The Religio-Philosophical Journal is neither religious nor philosophical


Book Description

The most venomous monsters bred by calumny, envy, hatred, and revenge are former Theosophists. They, whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. The Religio-Philosophical Journal is neither religious nor philosophical. As the Indian spirit of patriotism and independence had been numbed, Colonel Olcott called upon the Japanese not to prostrate themselves at the shrine of foreign civilization.




Between Naturalism and Religion


Book Description

Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age – the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious orthodoxies. Advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics are clearing the way for the penetration of an objective scientific self-understanding of persons into everyday life. For philosophy, this trend is associated with the challenge of scientific naturalism. At the same time, we are witnessing an unexpected revitalization of religious traditions and the politicization of religious communities across the world. From a philosophical perspective, this revival of religious energies poses the challenge of a fundamentalist critique of the principles underlying the modern Wests postmetaphysical understanding of itself. The tension between naturalism and religion is the central theme of this major new book by Jürgen Habermas. On the one hand he argues for an appropriate naturalistic understanding of cultural evolution that does justice to the normative character of the human mind. On the other hand, he calls for an appropriate interpretation of the secularizing effects of a process of social and cultural rationalization increasingly denounced by the champions of religious orthodoxies as a historical development peculiar to the West. These reflections on the enduring importance of religion and the limits of secularism under conditions of postmetaphysical reason set the scene for an extended treatment the political significance of religious tolerance and for a fresh contribution to current debates on cosmopolitanism and a constitution for international society.




Voices from the Edge


Book Description

Over the past several decades, scholars working in biblical, theological, and religious studies have increasingly attended to the substantive ways that our experiences and understanding of God and God's relation to the world are structured by our experiences and concepts of race, gender, disability, and sexuality. These personal and social identities and their intersections serve as a hermeneutical lens for our interpretations of God, self, the other, and our religious texts and traditions. However, they have not received nearly the same level of attention from analytic theologians and philosophers of religion, and so a wide range of important issues remain ripe for analytic treatment. The papers in this volume address the various ways in which the aforementioned social identities intersect with, shape, and might be shaped by the questions with which analytic theology and philosophy of religion have typically been concerned, as well as what new questions they suggest to the discipline. We focus on three central areas of analytic theology: methodological principles, the intersection of social identities with religious epistemology, and the connections among eschatology, ante-mortem suffering, and ante-mortem social perceptions of bodies.




Truth is exiled from the press because it is not as beguiling as falsehood


Book Description

Truth is systematically boycotted and exiled from the Press because truth is not as sensational as falsehood — it fails to tickle the reader’s bump of gossip and love of slander as effectually as a cock-and-bull story. Colenso’s insults, shielded under the cloak of anonymity, are cowardly and contemptible acts of moral violence. Human sacrifice is being offered to public prejudice by editors who know next to nothing about Theosophy, and yet each has to propitiate his subscribers, hence to besmear with literary mud all men and things unpopular in the sight of his readers. Truth pure and simple, dearly beloved Knights-errant of the quill and pencil, is often stranger than fiction. The venomous Billingsgate of the Religio-Philosophical Journal, having poisoned but itself, it is now reduced to a clawless and toothless drivelling idiot. Ignorance goes hand in hand with malevolence. A bullying descendant of Ananias, in the Agnostic Journal, pontificates that the theosophical doctrines are “phallic worship.” Can an Atheist be a Theosophist? The Theosophical Society is an international and unsectarian body of kindred souls. While showing respect for every religion and school of thought, it prides itself on belonging to none, save to the Spirit of Truth or Theosophy. In other words, our Society is a brotherhood of men and women in search of Absolute Truth — an uncompromising Republic of Conscience. Narrow-mindedness, scepticism, and worldly philosophy have no room in it. Gautama Buddha is the pre-eminent Theosophist of all ages. Haweis and Headlam transformed their pulpits into oratorial tribunes similar to those in ancient Athens, where feminine beauty in general, and Aspasia and Company in particular, were defended. There are two Jesuses: The real Jesus, a Master of Wisdom, and Jesus travestied by pseudo-Christian fancy and clad in pagan robes borrowed from heathen gods. Thus the exalted Christianity of Jesus has been degraded to “Church” Christianity.




