Georg Gasser

This paper explores recent developments in the philosophy of religion, emphasising alternative conceptions of God that move away from personal theism. Two alternative frameworks are presented: the euteleological concept of God developed by John Bishop and Ken Perszyk, which views God as an emergent phenomenon of an inherently purposive and good reality, and John L. Schellenberg’s ultimism, which conceptualises ultimate reality as metaphysical, axiological and soteriological ultimate, advocating for a cautious, open-ended understanding of the divine. These models argue for a humble and exploratory stance toward religious understanding. They suggest a shift toward a pluralistic, non-personalist framework in conceptualising the divine and ultimate meaning.

Many ethicists believe that moral statements can be true or false because there exist truthmakers for them. If these truth-makers are not conceived as natural but as moral facts „sui generis“ then we arrive at a position dubbed non-naturalistic moral realism (Non-NMR). This article tackles the question whether Non-NMR is persuasive. It is argued that metaphysics of supervenience and constitution between natural and moral facts will not suffice. Instead, Non-NMR should allow for moral standards or principles as abstract normative entities in its ontology. These abstract normative entities are instantiated in our actions and thereby determine their moral quality. If we call an action „good“ or „bad“ we do not describe an action’s natural features but the moral standard realized in it.

Der Glaube an Unsterblichkeit ist Bestandteil praktisch aller Religionen und seit ihren Anfängen ein zentrales Thema der Philosophie. Dieser Sammelband bietet einen Überblick zum aktuellen Stand klassischer Debatten über Unsterblichkeit (Unsterblichkeit der Seele, Wiedergeburt, Auferstehung), bringt aber auch neue und bisher vernachlässigte Aspekte mit in die Diskussion (z.B. digitale Unsterblichkeit, Unsterblichkeit und Gender, Unsterblichkeit der Tiere). Die Beiträge skizzieren den Stand der philosophischen Forschung und entwickeln eigene Positionen der Autorinnen und Autoren. Der Band richtet sich an Forschende und Studierende in den Bereichen Religionsphilosophie, Theologie und Religionswissenschaft und eignet sich nicht nur als Grundlage für Lehrveranstaltungen, sondern auch für eine wissenschaftliche Einarbeitung in das Thema.

This book is the first systematic treatment of the strengths and limitations of personal and a-personal conceptions of the divine. It features contributions from Jewish, Islamic, Chinese, Indian and naturalistic backgrounds in addition to those working within a decidedly Christian framework. This book discusses whether the concept of God in classical theism is coherent at all and whether the traditional understanding of some of the divine attributes need to be modified. The contributors explore what the proposed spiritual and practical merits and demerits of personal and a-personal conceptions of God might be. Additionally, their diverse perspectives reflect a broader trend within the analytic philosophy of religion to incorporate various non-Western religious traditions. Tackling these issues carefully is needed to do justice to the strengths and limitations of personal and a-personal accounts to the divine. The Divine Nature: Personal and A-Personal Perspectives will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of religion and philosophical theology.

Recently, there have been increasing voices that analytic philosophy of religion is in crisis. In this article, this diagnosis is discussed on the basis of two recent publications on the topic. I argue for the thesis that the current analytic philosophy of religion is less in a crisis than in a transformation process. All resources are available to develop into a global philosophy of religion that takes into account the religious diversity that characterizes modern global society and brings different religious traditions more strongly into a constructive exchange.

Zu den weiterreichenden transhumanistischen Zukunftsvisionen gehört Mind-Uploading: Wir werden dank wissenschaftlicher und technologischer Fortschritte in der Lage sein, Bewusstsein auf künstliche Körper oder digitale Strukturen zu transferieren, um sehr viel länger oder gar unendlich lange leben zu können. Im Kern handelt es sich also um die Vision, durch Technik den Tod zu überwinden. In diesem Beitrag gehe ich im Wesentlichen der Frage nach, welche Theorie des Bewusstseins bzw. welches Geist-Körper-Verhältnis im Mind-Uploading vorausgesetzt werden. Ich werde dafür argumentieren, dass das zugrunde gelegte Verständnis des menschlichen Geistes problematisch ist, weil die Rolle des Eingebettet-Seins in einen lebendigen Körper unterschätzt wird. Mind-Uploading arbeitet mit einem stark verkürzten Begriff des Geistes, der den komplexen Bezügen zu den biologischen, psychischen und sozialen Dimensionen unserer Existenz nicht gerecht wird.

