{"title":"Nietzsche, D.F. Strauss and the question of Darwinian asceticism","authors":"L. Mabille","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2021.2017324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2021.2017324","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The article examines Nietzsche’s evaluation of D. F. Strauss’ progressive theology. It argues firstly, that Nietzsche identified a nihilistic strain in Strauss’ vision, a strain which renders his views ultimately untenable and that this strain is detectable in latter-day atheistic activism. This claim is supported by identifying two major contradictions in Strauss’ thought. The first is a misreading of Hegel which renders Strauss’ own reliance on Hegel illegitimate and incoherent. The second is Strauss’ failure to appreciate the full impact of Darwin’s naturalistic shift. It is demonstrated that Strauss’ attempt to forge a new progressive religion on scientific principle still rests upon Christian moral principle. Like his latter-day inheritors, Strauss ultimately fails to make a convincing argument. The article shows the nihilistic consequences of Strauss’ continuous reliance on Christianity.","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":"82 1","pages":"249 - 267"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60496193","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hume’s Dialogues: a natural explanation of natural religion?","authors":"Hannah Lingier","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2021.2014938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2021.2014938","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) describes a philosophical discussion on the validity of the argument from design. What Hume investigates, however, is not the rational grounds of religion, but human nature and its attraction to the idea of design. I argue that the key to understanding Hume’s Dialogues is his conception of the imagination as described in the Treatise. Hume characterizes the human imagination or mind as self-indulgent, with a strong drive to unite perceptions in relations of resemblance, contiguity or causality, often adding fictional constructions to create an easy transition between ideas. Natural religion is a prime example, as the whole universe is united in orderly means-to-ends relations and provided with a familiar cause: something resembling the human mind. This reading of the Dialogues, however, does not warrant the conclusion that Hume provides a reductionist natural explanation of natural religion. Knowing human nature helps to understand religion’s attraction and the attraction of religion helps to understand humans, because it is paradigmatic of who we are. To connect perceptions, construct wholes and create meaning out of chaos is an essential feature of human nature, and a source of great pleasure.","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":"82 1","pages":"233 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42736683","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Space, time, and the formation of love: the Augustinian self revisited","authors":"Martin Westerholm","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2021.1994447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2021.1994447","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article takes up questions regarding the interrelation of the given and the undetermined in Augustine’s understanding of the self. As a critical point, it argues that debate regarding the Augustinian self has been marked by an emphasis on given structures that has constricted conceptions of human becoming. This emphasis emerges by way of competing narratives of discovery: Augustine is presented as a discoverer either of a constitutive space of the self, or of a determinative temporality. It results in accounts of formation that occlude the spiritual significance of the full sweep of Christ’s history, from incarnation through ascension. As a constructive point, this article argues that Augustine positions himself to develop a Christological vision of Christian becoming, rooted in attention to all aspects of Christ’s life and work, by understanding space and time not as structures that fix the bounds of human becoming, but rather as realities that take on different forms in accordance with differing modes of love.","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":"82 1","pages":"205 - 232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47964221","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking violence beyond war and peace: anthropo-ethics from Levinas to Girard","authors":"Geert Van Coillie","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2021.1980422","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2021.1980422","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Starting from a philosophical, literary and historical frame of reference (Heraclitus, Hegel, Tolstoy, and Clausewitz), the paper aims to find a ‘deconstructive’ and anthropo-ethical way out of the binary opposition of war and peace (Levinas and Girard). ‘Apocalyptic reasoning’, inspired by a biblical view of man, gives insight into (in/un)human violence, and opens up a new perspective on necessary and possible conversion.","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":"82 1","pages":"268 - 279"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60495885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The affective need to belong: belonging as an affective driver of human religion","authors":"Jack Williams","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2021.1978309","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2021.1978309","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Philosophy of religion has recently made a turn to lived religion, an approach which seeks to understand lived religion as it is experienced concretely by individual practitioners. However, this turn to lived religion has seen limited engagement with the notion of belonging. Belonging here refers to the felt sense of being part of a group – of insidership – along with the development of positive social ties and mutual affective concern. It is my contention in this paper that reflection on this experience of belonging can improve our understanding of lived religion. In particular, I argue that human beings have an affective need to belong – a fundamental and affective need for belonging and positive social