This is a provocative international and interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars of Nietzsche and philosophers of religion. Nietzsche, famous for declaring the death of God, nevertheless was responsible throughout his writing for the most telling modern meditation on the nature of the religions of the world, mysticism, the divine as a principle in culture, and the relation of mankind to the infinite. This collection deals with the full scope of Nietzsche's thought on this topic, encompassing Greek, Hebraic, Asian and Mystic religion. (...) Nietzsche scholarship has flourished immeasurably in recent years, not least in respect to the religious question. Nietzsche and the Divine will be an essential underpinning of this area for Nietzsche scholars and theological scholars alike. (shrink)

Taking Heidegger's prominent critique of Nietzsche's treatment of Kant's notion of 'aesthetic disinterestedness' as a foil this paper argues that, contrary to the dominant interpretation, Nietzsche's text contain a positive and radical notion of 'aesthetic disinterestedness'. It is argued that Nietzsche's naturalistic notion of aesthetic disinterestedness is a key feature of his conception of art as natural life process that contests the boundaries, values and libidinal constitution of the 'human'. The ramifications of this for Heidegger's reading of Nietzche's aesthetics are (...) considered. The paper reviews Nietzsche's critical treatment of the notion of 'aesthetic disinterestedness' in both "The Birth of Tragedy" and the "Genealogy of Morality" and relates these to his overall vision of the relationship between art and life. (shrink)

This paper attempts to show how two seemingly conflictual aspects of Nietzsche's thought, its naturalism and religiosity, can be interpreted as the coherent expression of a religious form of naturalism. A wide range of texts across Nietzsche's corpus are considered and the perspective developed related to contemporary debates within the philosophy of religion. In particular, Nietzsche's thought is shown to provide rich resources for overcoming the 'reductionism/anti-reductionism' dilemma.

In relation to the overall theme of the collection in which this paper appears, namely, Nietzsche and the 'future of the human' I offer a reading of Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy" to argue for the key role of art in relation to Nietzsche's project of 'overcoming the human'. It is argued that Nietzsche credits the pre-Socratic Greeks, and in particular their tragic dramas, with achieving a 'transvaluation' of the optimism/pessimism distinction and thereby promoting an overcoming of the man/nature distinction. (...) The extent to which this outlook is attained by Nietzsche in his first published work - and which aspects of it demonstrate this - is underlined in its contrast with a number of current interpretations of the work. (shrink)

Charts the themes of 'immanence' and the 'sacred' in Bataille's "On Nietzsche" in order to articulate the distinctive features of Bataille's response to Nietzsche's thought and its place in the development of his conception of the sacred. The paper also identifies and develops some critical tensions between Bataille's and Nietzsche's thought.

This paper sketches a critical response to Meillassoux's articulation of a 'philosophical divine' in "Spectral Dilemma" and 'The Divine Inexistence'. Reference is also made to his critical discussion of the 'return of religion' in 'After Finitude'. Meillassoux's overlooking of the religious possibilities of an ontology of contingency is highlighted and his avowals of messianism, hope and justice interrogated. The issue of the place of 'religion' within 'speculative materialism' is raised in relation to the question of how to conceive a religion (...) of immanence. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Bataille's elaboration of an 'economic' conception of the 'sacred' and considers the extent to which it is vulnerable to the charge of 'romantic anti-capitalism'. Aspects of the thought of Deleuze and Guattari on the nature of 'late capitalism' are evoked with a view to supporting the paper's hypothesis that a synthesis of Bataille's conception of the 'sacred' and Deleuze's and Guattari's insights into the nature of capital provides a powerful theoretical outlook at once enticing and disturbing (...) - the sacredness of 'late capital'. What this entails as regards both the attainment of the non-anthropomorphic nature of religion and contemporary political critique is considered. (shrink)

In this paper I identify and discuss some themes in the thought of Nietzsche and Bergson respectively as these bear upon the wider project to which the paper contributes – the articulation of a philosophical naturalism which offers a non-reductive account of the origin and nature of religion on the basis that the real is 'religious' in essence. Implicitly, an alternative is thereby proposed to the approaches and presuppositions of the 'theological turn' perspective within contemporary 'continental philosophy of religion'. [PROVIDED (...) BY THE AUTHOR]. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical assessment of Meillassoux's attempt to articulate a “philosophical divine” based on, and consistent with, his radical ontology of contingency. The critical claim developed is that Meillassoux's conception of the divine is inconsistent with his wider commitment to immanence and that this is due to his uncritical endorsement of key evaluative and affective features of religions of the transcendent. This affinity is evident in his view that the phenomenon of “unjust death” generates a problem concerning the (...) justification of a world thus characterised and in the solution proposed. The critical question regarding the compatibility of immanence and such a theodicy is explored. Further examples of Meillassoux's unacknowledged allegiance to the sensibility of transcendent religion are identified including his concern for “justice” and “humanity” and persistent avowal of “God”. An alternative conception of a religion of immanence is sketched which emphasises impersonality and a-moralism. This alternative, it is claimed, integrates more consistently than Meillassoux's the evaluative-affective and theoretical domains. On this basis the claim is advanced that Meillassoux misappropriates the considerable resources his ontology contains for the formulation of a religion of immanence. (shrink)

This paper argues that there are significant fault lines between key themes and critical perspectives within the "Genealogy" and that such tensions, and the effects they generate, have a significant bearing upon the nature and plausibility of a 'postmoral' culture as Nietzsche conceives it.

