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In contrast to previous attempts to establish a direct relation between Freud and Kabbalah, this article argues for an indirect relationship mediated by way of Schelling’s philosophy. My claim is that Freud’s Oedipus complex partly originated in Schelling’s idea of God’s contraction, which he arguably derived from the Lurianic doctrine of zimzum. Furthermore, in thinking of the oedipal complex, and of repression more generally, as a late development of the Lurianic and Schellingian imagination of what I call “productive negativity,” I suggest that an important conceptual horizon is opened for the Freudian concept, one that transcends the widespread but narrow formulation of repression as a retroactive and regressive mental mechanism.

Two philosophical positions adopted by Soloveitchik in his doctoral dissertation continued to inform his Jewish philosophical writings throughout his career. The first position, epistemological pluralism, stands behind Soloveitchik’s approach to the religious view of causality and repentance in his writings during the 1940s–1960s. It also grounds his consistent use of the dialectical method. The second position, the eternal mystery of the unknown, comes from the Marburg neo-Kantian Paul Natorp; this idea is a consistent thread throughout Soloveitchik’s writings and a foundation of his existentialist writings through the late 1970s. The conclusion suggests how these two positions might be related to one another.

Cosmological descriptions and interpretations of the process of creation in kabbalistic literature deeply influenced various conceptual issues, especially the definition of “history.” Sefer ha-Temuna, which first appeared in Byzantium over the course of the fourteenth century, presents a unique concept of history in which the entire world operates according to a precise and predetermined model: the Sabbatical theory (Torat ha-shemitot). Its approach, however, was criticized by the Safed kabbalists in the sixteenth century. This article attempts to explain why this idea continued to influence Eastern European kabbalists in later generations, despite the harsh opposition it encountered.

In this article first appeared in 1997, Jean-Louis Chrétien examines the meaning of prayer in Kierkegaard’s writings and existence. By focusing on the difficulties of this task and with meticulous attention to the vast work of the Danish philosopher, Chrétien describes prayer as a tense and agonistic experience, akin to the evangelical struggle between Jacob and the angel. Just like in his well-known phenomenological analysis, “The Wounded Word: Phenomenology of Prayer”, the author identifies in prayer a paradoxical articulation of struggle and peace, gift and endeavour, speaking and listening, through which the human being is profoundly transformed and finally learns to truly say “thank you”.

Despite recognition of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Rustughfanī (d. ca. 345/956) as the most important student of Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī (d. 333/944), a sustained treatment of his theological views has not hitherto appeared. One of the challenges that has been identified in prior studies is a lack of primary sources. To overcome this obstacle, I analyse manuscripts of “Bāb al-mutafarriqāt min fawāʾid” and “al-Asʾila wa-l-ajwiba,” two texts recording al-Rustughfanī’s theological responsa, locating them within available bibliographic information and discussing the question of literary structure. I then contextualise the material within the polemical milieu of mid-fourth/tenth century Samarqand, arguing that al-Rustughfanī is the earliest figure in the Samarqandī Ḥanafī kalām tradition to self-consciously adopt the full name ahl al-sunna wa-l-jamāʿa to express his theological identity. Finally, I provide an annotated theological overview of the main doctrines found in the texts with a detailed case study on divine speech and the Qurʾān, showing how al-Rustughfanī bridges the gap between al-Māturīdī’s rationalistic kalām and the Ḥanafī traditionalism of al-Ḥakīm al-Samarqandī (d. 342/953).

This article examines how three leading exegetes of the Muʿtazilite school tradition – ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), Jishumī (d. 494/1101), and Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) – conceptualized the Qurʾānic idea of covenant in divergent ways. It also illustrates how they related the idea of covenant to their broader thought world to forge an interpretation of the meaning of human history and salvation. It argues that these three commentators, although they are linked to one another by a loose form of teacher-student discipleship, share only basic ideas and applied hermeneutical devices and interpretive principles in considerably different ways. It is unlikely that they relied on one another when they composed their commentaries.

Visual art does not judge. That was the method advocated by the school of the skeptics of Pyrrho. Since everything was considered doubtful, they did not want to pass judgment on anything, with a view to achieving “ataraxia,” or the peace of mind. Nowadays “stress-resistant” people would say this means that resilience is thrown out of the window. Artwork is open, stated Umberto Eco. All serious interpretations are therefore possible. Contradiction, or at least ambiguity, is an important aspect of art. That is precisely what makes it such an interesting source of resilience. I will take as a case study the discussion that took place in the recent past about sudden unsolicited, inappropriate images painted on walls in Brussels. The artwork by Bonom, Vincent Glowinski, was not part of an urban beautification plan, but raucous protests against the absurd decisions of power and against the hypocrisy of our society.

