Continental Philosophy of Religion

Abstract

Abstract The term continental philosophy is not much used on the European continent. In the English-speaking world it is used to signify thinkers, texts, and traditions from the European continent, especially France and Germany, from German idealism to the present; and the work of Anglophone thinkers primarily engaged in the critical analysis and creative development of those thinkers, texts, and traditions. The term regularly implies a contrast with “analytic philosophy,” a widely used if not very precise name for the dominant form(s) of Anglo-American philosophy, whose provenance is, for the most part and not surprisingly, Anglo-American. There is no continental equivalent to the analytic philosophy of religion industry, with a large number of practitioners and a standard list of topics to be discussed. One will look in vain for much discussion of the proofs for the existence of God, the problem of evil as a counterproof, the divine attributes, the evidential value of religious experience, and so forth.