous doctrines of the pre-existence of souls and, above all, the restitution of all things envisaged as a never-ending process of autonomous moral soul-making. Origen’s philosophy of divine goodness and human freedom appealed deeply to the Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, who cited the Church Father in support of their metaphysics of God’s benignity and man’s free will. German rationalist G.W. Leibniz was also a close reader of Cudworth and More. Both his Theodicy and his Monadology—notably the notion of a best possible world created by a good God and inhabited by self-improving spiritual monads—are indebted to the Church Father’s Christian philosophy. G.E. Lessing, reviewing the controversial discussions about the apokatastasis in his day, staunchly defended Leibniz’s Origenist rationalism in several works devoted to his philosophical eschatology. Above all, he restated Origen’s notion of salvation as divine pedagogy in his celebrated Education of the Human Race. The present essay establishes the deeply Origenist character of the historic systems of these two seminal German rationalists, with their shared concern for God’s creative goodness and man’s free perfectibility. (shrink)

The Letter of Resolution Concerning Origen and the Chief of His Opinions, published anonymously in London in 1661, is the chief testimony of the renaissance of Origen in early modern Cambridge. Probably authored by George Rust, the later Bishop of Dromore in Ireland, it is the first defence of Origenism, and delineates a rational theology based upon the unshakable foundation of God’s first attribute, his goodness. Trespassing and falling away from God’s goodness, the souls forfeit their original ethereal bodies or (...) ‘vehicles’ and come to inhabit lesser ones made of air and earth. Making responsible use of their freedom, however, they may climb up the ontological ladder again. Rust’s rational theodicy with its stress on God’s universal goodness and the pre-existent soul’s free will is a key document of the Cambridge Platonists’ deeply Origenian philosophy of religion. (shrink)

Dante's metaphysics--his understanding of reality--is very different from our own. To present Dante's ideas about the cosmos, or God, or salvation, or history, or poetry within the context of post-Enlightenment presuppositions, as is usually done, is thus to capture only imperfectly the essence of those ideas. The recovery of Dante's metaphysics is essential, argues Christian Moevs, if we are to resolve what has been called "the central problem in the interpretation of the Comedy." That problem is what to make of (...) the Comedy 's claim to the "status of revelation, vision, or experiential record--as something more than imaginative literature." In this book Moevs offers the first sustained treatment of the metaphysical picture that grounds and motivates the Comedy, and of the relation between those metaphysics and Dante's poetics. He carries this out through a detailed examination of three notoriously complex cantos of the Paradiso, read against the background of the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian tradition from which they arise. Moevs finds the key to the Comedy 's metaphysics and poetics in the concept of creation, which implies three fundamental insights into the nature of reality: 1) The world is radically contingent, dependent at every instant on what gives it being. 2) The relation between the world and the ground of its being is non-dualistic. 3) Human beings are radically free, unbound by the limits of nature, and thus can find all of time and space within themselves. These insights are the foundation of the pilgrim Dante's journey from the center of the world to the Empyrean which contains it. For Dante, in sum, what we perceive as reality, the spatio-temporal world, is a creation or projection of conscious being, which can only be known as oneself. Moevs argues that self-knowledge is in fact the keystone of the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic philosophical tradition, and the essence of the Christian revelation in which that tradition culminates. Armed with this new understanding, Moevs is able to shed light on a series of perennial issues in the interpretation of the Comedy. In particular, it becomes clear that poetry coincides with theology and philosophy in the poem: Dante poeta cannot be distinguished from Dante theologus. (shrink)

The unity of God and man in the intellect is the fundamental teaching of Meister Eckhart on which he bases the system of his thoughts. Since there is a metaphysical and a psychological aspect to this teaching the book naturally falls into two parts: The first part is devoted to the analysis of divine nature, the second examines the human soul. God and man are essentially the same in their highest point: God's innermost essence is unity, which Eckhart identifies with (...) intellect. But intellect is also the highest peak in the human soul, the famous spark. By studying both Eckhart's German and Latin works, from the early Parisian Questions to the German sermons, this study also shows the unity of Eckhart's thought in all genres of writing. (shrink)

