scholarly journals ‘That’s What Art Does’: Disclosing Religious and Ethical Possibilities Through Film

Sophia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikel Burley
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Dead Man

AbstractThe significance of narrative artworks as resources for, and possibly as instances of, philosophical thinking has increasingly been recognized over recent decades. Utilization of such resources in philosophy of religion has, however, been limited. Focusing on film in particular, this article develops an account of film’s importance for a ‘contemplative’ approach to philosophizing about religious ethics, an approach that prioritizes the elucidation of possibilities of sense over the evaluation of ‘truth claims’. Taking Dead Man Walking as a case in point, the article shows how this film facilitates an enhanced comprehension of specific concepts, most notably the concepts of faith, truth and love, as they feature within a characteristically Christian form of life.

How rational is rational theology? A reply to Mikael Stenmark

1999 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-97
Author(s):  
VINCENT BRÜMMER
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Language Game ◽  
Religious Language ◽  
Rational Theology ◽  
Truth Claims

In this response to Stenmark's critique of my views on rational theology, I concentrate on his distinction between the epistemic and the practical goals of religion and between descriptive and normative rational theology. With regard to the first distinction, I grant that truth claims play an essential role in religious belief and that it is indeed the task of philosophy of religion to decide on the meaning and rationality of such claims. I argue, however, that since such claims are internally related to the practical context of religious belief, their meaning and rationality cannot be determined apart from this context as is done in the kind of rational theology which Stenmark calls ‘scientific’. With regard to the second distinction, I reject Stenmark's view that philosophy of religion has a descriptive task with reference to religion, and hence also his claim that I have put forward a false description of ‘the religious language game’.

scholarly journals The philosophical and religious ideas of D. Hume and their influence on the formation of the ideological field of philosophy of religion of I. Kant

2009 ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Iryna Horokholinska
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Research Attention ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Spiritual Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

The focus of philosophical research attention on the theoretical and, where appropriate, specifically applied problems of religion is a phenomenon immanent and unpersuasive. Its relevance is explained by the fact that the reflexiveness of philosophical thinking always determines the search for the answer to the basic worldview questions and aims at grasping the standards of wisdom. The history of human civilization is confirmed by the fact that one of the major worldview issues that bothers man is the question of life and death, the meaning of human existence and the purpose of the world and, most often, in finding an answer to it, humanity turned to a religion that is vividly illustrated by the existence of the great the number of different doctrines and beliefs. It is no secret that a large number of people see in religion and the basis of wisdom, the ideological and axiological potential of its nurturing. Of course, this does not mean that within the human culture there is no attempt to find wisdom outside of religion and even against it. But in any case, it cannot be denied that the search for wisdom on the basis of religious outlook is historically natural, and even dominates spiritual culture in certain eras.

Historicism, Truth Claims, and the Teaching of Ethics

Horizons ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Terrence Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Religious Ethics ◽  
Ethical Relativism ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Web Of Belief ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Theological Realism

AbstractThis article analyzes the impact of postmodernism on the meaning, truth, and justification of claims in contemporary theology and ethics. It argues that historicist premises do not lead inexorably from a naïve objectivism in ethics to ethical relativism, as Sheila Greeve Davaney and Richard Rorty suggest. Instead, as the work of Carol Christ and Jeffrey Stout has argued, theologians and ethicists are justified in making indirect, web-of-belief related claims to ontological truth. Christ's theological realism and Stout's modest pragmatism both appear able to support meaningful discussions of truth, while avoiding the related dangers of relativism, skepticism, and nihilism. Paying careful attention to these methodological issues in a course on Religious Ethics and Moral Issues has proved very effective in overcoming student acquiescence to a relativist perspective, and in enabling them to propose and defend their own moral views with greater confidence.

Religious Faith and Prometheus

Philosophy ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 55 (214) ◽  
pp. 497-507
Author(s):  
J. Kellenberger
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Affective Response ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Essential Dimension ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Belief In God ◽  
Truth Claim ◽  
Recent Philosophy

Recent philosophy of religion, particularly neo-Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, has reminded philosophers that there is more to religion than belief and, indeed, that there is more to religious belief than mere belief. D. Z. Phillips is among those who have made a contribution here. He has emphasized how religious belief is very different from the kind of belief that amounts to holding a hypothesis, even a God-hypothesis. However, perhaps because of his non-cognitivist tendencies, Phillips, unlike Kierkegaard to whom he often appeals, has failed to bring into relief another quintessential fact about belief in God, namely that it is for the believer an entered relationship with God. We do well to appreciate that belief in God is not identical with making a truth claim. But if the essential core of religious belief is construed as an attitudinal or affective response, as non-cognitivists tend to construe it, an important conceptual dimension of religious faith will all but be overlooked, as, paradoxically it seems it has been by the philosophical approach that strives to describe the religious ‘form of life’ in its own terms. In what follows I shall endeavour to bring into relief what I take to be an essential dimension of religious belief, one which presupposes that religious belief is an entered relationship for the believer. This I shall do by pursuing a contrast which, I think, at once clarifies and makes undeniable religious belief's essential nature as a relationship to God.

scholarly journals Redefining Religious Truth as a Challenge for Philosophy of Religion

2012 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 139-159
Author(s):  
Peter Jonkers
Keyword(s):  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
The Way

One of the most important features of contemporary Western societies is the rise of (religious) pluralism. Whereas (philosophical) theism used to serve as a common ground to discuss the truth-claims of religion, this approach seems to have lost much of its plausibility. What I want to argue in this article is that philosophy of religion as a critical intellectual activity still cannot do without the notion of religious truth, but also that it needs to redefine this truth in an existential way, i.e. by interpreting religions as concrete ways of life. In this paper I develop this idea of religious truth by interpreting religions as traditions of wisdom, being a kind of truth that is able to orientate humans’ lives without being swayed by the issues of the day. In order to substantiate my interpretation I discuss three fundamental aspects of wisdom, viz. the fact that it rests on a broadened idea of reason, the way in which it discovers the universal in the particular, and the insight that all life-orientations are based on a principle that is subjectively adequate, but objectively inadequate (Kant).