A Confusion of the Spheres


Book Description

Cursory allusions to the relation between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein are common in philosophical literature, but there has been little in the way of serious and comprehensive commentary on the relationship of their ideas. Genia Sch?nbaumsfeld closes this gap and offers new readings of Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's conceptions of philosophy and religious belief. Chapter one documents Kierkegaard's influence on Wittgenstein, while chapters two and three provide trenchant criticisms of two prominent attempts to compare the two thinkers, those by D. Z. Phillips and James Conant. In chapter four, Sch?nbaumsfeld develops Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's concerted criticisms of certain standard conceptions of religious belief, and defends their own positive conception against the common charges of 'irrationalism' and 'fideism'. As well as contributing to contemporary debate about how to read Kierkegaard's and Wittgenstein's work, A Confusion of the Spheres addresses issues which not only concern scholars of Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, but anyone interested in the philosophy of religion, or the ethical aspects of philosophical practice as such.




But Not Philosophy


Book Description

George Anastaplo has written brilliantly and persuasively about ancient and modern Western political philosophy and literature and about American Constitutional history and law. With his latest book Anastaplo turns away from his areas of admitted expertise to offer, in his own words, "the explorations of a determined amateur with some practice in reading." The essays contained in this volume were originally conceived as a set of seminars, each culminating in a public lecture, which in turn formed the basis for contributions to Encyclopedia Brittanica's 1961-1998 series The Great Ideas Today. Gathered in this one volume, But Not Philosophy provides useful and thought-provoking introductions to seven major "schools" of non-Western thought: Mesopotamian, ancient African, Hindu, Confucian, Buddhist, Islamic, and North American Indian. Anastaplo studies ancient literary epics and legal codes and examines religious traditions and systems of thought, providing detailed references to authoritative histories and commentators. Movingly and thoughtfully written, the essays encourage readers to bring their own Western traditions under similar scrutiny, to study our own grasp of the divine, reliance upon nature and causality, and dependence on philosophy-to learn about what we are from what we are not.







Philosophical Perspectives on Religious Diversity


Book Description

Addressing the question of what kind of theoretical foundations are required if we wish to have a constructive attitude towards different religions, this book scrutinizes aspects of the human condition, personhood and notions of (exclusive) truth and tolerance. In the book, Wolterstorff suggests that persons have hermeneutic and related competences that account for their special dignity, and that this dignity implies the right to practice religion freely. Margolis emphasizes the contingent character of all religious pursuits – being products of a unique form of evolution, humans need to create convincing purposes in an otherwise purposeless world. Respondents criticize both views with an eye on the question of whether those views promote religious tolerance. Grube criticizes the tendency for interreligious dialogue to be pursued under the parameters of an exclusive, bivalent notion of truth according to which something is necessarily false if it is not true. Under those parameters, religions that differ from the (one) true religion must be false. This explains why religious pluralists attempt to minimize the differences between religions at all costs and why others suggest implausibly strong concepts of tolerance. As an alternative, Grube proposes to drop exclusive concepts of truth and to conduct interreligious dialogue under the parameters of the concept of justification which allows for pluralisation. The following discussion takes up this criticism of bivalence and its consequences for dealing with religious otherness. This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Philosophy and Theology.




Chesterfield’s choice thoughts to his son


Book Description

320 exhortations on becoming a man of the world and a gentleman. On vice and virtue, haughtiness and humility. Great learning without sound judgment carries us into pride and pedantry. Speak of the moderns without contempt, and of the ancients without idolatry. Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with.




Philosophy of Religion and Art


Book Description

This volume serves to fill a lacuna in the literature of the analytic philosophy of religion by relating key philosophical themes to broader aspects of the humanities, such as visual art, literature, and pop culture studies. The essays here range from discussions of the nature of art and religious experience, to the role of art in religious dialogue, and the function of narrative in religious discourse, as well as cultural media and artistic and phenomenological experience.