The first five essays, including the title essay, are a stimulating contribution to contemporary discussion in philosophical theology. Their most striking feature is the attempted synthesis of Heideggerian-Bultmannian existentialism with Hartshorne's neo-classical metaphysics. Unlike Hartshorne, Ogden gives particular attention to the moral argument for God's reality, drawing heavily on the work of Stephen Toulmin, and engaging the atheism of Sartre and Camus in provocative fashion, in both the title essay and in "The Strange Witness of Unbelief." The final three (...) essays treat specifically Christian problems within the context of the philosophical framework previously developed—How is Jesus Christ God's unique and decisive act in history? What does it mean to call him Lord? What is the meaning of Christian eschatology? An explicit discussion of the relation between the theologian as philosopher and the theologian as Christian witness would have been helpful, since it is difficult to gather precisely what Ogden thinks of this relation by comparing the final three with the first five essays.—M. W. (shrink)

The first five essays, including the title essay, are a stimulating contribution to contemporary discussion in philosophical theology. Their most striking feature is the attempted synthesis of Heideggerian-Bultmannian existentialism with Hartshorne's neo-classical metaphysics. Unlike Hartshorne, Ogden gives particular attention to the moral argument for God's reality, drawing heavily on the work of Stephen Toulmin, and engaging the atheism of Sartre and Camus in provocative fashion, in both the title essay and in "The Strange Witness of Unbelief." The final three (...) essays treat specifically Christian problems within the context of the philosophical framework previously developed—How is Jesus Christ God's unique and decisive act in history? What does it mean to call him Lord? What is the meaning of Christian eschatology? An explicit discussion of the relation between the theologian as philosopher and the theologian as Christian witness would have been helpful, since it is difficult to gather precisely what Ogden thinks of this relation by comparing the final three with the first five essays.—M. W. (shrink)

James E. Taylor As the title of this book makes clear, the essays contained in it are unified by their focus on models of God and alternative ultimate realities. But what is ultimate reality, what does 'God' mean, and what would count as a model ...

Two different versions of the ending of the first additament to C. S. Peirce's 1908 article, "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God," appear in the Collected Papers but were omitted from The Essential Peirce. In one, he linked the hypothesis of God's Reality to his entire theory of logic as semeiotic, claiming that proving the latter would also prove the former. In the other, he offered a final outline of his cosmology, in which the Reality (...) of God as Ens necessarium is indispensable to both the origin and order of our existing universe of Signs. Exploring these passages, as well as the unpublished manuscript drafts of the article, provides important insights into the key concepts of instinct and continuity within Peirce's comprehensive system of thought. (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)

Charles Sanders Peirce developed a mature Christian faith under the influence of his father Benjamin Peirce and Frederic Dan Huntington, a teacher and pastor at Harvard. Peirce’s Christian self-understanding and concern shape the development of his philosophical logic as well as the development and refinement of pragmatism.

This paper is an evaluation of C. S. Peirce’s late essay “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God”, based on the two logical values that he calls “productiveness” and “security.” After reviewing the unique logical form of “abduction” and noting that it is a formal fallacy—and so enjoys less “security” than deduction or induction—I turn to the extraordinary case of abduction that is found in “A Neglected Argument.” I argue that the productiveness of the Neglected Argument is found (...) in its ability to instigate practical results. The security of the Neglected Argument, on the other hand, is rooted in an activity Peirce calls “musement,” a kind of rational intuition. Moreover, I suggest that Peirce’s notion of “musement,” which has remained something of a mystery in Peirce studies, arose from hisearly reading of Friedrich von Schiller’s aesthetics. (shrink)

Published in 1908, C.S. Peirce’s ‘A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God’ is one of his most difficult articles. Presenting a peculiar entanglement of scientific method and theology, it sketches a ‘humble’ argument for the reality—and not the existence—of God for Musers, that is, those who pursue the activity he calls ‘Musement’. In Musement, Peirce claims, we can achieve a kind of perception of the intertwinement of the three universes of experience: of feeling, of brute fact, and (...) of reason. He also somehow relates each universe to a distinct phase of inquiry, which is described by the use of induction, deduction, and abduction or retroduction. The way that he develops his claims allows him to outline God as an abductive vague hypothesis to explain how those three universes make up a single whole. The hypothesis being vague means that the principle of contradiction does not hold for it. In this presentation, we aim at throwing some light at these points, focusing on the concept of Musement and what is understood as the vagueness of the hypothesis. (shrink)

