A lecture course on the interaction of Philosophy and Religion in Western thought, available in video and audio formats published by The Great Courses.

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

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

Preface.-I. Mind and matter.-II. The universal cause.-III. God and the moral consciousness.-IV. Difficulties and objections.-V. Revelation.-VI. Christianity.

'Young People and Social Media: Contemporary Children's Digital Culture' explores the practices, relationships, consequences, benefits, and outcomes of children's experiences with, on, and through social media by bringing together a vast array of different ideas about childhood, youth, and young people's lives. These ideas are drawn from scholars working in a variety of disciplines, and rather than just describing the social construction of childhood or an understanding of children's lives, this collection seeks to encapsulate not only how young people exist (...) on social media but also how their physical lives are impacted by their presence on social media.One of the aims of this volume in exploring youth interaction with social media is to unpack the structuring of digital technologies in terms of how young people access the technology to use it as a means of communication, a platform for identification, and a tool for participation in their larger social world. During longstanding and continued experience in the broad field of youth and digital culture, we have come to realize that not only is the subject matter increasing in importance at an immeasurable rate, but the amount of textbooks and/or edited collections has lagged behind considerably. There is a lack of sources that fully encapsulate the canon of texts for the discipline or the rich diversity and complexity of overlapping subject areas that create the fertile ground for studying young people's lives and culture. The editors hope that this text will occupy some of that void and act as a catalyst for future interdisciplinary collections.'Young People and Social Media: Contemporary Children's Digital Culture' will appeal to undergraduate students studying Child and Youth Studies and-given the interdisciplinary nature of the collection- scholars, researchers and students at all levels working in anthropology, psychology, sociology, communication studies, cultural studies, media studies, education, and human rights, among others. Practitioners in these fields will also find this collection of particular interest. (shrink)

Reviews have something in common with the structure of reflection. Just as a reflection can in turn be made the object of a reflection, a review also can in turn be made the object of a further review - and so on ad infinitum, as Hegel was frequently accustomed to say. The fact that there is an evident risk of such a progression ad infinitum, once one embarks on the path of reviewing a review, should not, however, prevent one from (...) taking at least the first step along this path when it is necessary to do so. (shrink)

Surprising as it might have seemed not so long ago, in recent times religion has once again become a focus of lively debate. The exchanges between those for and against religion have, however, often thrown up heat, rather than light. As an attempted corrective, The Royal Institute of Philosophy asked a number of distinguished philosophers who are interested in religion to contribute to its annual lecture series for 2008–9. This volume contains essays based on the lectures. (...) The topics covered include natural theology, for and against, miracles, the debates about Darwinism, spirituality, sacrifice and the sacred, the Incarnation and religion and pluralism. Vigorously argued as they are, these essays will undoubtedly take the debates forward in a constructive way. (shrink)

Surprising as it might have seemed not so long ago, in recent times religion has once again become a focus of lively debate. The exchanges between those for and against religion have, however, often thrown up heat, rather than light. As an attempted corrective, The Royal Institute of Philosophy asked a number of distinguished philosophers who are interested in religion to contribute to its annual lecture series for 2008–9. This volume contains essays based on the lectures. (...) The topics covered include natural theology, for and against, miracles, the debates about Darwinism, spirituality, sacrifice and the sacred, the Incarnation and religion and pluralism. Vigorously argued as they are, these essays will undoubtedly take the debates forward in a constructive way. (shrink)

Philosophy and religion were the two important sources of knowledge for medieval Arab Muslim polymaths. Owing to the difference between the nature of philosophy and religion, the interplay between philosophy and religion often takes the form of conflict in medieval Muslim thought as exemplified by the Al-Ghazali versus Averroes (Ibn Rusd) polemic. Unlike the Al-Ghazali versus Averroes (Ibn Rushd) polemic, the interplay between philosophy and religion in the political philosophy of Abu (...) Nasr Alfarabi takes the form of harmonious co-existence. Although, for Alfarabi, religion is an inferior form of knowledge as compared to philosophy, the present article will show that philosophy and religion play equally significant roles in Alfarabi’s virtuous city and that in the absence of either philosophy or religion, the political system proposed by Alfarabi cannot exist. (shrink)

An exploration of Chinese during a time of monumental change, The period after the fall of the Han dynasty.

