Burns - Continental Philosophy of Religion

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 179.6.164.
163, on 03 Sep 2021 at 11:30:34, subject to the Cambridge

Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108558099
Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 179.6.164.163, on 03 Sep 2021 at 11:30:34, subject to the Cambridge Core
terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108558099
Elements in the Philosophy of Religion
edited by
Yujin Nagasawa
University of Birmingham
CONTINENTAL
PHILOSOPHY OF
RELIGION
Elizabeth Burns
University of London
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre,
New Delhi – 110025, India
79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108457439
DOI: 10.1017/9781108558099
© Elizabeth Burns 2019
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2019
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-108-45743-9 Paperback
ISSN 2399-5165 (online)
ISSN 2515-9763 (print)
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Continental Philosophy of Religion
Elements in the Philosophy of Religion
DOI: 10.1017/9781108558099
First published online: December 2018
Elizabeth Burns
University of London
Abstract: This book presents key elements from the writings on religion of
twelve philosophers working in or influenced by the continental tradition
(Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Rosenzweig, Tillich, Derrida,
Caputo, Levinas, Hadot, Jantzen, and Anderson). It argues for a hybrid
methodology which enables transformational religious responses to the
problems associated with human existence (the existential problems of
meaning, suffering, and death) to be supported both by reasoned
argument and by revelation, narrative philosophy, and experiential
verification.
Keywords: Continental philosophy of religion, existential philosophy of

religion, narrative philosophy of religion, experiential verification, hybrid
philosophy of religion.
© Elizabeth Burns 2019

ISBNs: 9781108457439 (PB), 9781108558099 (OC)
ISSNs: 2399-5165 (online), 2515-9763 (print)
Contents
1 What Is Continental Philosophy of Religion? 1
2 The Nature of Faith: Hegel and Kierkegaard 7
3 The Non-Existence of God: Nietzsche and Heidegger 19
4 Twentieth-Century Existentialism: Rosenzweig and Tillich 29
5 Re-Visioning Religious Language: Derrida and Caputo 41
6 The Existential Problem of Evil: Nietzsche, Levinas

and Hadot 47
7 Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Jantzen and Anderson 51
8 Concluding Reflections 56
References 68
Elements in the Philosophy of Religion 1
1 What Is Continental Philosophy of Religion?

It is difficult to give a precise definition of ‘continental philosophy of religion’.
In this section we will first consider the nature of continental philosophy before
moving on to examine the relationship between continental philosophy and
questions about the nature of religious belief.
1.1 Continental Philosophy

Broadly speaking, ‘continental’ refers to the continent of Europe, excluding the
British Isles and other Anglophone (English-speaking) countries, particularly
the United States. The beginning of what is now known as ‘continental
philosophy’ may be said to have occurred with the work of Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), in his critical response to the philosophy
of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) (West, 2010: 3). Continental philosophy
is distinguished from analytic philosophy, which became particularly
distinctive early in the twentieth century in the work of Gottlob Frege
(1848–1925), Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) and G. E. Moore (1873–1958)
(West, 2010: 3–4).
Since the key features of continental philosophy are often identified by
contrasting them with the key features of analytic philosophy, it might be
helpful to set out, first, some common characteristics of analytic philosophy.
Again broadly speaking, philosophers working in the analytic tradition aim to
construct arguments consisting of clear and precise premises (statements,
assumed to be true, from which a conclusion is deduced or inferred) in which
unfamiliar, technical or ambiguous terms are defined. An argument may be
deductive (if a logically certain conclusion follows from the premises), induc-
tive (if the premises support the conclusion) or abductive (if the conclusion is
the best explanation for the premises). The success – or otherwise – of an
argument is determined, sometimes using the tools of symbolic logic, by
assessing whether it is valid and sound. An argument is valid if the conclusion
follows from the premises, and sound if it is both valid and all its premises are
true. With respect to religious belief, however, it is often difficult to ascertain
whether the premises of an argument are true and, if they are, the extent to
which we can be certain that the conclusion follows from those premises. For
example, Alvin Plantinga claims that Michael Behe’s argument that an intelli-
gent designer is required to explain some features of the natural world (in,
e.g., Behe, 2003) supports theism, but admits that the degree to which it
supports theism is unclear and that this is therefore ‘a wet noodle conclusion’
(Plantinga, 2011: 264). Analytic philosophy tends to be divided into distinct
sub-disciplines, of which philosophy of religion is one.
2 Continental Philosophy of Religion
By contrast, continental philosophers reject the use of reason as it is conceived

by analytic philosophers. For example, Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) suggests
that ‘[t]hinking begins only when we have come to know that reason, glorified
for centuries, is the most stiff-necked adversary of thought’ (1977 [1952]: 112).
Continental philosophy therefore adopts a more literary style which is
often difficult to understand. Nick Trakakis notes, for example, that the
writings of Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) and Jacques Derrida
(1930–2004) ‘are saturated with dense sentence constructions, highly idiosyn-
cratic (even experimental) forms of language, all manner of literary devices or
tropes, and technical jargon that is rarely precisely defined’ (2007: §28).
Examples of literary devices from the writings of Derrida and John Caputo
(b 1940) include ‘prayers, parables, pseudonymous discourses, witty jokes,
word-plays, paradoxical turns of speech, irony and metaphor’ (§28).
Overall structure in such works is also often difficult to discern. For example,
Julian Young remarks of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) that ‘there
appears to be no genuine principle of organisation: the discussion swerves from
topic to unrelated topic in a way that has led some readers to suggest that the
Phenomenology was written under the influence of drugs and others to compare
it to the works of James Joyce – to view it as the product of an unmediated
“stream of consciousness”’ (Young, 2014: 87).
Trakakis argues, however, that some readers find these texts difficult because
they make unrealistic assumptions about the way in which philosophy ought to
be written and read. The technique for reading these texts might be different than
that required to read the texts of analytical philosophy. Furthermore, he suggests,
it is possible that difficult ideas can only be described in difficult language; we
cannot simply assert that only clear and precise language can lead to and convey
philosophical insight (Trakakis, 2007: §28). Trakakis suggests, however, that it is
more accurate to say that continental philosophers do make use of arguments,
evidence and justification in order to seek truth, but that, in continental philoso-
phy, the meaning of these terms differs from their meaning in the context of
analytical philosophy (§29). So, for example, Heidegger says of the concept of
the Übermensch in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) (about which
more in section 3) that it is ‘easy but irresponsible to be indignant at the idea . . .
and to make this indignation pass for a refutation’ (Heidegger, 1977 [1952]: 98).
Rather, he suggests, ‘[w]e show respect for a thinker only when we think. This
demands that we think everything essential which is thought in his thought.’ (99)
Thus Young, despite his negative judgement of the quality of Hegel’s writing, is
able to acknowledge that the Phenomenology ‘has had an extraordinary influence
on world history, on nineteenth-century German philosophy and on twentieth-
century French philosophy’ (Young, 2014 [2003]: 87).
The aim of continental philosophy, then, is to find not truth but practical
wisdom, often by deconstructing common ways of thinking to show how they
are spiritually or socially detrimental to humankind, and constructing a new and
inspirational vision of ‘liberation’ which leads to action of the kind which will
make a positive contribution to human happiness (Trakakis, 2007: §§39–40; 43).
In order to do this, continental philosophers often draw on other fields from the
humanities such as literary, cultural or political theory, psychoanalysis or history,
and choose their vision not because a series of arguments has shown its likely
truth, but on the basis of its ethical and socio-political implications, or the extent
to which it promotes particular values, or fits in with ‘lived human experience
and practices (e.g. personal freedom, authentic existence)’ (§29).
Although continental philosophy was initially defined in terms of its geo-
graphical location, it is no longer so clearly associated with mainland Europe.
As David West points out, for example, ‘Frege played a significant role in the
development of analytical philosophy despite being German, as did the logical
positivists of the Vienna Circle and Ludwig Wittgenstein [1889–1951], who
were Austrian’ (West, 2010: 6). There are now schools of analytic philosophy
in France and Germany, and English-speaking philosophers such as Richard
Rorty (1931–2007), Alasdair MacIntyre (b 1929), and Charles Taylor (b 1931)
have worked on themes which are more commonly discussed in continental
philosophy (West, 2010: 6). It might therefore be more accurate to refer to
continental and analytic philosophy as styles of philosophical writing.
Continental philosophy may be divided, at least roughly, into schools of
philosophical writing which include the following:
1.1.1 Phenomenology
Phenomenology as a discipline may be defined as the study of the way things

appear to us, while the historical movement of phenomenology began in the
early twentieth century with the work of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and
Heidegger, and may be characterised, at least in outline, as holding that
phenomenology is the foundation of all philosophy (Smith, 2016: §1).
Michael Wheeler argues that, for both Husserl and Heidegger, although phe-
nomenology begins with the study of the way things appear to us, by examining
that experience they aim to uncover the underlying conditions which shape and
structure our experience (2017: §2.2.1).
1.1.2 Existentialism
The term ‘existentialism’ was first used by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), but
Sartre was inspired by Heidegger’s Being and Time (Heidegger, 1962 [1927]).
Heidegger employs Husserl’s phenomenological method, which is concerned

not with questions about how things came to exist or what they are made of but
with the nature of their meaning for humankind. Heidegger uses this method to
consider what he regards as the most important question for humankind – that
of the nature of being, of what it means for a person to be. For Heidegger,
concepts of a person as a substance with reason or a subject with self-
consciousness ignore the fact that a fundamental aspect of our existence as
persons is our existence in the world. We can therefore increase our under-
standing of what it means to exist only if we explore the nature of our existence
in the world. In order to do this, Heidegger drew on the work of Søren
Kierkegaard (1813–1855) and Nietzsche (Crowell, 2016: §1).
1.1.3 Postmodernism
Modernism began with Kant’s claim in the Critique of Pure Reason (1787
[1781]) that we can know things only as they appear to us, and not as they are in
themselves, and that, although we cannot experience God, freedom or immor-
tality, a rational account of the nature of our world requires that they exist.
The idea that there is some kind of residual reality or truth which cannot be
perceived but which must, nonetheless, exist gradually began to break down,
however. Gary Aylesworth suggests that both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche may
be regarded as precursors to postmodernism. Kierkegaard argues that ‘the
public’ is an idea created by the press to describe a collection of otherwise
unconnected individuals (Kierkegaard, 1962 [1846]: 59–60), while Nietzsche
argues that the distinction between the real world and the world as it appears to
us has been gradually breaking down since the time of Plato (427–347 BCE),
and that the idea that there is a ‘true world’ is no longer of any use to us
(Nietzsche, 1954 [1889]: 485–486). Heidegger, influenced by Nietzsche,
argues that, although we are surrounded by beings who we think of as present
to us (the metaphysics of presence), the modern world’s focus on the utility of
beings leads to a gradual loss of the sense of being. This can only be regained by
focusing our attention on the eternal process of ‘becoming’, the coming into
and passing out of existence of individual beings in the context of the whole
community of beings (Aylesworth, 2015: §1).
The term ‘postmodernism’ was introduced by Jean-François Lyotard
(1924–1998) in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Lyotard
1984 [1979]). Lyotard draws on Wittgenstein’s language game theory which,
on one interpretation at least, claims that different spheres of human endeavour
are associated with different ‘languages’, each of which has its own rules
which may be learned by those who wish to speak it (Wittgenstein, 1953). For
example, a religious practitioner is someone who learns how to speak the

language of his/her religion from other practitioners; he/she does not acquire
a set of religious beliefs by means of philosophical arguments about what is real
or true. Lyotard dispenses entirely with the idea that our perceptions are linked
in some way to an unknowable object. This means that there is no longer any
need to struggle towards a better collective understanding of what is real and
true, and postmodernism is free to invent new language games, with new rules
(Aylesworth, 2015: §2).
1.1.4 Deconstruction
The philosophical method which came to be called ‘postmodernism’ often employs
the technique of ‘deconstruction’, introduced into philosophy by Derrida in 1967, in
Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, and Speech and Phenomena, although
Derrida himself does not describe deconstruction as a technique of postmodernism.
Deconstruction focuses on the function rather the meaning of a text. In outline
(which will be developed further in section 5), deconstruction attempts to show how
parts of a text – words and/or sentences – are related to each other; together, they
constitute an interrelated system of signs, each of which may be defined by its
difference from others. Derrida calls the relationship between signs ‘différance’,
a word which intentionally resists easy definition. Since it can be differentiated
from the French ‘différence’ only when written and read, it emphasises the focus of
deconstruction on the interpretation of writing as a series of signs which may be
defined predominantly in terms of their relationship to each other. As such, all
language, including the spoken word, may be regarded as writing, because all
language is a series of interrelated signs. The purpose of deconstruction, then, is not
to try to determine the meaning of a text, but to examine its component parts in order
to consider whether it might have a function which differs from that which it was
previously thought to have (Aylesworth, 2015: §5).
Although it might be helpful to assign philosophers to various schools of

philosophical writing, however, there are two caveats which we must bear in
mind. First, some philosophers are not easy to categorise. The work of
Heidegger may be regarded as both phenomenology and existentialism, for
example. Secondly, we must not use such categorisations to ignore important
differences between the members of each category. So, for example, as Walter
Kaufmann suggests, we should not assume that knowing about existentialism
qualifies us to ‘talk about a large number of authors without actually having
read their books’ (1967: 7). In order to avoid these possible pitfalls, it might be
helpful to apply the ‘family resemblance approach’ which is often used in
definitions of religion (see, for example, a modified family resemblance

approach in Harrison, 2006). In this context, we might say that a philosophical
school is associated with a range of characteristics, at least some of which will be
possessed by each of its members. This allows us to say that the work of some
philosophers might have aspects in common with more than one philosophical
school, but to note that the work of each philosopher also contains features which
are, in some respects, distinctive.
1.2 Continental Philosophy of Religion

In the sections which follow, we will turn our attention to the impact of these
schools of continental philosophy on continental philosophy of religion.
In section 2, I will consider the nature of faith in the work of Hegel and
Kierkegaard, while section 3 outlines the atheism of Nietzsche and
Heidegger. Twentieth-century existentialism as it is found in the work of
Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929) and Paul Tillich (1886–1965) will be exam-
ined in section 4, while deconstruction as it is related to religious belief in the
work of Derrida is the topic of section 5. The existential problem of evil in the
work of Nietzsche, Levinas and Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) features in section 6,
while section 7 examines the feminist philosophy of religion of Grace Jantzen
(1948–2006) and Pamela Sue Anderson (1955–2017). The concluding section,
section 8, examines objections which are common to many, if not all, of the
philosophical positions outlined in the preceding sections, and argues in favour
of a philosophy of religion which uses a hybrid methodology – one which
employs the most helpful features of both continental and analytic methodol-
ogies – akin to that recommended by John Cottingham (b. 1945).
1.3 On Reading This Book

This book is, as the series title suggests, a guide to some of the key
elements in the work of some of the key thinkers in continental philosophy
of religion. The nature of my task means that there is space to consider
only a small selection of passages from the writings of those philosophers.
Necessarily, what is offered is an interpretation of each primary source and,
as Heidegger notes, every exposition draws on the text which it attempts to
expound, but also contributes something to that text. This contribution,
Heidegger suggests, the layperson, ‘judging on the basis of what he holds
to be the content of the text, constantly perceives as a meaning read in, and
with the right that he claims for himself criticizes as an arbitrary imposi-
tion’ (1977 [1952]: 58). For Heidegger, even a correct interpretation of
a text never provides an understanding of that text which is better than that
of the author, and it does understand the text differently. Heidegger argues
that this different interpretation does, nonetheless, gives us glimpses of
what the author intends to convey (1977 [1952]: 58) and this will be my
aspiration for this book. Ultimately there is no substitute for reading the
text for oneself, however. Rosenzweig provides readers of The Star of
Redemption (2005 [1919]) with ‘pointers’ in his subsequent essay
‘The New Thinking’ (1925), but remarks that, if the reader really wants
to know what is in the book, ‘he must actually read it’; that, Rosenzweig
says, he is unable to spare him (2000 [1925]: 117).
Although many of the authors whose work is discussed do not value clarity,
precision and structure – and, in some cases, see these as detrimental to their
objectives – in common with the hybrid methodology for which I argue in
section 8, this book does aim to achieve clarity and (where possible) precision
in its expositions, and to impose a structure on a wide-ranging and disparate
body of material with often indeterminate boundaries. Clarity, precision and
structure do help us to understand ideas, and to remember them. By eliminating
unnecessary repetition and introducing some degree of order to the ideas which
remain we might be able to see more clearly how one idea relates to another,
and where there might be a positive contribution to our accumulated human
wisdom. But perhaps the reader who is persuaded by the postmodern way of
understanding our world might, in the manner of Gianni Vattimo (b. 1936),
regard the structure which I have attempted to impose on this material as a work
of rhetoric, and/or even a work of art (Vattimo 1988 [1985]: 179; Aylesworth,
2015: §7).
2 The Nature of Faith: Hegel and Kierkegaard

2.1 Hegel
As we saw in section 1, the beginning of continental philosophy is sometimes
traced back to the work of Hegel. Key sources for Hegel’s philosophy of religion
are his essay Faith and Knowledge (1977a [1802]), the Phenomenology of Spirit
(1977b [1807]), and the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (2007 [1987,
1985, 1984] [1821, 1824, 1827, 1831]), compiled from his lecture notes and
student transcripts of lectures given at the University of Berlin.
Hegel is notoriously difficult to understand, at least in part due to his style of
writing. He adapts the meanings of words and the conventions of grammar to
construct an ongoing dialectic – a debate between conflicting viewpoints, the
aim of which is to discover the truth. What follows here can therefore be no
more than a selection and summary of some of the key aspects of Hegel’s
philosophy of religion, occasionally interspersed with comments on their
interpretation. Further comments on the interpretation of Hegel may be found

in section 2.1.4.
2.1.1 Faith and Knowledge

In Faith and Knowledge, Hegel argues that Reason has been used to destroy
religion, but that the religion it destroyed was not religion, and that Reason
itself has now suffered a similar fate; in the philosophy of Kant, Friedrich
Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819) and Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) it has
become ‘mere intellect’, subservient to ‘a faith outside and above itself, as
a beyond [to be believed in]’ (Hegel, 1977a [1802]: 56). For Hegel, the culture
of his time had established a situation in which ‘philosophy cannot aim at the
cognition of God, but only at what is called the cognition of man’ (65), which is
limited to knowledge which can be gained by means of the senses. Once it has
clarified the nature of its limitations, philosophy is then ‘supposed to prettify
itself with the surface colour of the supersensuous by pointing, in faith, to
something higher’ (65). But, Hegel suggests, truth ‘cannot be deceived by this
sort of hallowing of a finitude that remains what it was’ (65). Hegel argues,
instead, that the infinite contains the finite, which means that the finite and the
infinite are inseparable (66); there is no separate realm, knowable only by
means of faith, in which the infinite resides.
Although Nietzsche is probably best known for announcing ‘the death of God’,
the idea appears rather earlier at the end of Hegel’s Faith and Knowledge, where
he draws on a version of the idea derived from the Pensées of Blaise Pascal
(1623–1662) (Pascal, 1670: 441; quoted in Hegel, 1977a [1802]: 190). Hegel
suggests that infinity, ‘the abyss of nothingness in which all being is engulfed’
(190), signifies the ‘infinite grief’ which had previously existed as ‘the feeling that
“God Himself is dead,” upon which the religion of more recent times rests’ (190).
Walter Jaeschke suggests that at least five different meanings of this claim may be
found in Hegel’s texts (Jaeschke, 1992: 1), but here Hegel appears to mean that the
God of religion as it had previously been understood is dead, and that a more
plausible understanding of religion has replaced it. He suggests that the feeling
which was previously associated with remembrance of the historic Good Friday
(the death of Jesus of Nazareth) should now be associated with the idea of the
‘speculative Good Friday’, the suffering of humankind in the world (Harris, 1977:
43), and that it is from this consciousness of all-encompassing loss that a form of
resurrection may be achieved (Hegel, 1977a [1802]: 190).
2.1.2 Religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel describes a common type of religious

belief which he terms ‘picture-thinking’. The form of consciousness which
thinks in pictures sees the universal divine Being as an individual in human

form, the world as evil, and reconciliation with the absolute Being as a real
event. Picture-thinking also introduces into the realm of consciousness the
relationships of father and son (1977b [1807]: paragraph 771: pages
465–466, henceforth 771: 465–466).
It is the death of this picture-thought which may be experienced by the
‘Unhappy Consciousness’ as ‘the painful feeling . . . that God Himself is dead’
(785: 476). For the Unhappy Consciousness, ‘[t]rust in the eternal laws of the
gods has vanished, and the Oracles, which pronounced on particular questions,
are dumb. The statues are now only stones from which the living soul has
flown, just as the hymns are words from which belief has gone. The tables of the
gods provide no spiritual food and drink, and in his games and festivals man no
longer recovers the joyful consciousness of his unity with the divine’ (753: 455).
This ‘death of God’ is, however, merely the death of ‘the abstraction of the
divine Being’ (785: 476). This death leads to a ‘spiritual resurrection’ (784:
475), the transformation of God’s individual self-consciousness in the form of
a human person into ‘a universal self-consciousness, or as the religious
community’ (784: 475).
For Hegel, all the individual gods and attributes of the divine which have
been found in the world’s religions hitherto are gathered together into a single
pantheon, and stand ‘impatiently expectant round the birthplace of Spirit as
it becomes self-conscious [i.e., round the manger at Bethlehem]’ (753–754:
456). That the absolute Spirit has given itself self-consciousness ‘appears as
the belief of the world that Spirit is immediately present as a self-conscious
Being – i.e., as an actual man, that the believer is immediately certain of
Spirit, sees, feels, and hears this divinity. Thus this self-consciousness is not
imagination, but is actual in the believer’ (758: 458). We do not, therefore,
come to believe in the existence of God by combining the thought of God with
the existence of God in our minds; rather, we begin from an experience of the
existence of something which is immediately present to us, in which we
recognise God; ‘God is sensuously and directly beheld as a Self, as an
actual individual man; only so is this God self-consciousness’ (758: 459).
The incarnate divine Being, or the fact that it possesses self-consciousness, is
‘the simple content of absolute religion’ (759: 459), in which ‘the divine
Being is known as Spirit, or this religion is the consciousness of the divine
Being that is Spirit’ (758: 459). Spirit may be described as ‘The Good, the
Righteous, the Holy, Creator of Heaven and Earth’ (759: 459–460), although
these forms exist only in thought, and are not Spirit itself.
In our consciousness of the self-conscious Spirit, ‘God is revealed as He is
in Himself, i.e. He is immediately present as Spirit’ (761: 461). God may be
attained only in speculative knowledge of that revelation; God, as Spirit, is that

knowledge, and may only be found in it. For Hegel, the history of the world
until this point had been a history of anticipation of this revelation, enabling it
to encounter absolute Being and to see itself in absolute Being. The joy which
this causes ‘enters self-consciousness and seizes the whole world: for it is
Spirit’ (761: 461).
In picture-thinking, when the eternal or abstract Spirit comes into existence,
it ‘creates’ a world (774: 467). It would, however, be a mistake to regard the
divine Being as ‘Nature in its whole extent’ (780: 472), or Nature separated
from the divine Being as nothing, or Good and Evil as the same. But, in each
case, both terms are present in the unity which is Spirit; the apparent differences
are ‘present only as moments or as suspended’ (780: 473).
The divine Being in human form sacrifices his human existence and is
reconciled to the divine Being (780: 472), but, for Hegel, self-consciousness
no longer thinks in pictures (780: 473). Self-consciousness understands that, by
causing its own incarnation and death in history, ‘the divine Being has been
reconciled with its [natural] existence’ (784: 475). To understand this is to
understand what Hegel has previously referred to as the spiritual resurrection –
in other words, ‘the coming into existence of God’s individual self-
consciousness as a universal self-consciousness, or as the religious
community . . . death becomes transfigured from its immediate meaning, viz.
the non-being of this particular individual, into the universality of the Spirit
who dwells in His community, dies in it every day, and is daily resurrected’
(784: 475). So picture-thinking’s concept of absolute Spirit as an individual is
transformed such that Spirit is self-consciousness which does not die; the
individual dies, but it loses its particularity in universality.
The community does not yet possess perfect self-consciousness, how-
ever; for the most part, its understanding remains at the level of picture-
thinking and it retains the picture-thought of future reconciliation with the
essential Being: ‘Just as the individual divine Man has a father in principle
and only an actual mother, so too the universal divine Man, the community,
has for its father its own doing and knowing, but for its mother, eternal love
which it only feels, but does not behold in its consciousness as an actual,
immediate object.’ (787: 478). The world is implicitly reconciled with the
divine Being and the divine Being recognizes that the world is not alienated
from it but, in its love, is identical with it. Self-consciousness does not
yet recognise this as Spirit, however; so there is implicit, but not yet
realised, unity between the world and Being which together constitute
Spirit (787: 478).
2.1.3 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion

Hegel gave four series of lectures on the philosophy of religion at the
University of Berlin – in 1821, 1824, 1827 and 1831. The texts of these lectures
have been pieced together from Hegel’s hand-written papers and auditors’
transcripts. All four lecture series are reproduced in the three-volume English
edition (Hegel, 2007), while the single-volume edition (Hegel, 2006) contains
the lectures of 1827, chosen by the editor because they are the latest series
which can be completely reconstructed, the most clearly organised, and the
most accessible (Hegel, 2006: Preface). As Dale M. Schlitt points out (2009:
10), the single-volume edition contains a particularly helpful analysis of the
text of the 1827 lectures (Hegel, 2006 :26–71).
In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel is concerned with ‘the
relationship between God and finite human consciousness’ (Schlitt, 2009: 31).
Each lecture series is divided into three parts: ‘The Concept of Religion’,
‘Determinate Religion’, and ‘The Consummate Religion’.
‘The Concept of Religion’ is divided into three ‘moments’: The concept of
God as a spiritual unity; the consciousness of God in which God is known
‘through immediate knowing, feeling, representation, and thought’ (Schlitt,
2009: 49) but also by means of the cosmological, teleological and ontological
proofs for the existence of God; and cultus, which is ‘the practical relationship
between subject and God’ (Schlitt, 2009: 49), the chosen activities (including
devotion, sacraments and sacrifice, repentance and remorse, and the ethical life
which is the most genuine form of cultus) which are the means by which we
know that we are experiencing the presence of God.
In ‘Determinate Religion’, Hegel traces the history of religions throughout
which spirit gradually develops until it becomes the consummate religion.
Hegel’s presentation of the history of religions differs in each of the four
lecture series. In the 1824 lectures, determinate religion has two divisions:
immediate or nature religion, and the religions of spiritual individuality. He
discusses the cosmological argument in connection with both, and the tele-
ological argument in connection with the latter. In the 1831 lectures he presents
a third division, the religion of freedom, in the context of which he also includes
a discussion of the teleological argument. In the 1827 lectures he is keen to
refute the charge of pantheism (e.g. Hegel, 2006: 260–263), although Peter
Hodgson notes that both Kierkegaard and Ludwig Feuerbach subsequently
maintained that Hegel was a pantheist (Hodgson, 2005: 249) because, in the
higher religions, particularly Christianity, ‘God is the one and absolute sub-
stance; but at the same time God is also subject, and that is something more.
Just as the human being has personality, there enters into God the character of
subjectivity, personality, spirit, absolute spirit’ (Hegel, 2006: 263).
Despite the variations of presentation across the four series of lectures,
Schlitt suggests that it is possible to find in them ‘a unique and identifiable
philosophical interpretation of determinate religion’ (Schlitt, 2009: 81).
According to Schlitt, Hegel first adopted a respectful attitude to each religion,
including in his description of it any aspect which was important to the religion
and its followers, and ‘presented them as necessary instances without which the
consummate or absolute or true religion could not have come into being’
(81). Second, he regarded determinate religion as ‘a universally formulated
progression of dialectical transitions from one philosophically interpreted
religion to another’ (82). This progression was regarded as ‘the step-by-step,
or level-by-level, elevation of spirit over nature’ (82).
For Hegel, ‘The Consummate Religion’ is the fulfilment of the concept of
religion and is realised in historical Christianity. Schlitt observes that Hegel has
previously offered a philosophical reading of what, in these lectures, he calls
consummate religion in the Phenomenology of 1807, in which he calls it the
revelatory religion, and in volume 1 of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences of 1817, in which it is called the revealed religion (Schlitt, 2009: 99).
In the third section of the lectures, the three moments of the concept of religion
are related to the three elements of the consummate religion. The first element
is the expression of God the eternal idea ‘in terms of the holy Trinity’
(Hegel, 2006: 417–418), which, for Hegel ‘is not a dead abstraction’ but
describes the way in which God ‘relates himself to himself’ (485).
In the second element, the relationship created by knowledge of God becomes
knowledge of the difference between divinity and humanity and the reconcilia-
tion between divinity and humanity which is represented by the death and
resurrection of the historical Christ. The third element is the realisation of God
as Spirit in the community, particularly by means of ethical living and the
practice of philosophy (Schlitt, 2009: 108–110). For Hegel, it is only reason
which is ‘capable of bearing witness to, and thus of expressing the witness of,
spirit in a developed, thoughtful fashion’ (Hegel, 2006: 487), and thus it is by
means of philosophy that ‘religion receives its justification from thinking
consciousness’ (Hegel, 2006: 488).
2.1.4 Interpreting Hegel

I have noted that the complexities of Hegel’s writing style make his ideas
particularly difficult to understand. This has led to many different interpreta-
tions. Since Hegel’s death, scholars have been divided on the questions of
whether or not Hegel was arguing for a form of metaphysics (Paul Redding
identifies three positions with respect to this question (2017: §§2.2–2.4)), and
whether or not his position is compatible with Christianity (George Pattison
notes the debate between the Right Hegelians who argued for compatibility
with Christianity, and Left Hegelians who developed Hegel’s ideas in
a direction which led to the atheism of Feuerbach, Marx and Engels (2005:
152)). While there is not space to consider the merits – or demerits – of each of
these interpretations in turn, perhaps there are elements of truth in each of them.
So although Hegel does reject forms of metaphysics which claim the existence
of a realm which is in some sense beyond the finite realm which we inhabit, he
also creates a system in which Spirit manifests itself in the world and, in
particular, in the community of human beings, and this is arguably a form of
metaphysics which transcends the ordinary, everyday experience of each
individual, but which, for Hegel, we require if we are to live lives of meaning
and purpose in our suffering and finite world.
Similarly, Hegel does reject the form of religious belief which he calls
‘picture-thinking’, but he also continues to talk about the manifestation of
Spirit in Jesus of Nazareth, the ‘speculative Good Friday’, and resurrection.
Hodgson argues that, for Hegel, Spirit is a power greater than evil, and evil can
be undone. Hodgson suggests that, ‘[b]y remembering the evil and honouring
its victims, we gain a certain transcendence over it and find resources to begin
anew, to rebuild, to experience a new birth. Spirit is the power of rebirth, the
inexhaustible movement by which opposing forces are reconciled and new
connections established.’ (2005: 277–278).
2.2 Kierkegaard
After Hegel’s death, his chair at the University of Berlin was taken by his
former friend and colleague Friedrich von Schelling (1775–1854), who had
become critical of Hegel’s rationalism. Schelling’s ideas influenced existenti-
alism, particularly through the work of Kierkegaard who had attended his
lectures (Redding, 2017: §1) and is commonly regarded as the ‘father of
existentialism’ (McDonald, 2016: Introduction) – although Kierkegaard him-
self claims, in a letter to his friend Emil Boesen, that ‘Schelling talks endless
nonsense’ (Letter 69, February 1842; quoted in Hong & Hong, 1987: viii).
According to Heidegger, ‘Kierkegaard is not a thinker but a religious writer,
and indeed not just one among others, but the only one in accord with the
destining belonging to his age.’ (Heidegger, 1977 [1952]: 94). In The Present
Age (1962 [1846]), Kierkegaard describes his age as ‘a reflective and passion-
less age’ (1962 [1846]: 50) in which distinctions between things which are of
value and those which are not have become almost meaningless, and decisive
thought and commitment are not required. This situation he calls ‘levelling’.
Whereas ‘a passionate age storms ahead setting up new things and tearing
down old, raising and demolishing as it goes, a reflective and passionless age
does exactly the contrary: it hinders and stifles all action; it levels’ (56). People
work together in groups on projects for which they have little or no personal
commitment, and ‘the religious singling out of the individual before God’ (59)
is overlooked. The ‘cure’ for this condition is that every individual must work
on herself (93). She must leap over the scythe blade of the leveller ‘into the
arms of God’ (94).
A key purpose of Kierkegaard’s work, then, was to try to reintroduce
Christianity into Christendom (Walsh, 2013: 293). For Kierkegaard, Hegel had
taken a wrong turning by appearing to claim that anyone able to understand his
arguments could achieve knowledge of the divine, ‘the universal Spirit that
contains within itself all essence and all actuality’ (Hegel, 1977 [1807] §677:
411). (Merold Westphal notes, however, that ‘there is appropriation as well as
negation, . . . Kierkegaard is never simply anti-Hegelian (1998: 101).)
By contrast, Kierkegaard argues that God transcends our world to such
a degree that it is impossible to understand or speak of the divine. Christian
belief and practice is therefore fostered by developing a relationship with God
who can only be known by means of faith. For this reason, Kierkegaard has
sometimes been dismissed as a ‘fideistic irrationalist’ but this, Pattison suggests,
represents intellectual laziness and does not excuse us from thinking seriously
about what Kierkegaard is trying to communicate to us (Pattison, 2005: 135).
2.2.1 Kierkegaard’s Literary Style

Kierkegaard uses a number of literary devices, the nature of which we must try
to understand if we are to grasp what he hopes to convey. Roger Poole (2004)
suggests that there has been much unhelpful commentary on Either-Or (1843)
because readers have failed to understand that it is primarily a literary work, the
meaning of which cannot be understood independently of its literary form.
Poole argues that Either-Or is not a philosophical treatise or a series of lectures
but a novel which utilises the techniques employed by Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe (1749–1832) in his Wilhelm Meister novels (1794–1796 and
1821–1829), in which we find ‘the exchange of letters, inset narratives that
are read aloud, the diary form, a collection of aphorisms, and scattered obser-
vations taken from an archive’ (Poole, 2004: 48). But these techniques were
modified in the work of Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853), Karl Wilhelm Friedrich
Schlegel (1772–1829), Jean Paul (1763–1825), and Novalis (1772–1801), and
it is these writers, Poole argues, who provided Kierkegaard with the technical
devices to make his own work more intelligible and entertaining (Poole, 2004:
49). (See also Pattison, who suggests that, like Either/Or, Repetition, and
Stages on Life’s Way ‘can plausibly be read as versions of the “novels of
education” popular in Kierkegaard’s literary culture’ (2005: 3).).
Such techniques were, for Kierkegaard, an important part of the method he
called ‘indirect communication’. In Training in Christianity (1941b [1850]), he
suggests that this can take two forms. First, the communicator disguises his
identity by means of a pseudonym in order to reduce himself to ‘nobody’, and
then writes in such a way that his composition is a ‘dialectical knot’ which, in
order to gain from it, the reader must untie for himself (1941b [1850]:
132–133). For this reason, a number of Kierkegaard’s works were published
pseudonymously; in some cases, as in Either-Or, different sections of the same
work are attributed to different authors. Either-Or is the earliest of the pseu-
donymous works, but others include Fear and Trembling (1843), Repetition
(1843), Philosophical Fragments (1844), The Concept of Anxiety (1844),
Stages on Life’s Way (1845), Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846),
The Sickness Unto Death (1849), and Training in Christianity (1850).
Nevertheless, Pattison suggests, ‘there is important continuity between much
that is in the pseudonymous works and what Kierkegaard said in his own voice’
(2005: 10).
A communicator who uses the second form of indirect communication
communicates by means of his own existence, the nature of which invites
reflection. Here Kierkegaard refers to ‘the God-Man’ (1941b [1850]: 134) –
Jesus of Nazareth. Although the claim ‘I am God; the Father and I are one’ is
direct communication, when the person who says this is a man who appears to
be like other men when it is not clear how an individual man could be God, the
communication becomes indirect and thereby offers the choice of whether or
not to believe that Jesus is divine (134) – that is, the choice of whether or not to
have faith (140).
In Kierkegaard’s own assessment of his work, The Point of View for my Work
as an Author. A Direct Communication, Report to History (1998 [1848]),
Kierkegaard describes his writing, and in particular his pseudonymous
works, as ‘godly satire’ (17) and himself as ‘hardly anything but a poet’ (18)
whose aim is that each individual person will ‘personally relate himself to the
unconditional’ (20).
Pattison suggests, however, that Kierkegaard’s work should not be seen as
merely ‘a kind of quasi-philosophical religiously toned poetry’ (2005: 171). He
notes that Kierkegaard himself identified Socrates as his philosophical pro-
genitor and that his own works do not merely reproduce a dialogue but ‘set in
motion a dialogue in which the reader is fully participant’ (181).

In The Concept of Anxiety (1980 [1844]: 3), Kierkegaard identifies as inspira-
tions for his own work both Socrates and J. G. Hamann (1730–1788), author of
the Sokratische Denkwürdigkeiten (Socratic Memorabilia) which provided ‘a
model for his own ironic and humorous mixture of flippancy and ultimate
concern’ (Pattison, 2005: 181).
2.2.2 The Four Spheres of Existence

Kierkegaard does not rule out reflection, however, suggesting that ‘it is neces-
sary to work through it in order that one’s actions should be more intensive’
(1962 [1846]: 96). He therefore describes four spheres of human existence into
which one might ‘leap’:
• The aesthetic sphere, in which a person is committed to enjoyment;

• The ethical sphere, in which a person is committed to ethical choice;
• Religiousness A, in which a person is committed to becoming nothing before
God;
• Religiousness B, in which a person is committed to something which
transcends herself.
The aesthetic and ethical spheres are described in Either/Or (1987a and 1987b
[1849, 1843]), which ends with an outline of the religious sphere in the section
‘Ultimatum [A Final Word]’. Stages on Life’s Way (1988 [1845]) considers the
religious sphere and its relationship to the aesthetic and ethical spheres in more
detail, while Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1941a [1846]) makes the
distinction between Religiousness A and Religiousness B (Hong and Hong,
1988: x).
Either/Or is written under the pseudonym of ‘Victor Eremita’, who is said to
have found the papers it contains in a secondhand writing desk and published
them in the order in which they were found. Victor Eremita notes that the
papers do not reach any conclusion, so that each point of view is able to speak
for itself and the reader is not influenced by the outcome of a debate (1987a
[1849, 1843]: 14).
The first volume contains the papers of ‘Author A’, consisting of a number of
essays and some scraps of paper containing aphorisms. Victor Eremita has
called the latter ‘Diapsalmata’ and placed them at the beginning of the volume
because they ‘could best be regarded as preliminary glimpses into what the
longer pieces develop more coherently’ (1987a [1849, 1843]: 8). The papers of
Author A contain a variety of approaches to life in the aesthetic sphere because,
Victor Eremita suggests, it is not possible to present a coherent view of an
aesthetic view of life (13). Author A describes a variety of aesthetic pleasures,

but concludes that they are all ultimately unsatisfying and that life is therefore
empty and meaningless, which leads to despair. A remembered relationship
may have ‘a security that no actuality possesses’, but ‘[a] recollected life
relationship has already passed into eternity and has no temporal interest
anymore.’ (32).
The second volume of Either/Or contains the papers of ‘Author B’, also
identified as ‘Judge William’, consisting of three studies with ethical content in
the form of letters written to Author A. Judge William observes that, like the
person who lives in the aesthetic sphere of existence, the person who lives in
the ethical sphere wishes to be happy with his choice of spouse, but, unlike the
person in the aesthetic sphere, he does not lose heart if his choice proves
unsatisfactory because, in the ethical sphere, his primary aim is not the satis-
faction of his needs but the task of ethical living (1987b [1849, 1843]: 252).
The truly ethical person is serene and secure because he lives for duty which is
within himself and not imposed by something external to himself (254–255).
The person who lives in the ethical sphere is able to see the universal and
express it in his life – to become the universal human being (256). He does not
regard his character-traits as accidental, but takes responsibility for the devel-
opment of his character (260–261). For the aesthete, a person may have an
accidental talent but, for the ethicist, every human being has a calling; every
human being can make an ethical choice to ‘do his task in life’ (295). So, for
example, an author who lives in the ethical sphere will be concerned not with
whether anyone will read his book or whether his book will accomplish any-
thing, but only with his attempt to grasp the truth (297). With regard to
marriage, the ethical view is superior to that of the aesthetic view of love
because it clarifies the universal, rather than the accidental. It does not show
how two particular people can be happy as a consequence of features which are
specific to that one relationship; rather, it shows how every married couple can
be happy (305).
The difficulty with the ethical sphere of existence is, however, that it is
difficult to decide what is ethical. So, Author B says, ‘[i]f a person is sometimes
in the right, sometimes in the wrong, to some degree in the right, to some degree
in the wrong, who, then, is the one who makes that decision except the person
himself, but in the decision may he not again be to some degree in the right and
to some degree in the wrong?’ (346).
This difficulty may be addressed by life in the religious sphere. Those who
live in the sphere of Religiousness A try to relate themselves to an eternal,
triumphant happiness, but this is not truly Christian. Only the person who lives
in the sphere of Religiousness B can be regarded as a true Christian because it is
only within this sphere that Christianity is regarded as ‘an existence-

communication’. In this sphere, one does not attend to Christianity ‘by reading
books, or by world-historical surveys, but by immersing oneself deeper in
existence’ (1941a [1846]: 497). In Religiousness B, a person relates to some-
thing beyond himself, the nature of which remains paradoxical for as long as he
exists (498–499). In this sphere, true religion is ‘the paradoxical transformation
of existence by faith through the relation to a historic fact’ (515). In Training in
Christianity, Kierkegaard claims that Christ’s life on earth is the paradigm for
life in the sphere of Religiousness B, and that every person should endeavour
to live in accordance with this paradigm (1941b [1850]: 109). Westphal
suggests, however, that a further stage, which he calls Religiousness C, may
be identified in the works which follow the Concluding Unscientific Postscript.
Although, in Religiousness B, ‘Christ is the Paradox to be believed’, Westphal
suggests that, in Religiousness C, Christ ‘is also the Pattern or Paradigm to be
imitated, most particularly in his compassion for the poor and the powerless’
(Westphal, 1998: 120).
2.2.3 The Teleological Suspension of the Ethical
Although a coherent account of life in the aesthetic sphere cannot be given, we

should not assume that the would-be religious believer who leaves behind the
aesthetic sphere of existence makes a linear progression through the remaining
spheres. Thus it is possible – and, indeed, desirable – to live both in the
religiousness sphere of existence and in the ethical sphere. On some occasions,
however, the believer might encounter an apparent conflict between the
requirements of life in both spheres.
In Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard considers the story of Abraham, the
father of both the Jewish and the Christian faith, who is willing to obey God’s
command to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. In order to carry out this action,
Kierkegaard suggests, a ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’ (1983 [1843]:
54) is required – a suspension of what social norms require of us in order to
obey the command of a higher authority. Since, for Kierkegaard, the distinction
between good and evil is ultimately determined not by social norms but by God,
it is possible that God could require a suspension of the ethical as it is
determined by social norms, and that this requirement would remain ethical
in the sense that it is determined by God.
Westphal notes that the pseudonymous author Johannes de silentio points out
that, unlike Jephthah, Agamemnon and Brutus who killed their children in
accordance with the laws of their people on behalf of their people (Kierkegaard
1983: 57–59, 62; Westphal, 1998: 109), Abraham lived in a society which
required him to protect his son. But Westphal argues that the conflict between
religion and ethics in the Abraham/Isaac story is only apparent; rather,
Kierkegaard claims that our highest commitment should be not to what our
society deems to be ethical but to God as the ultimate source of the ethical
(Westphal, 1998: 110). The story is not about sacrifice or ethics; it is concerned
with faith (Westphal, 2014: 15).
Sylviane Agacinski considers the possibility that Abraham is testing God to see
whether God really would require him to sacrifice his son, but rejects this
interpretation because there is little or no support for it in the biblical text (1998:
134–135). She suggests that, for Kierkegaard, obeying law, whether this be divine
law, moral duty or love of our neighbour, requires dissolution of the ties that bind
us to finite things, and that obedience to the eternal law could have required the
breaking of the bond between Abraham and his son. Nevertheless, she concludes
that existence can also require us to love the finite, and to accept the losses which
we will inevitably experience without suffering them in advance (147).
Pattison notes Kierkegaard’s claim in The Concept of Anxiety that ‘Socrates
was great in this . . . that he distinguished between what he understood and what
he didn’t understand’ (1980 [1844]: 3, quoted in Pattison, 2005: 181), and
Agacinscki notes that, in Fear and Trembling, Johannes simply says that he
cannot understand Abraham (Agacinski 1998, 143). So perhaps while faith, for
Kierkegaard, is ultimate, there remain aspects of it which we cannot, or have
yet to, understand.
3 The Non-Existence of God: Nietzsche and Heidegger

