Critique Of Christianity Research Articles

Love and the End of Reasoning

The author recounts the unsettling faith journey of her conversion to Judaism after she had become an established, professional Christian theologian. Struggling to discern the call of God, she intellectually probes a series of questions about Christianity that disturb her, including her understanding of Jesus. At the end of reasoning she discovers that converting is not a matter of intellect but of heart. It is not dissatisfaction with or criticism of Christianity that propels her toward Judaism, but love—of both traditions. The question is not, Which is better, Christianity or Judaism? But, which community's revelatory lens does one share?

Elizabeth Bishop and Paul Klee

Elizabeth Bishop and Paul Klee Peggy Samuels (bio) In a letter that Bishop's biographer, Brett C. Millier, considers "may have been the most important single piece of criticism Elizabeth ever received," Marianne Moore posed the aesthetic problem of "depth" to her young protégé, Elizabeth Bishop.1 Moore wrote: "I can't help wishing you would sometime in some way, risk some unprotected profundity of experience." 2 Responding to the 1930s pressure for artists to engage with the political left, Moore urged Bishop to turn, as the older poet herself had, to the "deeper" moral and metaphysical Christian critique of culture provided by the cultural critic and theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Although Bishop admired Niebuhr and read some of his books, she could not rely on Christian metaphysics to provide a ground for her work. Bishop's second volume of poems, A Cold Spring, published in 1955 but written almost entirely during the 1940s, constitutes Bishop's solution to the problem of depth. Paul Klee's experiments with the construction of deep space provided Bishop with a means of imagining a poetics of aesthetic and ontological depth. In drawing on the work of modernist painters in order to solve a literary problem, Bishop participates in what Charles Altieri has called the "dialectic between painterly achievements, writerly appropriations, and painterly responses" that was integral to the story of modernism.3 As Altieri has shown, poets often used the work of modernist painters to invent models of subjectivity, positions for the "I" in relation to landscape or world.4 Drawing on Klee's innovative use of a fluid deep space, Bishop located the eye/"I" deeply, extensively and expressively within the complex relations of a mobile environment of other motifs, bodies, and textures that carried multisensory and emotional experiences. [End Page 543] The eye/"I" almost without skin becomes witness to and host of the "events" of the environment in which it hangs. Bishop's lifelong engagement with the visual arts is well documented, although it has been examined only partially.5 A brief listing of the range of her interests would include her early attraction to Van Gogh, before Van Gogh's work was widely known in the U.S.; her report in a 1939 letter that she "almost lived" at MoMA;6 her frequent comparison in letters and notebooks of people, animals, and places to particular paintings or painters; her long friendships and extensive correspondence with Margaret Miller, research associate and then associate curator at MoMA, the American painter Loren MacIver, and the English painter Kit Barker; her own amateur work in watercolors and her construction of two Joseph Cornell-like boxes; her frequent visits, sustained over a lifetime, to exhibitions and museums; her frequent purchase of art books and art; and her reading of art criticism in the small American and British magazines as well her extensive reading of major art historians: Irwin Panofsky, Alfred H. Barr, Ernst Gombrich, Meyer Schapiro, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Eugene Fromentin, and Arnold Hauser. Occasionally, we can even glimpse the intensity of Bishop's encounter with particular paintings. In 1949, at a moment of personal despair, Bishop begs MacIver to finish "that little picture with the lights" so that it can accompany the poet as life raft or talisman for her upcoming dreaded year in Washington D.C. where Bishop was to serve as Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress.7 During that year in Washington, Bishop felt a special attraction to the Phillips Collection, and years later, returning to the museum, two Daumiers so overwhelm her that she reports feeling her "entire life has been wasted."8 In 1959, she claims that she can remember almost every Calder that she had seen in an exhibition of 1932.9 The wide range of paintings and sculptures with which Bishop was familiar and to which she responded passionately in her correspondence and notebooks may overwhelm any scholar wishing to discover how she drew on visual art in creating her own aesthetic. Yet deeper affinities for particular works and artists emerge in the course of her career. Bishop most consistently names three painters as fundamental for her: Edouard Vuillard, Paul Klee, and Kurt Schwitters...

