Religion after Metaphysics

The decline of metaphysics and the space this has opened for non-theological understandings of religion.

Mark A. Wrathall (Edited by)

9780521824989, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 November 2003

204 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 1.9 cm, 0.44 kg

'This intense and profound book performs the very approach it recommends, by demonstrating throughout intellectual virtues of patience, attention, rigour and commitment, Janz writes well and in a style refreshingly free from self-indulgent obscurity.' The Times Literary Supplement

How should we understand religion, and what place should it hold, in an age in which metaphysics has come into disrepute? The metaphysical assumptions which supported traditional theologies are no longer widely accepted, but it is not clear how this 'end of metaphysics' should be understood, nor what implications it ought to have for our understanding of religion. At the same time there is renewed interest in the sacred and the divine in disciplines as varied as philosophy, psychology, literature, history, anthropology, and cultural studies. In this volume, leading philosophers in the United States and Europe address the decline of metaphysics and the space which this decline has opened for non-theological understandings of religion. The contributors include Richard Rorty, Charles Taylor, Jean-Luc Marion, Gianni Vattimo, Hubert Dreyfus, Robert Pippin, John Caputo, Adriaan Peperzak, Leora Batnitzky, and Mark Wrathall.

List of contributors
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction: Metaphysics and onto-theology Mark A. Wrathall
2. Love and death in Nietzsche Robert Pippin
3. After onto-theology: philosophy between science and religion Gianni Vattimo
4. Anti-clericism and atheism Richard Rorty
5. Closed world structures Charles Taylor
6. Between the earth and the sky: Heidegger on life after the death of God Mark A. Wrathall
7. Christianity without onto-theology: Kierkegaard's account of the self's movement from despair to bliss Hubert L. Dreyfus
8. Religion after onto-theology? Adriaan Peperzak
9. The experience of God and the axiology of the impossible John Caputo
10. Jewish philosophy after metaphysics Leora Batnitzky
11. The end of metaphysics as a possibility Jean-Luc Marion
Index.

Subject Areas: Christian theology [HRCM], Philosophy [HP]