In the Infini-Rien fragment of his Pensées, Blaise Pascal develops an argument for the rationality of faith in God, which posthumously became known as Pascal’s Wager and at the same time represents a cornerstone of modern probability theory. While this betting argument has been the subject of much philosophical investigation, the contribution of this paper lies in the following: On the one hand, the bet is reconstructed in its basic features as well as its structure with the help of modern (...) decision and probability theory tools. Thus, it is shown that Pascal’s betting argument, in distinction to Hacking 1972 for instance, has the form of an a fortiori argument. On the other hand, as far as objections to Pascal’s argument are concerned, it is true that the premises have often been called into doubt, more or less convincingly. On the other hand, this article is dedicated to the question, often emphatically – especially in Hacking 1972 – and perhaps carelessly affirmed in Pascal research, whether Pascal’s premises imply his conclusion at all. (shrink)

In _God, the Flesh, and the Other, _the philosopher Emmanuel Falque joins the ongoing debate about the role of theology in phenomenology. An important voice in the second generation of French philosophy’s “theological turn,” Falque examines philosophically the fathers of the Church and the medieval theologians on the nature of theology and the objects comprising it. Falque works phenomenology itself into the corpus of theology. Theological concepts thus translate into philosophical terms that phenomenology should legitimately question: concepts from contemporary phenomenology (...) such as onto-theology, appearance, reduction, body/flesh, inter-corporeity, the genesis of community, intersubjectivity, and the singularity of the other find penetrating analogues in patristic and medieval thought forged through millennia of Christological and Trinitarian debate, mystical discourses, and speculative reflection. Through Falque’s wide-ranging interpretive path, phenomenology finds itself interrogated—and renewed. (shrink)

The present volumes unites papers which explore the European image of god in an intercultural context. They range from classical antiquity to contemporary philosophy and science.

The present volumes unites papers which explore the European image of god in an intercultural context. They range from classical antiquity to contemporary philosophy and science.

