Philosophy, revelation and politics: The recovery of medieval Islamic political philosophy

In contemporary philosophical thought, Leo Strauss is associated with the rediscovery of ancient political philosophy against modern political philosophy. The rediscovery of ancient political philosophy is the rediscovery of classical rationalism or “moderate Enlightenment” against modern rationalism or “radical Enlightenment” and can be understood as recapturing the “the question of man’s right life” and “the question of the right order of society”. This article would like to show that it was his study of medieval Islamic and Jewish texts that enabled Strauss to rediscover the classical rationalism. Also, in this article we would like to argue that although the opposition between Athens and Jerusalem, Reason and Revelation embodies two irreconcilable alternatives or a way of life in his thought, this opposition should be only examined with references to claims about radical rationalism of modern philosophy. In this case, we would like to argue that there can be seen a commonality between these “opponents”, i.e., Athens and Jerusalem, Reason and Revelation in terms of both their attitudes towards morality and their approaches to the relationship between philosophy and society.

The Clash of Cultures of Radical Enlightenment and Humanism Open to Transcendence. The Perspective of Pope Benedict XVI

The article analyzes the content of the Pope’s speeches discussing, reconstructing and interpreting the concept of two dominant western cultures and their mutual relationships to the perspective of Pope Benedict XVI, who calls them the culture of radical enlightenment and the culture of humanism that is open to transcendence. The article identifies fundamental contentious issues including: anthropological issues, human dignity, political anthropology, freedom, reason, its rationality, and the role of religion in the public sphere. Thus, the article provides a positive answer to the question of whether the perspective of the clash of cultures outlined by Samuel Huntington can be cognitively used in interpreting the contrast of cultures presented from the perspective of Pope Benedict XVI. However, contrary to Huntington, who describes the clash of western cultures with other, non-western cultures, Pope Benedict XVI claims that there is a clash between two dominant western cultures.

The Bible as Cultural Translation

This chapter explores three aims of Mendelssohn’s Bible translation project: (1) strengthening Jewish national sentiment and halakhic practice, (2) invigorating German nationhood; and (3) fostering love and tolerance between German Jews and Christians. Mendelssohn aimed to strengthen Jewish national sentiment by revealing the beauty and rationality of the Bible. He sought to bolster halakhic practice by defending the Masoretic Text of the Bible and rabbinic interpretation. He aimed to invigorate German nationhood by using Bible translation to enrich the German language and contribute to a cosmopolitan vision of Germanness. By translating the Hebrew Bible into German, he sought to illustrate the translatability of religious truth thereby fostering tolerance and love between German Jews and Christians. Mendelssohn translated two main biblical texts-- the Pentateuch and the Psalms. His aims and exegetical methods in the two works are compared. The aims and methods of Mendelssohn’s Bible translations are also compared with two German Protestant translations with which he was familiar: Luther’s 1545 translation and the 1735 Radical Enlightenment Wertheim Bible of Johann Lorenz Schmidt. The claim that Luther’s translation is closer to the Hebrew original than Mendelssohn’s is refuted. Comparing Mendelssohn’s translation with Schmidt’s Wertheim Bible illustrates similarities and differences between Mendelssohn’s moderate religious rationalism and Schmidt’s radical religious rationalism.

‘Too late for antique vows’

This chapter reads John Keats in the context of the influence of Leigh Hunt and the wider radical Enlightenment. One problem posed by a secular modernity is whether prayer—and forms of religious practice more generally—can be maintained as part of an increasingly abstracted philosophical religion that exits the form of Christianity. Circles of elegy, nostalgia, and scepticism pose this problem of a ‘post-Christian’ prayer. In ‘Ode to Psyche’, Keats tries to imagine a prayer detached from Christianity’s mournful theology; in the Catholic and Gothic tones of ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’, he is repeatedly drawn by the seductive lure of superstition and the rich concrete forms of devotion. The chapter concludes by reading ‘The Fall of Hyperion’ as stylizing a scene of prayer to Moneta, a goddess embodying the uncertain transitions between religious epochs, thus dramatizing his most pressing spiritual dilemma.

Prawo naturalne w ramach radykalnego oświecenia

The main difference between classical (both ancient and medieval) and modern concepts of natural law lies in the assumption of its supernatural (divine) foundation. Early modern philosophical concepts tend to undermine and gradually to deny God or some other metaphysical entity as the source of natural law. Some contemporary scholars (e.g. Habermas, Bobbio) define this process as transition (modernization, rationalization, Positivisierung) of traditional natural law towards the idea of natural rights and human rights. We can distinguish at least three main schools of natural law during the 17th and 18th centuries, each one more radical than the others: de Groot dares to consider the natural law “as if there were no God”. The philosophers of early Enlightenment (e.g. Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire) were perhaps more daring, nevertheless they were all deists and the “Supreme Being” still validates natural law in their writings. The article aims to examine the most radical view on natural law, i.e. partly forgotten and underestimated ideas of French materialists: La Mettrie, Diderot, Holbach, Mably, and Condorcet. For they were all thinkers of the radical Enlightenment (J. Israel), all of them were materialists and atheists, and they perceived the nature and natural law as completely separated from God or other supernatural being. Unlike their older colleagues, these radical philosophers demanded equality (for women and ethnical minorities as well), emancipation, and social justice for all classes. This papers describes the idea of natural law within the radical Enlightenment movement,and investigates some political consequences of this interpretation during the French Revolution. While strongly materialistic, progressive, and atheist, the ideas of Diderot, Holbach, Mably, and Condorcet were also perceived as politically dangerous. All revolutionary attempts to put these ideas into political and social practice have failed. Finally, these ideas were refuted, but they returned during the 19th- and 20th-century debates on human rights.

Enlightenment and Modernity, Historians and Philosophers

Since the 1990s, historians of the Enlightenment have been notably keen to emphasise their subject’s contribution to modernity. In doing so, they have not shied away from ground usually occupied by philosophers, identifying Enlightenment’s modernity with a system of values and even with specific philosophical positions. This article asks how this has come about, and what have been its consequences. It does so by offering an account of Enlightenment historians’ relations with philosophy since the 1960s, when Franco Venturi repudiated Ernst Cassirer’s philosophical understanding of Enlightenment and urged historians to adopt a different approach. Before 1989, it will be argued, historical study of Enlightenment expanded rapidly but with little reference to philosophers, or interest in demonstrating the modernity of Enlightenment. It was the challenge of Postmodernism (however intellectually chaotic it seemed) in the 1980s, and still more Jürgen Habermas’s vigorous espousal of modernity, which gave historians their cue. Three dimensions of the ensuing association of Enlightenment with modernity are identified: Enlightenment and the public sphere; Radical Enlightenment and one-substance metaphysics; and Enlightenment as cosmopolitan and global. In conclusion, it is argued that while this enthusiasm for modernity appears to be on the wane, the episode has underlined the impossibility of separating historical and philosophical study of Enlightenment.

Reformed Theology and the Enlightenment

Reformed theologians both promoted and opposed philosophical trends, such as Cartesianism and Christian Epicureanism, normally associated with the Enlightenment. But although Reformed theologians initially divided over response to more moderate forms of Enlightenment associated with Descartes and Locke, they remained firmly opposed to the radical Enlightenment represented by Spinoza and deism. Reformed theology was also impacted by the growing popularity of Remonstrant theology and Anglican Latitudinarianism. These new religious currents were contributing factors to a shift in Reformed sentiment about the correct use of reason in theology, the method of biblical interpretation, and the employment of traditional scholastic sources and terminology. Under the impact of a changed philosophical and religious climate, Reformed theologians began to alter various doctrinal loci, including free choice, the Trinity, and person of Christ, thereby inviting doctrinal controversy and contemporary accusations of heterodoxy.