Nick Trakakis

Taking as its starting-point Eva Illouz's sociological study Why Love Hurts, this paper develops a philosophical framework for understanding love and marriage, particularly in their contemporary manifestations. To begin with, premodern practices in love and marriage during the ancient Greek and Byzantine eras are outlined and contrasted with modern forms of love, whose overriding features are suffering and disappointment. To cast some light upon this great transformation in the fortunes of love the discussion takes an axiological and metaphysical turn by placing the transformation within the context of the kind of relational morality and metaphysics proposed by many idealist philosophers.

The problem of evil is regularly regarded as posing a serious threat to theistic belief. However, contemporary philosophers of religion have overlooked the ways in which this problem has been, or could be, handled by theists committed to the metaphysics of idealism. In seeking to redress this lacuna, I turn to the systems of the British idealists, popular in the late nineteenth century though now out of favour, and in particular the work of F.H. Bradley, while also drawing parallels with the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism. The central argument of this paper is that these idealist traditions have greater resources to adequately deal with the problem of evil than comparatively mainstream theist views. While standard forms of theism struggle to make sense of the facts of evil, or are even resoundly defeated by them, the conception of divinity suggested or developed by the British idealists offers possibilities for innovative and fruitful ways of thinking about the relationship between God and evil.

An aspect of the question of the relationship between reason and faith concerns the compatibility between philosophy and religious commitment. I begin by considering some attempts that have been made in both the analytic and Continental traditions to divorce philosophy from the life of religious faith as far as possible: in particular, I discuss Martin Heidegger’s critique of the very idea of a ‘Christian philosophy’ and Bertrand Russell’s criticism of Aquinas for not living up to the Socratic ideal of following the argument wherever it leads. I then seek further to develop these criticisms by reviewing the current debate around the problem of evil in philosophy of religion as a case study of the dangers and drawbacks of religious commitment in philosophy. I conclude with some comments on the connection between ideology and philosophy, and claim that much of what passes as Christian philosophy is ideological as opposed to rational or truth-seeking in character.

Metaphilosophy is typically concerned with such questions as the goals of philosophy, the relations between philosophy and the arts and sciences, the methods of argumentation and tools of analysis employed by philosophers, major trends and schools of thought, the prospects for progress and future directions. But one topic that has been consistently overlooked in these discussions is that of the temporality, or pace and tempo, of philosophy. Initially this may seem a relatively insignificant topic and therefore one that has been justifiably passed over. The tempo of philosophy, however, relates in quite direct ways to the nature of philosophical practice and how this has been shaped by wider social currents and changes – matters that are of crucial concern to metaphilosophy. Most of us, for example, are keenly aware that modern life is fast and frenzied, and its busy-ness appears only to be accelerating. How has this impacted upon the ways in which philosophy is understood and produced? Does the fast pace of contemporary life compel us to reevaluate not only our ways of living but also our ways of thinking as philosophers? In response to such questions, I propose that philosophy is in urgent need of slowing down, and to this end I develop what might be called a ‘Slow Philosophy’.

This paper examines the evidential argument from evil put forward by William Rowe during his early and middle periods. Having delineated some of the important features of Rowe’s argument, it is then assessed in the light of “the skeptical theist critique.” According to skeptical theists, Rowe’s crucial inference from inscrutable evil to pointless evil can be exposed as unwarranted, particularly by appealing to the disparity between our cognitive abilities and the infinite wisdom of God. However, by relating the problem of evil to that of divine hiddenness, the adverse consequences and hence the highly dubious nature of this skeptical theist position are brought to light.

This paper contests an important assumption guiding Alexander Pruss’ One Body, that marriage is intimately connected with love, including romantic love. This assumption, I argue, is the product in part of a distinctively modern understanding of marriage. To show this, Pruss’ position is set against the premodern, and in particular the Byzantine Christian, view and practice of marriage, where marriage was not grounded to any significant extent on love. Finally, some indication is provided as to why romantic love was disassociated from marriage in medieval Christian culture.

