Philosophy of Religion 3/10/2022

Dr. Henning Tegtmeyer

1. Enlightenment Philosophy of Religion

Hume, Kant.

2. Philosophy of Religion in German Idealism

Less in favor of emotivism found in Schleiermacher. Idealists focus more on the rationalistic
side.
They have to take religion seriously and come to terms with it.

Hegel and Schelling had a background in theology and influenced their approach to religion.
In each one of them developed the idea that ultimately a purely a priori approach to religion is
not enough. A more comprehensive approach to religion with a strong empirical note also. This
ultimately results in Schelling’s philosophy.

First writings on religion were written roughly parallel to each other. Schelling wrote an essay
called Philosophy and Religion, where he developed a rational approach to religion from an a
priori standpoint. Hegel wrote an a priori approach in the Phenomenology of Spirit, phenomenon
of Geist. Somehow philosophy has to do with the absolute, that is the culmination of spiritual
life, what is required by reason to come to terms with itself and the world as a whole. Different
ways to do so. And, according to Hegel, there is a certain rationality that informs the hierarchy of
different forms of conceiving, of the absolute. That’s why we have religions of nature, where
there is no distinction between what is natural and not. It has its own dynamic. Truly
transcendent god with whom they can’t relate personally. This is overcome in an philosophical
interpretation oof Christianity (Protestantism).

Schelling:
Student of Fichte, admirer of Kant, but trying to push beyond Kant using Fichte.
Extremely self-critical of previous views, including his own.
Schelling started as a protestant theologian who turned a Fichtean philosopher, with a friendly
eye on religion and strong emphasis to Christianity. Sympathetic to Hegel’s idea that somehow
Christianity is closer than other religion and a rational theology should reflect that.
- From a philosophy of art point of view, we can’t say that Christianity is superior to Ancient
Rome and Greece. Art and aesthetic beauty have a different role in ancient cultures than in
Christianity.
Christianity is always aiming at something higher, whereas among the ancients, the statues of the
gods are actual representations of said gods. Symbolism in art, the notion of symbol becomes
very important. Important aesthetic notion.
- What is superior? Paganism or Christianism? There is no easy answer to this.
- One of the reasons they go on different paths, Hegel says that in spite of this, there is a line of
progress. Progress always has a price, there are things that are lost, loses are always included, but
all in all, we can say that things have changed to the better, at least in the long run. Ultimately,
the shift from pagan polytheism to Christian monotheism is progress. So is the transition from
Catholicism to Protestantism (modern version).
- Schelling is much less confident about this. He agrees with the idea that historical change
always brings along loses and gains, but he is growing increasingly impatient with this a priori
pattern that historical is always dominant progress and that we can say that things have improved
before we take a look at the details. That we need more historical understanding in hermeneutics,
specially when talking about paganism and Christianism, Schelling argues that without a deep
study we can’t assume that Christianity is the superior religion. We can’t take it for granted.
- Schelling defends a philosophical religion, but it’s not Hegelian at all. Philosophers can form
own axis to religion (whatever religion that is) in a philosophical way.
- Later Schelling philosophy also mean history; a positive religion includes philosophy of history
with a strong empirical component.
Later Schelling: negative philosophy / positive philosophy (technical terms). They are pre-
formed in Schelling’s Freedom Essay where he criticizes Kant. Insufficient notion of freedom,
because he defines freedom only negative, as the absence of a determining cause. And, through
that, Kant also has a positive notion of free will, but that is in practical philosophy, not in the
theoretical philosophy. It’s merely negative because it builds on purely a priori reasoning about
reason and its relation to the objects of reason, which is only relational, so there is no positive
account about what reality consists of, causal factors aren’t really in play, only focusing on the
theory of knowledge, but there is no philosophy/history of nature. What we need is a positive
philosophy that compliments this negative philosophy. Schelling thinks of philosophy as the
combination of both. One cannot exist without the other. It can’t only be positive (philology,
history), it can’t only be negative (an empty mill that does not produce any bread).
- The problem of how to relate both types of philosophy is one that he will wrestle with
throughout the rest of his life.