Josiah Royce was undoubtedly one of the most interesting thinkers of classical American philosophy in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century. His works cover a wide range of subjects from psychology and issues of social philosophy to metaphysics. Surrounded by philosophers such as William James or Charles Sanders Peirce, Royce developed a concept of pragmatism which he himself called "absolute pragmatism" and which was centred around a theory of community. The essays in this edited volume deal with (...) this pragmatistic approach in his work and discuss it from various points of view. Among other things, they explore Royce's relationship to German idealism, the foundation of his ethics as well as his philosophical doctrine of God and his philosophy of religion. This results in rather divergent assessments of his philosophy, each of which is evidence of the enduring relevance of his thinking for the world of today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.1 (2001) 146-149 [Access article in PDF] Gianluca Mori. Bayle philosophe. Paris: Champion, 1999. Pp. 416. Paper, N.P. Stefano Brogi. Teologia senza verità: Bayle contro i "rationaux." Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1998. Pp. 306. Paper, N.P. Why do professional philosophers spend so much time on Descartes and so little time on Pierre Bayle, when Bayle was clearly the better philosopher? I hope that the real (...) answer is not that Bayle wrote too much that is too hard to survey and synthesize, whereas Descartes wrote short works that are easy to teach to undergraduates. Of course, part of any answer will turn on what is meant by "the better philosopher," and [End Page 146] we will return to this issue. If the two books reviewed here get the attention they deserve, Bayle may begin to get more of the attention he deserves.Bayle is well-known for his attacks on Pierre Jurieu, but less well-known are his fights with the 'rationalist' theologian-philosophers Jean LeClerc, Jacques Bernard, and Isaac Jaquelot. They reveal that Bayle was not the automatic supporter of "Enlightenment" of later legend. Stefano Brogi explores these attacks in three of Bayle's last works, the Continuation of the Diverse Thoughts on the Comet (1705; very different from the Diverse Thoughts on the Comet of 1683), Response to Questions of a Provincial (1704-1707), and Conversations between Maxime and Thémiste (1707). Regrettably, none of these—nor any of the works of LeClerc, Bernard, and Jaquelot—have been translated. Greater attention to Descartes may derive from the excellent translations of his work, contrasted with the absence of translations of much of Bayle.Brogi begins with Bayle's reconstruction of "Pyrrho's theology." Faith, in Bayle's hands, is almost completely non-cognitive, accepting the Scripture without understanding it. Rationality, to Bayle, is a second Penelope, unraveling all that it makes. Then Brogi explores what Bayle could have meant by praising Simonides, the ancient Greek who, asked to define God, always asked for more time. He also reviews Bayle's views on euhemerism and the theory of impostorship, and cannot believe Bayle's pretended unawareness of some of the implications of his arguments.The third section, "Ethics against religion," tackles the paradox that Bayle fiercely attacked reason and the argument from consensus for the existence of God, but then invoked reason and consensus as proof of moral claims. In ethics, Bayle's skepticism evaporates. That leads to the further paradox that his rigorous moral evaluation of religion leads to atheism. The ostensible argument is that pagan religions have such immoral gods that it is better not to believe in them; the implication is that the same goes for Judeo-Christianity.It all comes together in Brogi's discussion of "Theology without morality." In his controversies with LeClerc about Origenism (universal salvation) and evil, Bayle brings out the dubious moral consequences of both Origenism and Augustinianism. There is no rational way of saving God's goodness. Then Bayle simply declares his faith in revelation. LeClerc thinks this is bad faith, but he ends up relying on blind faith. Jaquelot argues that God's glory requires the world as it is, but when Bayle asks what glory could come from human suffering, Jaquelot also takes refuge in the inscrutability of God. If anyone thinks these were insignificant controversies, remember that they provoked Leibniz's Theodicy (1710). Austin Farrar once pronounced, exignorantia, that Bayle was "hopelessly confused" ("Introduction," Routledge edition of Leibniz's Theodicy, 1951; now Open Court edition, 35), but Leibniz knew better.Gianluca Mori's book ranges far more widely than Brogi's. It is the best all-around book on Bayle's philosophy in twenty years. Mori begins with a chapter on interpretation, pointing out that everything that Leo Strauss said about encoded language can be found in Bayle. Using Bayle's own claims about such artifices to interpret his work, he explores the writer's ironies, dissimulation, self-censorship, and implied meanings. The interior thoughts of Bayle are unreachable... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading BayleJohn Christian LaursenThomas M. Lennon. Reading Bayle. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Pp. xi + 202. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $19.95.One of the more philosophically interesting things about Pierre Bayle is the difficulty of interpreting his work. A myriad of interpretations have been advanced, but "the whole is [still] a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery"—to apply David Hume's famous judgment about religion to Bayle's work. This (...) book proposes a Bakhtinian reading of Bayle's philosophical activity, which means that Bayle is understood as letting his interlocutors speak for themselves in an ongoing dialogue over which he does not have full control and in which no one "wins." Bakhtin thought that Dostoevsky was the first major author to do this, but Lennon shows that he was anticipated by Bayle.The discussion is broken up into sections on Bayle's views of integrity, authority, toleration, idolatry, and providence. Integrity turns out to be largely a matter of honesty and fairness in dialogue, and at times it sounds like Bayle is prefiguring Habermas and discourse ethics or recent Anglo-American theories of deliberative democracy.Bayle's view of authority emerges from his analysis of the fact/law (fait/droit) distinction. [End Page 278] This was part of larger debates among Jansenists, Jesuits, and other philosophers such as Arnauld and Malebranche. Here, Lennon's intimate knowledge of seventeenth-century philosophy is put to good use. He shows that in Bayle's hands the distinction cannot hold up, as questions of fact and law are always mutually