Scripture and Knowledge, An Essay on Religious Epistemology.
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At the core of Scripture and Knowledge lies the problem of the nature of religious knowledge. The author argues that religion is a particular framework rather than a particular content or defined set of performances. He sees this framework as epistemological, that is, as one that furnishes believers with a conception of knowledge alternative to that of philosophical reasoning. The thesis on the epistemological nature of religion will be developed by the examination of the concept of scripture as a body of authoritative and even infallible texts. The concept of scripture is presented as one of the constitutive concepts of the epistemological framework of religion. The author argues that the various scriptures and their commentaries should be understood as the arena within which the epistemological process of religion takes place and the central epistemological means by which religious knowledge is made possible.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378919
Christianity and the notion of nothingness : contributions to Buddhist-Christian dialogue from the Kyoto school /
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This publication by Muto Kazuo is a significant Christian contribution to the predominantly Buddhist "Kyoto School of Philosophy." Muto proposes a philosophy of religion in order to overcome the claim for Christian exclusivity, as proposed by Karl Barth and others. On such a foundation, he investigates the possibilities for mutual understanding between Buddhism and Christianity. Thereby he engages in a critical exchange with the Kyoto School philosophers Nishida, Tanabe, and Nishitani. Throughout his discourse, Muto applies their method of logical argument (the "dialectic" of soku ) to the dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism. He thus opens up new perceptions of Christian faith in the Asian context and, together with his Buddhist teachers, challenges the modern Western dialectical method of reasoning.
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1 online resource (244 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004228429 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Theory of religious cycles : tradition modernity and the Bahá'í faith /
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In Theory of Religious Cycles: Tradition, Modernity and the Bahá'í Faith Mikhail Sergeev offers a new interpretation of the Soviet period of Russian history as a phase within the religious evolution of humankind by developing a theory of religious cycles, which he applies to modernity and to all the major world faiths of Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Sergeev argues that in the course of its evolution religion passes through six common phases-formative, orthodox, classical, reformist, critical, and post-critical. Modernity, which was started by the European Enlightenment, represents the critical phase of Christianity, a systemic crisis that could be overcome with the appearance of new religious movements such as the Bahá'í Faith, which offers a spiritual extension of the modern worldview.
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1 online resource (xiii, 161 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004301078 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Wittgenstein's (misunderstood) religious thought /
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Wittgenstein's religious thought is not well understood. And Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion is charged with fideism, religious non-realism, and even crypto-atheism. These charges, however, are borne of misunderstandings that are a result of the critics' being oblivious of apophatic theology. This book is intended to help clear some of those misunderstandings and neutralize the above-mentioned charges. It argues that Wittgenstein's religious thought shares kinship with the thought of apophaticists in Christendom such as the Pseudo-Dionysius and St. Thomas Aquinas. What appear to be fideism, non-realism, or crypto-atheism to the critics appear differently to those who see Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion from the apophaticists' point of view--Wittgenstein's religious point of view.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [231]-237) and index. :
9789004186118 :
2210-481x ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Raffaele Pettazzoni and Herbert Jennings Rose, correspondence 1927-1958 : the long friendship between the author and the translator of The all-knowing God, with an appendix of docu...
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Raffaele Pettazzoni (1883-1959), Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Rome and one of the leading historians of religions in the twentieth century, maintained a long correspondence with Herbert Jennings Rose (1883-1961), the gifted Canadian scholar who was Professor of Greek at St Andrews and is best known for his work in the field of ancient religion and folklore. These letters, spanning the years 1927 to 1958, bear witness to the close relationship between the two scholars and focus on two of Pettazzoni's books, both translated by Rose: Essays on the History of Religions (1954) and The All-Knowing God (1956). They also shed light on Pettazzoni's initiative to the foundation of the journal NVMEN (1954), and reveal Rose's brilliant personality.
