Christoph Jedan

The article attempts to put the undervalued cultural phenomenon of offering comfort by means of persuasive speech acts (‘arguments’) on the research agenda of the human¬ities. The article proceeds in four steps. First, it defines ‘argumentative consolation’. Second, it argues that there has been a broad overlap of ancient philosophical and Christian modes of argumentative consolation. Third, it would be misguided to attribute today’s uneasiness with argumentative consolation to a process of ‘secularization’; the uneasiness stems from a radicalized intensification of life that is played out against the possibility of consolation in the face of death. Fourth, the ensuing emphasis on the notions of desires, plans and projects to measure the completeness of a life is self-defeating. The article argues the continued relevance of pre-modern argumentative consolation that identified virtue as the key factor in the completeness of a biography.

It is often assumed that a single, diachronically persistent motif of imitating god can be identifijied in Ancient philosophy and early Christianity. The present article takes issue with this assumption and seeks to establish the conceptual framework for a more sophisticated discussion of homoiôsis. The article identifijies eight crucial junctures at which homoiôsis stories can diverge. For all the variance of homoiôsis narratives, the category of imitation of the divine remains a useful analytical tool. The article supports this claim by a comparison of Platonic and Stoic narratives of homoiôsis. It established their distinctness and shows how the rhetoric of imitating the divine offfers important linguistic markers that allow us to trace the transgressive potential of (ancient) theologies.

TERRORISM, RESPONSIBILITY, AND RADICAL EVIL: RE-READING KANT?S RELIGIONSSCHRIFT In recent debates, insufficient attention has been paid to the positive role religions can play in modern societies. Religions offer insights that remain important even in secular societies. Kant?s conception of radical evil is a paradigm of positive engage�ment with Christian dogmatics. This article argues that Kant cannot formulate his con�ception of radical evil without falling back on Christian interpretative resources. Kant attempts a combination of Pelagian and Augustinian views on evil and free will. In spite of tensions in Kant?s analysis of evil, it still offers important insights that can help us to better understand, and deal with, contemporary manifestations of evil, like modern terrorism

In Western public discourse there is a long tradition of opposing secular and religious values. In consequence, religion has been increasingly excluded from the public domain and relegated to the realm of personal motivation. From different perspectives, the present collection of essays shows that religion still has an important role to play in the public domain. In exploring the possibility of a rapprochement between religious and secular values, the contributions to this volume offer important insights for ongoing debates on the question whether Western, and particularly European, democracies have entered a ‘postsecular’ phase.