The End of Philosophy of Religion

181 Pages·2009·0.905 MB·English

by  Nick Trakakis

The End of Philosophy of Religion
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The End of Philosophy of Religion
Nick Trakakis
Continuum International Publishing Group
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Copyright © Nick Trakakis, 2008
Nick Trakakis has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as the Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN-10: HB: 1-8470-6534-1
ISBN-13: HB: 978-1-8470-6534-6
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
For Lydia
sic itur ad astra
In my end is my beginning.
— T. S. Eliot, “East Coker”
Philosophy, as I have understood it and lived it so far,
is a life lived freely in ice and high mountains – a seeking
after everything strange and questionable in existence,
everything banned by morality so far.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
The way I understand the philosopher, as a terrible
explosive that is a danger to everything, how remote my
idea of a philosopher is from anything that includes
even a Kant, let alone academic ‘ruminants’ and other
professors of philosophy.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo
Art-in-art is art.
The end of art is art-as-art.
The end of art is not the end.
— Ad Reinhardt
Contents
1. Introduction: The Beginning of the End 1
2. T heodicy: The Solution to the Problem of Evil, or
Part of the Problem? 6
1. What is a Theodicy? 6
2. Sketch of a Theodicy 8
3. The Anti-Theodical Critique 11
3.1 Suffering the consequences 12
3.2 The teleology of suffering 15
4. The Challenge of Ivan Karamazov 18
5. Theoretical and Practical Problems of Evil 24
3. Meta-Philosophy of Religion: The Analytic-
Continental Divide in Philosophy of Religion 31
1. The Great Divide 31
2. Preliminary Matters 33
3. A Question of Style 36
4. Entering Deeper into Meta-philosophy: Analytical
and Continental Approaches 46
4.1 Analytic philosophy 46
4.2 Continental philosophy 50
4. Continental Philosophy of Religion and Objections
from the Analytic Camp 54
1. Continental Philosophy of Religion 54
2. T he God of the Philosophers and the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob 60
3. Objections from the Analytic Camp 66
3.1 P oor form: the language and style of Continental
philosophy 66
3.2 L ack of content: the underlying commitments of
Continental philosophy 70
3.2.1 Perspectivism 70
3.2.2 Non-realism 74
viii Contents
5. Kazantzakis’ Poor Man of God: Philosophy
without Philosophy 84
6. After the End of Philosophy of Religion 113
Notes 125
Bibliography 159
Index 171
Chapter 1
Introduction: The Beginning of the End
In a series of almost indistinguishable black paintings created in the 1960s,
with one monochromatic colourless fi ve-foot-square canvas after another,
Ad Reinhardt sought to make the last paintings that anyone could make.
In each black canvas and with a sense of impending fi nality, Reinhardt saw
himself as working through to the end of painting. A parallel could be
drawn here with contemporary philosophy. Just as Reinhardt’s black
paintings, in their austere purity and emptiness, symbolized “a kind of zero
beyond which painting could not progress,” as one critic put it,1 so too
much of the philosophy that is studied and practised in the academies today
appears ‘colourless’ and monotonous, even mournful and melancholic in
its endlessly futile attempts to render everything rationally comprehensible.
In effect, philosophy has brought about its own demise.2
However, rumours of the death of philosophy, like proclamations of the
death of painting and the infamous declaration of the death of God, are
routinely dismissed as exaggerated and premature.3 The practice of philos-
ophy, like the worship of God, has not disappeared and even shows signs
of resurgence and renewal in many quarters. But the case of God and reli-
gion should lead us to be more wary. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra was to learn
that the death of God must be followed by a long twilight of piety and
nihilism,4 and Nietzsche elsewhere pointed out that there may be caves
for centuries to come where the gruesome shadow of God will continue to
be displayed.5 Similarly with philosophy, at least in the Anglo-American
world where the so-called ‘analytic tradition’ holds sway (a tradition of phi-
losophy that, as will be explained in Chapter 3, models itself on scientifi c
inquiry and reasoning). This kind of philosophy may not, as a matter of his-
torical fact, have come to an end, but a growing awareness of the unduly
narrow ends that can be pursued under its banner, as well as the personal
and political dangers involved in the pursuit of such ends, is leading to wide-
spread calls for an end to be fi nally put to this approach to philosophy.
The present study claims to drive one further nail into the coffi n of
philosophy as it is usually practised in the analytic tradition, but with one
peculiar twist: the focus will be on the philosophy of religion, the sub-
discipline that is concerned with the meaning and truth of religious beliefs.
Metaphilosophical debates are usually conducted in a very generalized
way that does not take into account the specifi cities of the particular
fi elds or discourses within philosophy. I attempt to correct this tendency by