The Concept of Hell

253 Pages·2015·2.912 MB·English

by  Benjamin McCraw, Robert Arp

The Concept of Hell
Also by Robert Arp (selected)
SCENARIO VISUALIZATION: An Evolutionary Account of Creative
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CRITICAL THINKING: An Introduction to Reasoning Well ( co-authored
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PHILOSOPHY DEMYSTIFIED ( co-authored with Jamie Watson )
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(c o-authored with Jamie Watson )
BUILDING ONTOLOGIES WITH BASIC FORMAL ONTOLOGY
(c o-authored with Barry Smith and Andrew Spear )
1001 IDEAS THAT CHANGED THE WAY WE THINK ( editor )
PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY: An Anthology ( co-edited with Alex
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CONTEMPORARY DEBATES IN PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY (c o-edited
with Francisco Ayala )
CONTEMPORARY DEBATES IN BIOETHICS (c o-edited with Art Caplan )
INFORMATION AND LIVING SYSTEMS: Philosophical and Scientifi c
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Also by Benjamin W. McCraw
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The Concept of Hell
Edited by
Benjamin McCraw
University of South Carolina, Upstate, USA
and
Robert Arp
Independent Researcher
Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Benjamin McCraw and
Robert Arp 2015
Chapters © Individual authors 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The concept of hell / [edited by] Robert Arp, Independent Researcher,
Benjamin McCraw, University of South Carolina, USA.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–1–137–45570–3
1. Hell. I. Arp, Robert, editor. II. McCraw, Benjamin, 1984– editor. III.
Jensen, Randall M. Choosing hell.
BL545.C66 2015
202(cid:2).3—dc23 2015014636
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Benjamin W. McCraw and Robert Arp
Part I The Nature of Hell
1 Choosing Hell 1 5
Randall M. Jensen
2 Hell Is Others and Paradise Is Others: Hell in the
Existential Paris of Sartre and Berdyaev 32
James M. McLachlan
3 A New Defense of the Strong View of Hell 4 9
Andrew Rogers and Nathan Conroy
4 The Temporality of Damnation: Examining Linear and
Non-Linear Responses to the Puzzle of Eternal Experience 6 6
Frank Scalambrino
Part II Justifying Hell?
5 Hell as Punishment: Pitfalls for the Pit 8 3
Galen A. Foresman
6 Leibniz’s Stoic and Spinozistic Justification for Eternal
Damnation 99
Charles Joshua Horn
7 Kant, Morality, and Hell 113
James Edwin Mahon
8 Hell Is For Children? Or the Violence of Inculcating Hell 1 27
Jeffrey E. Stephenson and Jerry S. Piven
Part III Hell and Others
9 Damnation as Marginalization 149
Nicolas Michaud
v
vi Contents
10 W hom We Resist: Subjectivity and Resistance at the
Infernal Periphery 1 69
S. Jonathon O’Donnell
11 E ternal Damnation as Exploitation’s Last Defense:
Marx, Religion, and the Concept of Hell 1 84
Jeffrey Ewing
12 ( All) politics (Are) from the Devil: Taking Agamben to
Hell (and Back?) 2 08
Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte
Bibliography 2 23
Index 2 33
Notes on Contributors
Robert Arp works on models and simulations projects as a research
analyst for the US Army at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He has interests
in philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, and ontology in the
information science sense. See robertarp.com.
Nathan Conroy i s from Lubbock TX and is a graduate student in
Mathematics at Texas Tech University. His interests include philosoph-
ical theology, Christian apologetics, and ancient philosophy.
Jeffrey Ewing is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of
Oregon. His primary academic research interests focus on critical
approaches to the connections between the state and economic proc-
esses under capitalism, informed by Marxian and feminist theory. His
current project is a study of the role of states in (re)creating a market-
dependent labor force (who need to sell their labor power for wages
to survive) through a variety of strategies. He has written a number of
chapters critically analyzing popular culture at both the academic level
(such as in The Philosophy of J.J. Abrams) and popular level (such as in
Psych and Philosophy, 2013 and Terminator and Philosophy, 2009).
Galen A. F oresman i s Associate Professor of Philosophy at North Carolina
Agricultural and Technical State University. His research interests include
ethics, philosophy of punishment, philosophy of religion, and philos-
ophy as it applies to pop culture. He edited S upernatural and Philosophy
(2013) and is a co-author of The Critical Thinker’s Toolkit ( forthcoming ).
Charles Joshua H orn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. He specializes in the history of
early modern philosophy and contemporary analytic metaphysics, and
has particular interests in the thought of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant.