This co-authored chapter offers a reconstruction of Bergson's conception of the relationship between the political and religion focusing on "The Two Sources of Morality and Religion". Bergson's claims and arguments are related to those of Nietzsche with a focus on the themes of critique, immanence and affirmation.

At the centre of Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” lies a tantalising relation, the reciprocal semblance between nature and art, upon which the entire text pivots. With this thought, Kant suggests a critically licensed blurring of some of the defining presuppositions of critical philosophy and reconfigures the ancient problematic of mimesis. This paper will offer a sketch of how some of Kant’s key successors attempt to extend his project of ‘transcendental critique’ in the field of aesthetics by exposing and challenging (...) the residual pre-critical assumptions underpinning such a conception of the relation between nature and art. The possibility thereby arises of liberating critique from the restraints of the Kantian ‘as if’ without relapsing into a pre-critical naivety. In this respect the important notion of ‘auto-poiesis’, the indigenous artistic creativity of nature, will be considered in its phenomenological and materialist guises. (shrink)

This paper discusses the accounts given of the nature of religious affectivity by Nietzsche, Otto and Bataille and pursues their shared claim as to the primacy of the affective dimension of religion over its conceptual, doctrinal and moral elements and to the development of a religious critique of Christianity. The first section clarifies the nature of Nietzsche’s religiosity and reconstructs his critique of Christianity from this perspective. In subsequent sections Nietzsche’s critique of Christianity is compared to both Otto’s critical defence (...) and Bataille’s ‘Nietzschean’ critique of it. Three themes are proposed as evaluative criteria for the comparative evaluation of the three thinkers undertaken. Firstly, the task of rethinking the nature of religious affectivity in ‘impersonalist’ or ‘a-subjective’ terms. Secondly, the role of the notion of ‘immanence’ in both the rethinking of transcendence given the demise of the transcendent and in a reconceiving of the critique of religion in general, and Christianity in particular, in non-oppositional terms. Thirdly, the question of the ‘autonomy of religion’ not only in relation to the ‘theoretical’, ‘moral’ and ‘aesthetic’ domains but also, ultimately, to the ‘human’ itself. In short, the thinkers considered are evaluated in terms of what they seek to formulate, namely, a radically non-anthropomorphic conception of religion. It is argued that only Bataille attains to both senses of ‘immanence’ identified in the paper in his development of a non-transcendent notion of transcendence and a critique of Christianity that finds suppressed ‘traces’ of the impersonal and a-moral force of the ‘sacred’ operative within it. (shrink)

The claim advanced in this paper is that the radicalisation of Kant’s project of the critique of metaphysics can be said to culminate in the fusion of two, traditionally opposed, terms - immanence and sublimity. Starting with a discussion of Kant's 'Analytic of the Sublime', the paper pursues its main claim through the reading of key texts in the thought of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Deleuze/Guattari. It attempts to clarify the dfferent senses of the'immanent sublime' it suggests is found in the (...) texts of these different thinkers and argues that the more naturalistically inclined and orientated versions are the most rigorous. (shrink)

A critical evaluation of Heidegger's conception of natural life based on a review of recent work on the topic.

On the assumption that religion is essentially an affective phenomenon this paper constructs an encounter between two of the most significant, seemingly diametrically opposed, critical accounts of the nature of religious feeling - those developed by Nietzsche and Otto respectively. After an exposition of these thinkers conceptions of religious feeling the paper attempts a critical evaluation of them focusing on the themes of immanence, naturalism and the linguistic and logical issues involved in the attempt to present or exhibit the 'numinous'. (...) Beyond the ultimately irreconcilable differences between Nietzsche and Otto on these matters both thinkers are acknowledged in relation to what, it is argued, is ultimately a shared aim - the articulation of a conception of 'god' in affective terms. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical assessment of Meillassoux's attempt to articulate a “philosophical divine” based on, and consistent with, his radical ontology of contingency. The critical claim developed is that Meillassoux's conception of the divine is inconsistent with his wider commitment to immanence and that this is due to his uncritical endorsement of key evaluative and affective features of religions of the transcendent. This affinity is evident in his view that the phenomenon of “unjust death” generates a problem concerning the (...) justification of a world thus characterised and in the solution proposed. The critical question regarding the compatibility of immanence and such a theodicy is explored. Further examples of Meillassoux's unacknowledged allegiance to the sensibility of transcendent religion are identified including his concern for “justice” and “humanity” and persistent avowal of “God”. An alternative conception of a religion of immanence is sketched which emphasises impersonality and a-moralism. This alternative, it is claimed, integrates more consistently than Meillassoux's the evaluative-affective and theoretical domains. On this basis the claim is advanced that Meillassoux misappropriates the considerable resources his ontology contains for the formulation of a religion of immanence. (shrink)

