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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > General > Philosophy of religion
God and Time is a collection of previously unpublished essays written by leading philosophers about God's relation to time. The essays have been selected to represent current debates written between those who believe God to be atemporal and those who do not. The essays highlight issues such as how the nature of time is relevant to whether God is temporal and how God's other attributes are compatible with his mode of temporal being. By focusing on the metaphysical aspects of time and temporal existence, God and Time will make a unique contribution to the current resurgence of interest in philosophical theology within the analytic tradition.
"At last, Russia has begun to speak in a truly original voice." So
said Anatoly Vaneev, a Soviet dissident who became Karsavin's
disciple in the Siberian gulag where the philosopher spent his last
two years. The book traces the unusual trajectory of this inspiring
voice: Karsavin started his career as Russia's brightest historian
of Catholic mysticism; however, his radical methods - which were
far ahead of their time - shocked his conservative colleagues. The
shock continued when Karsavin turned to philosophy, writing
flamboyant and dense essays in a polyphonic style, which both
Marxists and religious traditionalists found provocative. There was
no let-up after he was expelled by Lenin from Soviet Russia: in
exile, he became a leading theorist in the Eurasian political
movement, combining Orthodox theology with a left-wing political
orientation. Finally, Karsavin found stability when he was invited
to teach history in Lithuania: there he spent twenty years
reworking his philosophy, before suffering the German and Soviet
invasions of his new homeland, and then deportation and death.
Clearing away misunderstandings and putting the work and life in
context, this book shows how Karsavin made an original contribution
to European philosophy, inter-religious dialogue, Orthodox and
Catholic theology, and the understanding of history.
Taking Hugh of St. Victor's magisterial 'On the Sacraments of the
Christian Faith' as his source text, Dillard applies the methods of
analytic philosophy to develop a systematic theology in the spirit
of Christian Platonism. The themes examined include the existence
of God, creation ex nihilo, modality and causality, divine
immutability and eternity, divine exemplarity, sin, dualism,
personhood, evil, ecclesiology, and resurrection, and beatitude.
This work covers ancient beliefs about life after death from
Homer's Hades to ancient Jewish beliefs, from the Bible to the Dead
Sea Scrolls and beyond. It examines early Christian beliefs about
resurrection in general and that of Jesus in particular, beginning
with Paul and working through to the start of the third century. It
explores the Easter stories of the Gospels and seeks the best
historical conclusions about the empty tomb and the belief that
Jesus did rise bodily from the dead.
Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of Nature: The Re-Enchantment of the
World in the Age of Scientific Reasoning analyses the works of
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) on natural philosophy in a series of
contexts within which they may best be explored and understood. Its
aim is to place Edwards's writings on natural philosophy in the
broad historical, theological and scientific context of a wide
variety of religious responses to the rise of modern science in the
early modern period - John Donne's reaction to the new astronomical
philosophy of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, as well as to Francis
Bacon's new natural philosophy; Blaise Pascal's response to
Descartes' mechanical philosophy; the reactions to Newtonian
science and finally Jonathan Edwards's response to the scientific
culture and imagination of his time.
Thierry Meynard and Dawei Pan offer a highly detailed annotated
translation of one of the major works of Giulio Aleni (1582
Brescia-1649 Yanping), a Jesuit missionary in China. Referred to by
his followers as "Confucius from the West", Aleni made his presence
felt in the early modern encounter between China and Europe. The
two translators outline the complexity of the intellectual
challenges that Aleni faced and the extensive conceptual resources
on which he built up a fine-grained framework with the aim of
bridging the Chinese and Christian spiritual traditions.
Hud Hudson offers a fascinating examination of philosophical
reasons to believe in hyperspace. He begins with some stage-setting
discussions, offering his analysis of the term 'material object',
noting his adherence to substantivalism, confessing his sympathies
regarding principles of composition and decomposition, identifying
his views on material simples, material gunk, and the persistence
of material objects, and preparing the reader for later discussions
with introductory remarks on eternalism, modality and
recombination, vagueness, bruteness, and the epistemic role of
intuitions. The subsequent chapters are loosely organized around
the theme of hyperspace. Hudson explores nontheistic reasons to
believe in hyperspace in chapter 1 (e.g. reasons arising from
reflection on incongruent counterparts and fine-tuning arguments),
theistic reasons in chapter 7 (e.g. reasons arising from reflection
on theistic puzzles known as the problem of the best and the
problem of evil), and some distinctively Christian reasons in
chapter 8 (e.g. reasons arising from reflection on traditional
Christian themes such as heaven and hell, the Garden of Eden,
angels and demons, and new testament miracles). In the intervening
chapters, Hudson inquires into a variety of puzzles in the
metaphysics of material objects that are either generated by the
hypothesis of hyperspace, focusing on the topics of mirror
determinism and mirror incompatibilism, or else informed by the
hypothesis of hyperspace, with discussions of receptacles,
boundaries, contact, occupation, and superluminal motion. Anyone
engaged with contemporary metaphysics will find much to stimulate
them here.