dependent and each can undermine the other. The upshot is that in the absence of truths of fact or law, dialogue is all that we have. That is good, because history cannot be used as a tool of oppression or homogenization if dialogue must go on forever.Some of the claims about Bayle that are advanced here are debatable. That Bayle "treated everyone with dignity" (44) is simply not true of his treatment of millenarians and others that he thought were fanatics. Rather than extending "toleration almost without limit" (74), he was downright intolerant of such folks. Lennon suggests that Bayle may not have fully thought through the question of the conscientious persecutor (85n.). It would have been appropriate to mention Bayle's reflections on this matter in his last work, the Réponse aux questions d'un provincial.The book contains valuable accounts of aspects of Bayle's debates with Pierre Jurieu, in which it often emerges that there was no great gulf of principle between the two arch-enemies. Disagreements with Ruth Whelan and Elisabeth Labrousse add to the interest of Lennon's discussion.Idolatry is one of Bayle's chief targets, and he finds it above all in the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Lennon nicely shows how this amounts to Spinozism, which in turn explains Bayle's hostility to both Spinoza and Rome. Both stifle Bakhtinian dialogue.One very interesting section of the book is on lotteries, which have important theological and philosophical significance. Often-forgotten authors like Barbeyrac, Ricotier, and Leti are discussed on this issue. Insights here include the observation that "it is hard to imagine Bayle praying" (146). Indeed it is. Mention of work by I. Hont, T. Hochstrasser, and others on Barbeyrac would have made Lennon's case stronger.One major conclusion is that Bayle's notion of providence and the problem of evil comes down to dialogue as well: evil emerges because God prefers to engage in open-ended dialogue with his creatures, which allows evil even if that is not God's intention (167). On this reading, we have a Kantian Bayle: autonomy is Bayle's most cherished value (182).Lennon's final evaluation of Bayle's fideism is that it is philosophically unsatisfactory. Blind and nonrational reliance on Scripture is, to say the least, undermined by Bayle's inability to establish that God is its author or to found his own beliefs in any way other than education. But if anybody still thinks that Pierre Bayle was merely a compiler and not a philosopher in his own right, this book and a lot of the other recent... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reading BayleJohn Christian LaursenThomas M. Lennon. Reading Bayle. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Pp. xi + 202. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $19.95.One of the more philosophically interesting things about Pierre Bayle is the difficulty of interpreting his work. A myriad of interpretations have been advanced, but "the whole is [still] a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery"—to apply David Hume's famous judgment about religion to Bayle's work. This (...) book proposes a Bakhtinian reading of Bayle's philosophical activity, which means that Bayle is understood as letting his interlocutors speak for themselves in an ongoing dialogue over which he does not have full control and in which no one "wins." Bakhtin thought that Dostoevsky was the first major author to do this, but Lennon shows that he was anticipated by Bayle.The discussion is broken up into sections on Bayle's views of integrity, authority, toleration, idolatry, and providence. Integrity turns out to be largely a matter of honesty and fairness in dialogue, and at times it sounds like Bayle is prefiguring Habermas and discourse ethics or recent Anglo-American theories of deliberative democracy.Bayle's view of authority emerges from his analysis of the fact/law (fait/droit) distinction. [End Page 278] This was part of larger debates among Jansenists, Jesuits, and other philosophers such as Arnauld and Malebranche. Here, Lennon's intimate knowledge of seventeenth-century philosophy is put to good use. He shows that in Bayle's hands the distinction cannot hold up, as questions of fact and law are always mutually dependent and each can undermine the other. The upshot is that in the absence of truths of fact or law, dialogue is all that we have. That is good, because history cannot be used as a tool of oppression or homogenization if dialogue must go on forever.Some of the claims about Bayle that are advanced here are debatable. That Bayle "treated everyone with dignity" (44) is simply not true of his treatment of millenarians and others that he thought were fanatics. Rather than extending "toleration almost without limit" (74), he was downright intolerant of such folks. Lennon suggests that Bayle may not have fully thought through the question of the conscientious persecutor (85n.). It would have been appropriate to mention Bayle's reflections on this matter in his last work, the Réponse aux questions d'un provincial.The book contains valuable accounts of aspects of Bayle's debates with Pierre Jurieu, in which it often emerges that there was no great gulf of principle between the two arch-enemies. Disagreements with Ruth Whelan and Elisabeth Labrousse add to the interest of Lennon's discussion.Idolatry is one of Bayle's chief targets, and he finds it above all in the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Lennon nicely shows how this amounts to Spinozism, which in turn explains Bayle's hostility to both Spinoza and Rome. Both stifle Bakhtinian dialogue.One very interesting section of the book is on lotteries, which have important theological and philosophical significance. Often-forgotten authors like Barbeyrac, Ricotier, and Leti are discussed on this issue. Insights here include the observation that "it is hard to imagine Bayle praying" (146). Indeed it is. Mention of work by I. Hont, T. Hochstrasser, and others on Barbeyrac would have made Lennon's case stronger.One major conclusion is that Bayle's notion of providence and the problem of evil comes down to dialogue as well: evil emerges because God prefers to engage in open-ended dialogue with his creatures, which allows evil even if that is not God's intention (167). On this reading, we have a Kantian Bayle: autonomy is Bayle's most cherished value (182).Lennon's final evaluation of Bayle's fideism is that it is philosophically unsatisfactory. Blind and nonrational reliance on Scripture is, to say the least, undermined by Bayle's inability to establish that God is its author or to found his own beliefs in any way other than education. But if anybody still thinks that Pierre Bayle was merely a compiler and not a philosopher in his own right, this book and a lot of the other recent... (shrink)

