Tillich und die anglo-amerikanische Philosophie. Seine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Erfahrungsbegriff

Ich bin gebeten worden, einen Beitrag zu Tillichs Auseinandersetzung mit der anglo-amerikanischen Philosophie in seiner Spätzeit zu verfassen. Diese Themenstellung scheint mir interessant zu sein und gern gehe ich darauf ein. Doch möchte ich sie dabei in bestimmter Weise zuspitzen. Dazu möchte ich zunächst deutlich machen, welche Frage ich in diesem Zusammenhang nicht eingehend beantworten werde

Justification rather than truth: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s defence of positive religion in the ring-parable

Positive religion is not held in high esteem since the time of the Enlightenment. Then its claims, e.g. revelatory claims or claims to absolute, i.e. unique validity , were considered to be incapable of being historically verifiable or to contradict rationality, moral as well as cognitive rationality. Regarding the latter, the criticism was that since positive religious claims go beyond what is possible to know, their truth cannot be fixed. Globally speaking, three fashions of reducing or even rejecting positive religion prevailed then: Positive religion could be reduced to morality – the fashion particularly prevalent in the ‘German’ (i.e. Prussia and surrounding countries) version of the Enlightenment (see also below, section 3). Or, it could be reduced to natural religion, to deistic and similar doctrines – particularly prevalent in the English version of the Enlightenment. Or, it could be straightforwardly rejected in the spirit of an all-out atheism – the fashion particularly prevalent in the French version of the Enlightenment

Die Pluralität der Religionen in Lessings Ringparabel und die Unterscheidung zwischen Rechtfertigung und Wahrheit

Der Beitrag, den ich gebeten worden bin zu verfassen, soll sich mit dem Thema „christlicher Wahrheitsanspruch und Pluralität der Religionen“ beschäftigen. Ich fasse dieses Thema so auf, daß dabei die Frage im Mittelpunkt steht, inwiefern das Festhalten an bestimmten religiösen Wahrheitsansprüchen kompatibel ist mit einer Tolerierung verschiedener Religionen

William James and Apologetics: Why ‘The Will to Believe’ Argument Succeeds in Defending Religion

Broadly speaking, the criticism of religion can be classified into two groups, a priori and a posteriori sorts of criticisms. To the first group belong attempts to re-interpret religious claims in line with whatever world view the critic presupposes. To this group belong the Feuerbachian/Marxian line of criticism, the (later) sociological theories of religion (e.g. Durkheim’s), Freud’s etc. Those attempts are a priori in that they rule out the possibility of religion from the beginning on. Given e.g. the materialist world view, that Marx, and, to some extent Freud and even Feuerbach presuppose, religious claims are ruled out on a priori grounds. This sort of criticism has its roots in the classical Continental philosophical tradition with its openness towards grand metaphysical theories, such as materialism and whatever theories are built upon it (e.g. a materialist theory of history). Its weakness is, obviously, that its critique of religion makes sense only to those people already sharing whatever world view is at stake

Vascular Remodeling in Health and Disease

The term vascular remodeling is commonly used to define the structural changes in blood vessel geometry that occur in response to long-term physiologic alterations in blood flow or in response to vessel wall injury brought about by trauma or underlying cardiovascular diseases.1, 2, 3, 4 The process of remodeling, which begins as an adaptive response to long-term hemodynamic alterations such as elevated shear stress or increased intravascular pressure, may eventually become maladaptive, leading to impaired vascular function. The vascular endothelium, owing to its location lining the lumen of blood vessels, plays a pivotal role in regulation of all aspects of vascular function and homeostasis.5 Thus, not surprisingly, endothelial dysfunction has been recognized as the harbinger of all major cardiovascular diseases such as hypertension, atherosclerosis, and diabetes.6, 7, 8 The endothelium elaborates a variety of substances that influence vascular tone and protect the vessel wall against inflammatory cell adhesion, thrombus formation, and vascular cell proliferation.8, 9, 10 Among the primary biologic mediators emanating from the endothelium is nitric oxide (NO) and the arachidonic acid metabolite prostacyclin [prostaglandin I2 (PGI2)], which exert powerful vasodilatory, antiadhesive, and antiproliferative effects in the vessel wall

Refuting the Evidentialist Challenge to Religion

In this article, evidentialism is refuted by relying on William James’ article ‘The Will to Believe’. After an introduction into the notion of ‘evidentialism’ and James’ attack on it (section 1), I distinguish between two sorts of evidentialisms, truth-oriented evidentialism and quiescent evidentialism (2.1). In 2.3–2.5, I criticize these forms of evidentialism on the grounds that the first has very limited applicability and the second leads to absurd consequences when applied in the moral domain. In section 3, the evidentialist challenge to religion is refuted by arguing that, first, truth-oriented evidentialism is of only very limited applicability for criticizing religion and second, that quiescent evidentialism cannot be applied in certain situations (3.2.1), particular religious claims being among them (3.2.2)

Religion and Politics: Philosophical Implications of 9/11

In my introduction, I situate the issue under discussion in a broad context, comparing its treatment in Europe with its treatment in the U.S. In the first part, I argue that in European Protestant Christianity, trans-individual issues, such as that of economic justice, dominate the religious agenda. In the U.S. however, issues pertaining to the individual dominate, such as abortion, gay-marriage, euthanasia etc. In the second part, I give an example of the way in which philosophy may contribute to issues of religion and politics, discussing the issue of ‘theory of evolution versus Intelligent Design’. This issue does not only receive attention in the U.S. but has recently received some attention in Dutch media as well. My theses are that, first, evolution theory does not prove atheism but, rather, presupposes it; second, the real issue behind it is not only the theological question of whether or not a creator-God exists. Rather, the philosophical question to what extent a culture is prepared to accept contingency plays a pivotal role as well