Did post-Enlightenment philosophers reject the idea of original
sin and hence the view that life is a quest for redemption from it?
In "Philosophical Myths of the Fall," Stephen Mulhall identifies
and evaluates a surprising ethical-religious dimension in the work
of three highly influential philosophers--Nietzsche, Heidegger, and
Wittgenstein. He asks: Is the Christian idea of humanity as
structurally flawed something that these three thinkers aim simply
to criticize? Or do they, rather, end up by reproducing secular
variants of the same mythology?
Mulhall argues that each, in different ways, develops a
conception of human beings as in need of redemption: in their work,
we appear to be not so much capable of or prone to error and
fantasy, but instead structurally perverse, living in untruth. In
this respect, their work is more closely aligned to the Christian
perspective than to the mainstream of the Enlightenment. However,
all three thinkers explicitly reject any religious understanding of
human perversity; indeed, they regard the very understanding of
human beings as originally sinful as central to that from which we
must be redeemed. And yet each also reproduces central elements of
that understanding in his own thinking; each recounts his own myth
of our Fall, and holds out his own image of redemption. The book
concludes by asking whether this indebtedness to religion brings
these philosophers' thinking closer to, or instead forces it
further away from, the truth of the human condition.
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