1st Edition

Post-Secularism, Realism and Utopia Transcendence and Immanence from Hegel to Bloch

By Jolyon Agar Copyright 2014
    256 Pages
    by Routledge

    256 Pages
    by Routledge

     This book explores the contribution to recent developments in post-secularism, philosophical realism and utopianism made by key thinkers in the Hegelian tradition. It challenges dominant assumptions about what the relationship between religion and our so-called "secular age" should be that have sought to reduce or even eliminate religiosity from the public sphere. It draws upon utopian thinkers within the Hegelian tradition whose work has challenged this narrow secularism. In particular it explores the importance of philosophical transcendence to Hegelian and post-Hegelian religious, social and political theorising. This includes philosophers whose thinking is sympathetic or at least compatible with transcendence (such as Hegel, Taylor, Bhaskar and Bloch) but also those who have a reputation for rejecting transcendence and instead embracing immanence and even atheism (Feuerbach, Marx and Engels). By drawing on the utopian content of these thinkers it seeks to shed new light on the importance religious ideas have played in a range of philosophical positions within the broadly Hegelian tradition from theism, idealism, materialism and atheism to new ideas, especially new research on Hegel's so-called "panentheism".

    The book will be of interest to those working in the areas of post-secularism and utopian studies. It should also be of interest to academics and students of the recent turn within Critical Realism to "meta-reality" and its implications for Hegelianism and Marxism.

    1. Introduction: Post-secularism, Utopia and Reality  2. Re-enchanting Reality: Depth Realism, Ethical Naturalism & Transcendence  3. Secularism, Post-Secularism, Transcendence & Rationality  4. Transcendent & Immanent Approaches to the “Self”: Marcel Gauchet & Charles Taylor  5. Freedom, Rationality and God: Hegelian Dialectical Historical Panentheism  5. From Transcendence to Immanence: The Anthropological and Materialist Utopia of Ludwig Feuerbach  6. Atheistic Meta-Reality? Historical Materialism and Ernst Bloch’s Philosophy of the “Not Yet”  7. Conclusion: Conclusion: Post-Materialist Meta-Reality

    Biography

    Jolyon Agar teaches political theory at the Queen's University of Belfast. He is the author of Rethinking Marxism: From Kant and Hegel to Marx and Engels (Routledge 2006).