3.1 Nietzsche
While Kierkegaard held that Christianity is an absolute paradox which, by its
very nature, cannot be understood (1941a [1846]: 498–499), by contrast,
Nietzsche, in Ecce Homo, his own interpretation of his work and its signifi-
cance, claims that God is a ‘gross answer’ to the questions of life, an ‘indeli-
cacy’ against thinkers, in essence merely ‘a gross prohibition’ which
commands the thinker not to think (1967 [1908, written in 1888]: 236–237).
Nietzsche says that he has never devoted time or attention to the concepts of
‘God’, ‘immortality of the soul’, ‘redemption’ or ‘beyond’ (236), even when
a child, and suggests that perhaps he has never been sufficiently childlike to do
so. He is, therefore, an atheist as a matter of instinct. Indeed, Rosenzweig
claims that ‘[t]he history of philosophy had never yet seen an atheism like that
of Nietzsche. Nietzsche is the first thinker who – not negates God – but, in the
really proper theological use of the word: “refutes” him. More precisely: he
curses him.’ (2005 [1919]: 25).
3.1.1 Nietzsche on Religion

In The Gay Science [Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, a better translation of
which may be The Joyful Wisdom] Nietzsche claims that, in ancient times,
the idea that another world exists was caused by ‘an error in the inter-
pretation of certain natural events, a failure of the intellect’ (1974 [1882,
1887]: aphorism 151, page 196, henceforth 151: 196). But, he argues, most
Europeans of his time still need Christianity because humankind needs to
believe. Even if an article of faith is refuted a thousand times, if a person
needs it, he continues to regard it as true (347: 287). Some demand
certainty ‘in a scientific-positivistic form’ while wanting something to be
certain so strongly that they are ‘easier and more negligent about the
demonstration of this certainty’ (347: 288). For Nietzsche, it is those who
lack strength of will who most urgently desire someone to command them.
For the weak and insecure, the only way in which they can attain strength
of will is by means of fanaticism, ‘a sort of hypnotism of the whole system
of the senses and the intellect for the benefit of an excessive nourishment
(hypertrophy) of a single point of view and feeling that henceforth becomes
dominant – which the Christian calls his faith. Once a human being reaches
the fundamental conviction that he must be commanded, he becomes “a
believer”.’ (347: 289).
For Nietzsche, Christian faith involves acceptance of the notion of ‘a power-
ful, overpowering being who enjoys revenge’ (135: 187). The power of this
being is thought to be ‘so great that nobody could possibly harm him, except for
his honour. Every sin is a slight to his honour . . . Contrition, degradation,
rolling in the dust – all this is the first and last condition of his grace: in sum, the
restoration of his divine honour.’ (135: 187). This, for the Christian, is more
important than ‘[w]hether the sin has done any other harm, whether it has set in
motion some profound calamity that will grow and seize one person after
another like a disease and strangle them’ (135: 187).
According to Nietzsche, Christianity advocates belief in a God who loves
humankind only if they believe in him, and who ‘casts an evil eye and threats
upon anyone who does not believe in this love’ (141: 190). Whereas the
Buddha advised his followers that they should not flatter a benefactor, said in
a Christian church this ‘clears the air of anything Christian’ (142: 191).
For Nietzsche, the value of prayer lies in its function as a kind of civilising
influence upon the masses. It was ‘invented for those people who really never
have thoughts of their own and who do not know any elevation of the soul or at
least do not notice it when it occurs’ (128: 184). It provides the answer to the
question of what such people are to do at sacred sites and in significant
life-circumstances ‘where calm and some sort of dignity are called for’ (128:
184). Nietzsche claims that, in order to prevent them from disturbing others, the
founders of religions have prescribed prayer formulas which provide ‘mechan-
ical work for the lips that takes some time and requires some exertion of the
memory as well as the same fixed posture for hands, feet, and eyes’ (128: 184).
Thus they repeat certain phrases, or ‘count the name of their god off their
fingers’, or honour Vishnu’s thousand names or Allah’s ninety-nine names, or
use prayer mills and rosaries (128: 185).
3.1.2 Nietzsche on the ‘Death of God’
As we noted in section 2.1.1, Nietzsche is well-known for his pronouncement

that ‘God is dead’ (108: 167; 125: 181–182; 343: 279–280), by which he means
that belief in the God of Christianity is no longer believable (343: 279), and that
everything, including European morality, which was underpinned by it will
now disintegrate.
The first occurrence of this famous dictum may be found in The Gay Science,
in aphorism 108. Here he says that, given human nature, just as the Buddha’s
shadow was said to be visible in a cave for many centuries after his death, so the
shadow of God may be said to be visible in caves for thousands of years, which
means that our task is to defeat this shadow.
The next and most famous occurrence is in aphorism 125, ‘The madman’.
In Nietzsche’s story, the madman goes to the market place crying ‘I seek God!
I seek God!’ and a crowd of non-believers laugh at him, suggesting trivial
reasons for the apparent absence of God. The madman replies that the reason
for God’s absence is that we have killed him. He suggests a number of ways in
which we might comfort ourselves, including becoming gods ourselves in
order to seem worthy of such a great deed. But, in the penultimate paragraph,
the madman declares that he has come too early because, although it is human
beings who have killed God, they have not yet realised that they have done this.
The story concludes with reports of the madman’s visits to a number of
churches. On being ejected, he replies: ‘What after all are these churches
now if they are not the tombs and sepulchres of God?’ (182).
On a more positive note, Nietzsche claims that he has ‘slain all gods . . . for
the sake of morality’ (153: 197) and promotes a freedom of the will which
enables the spirit to ‘take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being
practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and
dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence’
(347: 290). Nietzsche claims that ‘we philosophers and “free spirits” feel, when
we hear the news that “the old god is dead,” as if a new dawn shone on us; our
heart overflows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long

last the horizon appears free to us again, even if it should not be bright; at long
last our ships may venture out again, venture out to face any danger; all the
daring of the lover of knowledge is permitted again; the sea, our sea, lies open
again; perhaps there has never yet been such an “open sea”.’ (343: 280).
3.1.3 Heidegger on Nietzsche and the Death of God

According to Heidegger, the terms ‘God’ and ‘Christian God’ refer to ‘the
suprasensory [metaphysical] world in general’ (Heidegger, 1977 [1952]: 61).
So, Heidegger suggests, according to Nietzsche, ‘“God is dead” means:
The suprasensory world is without effective power. It bestows no life.
Metaphysics, i.e., for Nietzsche Western philosophy understood as Platonism,
is at an end.’ (61).
Heidegger argues that, for Nietzsche, there is an important distinction
between the God of the early Christians, and the God of Christendom described
in the Gospels and the writings of Paul and proclaimed by the Church through-
out subsequent history as a means to influence politics and culture. It is the
authority of the God of Christendom and the teaching of the Church which has
died, to be replaced by the authority of conscience and reason, historical
progress, this-worldly happiness for the greatest number, the creation of culture
and the development of civilisation (64–65). But, with the demise of metaphy-
sics, we come to recognise that these, too, previously regarded as the highest
values, are devoid of value. Thus, the nihilism which Nietzsche proclaims is not
reached at a single point in history, but is an ongoing historical event (66).
Heidegger suggests that, in a second phase of nihilism, however, Nietzsche
argues that we seek new values (67). The empty place previously occupied by
God is now filled by new ideals such as world happiness, socialism and
Wagnerian music (69); he references The Will to Power (2017 [1906, 1901]),
aphorism 1021, where Nietzsche refers to ‘cheerful music’ and ‘[g]reat feats of
engineering and invention, the natural sciences, possibly history’ as ‘products
of the relative strength and self-confidence of the nineteenth century’
(Nietzsche, 2017 [1906, 1901]: 563).) This is ‘incomplete nihilism’
(Nietzsche, 2017 [1906, 1901]: 28: 26), insofar as it replaces the old values
with new ones, but the new values carry authority only because they occupy the
same suprasensory place as the old values. A completed nihilism must there-
fore abolish the notion of value itself and find a new principle for the creation of
values. This principle is ‘the ideal of superabundant life’ (Heidegger 1977
[1952]: 70; Nietzsche, 2017 [1906, 1901]: 14: 21). Thus, Heidegger suggests,
we can understand Nietzsche’s concept of nihilism adequately only when we
understand what he means by ‘value’. Only when we have grasped this can we
properly understand what he means when he says that ‘God is dead’.
Heidegger suggests that, for Nietzsche, in order to realize the value of super-
abundant life, we need to attend to our ‘preservation-enhancement conditions’
(Heidegger, 1977 [1952]: 71; Nietzsche, 2017 [1906, 1901]: 715: 405).
We should aim to achieve both preservation and enhancement simultaneously
because these are the ‘fundamental tendencies of life’ (Heidegger, 1977 [1952]:
72–73). Enhancement, or the will to grow, belongs to the essence of life; every
example of life-preservation serves the purpose of life-enhancement. Every life
which is concerned only with preserving itself ‘is already in decline’ (73). For
example, having space in which to live is not a life-goal but a means to life-
enhancement. Heidegger suggests that, for Nietzsche, we should attend to our
preservation-enhancement conditions in the context of ‘becoming’ (Heidegger
1977 [1952]: 74; Nietzsche, 2017 [1906, 1901]: 715: 405) – i.e., in the context of
the fundamental characteristic of life, the ‘will to power’ (Heidegger, 1977
[1952]: 74). The will to power is the will for power-preservation and power-
enhancement – to become stronger, to grow, and to have the means to do so (80).
The will to power, then is ‘the ground of superabundant life’ (81). The will to
power causes the creation of new values and, as such, inspires human activity,
lifting the condition of being human to ‘another dimension of happening’ (95).
So, for Nietzsche, Heidegger argues, the ‘death of God’ leads to a radical
revaluing of what were previously thought to be our highest values, driven by
the will to power, the principle which drives everything which exists. The form
of humanity which sees its own humanity as the product of the will to power is
called the Übermensch (96), which is commonly translated as ‘overman’ but
may be understood as ‘man-beyond’ (96, translator’s note 35), or ‘enhanced
humanity’ (although it is important to note that this should not be understood in
the manner of the Nazis who misappropriated Nietzsche’s ideas).
Nietzsche ends the first part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra by declaring: ‘Dead
are all gods: now we want the overman to live.’ (2006 [1883–1885]: 59).
Heidegger suggests, however, that this does not mean that dominion over
everything which exists is passing from God to humanity, or that Nietzsche
puts humankind in place of God. Those who think in this way, Heidegger
argues, are not thinking about the essence of God in a godly manner; human-
kind cannot put themselves in God’s place because the essence of humanity can
never reach the realm of God. God’s place is ‘the place of the causative
bringing about and preserving of whatever is, as something created’
(Heidegger 1977 [1952]: 100). This place may be empty, but Heidegger argues
that there is another realm which also serves as a grounding of what is, to which
humankind is also related – i.e., the realm of Being. The nature of this realm
will be a key focus in the next section of this book.
3.2 Heidegger
3.2.1 Levinas on Heidegger
According to Levinas, ‘[t]he most extraordinary thing that Heidegger brings us is

a new sonority of the verb “to be”: precisely its verbal sonority. To be: not what
is, but the verb, the “act” of being.’ (2000 [1993]: 122). He suggests that, for
Heidegger, our understanding of the true nature of being has been obscured
because, in an age of metaphysics, being has come to be understood as the
universal foundation of beings, eventually given the name ‘God’. Heidegger
therefore argues for the destruction, or deconstruction, of metaphysics so that,
after the death of ‘God’, the true nature of being might be understood (123–124).
3.2.2 Heidegger’s Being and Time

3.2.2.1 Dasein
Heidegger’s Being and Time (1962 [1927]) is commonly regarded as one of the
most important texts of contemporary continental philosophy (Wheeler, 2017:
section 1). It is also, perhaps, one of the most difficult to understand; indeed,
Don Cupitt remarks that Heidegger’s name ‘is a byword for atrocious obscur-
ity’ (Cupitt, 1998: 75). So again, then, what follows is my attempt to set out
clearly some of Heidegger’s key points.
Heidegger claims that, in order to understand the nature of Being, we need to
understand the nature of ‘Dasein’, which literally means ‘there-being’ or ‘being-
there’. According to Wheeler, the standard interpretation of the meaning of Dasein
in the secondary literature is that it is ‘Heidegger’s term for the distinctive kind of
entity that human beings as such are’ (as opposed to ‘the distinctive mode of Being
realized by human beings’ (Wheeler, 2017: §1; see Heidegger 1962 [1927] §7: 27).
The kind of entity referred to is not a biological human being or person, however; it
is more akin to a way of life which is shared by human beings (Wheeler, 2017: §1).
An essential characteristic of Dasein is that of ‘Being-in-the-world’. It is
a necessary feature of Dasein that it exists in the world; it cannot be Dasein
unless it exists in this context, and this context provides Dasein with
a range of choices of ways to exist. Key features of Being-in-the-world
are ‘thrownness’, ‘projection’, and ‘fallenness’. ‘Thrownness’ is the situa-
tion into which Dasein is ‘thrown’ – that is, the world in which we find
ourselves and the concerns over which we have no control. The nature of
this is our ‘facticity’. ‘Projection’ is action which aims to actualise some
possibility, and ‘transcendence’ is our attempt to address our current facti-

city by projecting into the future. ‘Fallenness’ describes the inauthentic
way we try to conceal by means of distracting activity the true nature of
human existence.
3.2.2.2 Death
The nature of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world is such that it is a ‘Being-towards-
death’ – a being with the potential to die. We cannot fully understand death by
experiencing the death of others because this is only to experience the loss of
those who die; the person who dies cannot experience loss of Being because the
Dasein of that person no longer exists.
Heidegger makes three key points regarding death:
• It is an inherent part of the nature of what it is to be Dasein that it possesses ‘a

“not-yet” which it will be’.
• When that which will come to an end has come to an end and no longer has
Being, it is no longer Dasein.
• Dasein’s coming-to-an-end is a kind of Being in which that Dasein cannot be
represented by another (that is to say, I cannot die another person’s death;
only he can die his own death.) (1962 [1927] §242: 286).
The ‘not-yetness’ of fruit is the future point at which it ripens, but this is not
analogous to Dasein’s situation because fruit fulfils itself (§244: 288) whereas at
the point of death Dasein might not have fulfilled itself, or it might have reached
the point of fulfilment well in advance of death. But, for the most part, Dasein is
unfulfilled at the point of death. Its ending does not, in itself, entail fulfilment.
Death is the end of Dasein – of Being-in-the-world – but this does not tell us
whether another Being is possible after death, whether Dasein ‘lives on’ or is
‘immortal’, or whether there might be anything ‘other-worldly’. Heidegger
tells us this his ‘analysis of death remains purely “this-worldly” in so far as it
Interprets [the capital indicates that there are two German terms which have
only one English equivalent] that phenomenon merely in the way in which it
enters into any particular Dasein as a possibility of its Being’ (§248: 292).
In other words, he offers only an existential analysis of death.
Dasein cannot know that it has died, but the existence of Dasein throws it
into the possibility of death. For Heidegger, ‘[t]hrownness into death reveals
itself to Dasein in a more primordial and impressive manner in that state of
mind which we have called “anxiety”’ (§251: 295). Anxiety is concerned with
Being-in-the-world – Dasein’s potentiality-for-Being. But ‘[a]nxiety in the
face of death must not be confused with fear in the face of one’s demise’
(§251: 295). Anxiety about death is not a weakness but Dasein’s basic state of
mind – its awareness of the fact that its existence will eventually come to an
end, that death cannot be ‘outstripped’ (§251: 295).
There are various ways in which Dasein can come to terms with the nature of
its Being (§251: 295). Mostly, Dasein covers up its Being-towards-death,
‘fleeing in the face of it’ (§251: 295). Heidegger criticizes the ‘they’ who try
to regulate the attitude to death which is regarded as appropriate. Thinking
about death is publicly accepted to be ‘a cowardly fear, a sign of insecurity on
the part of Dasein, and a sombre way of fleeing from the world’ (§254: 298).
The ‘they’ does not permit ‘the courage for anxiety in the face of death’ (§254:
298). Anxiety in the face of death brings us face-to-face with the possibility
which cannot be outstripped, but the ‘they’ tries to transform this anxiety into
fear of an oncoming event. This anxiety which has been transformed into fear is
then regarded ‘as a weakness with which no self-assured Dasein may have any
acquaintance’ (§254: 298). ‘Indifferent tranquillity’ with regard to the ‘fact’ of
death is regarded as ‘fitting’, but ‘[t]he cultivation of such a “superior” indif-
ference alienates Dasein from its ownmost non-relational potentiality-for-
Being’ (§254: 298). Death is empirically certain – we derive this knowledge
from observing the death of others – and possible at any moment (§258: 302).
So, Heidegger concludes, ‘[t]he full existential-ontological conception of
death may now be defined as follows: death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein’s
ownmost possibility – non-relational, certain and as such indefinite, not to be
outstripped. Death is, as Dasein’s end, in the Being of this entity towards its end.’
(1962 [1927]: §§254–259: 303). Failure to face the inevitability of death con-
stitutes ‘inauthentic Being-towards-death’ (§259: 303). But inauthenticity pre-
supposes the possibility of authenticity. When Dasein accepts that death cannot
be outstripped, he/she is ‘liberated from those possibilities which may acciden-
tally thrust themselves upon one’ and can, for the first time, make an authentic
choice from the actual possibilities which are present in advance of death, one of
which is to understand the ‘potentiality-for-Being of Others’ (§264: 309).
3.2.2.3 Conscience
Another key feature, ‘a primordial phenomenon of Dasein’ (§268: 313), is
conscience. Heidegger is not concerned to classify the experiences of con-
science, or to offer any biological explanation, or ‘a theological exegesis of
conscience or any employment of this phenomenon for proofs of God or for
establishing an “immediate” consciousness of God’ (§269: 313). Conscience
can no longer be understood as ‘an “effluence of the divine power”’ (§291:
337). Rather, conscience is characterized as a ‘call’ – a ‘voice’ which is not an
utterance but ‘a giving to understand’ (§271: 316).
So Heidegger focuses on understanding the phenomenon of conscience

without seeking an interpretation of it in terms of ‘some psychical faculty
such as understanding, will, or feeling, or . . . explaining it as some sort of
mixture of these’ (§271: 317). It is a call to the Self which is ‘Being-in-the-
world’ (§273: 318). Nothing is said – the call is not a communication – but
Dasein is called to its possibilities, its ‘potentiality-for-Being-its-Self’
(§§273–274: 318–319).
Conscience is unplanned and involuntary, but it does not come from some-
one outside of ourselves. The idea of a ‘world-conscience’ is, Heidegger
claims, ‘a dubious fabrication’ (§278: 323) because the call comes from the
entity which is myself; ‘[t]he call comes from me and yet from beyond me.’
(§275: 320). It is a characteristic of Dasein. We need to understand the nature of
Dasein in order to understand the nature of that which calls. This is charac-
terised as the ‘uncanniness’ which is ‘the basic kind of Being-in-the-world’
(§277: 322), even though this has been concealed from us. Out of the depths of
this uncanniness, conscience calls. So ‘Dasein is at the same time both the
caller and the one to whom the appeal is made’ (§277: 322).
Conscience is manifested as ‘the call of care’ (§277: 322) because ‘Dasein,
in the very basis of its Being, is care’ (§278: 323). But what does this call enable
us to understand? Heidegger suggests that it may enable us to understand
whether or not we are guilty, in the sense of owing something to an Other.
So ‘Being-guilty’ may be defined as ‘Being-the-basis for a lack of something in
the Dasein of an Other, and in such a manner that this very Being-the-basis
determines itself as “lacking in some way” in terms of that for which it is the
basis’ (§282: 328). It is not the case that we are guilty because we owe some-
thing to another, however; rather, we owe something because we are guilty
(§284: 329). This is the existential sense of ‘Being-guilty’ (§287: 333).
So, then, for Heidegger, ‘[c]onscience is the call of care from the uncanniness
of Being-in-the-world – the call which summons Dasein to its ownmost
potentiality-for-Being-guilty’ (§289: 335).
3.3 Kierkegaard and Heidegger

