Drawing on Furio Jesi’s 1979 book "Cultura di destra" [Right Wing Culture], this article sketches a preliminary genealogy of fascist accelerationism, a distinct current of white supremacist militancy responsible for a considerable number of North American mass murder events over the span of four decades. After positioning Jesi’s theory of fascist violence within the broader methodological turn of his late period work, the article proceeds to outline three key features of right-wing thought: a language of wordless ideas, a funerary (...) religion of exemplary deaths, and a repertoire of militant yet militarily "useless" tasks. Resisting the tendency either to over- or under-politicize these deadly events, Jesi’s analysis instead allows us recognize the operation of a mythological machine that animates white supremacist mass murders over the past half century. The aim of this article is to trace the genesis and mutation of this machine, with particular emphasis on the period from 1975 to the present. (shrink)

Recent years have seen an increasing amount of studies of the history of the term “religion” and how it figures in conceptions of “the secular” and of cultural differences generally. A recurrent theme in these studies is that “religion” carries associations with Protestant Christianity and thus is not as universal a category as it might appear. The aim of this paper is to explore some resources in Wittgenstein’s philosophy to obtain greater clarity about the contexts of ascription of religion-status to (...) various phenomena and thus to gain perspective on claims made by scholars who investigate the genealogy of the term. While there is good reason to be circumspect about uncritical use of the term “religion” (no less in philosophizing about religions or conducting interreligious dialogue), I argue that instead of abandoning the term or proffering a critical theory of religion, investigation of ascriptions of religion will help philosophers to perceive more clearly the social dynamics that have led to some- one or thing being called religious and thus avoid equivocations that could obstruct the ends of philosophical inquiry or dialogue. (shrink)

The liberal enlightenment as well as the more radical left have both traditionally opposed religion as a reactionary force in politics, a view culminating in an identification of the politics of religion as fundamentalist theocracy. But recently a number of thinkers—Agamben, Badiou, Tabues and in particular Simon Critchley—have begun to explore a more productive engagement of the religious and the political in which religion features as a possible or even necessary form of human emancipation. The papers in this collection, deriving (...) from a workshop held on and with Simon Critchley at the University of Texas at San Antonio in February 2010, take up the ways in which religion’s encounter with politics transforms not only politics but also religion itself, molding it into various religions of politics, including not just heretical religious metaphysics, but also what Critchley describes as non-metaphysical religion, the faith of the faithless. Starting from Critchley’s own genealogy of Pauline faith, the articles in this collection explore and defend some of the religions of politics and their implications. Costica Bradatan teases out the implications of Critchley’s substitution of humor for tragedy as the vehicle for the minimal self-distancing required for any politics. Jill Stauffer compares Critchley’s non-metaphysical religiosity with Charles Taylor’s account of Christianity. Alistair Welchman unpacks the political theology of the border in terms of god’s timeless act of creation. Anne O’Byrne explores the subtle dialectic between mores and morality in Rousseau’s political ethics. Roland Champagne sees a kind non-metaphysical religion in Arendt’s category of the political pariah. Davide Panagia presents Critchley’s ethics of exposure as the basis for a non-metaphysical political bond. Philip Quadrio wonders about the political ramifications of Critchley’s own ‘mystical anarchism’ and Tina Chanter re-reads the primal site in the Western tradition at which the political and the religious intersect, the Antigone story, side-stepping philosophical interpretations of the story (dominated by Hegel’s reading) by means of a series of post-colonial re-imaginings of the play. The collection concludes with an interview with Simon Critchley taking up the themes of the workshop in the light of more recent political events: the Arab Spring and the rise and fall of the Occupy movement. (shrink)

(Awarded the International Society for Intellectual History’s Charles Schmitt Prize) Mīrzā Fatḥ 'Alī Ākhūndzāda’s Letters from Prince Kamāl al-Dawla to the Prince Jalāl al-Dawla (1865) is often read as a Persian attempt to introduce European Enlightenment political thought to modern Iranian society. This essay frames Ākhūndzāda’s text within a broader intellectual tradition. I read Ākhūndzāda as a radical reformer whose intellectual ambition were shaped by prior Persian and Arabic endeavors to map the diversity of religious belief and to critically assess (...) the limits of religion. That Ākhūndzāda’s critique of religion reached further than that of his predecessors is due in part to the influence of the European Enlightenment, but Ākhūndzāda’s form of critical reasoning was also substantially shaped by prior early modern intellectual genealogies. -/- . (shrink)

What happens when mindless symbols of algorithmic AI encounter mindful performative rituals? I return to my criticisms of Habermas’ secularising reading of Kierkegaard’s ethics. Next, I lay out Habermas’ claim that the sacred complex of ritual and myth contains the ur-origins of postmetaphysical thinking and reflective faith. If reflective faith shares with ritual same origins as does communicative interaction, how do we access these archaic ritual sources of human solidarity in the age of AI?

