This paper transforms a development of an argument against pantheism into an objection to the usual account of God within contemporary analytic philosophy. A standard criticism of pantheism has it that pantheists cannot offer a satisfactory account of God as personal. My paper will develop this criticism along two lines: first, that personhood requires contentful mental states, which in turn necessitate the membership of a linguistic community, and second that personhood requires limitation within a wider context constitutive of the ’setting’ (...) of the agent’s life. Pantheism can, I argue, satisfy neither criterion of personhood. At this point the tables are turned on the Swinburnian theist. If the pantheist cannot defend herself against the personhood-based attacks, neither can the Swinburnian, and for instructively parallel reasons: for neither doctrine is God in the material world; in the pantheist case God is identical with the world, in the Swinburnian case God transcends it. Either way both the pantheist and the Swinburnian are left with a dilemma: abandon divine personhood or modify the doctrine of God so as to block the move to personhood. (shrink)

According to traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic theism, God is an omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect agent. This volume shows that philosophy of religion needs to take seriously alternative concepts of the divine, and demonstrates the considerable philosophical interest that they hold.

In this paper I have had two aims. One was to describe a number of pantheist or near pantheist religious attitudes, including the influence of many worlds theories. The other was to indicate some of the ways we might arrive at Pantheism.One final remark: when assessing religious positions the intellectual grounds for accepting or rejecting them should, I suggest, be whether they make sense of things, that is, enable us to understand. The ways to Pantheism, or to near Pantheism, should (...) therefore be interpreted as part of a comparison between ways of understanding. (shrink)

Článek se zabývá pojmem panteismus v období renesance. Ačkoli termín panteismus se objevil až na konci 17. století a později v kontextu tzv. “Pantheismusstreit”, za předchůdce moderního panteistického myšlení byl označen renesanční filosof Giordano Bruno. Následně i Mikuláš Kusánský, a to jakožto pokračovatel myšlení Mistra Eckharta, začal být považován za panteistu. Jak Kusánský, tak Bruno v určitém smyslu obhajovali imanenci božského ve světě, avšak zároveň oba zdůrazňovali rozdíl mezi Bohem a přírodou a připisovali Bohu transcendenci nebo přinejmenším transcendentální aspekty. Toto (...) není v souladu s definicí panteismu v tzv. silném slova smyslu, kdy se tvrdí striktní identita Boha a světa. Zdá se, že pojem renesanční panteismus je konstruktem, který byl vytvořen skrze násilnou aplikaci terminologie osvícenské filosofie na renesanční období. (shrink)