In this new translation, Laruelle offers a serious and rigorous
challenge to contemporary theological thought, calling into
question the dominant understanding of the relation between Christ,
theology, and philosophy, not only from a theoretical, but also
political perspective. He achieves this through an inversion of St
Paul's reading of Christ, through which the ground for Christianity
shifts. It is no longer the 'event' of the resurrection, as
philosophical and theological operation (Badiou's St Paul), so much
as the Risen Himself that forms the starting point for a
non-philosophical confession. Between the Greek and the Jew,
Laruelle places the Gnostic-Christ in order to disrupt and overturn
such theologico-philosophical interpretations of the resurrection
and set the Risen within the radical immanence of Man-in-Person.
Forming the basis for a non-Christianity, Clandestine Theology
offers a more radical deconstruction of Christianity, resting upon
the last identity of Man and the humanity of Christ as opposed to
endless deferral or difference (Nancy) or the universalising
economy of Ideas and Events (Badiou).
In a violation of our destiny, something is killing every one of
us. The judge of ignorance has long sentenced every living being to
death, has sentenced you, and I, all our ancestors, and our
children to death. In a relentless holocaust, there are no
survivors. Hope has not been enough to win an appeal, nor the
visions of faith, nor the dream of justice and beauty, not even
love. To the hearless judge of ignorance, these mean nothing. We
will be saved in the end y knowledge. We will learn to overcome
aging and death by engendering the noble and supreme intelligences.
We will create the gods who will call us back to life, or we will
not return at all. It is in our hands. It is time to inspire and
begin the ultimate scientific, moral, and spiritual quest. The end
of death.
An interdisciplinary collection of comparative essays which look at aspects of the thought of Edwards and Franklin and consider their places in American culture.
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.
Our digital technologies have inspired new ways of thinking about
old religious topics. Digitalists include computer scientists,
transhumanists, singularitarians, and futurists. Writers such as
Moravec, Bostrom, Kurzweil, and Chalmers are digitalists. Although
they are usually scientists, rationalists, and atheists,
digitalists they have worked out novel and entirely naturalistic
ways of thinking about bodies, minds, souls, universes, gods, and
life after death. Your Digital Afterlives starts with three
digitalist theories of life after death. It examines personality
capture, body uploading, and promotion to higher levels of
simulation. It then examines the idea that reality itself is
ultimately a system of self-surpassing computations. On that view,
you will have infinitely many digital lives across infinitely many
digital worlds. Your Digital Afterlives looks at superhuman bodies
and infinite bodies. Thinking of nature in purely computational
terms has the potential to radically and positively change our
understanding of life after death.
'A Theory of the Absolute' develops a worldview that is opposed to
the dominant paradigm of physicalism and atheism. It provides
powerful arguments for the existence of the soul and the existence
of the absolute, showing that faith is not in contradiction to
reason.
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.
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.
Many people believe that during the Middle Ages Christianity was
actively hostile toward science (then known as natural philosophy)
and impeded its progress. This comprehensive survey of science and
religion during the period between the lives of Aristotle and
Copernicus demonstrates how this was not the case. Medieval
theologians were not hostile to learning natural philosophy, but
embraced it. Had they had not done so, the science that developed
during the Scientific Revolution would not--and could not--have
occurred. Students and lay readers will learn how the roots of much
of the scientific culture of today originated with the religious
thinkers of the Middle Ages. Science and Religion, 400 B.C. to A.D.
1550 thoroughly covers the relationship between science and
religion in the medieval period, and provides many resources for
the student or lay reader: Discusses how the influx of Greek and
Arabic science in the 12th and 13th centuries-- especially the
works of Aristotle in logic and natural philosophy--dramatically
changed how science was viewed in Western Europe. Demonstrates how
medieval universities and their teachers disseminated a positive
attitude toward rational inquiry and made it possible for Western
Europe to become oriented toward science. Includes primary
documents that allow the reader to see how important scholars of
the period understood the relationship of science and religion.
Provides an annotated bibliography of the most important works on
science and religion in the Middle Ages, helping students to study
the topic in more detail. BL
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