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1 online resource (pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004272248 :
0169-8834 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religion, politics and law : philosophical reflections on the sources of normative order in society /
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Modern, liberal democracies in the West living under the rule of law and protection of human rights cannot articulate the very values from which they derive their legitimacy. These pre-political and pre-legal preconditions cannot be guaranteed, let alone be enforced by the state, but constitute nevertheless its moral and spiritual infrastructure. Until recently, a common background and horizon consisted in Christianity, but due to secularisation and globalisation, society has become increasingly multicultural and multireligious. The question can and should be raised how religion relates to these sources of normative order in society, how religion, politics and law relate to each other, and how social cohesion can be attained in society, given the growing varieties of religious experiences. In this book, a philosophical account of this question is carried out, on the one hand historically from Plato to the Enlightenment, on the other hand systematically and practically.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047425380 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Fifty years of philosophy of religion : a select bibliography, 1955-2005 /
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The bibliography lists about 10.000 titles of monographs, collections and articles in the field of the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology that appeared between 1955 and 2005. The majority of them are in the English language but publications in German, Dutch and French are listed as well. Though it is not claimed to be exhaustive, the bibliography offers a fairly representative survey of scholarly work on the main topics of interest. *** Publications have been systematically classified according to eleven main categories: Introductions, Surveys and Historical Issues (Part I), Religious Language (Part II), Religious Experience (Part III), Religious Epistemology (Part IV) , Theism (Part V), Hermeneutics (Part VI), Religion and Science (Part VII), Religion and Aesthetics (Part VIII), Religion and Morality (Part IX), Religious Pluralism (Part X) and Feminist Philosophy of Religion (Part XI). Part III has been subdivided into Religious Experience and Mystical Experience , Part VII into The Concept of God , (arguments for) The Existence of God , The Problem of Evil and Atheism , and Part VII into General and Historical Issues , Theological Issues and (implications of) Modern Physics, Cosmology and Biology . *** The bibliography will particularly be useful to scholars, teachers and students in the philosophy of religion, philosophical theology and systematic theology as well as to those who are interested, professionally or otherwise, in the results of academic scholarship in those fields.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789047420811 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
A companion to Heidegger's Phenomenology of religious life /
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In the academic year 1920-1921 at the University of Freiburg, Martin Heidegger gave a series of extraordinary lectures on the phenomenological significance of the religious thought of St. Paul and St. Augustine. The publication of these lectures in 1995 settled a long disputed question, the decisive role played by Christian theology in the development of Heidegger's philosophy. The lectures present a special challenge to readers of Heidegger and theology alike. Experimenting with language and drawing upon a wide range of now obscure authors, Heidegger is finding his way to Being and Time through the labyrinth of his Catholic past and his increasing fascination with Protestant theology. A Companion to Heidegger's Phenomenology of Religious Life is written by an international team of Heidegger specialists.
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1 online resource (xix, 375 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789042030817 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth : Contributions in Honor of Robert A. Segal /
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In Explaining, Interpreting, and Theorizing Religion and Myth: Contributions in Honor of Robert A. Segal , nineteen renowned scholars offer a collection of essays addressing the persisting question of how to approach religion and myth as academic categories. Taking their cue from the work of Robert A. Segal, they discuss how to theorize about religion and myth from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. With cases from ancient Greece and Mesopotamia to East Asia and the modern world by and large, and engaging with diverse disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, anthropology, history, film, theology, and religious studies among others, the volume establishes a synthesis that demonstrates the pervasiveness as well as the pitfalls of the categories "religion" and "myth" in the world.