The British Society for Phenomenology, Summer Conference, held at the University of Greenwich, 11th - 13th July 2003. The conference aimed to engender a critical dialogue between the two major critical perspectives within contemporary philosophy of religion and religious studies in the European tradition - phenomenology and naturalism. For further information see the information on Jim Urpeth's research activity on GALA.

A critical exposition of Bataille's notion of the 'sacred' across all of his key texts. Bataille's thought is related to, and interpreted in terms of, the project of 'critique' and interrogated from the perspective of the experience of contemporary capital. The resources Bataille provides for configuring the relation between religion and capitalism are also considered. As a whole the paper provides an introduction and overview of Bataille's thought and underlines its on-going contemporary significance.

This paper argues that, beginning with its seminal role in Kant's thought, that an increasingly radical - and ontological - notion of the imagination can be discerned in the thought of Nietzsche and Heidegger who thereby undertake a radicalisation of this key aspect of Kant's aesthetics. A wide range of texts and themes is explored from across the work of Kant, Nietzsche and Heideggger and a relation of mutual radicalisation between them is proposed.

This paper offers a critique of what it terms the ‘Heideggerian-deconstructive’ reading of Kant’s “Analytic of the Sublime” and develops an alternative ‘genealogical’ interpretation of it. It is argued that the ‘Heideggerian-deconstructive’ reading of Kant’s text emphasises the ‘question of presentation’. By contrast, the concerns of the ‘genealogical’ interpretation of Kant’s sublime are affective and ‘libidinal’ in character. The underlying issue concerns the prioritisation of the orders of presentation and affectivity respectively and the balance between them in Kant’s text. The (...) paper begins with an appreciative overview of the ‘Heideggerian-deconstructive’ reading of Kant’s sublime as found in texts by Derrida, Escoubas, Lacoue-Labarthe, Lyotard, Nancy and Sallis. In the ensuing sections the ‘genealogical’ alternative is developed. It is suggested that such a ‘Nietzschean’ reading has two phases, oppositional and immanent respectively. The first phase exposes the evaluative economy of Kant’s text and identifies themes within it which endorse the constitutive values of the ‘Platonic-Christian’ tradition. Kant’s sublime appears to be a ‘moral’ response to the a-symmetry between ‘raw nature’ and the transcendent aspirations of rational-moral humanity. However, due to its oppositional character, this form of ‘genealogical’ critique does not execute a sufficiently radical critique of Kant’s text. A second, immanent form, of ‘genealogical’ reading is required. This focuses on the theme of ‘negative pleasure’ in Kant’s text and argues that it has priority over that of ‘negative presentation’. Kant’s sublime no longer appears to be ‘moral’ in orientation but advocates passionately the pleasures of a specific, non-universalisable, ‘affective-libidinal’ economy. The task arising concerns the evaluative comparison of different aesthetic sensibilities, the ‘negative pleasure’ of Kant’s sublime and the Nietzschean alternative of a ‘tragic joy’ that affirms precisely the ‘contrapurposiveness’ of ‘raw nature’ from which Kant turns away. This is a contrast between a teleological and dysteleological sublime, ‘human’ and ‘post-human’ aesthetic sensibilities. (shrink)

I shall attempt to identify some of the main features of ‘religious materialism’, as I understand it, and indicate some of the thinkers and themes within modern European thought that I have drawn upon in my effort to formulate it thus far. The philosophical stance in question consists of an odd amalgam of thinkers and ‘Schools’ within post-Kantian European philosophy that are often considered to be radically incommensurable – in broad terms, post-Husserlian phenomenology and post-Nietzschean philosophical naturalism.

This paper offers a critical exposition of the role of matter and the material aspects of aesthetic experience and works of art in Kant's 'Critique of Judgment'. It proceeds to discuss the role of 'earth' in Heidegger's discussion of the nature of the work of art and materialist themes in some of Deleuze and Guattari's texts on art. The extent to which the problems surrounding Kant's treatment of the material dimension of aesthetic experience and art are addressed and overcome in (...) the texts of Heidegger and Deleuze/Guattari is considered. (shrink)