Beliefs have genealogies. Can tracing a belief’s genealogy illuminate the epistemic quality of the belief? This paper sets out a general epistemology of genealogies. As it turns out, genealogies for beliefs come in two sorts: those that trace a belief to some mental event that doubles as evidence for the belief and those that do not. The former have the potential to undercut the belief, rebut the belief, or—importantly—both. The latter have the potential to reinforce the belief or rebut (...) the belief but—importantly—not undercut it. The ultimate conclusion is that there is a role for genealogies in the epistemic appraisal of our beliefs, but this role will be circumscribed by the availability of clear and compelling genealogies. (shrink)

As we have seen in the transition form Part I to Part II of this book, the inductive riskiness of doxastic methods applied in testimonial uptake or prescribed as exemplary of religious faith, helpfully operationalizes the broader social scientific, philosophical, moral, and theological interest that people may have with problems of religious luck. Accordingly, we will now speak less about luck, but more about the manner in which highly risky cognitive strategies are correlated with psychological studies of bias studies and (...) human cognitive ecology. Chapter Four is concerned with connections between psychological study of biases and heuristics, and the comparative study of fundamentalism. The first section looks at work by psychologists and philosophers on our bias blind spot. Later sections ask, ‘In what ways might biases and heuristics play a special role in aiding our understanding of, and response to, fundamentalist orientation?’. The judgments we make in ignorance of our own biases Montaigne calls our importunate presumptions, and he suggests a host of practical factors that make them appealing. Montaigne, as I discuss in the first section, associates many of our errors with one or another kind of presumption, often about our similarity or differences from others, or from God. Our obvious psychographic diversity, and the polemical ground dynamics involved in our ‘culture wars’ are compounded on the agential side by the invisibility of our biases to ourselves. A number of person and social biases are described that plausibly affect all of our beliefs in domains of controversial views, religious views included. The second section continues to study of how etiological symmetry (similar patterns of belief-uptake) gives rise to religious contrariety (diverse narratives and theologies) in testimonial faith traditions, and what the implications of this are for philosophy of religion, generally, and for an improved comparative study of fundamentalism, in particular. Utilizing the work of philosophers such as Rachel Fraser and psychologists such as Emily Pronin and her co-authors, I offer a four-step genealogical account for how etiological symmetry so easily gives rise to religious contrariety. This account begins with the narrative nature of testimony in the Abrahamic family of religions, and how narrative content confounds our “source monitoring.” My genealogy also introduces what I term biased-closure inferences (BCI) as one of the key enablers of religious exclusivism and absolutism. These are the seemingly ‘logical’ but actually very self-serving inferences people often make, inferences from their own belief being true, to any belief contrary to it being false. Those who claim unique truth, epistemic access, and/or virtue and religious value for the home religion are no exception to the broad pertinence of bias studies across domains of controversial view. The proximate causes of belief are all that we can study, and in these there may be significant etiological symmetries. Yet those groups themselves, especially to the extent that they are exclusivist, are tunnel-visioned on claims of doctrinal uniqueness: on content differences of a theological sort. Comparative philosophy is met with the puzzlement that symmetric or essentially similar doxastic strategies should give rise not just to cognitive diversity, but to what we can call polarized or polemical contrariety, contrariety of a kind where each view adamantly rejects all others. Arguably, the more that theologies offer explanations of a counter-inductive sort, or profess counter-inductive thinking as exemplary of faith, the better evidential ground there for inferring that bias involved in the acquisition or maintenance of beliefs. This provides more substance to the question of when censure, and etiological challenges to faith-based beliefs are philosophically well-motivated. (shrink)

This Introduction surveys "political theology" as an interdisciplinary site of inquiry, explicating its contemporary stakes and its connection to the movement of thought known as German Idealism.

The chapter begins with a brief genealogy of psychoanalytic thinking in the broad area of religion. It first looks at Freud’s early modernist dismissal of religion, comparing this with Lacan’s valorisation of the ethical quests that both religion and psychoanalysis are said to share at the heart of their discourse. It then examines Lacan’s later pessimism in opposing the ‘triumph of religion’ in our times to an increasingly uncertain future for psychoanalysis. Moving from a conceptual discussion of these themes (...) to an applied analysis of contemporary challenges, the chapter highlights the contribution of psychoanalysis to an understanding of the aesthetics of violence informing the eschatology of Islamic terror within contemporary global jihadism. (shrink)

The most recent work by Jürgen Habermas tries to revalue religion in today's society. For this he tries to find genealogical connections between secular content and the worldviews that emerged in the Axial Age, including Jewish monotheism. In this article we try to propose that a genealogical approach to monotheism from the perspective of those involved would have to start from the context of undetected origin that constitutes the ethical universalism of Judaism: the Noahide code. To do this, we analyze (...) narrative and conceptual elements of axial and non-axial cultures and show their parallels with the seven laws of the children of Noah as the moral core of humanity. (shrink)

The central question in this paper is the following: how does Nietzsche use history in his critique of morality? The answer, in sum: interestingly, not how you (i.e. most Nietzsche scholars) think, and not well enough. My focus is on The Antichrist, not his Genealogy of Morality, which is more commonly used to answer this question. And I look, in particular, at Nietzsche’s use of good, contemporary scholarship on the origins of Judaism. The chapter also examines the so-called 'genetic (...) fallacy', arguing that Nietzsche has a provisional response to it, but that this response leads to further complications. (shrink)

