How Theology Shaped Twentieth-Century Philosophy

Re-examines our relationship to the modern world by providing new perspectives on the influence of medieval, Jewish, and Christian theologies.

Frank B. Farrell (Author)

9781108491716, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 14 March 2019

272 pages
23.5 x 15.7 x 1.9 cm, 0.52 kg

'This wide-ranging and fascinating book should be required reading for anyone who is interested in placing twentieth-century philosophy in intellectual history, not just the history of philosophy.' John McDowell, University of Pittsburgh

Medieval theology had an important influence on later philosophy which is visible in the empiricisms of Russell, Carnap, and Quine. Other thinkers, including McDowell, Kripke, and Dennett, show how we can overcome the distorting effects of that theological ecosystem on our accounts of the nature of reality and our relationship to it. In a different philosophical tradition, Hegel uses a secularized version of Christianity to argue for a kind of human knowledge that overcomes the influences of late-medieval voluntarism, and some twentieth-century thinkers, including Benjamin and Derrida, instead defend a Jewish-influenced notion of the religious sublime. Frank B. Farrell analyzes and connects philosophers of different eras and traditions to show that modern philosophy has developed its practices on a terrain marked out by earlier theological and religious ideas, and considers how different philosophers have both embraced, and tried to escape from, those deep-seated patterns of thought.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: the thinning out of the world
1. Empiricism and theology
2. John McDowell: rejecting the defensive move inward
3. Aristotle redivivus: on Saul Kripke
4. Hegel, theology, and Pippin's reading of Hegel
5. Walter Benjamin: incarnation or radical incommensurability?
6. Rolling back the Protestant Reformation: Wittgenstein and Dennett
7. McDowell (II): active and passive faculties and the theological framework
8. Derrida, the religion of the sublime, and the messianic
9. Literature today and the sublime absence of aesthetic experience
10. Where do we go from here?
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of religion [HRAB], Philosophy of mind [HPM], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK]