Essay On Religious Philosophy

This volume brings together 14 of the papers by the late Philip Quinn, one of the world's leading philosophers of religion. It covers topics such as: religious epistemology, religious ethics, religion and tragic dilemmas, religion and political liberalism, Christian philosophy, and religious diversity.

This volume presents a selection of essays by the late Philip Quinn, one of the world's leading philosophers of religion. Quinn left behind an influential body of work on a wide variety of topics. He was the author of Divine Commands and Moral Requirements (1978) and of more than two hundred papers in philosophy. Fourteen of his best and most influential contributions to the philosophy of religion are gathered here. The papers have been organized around the followingtopics: religious epistemology, religious ethics, religion and tragic dilemmas, religion and political liberalism, topics in Christian philosophy, and religious diversity.

Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age – the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious orthodoxies. Advances in biogenetics, brain research, and robotics are clearing the way for the penetration of an objective scientific self-understanding of persons into everyday life. For philosophy, this trend is associated with the challenge of scientific naturalism. At the same time, we are witnessing an unexpected revitalization of religious traditions and the politicization of religious communities across the world. From a philosophical perspective, this revival of religious energies poses the challenge of a fundamentalist critique of the principles underlying the modern Wests postmetaphysical understanding of itself. The tension between naturalism and religion is the central theme of this major new book by Jürgen Habermas. On the one hand he argues for an appropriate naturalistic understanding of cultural evolution that does justice to the normative character of the human mind. On the other hand, he calls for an appropriate interpretation of the secularizing effects of a process of social and cultural rationalization increasingly denounced by the champions of religious orthodoxies as a historical development peculiar to the West. These reflections on the enduring importance of religion and the limits of secularism under conditions of postmetaphysical reason set the scene for an extended treatment the political significance of religious tolerance and for a fresh contribution to current debates on cosmopolitanism and a constitution for international society.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1863.