Philosophy of Religion, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics

Religion was a constant theme throughout Paul Ricoeur’s long career, and yet he never wrote a full-length treatment of the topic. In this important new book, Brian Gregor draws on the full scope of Ricoeur’s writings to lay out the essential features of his philosophical interpretation of religion, from his earliest to his last work.

Ricoeur’s central claim is that religion aims at the regeneration of human capability—in his words, “the rebirth of the capable self.” This book provides a rich thematic account of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of religion, showing how the theme of capability informs his changing interpretations of religion, from his early work on French reflexive philosophy and the philosophy of the will to his late work on forgiveness, mourning, and living up to death. Gregor exhibits Ricoeur’s original contribution to philosophical reflection on such themes as evil, suffering, and violence, as well as imagination, embodiment, and spiritual exercise. He also presents a critical reconsideration of Ricoeur’s separation of philosophy from theology, and his philosophical interpretation of Christian theological ideas of revelation, divine transcendence and personhood, atonement, and eschatology.

Additionally, Gregor provides an expansive look at Ricoeur’s interlocutors, including Marcel, Jaspers, Kant, Hegel, Levinas, and Girard. Theologically-inclined readers will be particularly interested in the book’s treatment of Karl Barth and the Protestant theology of the Word, which was a vital influence on Ricoeur.

The result is a study of Ricoeur that is both sympathetic and critical, provocative and original, inviting the reader into a deeper engagement with Ricoeur’s philosophical interpretation of religion.

The phenomenon of multiple religious belonging is studied from different perspectives, each of which reveals a different understanding of religion, religious diversity and religious belonging. This shows that the phenomenon of multiple religious belonging is challenging the applicability of these central notions in academic enquiry about religion. In this article, I present the different perspectives on multiple religious belonging in theology of religions and show how the understanding of some central scholarly notions is different. In Christian theology, the debate on multiple religious belonging is conducted between particularists, who focus on the uniqueness of religious traditions, and pluralists, who focus on the shared religious core of religious traditions. Both positions are criticized by feminist and post-colonial theologians. They believe that both particularists and pluralists focus too strongly on religious traditions and the boundaries between them. I argue that the hermeneutic study of multiple religious belonging could benefit from a more open understanding of religious traditions and religious boundaries, as proposed by these feminist and post-colonial scholars. In order to achieve this goal we could also benefit from a more intercultural approach to multiple religious belonging in order to understand religious belonging in a non-exclusive way.

Böhme is an important figure who connects the histories of early modern religious dissidence to Continental philosophy and later countercultural movements, yet he remains understudied. Challenging prevalent views that Böhme's writings are exercises in irrationality or "primitive" religious speculation, I argue that his work provides the theory for a practice aimed at (a) relocating religious authority in the body and (b) fostering an experience of the world that rejects contemporaneous theological and scientific cosmologies in favor of an ontology of human/world co-constitution. I demonstrate that many of Böhme's concepts do not "make sense" when approached as theology, philosophy, or theory, because his texts are indexed to the body: they are meant to catalyze existential transformation rather than convey purely conceptual content. My dissertation attempts to rectify the tendency to "disembody" Böhme, by approaching him first and foremost as a praxis-oriented thinker. I analyze Böhme's work, not as an example of introspective mysticism or speculative philosophy, but as the framework for a praxis meant to be performed in real time: an "existential paradigm" that is simultaneously (a) a phenomenology of desire; (b) a theory, method, and practice of self and world creation; and (c) a creative action aimed at disrupting the social imaginary and influencing the larger body politic.

The study seeks to answer the phenomenological question: What in essence is religious experience-specifically, the lived experience of "remembrance" (dhikr) in Sufi practice within the schools of Sufism shaped by the "Greatest Master," Ibn al-'Arabi? The eidetic structure of remembrance is the awakening of the individuated human subject to recollecting the primordial ground of his or her identity as a dynamic instantia-tion of the Absolute. This is simultaneously experienced as the subject becoming the object of remembrance-that is, being remembered by the Absolute. This transforms the psychological ego's relationship to its own embodied, affective, and cognitive living, as the "center of gravity" of that ego shifts from an egocentric one-that is, an identification with the natural attitude standpoint of the personal ego-to progressively greater centeredness in the transcendental ego as a locus of ongoing world constitution and primordial self-presence, while nevertheless living as a unique individual.

The book reconstructs Saint Paul's thought in selected philosophical concepts-thos of Giorgo Agamben, Alain Badiou, Martin Buber, Sigmund Freud, Martin Heidegger, Soeren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Max Scheler, Jacob Taubes and Simone Weil.