In Section 2 we saw that, for Kierkegaard, the individual who wishes to avoid
the despair associated with ‘levelling’ (the situation in which there are no
longer meaningful distinctions between that which has value and that which
does not) must leap into one of three spheres of existence. Ultimately,
Kierkegaard recommends living in the sphere of Religiousness B, in which
a person commits herself to the transformation of her existence through faith in
the paradoxical claims of Christianity. Heidegger, by contrast, offers
a phenomenological account of the nature of humanity (Dreyfus and Rubin,
1991: 299) in the context of a shared, public world, in which each Dasein is ‘a
version of, or selection from, the moods, projects, and self-interpretations made
available by the culture’ (Dreyfus and Rubin, 1991: 301). Heidegger seeks not
an escape from despair but an authentic existence – one which does not attempt
to conceal its anxiety but must face up to the meaninglessness of its own
existence.
Hubert L. Dreyfus and Jane Rubin suggest that, just as the person living in
Kierkegaard’s sphere of Religiousness A lives without expectation of fulfil-
ment in this life and is therefore not concerned about the success or otherwise of
her life projects, for Heidegger, authentic Dasein lives with no expectation that
any particular life project will bring fulfilment or give her life meaning.
Dreyfus and Rubin illustrate this by describing the authentic athlete who
knows that sporting success cannot give his life meaning and does not worry
about defeat or injury. If he is injured, he simply accepts that as his new
situation and regards it as a new opportunity for different kinds of activity
(Dreyfus and Rubin, 1991: 323).
But Heidegger’s position differs from that of Religiousness A, according to
Dreyfus and Rubin, in that he incorporates an element of Religiousness
B because he thinks that the self needs a sense of continuity. Kierkegaard
thinks that the self must seek eternity within time, whereas Heidegger claims
that the authentic self must seek constancy. To achieve constancy, Dasein must
give constancy to a life in which it is dispersed on a daily basis into everything
which happens; to become a self, Dasein has to ‘pull itself together from the
dispersion and disconnectedness of the very things that have “come to pass”’
(Heidegger, 1962 [1927] §390: 441–442; Dreyfus and Rubin, 1991: 325).
Although Dasein lives in a world in which long-term commitments are
commonly made, these cannot be entered into in such a way that they define
the self and the world. Dasein accepts even long-term commitments as existing
only for as long as they actually last – for as long as the current situation
requires that commitment. Authentic Dasein does not expect its projects to give
it a sense of identity and meaning, and can devote itself to a project with
tenacity but let it go when it ceases to be realistic – that is, when the situation is
such that the project no longer needs to be done. As the self is not defined by the
project, there will always be something else which becomes the important thing
which needs to be done. Dreyfus and Rubin suggest that, for Kierkegaard, an
absolute commitment to a specific thing is required, but Dasein accepts anxiety,
and this changes the temporal structure of its life. Rather than awaiting and then
forgetting particular events, it lives in such a way that it gives constant form to
its activities, without concern for how its projects turn out. No particular life
projects are recommended; what matters is that I do ‘impeccably and
passionately’ (Dreyfus and Rubin, 1991: 327) whatever the current situation
requires to be done.
Dreyfus and Rubin point out that, in Chapter V of Division Two of Being and
Time, Heidegger suggests that history is a source of superior possibilities which
have attracted authentic individuals who may then become for us possible role-
models from which to choose, or which, in some sense, sometimes choose us, as
when Dasein lets itself be chosen by a possibility – i.e., accepts its fate.
We cannot act in exactly the same way as an exemplar from the past, but, if we
follow them, we cannot act as we normally do, either. So our heritage may
provide possibilities, but not absolute commitments (Dreyfus and Rubin, 1991:
331). For Heidegger, everyday ‘mattering’ – fear, ambition, conformity – ceases
to matter, but authentic Dasein finds its own mattering amongst the possibilities
which are presented to it by the past and by the present situation in which it finds
itself (Dreyfus and Rubin, 1991: 332–333). So, in facing its nothingness, Dasein
is freed from the banality of public expectations and the Christian requirement
for absolute commitment, and it is this which makes life worth living.
Resoluteness in the face of death comes not from idealistic concerns about things
which transcend existence and the possibilities of existence, but from under-
standing what is actually possible for Dasein. There is anxiety about our indivi-
dual existence, but alongside this ‘there goes an unshakable joy’ (Heidegger,
1962 [1927]: 310: 358; Dreyfus and Rubin, 1991: 333).
Although Dreyfus and Rubin argue that, in Being and Time, Heidegger
argues, in effect, for a secular version of Kierkegaard’s Religiousness B,
Heidegger’s writings do contain more specific, if undeveloped, references to
religion at the end of his life. As Richard Polt points out, in his Contributions to
Philosophy (written 1936–1938), Heidegger ‘speculates incessantly about “the
god” or “the gods”’ (Polt, 1999: 165). In an interview by Rudolf Augstein and
Georg Wolff for Der Spiegel, he suggests that ‘[philosophy will not be able to
bring about a direct change of the present state of the world . . . Only a god can
still save us.’ (1976 [1966]: 11). Heidegger appears to remain uncertain with
regard to the existence of God, however, and recommends that we prepare, by
means of ‘thinking and poetry’, for either the appearance or absence of the god,
in order that we might not ‘die meaningless deaths’ (11).
Section 4: Twentieth-Century Existentialism: Rosenzweig

and Tillich
4.1 Rosenzweig
Rosenzweig was a Jewish philosopher whose work is sometimes described as
‘existentialist’ (Putnam, 2008: 17). He is perhaps best known for his book
The Star of Redemption (2005 [1919]), parts of which were sent to his mother
on military postcards from the battle front during the First World War. A more
popular introduction to his philosophy, Understanding the Sick and the
Healthy: A View of World, Man and God, was commissioned in 1921 and
published posthumously in 1953.
4.1.1 Rosenzweig’s ‘New Thinking’
In his 1925 essay ‘The New Thinking’, Rosenzweig sets out what he had
intended to achieve in The Star of Redemption – although with the intention
of ‘unmasking his face’, four years after the book had been received ‘kindly and
with respect’, rather than as a belated introduction or conclusion in the manner
of ‘customary philosophers’ forewords with their cackling after the laid egg
and their impolite lampooning of the reader, who had not yet perpetrated
anything – who indeed could not have read the book yet’ (2000 [1925]: 109).
Rosenzweig notes that his book does not claim to be ‘a philosophy of
religion’, since the word ‘religion’ does not occur in it (110). He observes
that ‘God created precisely not religion, but rather the world’ (129), and that
Judaism and Christianity were originally ‘something quite “irreligious”, the
one a matter of fact, the other an event’ (130). Only Islam is regarded as
a religion from its beginning, and therefore the six passages of the book in
which he deals with Islam are ‘the only parts of the book, which, strictly
speaking, qualify as philosophy of religion’ (131). Rather, the book is
a system of philosophy (Franks and Morgan (2000: 35) note that this reflects
the influence of Schelling), and this system of philosophy (rather than just the
book) ‘wants to bring about the total renewal of thinking’ (2000 [1925]: 110).
Rosenzweig is not solely concerned with religious problems – he is also
interested in logical, ethical and aesthetic problems (129) – and neither is the
new thinking ‘familiar with that attitude that is a mixture of attack and defence,
never quietly concentrated on the matter in hand, which is characteristic
of theological thinking’ (129). If his thinking is, in fact, regarded as theology,
then it is, he suggests, ‘as new a theology as it is a new philosophy’ (129).
The relationship between the ‘renewed sciences’ of philosophy and theology
is a relationship of equals ‘which must in fact lead to union [of the sciences]
within the persons who maintain them’ (129).
Rozenzweig reacts against ‘[a]ll philosophy’ which is concerned with
‘essence’ – i.e., with what things ‘really’ are, as opposed to ‘the unphilosophi-
cal thinking of healthy human understanding’ (115) which does not ask what
things ‘really’ are; it is enough to know that a chair is a chair without inquiring
whether it is ‘really’ something different. Such philosophers do not allow God,
the world, and humankind to be just God, the world, and humankind but are
concerned to ask what they ‘really’ are. If they are only what they are,
philosophy is superfluous – or, at any rate, ‘a [kind of] philosophy which
absolutely might ferret out something “entirely different”’ (115). Rather,
Rosenzweig suggests, ‘[e]xperience, no matter how deeply it may penetrate,
discovers only the human in man, only worldliness in the world, only divinity
in God.’ (116–117). This is the point at which philosophy ends, and ‘experi-
ential philosophy can begin’ (117). Questions about essence have only tauto-
logical answers: ‘God is only divine, man only human, the world only worldly’
(118). It is by means of ‘the intuitive knowledge of experience’ that we gain
the most precise knowledge about the nature of God, humankind and the
world (118).
Rosenzweig also rejects the notion that everything is, at the deepest level,
identical because, ‘[i]f the other were “in its deepest ground” the same as me . . .
I could not love him to any degree, for I would be loving only myself. Or if God
were “in me” or “merely my loftier self” . . . this would constitute not only an
unnecessary linguistic obfuscation of an otherwise clear relation, but above all
this God would hardly have anything to say to me, for what my loftier self has
to say to me, I already know.’ (124–125).
Rosenzweig notes that the reader seeks ‘a catchy characterization under
which he could bury what has perhaps been brought into experience regarding
the new thinking, in the graveyard of his general education’ (137–138).
Rozenzweig says that he does not offer a catchword as a consequence of ill
will; rather he does not have one to offer. Indeed, he says: ‘[T]he work in which
I have tried to expound the new thinking attacks certain catchwords with
a special antagonism that goes far beyond the general antipathy to all isms,
but should I, for that reason, let the book be pinned down to the usual opposites
of those isms? Can I let it? The catchword I would soonest tolerate would be
that of absolute empiricism.’ (138). We have no knowledge of the heavenly or
the earthly apart from what we have experienced; this ‘trust in experience’
might, he suggests, ‘constitute what is teachable and transmissible with respect
to the new thinking’ (138).
4.1.2 The Star of Redemption

In his Foreword to Barbara E. Galli’s translation of The Star of Redemption,
Michael Oppenheim notes that there are multiple possible interpretations of the
book and describes three of them (2005: xiv). In ‘The New Thinking’,
Rosenzweig claims that the second book of the second part, ‘Revelation or
the Ever Renewed Birth of the Soul’, is the central core of the Star, in the light
of which Oppenheim suggests that the book is concerned with the dialogue of
love between God and the soul. What follows in this section is my reading of
the text, informed by Rozenzweig’s own account in ‘The New Thinking’.
In ‘The New Thinking’, Rosenzweig says that the point of the first part
(originally intended to be the first volume) of The Star of Redemption is ‘that
none of the three great basic concepts of philosophical thinking can be reduced
to another’ (2000 [1925]: 117). Each can only be reduced to itself; ‘[e]ach is
itself “essence”’ (117).
Rosenzweig begins the first part of The Star by observing that it is the fear of
death experienced by every mortal being which leads to the consolation offered
by the philosophical idea of ‘the All’ (2005) [1919]: 9). Until the time of
Nietzsche, poets and saints, but not philosophers, had talked of life and their
own souls, but Nietzsche, a philosopher, had remained both man and thinker
(15–16). Our focus has therefore shifted to ‘the huge mass of facts of the
knowable world’ (17), as a consequence of which the unified notion of ‘the
All’, which may have been regarded as the basic principle of our world, has
been ‘dethroned’ (17). Thus, ‘the All of thinking’ has ‘unexpectedly shattered
before our eyes into three separate pieces’ (26), God, the world, and human-
kind. We know nothing about God (31), the world (49), or humankind (72), but
it is only when knowledge has left us with nothing that ‘faith has been able to
take under its wing the simplicity that was expelled from knowledge, and so
become itself perfectly simple’ (71). Thus, the free action of God, the phenom-
enal existence of the world (54), and the free will of humankind (75) are
revelations from nothing, so that each is ‘a new victory over the nothing’ (54).
In ‘The New Thinking’, Rosenzweig says that the second part of The Star
uses the ‘method of narration’, as prophesied by Schelling, who said that
successful philosophy imitates inner conversation or narrative (2000 [1925]:
121). A narrator does not tell us how something ‘really’ is, but how it came
about (121–122). The sequence of the books in the first part of The Star is not
important but, in the second part, the sequence of the books is the important
thing which Rosenzweig wishes to communicate. So the second part ‘is already
itself the new thinking . . . If, say, the old [thinking] addressed the problem of
whether God is transcendent or immanent, then the new [thinking] attempts to
show how and when He turns from the distant into the near God, and again from
the near into the distant.’ (122). The new philosophy follows ‘the path of the
act’ and ‘overcomes the fluctuations of that alternative according to which man
is compelled to view himself either as a dressed-up piece of the world or to “be”
a disguised god. In effect, the new philosophy does nothing else but make the
“method” of healthy human understanding into the method of scientific think-
ing.’ (122–123). This is the difference between sick and healthy human
understanding. Sick understanding is compelled to understand something in its

entirety, but healthy understanding can keep on living while waiting for under-
standing to come: ‘[A]dvice comes when the time comes. This secret is the
whole wisdom of the new philosophy.’ (123). So the method of the new
thinking arises from its temporality. Rosenzweig claims that this is most clear
in the second book of the second part of The Star, which is the core both of
the second part and of the three-part work as a whole and is concerned with
present revelation (125). So the method of thinking found in earlier philosophy
is replaced by ‘the method of speaking’ (125). Thinking is timeless and aims ‘to
establish a thousand connections with one blow’, whereas speaking is tem-
poral: ‘[I]t does not know in advance where it will arrive; it lets its cues be
given by others’ (125–126). Even in written dialogues, such as those of Plato,
‘the other merely raises objections which I myself would have to raise’ (126).
Rosenzweig suggests that it is for this reason that philosophical dialogues,
including Plato’s, tend to be rather boring: ‘In actual conversation, something
happens.’ (126).
In the second part of The Star, then, Rosenzweig examines the relationships
between God, the world and humankind. The relationship between God and the
world and God and humankind is that of Creator and that which is being
continuously created (2005 [1919]: 130–131; 135). God has the power to
create, the world has the character of creature, and Creation is ‘the real process
between the two’ (143). Creation is accomplished by means of the word of God
(164), but the word of God and the word of humankind are the same: ‘What
man feels in his heart as his own human language is the word that has come
from the mouth of God.’ (163). God is first revealed in God’s Creation
(171–172), but there is also a Second Revelation (174) by means of God’s
love (176) for humankind (180). The love of God gives rise to the ‘only’
commandment, ‘the sense and essence of all the commandments that ever
may have come out of God’s mouth’ (190) – i.e., the commandment to love
the Eternal God with heart, soul and might (190) which ‘can be nothing other
than the love for the neighbour’ (230). The world is not yet complete, however,
because ‘[l]aughter and tears are still in it. And the tears are not yet wiped away
on all faces.’ (235) Redemption is achieved with the coming of the Kingdom of
God in the world, demonstrated by the world and every organism which it
contains becoming fully alive (239–240). Once it has entered the Kingdom, an
existence cannot leave it; ‘it has entered under the sign of the once-and-for-all,
it has become eternal’ (241).
In the chapter ‘Threshold’ which concludes the second part of The Star,
Rosenzweig introduces the image of a star consisting of two triangles.
The points of the first represent God, the world, and humankind, while the
points of the second indicate the three paths of Creation, Revelation, and
Redemption (274). This is Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption.
In the third part, Rosenzweig argues that the daily and weekly cycles of
human life and communal religious worship provide glimpses of eternity
within time (309–310). In particular, prayer for the coming of the Kingdom
of God ‘achieves the redemptive coming of the eternal within time by showing
to love that what is nearest is the eternal one, and thus releases upon it the
irresistible power of love for the neighbour’ (311). In the first book of the third
part, Rosenzweig describes Judaism, with its annual cycle of Jewish liturgical
festivals, as ‘the eternal life’, while in the second book, Christianity, ‘an
assembly of individuals for a mutual task that is realized only however by
each suitably taking action as an individual’ (364) is described as ‘the eternal
way’. The All, then, ‘can neither be known honestly nor experienced clearly;
only the dishonest cognition of idealism, only the obscure experience of the
mystic can make itself believe it has grasped it’ (414). Both the Jew and the
Christian are ‘workers on the same task’ (438) before God, but neither possess
the whole truth (438–439). Only the person who sees the truth in God can see
the whole truth, but this will take place beyond this life (439).
In the final section, ‘Gate’, Rosenzweig describes a vision of the face of God
shining from the Star of Redemption (441). But the task of the one who sees the
vision is written above the gate to life: ‘To walk humbly with your God.’ (447).
No one can remain alive in ‘the mysterious, wonderful illumination of the
divine sanctuary’ but must enter the gate ‘INTO LIFE’ (447) – the final words
of The Star of Redemption.
In ‘The New Thinking’, Rosenzweig says that the conclusion ‘is already
beyond the book, a “gate” from it out into the No-longer-book’ (2000 [1925]:
136). The No-longer-book is the knowledge that ‘in this seizing of all being in the
immediacy of a moment [eines Augenblicks] and blink of an eye [Augen-blicks],
the limit of humanity is entered’ (136). The ending ‘is also a beginning and
a midpoint: stepping into the midst of the everyday of life’ (137).
4.1.3 Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World,

Man, and God
Oppenheim notes that ‘the Star is universally seen as a difficult endeavor’
(2005: xiii). Indeed, he observes, ‘there were few among Franz’s contempor-
aries who completed the whole book’ (xiii-xiv). By contrast, while
Understanding the Sick and the Healthy is a philosophical book, it is also, as
Philip Rieff says in his review of it, ‘a personal book, even a chatty book’
(1955: 262). Unlike The Star, it is ‘meant for everyone’ (Rosenzweig, 1999
[1953]: 35), including the ‘Expert’ to whom the first preface is addressed.
Rosenzweig anticipates the Expert’s objection to his book, noting that ‘[a]nyone
in quest of a proof will be disappointed by it’ (36). There follows another preface,
addressed to the ‘Reader’, who is asked to remember that he/she and the author
have a common background in ‘the school of common sense’ (37).
In Chapter 1, Rosenzweig describes the ‘paralysis’ caused by the misuse of
philosophy. Philosophers admit that common sense is useful when buying
butter, in courtship, and when trying to determine whether a man accused of
stealing is guilty, but claim that common sense is of no use when trying to
decide what ‘butter’, ‘woman’ and ‘crime’ are ‘essentially’. Rosenzweig notes,
however, that ‘no one but a philosopher asks this question . . . In life the
question is invalid; it is never asked. Indeed, even the philosopher, when the
situation becomes serious, refrains from asking it. He is scarcely interested in
knowing what half a pound of butter costs ‘essentially’. He does not court his
beloved in proper terms of essence. He would neither deny nor affirm that the
defendant stole, or did not steal, ‘essentially’. The terms of life are not
‘essential’, but ‘real’; they concern not ‘essence’ but fact.’ (41–42). Despite
this, the philosopher continues to ask the question, and thus ‘parts company
with ordinary common sense’ (42).
In Chapter 2, Rosenzweig describes the condition of the person who is
paralyzed by philosophy, and the failed attempt of the healer-philosopher to
heal him by instructing him to act as if he does believe with respect to all the
things he doubts.
In Chapter 3, Rosenzweig expands on his three examples – buying butter,
courtship, and judging guilt – and shows, in each case, that looking for the
essence of butter, woman, or crime is of no practical use. He concludes that
‘sensible people consider a person sick who seeks such queer bypaths of
thought . . . In practical life no one gives up his intention to buy butter merely
because he is unable to prove that the butter he wishes to buy and the butter
on sale are identical.’ (52). Even the philosopher, ‘[w]hen he goes
shopping . . . is unwilling to have an empty stomach as a reward for his
thoughts’ (53).
In Chapter 4, Rosenzweig considers what kind of therapy might bring about
‘a return to healthy common sense’ (55). He notes that ‘[e]veryday life, it is
clear, cannot possibly be ignored; one cannot exist entirely in the sublime realm
of theory, no matter how “essential” it may seem when compared to dull,
tedious reality. The concerns of the world intrude. They bring with them the
natural structure of life, the force of facts and experience, the impact of every-
day existence with its interminable small tasks and its stable, enduring names.’
(56). But this alone is not enough to effect a cure. The sick person needs to be
helped to use his reason in order to understand the naming of butter, the
beloved, and crime as ‘constitutive aspects of worldly existence, human

destiny, or divine activity’ (58).
In Chapter 5, the ‘Medical Director’ at the ‘sanatorium’ describes the
‘Environmental Cure’. The building is at the centre of three mountain ranges
(representing God, the world, and human beings), and pathways lead from the
building to all three ranges. Travelers choose the route best fitted to their needs
and desires. The path prescribed for the sick person enables him to see only the
foothills of one mountain, with occasional glimpses of the peaks of the other
two. At the end of the path, he is able to see both the summit and the other two
peaks. If the clouds break, he can see the valley from which he came. This
happens often, but it rarely happens that the three peaks can be seen from the
valley. ‘Thus’, the Medical Director concludes, ‘our patient, viewing familiar
territory, the commonplace and the ordinary, at the same time as he reaches the
summits, is oriented again’ (62).
Rosenzweig spells out ‘The Cure’ in Chapters 6–8. In Chapter 6, he recom-
mends that we should abandon the search for the essence of things. In order to
acquire knowledge of the world, we have to accept that the world is something,
rather than nothing, because it can be distinguished from other entities – God
and the self (70–71). We use language to make this distinction. Language is ‘the
companion of everything, including every event which takes place in the world,
and yet is external to them all’ (71); it is a bridge between the world and the
things which are not the world. Human beings use language to name things, and
are given the authority to do this by God. The Word of God is intended for all;
human words imply a speaker and a person spoken to, and the same applies to
the Word of God (73). Thus, ‘[t]he world as such does not exist. To speak of the
world is to speak of a world which is ours and God’s. It becomes the world as it
becomes man’s and God’s world. Every word spoken within its confines
furthers this end. This is the ultimate secret of the world.’ (74). This is not
really a secret, however, because common sense confirms every day that our
names are the names of things, and these are confirmed by God. Therefore,
‘each day we solve the ultimate question, frankly confronting each thing as we
encounter it; we look for nothing beyond, do not try to walk suspiciously round
the object; nor do we peer into its depths, but accept it rather as it is, as it hastens
towards us. And then we leave it behind and wait for whatever is to come
tomorrow.’ (74).
In Chapter 7, Rosenzweig suggests that we should not attempt to find out
what ‘life’ or ‘man’ is essentially but should simply ‘become part of the
onward-moving life of man. Here life “is” not, it simply occurs’ (80). Again,
language is the bridge between the human and the non-human, and provides
continuity; a man’s name ‘represents permanence; it is the only thing giving
continuity to man’s existence’ (81). Otherwise, ‘[t]he future is the inexhaustible

well from which moments are drawn; every instant new-born moments rise and
replace the moments disappearing into the past. At each moment the future
presents to man the gift of being present to himself. And so man may use his
moments freely and then deposit them in the vast receptacle of the past. In the
enduring process of receiving and using his moments he is man, master of the
present, of his present – for it is truly his, if it is present. It is indeed born anew
each instant, and each instant it dies.’ (82).
Our surnames indicate our connection with the past (i.e., our connection with
our ancestors), and our proper names show that we are new human beings with
a future – they refer to that which we are becoming. Thus, Rosenzweig asks,
‘have you not always had the courage to live when you simply proceeded on
your way, with the past at your heels, and the light of a dawning tomorrow
already touching your brow?’ (83).
In Chapter 8 he considers the nature of God – ‘the favourite subject of
philosophy’ (85). He rejects the view that Nature is God, exclaiming ‘What
sort of faith is it which must rename the object of faith so that it may believe in
it?’ (87). And he rejects the idea that God is Mind as a fantasy which deprives
the human mind of its relationship to God (88). Rather, God is a Something
distinct from human beings and things in the world – to confuse God with other
things is pagan. God ‘transforms . . . human energies into the energies of the
world’ (92). When a human being ‘is in need he depends on common sense; he
has no time to waste on such a luxury as sick reason. The proper time then is the
present – today. To avail himself of today, man must, for better or worse, put his
trust in God.’ (93) When a person is in need, this forces him to live in the
present. When you find yourself in such a situation, Rosenzweig asks, ‘do you
still insist on asking about yesterday and tomorrow? Do you still require
eternity to give you proof of the Here and Now?’ (93]. His response is that
there is no time for such things and that it is God who will help us.
In his final chapter, Rozensweig begins: ‘[I]s it entirely true that life is
simple? Why does it seem more difficult than we expected? Have we not
responded to the treatments, convalesced, and regained our common sense?
Nevertheless we discover upon our return to everyday life that existence is still
difficult.’ (101). The problem, he acknowledges, is that life is full of frailties,
anxieties, and disappointments, and that we cannot escape death (102). He
concludes that to live means to die. But to withdraw from life is not to avoid
death; it is merely to have foregone life (103).
Some scholars have suggested that there is a contrast between the optimistic
ending of The Star – which focuses on life – and the pessimistic ending of
Understanding the Sick and the Healthy – which focuses on death. But Zachary
Braiterman suggests that ‘INTO LIFE’ refers to a life directed towards death:
‘It means coming to good terms with death and overcoming the fear of it that
would otherwise paralyze the healthy understanding.’ (1998: 212). Perhaps it is not
irrelevant that, during the latter part of 1921, the year in which Understanding the
Sick and the Healthy was commissioned (it was published only posthumously in
1953 because Rosenzweig was dissatisfied with it), Rosenzweig began to experi-
ence the first symptoms of Lou Gehrig’s disease which, during the following eight
years, gradually paralyzed him and brought about his death at the age of forty-three.
4.2 Tillich
Tillich is probably best known for the three volumes of his Systematic Theology
(1951, 1957a, 1963), as well as a number of smaller volumes, including
The Shaking of the Foundations (1948), The Courage to Be (1952), and
Dynamics of Faith (1957), all of which were published following his move
from Germany to America after dismissal from his Chair at the University of
Frankfurt in 1933 for criticism of Nazism.
4.2.1 Religious language as symbolic

