Introduction: The development of the critical theory of religion in Dubrovnik from 1975 to 2007

Abstract

In 1977, the author's late wife Margaret and he initiated the international course on The of Religion in the Inter-University Center for Post Graduate Studies (IUC) in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, on invitation by professors of the University of Zagreb, Zagreb, in 1975. Their Dubrovnik discourse about the Future of Religion in the IUC was based mainly on Horkheimer's and Adorno's critical theory of society and on their Frankfurt School. In Dubrovnik, they discovered that the first generation of critical theorists had been of Jewish origin and that the critical theory of society contained in itself a theory of religion the very core of which was a comparative theory of Judaism as well as of anti-Semitism and anti-feminism and that its very center was a critical political theology as theodicy. Following the guidance of the critical theorists, the Dubrovnik researchers concretely superseded the historical-idealistic paradigm into the historical-materialistic model.Keywords: critical theory of religion; Dubrovnik; Frankfurt School; historical-idealistic paradigm; historical-materialistic model; Judaism; Theodicy