Diese Festgabe für Friedrich Hermanni ist der Frage gewidmet, was das Denken mit Gott zu tun hat und Gott mit dem Denken. Der Band verbindet klassische mit zeitgenössischen Positionen, indem er das Verhältnis von Denken und Gott in Geschichte und Gegenwart analysiert und diskutiert. Gegliedert ist er in fünf Themenbereiche: I. Gott und Denken in Theologie und Philosophie - Prinzipientheoretische Überlegungen - II. Der Gottesgedanke und die Frage nach seiner Wahrheit - III. Der Gottesgedanke und die Frage nach seiner Bestimmtheit (...) - IV. Das Verhältnis von Gott und Denken in Gott und im Menschen - V. Zur Frage nach der Transzendenz Gottes Die international renommierten Autoren stellen sich diesen Themen und treten in das systematisch-theologische und religionsphilosophische Gespräch mit den Argumenten Friedrich Hermannis ein. Für die gegenwärtige Theologie und Philosophie werden dabei entscheidende Einsichten für die Verhältnisbestimmung von Gott und Denken gewonnen. (shrink)

Josef Pieper's Tradition: Concept and Claim analyzes tradition as an idea and as a living reality in the lives and languages of ordinary people. In the modern world of constant, unrelenting change, tradition, says Pieper, is that which must be preserved unchanged. Drawing on thinkers from Plato to Pascal, Pieper describes the key elements and figures in the act of tradition and what is distinctive about it. Pieper argues that the handing down of tradition is not the same as discussing (...) or teaching, despite its similarities to those activities. It means accepting something as true and valid with the intent of handing it down again, unmixed with alien intrusions and yet kept alive for each new generation via imaginative reformulations. In the beginning, there is sacred tradition, founded on a revelation of God to man, yet secular tradition is important too. Tradition offers liberation from the prison of the present." Understanding what tradition really means makes one free and independent in the face of conservatisms," notes Pieper. At the same time, it links us to the past and is essential for a meaningful future. Book jacket. (shrink)

Logical reconstruction is a fundamental philosophical method for achieving clarity concerning the prerequisites, presuppositions and the logical structure of natural language arguments. The scope and limits of this method have become visible not least through its intense application to Anselm of Canterbury’s notorious proofs for the existence of God. This volume collects, on the one hand, reconstructions of Anselmian arguments that take account of the problems of reconstruction and, on the other hand, theoretical reflections on reconstruction with a view to (...) Anselm. We hope that this will allow the reader to critically assess the merits of the theoretical accounts in the light of the reconstructions and the merits of the reconstructions in the light of the theoretical accounts. In general, by considering the example of an outstanding thinker in one or the other way, this volume aims at advancing the methodology and the practice of logical reconstruction. The following remarks explain and motivate this undertaking: What purposes does logical reconstruction serve? What purposes does the reflection on logical reconstruction serve? In which ways can the practice and theory of reconstruction profit particularly from studying Anselm’s reasoning? How can the resulting problems be addressed? – Finally, a short overview over the contributions to this volume is offered. (shrink)

Gesellschaftliche Veränderungen in grossem Massstab, von der Pluralisierung der Gesellschaft, der Digitalisierung, die als Vierte Kulturtechnik bezeichnet wird, bis hin zur Widerfahrnis von Kontingenzen wie Armut und Flüchtlingsströmen oder Umweltkatastrophen, stellen die Verantwortungsfähigkeit des Menschen vor neue Herausforderungen. Es wird dabei deutlich: Humanität und Vernunft, Würde und Freiheit verdanken ihren Gehalt und ihre Gestalt einem die Vernunft selbst übersteigenden Transzendenten, in dem die Vernunft je und je ihres eigenen Grundes ansichtig werden kann. Dass dieses Verhältnis zwischen Vernunft und ihrem transzendenten (...) Grund alle Wissens- und Lebensbereiche durchdringt, zeigen die interdisziplinären Beiträge dieses Bandes, die Fragen der Weltentstehung und Anthropologie, der Logik und Mystik, des Glaubens und des Gottesbildes, des Sinns und der Religion, der Gottesdienstpraxis und der Architektur behandeln. (shrink)

In _Did God Care?_ Dylan Burns offers the first comprehensive survey of providence (_pronoia_) in ancient philosophy, from Plato to Plotinus, that takes into full account the importance and innovations of early Christian thinkers, including Coptic Gnostic and Syriac sources.

The dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism has been underway almost since the very beginnings of philosophy. Christian thinkers, by proclaiming that God as Creator transcends the reality He has created, and that human beings as persons transcend the material world, have entered this dispute on the anti-naturalist side. The contemporary dominance in culture of the naturalistic paradigm requires Christian philosophy to reflect on naturalism in the broadest sense (in its various forms), together with its conditions and consequences, and to rethink (...) its relationship to this philosophical tradition. Naturalism rejects the possibility of something existing, being known, or being explained that is separate from the material reality given in empirical cognition. Along with this, it denies human beings transcendence with respect to the natural or social world. In its contemporary iteration, this tradition appeals to the solutions and methods of domain-specific forms of scientific inquiry, relying on them for its own authority. For Christian philosophy, naturalism represents a powerful challenge. It is possible to see in it a threat to Christian philosophy, but it is also possible to discern in it an opportunity for a more critical evaluation of Christian philosophy’s previous solutions, and an opportunity to develop new ones. There is a need for a better understanding of naturalism itself, as well as of what the various domain-specific sciences (including the natural and social sciences, as well as the humanities and, currently, neuroscientific research in particular) have to say about the world and about human beings. Systematic and historico-philosophical questions equally still call for debate – in relation to the centuries-old dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism, as well as the changing place of Christian thought within it. In our own time, one can witness diverse attempts by Christian thinkers both to critically discuss naturalistic positions and to implement naturalistic approaches or solutions within Christian thought itself. Certainly, the latter cannot ignore the fact that naturalism allows philosophy to maintain cognitive contact with domain-specific forms of scientific inquiry. The organizers plan to conduct this conference in hybrid mode, combining both online and onsite elements. This model will allow all interested persons to participate, while also offering those wishing to actually come to Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow the possibility of doing so. (shrink)

In this final edition of his classic study of St. Thomas Aquinas, Etienne Gilson presents the sweeping range and organic unity of Thomistic philosophical thought. The philosophical thinking of Aquinas is the result of reason being challenged to relate to many theological conceptions of the Christian tradition. Gilson carefully reviews how Aquinas grapples with the relation itself of faith and reason and continuing through the existence and nature of God and His creation, the world and its creatures, especially human beings (...) with their power of intellect, will, and moral life. He concludes this study by discussing the life of people in society, along with their purpose and final destiny. Gilson demonstrates that Aquinas drew from a wide spectrum of sources in the development of his thought-from the speculations of the ancient Greeks such as Aristotle, to the Arabic and Jewish philosophers of his time, as well as from Christian writers and scripture. The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas offers students of philosophy and medieval studies an insightful introduction to the thought of Aquinas and the Scholastic philosophy of the Middles Ages, insights that are still revelant for today. (shrink)

Philosophy of religion is a general term, which includes the study of any religion in the world with philosophical perspective. Philosophy of religion with Christian perspective went through its three important stages in the 20th century. First in the 1960s, the topic was related to the arguments for the existence of God, the problem of evil, and the relation between faith and reason. A second major development, stemming from the late 1960s and early 1970s, was in the context of the (...) comparative study of religions and religious pluralism. A third major development has been in the application of techniques of philosophical analysis to the central doctrines of Christian faith-philosophical theology. Unfortunately, Christian philosopphy of religion, also known as Christian religious philosophy, is not distinguished from the general study of the philosophy of religion in the twentieth century. There is an urgent need of formulating a Christian philosophy of religion, which is a gift of the twenty-first century. It is a new branch under Christian Philosophy and a branch of philosophy that is concerned with the philosophical study of religion with Christian perspective. It is too late for us to come back to the philosophy of biblical Christianity. Only a Christ-centred philosophy can change the world from the anarchy and present chaos of the world. Many philosophical speculations and theories have emerged, but the need is a world-changing Christian philosophy. Contra-biblical philosophy stands against biblical teachings, extra-biblical philosophy may be partly acceptable and biblical philosophy is fully acceptable, because it is biblically based-Publisher. (shrink)

In this classic work, the eminent Catholic philosopher Étienne Gilson deals with one of the most important and perplexing metaphysical problems: the relation between our notion of God and demonstrations of his existence. Gilson examines Greek, Christian, and modern philosophy as well as the thinking that has grown out of our age of science in this fundamental analysis of the problem of God. “[I] commend to another generation of seekers and students this deeply earnest and yet wistfully gentle little essay (...) on the most important of all metaphysical—and existential—questions.... The historical sweep is breathtaking, the one-liners arresting, and the style, both intellectual and literary, altogether engaging.” —Jaroslav Pelikan, from the foreword “We have come to expect from the pen of M. Gilson not only an accurate exposition of the thought of the great philosophers, ancient and modern, but what is of much more importance and of greater interest, a keen and sympathetic insight into the reasons for that thought. The present volume does not fail to fulfill our expectations. It should be read by every Christian thinker.” —Ralph O. Dates, _America_. (shrink)