In the Dynamics of Faith, Tillich argues that religious language is symbolic
because only symbolic language can express the ultimate. Only symbolic
language is able to express the ultimate because that which is truly ultimate
cannot be directly expressed in language which is normally used to describe
finite reality; God transcends God’s own name (1999a [1957]: 78).
There are different symbols of faith. God is the most fundamental one; ‘God
is the fundamental symbol for what concerns us ultimately’ (1999a [1957]: 79).
[Note that in the earlier Systematic Theology: Volume 1 Tillich says that God is
being-itself, and that this is a non-symbolic statement, although nothing else
can be said about God which is not symbolic (1999c [1951]: 91).] An atheist is
therefore someone who has no ultimate concern – who is not concerned about
the meaning of their existence: for Tillich, ‘[i]ndifference toward the ultimate
question is the only imaginable form of atheism.’ (1999a [1957]: 79).
Debates regarding the existence of God therefore serve no purpose.
According to Tillich, it makes no sense ‘to question the ultimacy of an ultimate
concern’ since this aspect of divinity must be certain (1999a [1957]: 79).
Instead, we should ask which of the many symbols of faith can function as
the most effective expressions of our ultimate concern. All of God’s attributes
are derived from our experiences and are ‘applied symbolically to that which is
beyond finitude and infinity’ (80). For example, if faith thinks of God as
almighty, it is not describing a highest being who can do as he likes, but
‘using our human experience of power in order to symbolize the content of its
infinite concern’ (80). Other faith symbols are ‘manifestations of the divine in
things and events, in persons and communities, in words and documents’ (80).
All of these can point towards that which is of ultimate concern.
The symbols of faith are collected together into stories of the gods – which is
the meaning of the Greek word ‘mythos’, myth. Even a single God ‘is an object
of mythological language, and if spoken about is drawn into the framework of
time and space’ (81). But we cannot manage without symbols and myths
because they are ‘forms of the human consciousness which are always present’
(82).
A myth which is recognized to be a myth may be called a ‘broken myth’.
Tillich argues that Christianity should not have any unbroken myths, because
this would amount to idolatry, the worshipping of idols. Christians should
acknowledge the mythological elements in the Bible and in Christian doctrine
and liturgy. Furthermore, creation is not a magic act which happened at
a particular point in time, and the fall of Adam did not happen in a particular
geographical place and should not be attributed to a single human person.
The virgin birth of Jesus of Nazareth should not be understood in biological
terms, his resurrection and ascension were not physical events, and the second
coming of Christ will not be a cosmic catastrophe (82). To suggest otherwise is
to take a literalist view which presupposes that God is ‘a being, acting in time
and space, dwelling in a special place, affecting the course of events and being
affected by them like any other being in the universe. Literalism deprives God
of his ultimacy and, religiously speaking, of his majesty. It draws him down to
the level of that which is not ultimate, the finite and conditional.’ (83).
In Volume I of his Systematic Theology (1951), Tillich agrees with those who
had argued that truth must be established by means of a verifying test, and that
the repeatable experiment is an effective form of verification. But Tillich argues
that, in addition to experimental verification, experiential verification by means
of experiences can occur during the course of life (1999c [1951]: 86).
Experiential verification is usually not repeatable, and rarely leads us to
undisputed truth, but there are some truths which can only be verified in this
way and we must therefore be prepared to adopt this more risky method of
verification.
In the same work, Tillich argues that God is not a being alongside or above
others because this would place him on the same level as that of other beings;
rather God is ‘being-itself or . . . the ground of being’ (88). This concept points
to ‘the power inherent in everything, the power of resisting non-being.
Therefore . . . it is possible to say that [God] is the power of being in everything
and above everything, the infinite power of being.’ (88). Since God is the power
of being, ‘God transcends both every being and the totality of beings’ – i.e.,
the world (89).
The purpose of theology is to interpret religious symbols. It may discover
contradictions between them, or show the religious dangers and theological
errors which arise from the use of certain symbols (93). Although religious
language is symbolic, this does not mean that it refers to something which is not
real, however. For Tillich, a symbolic interpretation of God and God’s relation-
ship with humankind attributes more reality and power to God than is possible
for a non-symbolic, superstitious interpretation; symbolic interpretation
‘enhances rather than diminishes the reality and power of religious language,
and in so doing it performs an important function’ (94).
4.2.2 Religion and Courage
In The Courage to Be, Tillich suggests that ‘Nietzsche is the most impressive
and effective representative of what could be called a “philosophy of life”’
(1952: 37). For Nietzsche, courage is the power of life to affirm itself despite
the ambiguity of life – its suffering and death. According to Tillich, affirmation
of life is what Nietzsche means by the ‘will to power’ (38). The will which
commands itself is creative: ‘It makes a whole out of the fragments and riddles
of life’ (39). For Tillich, this makes Nietzsche an Existentialist – someone with
‘the courage to look into the abyss of non-being in the complete loneliness of
him who accepts the message that “God is dead”’ (40).
Tillich distinguishes between fear and anxiety. Fear has a definite object such
as ‘a pain, the rejection by a person or a group, the loss of something or
somebody, the moment of dying’ (46) and can be overcome by love because
its object can be ‘faced, analysed, attacked, endured’ (44). Anxiety, however, is
concerned about the ultimate loss which results from death, meaninglessness,
and condemnation. Since anxiety has no object, ‘participation, struggle and
love with respect to it are impossible’ (45). Anxiety therefore tries ‘to become
fear, because fear can be met by courage’ (47), but, ultimately, it fails because
anxiety is existential; in each case, the anxiety belongs to the nature of
existence itself (49). The anxiety associated with death is universal because,
even if there had been good arguments for the immortality of the soul, ‘exis-
tentially everybody is aware of the complete loss of self which biological
extinction implies’ (50). Anxiety about meaningless is anxiety about the loss
of an ultimate concern, a spiritual answer to the question of the meaning of our
existence (54–55), perhaps because the symbols which have been handed down
to us no longer have the power to express the human situation and answer
existential questions (57). And anxiety about condemnation arises because
even our best deeds are imperfect, as a consequence of which we experience the
absolute anxiety of self-rejection or condemnation (58).
Tillich suggests that anxiety may be overcome by means of courage which
draws on the power of being, a power which transcends the non-being which
is experienced in the three forms of anxiety. For Tillich, every example of
courage has a religious root, whether or not this is acknowledged, because
‘religion is the state of being grasped by the power of being itself’
(152–153). Faith does not require belief in something unbelievable:
‘The courage to be is an expression of faith and what faith means must be
understood through the courage to be’ (167). Thus, providence is not
a theory about divine activity but ‘the religious symbol of the courage of
confidence with respect to fate and death’ which ‘says “in spite of” even to
death’ (163). Of the three forms of anxiety, it is the anxiety of meaningless-
ness which is the most difficult to overcome. A leap from doubt to dogmatic
certainty is not the answer because, although it may give courage to those
who are converted, it does not show how that courage is possible (170).
The only answer, Tillich suggests, is to say that ‘the acceptance of despair is
in itself faith and on the boundary line of the courage to be. In this situation
the meaning of life is reduced to despair about the meaning of life. But as
long as this despair is an act of life it is positive in its negativity’ (170).
Thus, the key characteristics of absolute faith are:
• Experience of the power of being which is present ‘even in the most radical
manifestation of non-being’ (170).
• Dependence of the experience of non-being on the experience of being, and
dependence of the experience of meaninglessness on the experience of
meaning. Even when one despairs, one has enough being to make despair
possible (171).
• The acceptance of being accepted. There is nobody/nothing that accepts, but
‘there is the power of acceptance itself which is experienced’ (171).
To accept the power of acceptance is ‘the religious answer of absolute
faith, of a faith which has been deprived by doubt of any concrete content,
which nevertheless is faith and the source of the most paradoxical manifesta-
tion of the courage to be’ (171).
Section 5: Re-Visioning Religious Language: Derrida and Caputo

5.1 Deconstruction
As we noted in Section 1.1.4, the notion of ‘deconstruction’ was introduced
into philosophy by Derrida in 1967, in Of Grammatology (1997 [1967])
(‘grammatology’ is defined by Derrida as ‘the science of writing’ (1997 [1967]:

4)), Writing and Difference (1978 [1967]), and Speech and Phenomena (1973
[1967]). In outline, deconstruction tries to show how the words of a text may be
understood as a system of interrelated signs, each of which is defined by its
difference from others. This relationship between signs is called ‘différance’ –
according to John D. Caputo, ‘the most famous misspelling in contemporary
philosophy’ (1997: 2). For Derrida, he suggests, différance is neither a word
nor a concept; it is ‘a kind of non-word, anterior to words, the general, de-
formed condition for the formation of words, a bit of a forgery for indicating
how words are forged’ (8).
Dawne McCance points out that, following the publication of Of
Grammatology, Derrida made further attempts to explain deconstruction in
various papers, interviews, and letters in which he argued that deconstruction
should be understood not as a technique which may be used to interpret any text,
or as a school of philosophy but as an event (McCance, 2009: 21–22). In order to
understand what Derrida means by this, McCance points out that ‘deconstruc-
tion’ is derived from Heidegger’s use of ‘Destruktion’ to describe his analysis of
the structure of the metaphysical systems of his predecessors. Derrida notes that,
translated into French, the word has negative connotations which he does not
intend. He therefore employs the word ‘deconstruction’. In the French Littré
definition, deconstruction is ongoing, happens within living systems (which
includes languages and texts), and is not a technique which is subsequently
applied by an interpreter. This means, McCance suggests, that deconstruction
is already happening in the texts which Derrida reads and he therefore sees his
task as that of uncovering and making clear what is already there (22).
Caputo notes that Derrida’s claim in Of Grammatology that ‘There is nothing
outside of the text’ (Derrida, 1997: 158) has been interpreted as a denial of
reference. It is also commonly thought that Derrida claims that signifiers lead
only to other signifiers, which implies doubt about whether there is ‘anything
real or really other’ beyond signifiers, and leaves us ‘in a cloud of confusion’
(Caputo, 1997: 16). But Caputo suggests this is a misunderstanding, because
everything Derrida has written ‘has been directed toward the “other” of lan-
guage’ (16); what deconstruction does do is try to show that questions about
reference are more complex than was previously thought. So deconstruction
does not deny reference but complicates it by arguing that ‘there is no reference
without difference, no reference . . . outside of a textual chain’ (17). Derrida
highlights that what we think of as ‘the “reality” of the “extra-linguistic”’ (17)
is constructed; he is suspicious of ‘the system of exclusions that is put in place
when a language claims to be the language of reality itself, when a language is
taken to be what being itself would say were it given a tongue’ (17).
5.2 Derrida’s ‘Faith and Knowledge’

The application of deconstruction to religious belief may be seen in Derrida’s
‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason
Alone’ (2002 [1998, 1996]) which is ‘regarded as Derrida’s most sustained
treatment of religion’ (McCance, 2009: 31). The paper, first delivered at
a conference on the Isle of Capri in 1994, is written in a style which Derrida
describes as ‘quasi-aphoristic’ (2002 [1998, 1996]: aphorism 35: page 76,
henceforth 35: 76). McCance notes that Derrida’s 52 aphorisms ‘need not
confirm, and might well contradict, each other’ (McCance, 2009: 73). This
form, McCance suggests, is ideally suited to a work in which Derrida does not
offer conclusive answers to questions about the nature of religion but presents
a selection of points which require further reflection (73).
As McCance points out, the title of Derrida’s paper is closely related to that
of Kant’s ‘Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone’ (1793) (the title of
which has more recently been translated as ‘Religion Within the Boundaries of
Mere Reason’ (1996 [1793]). But whereas Kant places religion within the
bounds of reason, Derrida’s use of quotation marks around the word ‘religion’
suggest a lesser degree of certainty about the nature of religion which, unlike
Kant, he places at the boundary of reason, the point at which our efforts fully to
understand it fail (McCance, 2009: 74–75).
5.2.1 Derrida on the Nature of Religion
According to Derrida, Kant’s ‘Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere

Reason’ (1996 [1793]) was concerned both with the nature of religion and
with the relationship between religion and radical evil (2002 [1998, 1996]: 36:
77). First, Derrida draws our attention to Kant’s two families and two sources of
religion. For Kant, he says, religion may be divided into the ‘religion of cult
alone’, which seeks divine favours but teaches only prayer and desire and not
action, and ‘moral religion’, which is more concerned with good conduct than
with knowledge of God, and for which salvation consists only in what human
beings must do to be worthy of it. The latter is a ‘reflecting faith’, which
depends upon rational, practical reason and is opposed to a ‘dogmatic faith’,
which ignores the distinction between faith and knowledge and claims knowl-
edge (15: 49). For Kant, according to Derrida, Christianity is the only truly
‘moral’ religion, whose mission is to enable a ‘reflecting faith’; Christianity
and pure morality are inseparable because Christianity offers essential teaching
about the nature of morality (15: 50).
For Derrida, this means that morality requires us to act as if God does
not exist, or is no longer concerned with our salvation – i.e., to act as if
God has abandoned us. In other words, Christianity is only truly moral if it
accepts ‘the death of God’ (15: 51). He therefore advocates ‘the messianic’
without ‘messianism’ – being open to a future in which we might, at any
time, be surprised, without prophetic warning, by either peace or justice, or
radical evil, another’s need for justice, or death (21: 56). Derrida suggests
that this messianic dimension to our lives does not belong to any particular
Abrahamic religion, although terms derived from the Abrahamic faiths may
sometimes be used to describe it.
Derrida claims that the two sources of the religious are the experience of
belief, and the experience of sacredness or holiness (32: 70). Religion is
a response to that which is other than us, and this implies that we have
a responsibility to give ourselves to that which is other than us (33: 71). For
Derrida, religion can be characterized in three further ways:
• The word ‘religion’ may be derived either from the Latin relegere, the source
of which is legere, to harvest or gather, or from religare, whose root is ligare,
to tie or bind, but Derrida suggests that the two possible sources overlap.
• The meaning of the word can be tested by considering the history and
anthropology of religions.
• By means of discussion, we can ‘liberate’ words and their meanings ‘from all
archaic memory and from all supposed origins’ (2002 [1998, 1996]: 33: 71),
and this enables us to look at the pragmatic and functional effects of our
words on structures, especially political structures.
Derrida proposes that, although the first and second ways should not be
excluded, it is the third way, which focuses on the meaning and implications
of religion for our world today, which is the most important (33: 72).
Derrida suggests that the word ‘religion’ is still, however, inadequate
because there will never be something which everyone agrees to call ‘religion’
(34: 72–73). Indeed, the use of a single word masks the complexity of the
phenomenon it attempts to describe: ‘“The thing” tends to drop out of sight as
soon as one believes oneself able to master it under the title of a discipline,
a knowledge or a philosophy’ (35: 76). But although the notion of religion is
difficult to grasp, certainly in a few words, we must still meet the demand of
how to think about religion in today’s world ‘without breaking with the
philosophical tradition’ (36: 77).
5.2.2 Derrida on Religion and Radical Evil

Derrida’s notion of radical evil is also derived from Kant but, Derrida suggests,
we now know that the ‘radical “perversion of the human heart”’ (14: 49) to
which Kant refers manifests itself in many different forms, in recent times often
aided by ‘the tele-technoscientific machine’ – i.e., all the machines which we
now use which, collectively, have become ‘a machine of evil, and of radical
evil’ (45: 91). Derrida argues that religion can be both a cause of radical evil,
but also a means by which we may overcome it.
Derrida recognises that religion is sometimes associated with things which
are, or should be, foreign to it (30: 67) – e.g., wars waged in the name of religion
(28: 63). And he acknowledges that religion can, indeed, be self-destructive,
just as the immune system of someone with an auto-immune disease attacks its
own organism. For example, religious violence ‘spreads death and unleashes
self-destruction in a desperate (auto-immune) gesture that attacks the blood of
its own body’ (42: 89). Even apparently benevolent forms of Christianity can
be guilty of promoting ‘globalatinization’, the imposition of a particular form
of religion and its associated discourse, culture and politics, originating in
Rome, on all monotheistic religions (37: 79).
But, although religion can be the driving force behind such evils, it can also
declare war on that which is its source of power. Thus, there is both ‘menace’
and ‘chance’, the latter of which could not exist without the former. Without the
possibility of radical evil, ‘good would be for nothing’ (37: 82) and faith ‘would
not be faith’ (38: 83). Religion involves both absolute respect for life and
sacrificial vocation (40: 86). Respect for life in the religions concerns human
life because it bears witness ‘to the infinite transcendence which is worth more
than it (divinity, the sacrosanctness of the law)’ (40: 87). The sacrificial voca-
tion of believers of all kinds may be shared with humanists and ecologists who
unite together to protest against the evil wrought by the tele-technoscientific
machine (46: 92), but, paradoxically, who also use the tools of the adversary
and search for ‘a new alliance between the tele-technoscientific and the two
sources of religion (the . . . holy, on the one hand, and faith or belief . . . on the
other’ (46: 93).
5.3 Caputo on Derrida, Deconstruction, and Religion

Caputo observes that it has often been thought that Derrida is offering a form of
negative theology – a theology which claims that the nature of God transcends
our human understanding to such an extent that we can say only what God is
not. He argues, however, that deconstruction is never entirely negative; rather,
it is ‘deeply and abidingly affirmative – of something new, of something
coming’ (1997: 3). For this reason, Caputo argues, it is also a mistake to
think that deconstruction is atheistic. Rather, he suggests, Derrida is ‘an atheist
who has his own God, and who loves the name of God, loves that “event” and
what “takes place” or eventuates in that good name’ (3). Deconstruction does
set out the metaphysical boundaries of theology (5), but Caputo points out that
this task has long been important in the theological tradition, that ‘deconstruc-
tion demonstrates that faith is always faith’, and that ‘faith is always through
a glass darkly’ (6). For Derrida, ‘[f]aith is a certain resolve to hold on by one’s
teeth, to put one’s hand to the plow . . . to say oui today knowing that this must
be repeated later on tonight, and then again tomorrow morning, again and
again, oui, oui, which is why monastic prayers were hourly’ (12). Negative
theologians ultimately aim to reach a point, beyond words, of union with the
divine One, but, for Derrida and deconstruction, there is only ever a never-
ending interplay of theological signs (11).
According to Caputo, Derrida’s notion of différance does not settle the God-
question. Rather, ‘the point is to un-settle it, to make it more difficult, by
showing that, even as we love the name of God, we must still ask what it is
we love’ (13). Différance has – and here Caputo borrows a phrase from
Kierkegaard – ‘armed neutrality’ – i.e., it is equally hostile to all points of
view, especially ontological claims (14–15). The point of armed neutrality is
not to trap us in an endless chain of signifiers, however, but to make us ‘think
twice about claiming that our discourse has accomplished what it set out to do’
(15). Deconstruction questions particular meanings, ‘but without simply
destroying meaning and reference themselves’ (15). It creates ‘distrust in the
power of language to do what it says it is doing, along with providing an
account of how language accomplishes what it does manage to do. But all of
this . . . takes place with the idea of keeping things open to something new’ (15).
If this were not so, Derrida’s work would be of no help in understanding faiths
or traditions because ‘it would make nonsense out of the interpretation of
classical texts and the articulation of shared beliefs’ (15). Rather, Caputo
suggests, deconstruction has cultivated special skills in ‘awakening us to the
demands of the other’, a point which, he thinks, has been ‘largely lost in the
midst of the ill-conceived and panicky reactions the name of Derrida provokes
among the Good and the Just’ (15).
Caputo argues that deconstruction is a new form of Enlightenment which
shows us the limitations within which we work (17), but that the purpose of this
work is never destructive; the point of deconstruction is ‘to loosen and unlock
structures . . . to allow them to function more freely and inventively, to produce
new forms’ (18). It therefore ‘gives old texts new readings, old traditions new
twists’ (18). So deconstruction does not aim to destroy religious belief or
traditions, but ‘it can cause a lot of well-deserved trouble to a faith or an
institution that has frozen over into immobility’; deconstruction is a method
which enables faith to ‘function more ad-ventfully, with an advanced sense of
advent and event’ (18). Indeed, Caputo suggests, ‘deconstruction is itself

a form of faith, a faith in the viens, a hope in what is coming, one which says
we are a little blind and it is necessary to believe’ (18). So ‘the point of
différance, far from destroying faith, is to lead up to faith, even to the “blind-
ness” of faith’ (19); différance is a kind of ‘quasi-condition of all our choices
and judgements, which must thereby take the form of a faith, a bit of a leap,
with the proviso that leaps of faith differ in terms of their motivations and
legitimations, that we are better off making some leaps than others’ (19).
5.4 Derrida’s Religion