McCaffree's challenge to traditional definitions of religion, and his suggestion that religiosity is about individual integration into a moral community are discussed. This is taken as an opportunity to examine difficulties in defining religion, and attempts to go around the definition issues by offering analogies. Religious emotion, as discussed by William James and Emile Durkheim, is found to be no different than strong emotions directed at our secular commitments. Devotion, and self-sacrifice are discussed in both religious and secular context. The denial of death and fantasies about an afterlife are central to religion, and are unlikely to disappear in the foreseeable future.

This study explores the experiences of non-religious clients in psychotherapy, specifically with regard to unwanted religious interventions. Because individuals who identify as non-religious often experience negative judgments of various kinds, they need a safe and accepting therapeutic environment. In the present study, clients expressed that 36 % of therapists reportedly engaged in either unwanted or unhelpful religious discussion, with 29 % explicitly suggesting a religious intervention for their non-religious clients, such as prayer or attendance at church services. For a small percentage of clients, these suggestions led to premature termination. Implications for professional practice, education, and public policy are suggested.

Post-true is defined as partial information that is aimed at achieving a political goal while using the truth but not the whole truth. The paper examines the impact of post-true politics in political systems, concentrating on the secular-religious relations in Israeli politics. The significant of Israeli politics as a test case to examine the validity of post-true in modern politics is since a long-standing compromise has identified Israeli politics and society on religious issues. This compromise consists of an agreed status-que under which all segments of society accept a post-true environment and agree not to agree and not to argue on the volatile issue of state and religion relations. The examination is based on analysis of post-true in Israeli politics according to four leading theories of truth: correspondence, coherence, pragmatic and pluralistic. The purpose of explicating the four theories is to show that the relations between secular and religious groups can be examined according to different standards for truth. The paper predicts that the social, political and religious conflict that identifies Israel since its establishment is going to continue with full force in the years to come, since the post-true environment that this conflict is based upon serves the social aspirations and the political interests of different political parties.

The relationship between language, music and cultural identity has always been of special interest in the social sciences, especially in the areas of anthropology, social psychology and ethnomusicology. The main argument revolves on how language reflected through music positively impacts on the identity of a social group, and what happens where this is lacking. Cultures die and languages go into extinction when there are no creative ways of keeping them alive. The aim of this essay is to investigate how the culture and language of a particular society could be safeguarded through music. Beyond the theoretical framework, I shall substantiate this investigation with the example of the Igbo people of Southeastern Nigeria, whose cultural identity is seriously threatened by the lack of interest in the local language among the people. Part of this disinterestedness is caused by the unique tendency of Igbo people to travel outside their original communities and to culturally adapt in their diaspora communities. This essay therefore aims at a) addressing this problem of identity through a sociological analysis of communal identity, and b) seeking how identity could be rediscovered through music that is delivered in a local language, illustrated with the example of Igbo cultural group. It is hoped that such analysis would aid in presenting another means of safeguarding endangered local languages, which invariably has a lot of implications for the cultural identity of the group involved. Of course, the analysis that is advanced here is not limited to the Igbo since the argument is based on a general epistemological function of music and language with respect to cultural identity.

This study investigates Avicenna’s conception of philosophical terminology through an analysis of the relation between equivocity (ishtirāk) and modulation (tashkīk) and by drawing evidence from a broad array of logical, physical, and metaphysical texts. In so doing, it also re-examines the notion of the modulation of existence (tashkīk al-wujūd). Although the intrinsic definitional ambiguity of tashkīk makes it possible to approach it alternatively through the lens of univocity and equivocity, there are strong textual and philosophical reasons to believe that Avicenna preferred to regard tashkīk as a kind of moderate equivocity, as opposed to both univocity and a kind of pure or absolute equivocity. As a corollary, it is preferable to construe tashkīk al-wujūd as a “modulated equivocity of being” rather than as a “modulated univocity of being.” On the one hand, this underscores the continuity with Aristotle’s theory of pros hen predication and its late-antique Greek and early Arabic reception, which Avicenna, as heir to a long commentatorial tradition, reinterprets in his own way. On the other hand, the reading of the asmāʾ mushakkika and tashkīk al-wujūd proposed here may explain some of the origins of the ontological debates on the construal of existence that developed from the post-classical reception of Avicenna’s works.

Almost all the existing research in the subfield of nonreligion and secularity studies has focused to date on majority populations (Whites from Christian family backgrounds) in North America and Europe. Using data from the 2011 National Household Survey and the 2013–2017 General Social Surveys, this research note is a first step towards better understanding the ethno-racial and immigrant diversity within the nonreligious population of one nation, Canada. A further emphasis is placed on socio-demographic trends among these different nonreligious groups, as well as their various experiences when it comes to the presence or absence of spiritual beliefs and practices in their lives away from organized religion.

While we would expect secularisation to have important consequences for voting behaviour, data limitations in previous studies leave the specific implications of secularisation for Canadian electoral politics unclear. Using a data set covering the period between 1975 and 2005, this study examines which aspects of secularisation have affected the partisan balance of the electorate by estimating the effects of religious belonging, behaving, and believing on party preferences. The results show that while the effects of religion (and other social identities) have not changed over time, changes in the composition of the electorate resulting from the growing share of non-religious Canadians holding liberal views on questions of personal morality has benefited the NDP and undercut support for the Conservatives.

On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork carried out among youths living in Montreal (Canada) who are interested in Islam and adopt some elements of a Muslim lifestyle, I show how affinities with Islam arise from sociability practices with friends of Muslim background and relate to the cultural diversification of secular societies. By combining network analysis with narrative analysis, I examine how youths interpret and make sense of these interactions and propose a critical view of their cosmopolitan discourses. While the latter is grounded in a universalist rhetoric, I argue it also unfolds within the intimacy of sociability experiences and shared emotions. Youth’s cosmopolitanism draws on cultural repertoires that stem from public education programs and local strategies to promote peaceable cohabitation in secular contexts. Consequently, youth competencies for cosmopolitanism lead to ongoing conversations that make differences and divergences within sociability spaces new sites to negotiate intercultural encounters in highly diversified localities.

With the advance of secularization in numerous countries and the growth of those who report no religious affiliation, more attention is being given to individuals who are not religious. Various scholars have proposed names for the individuals who report no religious affiliation and researchers have created categories for such individuals. The de facto term is now “nonreligion” or “nonreligious.” However, even when the term “nonreligious” (Lee 2012) was put forward, there were serious reservations about labeling a group of people by what they are not. In this article, we detail why this is such a serious problem, and how this is only going to become more of a problem as this segment of national populations grows. We propose that we discontinue referring to such individuals as “nonreligious” and instead focus on the positive substance of their identities.

The authors examine the relationship between religion and support for State secularism in the context of the recent passing of Bill 21 in Quebec. After contextualizing the transformation of Québécois’ regime of religiosity from the 1960s to the present day, the authors analyze two surveys on how the restrictive measures set out in Bill 21 have been received and supported. Public opinion data suggest something unexpected at first glance: support for the measures aimed at restricting the wearing of religious symbols in State institutions appears to come mainly from Francophones who are self-declared Catholics, rather than from the nonreligious. Language, religious (non) affiliation, age as well as place of residence appear to be major determinants when it comes to support for the restrictive State secularism measures.

In this article, I want to make the following points, none of which are totally new, but their constellation here is meant to be challenging. First, world is not a (Cartesian) thing but an event, the event of sense. This event is opening and meaning – verbal tense. God may be a philosophical name of this event. This is recognized by late-modern religious atheist thought. This thought differs from modern scientific rationalism in that the latter’s so-called areligious atheism is actually a hyperreligious theism. On the way, the alleged opposition between philosophy and theology, between thought and faith is seen to erode. The core matter of this philosophy of religion will be the absolute reference, the system of objectivity and the holiness of the name. All this because of a prefix a- that has its sense turned inside out by the death of God.

In this article I claim there is no contradiction involved in Franz Rosenzweig’s love of life and his apology for death: what he loves and wants us to love is the finite life, life offered in its finitude which should in the end appear as enough – that is, sufficient and fit for everything we could want from life, redemption included. The beyond toward which death as the end gestures is not a promise of immortality, offering a transcendence in temporal terms infinitely prolonged. The will “to stay, to live,” of which Rosenzweig speaks in the opening paragraph of The Star of Redemption, is the drive characteristic of another finitude: desiring and investing in life, without, at the same time, wishing to prolong itself into infinity.

