Ian
J. Seda Irizarry asks whether I might be willing to review the arguments concerning the existence of God in the writings of the great philosophers. This is, to put it as gently as I can, not my field of expertise, although it is impossible to devote a lifetime to philosophy without spending a good deal of time reading, thinking about, and teaching what the great philosophers had to say about God, so I do know something, at any rate. But I wonder whether there is anyone else out there who would find such a discussion interesting. As you may have observed, it takes very little encouragement to get me to unleash a torrent of words, so I am not looking for throngs of avid readers -- or, as Emily Dickinson put it in one of my favorite poems from her pen, "an admiring bog" -- but it would be de trop to lay a carefully chosen five thousand words or so on the world for only one reader. So let me know.
Meanwhile, I am proceeding with the project of working up a multi-volume collection of my published and unpublished papers. This will take some time, since I think I must get permission from every journal where they appeared, but one of these days I will offer The Collected Papers of Robert Paul Wolff on Amazon as a series of e-books. If anyone who has read my tutorial on The Thought of Sigmund Freud imagines that this entire undertaking has a certain similarity to the fascination that little babies exhibit with their own feces, he or she would be correct.
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5 comments:
I'd be very interested!
As a philosophy GTA, I have to say, even amongst the believers in my classes (90%), the arguments in favor of God are found to be wanting. The only arguments that reaffirm the faith of my students are the ones by Swineburne. He specifically deals with the problem of evil as a soul building exercise. I personally think all arguments in favor of God are vapid...but I admit a militantly atheistic bias. Nonetheless, if you want to wrestle with Swineburne, I'd be interested.
My philosophy book at my website has many different arguments for the existence of God which I thought up. Everyone is free to read it. The book is callled: Present Philosophical Papers on the Existence of God. It is divided into 5 parts.
Although I only have an undergraduate degree in History, I believe my 5 part book is still entertaining.
Count me in! I'll read every word
Freud may have had it right about your fascination, but fascination with God's existence may be equally based in psychological explanation. As to the *arguments*, their worth is in the issues that spin off them (modal logic, the nature of quantification, the nature of explanation, etc.). AND, gods aside, those are worthy. I never teach an intro. class without both Hume (Dialogs concerning natural religion) and a consideration of Socrates' beautiful dilemma on the foundations of ethics (is a action good because the gods command it or do the gods command it because it's good?).
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