3. Philosophy of Mythology
Something very peculiar. You don’t find it anywhere else in the XIXth century. Invention of
Schelling. The need to come up with a philosophy of mythology is one of Schelling’s claim. If
you know the background, one can understand what is going on. Basically, the idea is that we
can’t do philosophy of religion without looking at the history of all the religions and philosophy
has to come to terms with it, not from a pre-determined point of view, but from an open mind
that takes these religions seriously.
- “Philosophy of Mythology” is an umbrella term to refer to pre-Judeo-Christian religions that
we know from the history of mankind, including those that still exist in other parts of the world.
He mentions India, America, especially South American religions.
- There are different non-Christian, non-Judeo-Christian traditions, monotheistic and polytheistic
religions, many cultures have some kind of monotheism, but the dominant is polytheism.
Schelling is interested in the relation between different types of -theisms. Historically polytheism
wins for a long time, but ultimately breaks down and monotheism wins regardless of the
monotheism. The very fact that polytheism can be so powerful that it defines a whole culture is
difficult to understand from an enlightenment point of view. Schelling doesn’t like the
enlightenment approach that takes these religions as superstition, fraud, poetry, etc.
- We must understand the real motivational force that polytheism exerted on the mind of the
peoples that believed in them. We have to approach these religions from an empirical
perspective, not a priori. Moreover, we have to study why polytheism fell down so easily against
Christianity. These are all questions for the philosophy of mythology.
- This includes the Old-Testament. Schelling constantly reads the documents of ancient Judaism
and ancient paganism next to each other. That is part of his methodological approach and his
kind of philology. Ultimately, this leads to what he calls the philosophy of revelation, the
overcoming of paganism, of mythology. We cannot make sense of Christianity without the
polytheism that precedes it. It presupposes that which negates. Ancient polytheism is its pre-
condition, since it emerges from a polytheistic world. Retrospectively, polytheism was an era,
one that had to be overcome. However, every era carries some true. Christianity cannot destroy
polytheism, but it can build from it and transform many elements and aspects of it.
- Ultimately, this is Schelling’s positive philosophy, come to terms with history. One of his key
claims is that the core of history, the human history, is somehow the history of religion. Can’t
make sense of human history without considering religion. Guiding ideas of human development
and conflict between different human communities, different cultures, different powers, these
conflicts are shaped by guiding ideas that people have, which are informed by religion.
- There is no a priori necessity that allows Christianity win over ancient polytheism. From our
point of view, things that happened are contingent, of course that from another point of view it
can be called providence. But we cannot construct this in a priori manner, we can only look at
events retrospectively and find the underlying order, the underlying causes that come from the
wise will of a creator, not a mechanistic and necessary cause. Contingency doesn’t mean chance
or chaos, but we’re simply not in the epistemic position to anticipate.
- We can’t take providence for granted, it’s not an a priori notion. Perhaps history gives us
reasons to believe or not believe in providence.

4. Historical-Critical Introduction
- There’s a problem in bringing the two parts of philosophy together. Schelling becomes aware
of the difficulties in doing so.
- Pattern he follows: unlike the system of transcendental idealism and philosophy of nature
which are simply next to each other and enlighten each other, the relation between negative and
positive philosophy is rather a progressive one.
- Starting from a negative philosophy, that provides conceptual framework, logic and traditional
metaphysics. In one point he says that actually the history of philosophy has been a negative
philosophy history, including Plato and Aristotle. So, somehow, positive philosophy is
unexplored territory, he will be the first. But we need a foothold in negative philosophy. We
need a conceptual framework. Purely a priori account of reality. It provides monotheism as a
conceptual necessity. We have god as first principle of being, it must be a personal good for
certain reasons.
- If we have that, we can proceed to philosophy of mythology which tells us something that we
know about the origin of the world. Most mythologies contain a cosmogony about how the world
came about, but if we study the different cosmogonies, including the testaments, we see
recurring patterns that tell us something. And from thereon we can, one path would lead to
philosophy of nature, including empirical approach to nature, something which Schelling never
fully developed. The other is the philosophy of history (of mythology and revelation). This first
part, this negative part became increasingly difficult for Schelling.
- Hypothetical notion of god as first principle. Defining some necessary features that an a priori
account of god must satisfy and then look for it in reality as we have it documented in human
history.
- That is the first part, then the second part is what interests us. The late material. Schelling
thought earlier that a negative approach would suffice. Discussing systematically with other
rivaling approaches to discuss their insight and shortcomings. Thereby present his own views as
integrating and overcoming others. Different methodological approaches to the history of
mythology.
- In the last lecture he discusses the relation between philosophy of mythology and of religion.
- This is quite unique, on the one hand, but on the other hand, it’s quite visionary, because it is
the first attempt that I know of to come up with a pluralistic approach to religion. Messiness is
unavoidable, but he tries to minimize it by getting clearer about the methodology that we need
and ordering the different approaches.
- Taking religious seriously, literally, or metaphorical, he prefers to take is as literal. These are
questions that he tackles.

Syllabus
- Presentations: Group – Max 6 people per group. But presentations are not given in class but
recorded in advance. We have a blackboard, recording tool on Toledo and upload it to the portal.
Or we can send it to the professor so he can upload it. We must take in the presentation before
class. Read the text and look at the presentation before class. Each presenter should formulate 5
questions regarding the text and these questions will be the topic of the discussion. We will do so
in groups in class. Basically, you record presentation including the questions and then the group
of presenters divides the class in a corresponding number of groups, so if we have 6 presenters,
there should be 6 groups. In each group, each presenter discusses its question with his group.
Then, at the end, there will be a recap moment in which a representative of the group will make a
conclusion. We can choose how we divide the text: it can be focusing on concepts, on the
interpretation of other authors mentioned in the text by Schelling, or just divide the text by
sections.
We should upload the presentation at least by Thursday of the previous week before Monday. 1
hour of group discussion in class and collecting the results. 30-40 minutes for discussion within
the group and then joint discussion afterwards. Length of presentation: maximum 30 minutes for
the recorded presentation. Discipline must be necessary. Be brief and to the point in presentation.
5 minutes each in a group of 6 students. Present your questions but also motivate them. Motivate
how this and why these questions emerge to you, and we can’t do that without reading the text.
Not repeat or summarize the text. But keep the text in mind regarding your questions. Each one
of the 6 group members will lead one of the 6 groups and there one will guide a discussion based
on the 5 questions. Handouts are not necessary. We can integrate the questions in the video, if we
want to, as slides. Divide time with the 5 questions and form an idea of how much time we want
to give to the group for each question.

Presentation counts for 20% and discussion counts for 10%.

Final paper can be based on the presentation topic, but it doesn’t have to be. It must be
negotiated with the professor.