This article examines the representation of human beings’ redemption in Islamic tradition with a special focus on the Sufi perspective. This is done using Islamic scriptures and semantics. There is no homogenous Sufi perspective on the question of human redemption. However, it is still worthwhile to look for references to human redemption in Sufi discussions of the high state of unification. The human being plays an essential role in this experience, while their responsibility for others’ spiritual redemption becomes greater after returning to the normal state of being. Beside the individualistic experience of redemption, both Islam in general and taṣawwuf in particular hint at a form of collective deliverance from depravity.

Despite Franz Rosenzweig’s unequivocal condemnation of Gershom Scholem, his own view of the world and the possibility of human redemption therein is in some respect very close to the nihilistic sensibility and its gnostic underpinning. Although Rosenzweig obviously did not consider himself either a nihilist or a gnostic, the latter term can well be applied even to Rosenzweig’s mature speculation in The Star of Redemption and other writings from the 1920s. In spite of his initial rejection of negative theology in the Star, the swerve of Rosenzweig’s path winds its way to an apophasis of the apophasis, a turn that is encapsulated in the astounding statement, “That God is nothing becomes just as much a figurative sentence as the other one, that he is truth.”

Although in a sense a follower of both Isaiah and Machiavelli, Rosenzweig did not share their perception of a conflict between idealism and realism in human experience. His Star of Redemption advances a theory of the redemption of the world inspired by both Isaiah and Machiavelli, and at the same time critical of both of them – a theory in which ethics and politics are strongly connected but where ethics renounces the opposition to history and historical laws, and politics renounces the opposition to ethical ideas.

At this juncture in history what is urgently needed, to state it rather paradoxically, is redemption from visions of redemption. In my brief reflections, I appeal for a studied, indeed resolute retreat from the very concept of redemption, in particular from its contemporary theological and secular iterations.

In this article, I test out Hans Blumenberg’s understanding of consolation as a pattern to interpret Rosenzweig’s “new thinking.” Drawing on Blumenberg’s philosophical anthropology, I explore the connection between the concept of redemption as consolation and the image of the human being that it presupposes. I further examine the function of consolation in concepts and non-conceptual images through a comparison of redemptive consolation in the respective thought of Luther and Rosenzweig.

Rosenzweig’s pathos with respect to an ultimate redemption raises the question of the desirability of a state in which so much has to be undone in order to retain nothing but the One, the All, the Eternal, and the True. Similar doubts arise concerning Rosenzweig’s portrayal of the ways that this state of redemption is anticipated in life: through prayer, love of neighbor, the communal hymn of the We. How accessible are these to “the human being” as such? Rather than arguing against what appears as a grand remnant of the urge for totality, I invoke here two figures whose concepts of redemption partly resemble Rosenzweig’s, but depart from him in ways that make all the difference: Benjamin and Kafka.

We might suggest two possible ways of understanding our question: Can God be redeemed? and: Must God be redeemed? In both cases the question sounds blasphemous. But following the movement that Franz Rosenzweig develops in The Star of Redemption, I suggest that the living relation initiated by God, as God created the world and as God revealed himself to the human being, would be an abstract construction if, on the one hand, the human being and the world did not need each other in order to become what they are and what they could be, and if, on the other hand, God was not implicated in this mutual relationship.

On the Rosenzweigian view that I advocate here, redemption is neither a humanly attainable ideal, nor a regulative ideal, nor a solely critical ideal. Redemption is rather a human actualization whose full realization depends on God. In the course of explicating this claim I explore the rabbinic and kabbalistic background to Rosenzweig’s position.

Rosenzweig’s account of Islamic universalism might lead us to question the extent of that universalism itself. In the context of Islam, it is widely understood that the possibility of redemption is available to “righteous” believers. But what about the world as a whole, the world beyond the realm of righteous believers? These questions have not elicited straightforward responses, as Muslim theologians have long debated the question of who exactly can be saved and admitted into paradise and God’s mercy. In the present essay, I consider certain influential Muslim theological approaches to the topic of world redemption, or universal salvation, with a focus on Sunni thought.

In this essay, I juxtapose two conceptions of redemption, as expressed by the Hebrew terms geʾulah and pidyon. I contend that today, the non-eschatological conception of redemption that animates the term pidyon is more politically salient than traditional cautions against geʾulah-inspired apocalypticism. Indeed, restoring the more mundane understanding of redemption suggested by pidyon – as release from inherited narratives and obligations – may help us break the stalemate that has descended upon Israeli politics.