KEBENARAN DAN KERAGUAN DALAM STUDI KEISLAMAN (TELAAH PEMIKIRAN CHARLES SANDER PEIRCE DALAM BUKU CONTEMPORARY ANALYTIC PHILOSHOPHY)

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-109
Author(s):  
Afga Sidiq Rifai
Keyword(s):  
Religious Studies ◽  
Good Theory ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Truth Claim ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Theoretical Thinking

Theory of belief and doubt Charles Sander Peirce gives fresh air to the problems faced by Muslims who are trapped in madzhabiyah and class fanaticism. Charles S. Peirce with the theory of Pragmatism tries to pioneer new philosophical thinking, where good theory must lead to the discovery of new facts and the consequences of theoretical thinking in practice does not stop at doctrine and truth claims (truth claim). Arguments that want to be proposed are beliefs about the truth if a test can be carried out to find truths about their beliefs that will give meaning. In religious studies the approach of Charles S. Peirce's theory is important to find the meaning of a truth that is believed. Keywords: Belief, doubt, Islamic study, Charles Sander Peirce

scholarly journals HISTRIONICS AS A SUPREME LIFE FORM: JIM JARMUSH’S “DEAD MAN” IN THE CONTEXT OF ANTONIN ARTAUD’S LIFE

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 127-136
Author(s):  
Leila F. Salimova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
William Blake ◽  
Individual Performance ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Antonin Artaud ◽  
French Theater ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
The Face ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Real Person ◽  
Dead Man

The article is a kind of aesthetic experiment that reveals patterns between two stories from the life of the fictional character William Blake from the film "dead Man" by American Director Jim Jarmusch and French theater theorist and philosopher Antonin Artaud. The complexity of the work lies in the fact that the comparison takes place between a fictional hero and a real person who made identical metaphysical trips to the bosom of an ancient civilization. The path is presented as an experience of reincarnation with the possibility of gaining new knowledge, liberation from the burden of pain and illness, fears and anxiety. The author is interested, among other things, in the stages of transformation of the personality and its transition from a reasonable state to a mad state with the exit to purification and liberation of the hero in death. The metamorphosis of the transition to the territory of the transcendent (mad) develops into a holistic individual performance-a challenge to society. Theatricality as the highest form of life itself and its completion determine the initiation process of Artaud and Blake. Artezianka theatricality and tragedy are the tears of all life and the creative forces. Blake's theatricality is realized in a gradual alienation from the everyday world and immersion in the ritual world, which requires him to perform a number of mandatory rites, for example, applying the blood of a slaughtered animal to the face. Comparative analysis takes into account the concept of disease and morbidity, which is considered not from a medical point of view, but in philosophical and aesthetic discourses. For both characters, the fact of theatricalization of life, the Monstration of its aesthetic and moral categories through the optics of ritual and ritual practice of the Indians is postulated.

scholarly journals Cohen and Natorp’s Philosophy of Religion: the Argument about the Boundary of Reason

2020 ◽  
pp. 54-71
Author(s):  
V. N. Belov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
Mutual Respect ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
Specific Nature ◽  
Special Place ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
Classical Triad ◽  
Hermann Cohen

The philosophy of religion as presented by Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, the founders and main representatives of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, is an important and at the same time controversial part of their philosophical systems. The discussion around the problems of religion began within the Marburg School and still continues among those who study that School. The reason for this is that “fitting” philosophical thinking about the phenomenon of religion into the classical triad of any system of philosophy, i. e. effectively formulating that phenomenon in logical concepts, ethical postulates and aesthetic principles touched the very foundations of that system. Drawing mainly on the rough notes and correspondence of Cohen and Natorp I argue that, in spite of internal and quite important differences over the problems of religion and its place in philosophical constructions, Cohen and Natorp, first, retained their commitment to critical idealism and remained loyal to their philosophical school to the end and, second, followed the principle of mutual respect, preserving their professional and human sympathy for each other. Besides, I substantiate my assertion that Marburg Neo-Kantians had different concepts of the special place of religion in the system of philosophy. The specific nature of this difference warrants the discussion not only of the boundary of reason and rationality but adds new dimensions to that boundary, filling it with content and thus broadening the very sphere of critical idealism. In the course of the discussion of the problems of religion, Paul Natorp (in a more immediate and extended fashion) and Hermann Cohen (largely potentially) stake a claim to projects for the serious transformation of philosophy which they tried to implement in their later works.

scholarly journals Religious Diversity: A Philosophical Defense of Religious Inclusivism

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-140
Author(s):  
Bernd Irlenborn
Keyword(s):  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Philosophy Of Religion ◽  
The Third ◽  
Religious Truth ◽  
Religious Plurality ◽  
The Face ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Catholic Tradition

Faced by the challenge of religious plurality, most philosophers of religion view pluralism and exclusivism as the most accepted and fully developed positions. The third alternative, the model of inclusivism, held especially within the catholic tradition, has not received adequate attention in the debates in philosophy of religion, perhaps as it is based solely on theological grounds. In this essay I offer a philosophical defense of the position of religious inclusivism and give reasons why this position represents the most appropriate position in the face of conflicting religious truth claims. 

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