Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Žižek
Benjamin takes issue with Weber’s thesis concerning the development of capitalism as conditioned by Christianity. For Benjamin, the relationship is stronger: capitalism does not simply emerge out of Christianity, as a sort of by-product, but is rather a religious phenomenon in its own right, one that draws on, but also twists and reverses, Christia
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general weakening of being reopens the philosophical debate on the end of metaphysics, and provides the basis for a critical evaluation of the forms in which the rebirth of the sacred appears in our time.
Hollis Phelps • Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Žižek
Theology, for Schmitt, lingers across the so-called “modern divide” in the political.
Hollis Phelps • Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Žižek
“People talk about the return of religion, that’s a mistake. It didn’t return because it never went away” (Hoffman and Taylor, 2008).
Hollis Phelps • Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Žižek
Having recognized its family resemblance with the biblical message of the history of salvation and with God’s incarnation, philosophy can call the weakening that it discovers as the characteristic feature of the history of Being secularization in its broadest sense, which comprises all forms of dissolution of the sacred characteristic of the modern
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The weakining of being or of existence itself (in general because of the death of God) is something that makes room for Christianity (even as it was predicted by Christianity). The incarnation and the Gospel were made to flourish in such a social-cultural environment (as it was in the 1st century). In fact, "weakness" and "death" or "dying to self" are crucial in the message of the Gospel… and in salvation. In the supposed death of metaphysics... and the death of God... there's now actually no room to deny him either.
Although secularization, when understood in light of the weakening of being, theoretically allows for a plurality of individual and collective beliefs, stances and paradigms, the medium in which these occur is essentially Christian, both in form and content.
Hollis Phelps • Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Žižek
The link between the two is, rather, deep-seated, rooted in a conceptual relationship that is less easy to dismiss.
Hollis Phelps • Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Žižek
Following Heidegger, for Vattimo Nietzsche’s proclamation of God’s death coincides with the end of metaphysics, the ability to reduce existence to its first principles.
Hollis Phelps • Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Žižek
Vattimo rules out any sort of public display of identity, particularly religious identity, because of the way in which such displays cut against the secular organization of life.