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7HolinessIn Charles Taliaferro & Philip L. Quinn (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Wiley-blackwell. 1997.This chapter contains sections titled: Analysis of the Holy Influences on Otto's Thought Possible Solution Works cited.
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227Is There a Right to Hope that God Exists?Religions 13. 2022.Abstract: In this paper, I respond to James Sterba’s recent book ‘Is a Good God Logically Possible?’ I show that Sterba concludes that God is not logically possible by ignoring three important issues: (a) the different functions of leeway indeterminism (and the political freedom presupposed by it) and autonomy (the two are very different things, even though both go under the name of freedom), (b) the differences in the conditions of agency in God and in creatures, (there is non-parity in how eac…Read more
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16Transformation of the Self in the Thought of SchleiermacherOxford University Press. 2008.The work of German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher has played a key role in the development of Protestant thought. Jacqueline Maria highlights the relation of Schleiermacher's ideas on the moral transformation of the self to other thinkers and current debates in the philosophy of religion
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18Kant and Religion by Allen WoodJournal of the History of Philosophy 60 (2): 351-353. 2022.Half a century after his first groundbreaking study on Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Allen Wood has once again produced a singularly important work on the topic. This is a passionate book. Wood strives to look with Kant at the human condition and at what reason demands of us as we confront ultimate questions and think about the place of religion in answering them. The result is a profound and honest engagement with Kant's work, certainly one of the most important book-len…Read more
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17Radical Evil, Social Contracts and the Idea of the Church in KantKantian Review 27 (1): 71-79. 2022.In this article I argue that Kant’s understanding of the universality of radical evil is best understood in the context of human sociality. Because we are inherently social beings, the nature of the human community we find ourselves in has a determinative influence on the sorts of persons we are, and the kinds of choices we can make. We always begin in evil. This does not vitiate responsibility, since through reflection we can become aware of our situation and envision ourselves as members of a …Read more
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21Review of: Mark C. Murphy. Divine Holiness & Divine Action (review)European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (4). 2022.-
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209On Some Presumed Gaps in Kant's Refutation of IdealismIn Udo Rameil (ed.), Metaphysik und Kritik, Walter De Gruyter. pp. 153-166. 2004.Kant’s aim in the Refutation of Idealism is to show that the temporal determination of inner experience presupposes outer experience. Commentators have rightly noted the extraordinarily compressed character of Kant's argument, and numerous gaps in the argument have been pointed out. In this paper I focus on two of these gaps and provide a reconstruction of Kant's argument that closes them.
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354Kant’s Robust Theory of GraceCon-Textos Kantianos 6 302-320. 2017.In this paper I argue against two prevailing views of Kant’s Religion. Against commentators such as Michalson and Quinn, who have argued that Kant’s project in Religion is riddled with inconsistencies and circularities, I show that a proper understanding of Kant’s views on grace reveals these do not exist. And contra commentators that attribute to Kant at best a minimalist conception of grace, I show that Kant’s view of it is remarkably robust. I argue that Kant works with three different concep…Read more
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453Individuality and Subjectivity in Kant and SchleiermacherIn Ingolf Dalferth & Raymond Perrier (eds.), The Unique, the Singular, and the Individual, Mohr-siebeck. pp. 321-337. 2022.This paper explores three important criticisms of Kant's ethics by Friedrich Schleiermacher, all having to do with Kant's alleged failure to account for the value of the individual. These are: (1) Kant's formalism precludes him from specifying ends for the will, and without such ends, the moral perfection of the individual, and the genuine appreciation of the other in his or her individuality cannot become my end; (2) Kant cannot provide an adequate metaphysical grounding of the value of the in…Read more
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224Schleiermacher Between Kant and LeibnizIn Christine Helmer, Marjorie Suchocki, John Quiring & Katie Goetz (eds.), Whitehead and Schleiermacher: Open Systems in Dialogue, De Gruyter. 2004.This paper takes stock of Leibnizian influences on Schleiermacher's thought through an examination and comparison of the views of Leibniz, Kant, and Schleiermacher on predication. I analyze each thinker's foundational ontological and epistemological commitments and their implications for their understanding of predication. More specifically, I explore whether Schleiermacher's adoption of Leibiniz' theory of the complete concept and the theory of prediction it entails conflicts with his adoptio…Read more
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522Religion and Early German RomanticismIn Elizabeth Millan (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of German Romantic Philosophy, Palgrave Macmillan. 2020.This paper explores the reception of Kant's understanding of consciousness by both Romantics and Idealists from 1785 to 1799, and traces its impact on the theory of religion. I first look at Kant's understanding of consciousness as developed in the first Critique, and then looks at how figures such as Fichte, Jacobi, Hölderlin, Novalis, and Schleiermacher received this theory of consciousness and its implications for their understanding of religion.