Evidentialism as its leading proponents describe it has two distinct senses, these being evidentialism as a conceptual analysis of epistemic justification, and as a prescriptive ethics of belief—an account of what one ‘ought to believe’ under different epistemic circumstances. These two senses of evidentialism are related, but in the work of leading evidentialist philosophers, in ways that I think are deeply problematic. Although focusing on Richard Feldman’s ethics of belief, this chapter is critical of evidentialism in both senses. However, I (...) share with authors like Feldman and Earl Conee, that epistemology has important prescriptive functions, and that a sound, civic ethics of belief is of more than merely philosophic importance. One reason why an ethics of belief might be important to problems of practice is the need we have for tools to more effectively mediate the renewed round of ‘culture wars’ we are experiencing in Anglo-American cultures. I mean especially that grand cultural clash between science and religion, reason and faith, secularist atheism and religious fundamentalism, etc. Let us start with the genealogical question of why there is such a grand cultural debate in the first place, and why the debate especially as played out in public and popular forums and even in the courtrooms seems so volatile and so often to confusedly drag everything—beliefs, values, passions, etc., with it. These are questions that I think Sigmund Freud’s classic Civilization and its Discontents can help us understand. Freud was a major voice in criticism of the stern and often hypocritical Victorian morality, a voice pointing out the price of its sometimes high-handed, guiltinducing curtailments of the satisfactions sought by the individual. But for Freud while there are real differences in the moral demands that different societies or traditions place upon people, there is something inevitable about the conflict itself, for “replacement of the power of the individual by the power of a community constitutes the decisive step of civilization... (shrink)

Analytic moral philosophers have generally failed to engage in any substantial way with the cultural history of morality. This is a shame, because a genealogy of morals can help us accomplish two important tasks. First, a genealogy can form the basis of an epistemological project, one that seeks to establish the epistemic status of our beliefs or values. Second, a genealogy can provide us with functional understanding, since a history of our beliefs, values or institutions can reveal (...) some inherent dynamic or pattern which may be problematically obscured from our view. In this paper, I try to make good on these claims by offering a sketchy genealogy of emancipatory values, or values which call for the liberation of persons from systems of dominance and oppression. The real history of these values, I argue, is both epistemologically vindicatory and functionally enlightening. (shrink)

The history of Christianity was a prevalent subject among 18th century philosophers. This article presents a historical perspective of the relationship between Christianity and power based on a comparative analysis of the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau. Bibliographic research was undertaken using a philosophical approach to their works. This study examines Voltaire’s inquiry into Jesus Christ as a historical figure and a“genealogy” of Christianity in three of his works: Tumbeau du fanatisme(1736), Traité sur la tolérance(1763), and Catéchisme de l'honnête (...) homme (1763). Regarding Rousseau, this study interprets his historical approach to the connections between Christianity and politics based on the following works: Sur la Réponse qui a été faite à son Discours(1751), the chapter entitled “Civil Religion” in Du Contract social(1762), and Lettres écrites de la montagne(1764). Not only do the findings of this inquiry reveal the similarities and differences between the thoughts of Voltaire and Rousseau and the historical tensions between Christianity and power, the findings also point toward a fundamental defense of a secular state. (shrink)

A religion with Buddhism's particular moral philosophies of non-violence and asceticism and with its *functional* polytheism in practice should not generate genocidal nationalist violence. Yet, there are resources within the Buddhist canon that people can draw from to justify violence in defense of the religion and of a Buddhist-based polity. When those resources are exploited, for example in the context of particular Theravāda Buddhist practices and the history of Buddhism and Buddhist identity in Burma from ancient times through its colonial (...) and contemporary periods, it perpetuates an ongoing tragedy that is less about religion than about ethno-nationalism. (shrink)

The use of the symbol ∨for disjunction in formal logic is ubiquitous. Where did it come from? The paper details the evolution of the symbol ∨ in its historical and logical context. Some sources say that disjunction in its use as connecting propositions or formulas was introduced by Peano; others suggest that it originated as an abbreviation of the Latin word for “or,” vel. We show that the origin of the symbol ∨ for disjunction can be traced to Whitehead and (...) Russell’s pre-Principia work in formal logic. Because of Principia’s influence, its notation was widely adopted by philosophers working in logic (the logical empiricists in the 1920s and 1930s, especially Carnap and early Quine). Hilbert’s adoption of ∨ in his Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik guaranteed its widespread use by mathematical logicians. The origins of other logical symbols are also discussed. (shrink)

This essay is dedicated to elaborating some of the stylistic elements at work in Nietzsche's polemical book, On The Genealogy of Morals with particular attention to the nature of the aphorism from its inception in ancient Greek literaure, Nietzsche's specific deployment of the aphorism as such, including Nietzsche's argument structure and rhetorical technique as well as the language of Greek and Jewish antiquity, master and slave. -/- In: Christa Davis Acampora, ed., Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals: Critical (...) Essays (Lanham, Md., Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), pp. 177-190. (shrink)

This paper applies Edward Craig’s and Bernard Williams’ ‘genealogical’ method to the debate between relativism and its opponents in epistemology and in the philosophy of language. We explain how the central function of knowledge attributions -- to ‘flag good informants’ -- explains the intuitions behind five different positions (two forms of relativism, absolutism, contextualism, and invariantism). We also investigate the question whether genealogy is neutral in the controversy over relativism. We conclude that it is not: genealogy is most (...) naturally taken to favour an anti-realism about epistemic norms. And anti-realism threatens absolutism. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d . The article is devoted to the Minnemystik of Hadewijch of Brabant in the XIII century. It deals with the genesis of Hadewijch's concept of Minne in its relation to the monastic Cistercian mysticism of Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Saint-Thierry in the XII century and Beatrice of Nazareth in the XIII century. It also considers the conception of theologist and philosopher Richard of Saint-Victor in the XII century. Considering the (...) existing advances of researchers on Hadewijch's Minnemystik, since the XX century, this investigation especially focuses on the primary role of the secular tradition of minnesingers and trobairitz of the mid-XIII century in her texts. M e t h o d s . The main method of the article is a comparative analysis. It is used to find the common meaning of Minne in two traditions: secular and religious minnesingers. The historical-philosophical approach allows us to demonstrate the conceptual link between monastic theology in the XII–XIII centuries and Hadewijch's beguinal Minnemystik. R e s u l t s . The article sheds light on Hadewijch's concept of the Minne and stresses the primary role of the secular and religious conceptions of predecessors and contemporaries in Hadewijch's Minnemystik. C o n c l u s i o n . The author underlines that Hadewijch's concept of Minne comes from the secular tradition of minnesingers and, especially, trobairitz. It also derives from the XII-century male and female mystic theology, which follows Augustine. Thus, the concept of the Minne is deeply connected with the notion of Amor and the tradition of "courtly love", and with Caritas and the tradition of "pure love". K e y w o r d s : Hadewijch's concept of the Minne, Caritas, trobairitz, minnesingers, troubadours, Minnemystik, Unio Mystica, William of Saint-Thierry, Beatrice of Nazareth, Richard of Saint-Victor, Bernard of Clairvaux. (shrink)

