"This book may be described as an attempt to do two things; first, to explain religion through nature and man; and, secondly, to construe Christianity through religion. The author conceives religion to be a joint product of the mind within man and the nature around him, the mind being the source of the ideas which constitute its soul, the nature around determining the usages and customs which build up its body. He does not think, therefore, that any (...) one of its special forms can be explained without the local nature which begot and shaped it, or that its general being can be resolved and construed without the reason or thought which is common to the race. He sees in religion the greatest of all man's unconscious creations, and the most potent of the means which the past, while it was still a living present, formed for the making of the man and the times that were yet to be." -- From the Preface. (shrink)

Alternative Conceptions of the Spiritual engages with polytheism, henotheism, pandeism, cosmopsychism, world-soul ontologies, animism and theophanism as propounded by recent philosophers and by members of lesser-known non-western faith communities, new religious movements, and esoteric groups. Treating the topics with comparative philosophical exploration and assessment, Travis Dumsday brings Christian doctrines, specifically from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, into dialogue with these alternative viewpoints.

Then it agrees or disagrees with what he says, as needed, for reasons of various sorts, whether philosophical, theological, scientific, historical, etc. - of whatever sort, just so long as they are relevant and cogent; to do these things as well as possible, if only in a small way - pro nostro modulo, as Aquinas puts it, in describing what he intends to do as the author of the Summa Contra Gentiles.

At one place in his collection of essays The Crane Bag and Other Disputed Subjects, the novelist and mythographer Robert Graves makes the following claim that might sound rather shocking to the ears of an analytic philosopher:I find myself far more at home with mildly superstitious people – sailors and miners, for instance – than with stark rationalists. They have more humanity.

In this article the author shows that we must distinguish between criterion as a characteristic in a definition and as a norm for truth and ethical values. He shows that we must accept a hierarchy of such criteria, But that this hierarchy is not absolute. He also discusses and solves the 'paradox of the publican'.

Through various applications of the ‘deep structure’ of moral and religious reasoning, I have sought to illustrate the value of a morally informed approach in helping us to understand the complexity of religious thought and practice…religions are primarily moved by rational moral concerns and…ethical theory provides the single most powerful methodology for understanding religious belief. Ronald Green, Religion and Moral Reason.

Aimed at introductory students and general readers interested in thinking and God in the context of modern thought and experience. Discusses work by Kant, Dostoevsky and Heidegger amongst others.

[From the publisher]Taking the term “phenomenologist” in a fairly broad sense, Early Phenomenology focuses on those early exponents of the intellectual discipline, such as Buber, Ortega and Scheler rather than those thinkers that would later eclipse them; indeed the volume precisely means to bring into question what it means to be a phenomenologist, a category that becomes increasingly more fluid the more we distance ourselves from the gravitational pull of philosophical giants Husserl and Heidegger. In focusing on early phenomenology this (...) volume seeks to examine the movement before orthodoxies solidified. More than merely adding to the story of phenomenology by looking closer at thinkers without the same fame as Husserl or Heidegger and the representatives of their legacy, the essays relate to one of the earlier thinkers with figures that are either more contemporary or more widely read, or both. Beyond merely filling in the historical record and reviving names, the chapters of this book will also give contemporary readers reasons to take these figures seriously as phenomenologists, radically reordering of our understanding of the lineage of this major philosophical movement. (shrink)

이 글은 정인보와 슐라이어마허가 의식과 존재에 대한 매우 유사한 관점을 지니고 있음을 드러내려는 취지로 작성되었다. 양자 모두 현상학적 성찰에서 출발한다는 뜻이다. 이 글의 논지는 다음과 같이 요약된다.BR 1. 정인보와 슐라이어마허는 현상학적 태도를 공유한다. 즉, 양자는 상습적인, 통상 당연한 것으로 여겨지는 이해의 방식들을 괄호치기한다.BR 2. 정인보와 슐라이어마허는 의식을 세계와 외적 대립의 관계를 형성하는 것으로 간주하지 않는다. 양자에게 우리의 의식과 세계 사이에는 객관적으로 실증될 수 있는 어떤 거리도 없다. 즉, 순수하게 내부적인 의식은 존재하지 않는다.BR 3. 정인보와 슐라이어마허는 일종의 지각현상학을 공유하는 바, 세계의 (...) 존재자들은 능동적 주체로서의 우리에 의해 지각되는 정적 객체들이 아니라는 성찰이 그 근본 출발점이다. 양자에 따르면 우리가 그 무엇을 지각하는 순간은 우리가 지각된 존재자들과 언제나 이미 감각적으로-정서적으로 통하여 함께 상응하게 되었다는 것을 알린다. 이것은 우리의 존재가 세계의 존재자들과 외적 대립의 관계를 형성하는 능동적 주체로서의 존재가 아니라는 것을 뜻한다. 양자의 관점에서 보면 우리는 세계와의 근본적 통일성인 그 자신의 존재에 반응하는 행위자로서 규정되어야 한다. (shrink)