We have seen that Derrida seems to advocate a form of religion which origi-
nates in a sense of the holy and a kind of faith which is, in some sense,
messianic. Scholars offer different answers to the question of whether the
presence of such ideas in Derrida’s later works indicates a ‘religious turn’ in
his thinking, however. As we have seen, Caputo claims that Derrida ‘has his
own God’, but Martin Hägglund argues that the proliferation of terms borrowed
from religion in his later works does not indicate a ‘religious turn’ (Hägglund,
2015: 179). Derrida himself, when asked in an interview to explain the meaning
of his earlier claim that he could ‘rightly pass’ as an atheist, confirms that it is,
indeed, right to say that he is an atheist. He qualifies this, however, by saying
that believing requires some degree of atheism because it is ‘in the suspension
of belief, the suspension of the position of God as a thesis, that faith appears’
(Caputo, Hart and Sherwood, 2005: 47). This is not faith in any particular
system of religious belief, however. As Richard Kearney suggests, it is ‘a
deconstructive belief in the undecidable and unpredictable character of incom-
ing everyday events (what he calls “experience in general”) rather than some
special advent of the divine’ (Kearney, 2005: 304). While some forms of
religion promulgate evil of various kinds, however, a form of religion rightly
understood can, nonetheless, be harnessed to serve as a force for good.
Section 6: The Existential Problem of Evil: Nietzsche, Levinas,

and Hadot
6.1 The Existential Problem of Evil
In Section 5, we saw that Derrida argues that, although religion is sometimes
a cause of radical evil, it can also provide us with a means of overcoming
radical evil. In this section, we consider the work of a selection of authors
writing continental-style philosophy of religion on the existential problem of
evil. Responses to the problem of evil in the work of analytic philosophers tend
to focus on the contradiction inherent in the co-existence of the God of classical
theism, who possesses the attributes of omnipotence, omniscience and good-

ness, and the evil and suffering in our world, and to offer a variety of arguments
which aim to show that the contradiction is only an apparent one. By contrast,
those who write continental-style philosophy of religion are more likely to
work with a variety of interpretations of religious belief, and to focus on ways
in which our attitude to belief might help us to overcome the unavoidable
difficulties associated with human existence.
6.2 Nietzsche on the Value of Suffering

In The Gay Science, Nietzsche argues that belief in the value of compassion
presupposes that suffering is bad. But pleasure and pain might not be the only
basis for value claims; there could be other values which do not depend upon
the experience of pleasure or pain. It is therefore possible that the value of any
particular experience of suffering might depend upon the role of that suffering
in the person’s life in general, and the way in which it contributes to other
values. Nietzsche argues for the ‘the personal necessity of distress’, without
which such things as ‘the way new springs and needs break open, the way in
which old wounds are healing, the way whole periods of the past are shed’
would be lost (1974 [1882, 1887]: 338: 269). For Nietzsche, ‘the path to one’s
own heaven always leads through the voluptuousness of one’s own hell’ (338:
269). Those who are unable to tolerate suffering and try to prevent it are
followers of both the ‘religion of pity’ and its origin, the ‘religion of comfor-
tableness’ (338: 270). Thus, we should neither pity others who suffer nor expect
pity for our own suffering; rather, we should ‘share not suffering but joy’
(338: 271).
In Ecce Homo, Nietzsche suggests that being ill can serve as ‘an energetic
stimulus for life, for living more’ (1967 [1908]: 2: 224). After a long period of
illness, Nietzsche says: ‘I discovered life anew, including myself; I tasted all
good and even little things, as others cannot easily taste them – I turned my will
to health, to life, into a philosophy’ (2: 224).
6.3 Levinas on Useless Suffering

Although Nietzsche finds value in the experience of suffering, Levinas, most of
whose Eastern European family were killed in the Holocaust, is concerned
about forms of suffering which appear to serve no useful purpose. In his paper
‘Useless Suffering’, he argues that evil cannot be, as Kant thought, subsumed
by order and meaning (1988 [1982]: 372); evil is ‘the explosion and most
profound articulation of absurdity’ (373). So ‘the least one can say about
suffering is that in its own phenomenality, intrinsically, it is useless, “for
nothing”’ (373). There are some illnesses in which pain is the main feature and
where the involvement of the mind does not bring relief but ‘where, on the
contrary, anxiety and distress add to the cruelty of the hurt’ (373). Those who
are mentally unable to relate to others are deprived even of the experience in
which suffering does not consume the whole of the mind but ‘comes across
novel lights within new horizons’ (373).
For Levinas, although one’s own suffering might be regarded as ‘an adven-
ture’ which can be imbued with meaning, the suffering of other people – ‘the
Other’ – is ‘unpardonable’ (374). Attention to the Other is what binds us to each
other and may be regarded as ‘a supreme ethical principal’ which can ‘com-
mand the hopes and practical discipline of vast human groups’ (374). This
attention and action are ‘so imperiously and directly incumbent on people . . .
that it makes waiting for the saving actions of an all-powerful God impossible
without degradation’ (374). But although this sense of obligation to the Other
makes the concept of God more difficult, ‘it also makes it spiritually closer than
confidence in any kind of theodicy’ (374).
Levinas notes that there is gratuitous suffering behind even ‘reasonable’
forms of suffering, in wars and the oppression of the weak by the strong (375).
Western humanity has tried to find meaning in the idea of ‘a kingdom of
transcendent ends, willed by a benevolent wisdom, by the absolute goodness
of a God who is in some way defined by this supernatural goodness; or
a widespread, invisible goodness in Nature and History, where it would com-
mand the paths which are, to be sure, painful, but which lead to the Good’
(375). In these ways, Levinas suggests, pain is said to be made meaningful
because it is subordinate ‘to the metaphysical finality envisaged by faith or by
a belief in progress’ (375).
Such beliefs, he argues, are presupposed by theodicy, ‘the grand idea necessary
to the inner peace of souls in our distressed world’ which ‘is called upon to make
sufferings here below comprehensible’ (376). Theodicy appeals to ‘an original
fault or to the congenital finitude of human being’ and explains the prevalence of
evil in our world as part of an overall plan (376). Suffering is said to atone for sin,
or compensation at the end of time is offered. Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716)
suggests that the aim of theodicy is to make suffering bearable. Levinas notes that
theodicy was named by Leibniz in 1710 but suggests that it is at least as old as the
interpretation of the bible in which Israel’s fate is said to be due to sin – their own
and their ancestors’ – and the Christian idea of Original Sin.
While there have been many examples of evil and suffering in the twentieth
century, Levinas suggests that the Holocaust of the Jewish people is ‘the
paradigm of gratuitous human suffering’ (377). If justifying our neighbour’s
pain is ‘the source of all immorality’ (378), what meaning can religion and
goodness have after the end of theodicy? (378) He suggests that, for Emil
Fakenheim (1916–2003), it is important that Jews should maintain their beliefs
and practices, since failure to do so would constitute an unwitting completion
of Hitler’s plan (378). But for Levinas it is not just the Jewish people but the
whole of humankind who must continue the Sacred History by upholding
a faith without theodicy which calls us to compassion for those who suffer –
a kind of non-useless, and therefore meaningful, suffering – and to help them
gratuitously, ‘without concern for reciprocity’ (379–380).
6.4 Hadot on Meaning and the Fear of Death

In his Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to
Foucault, Hadot offers an alternative response to evil and, in particular, the
fear of death, which draws on the Platonic tradition.
Hadot argues that, in the Phaedo, Socrates prefers the Good, thought and
conscience to bodily existence which means that, if philosophy privileges ‘the
higher demands of thought’ over bodily survival, philosophy may be regarded
as ‘the training and apprenticeship for death’ (1995 [1981]: 94). Hadot suggests
that Platonic spiritual exercises prompt us to leave behind our individual
concerns in order to see the world from a universal perspective; once we
have attained this state, we are no longer concerned about ourselves as indivi-
duals (94–95). Therefore, when we experience misfortune, we are able to
remain serene, consider what has happened, and use our reason to work out
the best response in our new situation (96).
Hadot suggests that, for Plato, the person who has tasted the immortality of
thought ‘cannot be frightened by the idea of being snatched away from sensible
life’, while, for the follower of Epicurus (341–270 BCE), ‘the thought of death
is the same as the consciousness of the finite nature of existence, and it is this
which gives an infinite value to each instant’ (1995 [1981]: 95). For the
Epicurean, Hadot argues, each moment ‘surges forth laden with incommensur-
able value’ (95–96). If we believe that each new day will be our last, then we
will ‘receive each unexpected hour with gratitude’ (Horace, Letter, I, 4, 13–14;
quoted in Hadot (1995 [1981]: 96)).
Hadot suggests that, for Plotinus (204–270 CE), the immateriality of the soul
can be seen if we examine it in its pure state. To do this we must do as the sculptor
does in order to make a beautiful statue when ‘he removes one part, scrapes
another, makes one area smooth, and cleans the other, until he causes the beautiful
face in the statue to appear’. Similarly, we, too, should sculpt our own statues, in
the process of which we should ‘remove everything that is superfluous, straighten
up that which is crooked, and purify all that is dark’ until it becomes brilliant. This
work should be unceasing, until our statues shine with ‘the divine splendour of
virtue’ (Plotinus, Ennead, 1, 6, 9, 8–26; quoted in Hadot (1995 [1981]: 100)).

Hadot observes that the writings of Plotinus are full of spiritual exercises, ‘the
goal of which was not merely to know the Good, but to become identical with it, in
a complete annihilation of individuality’ (101).
(A more wide-ranging account of the problem of existential evil in con-
tinental philosophy 1950–2010 may be found in Burns, 2018.)
Section 7: Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Jantzen and

Anderson
7.1 Feminist Philosophy of Religion
Feminist philosophy of religion as a distinctive discipline emerged in the late
1990s with the publication of a special edition of the feminist philosophy
journal Hypatia in 1994, followed by Pamela Sue Anderson’s A Feminist
Philosophy of Religion and Grace Jantzen’s Becoming Divine: Towards
a Feminist Philosophy of Religion in 1998. Anderson’s Re-visioning Gender
in Philosophy of Religion: Reason, Love and Epistemic Locatedness, derived
from a collection of papers produced in the intervening years, was published in
2012. Both Jantzen and, to a lesser extent, Anderson draw on the tradition of
French poststructuralism and, in particular, on the work of the French feminist
philosophers Luce Irigaray (b. 1930), Julia Kristeva (b. 1941) and Michèle Le
Doeuff (b 1948). Their key concerns are broadly twofold. First, they argue that
the methods typically employed by analytic philosophers are disadvantageous
to women. Secondly, they claim that the concept of God most commonly
discussed by analytic philosophers is a male God with attributes, particularly
power, which are usually ascribed to – and often abused by – male human
beings.
7.2 Philosophical Methods

Anderson and Jantzen suggest that, since the time of Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500
BCE), the use of reason has been associated with masculinity, while the
feminine has been associated with the body and physical matter. Anderson
claims that women philosophers have therefore ‘had to deny their femaleness in
order to achieve recognition as rational subjects; or they have had to fail as the
female in order to be acknowledged as philosophers’ (1998: 8). In her later
work, however, she suggests that apparent differences in the reasoning skills of
men and women may have been caused by lack of education, and the social
situations in which the majority of women have lived their lives. Indeed, at the
time of writing (2018), the University of London is celebrating the 150th
anniversary of the first year in which women were permitted to sit examinations
at the University, the first time in Britain that women were admitted to
university – and even then there were special examinations for women.
Anderson draws our attention to the work of a number of women philosophers,
including Anne Conway (1631–79), Catharine Cockburn (1679–1749), and
Mary Astell (1666–1731), who did, nonetheless, manage to produce a limited
number of works in the philosophy of religion (Anderson, 2012: 5–6).
The main force of Anderson’s and Jantzen’s objection to the use of reason is
therefore not that women are disadvantaged because they are inherently less
skilled than men in the use of reason, but that adversarial arguments which
focus on fault-finding rather than creative development (Jantzen, 1998: 70) are
off-putting to women – and some men – who value ‘creativity, nurture, and
a non-competitive stance’ (Jantzen, 1998: 71).
7.2.1 Feminist Poststructuralism
Jantzen draws on the work of scholars such as Irigaray to argue that we need to
deconstruct the concepts of divinity which we have inherited from previous
generations in order to identify the ways in which these concepts disadvantage
women, and to clear a space in which to reconstruct more beneficial concepts of
divinity (Jantzen, 1998: 3). For Jantzen, the interpretation of Sigmund Freud
(1856–1939) found in the work of Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) shows that we
must work on the human psyche throughout our lives; it is not something which
we are ‘given’. For Lacan, Freud taught us that we repress our unacceptable
desires in order to conform to ‘the Law or Name of the Father’ (Jantzen, 1998:
9), the patriarchal or religious structure of the demands which society places
upon us. Jantzen notes that, after Lacan, the notion of ‘the symbolic’ came to be
used by French thinkers to refer to every aspect of a civilization, including its
religion, each of which is called a ‘discourse’ (Jantzen 1998: 9–10). Following
Irigaray again, Jantzen suggests that theories which claim that there is a single
interpretation of each discourse should be ‘disrupted’ – pulled apart – and that
we need to construct a new discourse, that of the ‘feminine imaginary’ – i.e.,
a collection of narratives and images which includes the contributions of
women as well as men. Jantzen argues that it is the religious discourse which
is most in need of disruption because, in the Minority world (also known as the
Western world), the religious discourse is the lynchpin of the symbolic
(Jantzen, 1998: 12). Since religion provides us with a ‘horizon’, ‘an ideal
wholeness to which we aspire’ (Jantzen, 1998: 12), if the religious discourse
and the symbolic of which it is a part construct our human reality by means of
myths which are detrimental to the wellbeing of women, they must be recon-
structed with new, more inclusive, myths which promote the flourishing of both
women and men.
7.2.2 Feminist Standpoint Epistemology

Anderson, too, employs the idea of the imaginary, although, for her, it is Le
Doeuff’s idea of ‘the philosophical imaginary’ which is influential. For Le
Doeuff, the philosophical imaginary is the narratives and images, and the
implications of these for beliefs about the relative value of men and women,
which support philosophical arguments in works of philosophy. For Anderson,
the philosophical imaginary in philosophy of religion is Minority world patri-
archy which favours men over women and supports beliefs and myths about the
nature of divinity and humanity which privilege the masculine over the
feminine.
The main method which Anderson employs in order to overcome the
influence of patriarchy on philosophy of religion – clearly evident in the earlier
book, although largely implicit in the later volume – is that of feminist
standpoint epistemology. According to Anderson, feminist standpoint episte-
mology requires that we try to ask and answer questions from the perspective of
the less privileged in order to obtain unbiased knowledge. This should lead us
to reject a belief such as the claim that a virgin mother gave birth to a male god
on the grounds that this belief was constructed and regarded as true by men, and
supports belief in the masculinity of divinity and the impossible ideal of virgin
motherhood (Anderson, 1998: 132).
In order to redress the balance, Anderson recommends that we use myths or
mimesis – i.e., the imitation of reality in the form of narrative (144). She argues
that, unlike philosophy, myths can represent characters who are embodied,
experience emotions and act in time and space (176). Drawing on Kant’s claim
that transcendental ideas which cannot be known by means of experience
cannot be constitutive of knowledge and must therefore be regarded as reg-
ulative – i.e., as a means of organising our knowledge – she claims that myths
cannot tell us about that which transcends human experience; rather, they are
stories which point us towards a practical course of action. Myths are therefore
unable to tell us anything about a transcendent deity, but they can direct us
towards interpretations of divinity which promote the wellbeing of both women
and men.
Some myths, however, have a negative impact on the wellbeing of women.
For example, in the story of Adam and Eve, the male protagonist is associated
with ‘a good father-God’ and has to learn to be responsible, but the woman is
linked with the evil serpent and leads the man to temptation (151). Following
this, the good exemplars of both the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New
Testament are patriarchal men (153). Kristeva provides an example of
a disruptive imitation in her ‘Stabat Mater’ (1986 [1977]) in which the patri-
archal myth of the virgin mother is recorded on each left hand page, and
Kristeva’s own experience of motherhood is described on each facing page

(Anderson, 1998: 155).
Anderson herself gives two examples of new interpretations of old myths.
The first is the story of Antigone who, in Sophocles’ account, defies the king in
order to bury her brother. According to Anderson, this should be seen not as
obedience to a religious duty but as dissent from the command of the patri-
archal king (196). In her second example, from sixteenth century Rajasthan,
North India, Mirabai refuses to marry the prince, the Sisodya Rana of Chittor,
thereby rejecting a privileged life in order to live with the socially oppressed,
yearning and striving for social change (172–173; 176–178). As such, she
functions as a symbol of spiritual strength for the thought and life of
a community (229).
Feminist standpoint epistemology is therefore supplemented by the tools of
feminist poststructuralism. The feminist epistemologist begins by trying to
attain knowledge from the standpoint of those who are disadvantaged, but the
feminist poststructuralist can pull apart the myths which have been handed
down to us in order to identify the myths, or aspects of myths, which contribute
to disadvantage, and to reconstruct or create myths which support the spiritual
and practical wellbeing of the whole of humankind.
7.3 Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion

Both Jantzen and Anderson criticise analytic philosophers of religion for
focussing on a narrow range of topics within the discipline – predominantly
those concerned with the nature and existence of God – and showing little
interest in the practical application – both negative and positive – of their
arguments. By contrast, Jantzen and Anderson argue that the range of topics
considered should be modified or expanded to take these concerns into account.
There is space here to consider very briefly only three of these topics, but they
are, arguably, perhaps the most central topics for feminist philosophers of
religion – the nature of divinity and its practical implications for both women
and men, the existential problem of evil, and how we are to live with the
knowledge that we must die.
7.3.1 God
Feminist philosophers of religion often claim that the God of analytic philoso-
phy is a fictional human construction which idealises the disembodied values of
power and knowledge, traditionally ascribed to and valued in the human male
(Jantzen, 1998: 10). Even if, as Anderson seems to admit, God in Godself is
not a human construction (229), human attempts to describe the nature of
a transcendent God may still idealise attributes which have traditionally been
associated with the masculine. This idealisation can lead men to desire to be all-
powerful and all-knowing in their relationships with women, and thereby to
domination and abuse (Anderson, 2012: 90; 93). On a national and interna-
tional scale, it may also contribute to the widespread acceptance of militarism
in the Minority world (Jantzen, 1998: 221).
In response to this perceived difficulty (see Byrne, 1995, for an argument to
the effect that it results from a misunderstanding), Jantzen, and Anderson in her
earlier work, contend that women should ‘become divine’ (Jantzen, 1998: 17;
Anderson, 1998: 158). The idea is derived from the work of Irigaray but, for
Jantzen, it means that divinity, ‘that which is most respected and valued’,
should be understood as a type of pantheism and defined in such a way that it
‘means mutuality, bodiliness, diversity, and materiality’ (Jantzen, 1998: 269).
Instead of the domination and ultimate destruction of the earth, this would lead
to a ‘reverence and sensitivity’ which would be beneficial for the whole of
humankind (269).
The solution which Anderson appears to favour in her later work is that the
divine should not be thought of in personal, and therefore gendered, terms.
Feminist philosophers of religion should therefore search for new ways to say
that the whole of humankind encompasses both the human and the divine
(1998: 198). Since human beings are embodied, however, they need bodily
rituals and spiritual practices in order to develop as ethical beings and to
express their interrelatedness. The ultimate goal, she thinks, ‘is to find reasons
for shared actions with an ultimate telos, even if this is ultimately unreachable’
(2012: 202).
7.3.2 Evil and Death
Although the gendered nature of divinity is a key focus of feminist philosophy

of religion, the existential problem of evil and related concerns about how we
should live in the light of the knowledge that we must die are also of interest.
For example, Jantzen, responding to discussions of the problem of evil in
analytic philosophy, suggests that the main concern of these philosophers is
to work out how a good God allows suffering, which is tantamount to finding
a way to justify evil, when it is much more important to focus on how we can
work together to alleviate suffering (Jantzen, 1998: 146). Jantzen also argues
that analytic philosophers spend too much time debating what happens to the
human soul after death, and not enough time on saving souls in this world by
meeting their basic human needs for food, clean water, and healthcare (146).
She therefore argues that philosophers should focus not on what happens to us
after death but on natality, the opportunities we have as a consequence of being
born – an idea borrowed from Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) – and on working to

provide better living conditions for the whole of humankind (Jantzen, 1998:
147; 259–264).
(A more detailed account of feminist philosophy of religion, with analysis,
may be found in Burns (2012) and (2017).)
Section 8: Concluding Reflections