Philosophy of religion, in both its analytic and Continental streams, has been undergoing a renewal for some time now, and I seek to explore this transformation in the fortunes of the discipline by looking at how truth – and religious truth in particular – is conceptualised in both strands of philosophy. I begin with an overview of the way in which truth has been commonly understood across nearly all groups within the analytic tradition, and I will underscore the difficulties and shortcomings of the analytic approach by comparing it with a Continental, and specifically Heideggerian, approach. I then proceed to a conception of truth that is even further removed from the analytic tradition, one that is prominent in the theology of Christianity and which identifies truth with Christ. The point of this detour through divergent understandings of truth is to show how philosophy of religion, whether analytic or Continental, remains entrenched in forms of thinking that will need to be overcome if it is to have a credible future.

A theodicy is the attempt to discern God's reasons for permitting evil, whereas the antitheodicy view rejects all such attempts outright. This chapter explores two sets of arguments that could be offered in support of antitheodicy. The first group of arguments concerns the morality of theodicy, and seeks to show that theodicy‐making conflicts with or undermines central aspects of morality – for example, the motivation to fight against gratuitous evil. The second group of arguments point out nonmoral (e.g., conceptual or metaphysical) failings in theodicy, such as the unduly anthropomorphic notion of God usually at work in theodicies.

Timothy Knepper’s book is divided into two parts, the first and more critical of which seeks to uncover the limits and weaknesses of analytic and continental philosophy of religion, while the second and more constructive section seeks to develop an alternative and more fruitful way of practising philosophy of religion, “one that is historically grounded and religiously diverse” (p. xiii). Much of the impetus behind the book derives from feelings of dismay and dissatisfaction, familiar especially to religious studies scholars, over the fact that “philosophy of religion often takes as its primary object of inquiry either ahistorical theism or postmodern philosophy, not the religions of the world in their historical complexity and cultural diversity” (p. ix). I found this to be a clear, well-argued and often provocative book, but also one flawed in some respects in its attempt to renew and reconceive the philosophy of religion.The starting-point of Chapter 1 (The End and Ends of Philosoph

Questions of style are often deemed of marginal importance in philosophy, as well as in metaphilosophical debates concerning the analytic/Continental divide. I take issue with this common tendency by showing how style – suitably conceived not merely as a way of writing, but as a form of expression intimately linked to a form of life – occupies a central role in philosophy. After providing an analysis of the concept of style, I take a fresh look at the analytic/Continental division by examining the various stylistic differences between philosophers on each side. Despite these differences, I argue, both sides of the divide suffer from a common stylistic deficiency, and if this deficiency were rectified the gulf separating the two traditions may not appear as insurmountable as it presently does. To show this, I draw principally from the philosophy of religion, a field that has recently experienced a renewal in both the analytic and Continental traditions

Nicholas Rescher is well-known for the breadth of his philosophical corpus, covering fields as diverse as medieval Arabic logic, process metaphysics, philosophy of science, and value theory. But one of his greatest preoccupations and passions throughout his career has been the life and thought of G.W. Leibniz. Indeed, as a result of his intimate familiarity with Leibniz and Leibniz’s historical milieu, Rescher invariably provides us with a clear, rigorous, and sympathetic treatment of Leibniz’s texts, and the present book under review is no exception.

This paper examines the evidential argument from evil put forward by William Rowe during his early and middle periods (1978-1995). Having delineated some of the important features of Rowe’s argument, it is then assessed in the light of “the skeptical theist critique.” According to skeptical theists, Rowe’s crucial (“noseeum”) inference from inscrutable evil to pointless evil can be exposed as unwarranted, particularly by appealing to the disparity between our cognitive abilities and the infinite wisdom of God. However, by relating the problem of evil to that of divine hiddenness, the adverse consequences and hence the highly dubious nature of this skeptical theist position are brought to light.

How is the philosophical study of religion best pursued? Responses to this meta-philosophical question tend to recapitulate the analytic-Continental divide in philosophy in general. My aim is to examine the nature of this divide, particularly as it has manifested itself in the philosophy of religion. I begin with a comparison of the stylistic differences in the language of the two traditions, taking the work of Alvin Plantinga and John Caputo as exemplars of the analytic and Continental schools respectively. In order to account for these stylistic divergences, however, it is necessary to delve further into meta-philosophy. I go on to show how each philosophical school models itself on different theoretical practices, the analytic school mimicking the scientific style of inquiry, while in Continental philosophy it is the arts and humanities rather than the sciences that provide the model for philosophical discourse. By situating themselves in such different genres, analytic and Continental philosophers have developed contrasting, if not mutually exclusive, methods for pursuing the philosophy of religion