An interdisciplinary collection of comparative essays which look at aspects of the thought of Edwards and Franklin and consider their places in American culture.

It is widely claimed that notions of gods and religious beliefs are irrelevant or inconsequential to early Chinese ("Confucian") moral and political thought. Rejecting the claim that religious practice plays a minimal philosophical role, Kelly James Clark and Justin Winslett offer a textual study that maps the religious terrain of early Chinese texts. They analyze the pantheon of extrahumans, from high gods to ancestor spirits, discussing their various representations, as well as examining conceptions of the afterlife and religious ritual. Demonstrating that religious beliefs in early China are both textually endorsed and ritually embodied, this book goes on to show how gods, ancestors and afterlife are philosophically salient. The summative chapter on the role of religious ritual in moral formation shows how religion forms a complex philosophical system capable of informing moral, social, and political conditions.

The recovery of nature has been a unifying and enduring aim of the writings of Ralph McInerny, Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame, director of the Jacques Maritain Center, former director of the Medieval Institute, and author of numerous works in philosophy, literature, and journalism. While many of the fads that have plagued philosophy and theology during the last half-century have come and gone, recent developments suggest that McInerny's commitment to Aristotelian-Thomism was boldly, if quietly, prophetic. In his persistent, clear, and creative defenses of natural theology and natural law, McInerny has appealed to nature to establish a dialogue between theists and non-theists, to contribute to the moral and political renewal of American culture, and particularly to provide some of the philosophical foundations for Catholic theology.

This volume brings together essays by an impressive group of scholars, including William Wallace, O.P., Jude P. Dougherty, John Haldane, Thomas DeKoninck, Alasdair MacIntyre, David Solomon, Daniel McInerny, Janet E. Smith, Michael Novak, Stanley Hauerwas, Laura Garcia, Alvin Plantinga, Alfred J. Freddoso, and David B. Burrell, C.S.C.

Since the time of the Enlightenment in Western Europe, discussions of faith and reason have often pitted the believer against the skeptic, the theist against the atheist, and the person of one faith against the person of no professed faith. But the relation of reason to faith has been a matter of debate among believers as well. There are those who hold that religious faith can be proven or supported by rational argument. Others say that to try to give reasons and arguments does violence to religious faith, or opens it to misunderstanding and doubt, or trivializes it. "Responses to the Enlightenment: An Exchange on Foundations, Faith, and Community "is a dialogue between Hendrik Hart and William Sweet, two philosophers who identify themselves as Christians, and who seek to respond to the challenges of the Enlightenment and its legacy. The authors approach the relation of faith to reason, however, in very different ways: Hart from the perspective of the Calvinian tradition and postmodern philosophy, Sweet from the Catholic tradition and analytic philosophy. Among the topics discussed are the nature of religious faith and of reason, liberalism and orthodoxy in religion, the relation of religious experience and rationality, and building community in a religiously and culturally pluralistic world. This exchange presents two distinctive perspectives to some of the major challenges of the reason to religious belief, but seeks to find common ground between them.

This book offers a fascinating account of Heidegger's middle and later thought."Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology" offers an important new reading of Heidegger's middle and later thought. Beginning with Heidegger's early dissertation on the doctrine of categories in Duns Scotus, Peter S. Dillard shows how Heidegger's middle and later works develop a philosophical anti-theology or 'atheology' that poses a serious threat to traditional metaphysics, natural theology and philosophy of religion.Drawing on the insights of Scholastic thinkers such as St Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, the book reveals the problematic assumptions of Heideggerian 'atheology' and shows why they should be rejected. Dillard's critique paves the way for a rejuvenation of Scholastic metaphysics and reveals its relevance to some contemporary philosophical disputes. In addition to clarifying the question of being and explaining the role of phenomenology in metaphysics, Dillard sheds light on the nature of nothingness, necessity and contingency. Ultimately the book offers a revolutionary reorientation of our understanding, both of the later Heidegger and of the legacy of Scholasticism.

This text examines religion as a form of collective memory. This is a memory held in place by Europe's institutional churches, educational systems, and the mass media - all of which are themselves responding to rapid social and economic change Europe's religious memory is approached in the following ways: as vicarious; as a particularly European characteristic; as precarious, especially among young people; and as it is portrayed by the media. The memory may fragment, be disputed, and in extreme cases, disappear. Alternatives may emerge. The challenge for European societies is to affirm healthy mutations in religious memory and discourage others. The book also examines the increasing diversity of Europe's religious life This book is intended for scholars and students of Sociology, Religion, Politics, European Studies, and Philosophy.

In In Exile, Jessica Dubow situates exile in a new context in which it holds both critical capacity and political potential. She not only outlines the origin of the relationship between geography and philosophy in the Judaic intellectual tradition; but also makes secular claims out of Judaism’s theological sources. Analysing key Jewish intellectual figures such as Walter Benjamin, Isaiah Berlin and Hannah Arendt, Dubow presents exile as a form of thought and action and reconsiders attachments of identity, history, time, and territory. In her unique combination of geography, philosophy and some of the key themes in Judaic thought, she has constructed more than a study of interdisciplinary fluidity. She delivers a striking case for understanding the critical imagination in spatial terms and traces this back to a fundamental – if forgotten – exilic pull at the heart of Judaic thought.