8.1 An Overview
In this book, I have offered an outline of some of the key elements in con-
tinental philosophy of religion. Each philosopher has been concerned, in
various ways, with the question of whether we can identify or construct and
commit to a form of belief and practice which enables us to address the
problems of human existence, primarily suffering and our inevitable death,
thereby promoting human flourishing.
In section 2, we considered the nature of faith in the work of Hegel and
Kierkegaard. We saw that Hegel argues that the God of ‘picture-thinking’
is dead, and that there has been a spiritual resurrection of a universal
self-consciousness, Absolute Spirit. In the second part of section 2, we
examined selected elements from the work of Kierkegaard who aims to
overcome the ‘leveling’ of his age – the inability to distinguish between
that which has value and that which does not – in order to renew
Christianity. He suggests to his readers, often by means of indirect com-
munication, that each of us needs to make a personal commitment to live in
the sphere of Religiousness B, a commitment to something which is both
paradoxical and transformational.
In section 3, we examined the atheism of Nietzsche and Heidegger. In the
first part of the section we explored Nietzsche’s thought on the death of God
and the will to power which can enable us to realise the value of superabundant
life. We saw that the ‘Übermensch’ is the form of humanity which acknowl-
edges that it is the product of the will to power. In the second part of Section 3,
we considered Heidegger’s work on the nature of ‘Dasein’, our shared way of
life, as ‘Being-in-the-world’ of which an inescapable aspect is ‘Being-towards-
death’. In the light this understanding, our best strategy for living is to accept
the nature of our existence and forthcoming demise, and to make an authentic
choice from the possibilities which remain available to us.
Section 4 was concerned with the existentialism of Rosenzweig and Tillich.
In the first part of the section, we considered Rosenzweig’s argument that we
should not seek knowledge of the ‘essences’ of God, the world and humankind,
but that we should simply accept what our experience tells us about these things
and focus on practical action in everyday life. In the second part, we saw that
Tillich describes God as the symbol for our ultimate concern, the existence of
which can be verified by means of experience. He recommends that we should
have faith in the power afforded to us by existence, no matter what the
circumstances, in the light of which we are enabled to live courageously.
Section 5 was concerned with deconstruction and religious belief in the work
of Derrida and Caputo. Caputo notes that, contrary to some interpretations, the
purpose of deconstruction is not to deny reference but to alert us to the fact that
questions about reference are more complex than was previously thought.
Derrida, too, argues for a version of the death of God, this time as
a consequence of the demands of morality, which requires us to act as if God
is not concerned for our salvation. He argues, instead, for ‘the messianic
without messianism’ – for the coming, without expectation, of peace and
justice – and for protest against radical evil inspired by the two sources of
religion, the experience of the holy and the experience of faith or belief.
In section 6 we examined the existential problem of evil in the work of
Nietzsche, Levinas, and Hadot. Nietzsche argues for ‘the personal necessity of
distress’, while Levinas claims that, although we may choose to find some
positive value in our own suffering, the suffering of others is unpardonable and
our task is therefore to work to prevent or alleviate it. Hadot addresses suffering
in the form of fear of death and recommends spiritual exercises derived from
ancient Greek philosophy which might help us both to be grateful for each
moment of life, and to divest ourselves of concern for our continuing existence
as individuals.
Finally, in section 7, we considered the feminist philosophy of religion of
Jantzen and Anderson. We saw that they employ the methods of feminist
poststructuralism and feminist standpoint epistemology to identify concepts
of divinity which might be detrimental to women and to reconstruct or create
new religious myths which might contribute to the flourishing of both women
and men.
In each section, I have aimed to set out as clearly as possible some of the key
elements in the thought of each of the philosophers whose work I have con-
sidered. Necessarily, each exposition is an interpretation, often in a field in
which there are several alternative interpretations. Analysis of each position
seems initially inappropriate, given that each scholar has, at least to a large
extent, rejected the methods of analytical philosophy, and the secondary litera-
ture includes publications which focus on interpretation, comparison, and/or
application. Nevertheless, in the next two parts of this section I will revisit
questions about the need for clarity of expression, and how, without the kind of
reasoning employed in analytical philosophy of religion, we are to choose
between the philosophical world-views set out by each philosopher. In the final
section, I will look forward to the future of continental-style philosophy of
religion and argue that a hybrid of analytic and continental philosophy might
more effectively serve the needs of contemporary philosophy of religion.
8.2 Clarity and Precision

In aphorism 173 of The Gay Science, on ‘Being profound and seeming pro-
found’, Nietzsche says: ‘Those who know that they are profound strive for
clarity. Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive for
obscurity. For the crowd believes that if it cannot see to the bottom of some-
thing it must be profound. It is so timid and dislikes going into the water.’ (1974
[1887, 1882] 173: 201). Since, arguably, Nietzsche is the only scholar of those
we have considered in this book to have written in a style which is, at least at
first sight, clear to the reader, this criticism may be taken to apply to many, if not
most, of the writers whose work we have examined.
For many of these scholars, however, lack of clarity is part of a deliberate
strategy. We saw that Kierkegaard often adopts pseudonyms in order to exam-
ine different and often conflicting points of view, and to conceal his own
identity in case this might have a negative influence upon the mind of the
reader. The complexity of his narratives is intended to reflect the complexity of
the questions discussed, and to encourage the reader to think for herself and
come to her own conclusions, prompted, but not influenced, by the writings
presented to her.
In his paper ‘The New Thinking’, Rosenzweig is primarily concerned with
the method and content of The Star of Redemption, but his sarcastic comments
on method may be more widely applicable. He notes a common tendency for
the reader to focus mainly on the first few pages of philosophical books and to
treat these ‘with special reverence’ because he thinks that ‘they are to be the
basis for all that follows’ (2000 [1925]: 112). The reader therefore thinks that
he can refute the whole book by refuting the first few pages of it. This is the
reason why the general reader of philosophical books is so helpless. He thinks
that such books are logical, insofar as each sentence depends upon the one
which precedes it, and therefore that, when one stone of the argument is
removed, the whole edifice falls down. But, Rosenzweig suggests, ‘this is
nowhere less the case than in philosophical books’ (113), in which a sentence
follows not from the one which precedes it but more probably from the one
which comes after it. Therefore, someone who has not understood a sentence or
paragraph is not advised to read it again, or to start again from the beginning;
rather, ‘[p]hilosophical books defy the methodological ancien regime strategy
that thinks it may not leave any unconquered fortresses in the rear; they want to
be conquered in a Napoleonic manner, in a bold advance on the enemy’s main
force, after whose defeat the small border fortresses will fall on their own.
Therefore, he who fails to understand something may expect enlightenment
most certainly if he courageously reads on.’ (113). Thinking differs from
writing because one thought can lead to ‘a thousand relations’, whereas ‘in
writing, these thousand relations must be neatly arranged on a string of
a thousand lines’ (113). This means that, if a philosophical book is worthy of
the reader’s attention, ‘it surely requires that one does not understand the
beginning, or, at the very least, [that one] understands it wrongly. For otherwise
the thought that it conveys will hardly be worth rethinking; since one already
knows what “it is supposed to be driving at” at the beginning of its argument,
one obviously already knows the thought.’ (114)
Derrida, too, thinks that philosophy of religion is impossible because ‘“[t]he
thing” [i.e., religion] tends . . . to drop out of sight as soon as one believes
oneself able to master it under the title of a discipline, a knowledge or
a philosophy.’ (2002 [1998, 1996]: 35: 76). Indeed, he suggests that a request
‘to state a position in a few pages on religion’ is ‘monstrous’, given that ‘a
serious treatise on religion would demand the construction of new Libraries of
France and of the universe, even if, not believing that one is thinking anything
new, one would content oneself with remembering, archiving, classifying,
taking note in a memoir, of what one believes one already knows.’ (35: 76).
Nevertheless, lack of clarity and excessive complexity might also obscure
the transformational message which these scholars wish to convey – at least for
all but the most able and determined of readers. Some scholars have provided
us with their own commentary on their narrative texts – e.g. Kierkegaard (1998
[1848]), Nietzsche (1967 [1908]), and Rosenzweig (2000 [1925]) – or
a simplified version of their key ideas – e.g. Rosenzweig (1999 [1953]) – and
perhaps it is important for the reader to read such texts alongside the texts
which they seek to elucidate. But, as John Cottingham (b. 1943), whose work
I will consider in Section 8.4, illustrates, it is also possible – and, indeed,
important – to construct texts in which the meaning is clearly and concisely
conveyed without over-simplification, but which still leave room for discussion
regarding the nature of their subject matter.
8.3 Verification, Falsification and Rationality

Even if we are able to find a way through the obscurity of expression and
complexity in the works we have considered, however, how are we to choose
between the worldviews which are presented to us? Paul Edwards objects to
Tillich’s notion of Being-itself on the grounds that it is not, even in principle,

observable – i.e., that its existence is not verifiable – and that belief in it is
compatible with any conceivable state of affairs; there is nothing which could
falsify Tillich’s belief that Being-itself is actual (Edwards, 1999: 108). This
objection could also be applied to Heidegger’s concept of Being, or, indeed, to
any of the other worldviews and concepts of divinity which we have considered
in this book.
There are, however, forms of verification or falsification for these scholars,
although they are configured differently from those which we find in analytic
philosophy of religion. Rosenzweig remarks upon ‘the comical circumstance
that philosophy is a university discipline, complete with professorships which
have to be occupied, and freshmen who let “Philosophy Major” be printed on
their calling cards’ (2000: 135) and ‘students who never get beyond the stage of
being students’ who ‘are the norm to such an extent that they do not notice it,
even to the point of their retirement at seventy’, as a consequence of which
‘they take the kind of epistemology that is certainly appropriate for school
exercises to be the only one’ (135).
For Heidegger, a kind of revelation comes in the form of the Augenblick,
which literally means ‘eye-glance’ and is translated ‘moment of vision’ by John
Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (Heidegger 1962 [1927] §338: 387).
Dreyfus and Rubin note that this is the term which Luther uses for what is
described by the King James Bible as the ‘twinkling of an eye’ when ‘we shall
all be changed’ (1991: 321). Heidegger draws on Kierkegaard’s concept of the
Oieblik (1962 [1927]: 338 note iii, 497). In the work of Kierkegaard, the
Oieblik is the point in time at which I choose to make an unconditional
commitment, although the effects of this commitment may be eternal.
In Heidegger, the Augenblik is the moment at which there is a ‘gestalt switch
of Dasein’s way of being-in-the-world from inauthenticity to authenticity’
(Dreyfus and Rubin, 1991: 321). Heidegger suggests that the term should be
understood in an ‘active sense as an ecstasis. It means the resolute rapture with
which Dasein is carried away to whatever possibilities and circumstances are
encountered in the Situation as possible objects of concern.’ (1962 [1927]
§338: 387). This ‘moment’ is non-temporal because it affects the way in
which Dasein understands both its past and future life. Kierkegaard’s concept
of the Oieblik also appears as the Augenblick in the work of Rosenzweig
(Rosenzweig, 2000 [1925]: 136).
Such revelation might occur as a consequence of reading a narrative. We saw
in section 2.2.1 that Kierkegaard, in particular, frequently employs a narrative
style of writing, attributed to various pseudonymous authors. And we saw in
section 4.1.2 that Rosenzweig refers to the second volume of The Star of
Redemption as ‘narrative philosophy’ (2000 [1925]: 121). The use of this

method is particularly clear in Understanding the Sick and the Healthy.
Hilary Putnam suggests that although, in this book, Rosenzweig appears to
be recommending that we should give up philosophy, he is really recommend-
ing another kind of philosophy. He does not argue for the absurdity of meta-
physics; rather, this is ‘something that he tries to make us feel by ironic
redescription’ (2008: 29). Putnam suggests that his use of irony and parable
remind us of The Pilgrim’s Progress, and that the book might equally well have
been called The Patient’s Progress (20).
But how do we know whether revelation is genuine? We have already seen
(in section 4.2.1) that Tillich argues for experiential verification, and many of
the other scholars whose work we have considered make a similar case for
a form of revelation supported by experience. Rosenzweig rejects what he
regards as the old epistemology, which was based on ‘noncontradictoriness-
theory and object theory’ (2000 [1925]: 135), in favour of a ‘new epistemol-
ogy’ which focuses on the verification of truth for someone, as opposed to
verification of something as it ‘really is’, irrespective of for whom it is true.
The static concept of objectivity is thereby replaced by a dynamic concept of
objectivity. Rosenzweig argues for a ‘messianic theory of knowledge’ which
ranks truths in accordance with the price which must be paid in order to verify
them and the extent to which they foster a spirit of community amongst
humankind. Thus, at the bottom of the hierarchy there are ‘unimportant truths
of the type “two times two is four,” on which people easily agree, with no other
expense than a little bit of brainpower’, with the multiplication table requiring
less brainpower and the theory of relativity rather more. In the middle of the
hierarchy are truths for which humankind are willing to pay, above these are
truths which can be verified only by sacrificing one’s life and, at the top of the
hierarchy, we find truths which can be verified ‘only by risking the life of
all generations’ (136). Regarding belief in a coming Messiah, however,
Rosenzweig suggests that the messianic theory of knowledge is unable to
help us avoid this risk for truth, with respect to which ‘verification stands
only with God Himself, the truth is One only before Him’ (136).
The notion of truth as truth ‘for someone’ is also utilised by later scholars.
For example Derrida and feminist philosophers of religion, both those who
employ Derrida’s method of deconstruction and those who favour standpoint
epistemology, are particularly concerned with the ethical, social and political
consequences of beliefs. They use these to measure the extent to which beliefs
might be detrimental to humankind or subsets of humankind and to interpret or
create narratives in such a way that they are more likely to enable human
flourishing.
Whether or not an interpretation of a religious text can legitimately amount

to a re-writing of that text is, however, debatable. Can we re-write the story of
Adam and Eve, for example? It is hard to imagine an alternative story of the
creation being accepted as scriptural and read in a Christian church. But there
are alternative interpretations. For example, Bruce Epperly speaks not of Eve’s
temptation of Adam and its dreadful consequences but of the mythical couple
who eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and ‘experience the
complexity and dissonance of life for the first time’ (Epperly, 2014). We can
also draw attention to stories which have, to a greater or lesser extent, been
marginalised – for example, that of Deborah, the only female judge mentioned
in the Hebrew Bible.
I have argued elsewhere (Burns, 2017) that we can simply discard narratives
which are likely to have detrimental consequences, such as the so-called
Imprecatory Psalms (which request divine judgement upon the writer’s ene-
mies). But, in philosophy of religion, can we discard concepts of the divine as
omnipotent? And should we cease to consider topics central to analytic philo-
sophy of religion such as the problem of evil, and the question of whether
humankind can reasonably hope for an immortal existence?
Peter Byrne (1995) has argued that the philosophical concept of divinity
differs from humankind to such an extent that we cannot deduce from the
concept of divine omnipotence that we should value god-like power in
humankind. Furthermore, Byrne argues, divinity encompasses not only
power but justice, love, and mercy, which means that divine power, unlike
some applications of human power, is not abusive. We could, perhaps,
argue that to speak of the divine in terms of the metaphor of fatherhood
is to privilege the male and that we should, instead, adopt the extended and
inclusive model of parenthood, especially since, in the New Testament, the
genderless Greek word for the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Christian
concept of the divine Trinity, is likely translated from a feminine Aramaic
word (see Burns, 2017). Alternatively, as Nancy Frankenberry suggests, we
might accept a genderless concept of the divine as ‘the idea of that which
energizes all things’ (2004: 13).
Topics such as the problem of evil and the likelihood of post-mortem
existence should not be discarded, however. Feminist philosophers of religion
might be right to argue that debate about these questions should not be
conducted in such a way that the participants appear to be predominantly
interested in the form and quality – or otherwise – of the argument, with little
or no apparent concern for whether or not the conclusions reached are likely to
be helpful to those who seek a meaningful life. There may also be an element of
truth in the claim that analytic philosophers of religion who address the
problem of evil are trying to justify evil, but this is likely to be motivated by
desire to find a way in which those who suffer can find or maintain a belief
which will help them to cope better with their suffering. For continental
philosophers of religion who might be less tied to the classical concept of
God, with its attendant and apparently contradictory attributes of omnipotence
and goodness, the problem is different, but the problem remains in the form of
the existential problem of evil. Similarly, most human beings display some
degree of curiosity – and, indeed, concern – about what will happen to them,
their family and friends when they die. Although it is clearly impossible to
construct a watertight argument for post-mortem existence, just as there is an
existential problem of evil, so there is an existential problem of death, to which
scholars such as Heidegger, Tillich and Jantzen, among many others, have
attempted to offer a solution.
Arguably, Rosenzweig’s life served as a form of verification for his world-
view. Nahum Glatzer suggests that, during his final years, ‘Rosenzweig . . .
verified under the most tragic circumstances what he had professed in his book
[Understanding the Sick and the Healthy]; a victory over the “nothings” that
threaten man’s freedom to think and act; an affirmation of the three factors –
God, world, man – whose relationships constitute reality; a passionate devotion
to human language; a love of life and an acceptance of death.’ (1998: 33).
Glatzer suggests that, although it is possible to reject Rosenweig’s reflections,
his life cannot be contradicted.
This does, however, raise the question of how we are to regard the
philosophical thought of an author whose life was far from perfect. For
example, it is well-known that Heidegger joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and
remained a member until its abolition at the end of the Second World War.
Although he attempted to defend his association with Nazism in the Der
Spiegel interview, conducted in 1966 but published posthumously in 1976 at
Heidegger’s request, there is significant evidence of Heidegger’s anti-
Semitism and Nazi sympathies. Opinion is divided on the question of
whether this was a consequence of his philosophical position or a personal
mistake which should not affect the reception of his philosophical ideas.
Either way, if we are to judge the value of a philosophy by assessing its
practical impact, this does seem to require a negative judgement of the work
of Heidegger – unless we also take into account the positive influence of his
thought on the work of other scholars such as Tillich, who opposed the Nazi
Party. Nevertheless, no human being, and therefore no philosopher of
religion, can lead an exemplary life in every respect for the whole duration
of his or her life. Perhaps we should, therefore, following Derrida and those
he has influenced, regard the ideas as having a kind of ‘life of their own’,
a life which we may choose to prolong if, on balance, they contribute, at

least for the most part, to human wisdom and human flourishing.
8.4 Future Directions

Although, as we have seen, Kierkegaard has been called the father of existen-
tialism and, in the twentieth century, the work of both Rosenzweig and Tillich
has been described as existentialist, it could be argued that the work of all the
scholars we have considered in this book is, in some respects, existentialist.
They are all particularly concerned to address the problems which are an
integral part of the nature of human existence – questions about our place in
the world and our difficulty in coming to terms with suffering and our inevi-
table death – and to contribute to the repository of human wisdom which shows
us how, despite our difficulties, we can be transformed to live meaningful,
flourishing lives.
The baton is being carried forward by a number of scholars, most of whom
space does not permit me to consider here, but the recent work of Cottingham,
in particular, represents a future direction for philosophy of religion which
I would argue has much to commend it. In his book Philosophy of Religion:
Towards a More Humane Approach (2014), he examines, with exemplary
clarity, a number of the ideas addressed by the scholars whose work I have
considered in this book, in particular the need to address human suffering
(Chapter 5), and the need to find a way to live with the knowledge that we
must die which does not depend upon the expectation of some kind of post-
mortem consolation (Chapter 6). In Chapter 7, drawing on Hadot’s notion of
philosophy as a way of life (2014: 149–150), he concludes that ‘[t]raditional
spiritual exercises . . . aimed at interior purification . . . will enable us to live
worthwhile and meaningful lives despite our human weakness and vulnerabil-
ity.’ (174) Cottingham suggests that it is the regular daily, weekly, and monthly
practices which sustain a religious life, and that this might include both
personal and communal practices. The individual might, for example, begin
her day with a time of silence and meditation in order to focus on her gratitude
for ‘the gift of life and the blessing of another day’ (175), and to summon the
strength to perform well the tasks of the coming day. Since an individual
practice can be difficult to sustain, she might also belong to a community of
religious practitioners with a formal structure, probably developed over many
centuries, which is ‘aimed at nurturing the integration of the self and fostering
moral maturity and orientation towards an objective source of goodness.’ (175)
There will be a regular pattern of weekly observance, and patterns of worship
which recognise the seasons of the liturgical year.
Cottingham also notes that, in his book, ‘there has been no shortage . . . of the
standard logical techniques of argument and counterargument, objections and
replies, analysis and clarification, which have always been part of philosophical
inquiry from its earliest beginnings.’ (150) Indeed, even Jantzen acknowledges
that it can be helpful to develop critical reasoning skills and to know the
classical and contemporary arguments in philosophy of religion in order to
counter various forms of fundamentalism, especially since these often include
teaching which feminists would consider misogynistic (Jantzen, 1998: 69),
while Anderson acknowledges that we need reason in order to argue against
injustice (Anderson, 1998: 55). But Cottingham, drawing on the work of
Eleanore Stump (2010) and Martha Nussbaum (1990) in particular, employs
not only the methods of analytic philosophy but also elements such as scriptural
examples and references to poetry and literature which are intermingled with
the arguments. These elements are not simply illustrative of philosophical
arguments which would be capable of standing independently; they are,
Cottingham argues, ‘an integral part of the way philosophy needs to conduct
itself if it is to aspire to a synoptic vision of reality as a whole’ (2014: 150). He
suggests that they are like hyperlinks in an electronic text which give access to
‘an entire network of connections, connotations, allusions and references’
(151). He suggests that it is at least possible that they deepen philosophical
understanding in ways which would not have been possible by means of
philosophical analysis alone.
In this book, I have tried to show that what Cottingham refers to as ‘the
narrative or literary turn in philosophy’ (7) has a long history, running back
almost to the beginnings of what has come to be called continental philosophy
of religion in the work of Kierkegaard, and featuring in the work of
Rosenzweig, who identifies Schelling as the original source of this method –
although, arguably, in Kierkegaard and Rosenzweig we find philosophy as
narrative, rather than philosophy which draws on narratives.
Cottingham also refers to understanding as something which is achieved not
‘in a detached analytic way but in an involved and experiential way’ (171).
We need to enter a form of life before we attempt to judge it. This, again, echoes
Rosenzweig’s ‘experiential philosophy of religion’ (2000 [1925]: 117) which
rejects the philosopher’s notion of essences and focuses on what experience can
tell us, discovering ‘only the human in man, only worldliness in the world, only
divinity in God’ (116–117).
Cottingham suggests that the risk of entering a form of life is akin to that
described in Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress in which there may be gates
which are made difficult to find and enter by the sacrifice required but which,
nonetheless, lead to new and transformational experiences. Again, this is
similar to the gate which we find at the end of Rosenzweig’s The Star of
Redemption. Outside of the gate, most human beings will experience what
Cottingham calls ‘intimations of the transcendent’ – reminiscent of, although
perhaps weaker than, the Oieblick of Kierkegaard and the Augenblik of
Heidegger. In such moments, says Cottingham, ‘we have glimpses of the
compelling and authoritative power of beauty and moral goodness that call us
to transcend ourselves and reach forward to something we are not yet, but might
yet become’ (2014: 172).
Thus, perhaps what philosophy of religion needs is a hybrid methodology –
one which draws on both the reasoning skills of analytical philosophy and the
existential emphasis and broader range of tools, some originating in cognate
disciplines, of continental philosophy. Although analytic philosophy of reli-
gion cannot demonstrate without doubt the nature and existence of divinity, it
can point us towards systems of belief which are more, or less, likely to be true.
Believing that there are fairies at the bottom of my garden might make me
happy for a while, but happiness based on a belief which is unlikely to be true is
precarious. Within the set of beliefs which are more, rather than less, likely to
be true, however, there remains a broad range of choice, and it is here that
verification and falsification achieved by means of revelation, empiricism, and
pragmatism based on the spiritual, moral, social, and political consequences of
beliefs can play their part in helping us to choose our life-commitments. On this
basis, we might choose courses of action from the possibilities which are
available to us in our given circumstances, which might include giving our
attention to others and/or the matters of everyday life, and/or engaging in
spiritual exercises which enable us to see that we are part of a larger whole,
and/or deciding to live courageously, because, even in the presence of great
evil, there is something which exists. The clarity, precision and structure which
is commonly found in analytic philosophy of religion can then help us to
strengthen our arguments and broaden the appeal and practical impact of
philosophy of religion.
But what impact does – or can – philosophy of religion have on the billions of
people who believe – and those who do not? The methods of analytic philoso-
phy can help us to understand which beliefs are irrational, while the techniques
of continental philosophy can show us why some beliefs are spiritually,
morally, socially, or politically damaging, and how we might select from the
beliefs which have been handed down to us those which are truly transforma-
tional of individuals, communities, and nations. Even natural evils can be
combatted to some extent; for example, we can choose to devote our resources
to mitigating the effects of climate change which threatens the homes and
livelihoods of many inhabitants of the Majority world, or to researching the
diseases which endanger the lives of all living beings. But much suffering is the
direct or indirect consequence of human selfishness and greed – the desire to
keep for oneself or one’s family, community, or nation as large a share of the
world’s resources as it is possible to have, far in excess of that which is
necessary, at the expense of those who have insufficient food and/or water
and/or shelter to enable them to thrive and raise a family. Forms of belief which
help humankind to counter these problems might go some way towards addres-
sing our existential concerns regarding death since, when we reach the point at
which we, ourselves, must die, we will then know that we did all we could to
contribute to the wellbeing of the inhabitants of our planet, and to secure their
future. There, perhaps, lies immortality.
References
Where more than one work by the same author is listed, works are listed by
descending order of the dates of the first editions.
Agacinski, Sylviane (1998). We Are Not Sublime: Love and Sacrifice,