Illusion and offense in Philosophical Fragments: Kierkegaard’s inversion of Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity

The article shows the “Appendix” to Soren Kierkegaard’s Philosophical Fragments to be a response to Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity. While previous studies have detected some influence by Feuerbach on Kierkegaard, they have so far discovered little in the way of specific responses to Feuerbach’s ideas in Kierkegaard’s published works. The article first makes the historical argument that Kierkegaard was very likely reading Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity while he was writing Philosophical Fragments, as several of Kierkegaard’s journal entries from that period discuss Feuerbach in relation to central ideas in Fragments. The article then shows how Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Johannes Climacus inverts Feuerbach’s projection theory, turning it against critics like Feuerbach. At the heart of Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity is the claim that religion is a conceptual illusion, whereby the individual projects his or her personal limits onto the species and then projects the unlimited onto a supposed divine being. Furthermore, Feuerbach sees Christianity as rife with absurdities that tell against its reasonableness. In exploring a hypothetical transcendent avenue toward the truth, Climacus inverts both of these philosophical moves. He argues that on the transcendent hypothesis, the immanentist critic is himself a victim of an “acoustical illusion”: the absolute paradox of the appearance of the god in time is in fact not judged by, but rather judges, the critic as absurd. In inverting and not repudiating Feuerbach’s critique, Climacus reveals the critic as a Socratic figure who displays the heights—and ultimately, the limits—of secular philosophy’s capabilities.

The Problem of a Transcendent God for the Well‐Being of Continuous Creation

Abstract:This year marks the 30th Anniversary of Lynn White's critique of Christianity, which set off the field of eco‐theology. At that time, apologetic theologians responded to the White critique, that the Genesis “dominion” command is largely responsible for the contemporary ecological crisis, through reformulating Christian doctrines to address ecological issues. These pioneers have brought us a long way in terms of addressing both how Christianity has been responsible in supporting harmful human‐earth relations and what resources within the tradition might be useful for addressing the contemporary ecological crisis. Building on this work, this article suggests that Christian theology (whether eco or not) will continue to support an understanding of the human being as rooted “outside of creation” as long as the concept of a transcendent, Omni, Creator‐God is left intact. In place of this theological discourse of transcendence which secularizes the natural realm, I suggest a “radical materialist” (Val Plumwood) understanding of Christianity that moves between idealism and reductive materialism (both are forms of transcendence) through a “planetary” (Spivak) understanding of Creation and a “bio‐historical” (Gordon Kaufman) understanding of anthropology.

The work of Daphne Hampson: The God talk of one feminist theologian

For almost all of human history both in ancient times and in modern contexts, talk about God has been mainly a male preserve. So closely has male God talk been associated by many with God’s own voice, that it is still not commonly realized and acknowledged. With the rise of feminism, especially during recent decades, it has changed. In this article the work of Daphne Hampson, a British feminist theologian, is considered: Her definition and critique of Christianity, her view of the relation between the present and our Christian past, specifically with regard to God talk, her dealing with prominent aspects of the Christian belief system and her emphasis on taking seriously all available knowledge and our contemporary context in doing theology. In line with some current trends in God talk, such as a movement away from anthropomorphism, and in dialogue with Friedrich Schleiermacher, she formulates what she calls a “future theism”.

Jewish Nietzscheanism: Walter Kaufmann's Critique of Christianity

critiques of Christianity continue to take diverse forms, meaning that attention should be paid to the individual particularities.1 One of the most thoughtful and challenging works of this sort appeared in 1976, at a moment when the Zeitgeist within and outside of Judaism pushed for ecumenical sensibilities. Yet Walter Kaufmann's Religions in Four Dimensions was not written to swim with any current, and even now it fits uneasily into standard categories of analysis.2 Indeed, although it was written in English and published in the US, it is slightly inaccurate to even call it American. Kaufmann (1921-80), who spent his adult life as a professor of philosophy at Princeton, left his native Germany in 1939. In terms of his style of thought, he remained as much a German, or GermanJew as he was anything else. These terms, as they stand, nevertheless explain very little, since despite the fact that Kaufmann, more than once in his academic career, openly compared (his version of) Judaism favorably to Christianity, he did not label his case a Jewish critique. Kaufmann's efforts, therefore, are highly unusual, and deserve attention in their own right. In the following pages, I will

Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries. The Apologies, Apocryphal Acts and Martyr Acts (review)

Reviewed by: Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries.The Apologies, Apocryphal Acts and Martyr Acts Robert Louis Wilken Early Christian Literature: Christ and Culture in the Second and Third Centuries.The Apologies, Apocryphal Acts and Martyr Acts. By Helen Rhee. {Routledge Early Church Monographs.] (New York: Routledge. 2005. Pp. xiv, 266. Paperback.) Most discussions of the relation between Christianity and the culture of the Roman world focus on the writings of the apologists, figures such as Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tertullian, or Origen. Their writings respond to criticisms of Christianity and attempt, in varying ways, to show that Christians are not irreligious and respect, at least up to a point, the moral ideals that govern life in society. In the nature of things apologists seek points of intersection between the beliefs of Christians and the larger world around them. Which is to say that the writings of the apologists are a unique literary genre within early Christian literature with specific aims and characteristic features. With some exceptions, notably Tatian, they give us one perspective on the relation between Christ and culture. The central idea behind this book, a reworking of a dissertation submitted to the Center for Advanced Theological Studies at the School of Theology of Fuller Theological Seminary, is that any assessment of early Christian attitudes toward Greco-Roman culture must take into consideration at least two other bodies of literature. The first is the apocryphal acts of the apostles, e.g. the Acts of Thomas, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and the Acts of John. These are imaginative expansions of the lives of apostles written to entertain the Christian folk with edifying stories and miraculous tales of fabulous adventures that often stretch the bounds of credulity. The martyr acts, by contrast, have a historical basis and offer narratives of trial and martyrdom of individuals or groups of individuals. Examples are the Acts of Justin, the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, and the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs. The sources are treated under three headings, the superiority of Christian monotheism, the superiority of Christian sexual morality, and loyalty to the [End Page 119] empire. Rhee, assistant professor of World Christianity at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, shows how differently the three bodies of literature—apologists, acts of the apostles, and martyr acts—address the topics. On the first, monotheism, the apologists attempt to demonstrate the rational foundations of belief in one God and present Christianity as the "true philosophy." Christ comes across first and foremost as a teacher. By contrast the apocryphal acts emphasize the miracles of the apostles and present Christianity as a "true power." The martyr acts contrast devotion to the one God and sacrifice to the many gods of Rome or the "genius" of the emperor. Rhee's phrase for these writings is "true piety." The second section, on the superiority of Christian sexual morality, is the most illuminating. Rhee shows that the apologists promote marriage as a religious and social good, and see virginity and continence as a laudable virtue. The apocryphal acts, however, are strongly encratitic, and reject marriage and sexual intercourse as sinful. The martyr acts, especially those dealing with female martyrs, highlight the tension between marriage and family and commitment to Christ. Similar accents come through in the final section on loyalty to the empire, the apologists promoting allegiance to the emperor while the acts defy imperial authority. The idea behind the book is a good one and Rhee has read widely in the ancient sources and in the modern literature. She asks intelligent questions and sheds fresh light on a well-worn topic. But I found the categories too schematic and the distinctions between the three bodies of literature too neat. To be sure, attitudes toward society in early Christianity were quite varied and the apologists cannot be taken as normative. Still I don't see that the apologists and the authors of the martyr acts necessarily represent two different attitudes toward Greco-Roman culture. It is understandable that in recounting the trial and death of martyrs, the authors of the acts reject the religious values of the society in which they live. What gives...