In addition to primarily working on issues related to the metaphysics
of modality, he is also committed to making philosophy accessible to a
wide range of interlocutors and sometimes publishes articles related to
popular culture.
Randall M. Jensen is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern College
in Orange City, Iowa. He teaches a wide range of courses and has written
quite a few chapters in books on philosophy and popular culture.
vii
viii Notes on Contributors
James Edwin Mahon is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the
Department of Philosophy at Washington and Lee University. He has
been a visiting scholar in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University
of Cambridge and a visiting fellow in the Department of Philosophy
at Princeton University. During 2011–2012, he was a lecturer in the
Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University, and a
visiting researcher at Yale Law School. His research interests are in
moral philosophy, the history of moral philosophy, and early modern
philosophy.
Benjamin W. M cCraw is an instructor of Philosophy at the University
of South Carolina, Upstate. His articles have appeared in the I nternational
Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Logos & Episteme, and S ocial Epistemology .
His research centers on epistemology and philosophy of religion: espe-
cially their intersection in religious epistemology.
James M. McLachlan is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at
Western Carolina University. He is the author of T he Desire to Be God:
Freedom and the Other in Sartre and Berdyaev (1992) and articles on Sartre,
Levinas, Berdyaev, Marcel, Process Theology, and Mormonism. He was
co-founder and co-chair of the Mormon Studies Group at the American
Academy of Religion. He is currently working on a book on H ell in
Heterodox Traditions .
Nicolas Michaud teaches philosophy in Jacksonville Florida. He focuses
on issues of marginalization, disabilities studies, and gender.
S. Jonathon O ’Donnell i s a doctoral researcher in the Department of the
Study of Religions at SOAS, University of London. His doctoral thesis,
funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, analyzes the rela-
tionship between sovereignty and demonology in spiritual warfare and
apocalyptic discourses in contemporary America. His broader research
interests include the relationship between religion and politics, post-
structuralist critical theory, gender studies, and the utilization of reli-
gious symbolism in popular culture and the secular public sphere.
Jerry S. Piven has taught at New York University, New School University,
and Case Western Reserve University, where his courses focused on
the psychology and philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and evil. He
is the editor of The Psychology of Death in Fantasy and History (2004)
and T errorism, Jihad, and Sacred Vengeance (2004), and author of D eath
and Delusion: A Freudian Analysis of Mortal Terror (2004), The Madness
and Perversion of Yukio Mishima (2004), and N ihon No Kyoki (Japanese
Notes on Contributors ix
Madness, 2007). He has recently completed S laughtering Death: On the
Psychoanalysis of Terror, Religion, and Violence .
Andrew Rogers is a graduate student in Philosophy at Texas Tech
University. He received a BS in Philosophy from Kansas State University.
He is primarily interested in metaethics and philosophical theology.
Frank S calambrino i s a visiting professor at the University of Dallas,
Texas. He regularly teaches courses in Metaphysics and the History of
Philosophy. He has taught graduate courses in both philosophy and
psychology departments in Illinois and Texas. He has presented his
research internationally. His forthcoming book is titled Full Throttle
Heart: Nietzsche, Beyond Either/Or .
Jeffrey E. Stephenson i s an adjunct instructor of Philosophy in the
Department of History, Philosophy and Religion at Montana State
University, Bozeman. His research interests include character and cogni-
tive science, akrasia and medical care compliance, religion and ethics,
classical and modern virtue theory, ethics and law, and ethical issues in
biotechnology.
Kristof K .P. V anhoutte is an invited professor in the Faculty of
Philosophy at the Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy.
He studied philosophy at the Higher Institute for Philosophy at the
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and obtained his PhD in
Philosophy at the Pontifical University Antonianum. He also studied
Spiritual Theology at the Pontifical University Gregoriana. In 2008 he
was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies
in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh and in 2010 he
was awarded the ‘European Philosophy from Kant to the Present Prize’,
issued by the University of Kentucky.