The Hegel Lectures Series Series Editor: Peter C. Hodgson Hegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original editors conflated materials from different sources and dates, obscuring the development and logic of Hegel's thought. The Hegel Lectures series is based on a selection of extant and recently discovered transcripts and (...) manuscripts. The original lecture series are reconstructed so that the structure of Hegel's argument can be followed. Each volume presents an accurate new translation accompanied by an editorial introduction and annotations on the text, which make possible the identification of Hegel's many allusions and sources. Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion represent the final and in some ways the decisive element of his entire philosophical system. His conception and execution of the lectures differed significantly on each of the occasions he delivered them, in 1821, 1824, 1827, and 1831. The older editions introduced insoluble problems by conflating these materials into an editorially constructed text. The present volumes establish a critical edition by separating the series of lectures and presenting them as independent units on the basis of a complete re-editing of the sources by Walter Jaeschke. The English translation has been prepared by a team consisting of Robert F. Brown, Peter C. Hodgson, and J. Michael Stewart, with the assistance of H. S. Harris. Now widely recognized as the definitive English edition, it is being reissued by Oxford in the Hegel Lectures Series. The three volumes include editorial introductions, critical annotations on the text, textual variants, and tables, bibliography, and glossary. 'Determinate Religion' comprises Hegel's treatment of world religions, starting with indigeneous or nature religions, moving on to religions of the Far East, the Near East, and the West. What Hegel succeeded in offering is not so much a history as a geography of religions, as demonstrated by the different schematic structures adopted in successive years. (shrink)

This is the first translation into English of an important early work of the German idealist philosopher F.W.J. Schelling. Philosophy and Religion (1804) is considered a precursor to his major work on freedom, his Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom (1809). In Philosophy and Religion, Schelling raises the question of how philosophy can come to terms with the failure of approaching the highest principle of being, the Absolute (or God), rationally. He argues that (...) the only possibility of recognizing the Absolute lies in intellectual intuition, which goes beyond presentiment or religious intuition. For Schelling, it is the task of philosophy to lead the soul towards the intuition of the Infinite: "All philosophy begins . . . with an animated idea of the Absolute." In recent years, Schelling's philosophical ideas have been adopted by contemporary thinkers such as the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Žižek and the French theorist of "Non- Philosophy," François Laruelle. (shrink)

We inhabit a world of differences - cultural, religious, moral, philosophical. The question that preoccupies the contributors to this volume is whether the fact of difference - plurality - inevitably leads to the conclusion that there cannot be a single truth, even in moral matters. As befits a volume on pluralism, it brings together a wide variety of contributors with different backgrounds and distinctive skills and attitudes. The implications of plurality are examined with regard to religion, morality and (...) class='Hi'>philosophy itself, but the essays range widely to consider how we should respond at the social and political levels to the facts of plurality and the claims of the pluralist. No reader will be left in any doubt that the debate about pluralism raises questions that are fundamental not only for philosophical argumentation but for society at large. (shrink)

This volume synthesizes cutting-edge philosophical reflections on interpretation with their application to the practice of interpreting religious texts, combining new philosophical insights with a thorough analysis of their application to religion.

Religious belief is not just about abstract intellectual argument; it also impinges on all aspects of human life. John Cottingham's Philosophy of Religion opens up fresh perspectives on the philosophy of religion, arguing that the detached neutrality of much of contemporary philosophizing may be counterproductive - hardening us against the receptivity required for certain kinds of important evidence to become salient. This book covers all the traditional areas of the subject, including the meaning of religious claims, (...) the existence of God and the relation between religion and morality, as well as the role of spiritual praxis and how religious belief affects questions about the meaning of life, human suffering and mortality. While preserving the clarity and rigor that are rightly prized in the analytic tradition, the book also draws on insights from literary and other sources, and aims to engage a wide readership. (shrink)

The Maimonides Review of Philosophy and Religion is an annual collection of double-blind peer-reviewed articles that seeks to provide a broad international arena for an intellectual exchange of ideas between the disciplines of philosophy, theology, religion, cultural history, and literature and to showcase their multifarious junctures within the framework of Jewish studies. Contributions to the Review place special thematic emphasis on scepticism within Jewish thought and its links to other religious traditions and secular worldviews. The Review (...) is interested in the tension at the heart of matters of reason and faith, rationalism and mysticism, theory and practice, narrativity and normativity, doubt and dogma. (shrink)

The papers in this volume fall into four sections. The first part deals more generally with heresy, religious movements and the Church, while the second focuses on Wyclif, covering his path to dissent, his religious doctrines, and a doctrinal comparison with Hus. Philosophical themes come to the fore in the third section, which has papers on the decline of scholasticism in the 14th century and on the trivium, and also includes hitherto unpublished essays on the theology of Augustine's two cities (...) and on Ockham and nominalism. The final part, with another two papers published here for the first time, discusses Christian, Augustinian and Franciscan concepts of man, and the concepts of natural rights according to Ockham and the Franciscans. (shrink)

The latest volume in the complete works of the internationally renowned philosopher of religion, Raimon Panikkar (1918-2010, ) mines the insights and intertwined aspects of centuries of philosophical and theological thought.

