Christian philosophy

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Christian philosophy is a collective term for a broad spectrum of philosophical research programs that are related to Christian conditions of philosophizing, e.g. B. to understand the content of the revelation . In this broadest sense, the shape of Christian philosophy is subject to the changes that are compatible with Revelation and that it has brought about in the history of Western thought. According to contemporary and Christian philosophers of modern times, the transcendental philosophy of the Enlightenment and modernity is also shaped by Christian consciousness and is understood as an expression of secularized Christian thought.

In a narrower, classical sense, Christian philosophy is that philosophy that has an affirmative relationship to Christian revelation and, in a philosophical way, reflects Christian truths. Nevertheless, it claims to be a science of reason. This philosophizing began in late antiquity and continued into the Christian Middle Ages. For late antiquity, this is the patristic and philosophers such as Clement of Alexandria , Origen and Augustine are to be mentioned. In the Middle Ages it is the scholasticism with Thomas Aquinas as the main representative and also the tradition of basic problems and their attempted solutions in Philosophia perennis , which is still practiced today.

Proceeding from Christian truths contradicted and traditionally does not contradict the philosophical approach, since it has been argued that this presupposes comprehensive conditions of knowledge. Since philosophy largely demands the universalisability of truth and validity claims in principle, projects by Christian philosophers, provided that they presuppose specific revelation contents of Christian provenance, have often been critically assessed, especially since the middle of the 19th century. Representatives of Christian philosophy, on the other hand, emphasize that its essence is to be inspired by Christian questions and approaches to solutions, but that the argumentation is always purely logical and without theological presuppositions. Christian philosophy accordingly argues exclusively with natural reason and does not become theological, since its evidence does not contain any supernatural revelation truths. This is not put into perspective by the fact that the answers given by Christian philosophy do not contradict Christian faith.

The term "Christian philosophy" is sometimes used in the history of philosophy in a strictly descriptive way to describe the corpus of all those texts that were produced in the Christian cultural milieu - analogous to the terms Arabic philosophy , Chinese philosophy , Jewish philosophy , etc.

See also

literature

  • Karl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann : About the concept of Christian philosophy. 1823.
  • Leopold Immanuel Rückert : Christian philosophy or philosophy, history and the Bible presented according to their true relationships to one another. 2 volumes. Hartmann, Leipzig 1825.
  • Heinrich Ritter : Christian philosophy according to its concept, its external circumstances and in its history up to the most recent times. 2 volumes. Perthes, Hamburg 1850-1853.
  • Karl Werner : For orientation about the nature and task of Christian philosophy in the present. Schaffhausen 1867.
  • Etienne Gilson : The History of Christian Philosophy from its Beginnings to Nicholas of Cues. Schoeningh, Paderborn 1937.
  • Alois Dempf : Christian Philosophy. Man between God and the world . Bonner Buchgemeinschaft, Bonn 1938.
  • Hans Büchenbacher : Nature and Spirit. Principles of a Christian Philosophy. Haupt, Bern u. Stuttgart 1946.
  • Ernst Hoffmann : Platonism and Christian Philosophy. Afterword by Walter Rüegg . Artemis, Zurich a. Stuttgart 1960.
  • Otto Muck : Christian Philosophy. Bercker, Kevelaer 1964.
  • Emmerich Stiglmayr: The concept of science in Christian philosophy. 1979.
  • Ernst Bloch : Christian Philosophy of the Middle Ages, Philosophy of the Renaissance. 1985.
  • Emerich Coreth (Ed.): Christian Philosophy in Catholic Thought of the 19th and 20th Century. 3 volumes. Graz u. a., 1987-1990.
  • Heinrich M. Schmidinger : The Christian philosophy of the 20th century in the German-speaking area. A sketch of the history of philosophy. In: Salzburg Yearbook for Philosophy. 35, 1990, pp. 105-123.
  • Richard Heinzmann : Christian Faith and the Claim of Thought Contributions from the perspective of Christian philosophy. 1998.
  • Emerich Coreth : Contributions to Christian Philosophy. 1999.
  • Wolfgang Senz: Christian philosophy and theology in the light of the Platonic dialectic and doctrine of the self. 2002.
  • Theo Kobusch : Christian Philosophy. The discovery of subjectivity. WBG, Darmstadt 2006.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See Brockhaus Enzyklopädie, Fourth Volume , Wiesbaden 1968, pp. 33f.