Religion and human essence: classical ideas

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleРелигията и човешката същност. Класически идеи
3. Language term Bulgarian
4. lemma author Nachev, Ivaylo
5. lemma category Scientific theories and disciplines > Religious studies
6. Publication date 17-11-2018
7. lemma work Богомилова, Нонка [Author]. Religion and human essence: classical ideas
8. lemma manifestations Религията и човешката същност. Класически идеи - София: Академично издателство “Проф. Марин Дринов”, 2011.
9. Keywords Human nature - human essence - Christian philosophy - Philosophy of religion
10. Lemma body

    1. The book’s aim is to reconstruct the cultural and theoretical patterns of the concept of religion, as formed by some key philosophers and theologians. There lies the analysis of thinkers who took “Man”, the “human essence”, “human nature” as the conceptual core of their approach to religion (handled are writers from the last quarter of the 18th century until the late 20th century). According to their approach to the human essence, which is presented by Bogomilova as speculative, historical, or existentialist (or psychoanalytical), the examined authors are united in three thematic blocs, each of them in a unique way marked some of the fundamental trends in the development of philosophy and the humanities since the end of the 18^th century. Bogomilova dealt with the representatives of a wide array of cultural and philosophical currents, including philosophers such as Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ludwig Feuerbach, Max Weber, Arnold Toynbee, Paul Tillich and others. In addition, within the context of these thinkers the book examined the approaches of thinkers who philosophized on religion, including Kierkegaard, Rousseau and Berdyaev. In addition to the variety of philosophical approaches to religion, these authors differ in their evaluation of religion ranging from full acceptance to rejection or seeing it as a functional element of the social world.

       The philosophers and theologians who were analysed in the book built their understanding of religion according to their specific view on human nature and the role of religion for human nature. The book devoted special attention to the critical approaches in works of Feuerbach, Marx, and Freud. Bogomilova also examined the concepts of Man, of individual and of religion in works of Hegel and Schleiermacher. In the views of these authors on the mutually connected and mutually manifested pulsation of Man, nature, society, and God, the absolute harmony between all these spheres is attained. In these systems the nature of humankind is to be a harmonious component, and one of equal standing, within the universe. Proceeding from a different understanding of Man and human nature, Tillich proposed a different understanding of religion and God. According to Bogomilova, the comparison between such thinkers allows to overcome the confessional specificities and restrictions and to analyze them from the perspective of their common and deepest value foundation, namely their understanding of Man. On the other hand, it makes possible to overcome the one-dimensional confessional approach to religious philosophy by revealing the differences in the views of philosophers and theologians belonging to the same religious confession, differences determined by the specifics of the philosophical and anthropological core of their ideas. In view of this goal, the analysis makes no claim, to present the problem in the light of confessional distinctions between Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism or of the internal differences within a confession. The religious philosophers are included in the perspective of their specific views on Man and human nature, views that provide comparability with the other perspectives that are presented.