Should technology be used to improve human faculties such as cognition and longevity? This thought-provoking dialogue between "transhumanism" and religion examines enhancement technologies that could radically alter the human species. "Transhumanism" or "human enhancement" is an intellectual and cultural movement that advocates the use of emerging technologies to change human traits. Although they may sound like science fiction, the possibilities suggested by transhumanism are very real, and the questions they raise have no easy answers. If these enhancements-especially major ones like the indefinite extension of healthy human life-become widely available, they would arguably have a more radical impact on humankind than any other development in history. This book comprises essays that explore transhumanism and the issues that surround it, addressing numerous fascinating questions posed by scholars of religion from various traditions. How will "immortality" or extreme longevity change our religious beliefs and practices? How might pharmaceuticals enhance spiritual experiences? Will "post-human" technologies be available to all persons, or will a superior "post-human race" arise to dominate the human species? The discussions are as intriguing as the future they suggest. Introduces some of the hardest and most pressing issues that will determine the future of the human race Examines current scholarly questions and thoughts about transhumanism Asks new questions relative to the intersection of human enhancement and religion Explores what it means to be human in a technologically changing world

This book discusses spirituality as an emerging scientific topic from a historical perspective, with extensive discussion of the mind-body problem and of scientific concepts of consciousness. While the book focuses on the Western tradition of 'Enlightenment', it also implicitly addresses the double meaning of the term, with the Eastern tradition describing it as 'a state of true knowledge, which is an important goal on an individual's spiritual path' and the Western tradition seeing it as 'the collective process of getting rid of narrow-minded dogmas and concepts'. The book is based on a simple yet challenging premise: Science has not gone far enough in the scientific process of going from a collective mind tied up in dogmatic teachings to a truly free mind that, seemingly, freed itself from bondage and restrictions. The book shows that science, and with it our whole Western culture, has to incorporate spirituality if it is to realize this goal of enlightenment. If that is done, and it can only be done by many individuals actually practicing spirituality, this will also lead to the individual type of enlightenment.

Michael Palmer's book provides a detailed account of the theories of religion of both Freud and Jung - widely held to be the two most important theories of religion in the history of psychology.
In the first section Dr Palmer analyses Freud's claim that religion is an obsessional neurosis - a psychological illness fuelled by sexual repression. The second section considers Jung's rejection of Freud's theory and his own assertion that it is the absence of religion, not its presence, which leads to neurosis.
Freud and Jung on Religion will be suitable for general and specialist reader alike, as it assumes no prior knowledge of the theories of Freud and Jung. It will be essential reading for all those concerned with contemporary debates between the disciplines of psychology and religion.

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This book provides a historical map of 20th philosophy of religion from absolute idealism to feminism and postmodernism. Dividing the 20th into four eras and eighteen primary strands, the book provides the historical context for the more specialized volumes that follow. This first volume is of interest to those working in the fields of philosophy of religion and theology.

Recent discussions of Thomas Aquinas's treatment of natural law have focused upon the ""self-evident"" character of the first principles, but few attempts have been made to determine in what manner they are self-evident. On some accounts, a self-evident precept must have, at most, a tenuous connection with speculative reason, especially our knowledge of God, and it must be untainted by the stain of ""deriving"" an ought from an is. Yet Aquinas himself had a robust account of the good, rooted in human nature. He saw no fundamental difference between is-statements and ought-statements, both of which he considered to be descriptive. Knowing the Natural Law traces the thought of Aquinas from an understanding of human nature to a knowledge of the human good, from there to an account of ought-statements, and finally to choice, which issues in human actions. The much discussed article on the precepts of the natural law (I-II, 94, 2) provides the framework for a natural law rooted in human nature and in speculative knowledge. Practical knowledge is itself threefold: potentially practical knowledge, virtually practical knowledge, and fully practical knowledge. This distinction within practical knowledge, typically overlooked or underutilized, reveals the steps by which the mind moves from speculative knowledge all the way to fully practical knowledge. The most significant sections of Knowing the Natural Law examine the nature of ought-statements, the imperative force of moral precepts, the special character of per se nota propositions as found within the natural law, and the final movement from knowledge to action.