Do humanismo ridículo: a crítica da prefectibilidade humana em Pascal e Lutero

O texto tem três camadas. A primeira apresenta a construção semântica do conceito filosófico de "humanismo" a partir dos artiens medievais (século XIII), chegando ao seu clímax na Renascença, identificado com a obra de Pico de La Mirândola e sua mística da "suficiência e dignidade da natureza humana". A segunda camada do texto é a crítica que o reformador Lutero e o jansenista Pascal fazem ao "humanismo" e sua mística, concentrando essa crítica na idéia de que nada no comportamento humano sustenta um tal conceito, e que, portanto, se trata de uma abstração sem fundamento, e não de um fato empírico. Na terceira e última camada, analisam-se os desdobramentos desse embate, indicando que, possivelmente, os críticos cristãos do humanismo teriam acertado na sua dúvida com relação à viabilidade de um tal "culto ridículo da natureza humana".

Review Essay: “Intelligence Illuminated by Love”: Faith, Learning, and the Stakes of Doing Rhetorical Scholarship

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Martin J. Medhurst, “Introduction,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 7, no. 4 (Winter 2004): 446. 2. Martin J. Medhurst, 447. 3. Stanley Fish, “All in the Game: One University, Under God?” The Chronicle of Higher Education 51, no. 18 (January 7, 2005) C1. 4. Readers also may recall the special issue of the Journal of Communication and Religion (March 2004) entitled “Religion and Scholarship: A Pluralistic Conversation.” The volume featured pieces by Professor Medhurst, Em Griffin, and Julia Wood, among other communication scholars. 5. Stanley Fish, C1. 6. George Marsden, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 5. 7. Quoted in Marsden, 433. 8. See especially Romans 14:1–15:3. 9. George Marsden, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 3–4. 10. Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 219. 11. Stephen L. Carter, God's Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 187. 12. Quoted in Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Erdmans Publishing Co., 1994), 26. 13. See especially Eugene McCarraher, Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 190. 14. The body practices to which Griffith alludes have received recent provocative treatments in very different scholarly contexts. See, for example, Kristen Pool's Racial Religion from Shakespeare to Milton: Figures of Nonconformity in Early Modern England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and Kazim Sheikh, “Medical Issues and Ramadan,” Journal of American Medical Association 295, no. 5 (February 1, 2006): 498. I am indebted to Kirt Wilson for pointing out these studies and the longer conversation in which they participate. 15. Also see McCarraher. 16. The term “thinking activists” is Chappell's, who offers that these intellectuals, including nonformally educated ones like Fannie Lou Hamer, … are keys to retrospective understanding. They talk more on the record, they tend to preserve their own observations, and they have an occupational interest in being more precise and thorough than their fellows about whatever afflicts them. (191) 17. E. Brooks Holifield, Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 3. 18. I borrow this phrase with grateful acknowledgement to the Reverend Mark R. Orten, Director of Religious Life and Chaplain of Denison University. It is taken from his “Welcome Remarks” for the Denison University Convocation in Celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 25, 2004). Readers seeking a “potent” example are encouraged to consult A Season of Discernment: The Final Report of the Theological Task Force on Peace, Unity, and Purity of the Church (Louisville, KY: Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.: 2006). 19. James F. Darsey, The Prophetic Tradition and Radical Rhetoric in America (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997), 208. I have no knowledge whatever of Professor Darsey's faith convictions. I think his desire to grapple with that which falls outside the bounds of strict empiricism is admirable, and his work on the prophetic tradition magisterial. The accolades heaped upon the book might suggest that a good many of his colleagues feel as I do. 20. Quoted in McCarraher, 190.

