Religion nach der Religionskritik

The contributions to this volume deal from various perspectives with the philosophical return of the topic of religion "after the criticism of religion". Over the last decades, core elements of the selfarticulation of modernity have come under extensive scrutiny: one of these elements is the criticism of religion of the Feuerbachian, Marxian and Nietzschean type (which was often taken for granted), as well as the dismissal of religion motivated by the "scientistical" claim that religious discourse is, ultimately, void of "meaning". This book documents the interest in a more complex and less dismissive theory of religion which has recently emerged in the international debate. Contributing to this project are philosophers who stand in the center of non- marginal discourses: i.e., in the center of late- and post-analytical philosophy, of communitarianism, and of deconstruction. Following the general concept of the book series, volume 12, Religion "nach der Religionskritik", presents this new discourse through articles in German or English by an international group of authors. The organizing idea is that the essays contained in this book do not express the view of one homogenous philosophical "school", but on the opposite make visible different approaches - in the case of volume 12: the variety of contemporary approaches to questions of philosophy of religion. This book comprises three parts: A post-analytical ouverture (1), where Hilary Putnam (Harvard) argues for a pluralistic yet non-relativistic re-thinking of religion, is followed by the section "After the criticisms of religion" - On the topology of contemporary philosophy of religion (2). The contributions to this part investigate, under a historical as well as a systematical perspective, the origin and structure of the newly reconfigured locus of thought "religio". (The essays have been written by Charles Taylor, Montreal; Onora ONeill, Oxford; and Robert Spaemann, Stuttgart.) Various new approaches (3), focusses on late analytical, (neo)pragmatic, Wittgensteinian, and deconstructive explorations of the status of religious discourse. (Authors are Wilfried Löffler, Innsbruck; Friedo Ricken, München; Hans Julius Schneider, Potsdam; Steven Burns, Halifax/Canada; and Rudolf Langthaler, Wien, who contributed a piece on Adorno). Since the publication of La Religion: Séminaire de Capri sous la direction de Jacques Derrida et Gianni Vattimo (Paris 1993; Stanford/Oxford 1998; Frankfurt/M. 2001) the (post)phenomenological, i.e. deconstructive, re-reading of "the religious" has attracted great attention. At the annual conference of the American Society for Aesthetics in November 2000, a complex debate took place that was inspired by Derridas work on religion; this material is published for the first time in this book (Monique Roelofs, Pittsburgh; Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale; Casey Haskins, New York; Hent de Vries, Amsterdam; and Joseph Margolis, Philadelphia). The editors of Wiener Reihe hope that its publication will contribute to link the emerging discourse on "the return of the religions" in the German speaking countries to the international discussion of this topic without loss of time.