Religion as a source and remedy for evil

ABSTRACT

The first part of the paper (Sections 1–3) recalls the structural relationship between the religious attitudes and practices and the problem of evil, starting from an anthropological–sociological point of view and ending with more philosophical considerations. The second part (Sections 4–7) deals with the forms of evil engendered or potentiated by religion itself mainly in the public-collective dimension, especially with constraint and violence connected with monotheistic traditions, and finally indicates the antidotes available in them.

KEYWORDS:

• Philosophy of religion
• salvation as liberation
• religious violence
• religious freedom

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.​

Notes

1. Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken II, 10–15, 77–95, 103–105, even claims that cognition and language proceed from ritually shaped communication, and refers to Tomasello, Cultural Origins of Human Cognition.

2. Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken II, 77.

3. Gauchet, Le désenchantement du monde.

4. Cf. Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken II, 96–182, 308–27; and Habermas, Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion, 119–154. See my commentaries on this subject and related issues: Cunico, Lettura di Habermas; and Cunico, Wege dorthin, 111–32.

5. Hick, Philosophy of Religion, 8; and Hick, An Interpretation of Religion, 36.

6. Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, 1404, 122, 127.

7. Bloch, Atheismus im Christentum, 23, 346.

8. Cf. Caracciolo, La religione come struttura, 61, 167 f. He has made it clear that we are to distinguish between religion as a constitutive (co-essential) ‘structure’ of human existence (a fundamental attitude of tension transcending the given towards an internally justified life in reference to Transcendence, or a ultimate Reality), and religion as distinct, specific, autonomous ‘mode’, by which people can immediately refer to God or an Absolute Other through prayers and rituals or other expressions, which may assume very different forms, even negative, ambivalent, spurious or degenerate.

9. Caracciolo, La religione come struttura, 131–2.

10. Assmann, Religio duplex.

11. Assmann, Of God and Gods, 108–116.

12. Assmann, Non avrai altro Dio, 13–24.

13. Assmann, Of God and Gods, 109.

14. Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 30–31. Assmann, Religio duplex, 20, 372.

15. See note 13.

16. Assmann, Of God and Gods, 110, 114.

17. See note 13.

18. Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, 16–18.

19. Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, 21–22; and Assmann, Of God and Gods, 125.

20. Assmann, Of God and Gods, 110–111, 123.

21. Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 24–28.

22. Ibid., 104.

23. Assmann, Of God and Gods, 123.

24. Assmann, Non avrai altro Dio, 133.

25. Habermas, Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion, 119–154; and Habermas, Nachmetaphysisches Denken II, 308–327.

26. Assmann, Religio duplex, 203–212, 371–3.

27. Assmann, The Price of Monotheism, 43–46.

28. Habermas, Philosophisch-politische Profile, 70–71; and Habermas, Glauben und Wissen, 30–31.

29. See also Cunico, Wege dorthin, chapter 9: ‘Religious Freedom in Philosophical Sight’.

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Notes on contributors

Gerardo Cunico

Gerardo Cunico is full professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Genoa (Italy). Main concerns: utopian ontology (Bloch), practical philosophy (Habermas), Polish and German philosophical messianism, philosophy of religion and interreligious dialogue (from Kant to the present). Last relevant book: Wege dorthin: Perspektiven des religiösen Gesprächs der Menschheit (Regensburg 2015).