Continental Philosophy and the Problem with Religion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/imre.34954Keywords:
continental philosophy, theism, naturalism, theology, postcolonialismAbstract
This review essay of the new volume Religion and European Philosophy: Key Thinkers from Kant to Žižek offers a critical analysis of the treatment of "religion" by Continental philosophers. The author points out how Continental philosophers repeatably try to surpass, use, or transform religion to define the proper ends of philosophy, but rarely stop to challenge some of their assumptions about the category. Moreover, the authors suggests that if philosophers and scholars want to correct this problem, they need to proceed with greater sensitivity to the genealogy and history of the concept of religion. What is needed in future work is to make the categorization of religion a central issue. It needs to be shown how philosophers often get caught in the construction and naturalization of a rather Christian or theological notion of religion, and how this is reflected in their historical and cross-cultural analysis of the topic.
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