India and the Identity of Europe: The Case of Friedrich Schlegel

If only Indian studies could find such cultivators and patrons as in fifteenth and sixteenth centuries suddenly kindled in Italy and Germany an ardent appreciation of Greek studies, and in so short a time achieved so much that reawakened knowledge of antiquity changed and rejuvenated wisdom and science, indeed one could even say world itself. Not less grand and universal, I dare to assert, would be effect of Indian studies even now, if it were seized with similar force and introduced into circle of European learning.2These enthusiastic words were used by Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) to recommend study of Indian literature to readers of his 1808 Uber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier.3 In this book, Schlegel offered fruits of his studies of Sanskrit and Indian literature, which began in Paris in 1803. Here he introduced to educated public of Continental Europe theory about affinity of Sanskrit to Greek, Latin and German, twenty-two years after this theory, which is now called the Indo-European was presented by Sir William Jones to members of Asiatick Society in Calcutta. The presentation of this linguistic relationship, together with a call to study languages by a historical-comparative method, comprised first part of book. The second part dealt with Indian philosophy, which according to Schlegel, belonged to tradition of all Oriental philosophy. The third part suggested how study of Indian literature might benefit study of history in general. Central to this view was speculation that Indian civilization had emigrated to Europe, supported by linguistic affinity between Sanskrit and European languages.The recommendation in quotation above was well received. The publication of Schlegel's book excited intellectual community of continental Europe, and, by 1809, large parts of book had appeared in French translation4 The most important outcome of this excitement was arrival of Franz Bopp and August Wilhelm Schlegel, Friedrich's elder brother, in Paris to study Sanskrit. The excitement stirred by Schlegel's book reflected growing interest in India and East among European intellectuals. This was a very complex process that was a product of Europe's growing colonial power in Asia but was also a part of modernization of European thought. Interest in India swelled during last third of eighteenth century, as British were becoming dominant power in subcontinent and began collecting, analyzing, and distributing information on Indian civilization, mainly through Asiatic Society in Calcutta, which was established by William Jones in 1783 under patronage of Governor-General Warren Hastings.5What interested European intellectuals most about ancient cultures of India and other oriental countries, was what they could learn about ancient religions of these countries. The region from Egypt to India was thought to be cradle of humanity, with various thinkers believing Urheimat to be in another center of oriental civilization, be it Egypt, Mesopotamia or Persia. India became popular with publication of John HolwelPs Interesting Historical Events Relating to Bengal in 1765,6 which was main source for Voltaire's ideas on India.7 Statements concerning nature of Hinduism became important arguments in theological debates in Europe and were used in critique of Christianity both from within and from outside. Critics of established religion like Voltaire argued that antiquity of Hinduism and its alleged Monotheism show Christianity to be a late invention.8 Supporters of orthodox Christianity argued, with Thomas Maurice in England9 and Friedrich Stolberg in Germany,10 that very antiquity of Hinduism and its resemblance to Christianity prove divine origin of bible.This kind of interest in India was growing fast especially in Germany during first decade of nineteenth century. …

L’introduction de l’Histoire ecclésiastique d’Eusèbe de Césarée (I, ii-iv) : étude génétique, littéraire et rhétorique

The introduction of the Ecclesiastical History (I, ii-iv), between the prologue and the narrative proper, contains a defence of Christianity which Eusebius calls προκατασκευή (preparation). This section belongs to the historiographical tradition of preliminary observations, but it also differs from this tradition in that it constitutes the first part of a general discussion about Christ that deals in turn with his divinity (I, ii-iv) and his humanity (I, v-xiii) and in that it provides answers to several criticisms of Christ and Christianity. In composing this section of his work, Eusebius seems to summarize the corresponding passages in the Demonstratio Evangelica. Consequently, these chapters may have been included in a later edition of the work. The present article offers a detailed analysis of the polemical context of this preliminary apologia as well as of Eusebius’ argumentation and his use of sources, particularly Origen. The analysis reveals the originality of this section of the Ecclesiastical History, particularly the way in which it functions simultaneously as an independent apologia and as a theological foundation for the historical narrative that follows.

