1st Edition

The Frankfurt School on Religion Key Writings by the Major Thinkers

Edited By Eduardo Mendieta Copyright 2005
    414 Pages
    by Routledge

    414 Pages
    by Routledge

    In "The Frankfurt School on Religion," Eduardo Mendieta has brought together a collection of readings and essays revealing both the deep connections that the Frankfurt School has always maintained with religion as well as the significant contribution that its work has to offer. Rather than being unanimously antagonistic towards religion as has been the received wisdom, this collection shows the great diversity of responses that individual thinkers of the school developed and the seriousness and sophistication with which they engaged the core religious issues and major religious traditions.
    Through a careful selection of writings from eleven prominent theorists, including several new and previously untranslated pieces from Leo Lowenthal, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas, this volume provides much needed sources for religious leaders, philosophers, and social theorists as they grapple with the nature and functions of religion in the contemporary social, political, and economic landscape.
    "The Frankfurt School on Religion" recovers the religious dimensions of the Frankfurt School, for too long sidelined or ignored, and offers new perspectives and insights necessary to the development of a fuller and more nuanced critical theory of society.
    Selections and essays from: Ernst Bloch, Erich Fromm, Leo Lowenthal, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Johann Baptist Metz, Jurgen Habermas, Helmut Peukert, Edmund Arens.

    Introduction 1. Ernst Bloch On the Original History of the Third Reich Not Hades, but Heaven on Earth Hunger, Something in a Dream God of Hope, Thing-For-Us Marx and the End of Alienation 2. Erich Fromm The Dogma of Christ 3. Leo Löwenthal The Demonic: Project for a Negative Philosophy of Religion 4. Herbert Marcuse Luther, Calvin, Kant 5. Theodor Adorno Reason and Sacrifice Reason and Revelation Meditations on Metaphysics 6. Max Horkheimer Theism and Atheism The Jews and Europe Religion and Philosophy Observations on the Liberalization of Religion 7. Walter Benjamin Capitalism and Religion Theological-Political Fragment Theses on the Philosophy of History 8. Johann Baptiste Metz Productive Noncontemporaneity Anamnestic Reason: A Theologian's Remarks on the Crisis of the Geisteswisesnschaften 9. Jurgen Habermas Transcendence from Within, Transcendence in this World Faith and Knowledge 10. Helmut Peukert Enlightenment and Theology as Unfinished Projects 11. Edmund Arens Religion as Ritual, Communicative, and Critical Praxis

    Biography

    Eduardo Mendieta is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Stony Brook University. He is the author or editor of several books including The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy, Identities: Race, Class, Gender, and Nationality and (as editor and translator), Enrique Dussel's The Underside of Modernity.

    "This volume, and the work of the Frankfurt School, should not be overlooked by anyone seeking to reflect on the place of religion and theology in societies dominated by the discourses of science and consumerism."

    --Christopher C. Brittain, Atlantic School of Theology, Anglican theological Review