https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2748-4650
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ABSTRACT
The purpose of this paper is to confront a well-known problem in interreligious engagement in European institutions, namely the tendency to exclude contributions that do not conform to certain European expectations. It diagnoses problems produced not only by the problem but by certain solutions to it, and to propose in outline an alternative approach. Chief among these problems is the imperative that members of traditions articulate their deepest moral commitments, in order to secure a common moral ground. This imperative has the unintended but drastic effect of excluding important voices in dialogue. Drawing on the figures of Cordelia (in Shakespeare’s King Lear) and Antigone (in Sophocles’ Antigone) it is argued that forced articulation distorts its objects. The theoretical framework of discussion is drawn from Hegel, Schelling, and Adorno as in interpreted by Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Andrew Bowie. The originality of the argument is the use of aesthetic theory in German philosophy to inform a critique of attempts to make morality central to interreligious engagement.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. MCP, The Search.
2. Fackenheim, Schelling’s Conception; Bowie, Schelling; Crouter, Introduction; Frank, Metaphysical Foundations.
3. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 23.
4. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 23.
5. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism.
6. Bowie, Schelling.
7. Hegel, Phenomenology, the latter section on Spirit.
8. Hegel, Phenomenology, §445–472
9. Hoy, Hegel Antigone, 175.
10. Hoy, Hegel Antigone, 180–181
11. MacIntyre, Whose Justice Which Rationality, 58–63
12. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 72–79
13. Taylor, A Secular Age, 20–22
14. e.g. Habermas, Discourse Ethics.
15. Bourdieu, Outline, 2.
16. Bowie, Aesthetic Dimensions.
17. Jenkins, An Experiment in Providence, 103–116
18. Bowie, Aesthetic Dimensions, 202; Jenkins, An Experiment in Providence, 103–104
19. Kant, Religion within the Boundaries, 6: 61.
20. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 23.
21. Bowie, Aesthetic Dimensions, 19, 202.
22. SSR, Journal of Scriptural Reasoning.
23. Ochs Rules of Scriptural Reasoning.
24. Modern Theology.
25. Adams, Making Deep Reasonings Public.
26. CIP, Communiqué.
27. Ford, An Inter-Faith Wisdom; Ochs, Religion Without Violence.
28. SR, Scriptural Reasoning Bibliography.
29. Ochs, Philosophic Warrants; Ford, An Inter-Faith Wisdom; Higton and Muers, The Text in Play.
30. Adams, Scriptural Difference.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Nicholas Adams
Nicholas Adams (University of Birmingham) is the author of Habermas and Theology (CUP 2006) and Eclipse of Grace: Divine and Human Action in Hegel (Wiley-Blackwell 2013), as well as articles on the relationship between philosophy and theology, and on philosophical problems in interreligious engagement, with a focus on the practice of scriptural reasoning.