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305Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism. By Richard Crouter (review)Journal of the American Academy of Religion 10 200-204. 2007.My review of this book.
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263What Perfection Demands: An Irenaean of Kant on Radical EvilIn Chris L. Firestone, Nathan A. Jacobs & James H. Joiner (eds.), Kant and the Question of Theology, Cambridge University Press. pp. 183-200. 2017.In this essay I will show that the incoherence many commentators have found in Kant’s Religion is due to Augustinian assumptions about human evil that they are implicitly reading into the text. Eliminate the assumptions, and the inconsistencies evaporate: both theses, those of universality and moral responsibility, can be held together without contradiction. The Augustinian view must be replaced with what John Hick has dubbed an “Irenaean” account of human evil, which portrays the human being …Read more
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1205The Religious A Priori in Otto and its Kantian OriginsIn Heinrich Assel, Christine Helmer & Bruce McCormack (eds.), Luther, Barth, and Movements of Theological Renewal 1918-1833, De Gruyter. forthcoming.This paper provides an analysis of Rudolph Otto's understanding of the structures of human consciousness making possible the appropriation of revelation. Already in his dissertation on Luther's understanding of the Holy Spirit, Otto was preoccupied with how the " outer " of revelation could be united to these inner structures. Later, in his groundbreaking Idea of the Holy, Otto would explore the category of the numinous, an element of religious experience tied to the irrational element of the ho…Read more
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399Selfhood and RelationalityIn Joel Rasmussen, Judith Wolfe & Johannes Zachhuber (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Christian Thought, Oxford University Press. pp. 127-142. 2017.Nineteenth century Christian thought about self and relationality was stamped by the reception of Kant’s groundbreaking revision to the Cartesian cogito. For René Descartes (1596-1650), the self is a thinking thing (res cogitans), a simple substance retaining its unity and identity over time. For Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), on the other hand, consciousness is not a substance but an ongoing activity having a double constitution, or two moments: first, the original activity of consciousness, what K…Read more
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270Where have all the Monads Gone? Substance and Transcedental Freedom in SchleiermacherJournal of Religion 95 (4): 477-505. 2015.This article explores the later Schleiermacher’s metaphysics of substance and what it entails concerning the question of transcendental freedom. I show that in espousing a metaphysics of substance, Schleiermacher also abandoned an understanding of nature as a mere mechanism, a view implying what I call a “state-state view of causation” (“SSV” for short). Adoption of the view of the self as substance was motivated by the primacy of practical and religious concerns in Schleiermacher’s later work: …Read more
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296The World is a Mirror of the SelfIn Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Schleiermacher, Oxford University Press. 2008.This is the fourth chapter of Transformation of the Self. In it I explore Schleiermacher's reception of Leibniz in the Monologen.
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944Personal IdentityIn Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Schleiermacher, Oxford University Press. 2008.This is the third chapter of my book Transformation of the self, which covers Schleiermacher's reception of Kant on the problem of personal identity.
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289The Philosopher's StoneIn Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Schleiermacher, Oxford University Press. 2008.This is the first chapter of my book Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher. It is a look as some of Schleiermacher's early attempts to critique Kant's ethics, in particular with respect to the idea of transcendental freedom and the problem of act attribution.