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 ...

This volume makes available to the English-speaking world a comprehensive selection of the works of one of the central figures in contemporary Swedish philosophy, theology, and law. One of the selections has been previously published by C. D. Broad. In the first selection, "A Summary of My Philosophy," Hägerström contends that in every judgment the reality of that which is judged about is presupposed. Since the real is determinate, there can be no judgments about absolute reality unless it (...) is identified with some determinate real thing. If this were done, all other things would suffer a relative lack of reality, and no judgments about them would be possible. Thus absolute reality is a self-contradictory idea and hence arises Hägerström's motto: "I propose that metaphysics must be destroyed." The remaining selections spell out the implications of this proposal for ethics and religion. The volume also includes a memoir by Broad.—A. E. J. (shrink)

This collection of essays focuses on East-West dialogue. Scholars of Western, Indian & Chinese thought such as Ninian Smart, Fred Dallmayr, Chad Hansen, Barbara Holdrege, Robert Ellwood, Srinivasa Rao, & others, including Akin Makinde of Nigeria share their insights on: Person East-West, Religion & Culture, Comparative Ethics, Indian, Chinese, & Western thought. To order write: Long Beach Publications, P.O. Box 14807, Long Beach, CA 90803. Telephone: (310) 439-7347.

In ancient Greece, philosophers developed new and dazzling ideas about divinity, drawing on the deep well of poetry, myth, and religious practices even as they set out to construct new theological ideas. Andrea Nightingale argues that Plato shared in this culture and appropriates specific Greek religious discourses and practices to present his metaphysical philosophy. In particular, he uses the Greek conception of divine epiphany - a god appearing to humans - to claim that the Forms manifest their divinity epiphanically (...) to the philosopher, with the result that the human soul becomes divine by contemplating these Forms and the cosmos. Nightingale also offers a detailed discussion of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the Orphic Mysteries and shows how these mystery religions influenced Plato's thinking. This book offers a robust challenge to the idea that Plato is a secular thinker. (shrink)

According to Amos Funkenstein, Stephen Gaukroger and Andrew Cunningham, seventeenth-century natural philosophy was fused with theology, driven by theology, and pursued primarily to shed light on God. Experimental natural philosophy might seem to provide a case in point. According to its English advocates, like Robert Boyle and Thomas Sprat, experimental philosophy embodies the Christian virtues of humility, innocence, and piety, it helps establish God’s existence, attributes, and providence, and it provides a basis for evangelism. This chapter shows (...) that, unlike their English counterparts, experimental philosophers in seventeenth-century Italy kept natural philosophy sharply distinct from theological and religious matters. This indicates that seventeenth-century experimental philosophy was not, as such, theologically driven or oriented. It also suggests that there was no intrinsic relation between experimental philosophy and religion. Whether experimental philosophy was presented as an ally of religion or as distinct from it was, to a significant extent, a matter of cultural politics. It depended on which rhetorical and argumentative strategies were believed to be most likely to ensure freedom of research and institutional support for the work of experimental philosophers in a specific sociopolitical context. (shrink)

This article sketches some of the main ideas that informed the work of the post-colonial Indian philosopher Margaret Chatterjee. A philosopher of language and religion, her work straddles the “frozen” traditions of the east and the west, and astutely philosophizes about Gandhian thought in the realm of religious alterity and coevality.

Richard Rorty never cared much for religion, to say the least. Faithful to his own philosophical and political outlook, he did, however, abandon atheism in favor of anticlericalism—the view that religion should play no role in the public life of democratic societies.1 This shift sets him apart from advocates of New Atheism (and their opponents), who consider the arguments for atheism a crucial component in the overall case against religion,2 but also from the growing group of religious (...) and nonreligious intellectuals who argue that democratic societies need more, not less, religious contributions to public life.3Rorty also came to articulate—particularly in the last volume of his Collected Papers—his .. (shrink)