No Illusions: The Politics of Philosophy of Religion

Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 2017

Transcendental materialism is a philosophical perspective that uses German Idealism, Marxism, psychoanalysis and natural science to offer a materialist account of subjectivity and culture. This essay compares this philosophical framework with recent work in the study of religion (Manuel Vásquez) and philosophy of religion (Kevin Schilbrack and Thomas A. Lewis). While transcendental materialism has until now been unconcerned with religion, it offers parallels with this recent work. It differs, however, in its specific understanding of the material dimension of the dialectical relationship between abstraction/conceptuality and practice/embodiment.

Culture and Religion: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2011

The Experience of Atheism, 2021

Sofia Philosophical Review, 2016

Ars Disputandi

The present essay calls for a readjustment and extension of the eld of philosophy of religion as it is conceived by most of its practitioners. Philosophy of religion should not only pursue its old objectives of epistemology, ontology, and philosophy of religious language, to name just these examples, but consider religious phenomena in their entirety, including social and public dimensions. Social philosophy is a major area at the moment. Thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor write extensively on the importance of the public sphere in modern societies, and they even address the role of religion in this sphere. To leave the exploration of the social dimension of religion to social philosophers, historians, and sociologists of religion would be unwise and betrays a truncated view of religion and, thereby, of philosophy of religion. There is more to religion than its cognitive and moral aspects. This essay is an attempt to engage in a dialogue with modern scholarship on religion which rethinks its (re)location in (post)modernity. It is simply not true that the only proper place for religion in the modern world is the private sphere. The emergence of a public sphere since the Enlightenment offers also new opportunities for religion. Philosophers of religion ought to re ect about this kind of transformations.

An issue hotly debated within religious studies due to its importance for the discipline's identity and status, is the choice between, on the one hand, a study of religion as a purely natural phenomenon and, on the other hand, a perspective that not a priori rejects the truth claims of religious traditions concerning supernatural realities. In the following, I will discuss these two approaches and sketch a position of my own. 1

A tricky question lies behind the whole secularization debate. What will be of “secularity” after the supposed demise of its opponent? Will it still make sense to speak of the “secular” in the absence of a “transcendent” alternative? At first sight, it would seem more sensible to ask this question against the backdrop of historical scenarios such as Gauchet’s “la sortie de la religion”. The issue could then be settled by resorting to Wittgenstein’s famous metaphor of the ladder: we employ religion to dispose of religion just as we employ philosophy to “throw away” the ladder after climbing up on it. But what will the world look like after that? Many observers of the contemporary world apparently think that the endpoint will be an atmosphere of “widespread indifference” (Bruce). Yet, if one is inclined, as I am, to give more credit to Taylor’s view that religion is likely to preserve an “independent motivating force” also in the future, it makes sense to try to formulate hypotheses on how human religiosity will look like in the context of the new secular conditions of belief. And, a fortiori, it makes sense, more generally, to ask how these new religious expressions will help to extend and refine our understanding of the religieux on the whole. Taking cue from the current flourishing of initiatives and theories on “walking”, I will argue in my paper that the human “désire d’éternité” is likely to appear in the guise of an oversignification of ordinary practices. I propose, then, to see in this need to force the limits of ordinary life a resilient disposition to establish an intentional relationship with the totality of experience, yet without embracing or confronting it from an external “view-from-nowhere” standpoint.