Between Religion and Reason (Part I)

Between Religion and Reason (Part I) PDF Author: Ephraim Chamiel
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644693828
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
The present book is a sequel to Ephraim Chamiel’s two previous works The Middle Way and The Dual Truth—studies dedicated to the “middle” trend in modern Jewish thought, that is, those positions that sought to combine tradition and modernity, and offered a variety of approaches for contending with the tension between science and revelation and between reason and religion. The present book explores contemporary Jewish thinkers who have adopted one of these integrated approaches—namely the dialectical approach. Some of these thinkers maintain that the aforementioned tension—the rift within human consciousness between intellect and emotion, mind and heart—can be mended. Others, however, think that the dialectic between the two poles of this tension is inherently irresolvable, a view reminiscent of the medieval “dual truth” approach. Some thinkers are unclear on this point, and those who study them debate whether or not they successfully resolved the tension and offered a means of reconciliation. The author also offers his views on these debates. This book explores the dialectical approaches of Rav Kook, Rav Soloveitchik, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Samuel Hugo Bergman, Leo Strauss, Ernst Simon, Emil Fackenheim, Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, his uncle Isaac Breuer, Tamar Ross, Rabbi Shagar, Moshe Meir, Micah Goodman and Elchanan Shilo. It also discusses the interpretations of these thinkers offered by scholars such as Michael Rosenak, Avinoam Rosenak, Eliezer Schweid, Aviezer Ravitzky, Avi Sagi, Binyamin Ish-Shalom, Ehud Luz, Dov Schwartz, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Lawrence Kaplan, and Haim Rechnitzer. The author questions some of these approaches and offers ideas of his own. This study concludes that many scholars bore witness to the dialectical tension between reason and revelation; only some believed that a solution was possible. That being said, and despite the paradoxical nature of the dual truth approach (which maintains that two contradictory truths exist and we must live with both of them in this world until a utopian future or the advent of the Messiah), increasing numbers of thinkers today are accepting it. In doing so, they are eschewing delusional and apologetic views such as the identicality and compartmental approaches that maintain that tensions and contradictions are unacceptable.

Between Religion and Reason (Part I)

Between Religion and Reason (Part I) PDF Author: Ephraim Chamiel
Publisher: Academic Studies PRess
ISBN: 1644693828
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 291

Get Book Here

Book Description
The present book is a sequel to Ephraim Chamiel’s two previous works The Middle Way and The Dual Truth—studies dedicated to the “middle” trend in modern Jewish thought, that is, those positions that sought to combine tradition and modernity, and offered a variety of approaches for contending with the tension between science and revelation and between reason and religion. The present book explores contemporary Jewish thinkers who have adopted one of these integrated approaches—namely the dialectical approach. Some of these thinkers maintain that the aforementioned tension—the rift within human consciousness between intellect and emotion, mind and heart—can be mended. Others, however, think that the dialectic between the two poles of this tension is inherently irresolvable, a view reminiscent of the medieval “dual truth” approach. Some thinkers are unclear on this point, and those who study them debate whether or not they successfully resolved the tension and offered a means of reconciliation. The author also offers his views on these debates. This book explores the dialectical approaches of Rav Kook, Rav Soloveitchik, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Samuel Hugo Bergman, Leo Strauss, Ernst Simon, Emil Fackenheim, Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, his uncle Isaac Breuer, Tamar Ross, Rabbi Shagar, Moshe Meir, Micah Goodman and Elchanan Shilo. It also discusses the interpretations of these thinkers offered by scholars such as Michael Rosenak, Avinoam Rosenak, Eliezer Schweid, Aviezer Ravitzky, Avi Sagi, Binyamin Ish-Shalom, Ehud Luz, Dov Schwartz, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Lawrence Kaplan, and Haim Rechnitzer. The author questions some of these approaches and offers ideas of his own. This study concludes that many scholars bore witness to the dialectical tension between reason and revelation; only some believed that a solution was possible. That being said, and despite the paradoxical nature of the dual truth approach (which maintains that two contradictory truths exist and we must live with both of them in this world until a utopian future or the advent of the Messiah), increasing numbers of thinkers today are accepting it. In doing so, they are eschewing delusional and apologetic views such as the identicality and compartmental approaches that maintain that tensions and contradictions are unacceptable.

Between Faith and Doubt

Between Faith and Doubt PDF Author: J. Hick
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 023027532X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
This short book is a lively dialogue between a religious believer and a skeptic. It covers all the main issues including different ideas of God, the good and bad in religion, religious experience and neuroscience, pain and suffering, death and life after death, and includes interesting autobiographical revelations.

Kant: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

Kant: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason PDF Author: Immanuel Kant
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521599641
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is a key element of the system of philosophy which Kant introduced with his Critique of Pure Reason, and a work of major importance in the history of Western religious thought. It represents a great philosopher's attempt to spell out the form and content of a type of religion that would be grounded in moral reason and would meet the needs of ethical life. It includes sharply critical and boldly constructive discussions on topics not often treated by philosophers, including such traditional theological concepts as original sin and the salvation or 'justification' of a sinner, and the idea of the proper role of a church. This volume presents it and three short essays that illuminate it in new translations by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams that locates it in its historical and philosophical context.

