Since the early 20th century internationally renowned scholars have regularly rediscovered the significance of Soren Kierkegaard for the philosophy of religion and theology. However, only recently have they explored the affinity between the North American philosophy of pragmatism and Kierkegaard's existential thinking.This collection of essays documents a process of adoption and interpretation that over the last thirty years has sought to overcome the traditional way of reading Kierkegaard's works. As the essays reveal, the original pragmatists especially William James and Charles (...) S. Peirce today increasingly serve as a source of inspiration for a modern foundation of the philosophy of religion.". (shrink)

Søren Kierkegaards frühes Hauptwerk Entweder– Oder bezeichnet in genialer Weise die Wendung der Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts zur Konkretion des humanen Existierens in Handlungssituationen. Damit steht dieses „Monstrum von einem Buch“ in der Tradition von Idealismus und Romantik, um sie zu verabschieden: In der Art eines modernen Romans, der die Sprachformen virtuos wechselt, zugleich in der Analyse der Lebensformen des Ästhetischen, Ethischen und Religiösen. „Papiere von A“ heißen die gesammelten Aphorismen, Mozart-Interpretationen, schwermütigen Texte samt „Tagebuch des Verführers“ - „Papiere von (...) B“ die beiden großen Lehrbriefe zur Verteidigung der Ehe und des ethisch Allgemeinen überhaupt. So erscheint die ästhetische Unmittelbarkeit als Krise, die Ethik der Selbst-Wahl als Lösung, die wiederum im religiösen Selbst-Verhältnis ihre ultimative Grenze ahnen lässt. Die Beiträge dieses Bandes– ein Ergebnis internationaler Zusammenarbeit– erschließen Kierkegaards Existenzwissenschaft, die Denken und Lebensgefühl des 20./21. Jahrhunderts vorweg hat zur Sprache bringen können. Die Exegese dieses Klassikers geschieht auf der Basis der neuen Edition von Søren Kierkegaards Skrifter, an die sich die begonnene Deutsche Søren Kierkegaard Edition anschließt. (shrink)

The author uses Eco's The Name of the Rose to pose the problem of the relation between the infinite aesthetic play of semiotics and pragmatic moral responsibility for human conduct. This problem is addressed through Peirce's semiotic theory, which not only links signs to objects, but situates them in an interpretant relation that is formative of human conduct. Religion is advanced as the paradigm of this relation; a "categorial semiotic" where concrete symbolic acts move beyond nominalism through real experience of (...) the divine, to which "fallibilistic" doctrines are always subject. (shrink)

American philosophy of religion makes possible a theological cosmology which allows us to conceive a foundation for the reality ofthe symbolism ofGod and creation, the processual integration of subject-object perspectives, the connections between nature and spirit, and those between faith and action. This raises the possibility of amending the deficit in the German theological tradition as regards theology of creation, that is, as the presupposition for a necessary ethics of creation. Constitutive factors in this connection are the christological elements of (...) the love of God which are made concrete via faith, thought, and act in a metaphysically and evolutionistically understood world-process. (shrink)

The author examines Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion to discover a variant of the usual teleological argument that abandons reliance on analogical reasoning. This second version, never refuted in the Dialogues, is termed "pragmaticist" in Peirce's sense. It relies on an abductive hypothesis that claims not logical proof but the power of instinctual conviction. The Dialogues' espousal of sound common sense may then be viewed as an imperfectly articulated precursor of Peirce's pragmaticist argument for the reality rather than the existence (...) of God. (shrink)