Peter Jonkers

Religion as a source of evil

ABSTRACT The starting point is that there is a structural, although not necessary link between religion and two important expressions of religious evil, religious intolerance and violence. The origin of this link lies in the radicalism that is inherent in all religions. Although this radicalism often has very positive effects, it also can lead to evil. Because religious evil is fueled by eschatological antagonism and the enormous utopian energies that are characteristic of religion, it is often qualified as symbolic. ‘Symbolic’ refers to the fundamental disproportion between the excess of the divine as a groundless ground and the finite capacity of every religion to receive it (Ricoeur). Symbolic violence arises when a religious community yields to the temptation of becoming possessive, forcing the inexhaustible divine mystery to adapt to the limited capacities of this community to grasp this mystery. This leads to the exclusion of internal or external dissenters. The final section examines how the ill-fated bond between religion and evil can be broken. It will be examined if and how a redefinition of tolerance, in particular a disconnection between religious truth and the claim to exclusivism and a commitment to interconfessional hospitality, can contribute to avoiding that religion becomes evil.

What about unjustified religious difference? Response paper to Dirk-Martin Grube’s ‘justified religious difference’

The aim of this paper is to shed some light on the distinction between justified and unjustified religious diversity, a problem that Dirk-Martin Grube only hinted at in his article ‘Justified Religious Difference.’ This article’s focus is not so much on the epistemological question of justifying religious difference, but on how to deal with it in the societal sphere. This implies that religions and religious diversity will be approached from a practical perspective, that is, as (reasoned) ways of life. I start by examining the opportunities and problems of religious diversity, opposing a universalist and a particularist view on this issue. Religious difference is an opportunity, because it is intertwined with creativity and innovation, but it is also a problem, because it confronts us with incompatible judgments, irreconcilable values, and contrary principles. Notwithstanding the legitimate objections that can be raised against the particularist position, the above observations seriously undermine Grube’s idea that the distinction between justified and unjustified religious difference can be made unambiguously, because of the heterogeneous character of the idea of justification itself. In order to deal with this issue, I propose a re-examination of the idea of tolerance, defined as a virtue: I disapprove of your manner of living, but I respect in it your liberty to live as you please and I recognize your right to manifest it publicly. But this virtue makes only sense against the background of the intolerable, which is the translation of the idea of unjustified religious difference into the language of the public debate. This idea serves as an always fragile limit to tolerance.

Das Absolute als Substanz oder persönlicher Geist

Am Schluss seines frühen Jenaer Aufsatzes Glauben und Wissen (1802) behauptet Hegel, die Jacobische Philosophie entbehre des Zusammenhangs mit der einen, wahren Philosophie am meisten,1 weil jene das Individuelle und Besondere über den Begriff erhebe2 und nicht imstande sei, das Absolute als eine unendliche, ewige Substanz zu fassen.3 Hingegen misst Hegel in seiner Jacobi-Rezension (1817) Jacobi das Verdienst bei, den „Übergang von der absoluten Substanz zum absoluten Geiste in seinem Innersten gemacht, und mit unwiderstehlichem Gefühle der Gewissheit ausgerufen [zu haben]: Gott ist Geist, das Absolute ist frei und persönlich.“4 Die bisherige Hegel-Forschung hat nachgewiesen, dass Hegel schon in der Phänomenologie des Geistes seine frühere polemische Haltung Jacobi gegenüber aufgegeben hat und zu einer ‚neuen Auseinandersetzung‘ mit diesem gelangt.5 Seine Anspielungen auf gewisse, von Jacobi eingeführte Problematiken und Debatten weisen darauf hin, dass Hegel spätestens ab 1807 Jacobi nicht mehr lediglich als einen Vertreter der Reflexionsphilosophie der Aufklärung und der vormaligen Metaphysik betrachtet, sondern ihn in zunehmendem Maße als deren Kritiker würdigt.6 Aber die Hauptfrage bezüglich Hegels veränderter Haltung zur Philosophie Jacobis in der Phänomenologie des Geistes, nämlich ob er in seiner Einsicht, dass das Absolute Geist sei, von Jacobi beeinflusst worden ist, kann nur hypothetisch beantwortet werden, weil es in der Phänomenologie des Geistes an eindeutigen Belegstellen dafür fehlt (Jacobi wird darin nicht namentlich genannt).7 Erst später, d. h. in seiner Jacobi-Rezension, erkennt Hegel die außerordentliche Bedeutung Jacobis an, indem dieser den „Uebergang von der absoluten Substanz zum absoluten Geiste [...] gemacht [hat].“8 In diesem Aufsatz möchte ich untersuchen, ob sich etwas Näheres über die oben formulierte Hypothese, dass Hegels umfassender Geistbegriff in der Phänomenologie des Geistes möglicherweise von Jacobi beeinflusst worden ist, zeigen lässt. Dabei werde ich vom substanzphilosophischen Hintergrund, von dem aus Hegel Jacobi in Glauben und Wissen kritisiert, ausgehen und weiterführend Hegels in der Phänomenologie des Geistes neu gewonnene Einsicht in den Geistcharakter des Absoluten bezüglich seiner möglichen Abhängigkeit von Jacobi untersuchen.

The Interest of Reason Is to Go Without God. Jacobi's Polemic Against Philosophical Theology

Jacobi’s polemics against philosophical theology is meant to show that neither Spinoza, nor Kant, nor Fichte nor Schelling have been able to think God as a person, that is as a free, intelligent being. In order to elucidate Jacobi’s position I focus on two less well-known texts of his, viz., A Few Comments Concerning Pious Fraud (1788) and Of Divine Things and Their Revelation (1811). In the second section I situate two key philosophical theological concepts — deism and theism — against the broader context of modern philosophy. The third section analyses Jacobi’s polemic against deism, followed by an examination of his positive attitude towards theism and an explanation of the reasons why he, at the end of his life, came to identify theism with deism and extended the negative meaning of the latter term to the former. In the final section, I give an outline of Jacobi’s alternative idea of philosophical theology.