Verse as Deep Surface: Elizabeth Bishop’s New Poetics, 1938–39

In years that have reading Elizabeth Bishop's poetry and scholarship that has grown up around it, two remarks stand out as almost uncannily apt. Bonnie Costello describes a poetics in which the self is projected into world and, conversely, mutable world enters domain of self. Bishop sees at threshold, along pane of glass (Elizabeth 60; my emphasis). Lorrie Goldensohn writes that playing in [Bishop's] work feels like a sympathy extending deeply and unnervingly everywhere (56). Both scholars are describing strangeness of a mind that somehow lacks usual membrane between itself and surrounding world. Put another way, it's a membrane that has become so porous, transparent, and extensive that it no longer bounds in usual way. In following pages will demonstrate that Bishop's idiosyncratic invention of a consciousness without skin arose as her solution to aesthetic problem of creating depth in poetry, a problem most intensively posed to her Wallace Stevens and Marianne Moore. Her unpublished poem Pleasure Seas, composed in 1938-39, provides us with an uncharacteristically explicit working out of problem and shows that Bishop began to consider surface of verse itself, writing on page, as a kind of threshold across which inner and outer worlds could pass. Bishop solves problem of depth imagining verse, nature, and mind as two-dimensional surfaces capable of opening out three-dimensionally into each other through complex relations of absorption, reflection, modulation, and resistance. The interior of self and a deep outer world pass through to one another via a skinless boundary, more like a sea surface than boundary of human body. In 1938 Marianne set problem of depth explicitly for her young protegee in a letter that Bishop's biographer Brett Millier considers may have most important single piece of criticism Elizabeth ever (137). wrote: can't help wishing you would sometime in some way, risk some unprotected profundity of experience; or since no one admits profundity of experience, some characteristic private defiance of significantly detestable. (391) The letter marks a particularly sensitive moment in a sequence of interchanges in evolving dynamic between two poets. (1) As Costello has argued, by confronting Bishop with aesthetic and moral principles [Moore] forced young poet to consider her own artistic decisions on a larger scale (Marianne Moore 137). Dated May 1, 1938, letter was received Bishop during period crucial for her transition to a poetics that moved beyond her more introspective, fantastic poems (Kalstone 61-75; Travisano 19, 56; Page 206). In 1930s climate of pressure to write a more politically engaged poetry, urged Bishop to turn, as older poet herself had, to deeper moral and metaphysical Christian critique of culture provided Reinhold Niebuhr, or some similar moral critique (private defiance of significantly detestable). (2) But although Bishop admired Niebuhr and read some of his work, she could not finally rely on Christian metaphysics to provide a ground or create depth for her work. Bishop felt May 1, 1938, letter as an attack. In fact, herself uses term in a handwritten addendum at bottom of typed letter: Don't interrupt yourself to answer this deference & attack (Bishop, Papers). In her reply Bishop tells that she has been having some this morning on subject of letter, where meditations has a seventeenth-century Protestant aura of severe self-scrutiny (One Art 73). The self-doubt that Moore's letter engendered can be felt in fact that in her reply Bishop asks point-blank whether it is worth her while to go on writing poems: I wish sometimes you would tell me quite frankly if you think there is any use--any real use--in my continuing with them. …

A Compulsion for Antiquity: Freud and the Ancient World

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book Forum: Autobiography and BiographyFull AccessA Compulsion for Antiquity: Freud and the Ancient WorldPAUL ROAZEN, Ph.D., PAUL ROAZENSearch for more papers by this author, Ph.D., Cambridge, Mass.Published Online:1 Dec 2005https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.162.12.2405AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail This serious book on an important matter forms part of the admirable Cornell Studies in the History of Psychiatry series, edited by Sander L. Gilman and George J. Makari. Armstrong is a classicist, and he has succeeded in writing the most thorough investigation yet on Freud’s relation to the ancient world. Of course, others have noted bits and pieces connected to the problem of Freud’s involvement with the ancient world, but Armstrong is in a position to execute a thorough and comprehensive investigation of many sides to this important question within the history of ideas.Today’s clinicians will probably be inclined to note aspects of the story that Armstrong skips. For example, the tomb-like atmosphere of Freud’s consulting room was bound to have a suggestive impact on his patients. Certainly the presence of Freud’s archeological antiquities was unusual enough to prevent his office from becoming anything like a neutral laboratory setting. The atmospherics of Freud’s collection of ancient objects, as well as the books, helped make Freud’s presence a realistic one. Armstrong also does not raise the issue of how psychological clients could collaborate with Freud in using the past as a defense against current problems, pointed out by Carl Jung and others.Where Armstrong is at his strongest is in dealing with just about every possible classical reference in Freud’s writings. The extensiveness of Freud’s appeal to the ancient world has to be considered remarkable, and the substance of Armstrong’s book securely complements those inclined to see Freud primarily in a biological context. Armstrong is correct in seeing how this fascination of Freud’s with pagan life can be related to both his critique of Christianity and his complicated relation to Judaism; the topic of Freud and religion is not likely to be exhausted in the near future. Armstrong is also especially interesting in understanding Freud within the context of late-19th-century history-writing.No scholar can be expected now to rely on the entire corpus of Freud studies, but as far as I can tell Armstrong has done a remarkably conscientious job of covering his topic. Intellectual historians will be grateful for this path-breaking humanistic exploration of a subject that has been unduly neglected until now.By Richard H. Armstrong. Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 2005, 305 pp., $35.00. FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 162Issue 12 December 2005Pages 2405-2405 Metrics PDF download History Published online 1 December 2005 Published in print 1 December 2005