This paper analyses the connection between Nietzsche’s early employment of the genealogical method and contemporary neo-pragmatism. The paper has two goals. On the one hand, by viewing Nietzsche’s writings in the light of neo-pragmatist ideas and reconstructing his approach to justice as a pragmatic genealogy, it seeks to bring out an under-appreciated aspect of his genealogical method which illustrates how genealogy can be used to vindicate rather than to subvert, and accounts for Nietzsche’s lack of historical references. On (...) the other hand, by highlighting what Nietzsche has to offer neo-pragmatism, it seeks to contribute to neo-pragmatism’s conception of genealogy. The paper argues that Nietzsche and the neo-pragmatists share a naturalistic concern and a pragmatist strategy in responding to it. The paper then shows that Nietzsche avoids a reductive form of functionalism by introducing a temporal axis, but that this axis should be understood as a developmental model rather than as historical time. This explains Nietzsche’s failure to engage with history. The paper concludes that pragmatic genealogy can claim a genuinely Nietzschean pedigree. (shrink)

The concepts of particular and universal have grown so familiar that their significance has become difficult to discern, like coins that have been passed back and forth too many times, worn smooth so their values can no longer be read. On the Genealogy of Universals seeks to overcome our sense of over-familiarity with these concepts by providing a case study of their evolution during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, a study that shows how the history of (...) these concepts is bound up with the origins and development of analytic philosophy itself. Understanding how these concepts were taken up, transfigured, and given up by the early analytic philosophers, enables us to recover and reanimate the debate amongst them that otherwise remains Delphic. This book begins from the early, originating texts of analytic philosophy that have hitherto baffled commentators, including Moore's early papers, and engages afresh with the neglected contributions of philosophical figures that historians of analytic philosophy have mostly since forgotten, including Stout and Whitehead. This sheds new light upon the relationships of Moore to Russell, Russell to Wittgenstein, and Wittgenstein to Ramsey. (shrink)

This paper aims to increase our understanding of the genealogical method by taking a developmental approach to Nietzsche’s genealogical methodology and reconstructing an early instance of it: Nietzsche’s genealogy of truthfulness in On Truth and Lie. Placing this essay against complementary remarks from his notebooks, I show that Nietzsche’s early use of the genealogical method concerns imagined situations before documented history, aims to reveal practical necessity before contingency, and focuses on vindication before it turns to subversion or problematization. I (...) argue that we understand Nietzsche’s later critique of truthfulness better if we place it against the background of his earlier vindicatory insight into the practical necessity of cultivating truthfulness in some form; and I suggest that Nietzsche’s own mature genealogical method has roots in its supposed contrary, the method of the “English” genealogists. (shrink)

Psychology of religion tries to understand the cause-effect relationships of religious experiences and religious consciousness so as to be able to predict behaviors. It aims to study the religious consciousness with investigations in religious behavior patterns. -/- The major systems of psychology are: structuralism, functionalism, behaviorism, psychoanalysis, and Gestalt School of Psychology. Obviously, each system has its own way of understanding religious consciousness.

Religious belief and behavior raises the following two questions: (Q1) Does God, or any other being or state that is integral to various religious traditions, exist? (Q2) Why do humans have religious beliefs and engage in religious behavior? How one answers (Q2) can affect how reasonable individuals can be in accepting a particular answer to (Q1). My aim in this chapter is to carefully distinguish the various ways in which an answer to Q2 might affect the rationality of believing in (...) God. A literature has sprouted around this exact issue, but it has heretofore focused almost exclusively on one way in which a genealogy for p can affect the rationality of believing p – namely, by the genealogy functioning within a debunking argument. However, there are other ways a genealogy can affect the rationality of a belief. I suggest that we should be interested in whether genealogies more broadly cast doubt on religious beliefs. My main goal is: (i) to argue that CSR does not cast doubt on theistic belief in a few of the primary ways that propositions can cast doubt on other propositions, including via a debunking argument; and (ii) to suggest that one plausible way in which CSR might cast doubt on theistic belief is by undermining various traditional theistic reasons, and to illustrate how this might work with one example of a traditional theistic reason – religious experience. (shrink)