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1 online resource. :
9789004435025
9789004435018
Empsychoi logoi--religious innovations in antiquity : studies in honour of Pieter Willem van der Horst /
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The fact that religions show internal variation and develop over time is not only a problem for believers, but has also long engaged scholars. This is especially true for the religions of the ancient world, where the mere idea of innovation in religious matters evoked notions of revolution and destruction. With the emergence of new religious identities from the first century onwards, we begin to find traces of an entirely new vision of religion. The question was not whether a particular belief was new, but whether it was true and the two were no longer felt to be mutually exclusive. The present volume brings together articles that study this transformation, ranging from broad overviews to detailed case-studies.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047433224 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The philosophy of spirituality : analytic, continental, and multicultural approaches to a new field of philosophy /
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The essays in The Philosophy of Spirituality explore a new field in philosophy. Until recently, most philosophers in the analytic and continental Western traditions treated spirituality as a religious concept. Any non-religious spirituality tended to be neglected or dismissed as irremediably vague. Here, from various philosophical and cultural perspectives, it is addressed as a subject of independent interest. This is a philosophical response to increasing numbers of spiritual but not religious people inhabiting secular societies and the heightened interaction between a multitude of spiritual traditions in a globalized age. A provocative array of approaches (African, Indigenous, Indian, Stoic, and Sufic perspectives, as well as Western analytic and continental views) offer fresh insights, many articulated by emerging voices. Contributors are Mariapaola Bergomi, Moses Biney, Christopher Braddock, Drew Chastain, Kerem Eksen, Nikolay Milkov, Roderick Nicholls, Jerry Piven, Heather Salazar, Eric Steinhart, Richard White, Mark Wynn and Eric Yang.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004376311 :
0929-8436 ;
Religion in the Making : The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion /
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This volume explores the ways in which religion became the object of scientific research in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most obvious is the development of an increasingly autonomous science of religion (with founding fathers like Max Müller and C.P. Tiele). However, within anthropology (Tylor, Frazer), sociology (Durkheim, Max Weber), and psychology (William James), religion also came to be seen as a separate entity to be studied comparatively. To capture this wide field this book focuses on the emergence of the discourse on religion in a broad academic context, among different disciplines. The emphasis is on general socio-historical developments, rather than on individual biographies. Part I deals with the institutionalization of science of religion in France, Britain, and the Netherlands. Part II focuses on boundary disputes between the emerging \'sciences of religion\'. Part III examines new conceptualizations of religion underlying the new endeavour (\'ritual\', \'magic\', \'survival\').
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Papers from a conference held May 22-24, 1997 at the University of Amsterdam. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004379039 :
0169-8834 ;
Mapping religion and spirituality in a postsecular world /
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Individualization of believing and the logic of pluralism today inevitably bring a redefinition of the role of religion in the lives of individuals as well as societies themselves. New concepts and new theories are necessary to try to describe and understand how such processes work: this is without doubt the most problematic and intriguing aspect of the processes of change that characterize our era. This is a difficulty that makes us use only partially, and often with much caution, words, concepts and theories that until not long ago had a convincing heuristic and explanatory power and were, at least apparently, indisputable. Once it is established that under the sacred vaults of religion nothing is created and nothing is destroyed, but everything is preserved and transformed, what are the connections that are now being established with the sacred in society? The concepts "spirituality" and "post-secular" give important insights into the new religious landscape.
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Description based upon print version of record. :
1 online resource. :
9789004230231 :
1061-5210 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Religions challenged by contingency : theological and philosophical approaches to the problem of contingency /
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In this volume, the relationship between religion and contingency is investigated. Its historical part comprises analyses of important philosophers' interpretations of this relationship, viz. that of Leibniz, Kant, Lessing, Jaspers, and Heidegger. Its systematic part analyses how this relationship should be currently (re-)interpreted. The upshot of the different interpretations is a re-evaluation of the traditional assumption that accepting contingency is detrimental to the pursuit of religion. It is shown that a number of the philosophers scrutinized are not as critical regarding the acceptance of (certain sorts of) contingency in the religious realm as is often thought, and the systematic contributions show that it may be unavoidable, sometimes even desirable, to accept contingency when dealing with religion. Contributors include: Lieven Boeve, Wim Drees, Joris Geldhof, Dirk-Martin Grube, Frans Jespers, Peter Jonkers, Donald Loose, Ben Vedder, Henk Vroom.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047433583 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
F.C. Baur's synthesis of Bohme and Hegel : redefining Christian theology as a gnostic philosophy of religion /
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In this book, Professor Simuț shows how Christian theology started to be understood as a Gnostic philosophy of religion in the thought of the 19th-century scholar F. C. Baur. Although Baur was seen traditionally as a theologian and biblical exegete, Simuț argues that he was in fact a philosopher of religion, and it was his philosophical reading of Christian theology that informed his biblical preoccupations. Specifically, Baur's perspective on Christian theology was heavily influenced by Jakob Böhme's esoteric theosophy and Hegel's religious philosophy in some key issues such as creation, Lucifer, dualism and the connection between spirit and matter coupled with that between philosophy and religion.