Monotheism and Tolerance

Monotheism and Tolerance PDF Author: Robert Erlewine
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253221560
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
Monotheism and Tolerance suggests a way to deal with the intractable problem of religiously motivated and justified violence.

Reason and Religion

Reason and Religion PDF Author: Nicholas Rescher
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311032072X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 125

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Book Description
This book is avowedly written in what has been rather patronizingly called “the affable spirit of compromise or conciliation” between science and religion. Its key thesis is that these two enterprises can—and should be—seen as complementary in addressing different albeit interrelated questions: on the one side the nature of the natural world and our place in it, and on the other how we should proceed and act so as to capitalize on the opportunities that our place in the world affords to us for shaping our lives in a meaningful and satisfying way. How the world works is the crux of the one enterprise and how we are to live is that of the other.

Reason, Religion, and Democracy

Reason, Religion, and Democracy PDF Author: Dennis C. Mueller
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139479423
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 461

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Book Description
This book also emphasizes the difference between religion and science as means for understanding causal relationships, but it focuses much more heavily on the challenge religious extremism poses for liberal democratic institutions. The treatment contains a discussion of human psychology, describes the salient characteristics of all religions, and contrasts religion and science as systems of thought. Historical sketches are used to establish a link between modernity and the use of the human capacity for reasoning to advance human welfare. The book describes the conditions under which democratic institutions can advance human welfare, and the nature of constitutional rights as protectors of individual freedoms. Extremist religions are shown to pose a threat to liberal democracy, a threat that has implications for immigration and education policies and the definition of citizenship.

Aesthetics of Religion

Aesthetics of Religion PDF Author: Alexandra K. Grieser
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110460459
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
This volume is the first English language presentation of the innovative approaches developed in the aesthetics of religion. The chapters present diverse material and detailed analysis on descriptive, methodological and theoretical concepts that together explore the potential of an aesthetic approach for investigating religion as a sensory and mediated practice. In dialogue with, yet different from, other major movements in the field (material culture, anthropology of the senses, for instance), it is the specific intent of this approach to create a framework for understanding the interplay between sensory, cognitive and socio-cultural aspects of world-construction. The volume demonstrates that aesthetics, as a theory of sensory knowledge, offers an elaborate repertoire of concepts that can help to understand religious traditions. These approaches take into account contemporary developments in scientific theories of perception, neuro-aesthetics and cultural studies, highlighting the socio-cultural and political context informing how humans perceive themselves and the world around them. Developing since the 1990s, the aesthetic approach has responded to debates in the study of religion, in particular striving to overcome biased categories that confined religion either to texts and abstract beliefs, or to an indisputable sui generis mode of experience. This volume documents what has been achieved to date, its significance for the study of religion and for interdisciplinary scholarship.

Between Naturalism and Religion

Between Naturalism and Religion PDF Author: Jürgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745694608
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age – the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious orthodoxies. Advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics are clearing the way for the penetration of an objective scientific self-understanding of persons into everyday life. For philosophy, this trend is associated with the challenge of scientific naturalism. At the same time, we are witnessing an unexpected revitalization of religious traditions and the politicization of religious communities across the world. From a philosophical perspective, this revival of religious energies poses the challenge of a fundamentalist critique of the principles underlying the modern Wests postmetaphysical understanding of itself. The tension between naturalism and religion is the central theme of this major new book by Jürgen Habermas. On the one hand he argues for an appropriate naturalistic understanding of cultural evolution that does justice to the normative character of the human mind. On the other hand, he calls for an appropriate interpretation of the secularizing effects of a process of social and cultural rationalization increasingly denounced by the champions of religious orthodoxies as a historical development peculiar to the West. These reflections on the enduring importance of religion and the limits of secularism under conditions of postmetaphysical reason set the scene for an extended treatment the political significance of religious tolerance and for a fresh contribution to current debates on cosmopolitanism and a constitution for international society.

Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza

Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza PDF Author: Carlos Fraenkel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521194571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
This groundbreaking account of the concept of a philosophical religion traces its history from antiquity to the Enlightenment.

Reason, Religion, and Natural Law

Reason, Religion, and Natural Law PDF Author: Jonathan A. Jacobs
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199767173
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This edited volume examines the ways in which theological considerations have figured in natural law theorizing, from Plato to Spinoza. Theological considerations have long had a pronounced role in Catholic natural law theories, but have not been seriously examined from a wider perspective. The contributors to this volume take a more inclusive view of the relation between conceptions of natural law and theistic claims and principles. They do not jointly defend one particular thematic claim, but articulate diverse ways in which natural law has both been understood and related to theistic claims. In addition to exploring Plato and the Stoics, the volume also looks at medieval Jewish thought, the thought of Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham, and the ways in which Spinoza's thought includes resonances of earlier views and intimations of later developments. Taken as a whole, these essays enlarge the scope of the discussion of natural law through study of how the naturalness of natural law has often been related to theses about the divine. The latter are often crucial elements of natural law theorizing, having an integral role in accounting for the metaethical status and ethical bindingness of natural law. At the same time, the question of the relation between natural law and God — and the relation between natural law and divine command — has been addressed in a multiplicity of ways by key figures throughout the history of natural law theorizing, and these essays accord them the explanatory significance they deserve.