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564The Principle of IndividuationIn Transformation of the Self in the Thought of Schleiermacher, Oxford University Press. 2008.This is the second chapter of my book Transformation of the Self. It concerns Schleiermacher's understanding of the principle of individuation, in dialogue with Kant, Jacobi, Leibniz and Spinoza.
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391Aristotle as A-Theorist: Overcoming the Myth of PassageJournal of History of Philosophy 39 169-192. 2001.Two things are often said about Aristotle's treatment of time in the Physics. First, that Aristotle's considered view of time is intrinsically tied to a language of temporal passage heavily dependent on the A-series. As such Aristotle's understanding of time is plagued with the perplexities that the A-series generates. Second, that the series of puzzles that Aristotle treats in IV.10, leading to the conclusion that time is non-existent, are left unanswered by Aristotle. Instead after presenting …Read more
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266Kant and the Creation of Freedom. By Christopher Insole. Pp. xiv, 264, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, $35.00 (review)Heythrop Journal 58 (3): 560-563. 2017.This is a review of Christopher Insole's book, Kant and the Creation of Freedom.
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385Kant's Construction of Nature: A Reading of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. By Michael Friedman. Pp. xix, 624, Cambridge University Press, 2013, £70.00 (review)Heythrop Journal 58 (3): 556-560. 2017.An extensive review of Michael Friedman's recent book.
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2205Kant’s Derivation of the Formula of the Categorical Imperative: How to Get it RightKant Studien 89 (2): 167-178. 1998.This paper explores the charge by Bruce Aune and Allen Wood that a gap exists in Kant's derivation of the Categorical Imperative. I show that properly understood, no such gap exists, and that the deduction of the Categorical Imperative is successful as it stands.
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4213Friedrich Schleiermacher and Rudolf OttoIn John Corrigan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Emotion, Oup Usa. 2007.Two names often grouped together in the study of religion are Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1884) and Rudolf Otto (1869–1937). Central to their understanding of religion is the idea that religious experience, characterized in terms of feeling, lies at the heart of all genuine religion. In his book On Religion, Schleiermacher speaks of religion as a “sense and taste for the Infinite.” In The Christian Faith, Schleiermacher grounds religion in the immediate self-consciousness and the “feeling of …Read more
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567HolinessIn Charles Taliaferro & Philip L. Quinn (eds.), A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, Wiley-blackwell. 1997.This essay analyzes the category of “the holy” as developed by Rudolf Otto, examining his division of the holy into rational and non-rational elements. While rational elements of the holy are closely tied to ethics, another aspect of the holy can only be apprehended through sui generis feelings irreducible to other mental states. But how do non-rational elements relate to rational, ethical categories? I trace the distinction between rational and non-rational elements in Otto’s analysis to Kant…Read more
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463Transformation and Personal Identity In KantFaith and Philosophy 17 (4): 479-497. 2000.In this paper I explore how Kant’s development of the idea of the disposition in the Religion copes with problems implied by Kant’s idea of transcendental freedom. Since transcendental freedom implies the power of absolutely beginning a state, and therefore of absolutely beginning a series of the consequences of that state, a transcendentally free act is divorced from the preceding state of an agent, and would thus seem to be divorced from the agent’s character as well. The paper is divided into…Read more
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3292Making Sense of Kant’s Highest GoodKant Studien 91 (3): 329-355. 2000.This paper explores Kant's concept of the highest good and the postulate of the existence of God arising from it. Kant has two concepts of the highest good standing in tension with one another, an immanent and a transcendent one. I provide a systematic exposition of the constituents of both variants and show how Kant’s arguments are prone to confusion through a conflation of both concepts. I argue that once these confusions are sorted out Kant’s claim regarding the need to postulate God’s existe…Read more
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164IntroductionIn Jacqueline Mariña (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher, Cambridge University Press. 2005.This is my introduction as editor to The Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher.
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3Schleiermacher's Christology Revisited: A Reply to his CriticsScottish Journal of Theology 49 (2): 177-200. 1996.This article refutes Barth's criticisms of Schleiermacher's Christology/
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Philosophy of Religion |
19th Century Philosophy |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
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Philosophy of Mind |
Continental Philosophy |
European Philosophy |