JEFFREY STOUT ON DEMOCRACY AND ITS CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN CRITICS

ABSTRACTJeffrey Stout addresses two of the main criticisms of liberal democracy by its contemporary neotraditionalist Christian critics: that liberal democracy is destructive of social tradition, and thereby of virtue in the citizenry, and that liberal democracy is inherently secular, committed to expunging religious voices from the public arena. I judge that Stout effectively answers these charges: liberal democracy has its own tradition, it cultivates the virtues relevant to that, and it is not inherently hostile to piety. What Stout does not do, I suggest, is take the next step of showing, positively, that Christianity can and should affirm the substance of liberal democratic society. This is due, in good measure, to the fact that Stout never tells us, except in off‐hand comments, what he takes the substance of liberal democracy to be. And this, in turn, is due to his way of employing pragmatism: he uses pragmatism to give an account of human society generally, not of liberal democratic society. I raise some questions about the general account that pragmatism gives of human society, and thus about the account that it would give of liberal democracy.

Herman Melville's Pierre : How Radical is the Critique of Christianity?

In the dark and problematic Pierre, the much lesser-known novel written after Moby-Dick, Melville provides a radical critique of Christian morality. Ironically, it is the untenable ideals fostered by Christianity that lead to Pierre's disillusionment and self-destruction. But if Christianity is subjected to such a critique, can the source of such moral beliefs — Christ himself - remain exempt from a related critical scrutiny? In any case, does not Pierre push to a further extreme the deep scepticism about a providential God the Father already evident in Moby-Dick?

Beyond Sacrifice: Gloria Naylor Rewrites the Passion

We need a god who bleeds now a god whose wounds are not some small male vengeance some pitiful concession to humility a desert swept with dryin marrow in honor of the lord --Ntozake Shange According to contemporary feminist theory, the process of rewriting and reinventing cultural texts is a liberatory practice. The challenge is to rewrite the established, influential texts of dominant culture in such a way as to explode the myths and symbols that support oppressive ideology. (1) Contemporary black women writers participate in this process in order to critique both racist and patriarchal power structures. I argue that by focusing the rereading and rewriting process on the text most central to Western culture, the Bible, successfully challenges dominant ideology. Contemporary African American women writers are part of a long tradition of black writers who have focused their practice of rewriting on the language and narrative of Christianity. The early slave spirituals are examples of this discursive practice where Christian stories and symbolism were recuperated to protest slavery and sometimes to pass information and thwart the white masters. Slave narratives such as Harriet Jacobs' challenge Christian definitions of sin and purity in order to argue against slavery in general and the fugitive slave laws in particular. Black writers such as Zora Neale Hurston identify the struggles of African American people with those of the Israelites in Egypt, as does Martin Luther King, Jr. in his speeches. And Malcolm X challenges white images of Christ with the notion that Christ was a black man. Renita Weems asserts the importance of such a project: It has proved the task and responsibility of marginalized readers today, both female and male, to restore the voice of the oppressed in the kingdom of God. In order to do this, they have had to be able as much as possible to read and hear the text for themselves, with their own eyes and with their own ears. And in the final analysis, they have had to be prepared ... to resist those elements of the tradition that have sought, even in the name of revelation, to diminish their humanity. (77) There is power in this practice, particularly as the focus is on reenvisioning the Christian myths central to maintaining existing power structures. Continuing this practice, while at the same time transforming it, contemporary black women writers make more extensive critiques of Christianity and the biblical text from both feminist and antiracist positions. Gloria uses biblical allusion to critique foundational myths of Western, and specifically American, culture. She aims a pointed critique at the central New Testament myth--the birth, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ--questioning in particular the concept of sacrifice and its relationship to systems of oppression. As part of this critique, Naylor recasts female sexuality as shaped by Judeo-Christian tradition in which the virgin/whore dichotomy is inescapable (Alexander 92) and argues for the celebration of female sexuality as necessary for spirituality. Like Shange's poem quoted in the epigraph, envisions a religion based on female sexuality and its role in the creation of life, and focused on salvation from the racist and sexist oppression supported by traditional Christian theology. includes biblical intertextuality to extend her critique to the whole of the biblical narrative as it is most often interpreted by mainstream Christianity. In Bailer's Cain, she constructs a cast of characters who closely parallel the biblical characters who prefigure Christ's birth and death. These characters serve to set up George Andrews as a Christ figure. In Mama Day, George's own early death parallels Christ's crucifixion and ultimately calls into question the necessity of such a sacrifice. In most Catholic and Protestant doctrines, interpretive focus is placed on the crucifixion as emblematic of salvation. …