Abraham and Ourselves. In Jonathan Rée and Jane Chamberlin, eds.,
Kierkegaard: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell.
Anderson, Pamela Sue (2012). Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion:
Reason, Love and Epistemic Locatedness, Farnham: Ashgate.
(1998). A Feminist Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Blackwell.
Aylesworth, Gary (2015). Postmodernism. In Edward N. Zalta, ed.,
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2015 Edition), http://
plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2015/entries/postmodernism.
Behe, Michael (2003). The Modern Intelligent Design Hypothesis. In Neil
Manson, ed., God and Design, London and New York: Routledge.
Braiterman, Zachary (1998). Into Life? Franz Rosenzweig and the Figure of
Death. AJS Review, 23 (2), 203–221.
Bunyan, John (2008 [1678]). The Pilgrim’s Progress, London: Penguin.
Burns, Elizabeth (2018). Continental Philosophy. In Jerome Gellman, ed.,
The History of Evil from the Mid Twentieth Century to Today
(1950–2010), vol. VI of Chad Meister and Charles Taliaferro, eds., The
History of Evil, London: Routledge, 152–166.
(2017). Feminist Philosophy of Religion. In Donald M. Borchert, ed.,
Philosophy: Religion. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks:
Philosophy series, Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference
USA/Gale, a Cengage Company, 347–360; reprinted in Carol Hay, ed.,
(2017). Philosophy: Feminism. Macmillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks:
Philosophy series, Farmington Hills, MI: Macmillan Reference
USA/Gale, a Cengage Company), 363–375.
(2012). Is There a Distinctively Feminist Philosophy of Religion?
Philosophy Compass, 7 (6), 422–435.
Byrne, Peter (1995). Omnipotence, Feminism and God. International Journal
for Philosophy of Religion, 37(3), 145–165.
Caputo, John D. (2011). The Perversity of the Absolute, the Perverse Core of
Hegel, and the Possibility of Radical Theology. In Slavoj Žižek, Clayton
Crockett and Creston Davis, eds., Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics
and Dialectic, New York: Columbia University Press.
References 69
(1997). The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without

Religion, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Caputo, John D., Hart, Keven and Sherwood, Yvonne (2005). Epoché and
Faith: An Interview with Jacques Derrida. In Yyvonne Sherwood and
Kevin Hart, eds., Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments, London:
Routledge, 27–50.
Cert, Walter (1977). ‘Speculative Philosophy and Intellectual Intuition: An
Introduction to Hegel’s Essays’. In G. W. F. Hegel (1977a [1802]),
xi-xxxvi.
Cottingham, John (2014). Philosophy of Religion: Towards a More Humane
Approach, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Crowell, Steven (2016). Existentialism. In Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), http://plato.stanford
.edu/archives/win2017/entries/existentialism.
Cupitt, Don (1998). The Religion of Being. London: SCM Press.
Derrida, Jacques (2002 [1998, 1996]). Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources
of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone, Samuel Weber, trans. In Gil
Anidjar, ed. Jacques Derrida: Acts of Religion (2002), New York:
Routledge.
Derrida, Jacques (1978 [1967]). Writing and Difference, Alan Bass, trans.,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1997 [1967]). Of Grammatology, Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak, trans., Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Derrida, Jacques (1973 [1967]). Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on
Husserl’s Theory of Signs, David B. Allison, trans., Evanston:
Northwestern University Press.
Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Rubin, Jane (1991). Kierkegaard, Division II, and
Later Heidegger. In Dreyfus, Hubert L., ed., Being-in-the-World:
A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division I, Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 283–340.
Edwards, Paul (1999). Professor Tillich’s Confusions. In Nancy Frankenberry
and Hans H. Penner, eds., Language, Truth and Religious Belief, Atlanta,
Georgia: Scholars Press, 106–129.
Epperly, Bruce (2014). Lectionary Reflections for the first Sunday in Lent,
March 9 2014, www.patheos.com/blogs/livingaholyadventure/2014/03/
the-adventurous-lectionary-the-first-sunday-in-lent-march-9-2014/.
Frankenberry, Nancy (2004). Feminist approaches. In Pamela Sue Anderson
and Beverley Clack, eds., Critical Readings: Feminist Philosophy of
Religion, London: Routledge, 3–27.
70 References
Franks, Paul W., and Morgan, Michael L. (2000). From 1914 to 1917. In Paul
W. Franks and Michael L. Morgan, trans. and eds., Franz Rosenzweig,
Philosophical and Theological Writings, Indianopolis/Cambridge:
Hackett Publishing Company, 25–43.
Glatzer, Nahum N. (1999). Introduction. In Franz Rosenzweig (1999) 21–33.
Glatzer, Nahum N. (1998 [1961]). Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought,
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Hadot, Pierre (1995 [1981]). Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises
from Socrates to Foucault, Michael Chase, trans., Arnold I. Davidson, ed.,
Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hägglund, Martin (2015). The Autoimmunity of Religion. In Edward Baring
and Peter E. Gordon, eds., The Trace of God: Derrida and Religion, New
York: Fordham University Press, 178–198.
Harris, H. S. (1977). ‘Introduction to Faith and Knowledge’. In G. W. F. Hegel
(1977a [1802]), 1–50.
Harrison, Victoria (2006). The Pragmatics of Defining Religion in a Multi-
Cultural World. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 59 (3),
133–152.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (2007 [1987, 1985, 1984] [1821, 1824, 1827,
1831]. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion; Vol. 1: Introduction and
the Concept of Religion; Vol. 2: Determinate Religion; Vol. 3: The
Consummate Religion, Peter C. Hodgson, R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson
and J. M. Stewart, eds., H. S. Harris, trans., Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (2006 [1988] [1827]). Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion, Peter C. Hodgson, R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson
and J. M. Stewart, eds., H. S. Harris, trans., Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1977b [1807]). Phenomenology of Spirit, A.
V. Miller, trans., Oxford: Oxford University Press.
(1977a [1802]). Faith and Knowledge, Walter Cerf and H. S. Harris, trans.
and eds., New York: State University of New York Press.
Heidegger, Martin (1976 [1966]). Interview by Rudolf Augstein and
Georg Wolff, ‘Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten (Only a God Can
Save Us)’, on 23 September 1966, published 31 May 1976 in Der
Spiegel, 193–219.
Heidegger, Martin (1977 [1952]), The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God is Dead’. In
The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, William Lovitt,
trans., New York: Harper Torchbooks.
References 71
Heidegger, Martin (1962 [1927]). Being and Time, John Macquarrie and
Edward Robinson, trans., Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Hodgson, Peter C. (2005). Hegel and Christian Theology: A Reading of the
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H. (1988). Historical Introduction. In Søren
Kierkegaard (1988 [1845]).
Hong, Howard V. and Hong, Edna H. (1987). Historical Introduction. In Søren
Kierkegaard (1987 [1849, 1843]).
Jaeschke, Walter (1992). Philosophical Theology and Philosophy of Religion.
In David Kolb, ed., New Perspectives on Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion,
New York: State University of New York Press, 1–18.
Jantzen, Grace (1998). Becoming Divine: Towards a Feminist Philosophy of
Religion, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Kant, Immanuel (1996 [1793]). Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere
Reason, George di Giovanni, trans., in Allen W. Wood and George di
Giovanni, eds., Religion and Rational Theology, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kant, Immanuel (1929 [1787, 1781]). Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp
Smith, trans., London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd.
Kaufmann, Walter (1967). Editor’s Introduction. In Friedrich Nietzsche
(1967b [1887]).
Kearney, Richard (2005). Deconstruction, God, and the Possible. In Yvonne
Sherwood and Kevin Hart, eds., Derrida and Religion: Other Testaments,
London: Routledge, 297–307.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1941b [1850]). Training in Christianity, Walter Lowrie,
trans., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1954, 1941 [1849]). The Sickness Unto Death, Walter
Lowrie, trans., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1998 [1859, 1848]). The Point of View for My Work as an
Author, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, trans. and ed., Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1962 [1846]). The Present Age, Alexander Dru, trans.,
New York: Harper and Row.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1941a [1846]). Concluding Unscientific Postscript, David
F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, trans., Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1988 [1845]). Stages on Life’s Way, Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong, trans. and ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1980 [1844]). The Concept of Anxiety, Reidar Thomte and
Albert B. Anderson, trans., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
72 References
Kierkegaard, Søren (1962, 1936 [1844]). Philosophical Fragments, David F.

Swenson and Howard V. Hong, trans., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1983 [1843]). Repetition, Howard V. Hong and Edna H.
Hong, trans. and ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1983 [1843]). Fear and Trembling, Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong, trans. and ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1987a [1849, 1843]). Either/Or Part I, Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong, trans. and ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kierkegaard, Søren (1987b [1849, 1843]). Either/Or Part II, Howard V. Hong
and Edna H. Hong, trans. and ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kristeva, Julia (1986 [1977]. Stabat Mater. The Kristeva Reader, Toril Moi, ed.,
Oxford: Blackwell, 160–186.
Levinas, Emmanuel (2000 [1993]). Beginning with Heidegger. In God,
Death and Time, Bettina Bergo, trans., Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 121–125.
Levinas, Emmanuel (1988 [1982]). Useless Suffering. Richard Cohen, trans.,
in M. Larrimore, ed., The Problem of Evil, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,
371–380.
Lyotard, Jean-François (1984 [1979]). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge, Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi, trans., Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
McCance, Dawne (2009). Derrida on Religion: Thinker of Difference. London:
Routledge.
McDonald, William (2017). Søren Kierkegaard. In Edward N. Zalta, ed., The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 Edition), http://plato
.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/kierkegaard.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967a [1908]). Ecce Homo, Walter Kaufmann, trans.,
New York: Vintage Books.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2017 [1906, 1901]). The Will to Power: Selections from
the Notebooks of the 1880s, R. Kevin Hill and Michael A. Scarpitti, trans.,
London: Penguin Random House.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1954 [1889]). Twilight of the Idols. In Walter Kaufmann,
ed., The Portable Nietzsche, New York: Viking Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1967b [1887]). On the Genealogy of Morals, Walter
Kaufmann, trans., New York: Vintage Books.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (2006 [1883–1885]). Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for
All and None, Adrian Del Caro, trans., Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1974 [1887, 1882]). The Gay Science, Walter Kaufmann,
trans., New York: Vintage Books.
References 73
Nussbaum, Martha (1990). Love’s Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University

Press.
Oppenheim, Michael (2005). Foreword. In Franz Rosenzweig (2005).
Pattison, George (2005). The Philosophy of Kierkegaard, Chesham: Acumen.
Pascal, Blaise (2006 (1958) [1670]). Pensees, New York: E. P. Dutton and Co.,
Inc., available at www.gutenberg.org/files/18269/18269-h/18269-h.htm
Plantinga, Alvin (2011). Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and
Naturalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Polt, Richard (1999). Heidegger: An Introduction, Ithaca, New York: Cornell
University Press.
Poole, Roger (2004). Reading Either-Or for the Very First Time. In Elsebet
Jegstrup, ed., The New Kierkegaard, Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press, 42–58.
Putnam, Hilary (2008). Jewish Philosophy as a Guide to Life: Rosenzweig,
Buber, Levinas, Wittgenstein Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Redding, Paul (2017). Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In Edward N. Zalta,
ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 edition),
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/hegel.
Reiff, Philip (1955). Review of The Star of Redemption. The Journal of
Religion, 35 (4), 262–263.
Rosenzweig, Franz (1999 [1953]). Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A
View of World, Man, and God, Nahum N. Glatzer, ed., Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Rosenzweig, Franz (1935). Briefe, Edith Rosenzweig and Ernst Simon, ed.,
Berlin.
Rosenzweig, Franz (2000 [1925]). The New Thinking. Franz Rosenzweig,
Philosophical and Theological Writings, Paul W. Franks and Michael L.
Morgan, trans. and ed., Indianopolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing
Company, 109–139.
Rosenzweig, Franz (2005 [1919]). The Star of Redemption, Barbara E. Galli,
trans., Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Schlitt, Dale M. (2009). Divine Subjectivity: Understanding Hegel’s
Philosophy of Religion, Scranton: University of Scranton Press.
Smith, David Woodruff (2016). Phenomenology. In Edward N. Zalta, ed., The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2016 Edition), http://plato
.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/phenomenology.
Stump, Eleonore (2010). Wandering in Darkness, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Taylor, Mark C. (1975). Kierkegaard’s Pseudonymous Authorship: A Study of
Time and the Self, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
74 References
Tillich, Paul (1963). Systematic Theology: Volume 3, London: SCM Press.

Tillich, Paul (1999a [1957b]). Dynamics of Faith. Extract reprinted in Nancy
Frankenberry and Hans H. Penner, eds., (1999). Language, Truth and
Religious Belief, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 76–84.
Tillich, Paul (1999b [1957a]). Systematic Theology: Volume 2, London: SCM
Press.
Tillich, Paul (1952). The Courage to Be, Glasgow: Collins.
Tillich, Paul (1999c [1951]). Systematic Theology: Volume 1, London: SCM
Press. Extract reprinted in Nancy Frankenberry and Hans H. Penner, eds.,
(1999). Language, Truth and Religious Belief, Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars
Press, 84–105.
Trakakis, Nick (2007). Metaphilosophy of Religion: The Analytic-Continental
Divide in Philosophy of Religion. Ars Disputandi, 7(1), 179–220, http://
dx.doi.org/10.1080/15665399.2007.10819969
Vattimo, Gianni (1988 [1985]). The End of Modernity: Nihilism and
Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture, Jon R. Snyder, trans., Baltimore:
John Hopkins University Press.
Walsh, Sylvia (2013). Kierkegaard’s Theology. In John Lippitt and George
Pattison, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Kierkegaard, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 292–308.
West, David (2010 [2000]). Continental Philosophy: An Introduction,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Westphal, Merold (2014). Kierkegaard’s Concept of Faith, Grand Rapids,
Michigan: William B. Eerdmans.
Westphal, Merold (1998). Kierkegaard and Hegel. In Alastair Hannay and
Gordon D. Marino, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Kierkegaard,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Wheeler, Michael (2017). Martin Heidegger. In Edward N. Zalta, ed., The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), http://plato
.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/heidegger.
Wittgenstein (1953). Philosophical Investigations, G. E. M. Anscombe, trans.,
New York: Macmillan.
Young, Julian (2014 [2003]). The Death of God and the Meaning of Life,
London and New York: Routledge.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Peter Vardy, John McDade, Don Cupitt, and Douglas
Hedley who introduced me to the work of, respectively, Kierkegaard,
Rosenzweig, Derrida, and Hadot, and my former students at Heythrop
College, University of London for their comments on the lecture notes on
which several sections of this book are based. I would also like to thank an
anonymous reviewer for comments on a draft, and the series editor, Yujin
Nagasawa, for his patience as I battled through a series of negative life events
to reach the end of this project. Thanks are also due to my colleagues at the
central University of London, particularly Mary Stiasny, my line manager, and
Alex Burke for his administrative assistance. Finally, for their help and support,
I would like to thank Tina Hathaway, Jenny Knight, Charles Mather, and Anne
Peach, and my family, Betty Burns, Natasha Burns, and Paul Noble.
Philosophy of Religion
Yujin Nagasawa
University of Birmingham
Yujin Nagasawa is Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the John Hick Centre for
Philosophy of Religion at the University of Birmingham. He is currently President of the
British Society for the Philosophy of Religion. He is a member of the Editorial Board of
Religious Studies, the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion and Philosophy
Compass.
About the Series

This Cambridge Elements series provides concise and structured introductions to all the
central topics in the philosophy of religion. It offers balanced, comprehensive coverage of
multiple perspectives in the philosophy of religion. Contributors to the series are cutting-
edge researchers who approach central issues in the philosophy of religion. Each provides
a reliable resource for academic readers and develops new ideas and arguments from a
unique viewpoint.
Philosophy of Religion
Elements in the Series

Atheism and Agnosticism
Graham Oppy
The Atonement
William Lane Craig
Miracles
David Basinger
Cosmological Arguments
Michael Almeida
The Divine Attributes
T. J. Mawson
God and Time
Natalja Deng
The Design Argument
Elliott Sober
Religious Disagreement
Helen De Cruz
Religious Epistemology
Tyler Dalton McNabb
Continental Philosophy of Religion
Elizabeth Burns
A full series listing is available at: www.cambridge.org/EPREL

Burns - Continental Philosophy of Religion

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Burns - Continental Philosophy of Religion

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Burns - Continental Philosophy of Religion

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 179.6.164.

163, on 03 Sep 2021 at 11:30:34, subject to the Cambridge

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

Elements in the Philosophy of Religion

Keywords: Continental philosophy of religion, existential philosophy of

© Elizabeth Burns 2019

1 What Is Continental Philosophy of Religion? 1

2 The Nature of Faith: Hegel and Kierkegaard 7

3 The Non-Existence of God: Nietzsche and Heidegger 19

4 Twentieth-Century Existentialism: Rosenzweig and Tillich 29

5 Re-Visioning Religious Language: Derrida and Caputo 41

6 The Existential Problem of Evil: Nietzsche, Levinas

7 Feminist Philosophy of Religion: Jantzen and Anderson 51

1 What Is Continental Philosophy of Religion?

1.1 Continental Philosophy

By contrast, continental philosophers reject the use of reason as it is conceived

Phenomenology as a discipline may be deﬁned as the study of the way things

Heidegger employs Husserl’s phenomenological method, which is concerned

example, a religious practitioner is someone who learns how to speak the

Although it might be helpful to assign philosophers to various schools of

deﬁnitions of religion (see, for example, a modiﬁed family resemblance

1.2 Continental Philosophy of Religion

1.3 On Reading This Book

2 The Nature of Faith: Hegel and Kierkegaard

interpretation. Further comments on the interpretation of Hegel may be found

2.1.1 Faith and Knowledge

2.1.2 Religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit

In the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel describes a common type of religious

thinks in pictures sees the universal divine Being as an individual in human

attained only in speculative knowledge of that revelation; God, as Spirit, is that

2.1.3 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion

2.1.4 Interpreting Hegel

2.2.1 Kierkegaard’s Literary Style

motion a dialogue in which the reader is fully participant’ (181).

2.2.2 The Four Spheres of Existence

• The aesthetic sphere, in which a person is committed to enjoyment;

aesthetic view of life (13). Author A describes a variety of aesthetic pleasures,

only within this sphere that Christianity is regarded as ‘an existence-

2.2.3 The Teleological Suspension of the Ethical

Although a coherent account of life in the aesthetic sphere cannot be given, we

3 The Non-Existence of God: Nietzsche and Heidegger

3.1.1 Nietzsche on Religion

3.1.2 Nietzsche on the ‘Death of God’

As we noted in section 2.1.1, Nietzsche is well-known for his pronouncement

heart overﬂows with gratitude, amazement, premonitions, expectation. At long

3.1.3 Heidegger on Nietzsche and the Death of God

According to Levinas, ‘[t]he most extraordinary thing that Heidegger brings us is

3.2.2 Heidegger’s Being and Time

possibility, and ‘transcendence’ is our attempt to address our current facti-

• It is an inherent part of the nature of what it is to be Dasein that it possesses ‘a

So Heidegger focuses on understanding the phenomenon of conscience

3.3 Kierkegaard and Heidegger

Section 4: Twentieth-Century Existentialism: Rosenzweig

4.1.1 Rosenzweig’s ‘New Thinking’

4.1.2 The Star of Redemption

understanding. Sick understanding is compelled to understand something in its

4.1.3 Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World,

beloved, and crime as ‘constitutive aspects of worldly existence, human

continuity to man’s existence’ (81). Otherwise, ‘[t]he future is the inexhaustible