This study argues that a revolution in the approach to philosophy took place during the first centuries of our era. Covering topics in Stoicism, Hellenistic antisemitism and Jewish apologetic, Platonism, and early Christian philosophy, it examines a trend to seek for the truth in antiquity which shaped the future course of Western thought.

"Individualism Old and New" is a serious study of public and cultural issues surrounding the place of the individual in a technologically advanced society. Dewey outlines the fear that personal creative potential will be stomped on by assembly-line monotony, political bureaucracy and an industrialized culture of uniformity. Dewey beoieves in the power of critical intelligence and says that individualism has in fact been offered a unique higher kevek of technological development upon which to grow, mature and redine itself. In "Liberalism and Social Action" Dewey looks at earlier forms of liberalism where the State sunction is to rotect its citizens while allowing free reign to social-economic forces. He believes that as a society matures, so must liberalism. He believes that liberalism must redefine itself in a world where government must play a dynamic role in creating an enviornment in which citizens can achieve their potential. Dewey's advocacy of a posiive role for government - a new liberalism - is a natural application of Hegel's dialetic. "A Common Faith" presents a compelling prescription for a union of religious and social ideals, inluding consistency in both idea and action. His thesis is thought provoking. This book should not only be read by social scientist, but also people if faith who wish to intelligently enhance their own faith. A Collector's Edition.

Transregional and regional elites of various backgrounds were essential for the integration of diverse regions into the early Islamic Empire, from Central Asia to North Africa. This volume is an important contribution to the conceptualization of the largest empire of Late Antiquity. While previous studies used Iraq as the paradigm for the entire empire, this volume looks at diverse regions instead. After a theoretical introduction to the concept of 'elites' in an early Islamic context, the papers focus on elite structures and networks within selected regions of the Empire (Transoxiana, Khurasan, Armenia, Fars, Iraq, al-Jazira, Syria, Egypt, and Ifriqiya). The papers analyze elite groups across social, religious, geographical, and professional boundaries. Although each region appears unique at first glance, based on their heterogeneous surviving sources, its physical geography, and its indigenous population and elites, the studies show that they shared certain patterns of governance and interaction, and that this was an important factor for the success of the largest empire of Late Antiquity.

"Following Vattimo's postmodern philosophy, Badiou's postmetaphysical ontology, and i ek's revolutionary style, the authors of this marvelous book invites us to reactivate our politics of resistance against our greatest enemy: corporate capitalism. The best solution to the ecological, energy, and financial crisis corporate capitalism has created, as Crockett Clayton and Jeffrey Robbins suggest, is a new theological materialism where Being is conceived as energy both subjectively and objectively. All my graduate students will have to read this book carefully if they want to become philosophers." - Santiago Zabala, ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona "This is a book of an extraordinary timeliness, written in an accessible and strikingly informative way. It is excellently poised to become a synthetic and agenda setting statement about the implications of a new materialism for the founding of a new radical theology, a new kind of spirituality. I consider this therefore quite a remarkable book which will be influential in ongoing discussions of psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, and theology. Moreover, it will be, quite simply, the best book about spirituality and the new materialism on the market today. While all of the work of the new materialists engage at one level or another the question of a new spirituality, I do not think there is anything comparable in significance to what Crockett and Robbins have provided here." - Ward Blanton, University of Kent "This book will perhaps be most appreciated by the reader with an intuitive cast of mind, able to recognize the force of an argument in its imaginative suggestiveness . . . New Materialism is about energy transformation, we are told, energy which cannot be reduced to matter because it resonates with spirit and life . . . Yet the book strikes a fundamental note of hard reality: 'if we want our civilization to live on earth a little longer we will have to recognize our coexistence with and in earth'." - Christian Ecology Link

The nine original essays collected in this volume explore the themes of philosophical progress, ultimate explanation, the metaphysics of free will, and the relation of sciences and religion. These essays exemplify Nicholas Rescher's characteristic mode of combining historical perspectives with analytical elucidation on philosophically contested issues and utilize this methodology to address some of the salient problems of the field.

Recently there has been a growing interest not only in existentialism, but also in existential questions, as well as key figures in existential thinking. Yet despite this renewed interest, a systematic reconsideration of Kierkegaard's existential approach is missing. This anthology is the first in a series of three that will attempt to fill this lacuna. The 13 chapters of the first anthology deal with various aspects of Kierkegaard's existential approach. Its reception will be examined in the works of influential philsophers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, and Habermas, as well as in lesser known philosophers from the interwar period, such as Jean Wahl, Lev Shestov, and Benjamin Fondane. Other chapters reconsider central notions, such as "anxiety", "existence", "imagination", and "despair". Finally, some chapters deal with Kierkegaard's relevance for central issues in contemporary philosophy, including "naturalism", "self-constitution", and "bioethics". This book is of relevance not only to researchers working in Kierkegaard Studies, but to anyone with an interest in existentialism and existential thinking.