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1 online resource (viii, 362 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004275218 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Philosophy of religion and the African American experience : conversations with my Christian friends /
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Most white philosophers of religion generally presume that philosophy of religion is based on what is a false universality; whereby the white/Western experience is paradigmatic of humanity at-large. The fact remains that Howard Thurman, James H. Cone and William R. Jones, among others, have produced a substantial amount of theological work quite worthy of consideration by philosophers of religion. Yet this corpus of thought is not reflected in the scholarly literature that constitutes the main body of philosophy of religion. Neglect and ignorance of African American Studies is widespread in the academy. By including chapters on Thurman, Cone and Jones, the present book functions as a corrective to this scholarly lacuna.
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1 online resource (viii, 403 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 377-400) and index. :
9789004332218 :
0929-8436 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Pragmatics of Defining Religion : Contexts, Concepts and Contests /
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This volume promotes a pragmatic, anti-essentialist and anti-hegemonic approach to the problem of the definition of religion. It argues that definitions of religion are context-bound strategies for pursuing a variety of purposes, extra-academic as well as academic. Religions being immensely varied, complex and multi-functional phenomena, they need to be studied by several academic disciplines from many different perspectives. It is, therefore, legitimate and useful that many definitions of religions are developed. The volume has contributions from scholars in Philosophy of Religion, the Comparative Study of Religions, Anthropology of Religion, Sociology of Religion and Psychology of Religion. It has chapters on the polemics of defining religion in modern contexts, the history of the concept of religion, and the methodology of its definition; it includes several definition proposals.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004379091 :
0169-8834 ;
Religion, emergence, and the origins of meaning : beyond Durkheim and Rappaport /
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Why is religion so important to individuals and societies? What gives religion its profound meaningfulness and longevity? Enhancing perspectives taken from sociology and ritual theory, Religion, Emergence, and the Origins of Meaning describes how 'emergence theory' - developed to make sense of life and mind - explains why religious communities are special when compared to ordinary human social groups. Paul Cassell argues that in religious ritual, beliefs concerning unseen divine agencies are made uniquely potent, inviting and guiding powerful, alternative experiences, and giving religious groups a form of organization distinct from ordinary human social groups. Going beyond the foundational descriptions of Émile Durkheim and Roy Rappaport, Cassell utilizes the best of 21st century emergence theory to characterize religion's emergent dynamics.
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Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Boston University, 2012. :
1 online resource (viii, 195 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004293762 :
1877-8542 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Theology and society in the second and third centuries of the Hijra.
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Theology and Society is the most comprehensive study of Islamic intellectual and religious history, focusing on Muslim theology. With its emphasis on the eighth and ninth centuries CE, it remains the most detailed prosopographical study of the early phase of the formation of Islam. Originally published in German between 1991 and 1995, Theology and Society is a monument of scholarship and a unique scholarly enterprise which has stood the test of time as an unparalleled reference work.
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1 online resource (700 pages) :
9789004356405 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Logic of Hope: Extensions of Kant's View of Religion /
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This book is a thorough study of the question posed by Kant, For what can a human being rationally hope? It offers a detailed commentary on Kant's seminal work, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, as well as an original development of the logic of three of Kant's basic ideas: ambivalence, ignorance, and hope. Sophisticated analytic techniques, including symbolic logic, are applied to this conceptual matrix. The result is a striking case for the transformation of world society into a Kingdom of Ends of individuals and a peaceful League of Nations.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004463806
9789051836936