Hegel is a thinker who haunts modern Christian theology. Although forever being refuted and rejected, he is also forever resurgent as an influence. Here Andrew Shanks diagnoses that rejection, very largely, as a defensive reaction against the sheer, troubling, prophetic open-mindedness of his thought. No doubt there is some justice to the charge that Hegel is religiously one-sided; in particular, as this criticism has been developed by Kierkegaard and, more recently, William Desmond. Against Desmond, however, Shanks argues that the critique itself is no less one-sided. The argument focuses especially on the dialectic of the Unhappy Consciousness in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, seeking to open up its relationship to recent developments in neuropsychology. Key Hegelian terms are also retranslated, in a bid to minimise the off-putting awkwardness of Hegel's jargon. What is at issue here is, surely, the most explosive element in Hegel's thought as a whole. And this is discussed not just as an item of intellectual history, but, rather, very much as a still-living option.

The debate over the proper definition of "religion" has occupied the attention of social scientists for many years without shedding much light on the nature of religion. One reason for this lack of progress is that most participants in the debate have accepted a naturalistic conception of religion. The goal of this volume is to inspire a re-orientation in the way students of religion think about the task of defining religion and to encourage an appreciation of the fact that defining religion is fundamentally a social and political process. The first substantive section of this volume features critical views of the ways in which academicians have traditionally defined religion and suggests new and potentially more useful approaches. A second section features essays that look at the development of the category of religion in historical and cross-cultural context. These essays make it clear that the notion that religion is a basic sphere of human experience is a Western concept that emerged at a particular point in history for particular political and ideological reasons. The final section of the volume focuses on the social nature of the process of defining religion and on the influence that changing definitions of religion have on religious practice and beliefs.

Heidegger has often been considered as the proponent of the end of metaphysics in the post-Hegelian philosophy, due to his persistent attempts to overcome the onto-theological framework of traditional metaphysics. Yet, this dismissal of metaphysical, theological, and religious motives is deeply ambiguous since new forms of metaphysical and religious experience re-emerge in his philosophical works. Heidegger shares this ambiguous relation to the notions of faith and religion with authors such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein whose works are also marked by a critique of metaphysics and by a characteristic rethinking of the role of faith and religion. In fact, all three still remain, among other things, reference points for contemporary philosophical debates relating to the phenomenon of religion and faith. Rethinking Faith explores how the phenomena of religion and faith are present in the works of Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein, and how these phenomena are brought into play in their discussion of the classical metaphysical motives they criticize.

Every one is fully aware of the fact, that of all subjects which it concerns man to investigate, that involved in these two questions is of paramount importance, namely, What ought I to be? and, How ought I to act? The scientific solution and elucidation of these questions, constitutes the peculiar sphere of the science of Moral Philosophy. A treatise on Moral Philosophy that does justice to its subject, will, of course, tax to the utmost the powers of the hardest student who attempts fully to fathom the depths, and ascend the heights of thought to which it attains; and at the same time, it will so elucidate that subject, that the ordinary reader who will devote adequate time and attention to its perusal, will study it with much interest and profit. Such it has been the fixed aim of the author to render the following treatise. He designed to render it a book for the student, and at the same time, a book for the people. This treatise was not prepared for the thoughtless, who take up such a work, glance, it may be, at its contents, and then lay it aside, as too deep for them, individuals whose minds float at random upon the surface of things, without looking seriously into the depths beneath, or to the heights above for the purpose of understanding the great realities within and around them, realities among which they are to have their eternal dwelling place, and who especially never ponder the questions, What am I? Where am I? and Whither am I bound? What ought I to be? What ought I to do? and What will be my destiny, as the consequence of being and doing what I ought, or ought not? It was prepared, on the other hand, for thinkers, into whose hearts wisdom has entered, and unto whose souls knowledge is pleasant. ASA MAHAN (1800-1889) was America's foremost Christian educator, reformer, philosopher, and pastor. He was founding president of two colleges and one university, where he was able to inspire numerous reforms, publish authoritative philosophical texts, and promote powerful revivals like his close associate Charles Finney. He led the way on all important fronts while being severely persecuted. He introduced the new curriculum later adopted by Harvard, was the first to instruct and grant liberal college degrees to white and colored women, advised Lincoln during the Civil War, and among many other remarkable achievements, was a father to the early evangelical and holiness movements.

