PY 407 Review

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PY 407 Review

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• 1i..Each of our authors presents us with a new
  understanding of religion ( if Nietzsches
  Dionysian can be seen as religious) which
• ii. opposes a current dominant understanding.
• iii.They all too see themselves as working within
  a context of secularization within which the
  intelligibility of religion is under question.
• iv.Secularization is in some way precipitated by
  or involved in the dominant understanding of
  religion.
• v.Understanding the history of this context is
  for N,H and B the key to the new understanding of
  religion which is now possible.

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• 2. Dominant interpretations of religion
• Kierkegaard the objective interpretation.
• Nietzsche the objective interpretation of
  Jesuss teaching by the Church.
• Bataille moralized, rationalized religion.
• Later Heidegger religion understood in terms of
  productionist metaphysics.

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• 3. Secularization we can understand the nature
  of the human ( and so the human good) and the
  nature of the non-human independently of a
  religious reference.
• Nietzsche, Heidegger and Bataille see the
  interpretations under 1 as part of this process.
  Understanding its history is the key to
  understanding the new possibilities our
  historical situation provides for rethinking the
  religious.

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• 4. New interpretations.
• Kierkegaard religion as existential
  communication.
• Nietzsche the Dionysian.
• Bataille the sacred as the other which
  disrupts reason, morality and self-identity,
  atheology.
• Later Heidegger possible advent of the
  holiness of the world, the recovery of the
  world as a sacred place within which gods may
  once again manifest themselves.

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Class

• Do we live in the time of the death of God or
  the default of God? What are the possibilities
  now for religious existence?