The issue of religious tolerance is increasingly raised in a globalized world with societies becoming more and more religiously diverse and inhomogeneous. Religious tolerance can be defined as the practice of accepting others as acting in accordance with their religious belief system. Philosophers have recently begun to study more thoroughly the relationship between religious pluralism and religious (in)tolerance with a main focus on the epistemic question of whether the recognition of and reflection on religious pluralism might lead to greater religious tolerance. The major thrust of this idea is that any genuine reflection of a person about her epistemic peers adhering to other religions will weaken the person’s epistemic justificatory basis for believing that her own religious beliefs are better warranted than the religious beliefs of her peers. The rational consequence of the recognition of this justificatory fact, in turn, should lead to more religious tolerance and to a weakened dismissive attitude towards adherents of other religions. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the plausibility of this account against the background of existing empirical, in particular psychological literature: Does increased contact with adherents of other religious traditions indeed lead to more tolerance? How are we able to show a deeper understanding for people with different religious beliefs and to take on—at least partially—their perspective? What are potential psychological obstacles to these achievements? Resources from research on intergroup toleration, social identity-theories, developmental psychology and personality traits will be used for tackling these questions. This shall help to broaden the so far rather narrow epistemic philosophical perspective on religious pluralism and (in)tolerance by embedding it into the larger context of constitutive traits of the human psyche.

Alternative Gotteskonzepte gibt es viele. Im Grunde ist jedes Gotteskonzept eine Alternative für andere Gotteskonzepte. Die Frage nach alternativen Gotteskonzepten ist somit eine Frage der Perspektive. In der gegenwärtigen analytischen Religionsphilosophie werden unter dem Begriff ›alternative Gotteskonzepte‹ Gottesvorstellungen zusammengefasst, die sich implizit oder explizit von dem in der Diskussion vorherrschenden christlich inspirierten theistischen Gottesbegriff abheben. Die Ausgangsperspektive ist also der durch die westlich-christlich geprägte Tradition theistische Gottesbegriff, während Abweichungen davon als alternative Gottesbegriffe gelten.

Das Handbuch dokumentiert die Bedeutung der analytischen Philosophie für den religionsphilosophischen und theologischen Diskurs erstmalig in kompakter Weise für den deutschsprachigen Raum. Ausgehend von der analytischen Methode, den Vorboten und den maßgeblichen Vertretern der analytischen Religionsphilosophie, wird der Blick auf die wichtigsten etablierten Diskurse, wie etwa die Existenz und Eigenschaften Gottes, das Verhältnis Gott – Mensch und Gott – Welt, sowie auf aktuelle Debatten gelenkt. Dabei kommen sowohl der „Neue Atheismus“, die Attraktivität a-personaler Gottesbegriffe als auch der religiöse Pluralismus zur Sprache.

Panenetheism is the claim that God and the cosmos are intimately inter-related, with the cosmos being in God and God being in the cosmos. What does this exactly mean? The aim of this paper is to address this question by sheding light on four possible models of God-world-inter-relatedness. Being critical of those models, which understand maximal immanence in a literal, spatial sense, the paper argues in favor of a model, which cashes out immanence in terms of divine activity. God is, where God acts. Since God acts upon all of creation everywhere and anytime, God is omnipresent to it at all times. Thus, the proposal is to read the ‘en’ in ‘panetheism’ in an ‘agential sense’: God is in the cosmos by creating and sustaining it and the cosmos is in God by constantly being within the sphere of divine activity.

SummaryHolm Tetens develops in his book „Gott denken. Ein Versuch über rationale Theologie“ theoretical and practical arguments against a naturalistic and in favour of a theistic understanding of reality. In my paper I focus on Teten’s claim that we are rationally justified to hope for the truth of classical theism. I distinguish between rationally justified and unjustified forms of hope and argue that we are rationally justified to hope for the redemption of reality as promised by classical theism. However, this hope has a weaker basis of justification than Tetens seems to assume because serious objections to classical theism ought to be taken into consideration as well.

Several non-naturalist philosophers look for ways to maintain the objectivity of morals without making any ontological commitments. Recently Derek Parfit proposed an account of non-ontologically existing irreducible moral properties. My first aim in this paper is to outline that such an account is doomed to fail. My second aim in this paper is to argue that irreducible moral properties can be integrated with adaptions into an ontological framework such as E.J. Lowe’s four-category ontology. If it can be shown that irreducible moral properties have a proper place in such an ontology, then there is no need to distinguish between an ontological and non-ontological mode of existence, which, in turn helps to eschew the obscurities that this distinction brings in its wake.

Wer der Frage nachgeht, was jemand tut, der geht – wenigstens implizit – auch der Frage nach, wer da etwas tut. Handlungen schreiben wir normalerweise Personen zu. Handeln zu können ist eine derjenigen Eigenschaften, die Personen auszeichnet. Die Analyse menschlichen Handelns geht mit der Frage einher, was menschliche Personen sind. Folgender Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Verhältnis von Handlung und Person innerhalb der kausalen Theorie des Handelns. Durch eine eingehende Analyse dieses weitverbreiteten Ansatzes zur Erklärung und Deutung menschlichen Handelns sollen Implikationen für den Begriff des Handelnden herausgearbeitet werden.

In this paper we explicate the notion of a miracle and highlight a suitable ontological framework for it. Our proposal draws on insights from Aquinas’s discussion of miracles and from the modern ontology of powers. We argue that each substance possesses a characteristic set of natural powers and dispositions which are operative or become manifest in the right circumstances. In a miracle divine intervention activates the fundamental disposition inherent in each creature to be responsive to God’s call. Thus, a miracle brings something about which a substance’s set of natural powers and dispositions could not bring about by itself.