In the vast collection of his writings, the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur only sporadically raised the issue of interreligious dialogue. In this book, comparative theologian Marianne Moyaert argues that Ricoeur's hermeneutical philosophy offers valuable signposts for a better understanding of the complexities related to interreligious dialogue. By revisiting the key insights of Ricoeur's wider oeuvre from the perspective of interfaith dialogue, Moyaert elaborates a Ricoeurian interreligious hermeneutic. In Response to the Religious Other provides a coherent interreligious reading of Ricoeur's philosophy of religion, his hermeneutical anthropology, his ethical hermeneutics. Moyaert shows that Ricoeur makes an exceptionally rewarding conversation partner for anyone wishing to explore the complex issues associated with interreligious dialogue. This book is essential for studies of hermeneutics, ethics, religious philosophy, global cooperation and hospitality, comparative theology, and religious identity.

Sren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is simultaneously one of the most obscure philosophers of the Western world and one of the most influential. His writings have influenced atheists and faithful alike. Yet despite his now pervasive influence, there is still widespread disagreement on many of the most important aspects of his thought. Kierkegaard was deliberately obscure in his philosophical writings, forcing his reader to interpret and reflect. But at the same time that Kierkegaard produced his esoteric, pseudonymous philosophical writings, he was also producing simpler, direct religious writings. Since his death the connections between these two sets of writings have been debated, ignored or denied by commentators. Here W. Glenn Kirkconnell undertakes a thorough examination of the two halves of Kierkegaard's authorship, demonstrating their ethical and religious relationship and the unifying themes of the signed and pseudonymous works. In particular the book examines Kierkegaard's understanding of the fall of the self and its recovery and the implications of his entire corpus for the life of the individual.

A classic work of religious philosophy, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is Scottish philosopher David Hume's famous examination of the nature of God. Hume asks the question as to whether or not man's belief in God can be supported by experience. The subject is discussed between three philosophers named Demea, Philo and Cleanthes. While all three agree that a god exists, they differ sharply in opinion on God's nature and how, or if, humankind can come to knowledge of a deity.

Subtle Implications is a defining clarification of the human experience as presented in the story of the author's life, and expressed in his 'Theories of Everything. Through his unrelenting quest to understand and come to terms with life's wide variety of apparently random events, he developed a methodology we can use to analyze and understand the madness. At the very least, the author offers the opportunity to gain the insight and strength needed to cope with even the worst of life's emotionally crippling crises. What are the true natures of our physical and spiritual realities? How did our Universe begin? Why are we here? Why do bad things happen in our lives? What happens when we die? Do we live again? Life is not that complicated. Pertinent information and the proper perspective can help you see life as your own creation. You alone are responsible for the present state of every facet of your life. Together we are responsible for every aspect of the world that greets us every morning. Together we can create a world where a comfortable life is the rule and not the exception. It is all up to us

The book works out new perspectives for a philosophy of religion that aims beyond the internal questions of rationality within a theological tradition, on the one hand, and the outer criticism of religion from naturalistic quaters, on the other. Instead it places itself within a wider philosophical view in line with groundbreaking thoughts about culture and a basic human 'conditionality' among interwar philosophers such as Ernst Cassirer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Walter Benjamin, and Martin Heidegger. The book also offers a concrete interpretation of examples of religious phenomena displaying a human world-relation that centers on issues of 'truth', 'name', and 'habitation'. Finally, lines are drawn to Jean-Luc Nancy's current rethinking of Christianity.

This original and provocative engagement with Erasmus' work argues that the Dutch humanist discovered in classical Stoicism several principles which he developed into a paradigm-shifting application of Stoicism to Christianity. Ross Dealy offers novel readings of some lesser and well-known Erasmian texts and presents a detailed discussion of the reception of Stoicism in the Renaissance. In a considered interpretation of Erasmus' De taedio Iesu, Dealy clearly shows the two-dimensional Stoic elements in Erasmus' thought from an early time onward. Erasmus' genuinely philosophical disposition is evidenced in an analysis of his edition of Cicero's De officiis. Building on stoicism Erasmus shows that Christ's suffering in Gethsemane was not about the triumph of spirit over flesh but about the simultaneous workings of two opposite but equally essential types of value: on the one side spirit and on the other involuntary and intractable natural instincts.

The separation of science and religion in modern secular culture can easily obscure the fact that in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe ideas about nature were intimately related to ideas about God. Readers of this book will find fresh and exciting accounts of a phenomenon common to both science and religion: deviation from orthodox belief. How is heterodoxy to be measured? How might the scientific heterodoxy of particular thinkers impinge on their religious views? Would heterodoxy in religion create a predisposition towards heterodoxy in science? Might there be a homology between heterodox views in both domains? Such major protagonists as Galileo and Newton are re-examined together with less familiar figures in order to bring out the extraordinary richness of scientific and religious thought in the pre-modern world.

Are science and religion in accord or are they diametrically opposed to each other? The common perspectives-for or against religion-are based on the same question, "Do religion and science fit together or not?" These arguments are usually stuck within a preconceived notion of realism which assumes that there is a 'true reality' that is independent of us and is that which we discover. However, this context confuses our understanding of both science and religion. The core concern is not the relation between science and religion, it is realism in science and religion. Wittgenstein's philosophy and developments in quantum theory can help us to untie the knots in our preconceived realism and, as Wittgenstein would say, show the fly out of the bottle. This point of view changes the discussion from science and religion competing for the discovery of the 'true reality' external to us (realism), and from claiming that reality is simply whatever we pragmatically think it is (nonrealism), to realizing the nature and interdependence of reality, language, and information in science and religion.

Selfhood and Sacrifice is an original exploration of the ideas of two major contemporary thinkers. O'Shea offers a novel interpretation of Girard's work that opens up his discourse on violence and the sacred into a fruitful engagement with both Taylor's philosophical anthropology and his philosophical history. In an age when religious violence and the role of practical reason in the secular sphere are continually juxtaposed, O'Shea offers new possibilities of responding to the problems of global crisis through the critical lenses of two of the most original and engaging thinkers writing on religion today.

Probability theory promises to deliver an exact and unified foundation for inquiry in epistemology and philosophy of science. But philosophy of religion is also fertile ground for the application of probabilistic thinking. This volume presents original contributions from twelve contemporary researchers, both established and emerging, to offer a representative sample of the work currently being carried out in this potentially rich field of inquiry. Grouped into five parts, the chapters span a broad range of traditional issues in religious epistemology. The first three parts discuss the evidential impact of various considerations that have been brought to bear on the question of the existence of God. These include witness reports of the occurrence of miraculous events, the existence of complex biological adaptations, the apparent 'fine-tuning' for life of various physical constants and the existence of seemingly unnecessary evil. The fourth part addresses a number of issues raised by Pascal's famous pragmatic argument for theistic belief. A final part offers probabilistic perspectives on the rationality of faith and the epistemic significance of religious disagreement.