Since the discovery of the paradoxes of Zeno, the problem of infinity was dominated by the meaning of endlessness—a view also adhered to by Herman Dooyeweerd. Since Aristotle, philosophers and mathematicians distinguished between the potential infinite and the actual infinite. The main aim of this article is to highlight the strengths and limitations of Dooyeweerd’s philosophy for an understanding of the foundations of mathematics, including Dooyeweerd’s quasi-substantial view of the natural numbers and his view of the other types of numbers as functions of natural numbers. Dooyeweerd’s rejection of the actual infinite is turned upside down by the exploring of an alternative perspective on the interrelations between number and space in support of the idea of infinite totalities, or infinite wholes. No other trend has succeeded in justifying the mathematical use of the actual infinite on the basis of an analysis of the intermodal coherence between number and space.

Among the ancients, there was no proper conception of the I. Yet an I emerges in ancient Israel. I therefore inquire into the philosophical anthropology of ancient Israel. How did the I emerge? By interpreting the Song of Songs as political myth, from which a philosophical anthropology can be unearthed and reconstructed, I theorize that not only an I, but also a different kind of we emerged through gift-dynamics. Then I demonstrate that these gift-dynamics are compatible with the ancient Israelites’ religious-political institutions and manifest itself in their collective psyche.

In this concluding reflection, the editors of this special issue reflect on the significance that Heidegger has had for French philosophy, precisely because of the creative and critical engagement of many of the original thinkers demonstrated above. It is not insignificant that Christian thinkers were drawn to Heidegger, seeing promise in his expansion of philosophical questioning, above all an enrichment of the idea of truth. However it is equally important to recognize that Heidegger’s native Christian roots were stripped of their animating spirit, the question of God and the revelation of the Hebraic scriptures. It is thus notable that the criticisms from this conference originating from the side of faith frequently appeal to the Scriptures as they argue that there are truths which Heidegger himself simply does not seem to see.

In this article, Joseph S. O’Leary recounts the origin and inspirations behind the 1979 Colloquium Heidegger et la Question de Dieu, and reflects on why it became such a key moment in the development of many of those who took part in it. In addition to the contingent factors of a particular time and place, and the deep personal and intellectual significance that Heidegger bore for many of them, O’Leary identifies the perennial philosophical questions which the participants were able to address in original and controversial ways. O’Leary also reflects on the way this Colloquium served as a subsequent influence on his own original work as well as the critical dialogue he engaged in with many of the other participants, culminating in his most recent work on interreligious dialogue which further amplifies the central problematics here concerning the nature of the quest for truth.

In this interview, Jean-Luc Marion recalls the intellectual world of Paris in 1970s, reflecting on how his engagement with the ubiquitous “death of God” question led to the sketches of God without Being first presented at this 1979 Colloquium, and discusses the criticism it provoked not only from Heideggerians but also from Thomists. He discusses the reception history of phenomenology in France the reasons for the particular power it gained among thinkers of his generation. Finally, he recounts how his work has led from the 1979 Colloquium through the “Theological Turn” and up to his forthcoming D’ ailleurs, la révélation (Grasset, 2020), which he briefly previews here. Marion closes with words on originality, criticism, and the particular challenges of the contemporary world that await philosophical thinking today.

In this article, Jean-Yves Lacoste lays out the central moments of Heidegger’s complicated relationship to Christian thinking, from his earliest studies under Carl Braig up to his death in 1976. With careful attention to personal letters, scholarly reviews, conferences, as well as major texts, Lacoste shows that this influence was mostly in one direction: despite the eagerness of theology to engage with Heidegger, Heidegger continually demonstrated reticence to approach theology except strictly on his own terms. The article closes with a retrospective evaluation of the central themes of the original Heidegger et la Question de Dieu volume, which took up this investigation in France in 1979. Despite the fact that its publication predated many of Heidegger’s essential texts on this theme, these essays, in Lacoste’s estimation, remain a “perfectly timeless” resource for those seeking to understand the place of God within phenomenology.

Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), the Dutch master of dogmatic theology, wrote a systematic treatise in theological ethics. Bavinck is a theistic moral realist whose ethics is deontological and virtue centered. His realism—both ontological and epistemic—is reflected in his understanding of conscience and its relation to the objective moral law. Furthermore, this review article discusses issues in Christian anthropology, particularly the selfhood of the human person, the relation between nature and grace, creation and redemption, and philosophy and theology, and the distinction between objective and subjective religion. It concludes with a brief reflection on Bavinck’s hermeneutics of renewal and reform in the continuity of the catholicity of the Reformed tradition.

Translation of “De vier religieuze grondthema’s in den ontwikkelingsgang van het wijsgeerig denken van het avondland” by Herman Dooyeweerd (1941), Philosophia Reformata 6 (4), pp. 161–179.