Philosophy of Religion for a New Century represents the work of nineteen scholars presented at a conference in honor of Eugene T. Long at the University of South Carolina, April 5-6, 2002.
This volume is a good example of philosophy in dialogue; there is both respect and genuine disagreement. First, an account of our present situation in the Philosophy of Religion is given, leading to a discussion of the very idea of a 'Christian Philosophy' and the coherence of the traditional concept of God. The implications of science and a concern for the environment in our concepts of God are carefully examined. A discussion follows on the possibility of speech about God and silence about God. Since much of modern European philosophy is concerned with the Death of God' theme, the positions of Nietzsche and some of his twentieth-century interpreters are presented. There are presentations on Feminist Approaches to Philosophy of Religion, and Comparative Religion is examined in relation to cultures and the demands of rationality. The volume concludes with a critical dialogue on the relation of Religious Discourse to the Public Sphere.
Developing global awareness has led to significant change in the Philosophy of Religion. One-dimensional approaches have given way to honest dialogue. The traditional boundaries between the secular and the religious have shifted, and new approaches to traditional problems are required. This volume presents examples of these new approaches.

"Coleridge and the Crisis of Reason" examines Coleridge's understanding of the Pantheism Controversy - the crisis of reason in German philosophy - and reveals the context informing Coleridge's understanding of German thinkers. It challenges previous accounts of Coleridge's philosophical engagements, forcing a reconsideration of his reading of figures such as Schelling, Jacobi and Spinoza. This exciting new study establishes the central importance of the contested status of reason for Coleridge's poetry, accounts of the imagination and later religious thought.

This book explores the value impact that theist and other worldviews have on our world and its inhabitants. Providing an extended defense of anti-theism - the view that God's existence would (or does) actually make the world worse in certain respects - Lougheed explores God's impact on a broad range of concepts including privacy, understanding, dignity, and sacrifice. The second half of the book is dedicated to the expansion of the current debate beyond monotheism and naturalism, providing an analysis of the axiological status of other worldviews such as pantheism, ultimism, and Buddhism. A lucid exploration of contemporary and relevant questions about the value impact of God's existence, this book is an invaluable resource for scholars interested in axiological questions in the philosophy of religion.

Jean-Luc Marion's early work on Descartes and his more recent writings in phenomenology have not only elicited huge interest in France and the US, but also created huge potential in the field of theology. This book is organised around central questions about the divine raised by Marion's work: how to speak of God, how to approach God, how to experience God, how to receive God, how to believe in God, how to worship God. Within that context it deals with the important aspects of his philosophical work: the inspiration of his writings in what he calls Descartes' "white theology" and its late medieval context as well as the apophatic theology associated with Dionysius the Areopagite; his important claims about idolatrous and iconic ways of speaking of the divine; his notion of the saturated phenomenon or a phenomenology of revelation and givenness, and his extensive writings on love. Christina M. Gschwandtner also considers Marion's explicitly theological writings and establishes their relationship to his larger phenomenological oeuvre. Overall, it approaches Marion's work not only as a philosophy of religion, but with specifically theological questions in mind. It hence shows how Marion's extensive historical and phenomenological work can be profitable and inspiring for theology today, for both systematic questions and for concerns of spirituality, in a way that holds the theoretical and the practical together.

This volume provides the first comprehensive treatment of the central topics in the contemporary philosophy of religion from a Thomist point of view. It focuses on central themes, including religious knowledge, language, science, evil, morality, human nature, God and religious diversity. It should prove valuable to students and faculty in philosophy of religion and theology, who are looking for an introduction to the Thomist tradition.

This book treats the critical theory of religion of Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Friedrich Pollock, Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, J rgen Habermas and other critical theorists who tried to make sense out of the senseless war experience by exploring the writings of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich W.J. Schelling, Georg W.F. Hegel, Artur Schopenhauer, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud.