Philosophy of Religion

Summer 2006

Course Details: Instructor Details:

PHIL 320 M-F 10-11:50 Carolyn Culbertson      Office: 324 PLC

Room 116 ESL cculbert@uoregon.edu 541-346-5993

Course Description

This class takes up the history of religious skepticism -- from its atheistic form in religious pessimism to its role in forming the character of faith for some devout philosophers. The very fruitful question that we will be focusing on, then, is the following: what meanings have human beings discovered in the absence of God? For some, the crisis of confronting this absence is the very thing that occasions their profound faith in the divine. They acknowledge the holiness of what is never manifest. The consequences drawn by others, though, differ greatly. For Kant, for example, God’s absence from the phenomenal realm opens onto a “moral theology,” while with Kierkegaard, the end result is a condemnation of rational efforts which are caught in a perpetually finite mode of thought and therefore unable to make the proper leap of faith. Each of the philosophers respond to the crisis in a different way. To clarify then, we will not be dealing directly with any ontological proofs for the existence of God in this class. My hope is that by the end of the class, the advantage of this omission should have become clear.

Assigned Readings

(** The course reader will be available at the Copy Shop on 13th across from Max’s.)

Week One

Tu/Wed -- Friedrich Nietzsche, “Second Essay: Guilt, Bad Conscience, and the Like” from Genealogy of Morals (p. 57-96)

Th/Fri -- Nishitani Keiji, “What is Religion” from Religion and Nothingness (p. 2-45)

Week Two

Mon/Tu -- Simone Weil, “The Love of God and Affliction” from Waiting for God (p. TBA)

Wed/Th -- Saint Augustine, “Testimonial” & Books I, II, & III from Confessions (p. TBA)

Fri -- Dogen, “Genjokoan” & “Uji” from Shobogenzo (p. 40-58)

Week Three

Mon -- Soren Kierkegaard, “Love’s Hidden Life and Its Recognisability by Its Fruits” & “You Shall Love” from Works of Love (p. 23-57)

Tu/Wed -- Soren Kierkegaard, “The Subjective Truth, Inwardness; Truth is Subjectivity” from Concluding Unscientific Postscript (p. 170-224)

Th -- In class viewing of Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifiice

Fri -- Emmanuel Levinas, “Enigma and Phenomenon” (p. 66-77)

Week Four

Mon/Tu -- Immanuel Kant, from Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone (p. TBA)

Wed -- Sigmund Freud, Chapters I-VI, The Future of an Illusion (p. 7-58)

Th -- No Class

Fri -- Sigmund Freud, Chapters VII-X, The Future of an Illusion (p. 59-98)

Graded Assignments

Students are responsible for two papers and a short precis. The length of the first paper is 4-5 pages, due Friday of Week Two. The second is 7-8 pages and is due Friday of Week Four. In addition, each student will be assigned one day in which he or she will give a 5-10 minute precis on the previous class discussion.

Attendance & participation 20% In-class precis 10%

First paper 30% Last paper 40%