Church

Abstract

Sociology, especially in its classic works, provides analytic perspectives for understanding specific ecclesiastic religious phenomena (i.e., churches and church$@#*^%#@#hyphen;oriented religions). But long before the birth of sociology $@#*^%#@#ndash; in its contemporary empirical version $@#*^%#@#ndash; modern philosophy, both Continental and Atlantic, was deeply engaged with the ecclesiological question (Olivetti 1992). This philosophical attention attributed special theoretical relevance to observation of certain socio$@#*^%#@#hyphen;religious phenomena. This was particularly true in the classical era of the philosophy of religion $@#*^%#@#ndash; in the specifically modern meaning of the term $@#*^%#@#ndash; especially from Hume and Kant through Hegel. This emerged in the attempt to consider and represent the tension between philosophical ecclesiology and theory of society (a tension that implies themes such as secularization, the relationship between church and state, the relationship between religion and morality, and the process of social differentiation and its limits). Thus the ecclesiological question, as a close relationship between the empirical and the theoretical sphere, plays a crucial role for that aspect of the crisis of ontotheological metaphysics known as philosophy of religion, regardless of the various solutions proposed by individual scholars. An exemplary case isReligionas the epilogue to Kant's transcendental program. Kant deals with the need to think and represent the church, but also with the contradiction of the more general assumptions this line of thought leads to. Another example is the classical (especially romantic and idealistic) theme of the opposition ofinvisibleandvisiblechurch.