Response

In this essay I reply to Stanley Hauerwas' reading of my book, Life as We Know It, by way of engaging Hauerwas' critique of Enlightenment humanism, and, more specifically, the Kantian categorical imperative. I argue that Hauerwas is mistaken to claim that “humanism cannot help but think that, all things considered, it would be better if [the mentally handicapped] did not exist,” even as I agree in part with his trenchant critique of my own work and of the widely-accepted Kantian proposition that human beings should treat each other as ends in themselves, never as means to an end. Finally, I defend my antifoundationalist formulation of moral “obligation” with regard to persons with mental disabilities against Hauerwas's Christian critique thereof by noting that even Hauerwas, at a critical juncture of his argument, relies on a pragmatist, antifoundationalist understanding of what it means to “help” other humans-and what it means to make oneself useful.

Nietzsche's Critique of Utilitarianism

Nietzsche's scattered, caustic remarks on utilitarianism pervade his philo sophical corpus and tend to be sweepingly critical. Until recently, how ever, scholars have generally ignored Nietzsche's critique because it consists largely of undeveloped arguments and ad hominem attacks against particular utilitarian proponents.1 This is unfortunate, since his critique of utilitarianism is linked important ways to his critique of Christianity, and moreover it exem plifies Nietzsche's adeptness at attacking views he opposed by exposing con cealed assumptions and turning the assumptions of its proponents against the principles they defend. This essay examines the main sources of Nietzsche's fierce opposition to util itarianism, without considering at length any alternative normative position he may have advanced.2 The absence of sustained discussion this essay of a pos itive alternative should not, however, be taken to imply that he rejects morality tout court. Nietzsche parries this common interpretation Daybreak by con ceding, in this book faith morality is withdrawn?but Why? Out of moral ity! (D 4).3 Instead of criticizing utilitarianism by contrasting it with his own moral values, however, Nietzsche primarily attacks utilitarianism by querying its internal coherence, and by raising the possibility that utilitarians are driven by motives at odds with their overt concern with the greatest happiness of the greatest number. The charges of theoretical and motivational inconsistency, which I discuss Sections 1 and 3, respectively, comprise Nietzsche's main objections to utilitarianism. In Section 2,1 discuss a more general argument, loosely related to Section 1, according to which Nietzsche criticizes English util itarians for failing to countenance the evil that utility maximization requires. In Section 4,1 attempt to fortify the interpretation of the first three sections by exposing the weaknesses of a recent account of Nietzsche's critique of utilitar ianism advanced by Frank Cameron. Finally, Section 5,1 begin by staving off another alternative interpretation of Nietzsche's critique of utilitarianism, and then proceed to characterize Nietzsche's hostility toward English utilitarians as typifying his general suspicion of any attempt by a particular group to impose a single moral standard on all people.

Jung, Mormonism, and the Dialectics of Exaltation

Throughout our academic and clinical careers over the last 30 years, we have been consistently impressed by Jung's critiques of traditional Christianity. These are critiques which we as Mormons—who...

Book Review: Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies

Book Review: Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique of Contemporary Ideologies