relationship which is felt in the body and rooted in human biology and evolutionary history. This paper makes the case for the affective need to belong, before examining its implications for understanding religion. It finds that the affectivity of belonging is capable of raising the affective salience of certain in-group beliefs, as well as creating affective hurdles to dissent, and in so doing can help to explain processes of religion conversion, sustained religious adherence, and religious disaffiliation.","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":"82 1","pages":"280 - 301"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46773246","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Giving birth to the impossible: theology and deconstruction in Johannes Climacus’s Philosophical Fragments","authors":"T. Middleton","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2021.1923557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2021.1923557","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT According to Roger Poole, theological interpreters of Søren Kierkegaard’s indirect communication privilege content over form, whereas deconstructive interpreters privilege form over content. Here, I offer a reading of Johannes Climacus’s Philosophical Fragments to illustrate how, in this case, the theology/deconstruction and form/content binaries both break down. The form of Fragments is as theological as it is deconstructive: Climacus’s kaleidoscopic quotation of scripture, and his parabolic tropes both attest to this. Similarly, the content of Fragments is as deconstructive as it is theological: the deferral of names, the madness of the moment of decision, and Climacus’s use of contradiction all unsettle any naïve theology. Ultimately, I suggest, the reason that Fragments resists the form/content and theology/deconstruction binaries is because it is a text about the incarnation – a paradigmatic combination of form and content, and a paradoxical reality that bursts apart any division between theology and deconstruction.","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":"82 1","pages":"116 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21692327.2021.1923557","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48360978","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Analysis of evil in Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift through Heidegger’s account of dissemblance and Αλήθεια","authors":"M. Marren","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2021.1919546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2021.1919546","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper, I offer an analysis of evil in Friedrich W. J. Schelling’s Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809). Schelling develops an account of the sui-genesis of God out of the two principles. These principles are 1) the dark ground (dunkler Grund) that belongs to God and 2) the self-revelation of God, who actualizes the dark ground, which grounds God antecedently. These two principles also contain in themselves the possibility and the intelligibility of the human world. In order to elucidate the ontological account of the possibility of evil in Schelling, I turn to Martin Heidegger’s analyses of Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift and especially to Heidegger’s account of self-will (Eigenwille) and put these analyses in conversation with Heidegger’s own thinking about αλήθεια. I establish a conceptual affinity between Schelling’s presentation of the dark ground, which for him is the ground of selfhood, and Heidegger’s insights into the prioricity of concealment (Verborgenheit).","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":"82 1","pages":"97 - 115"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21692327.2021.1919546","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47442846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pedagogical relevance of the Ignatian presupposition","authors":"S. Gałkowski, P. Kaźmierczak","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2021.1939107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2021.1939107","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The paper undertakes a critical analysis of the so-called Presupposition of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, which prescribes the benevolent interpretation of the other’s words. We aim to identify the anthropological and epistemological background of the pedagogical guidelines contained therein and to explicate the intellectual and moral virtues needed to put them into practice. We argue that practising the Presupposition is both virtuous and mutually beneficial in pedagogical practice.","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":"82 1","pages":"193 - 203"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21692327.2021.1939107","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46724780","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘The snake biting its own tail’: Karl Barth on the modern promise of politics","authors":"Liisi Keedus","doi":"10.1080/21692327.2021.1917446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/21692327.2021.1917446","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Barth scholarship, largely theological in focus, has highlighted his lifelong political engagement, emphasising his early socialist activism, his resolute opposition to the Great War and nationalism, and his authorship of the Barmen declaration. This paper focuses on a series of lectures by Barth, published as Protestant Theology in the 19th Century. Its Pre-history and History (1927–1933/1947), and argues that these lectures reveal his more comprehensive interest and approach to the problem of political modernity than has commonly been allowed for. As such, they illuminate and connect some of the main political concerns and themes in Barth’s thought, especially during the interwar period, usually considered in isolation from each other, such as social justice, revolution, nationalism, totalitarianism, internationalism, resistance, liberalism and Christian politics.","PeriodicalId":42052,"journal":{"name":"International Journal of Philosophy and Theology","volume":"82 1","pages":"155 - 175"},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/21692327.2021.1917446","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43797992","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}