Despite the attention it has received in recent years, C. S. Peirce's so-called neglected argument for God's reality remains somewhat obscure. The aim of this essay is to clarify the basic structure of Peirce's three-part argument and to show how it falls prey to several objections. I argue that his overall argument is ultimately unsuccessful in demonstrating the reality of God, even if it provides some degree of warrant for the belief in God's reality to those who (...) are uncontrollably drawn to that belief during the process of musement. (shrink)

C. S. Peirce develops a novel argument for belief in God in a 1908 paper he entitled “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God.”1 That essay has received a fair amount of attention in recent years,2 but Peirce’s overall argument remains somewhat obscure. There is still more work to be done in explicating its basic structure and determining whether the argument can withstand criticism. The purpose of this essay is to reconstruct Peirce’s argument in a way that reveals (...) the most pressing objections to which it is susceptible.Peirce’s overall argument consists of three interrelated sub-arguments. First, Peirce leads us through a meditative or contemplative process through which the belief in God’s reality is.. (shrink)

This paper aims, above all, to invite a direct reading of the article that Charles S. Peirce published in 1908 with the title “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God.” More than a century after its original publication, that article by Peirce has not lost its relevance: its careful reading continues to provide a lot to think about. To this end, my presentation is organized in six sections: 1) introduction; 2) presentation of “A Neglected Argument for the (...) class='Hi'>Reality of God”; 3) the notion of reality; 4) the heart of the “Neglected Argument”; 5) contemporary discussion: a response to Oya ; and 6) conclusion. (shrink)

For both Luther and Bonhoeffer God enters into and dwells in the world through weakness and suffering, rather than divine authority or strength. This article explores the significance of Luther’s theologia crucis and Bonhoeffer’s treatment of ‘the weakness of the Word’ in Discipleship. Moreover, it draws out some of the implications of these themes for Christian mission today. What does it mean for Christians to witness to and engage the world in weakness? How does this free Christians from needing a (...) fixed programme or governing ideal in their witness and evangelism? (shrink)

Basing his argument for the existence of God on the continuous nature of the temporal world, Braine here posits that the philosophy of religion cannot be continued as a separate discipline: the solution of its problems will be the fruit of the correct telesis of the problems of general philosophy in their complex interrelationships.

Engaging in a dialogue with such major representatives of the dominant consensus as Kant, Habermas, and Rawls, and informed by the philosophical writings of ...

Reacting against philosophers such as Braithwaite, Hare and Van Buren, caught in what not a few would believe to be an essentially positivist rut, John Wisdom and Ilham Dilman forcefully argue that there is more to religion than commitment to a way of life and yet they both are, like Braithwaite and Hare, adamant in maintaining that believers and non-believers need not differ, and indeed will not differ, when they are informed, reflective and philosophically sophisticated, ‘in what they expect by (...) way of a life after death’ and more importantly still – they will not differ in what ‘they infer about what lies beyond the reach of the senses’ . 1 Moreover, they agree that not only can we not make any valid inferences about what lies beyond any possible reach of the senses, we cannot directly know - encounter, become acquainted with - such a reality either. (shrink)

In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. The Parc de La Villette represents the (...) last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Bernard Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Jacques Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Peter Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, Absolute Otherness (tout autre) and the Impossibile were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others). Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

This article borrows from the american tradition of emerson, james, and peirce to argue that religious belief may properly originate in feeling, willing, or reasoning. i also maintain that such belief is not consummated until all three aspects of one's being--feeling, willing, and thinking--have been addressed. this approach both democratizes the possibility of religious belief and requires of full belief that it be applicable to all aspects of one's life.

Widely known among philosophers and scholars as one of the most important logicians in the history of Western philosophy, C. S. Peirce is not equally known as an intellectual whose work was guided by theological views. In other words, compared to his profound contributions in other areas – logic, semiotics and epistemology, to name but a few –, the religious dimension of Peirce’s thought has not yet received all the attention it deserves. What explanations can be given of this neglect? (...) Firstl... (shrink)