This chapter explores the unifying themes of “the Pittsburgh School” of Sellars, Brandom, and McDowell: a social pragmatist account of intentionality, the rejection of the Myth of the Given, and the partial rehabilitation of Hegel for analytic philosophy. In addition this chapter also discusses three points of disagreement within the Pittsburgh School: whether or not we should posit sense-impressions, whether perceptual intentionality is world-relational, and whether the natural sciences have epistemic authority over other ways of thinking about nature. The chapter (...) concludes with a metaphilosophical concern about the status of a return to Hegel within analytic philosophy. Analytic philosophy follows an anti-Hegelian neo-Kantian institution of a divide between philosophy and the social and natural sciences. Hegel would reject such a divide, since he conceives of philosophy as investigating “shapes of a world” and not just “shapes of consciousness”. In these terms the Pittsburgh School marks a return to Hegel trimmed to suit the needs of analytic philosophy rather than questioning those needs. (shrink)

Recognition of Religion or Belief presents a global overview of the systems, laws and mechanisms states have established to recognise religions and beliefs and to legally register their affiliated organisations. Recognition of Religion or Belief is the first book of its kind to dedicate its contents to the recognition and registration issues, especially how they intersect with religious freedom conditions around the world. The book provides an analysis of the most up-to-date data on the recognition systems and registration procedures (...) of every country and territory on the planet using terminology derived from Cometan's doctoral research forming his upcoming thesis titled Religious Freedom & State Recognition of Belief to which Recognition of Religion or Belief acts as both a compliment and precursor. (shrink)

In this paper I consider two books of Vladimir Shokhin, a distinguished philosopher in Russia, on philosophy of religion and philosophical theology as one project aimed at drawing the demarcation between these two disciplines. In what follows I will present Shokhin’s project and show briefly how it fits in with the current discussion on the topic, then, draw some consequences from his position, and make some critical notes, and at the end I will briefly present some my views on the (...) problem of drawing clear lines of demarcation between philosophy of religion and philosophical theology on the basis of the following questions: what is the topic of the disciplines, what are their methods, what are their guiding lines, and who may exercise them? (shrink)

To have a theory of religion before studying religion would make the study superfluous unless there is openness for change, openness for new horizons emerging. However, we need to understand that contextual meaningfulness is not the same as relativism. The search for a common framework presupposes the reality of and possibility of the same. Men can determine the rules of a particular language-game; but, they cannot create the laws of logic. So, while hermeneutics must pay attention to both content and (...) context, it must also watch to keep to the principles that are universal and absolute – that are common. (shrink)

Can an explanation of a set of beliefs cast doubt on the things believed? In particular, can an evolutionary explanation of religious beliefs call the contents of those beliefs into question? Yes - under certain circumstances. I distinguish between natural histories of beliefs and genealogies. A natural history of a set of beliefs is an explanation that puts them down to naturalistic causes. (I try to give an account of natural explanations which favors a certain kind of ‘methodological atheism’ without (...) begging any crucial questions against theists.) A genealogy is an explanation which somehow subverts the claims believed, usually by putting down the beliefs to unreliable causal mechanisms. Some genealogies are natural histories, such as Aquinas’s explanation of the prevalence of Islam and Gibbon’s explanation of the prevalence of Christianity. But not all genealogies are natural histories and not all natural histories are genealogies: witness the Primitive Christians’ explanation of the prevalence of Paganism which relies crucially on supernatural agencies and Hume’s explanation of our moral beliefs which defines moral truth in terms of the idealized outputs of our natural belief-forming mechanisms. However both believers and non-believers postulate a natural propensity of to devotion on the part of human beings a ‘sensus divinitatis’ which often results in false positives and is therefore unreliable. Thus the evolutionary explanation of this propensity does not add much to the skeptical case against religion. I conclude by arguing, as against Plantinga that since on his own showing our sensus divinitatis often malfunctions under optimum conditions, its unreliability constitutes a defeater for the claim that Christian beliefs are properly basic. (shrink)

The early modern period (roughly, 1600–1800 ce) in Europe brought tremendous changes in intellectual, political, and cultural life. It was a period in which philosophical debates were inevitably bound up with questions about the nature and sources of religious truth. A chronological examination of some of the period’s major thinkers highlights two issues that were central to the development of philosophy of religion in the period. The first concerns the relations between God, the soul, and the body; the other concerns (...) the relationship between human reason and divine revelation. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, if ‘the overrepresentation of Christian theists in analytic philosophy of religion is unhealthy for the field, since they would be too much influenced by prior beliefs when evaluating religious arguments’ (De Cruz and De Smedt (2016), 119), then a first step toward a potential remedy is this: analytic philosophers of religion need to restructure their analytical tasks. For one way to mitigate the effects of confirmation bias, which may be influencing how analytic philosophers of (...) religion evaluate arguments in Analytical Philosophy of Religion (APR), is to consider other points of view. Applied to APR, this means considering religious beliefs, questions, and arguments couched in non-Christian terms. In this paper, I focus on Islam in particular. My aim is to show that Islam is a fertile ground of philosophical questions and arguments for analytic philosophers of religion to engage with. Engaging with questions and arguments couched in non-Christian terms would help make work in APR more diverse and inclusive of religions other than Christianity, which in turn would also be a first step toward attracting non-Christians to APR. (shrink)

