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.
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.
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.
This study argues that Shakespeare's aim in Coriolanus is twofold: (1) to depict the ancient world of Rome as dominated by contradiction; and (2) to signal to us moderns, in the biblical tradition, that we can comprehend or, in other words, interpret the contradictory world of the ancients solely on the basis of a paradoxical world elsewhere, beyond contradiction. Shakespeare thus shows us how important it is to distinguish between the contradictory values of antiquity, from which the Romans (like the (...) Greeks) know no exit, and the paradoxical values of modernity, whose interpretive basis, the love of neighbor—interpret others as you would have others interpret you—provides us moderns with a world of otherness (Augustine's City of God) by which we can overcome the earthly contradictions dividing us. (shrink)
In this study of spiritual experience as involving what he calls intuitive knowledge, Phillip Wiebe argues that there is substantial evidence for the existence of spirits. He supports his argument...
Modernity between Wagner and Nietzsche argues that the operas and writings of Wagner contradict the values that are fundamental to modernity. Analyzing Wagner’s works in contrast to the philosophical thought of Nietzsche, Brayton Polka examines how Wagner breaks with Nietzsche and their common influencer, Schopenhauer.
In my paper, I undertake to show that the God of the Bible is the subject of modern philosophy, i.e., that philosophy is biblical and that the Bible is philosophical. Central to the argument of my paper is an analysis of the fundamental difference between the philosophy of Aristotle, as based on the law of contradiction and thus on the contradictory opposition between necessity and existence, and the philosophy of, in particular, Spinoza and Kant, as based on the transcendental logic (...) of the necessary relationship of thought and existence. Thus, I argue that the ontological argument demonstrates the necessary existence of the thinking subject and of the subject thought, at once human and divine. In short, metaphysics is practical reason, the practice of doing unto others what you want others to do unto you, and reason is metaphysical practice, the practice of proving that there is one thing that you, a subject, cannot think without it necessarily existing, and that is the other subject. (shrink)
In his book Hune Margulies provides an account of Martin Buber’s dialogical philosophy that is at once truly insightful and deeply problematic. Margulies shows that the I-thou philosophy of Buber,...
In her book the distinguished historian of early Christian history, Paula Fredriksen, provides an incisive study of what she calls the Jesus-movement from the time of the execution of Jesus on a Ro...
Paradox and contradiction constitute the two ways of the world. Polka traces these ideas and the way they have shaped the Western philosophical world view through close readings of Montaigne, Descartes, Spinoza, and Vico.
In this paper it is argued that, while the case that Antony Flew makes against philosophically invalid arguments for the existence of God is generally sound, he fails to comprehend the power and cogency of the ontological argument. Thus, his conception of the grounds of morality, separate from the biblical tradition of theology, is by no means compelling. This paper aims to show that the rational concept of morality that Flew rightly claims to uphold is not only consistent with but (...) also presupposes, paradoxically, the ontological argument for the existence of God. Central ideas of Kant and, above all, of Spinoza are called upon to show that the nexus between morality and theology, between philosophy and God, is that central to the ontological argument. The conclusion of the paper is that, just as philosophy without God is empty, so God without philosophy is blind. (shrink)
This book analyzes the ideas central to the philosophy of Kant, Hegel, and Kierkegaard to show that they are biblical in origin, both ontologically and historically. Polka argues that Schopenhauer has an altogether false conception of the fundamental ideas of the Bible and of Christianity, which leaves his philosophy irredeemably contradictory.