This volume examines emotions and emotional well-being from a rich variety of theological, philosophical and scientific and therapeutic perspectives. To experience emotion is a part of being human; but what are emotions? How can theology, philosophy and the natural sciences unpack the nature and content of emotions? This volume is based on contributions to the 15th European Conference on Science and Theology held in Assisi, Italy. It brings together contributions from scholars of various academic backgrounds from around the world, whose individual insights are made all the richer by their juxtaposition with those from experts in other fields, leading to a unique exchange of ideas.

Can it be justifiable to commit oneself 'by faith' to a religious claim when its truth lacks adequate support from one's total available evidence? In Believing by Faith, John Bishop defends a version of fideism inspired by William James's 1896 lecture 'The Will to Believe'. By critiquing both 'isolationist' (Wittgensteinian) and Reformed epistemologies of religious belief, Bishop argues that anyone who accepts that our publicly available evidence is equally open to theistic and naturalist/atheistic interpretations will need to defend a modest fideist position. This modest fideism understands theistic commitment as involving 'doxastic venture' - practical commitment to propositions held to be true through 'passional' causes (causes other than the recognition of evidence of or for their truth).
While Bishop argues that concern about the justifiability of religious doxastic venture is ultimately moral concern, he accepts that faith-ventures can be morally justifiable only if they are in accord with the proper exercise of our rational epistemic capacities. Legitimate faith-ventures may thus never be counter-evidential, and, furthermore, may be made supra-evidentially only when the truth of the faith-proposition concerned necessarily cannot be settled on the basis of evidence. Bishop extends this Jamesian account by requiring that justifiable faith-ventures should also be morally acceptable both in motivation and content. Hard-line evidentialists, however, insist that all religious faith-ventures are morally wrong. Bishop thus conducts an extended debate between fideists and hard-line evidentialists, arguing that neither side can succeed in establishing the irrationality of itsopposition. He concludes by suggesting that fideism may nevertheless be morally preferable, as a less dogmatic, more self-accepting, even a more loving, position than its evidentialist rival.

Philosophical naturalism, according to which philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences, has dominated the Western academy for well over a century; but Michael Rea claims that it is without rational foundation, and that the costs of embracing it are surprisingly high. Rea argues compellingly to the surprising conclusion that naturalists are committed to rejecting realism about material objects, materialism, and perhaps realism about other minds. That is surely a price that naturalists are unwilling to pay: this philosophical orthodoxy should be rejected.

The articles in this volume are dedicated to Professor Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani for the breadth and depth of his interests and his influence on those interests. They attest to the fact that his fervor and rigorously surgical attention to detail have found fertile ground in a wide variety of disciplines, including (among others) Persian literature and philology; Islamic history and historiography; Arabic literature and philology; and Islamic philosophy and jurisprudence. The volume has brought together some of the most respected scholars in the fields of Islamic studies and Islamic literatures, all his prior students, to contribute with articles that touch on the fields Professor Mahdavi Damghani has so permanently touched with his astonishing scholarship and attention to detail.

A sense of ritual in the modern world had ostensibly vanished following the breakdown of institutionalized religion. The importance of rituals as expressions of fundamental psychological conditions was recognized by Jung, but most psychologists have shied away from religious experience in analysis. However, the apparent chaos and pointlessness of modern life prompt questions which in turn prompt search and revelation, processes which are themselves a form of ritual. Our religious capacity is thus activated, with or without therapist, companion or priest. In Susceptible to the Sacred Bani Shorter, a well-known Jungian analyst, examines the psychological experience of ritual in contemporary life through personalized and descriptive images that suggest and imply the place of ritual in the pyschology of the individual and group. Basing her book on live material ranging from the consulting room to larger cultural events, Bani Shorter investigates, with great sensitivity, how people perceive the sacred and use ritual in their search for purpose, motivation and transformation

In this thought-provoking book, clinical psychologist and professor of religious studies James W. Jones presents a dialogue between contemporary psychoanalytic thinking and contemporary theology. He sheds new light on the interaction of religion and psychology by viewing it from the perspective of world religions, providing an epistemological framework for the psychology of religion that draws on contemporary philosophy of science, and bringing out the importance of gender as a category of analysis. Developments in psychoanalysis provide new resources for theological reflection, Jones contends. The Freudian view that human nature is isolated and instinctual has shifted to a vision of the self as constituted in and through relationships. Jones uses this relational model of human nature to explore the convergence between contemporary psychoanalysis, feminist theorizing, and themes in religious thought found in a variety of traditions. He also critiques the reductionism inherent in Freud's discussion of religion and proposes nonreductionistic and genuinely psychoanalytic ways for psychoanalysis to treat religious topics. For therapists, psychologists, theologians, and others interested in spiritual or psychological issues, Jones offers illuminating clinical material and insightful analysis.