This article investigates religious ideals persistent in the datafication of information society. Its nodal point is Thomas Bayes, after whom Laplace names the primal probability algorithm. It reconsiders their mathematical innovations with Laplace's providential deism and Bayes' singular theological treatise. Conceptions of divine justice one finds among probability theorists play no small part in the algorithmic data-mining and microtargeting of Cambridge Analytica. Theological traces within mathematical computation are emphasized as the vantage over large numbers shifts to weights beyond enumeration in (...) probability theory. Collateral secularizations of predestination and theodicy emerge as probability optimizes into Bayesian prediction and machine learning. The paper revisits the semiotics and theism of Peirce and a given beyond the probable in Whitehead to recontextualize the critiques of providence by Agamben and Foucault. It reconsiders datafication problems alongside Nietzschean valuations. Religiosity likely remains encoded within the very algorithms presumed purified by technoscientific secularity or mathematical dispassion. (shrink)

This article accomplishes two goals. First, the paper clarifies Edmund Husserl’s investigation of the historical inception of the number system from his early works, Philosophy of Arithmetic and, “On the Logic of Signs (Semiotic)”. The article explores Husserl’s analysis of five historical developmental stages, which culminated in our ancestor’s ability to employ and enumerate with number signs. Second, the article reveals how Husserl’s conclusions about the history of the number system from his early works opens up a fusion point with (...) his investigations from his mature texts, The Crisis of the European Sciences and “The Origin of Geometry”. On the one hand, the essay shows that Husserl’s methodology was similar, as he sought in both his early and late writings to uncover the essence of the history of the formal sciences and was not executing mere intellectual history. On the other hand, the article discloses that Husserl’s insights from both time periods are strikingly analogous. Already in his early texts, Husserl saw that the sciences emerged from pre-theoretical experiences of the world and that the sciences are the result of a historical process, which involves the psychic activities of past individuals and the maintaining of discoveries over time by intersubjective communities. I conclude by showing how, in light of the analysis of this paper, we can rethink the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy. (shrink)

Religion is basically a consciousness or awareness of God. This means that Religion depends upon a difference between the finite subject or consciousness and the infinite object or God. This difference is maintained because of the way Man relates to God in religion, i.e. through feeling, love, etc. Philosophy is the scientific comprehension of Truth, in which an identity-in-difference is sought between the subject and object or concept and object. This is attained through thinking, and not through feeling. Religion and (...) Philosophy often seem to be at odds in the beginning. This opposition is, however, reconciled by absolute knowledge. The love that is found in Religion is represented by the identity-in-difference principle that is found in Philosophy. The urge that the philosopher feels in the necessity to come to truth or oneness with truth, is the same urge that religion expresses in the feeling of love of God. It is merely a difference in the way they each proceed in fulfilling that need or necessity – one through thinking the other through feeling. The identity and difference of thinking and feeling is another topic that is dealt with by Hegel in his system. (shrink)

The article aims to answer the question whether philosophy of religion can fulfil its research goals, that is discover the essence of religion, find out if any one of them is true and if faith and religious behavior are rational. In the face of a multitude of religions it is difficult to point to any common elements which makes it harder to discover the essence of religion. Trying to prove the consistency of the concept of God as an object (...) of religion and either His/Her existence or non-existence faces similar problems; this makes it impossible to conclusively decide whether religion is true or not. Therefore, it is also difficult to settle whether religious faith is rational or irrational. However, this failure does not deny the cognitive value of philosophy of religion, which can analyze various religious doctrines as it relates to their consistency, truthfulness, or the rationality of following them. (shrink)

Philosophers have cataloged a range of genealogical methods by which different sorts of normative conclusions can be established. Although such methods provide diverging ways of pursuing genealogical inquiry, they typically converge in eschewing historiographic methodology, in favor of a uniquely philosophical approach. In contrast, one genealogist who drew on historiographic methodology is Michel Foucault. This article presents the motivations and advantages of Foucault's genealogical use of such a methodology. It advances two mains claims. First, that Foucault's early 1970s work employs (...) a distinct genealogical method, which borrows from contemporary historiographic models of explanation to expand the range of objects that are proper to genealogical accounts of historical change. I demonstrate how Foucault modifies two central commitments of Nietzsche by broadening the dimensions of genealogical inquiry and explanation. Second, that historical method has normative relevance for genealogy, insofar as different historiographic choices can lead to different normative conclusions. I motivate this second claim by explaining how Foucault's multidimensional genealogical method expands both (a) the range of objects that are subject to evaluative assessment, and (b) the set of possible prescriptive recommendations that follow from such assessment. (shrink)

The British government's current educational policy for England draws on E.D. Hirsch's writings on 'cultural literacy'. This paper aims to uncover the roots of Hirsch’s influential views through a genealogical critique. Hirsch admired the Scottish Enlightenment educator Hugh Blair as a model architect of a hegemonic culture to unite disparate members of a nation. Following Hirsch, the government Department for Education in England called for ‘shared appreciation of cultural reference points’ and ‘a common stock of knowledge on which all can (...) draw and trade’. Consequently, the literature curriculum in England increasingly disenfranchises a significant component of the population in terms of both gender and cultural heritage. Recent ‘culture wars’ have highlighted the legacy of colonialism and have led educators to decolonise the curriculum and prioritise social justice. Continuing racism within civil society demonstrates the need for a general recognition that cultures are desirably diverse and internally plural. (shrink)

The textbook presents the problematic aspect of historical and modern representations of the phenomenology of religion in academic discourse. The most important topics of the course are presented in a form that is easy to understand, questions for self-assessment and problems for analysis are formulated, and recommendations for organizing independent work of students are given. The textbook's material is systematized according to the principle of a problem to a specific example of its installation in religion, culture, science, and philosophy. The (...) textbook explores the interdisciplinary connections between philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and religious studies. The publication is addressed to students studying in the field of training "Religious Studies", and recommended to students studying philosophy, as well as to anyone interested in issues of understanding religion taking into account the achievements of the phenomenology of religion. (shrink)

Religion can be understood as a system of beliefs, practices, and values that relate to the nature of existence and the universe, and that often involve a belief in one or more supernatural or divine entities. Different religions have different beliefs, practices, and values, and there is often significant diversity within a particular religion as well. Many religions provide a set of moral and ethical principles that guide behavior and decision-making, helping individuals to navigate complex ethical issues and (...) make choices that align with their values. Ethical and moral values are principles or beliefs that guide behavior and decision-making. Moral values are important for individuals to live in harmony with others and to make ethical choices. Moral values among youths are shaped by a variety of factors, including family, education, religion, and culture. It was discovered that young people who are actively involved in religious communities are more likely to exhibit prosocial behavior, such as volunteerism, empathy, and moral reasoning, than those who are not involved in religious communities. Religion provides a supportive and nurturing environment for young people, and offers guidance and support as they navigate complex ethical and moral issues. The study concluded that religion plays a significant role in shaping human history and culture, influencing art, literature, music, and philosophy, and contributing to the development of social and political institutions. The study recommended that religious institutions should strive to create welcoming and inclusive environments that foster a sense of community and belonging among young people. Religious leaders should engage with young people and encourage them to develop their own moral compass. Religious institutions should also collaborate with parents and educators to promote positive values and ethical behavior among young people. (shrink)

The paper outlines a tentative genealogy of the Platonic metaphysics of sight by thematizing pre-Platonic thought, particularly Heraclitus and Parmenides. By “metaphysics of sight” it understands the features of Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics expressed with the help of visual metaphors. It is argued that the Platonic metaphysics of sight can be regarded as the result of a synthesis of the Heraclitean and Parmenidean approaches. In pre-Platonic thought, the visual paradigm is still marginal. For Heraclitus, the basic structure of being is its (...) discursive articulation (logos) into conceptual pairs of binary opposites, an articulation that at the same time binds differences together into a tensional unity. The fundamental grasping of this ultimate unity-in-difference is conceived primarily through acoustic terms as a non-sensory “hearing.” For Parmenides, the ultimate unity of contraries is based on the capacity of thinking (noos) to intend anything as present; in fragment B 4, the exclusive relationship of thinking to intelligible presence is finally visualized in terms of a seeing or looking (leusso). (shrink)

This article is an in-depth critique of Nietzsche's first essay in his Genealogy of Morals. The article argues that Nietzsche's ideas in this exposition may be used by Nazis to support their course due to its reference of superior races. Secondly, Nietzsche's rendition of historical Judaism is fallacious. Finally, the German philosopher inaccurately presents German history in his treatise.

This paper offers a reading of Beauvoir’s Second Sex as a genealogy of ‘morality’: the patriarchal system of values that maintains a moral distinction between men and women. This value system construes many of women’s experiences under oppression as evidence of women’s immorality, obscuring the agential role of those who provoke such experiences. Beauvoir’s examination of the origin for this value system provides an important counterexample to the prevailing debate over whether genealogical method functions to debunk or to vindicate: (...) while the currently dominant moral system may have been historically necessary at certain stages in human development, Beauvoir nevertheless debunks it; only the value system itself now remains, without its precipitating needs. Thus, Beauvoir’s critique reveals what I call the moral unintelligibility of women’s experiences of oppression: women encounter difficulty in making sense of the harms wrought against them because the operative value system obscures them as harms in the first place, instead construing women themselves as immoral. Against the prevailing construction of moral blame and responsibility, Beauvoir’s solution is the political virtue of moral invention, a virtue epistemic as well as moral, collective as well as individual. (shrink)

The cultural transmission of theological concepts remains an underexplored topic in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). In this paper, I examine whether approaches from CSR, especially the study of content biases in the transmission of beliefs, can help explain the cultural success of some theological concepts. This approach reveals that there is more continuity between theological beliefs and ordinary religious beliefs than CSR authors have hitherto recognized: the cultural transmission of theological concepts is influenced by content biases that also (...) underlie the reception of ordinary religious concepts. (shrink)

You can get a quick summary of this book on p 135 or 326. If you are not up to speed on evolutionary psychology you should first read one of the numerous recent texts with this term in the title. One of the best is " The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology " by Buss, but it is big and expensive. Until about 15 years ago, ´explanations´´of behavior have not really been explanations of mental processes at all, but rather vague and (...) largely useless descriptions of what people did and what they said, with no insight into why. We might say that people gather to commemorate an event, praise god, receive his (or her or their) blessings, etc, but none of this describes the relevant mental processes so we might say they are explanations in much the same way that it explains why an apple drops to the ground if we say its because we released it and it's heavy-there is no mechanism and no explanatory or predictive power. This book continues the elucidation of the genetic basis of human behavior which has been almost univerally ignored and denied by academia, religion, politics and the public(see Pinker´s excellent book``The BlankSlatè`). His statement (p3) that it is meaningless to ask if religion is genetic is mistaken as the percentage of variation due to genes and environment can be studied, just as they are for all other behaviors (see eg. Pinker). The title should be "Preliminary Attempts to Explain Some Aspects of Primitive Religion" since he does not treat higher consciousness at all (e.g., satori, enlightenment etc.) which are by far the most interesting phenomena and the only part of religion of personal interest to intelligent, educated people in the 21st century. Reading this entire book, you would never guess such things exist. Likewise for the immense field of drugs and religion. It lacks a framework for rationality and does not mention the dual systems of thought view which is now so productive. For these I suggest my own recent papers. Nevertheless, the book has much of interest and in spite of being dated is still worth reading. -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date account of Wittgenstein, Searle and their analysis of behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may download from this site my e-book ‘Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Michael Starks (2016)- Articles and Reviews 2006-2016’ by Michael Starks First Ed. 662p (2016). -/- All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. -/- Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. -/- The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. -/- Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX . (shrink)

According to cognitive science of religion (CSR) people naturally veer toward beliefs that are quite divergent from Anselmian monotheism or Christian theism. Some authors have taken this view as a starting point for a debunking argument against religion, while others have tried to vindicate Christian theism by appeal to the noetic effects of sin or the Fall. In this paper, we ask what theologians can learn from CSR about the nature of the divine, by looking at the CSR literature and (...) what it identifies as commonalities across religions. We use a pluralist, non-confessional approach to outline properties of the divine. We connect our approach to Hick’s religious pluralism, Ramakrishna’s realization of God through multiple spiritual paths, and Gellman’s inexhaustible plenitude. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that in order to explain our own moral reliability, we must provide a theory of error for those who disagree with us. Any story that seeks to vindicate our own reliability must also explain how so many others have gone wrong, otherwise it is not actually a vindicatory story. Thus, we cannot claim to have vindicated our own moral reliability unless we can explain the unreliability of those who hold contrary beliefs. This, I show, requires (...) us to engage directly with cultural history, a topic which has been unfortunately obscured by the meta-ethicist’s near-exclusive focus on evolutionary challenges to moral belief. (shrink)

This work examines Michel Foucault’s critique of the present, through his analysis of our hidden but still active historical legacies. His works from the Eighties are the beginning of what he called a “genealogy of the desiring subject,” in which he shows that practices such as confession—in its juridical, psychological, and religious forms—have largely dictated how we think about our ethical selves. This constrains our notions of ethics to legalistic forbidden/required dichotomies, and requires that we engage in a hermeneutics (...) of the self which consistently fails to discover its imagined authentic self, or to find the happiness and freedom promised by contemporary ethics. In order to think the modern self in different terms, Foucault’s later works analyzed Classical and Hellenistic ethical sources, emphasizing their distance from today. He hoped doing so would allow us to rethink our current assumptions about ethical matters, the truth of oneself, and the relation to others. While Foucault’s genealogical descriptions critically diagnosed contemporary ills such as these, he did not prescribe a cure, preferring to let his readers experiment with new practices of their own design. This work attempts such an experiment, supplying concrete solutions to our ethical ills, in order to help us improve, as well as understand, our ethical selves. To that end, this work demonstrates that a form of subjectivity based on Benedict Spinoza’s ethical and political works avoids the pitfalls of modern ethics as diagnosed by Foucault. Additionally, the practices of the self found in Spinoza can be used to directly counter and displace each central element of “desiring subjectivity,” and thus supplies the kind of effective positive move which should follow after genealogical critique. (shrink)

In this entry, we survey key discussions on the role of narrative in theology and philosophy of religion. We begin with epistemological questions about whether and how narrative offers genuine understanding of reality. We explore how narrative intersects with the problems of evil and divine hiddenness. We discuss narrative's role in theological reflection and practice in general, and in black and feminist theologies specifically. We close by briefly exploring the role of narrative in theorization about life's meaning.

Alvin Plantinga is an American-born philosopher of religion and one of the leading advocates of contemporary Christian philosophy. Plantinga deals with numerous problems of the monotheistic Christian religion, including the problem of religious pluralism. One of the most common questions an atheist asks a believer is, "Why your God and not someone else's?" Therefore, this paper aims to present Plantinga's answer to the question of religious pluralism. We will achieve this goal by developing Plantinga's theory of "proper functioning", a thesis (...) that atheism represents a state of incorrect functioning of cognitive mechanisms. We can respond to the problem of religious pluralism through positive or negative apologetics. Plantinga has chosen negative apologetics, arguing that the believer is under no obligation to justify the truth of his beliefs when confronted with the problem of religious pluralism. Although Plantinga provides numerous convincing arguments supporting his position, we will show that we can provide a positive apologetic by returning to the foundations of Plantinga's understanding of intentionality and mental representations. In so doing, we will demonstrate a broader range of ways a believer can defend his epistemic position and connect Plantinga's epistemology of religion in relevant ways to contemporary theories of cognitive psychology and philosophy of cognition. (shrink)

Alternate Universes: Religion assumes the other world after death: paradise, hell, nirvana, karma.. Our world is incomplete, because there is truer universe, replicating Plato: behind something is something.. till the true idea - last judgment, karma.. R. Descartes's "I think, therefore I am", is independent of Plato. I'm thinking, regardless of there is truer idea or not. As I'm thinking, I can realize my first idea was false (eg. solving a math problem), and then the Plato's truer idea reappears. Plato (...) and Descartes precede each other as chicken and egg.. Paradox of Religion: Religions' rules (e.g. don't lie) increase chances of future paradise. Hume's: "A" preceding "B" doesn't need to cause "B" turns to: Expectation of "B" can cause "A" NOW Believers expect paradise to forever delay it. Paradise can paradoxically occur only by deviation from the religion... Exhibited in Holland Park, W8 6LU, The Ice House between 18. Oct - 3. Nov. 2013. (shrink)