Answer three (3) questions in essay form. Each essay should be at least two (2) pages in length, double-spaced, 12 pt. font. The total length of the exam should be 6-8 pages. To answer these questions it is necessary that you have done the readings I list after each question (Pals, Nigosian, Livingston). The essays should be submitted as one submission (not three separate submissions) to Turnitin assignments in Blackboard, no later than MONDAY, NOVEMBER 7TH, 2016, BEFORE 11:30 P.M.
IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ANSWER SOME OF THESE QUESTIONS UNLESS YOU COME TO CLASS.
1. The (radical) Enlightenment (Spinoza, Reimarus, Hume, and Kant) had a very negative view of revealed religion in general, and Christianity in particular. For example, Reimarus looked at Christianity as a fraud, a fabrication of the power-hungry early disciples of Jesus. Kant had a complete disregard for revealed religion (which he found full of superstitions and gross immoralities) and sought translate Christianity into a moral system, which we can get on our own through Reason (not revelation). Hume proposed a naturalistic explanation of religion and attacked all attempts to rationally prove the existence of God. Although Schleiermacher and Hegel were influenced by the Enlightenment in their critique of revelation and dogma, and were both influenced by Kant and Spinoza, they had a different analysis and interpretation of religion.
1. State the (radical) Enlightenment understanding of religion and compare it and contrast it with that of Schleiermacher and Hegel.
2. In what ways the way Schleiermacher, and Hegel see religion a more positive and sympathetic interpretation of religion and Christianity?
3. Or are the views of religion offered by Schleiermacher and Hegel in the end more harmful to Christianity in particular, and religion in general (e.g. by making too many concessions to scientific naturalism and the Enlightenment)? (For this essay Handout #1 is essential, and my lectures on the Enlightenment, Schleiermacher, Hegel; the Strauss selection posted on Blackboard will give you a pretty good idea of Hegel's position.)
2. Emile Durkheim offered a major interpretation of religion that rivaled Tylor's and Frazer's in depth and in many ways surpassed them in influence.
1. Explain's Durkheim's interpretation and analysis of religion.
2. Explain how Durkheim's analysis is similar to Marx's (and Feuerbach's), and ways in which it is different.
3. Is Durkheim's analysis of religion continuous (in sync) with the Enlightenment (Hume, Reimarus, and Feuerbach), or does it significantly go beyond the Enlightenment? (For this question you must read carefully the chapter on Durkheim and Marx in Pals, as well my lectures on Marx, Feuerbach, and Strauss. I have posted a selection from Feuerbach).
3. Discuss Marx's thesis, building on the work of Feuerbach and Hegel (as Hegel was interpreted by Feuerbach) that religion is a major obstacle to the emancipation of humanity from superstition and oppression, that religion has been a major force in legitimizing and justifying the conquest of subjugation of peoples in the name of their god and religion.
QUESTION: a. Is Marx's critique of religion for the most part correct, partially correct, or too simplistic (black and white) to be right? b. In what ways, as Nietzsche claimed, can it be argued that Marxism a "Christian heresy." (You must read the Marx selection in Pals, and I strongly recommend that you read the Feuerbach selection posted on Blackboard as well; my lectures on Hebrew prophecy will be most useful for answering at least part of this question)
4. The Bhagavad Gita is one of the greatest syntheses in the history of religions. The Gita reconciles the different paths to salvation (Karma/Action, Jñana/Knowledge, and Bhakti/Devotion or faith in God) offered, respectively, by the Vedas (action in the world), the Upanishads (knowledge of Brahman or the Absolute), and the Gita (devotion or faith in a personal, loving and savior God who takes on human form to make his message available to us humans). Without a doubt, it represents either one of the greatest spiritual achievement, or certainly a great example of society at work as Durkheim would argue; or, as Marx would say, the kind of deceptive and manipulative attempt to keep a decadent and dying religion alive for the benefit of the upper Hindu priestly and warrior classes who saw their power and influence over the masses decline and who needed to reinvent themselves and their religion to secure and prolong their power and control over the people. Defend one of these interpretations (Durkheim, Marx). (Readings: Marx and Durkheim).
5. As commonly perceived, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, (Theistic) Hinduism of the Vedic and Bhakti/Devotional (the Bhagavad Gita) types offer: a. comparable other-worldly understanding of human "salvation" (liberation) and well-being: life in a beyond ths world or future life (heaven, paradise, or Nirvana), that seeks to exit the historical, material existence as either evil, unchangeable, and not subject to transformation. With the Upanishads, Hinduism offers a more Pantheistic (Self=God) understanding of salvation; Buddhism, although atheistic, understands human salvation (liberation) in terms of a change of consciousness in the face of suffering and acquiescence in (acceptance of) the status quo, both agreeing that life on earth is beyond repair and cannot be altered, and the only hope is in a new understanding of ourselves in relation to an illusory, impermanent existence.
QUESTION: FIRST, how is this understanding of "salvation" (from evil, suffering, injustice, death) in the major world religions vulnerable to the Marxist interpretation and critique of religion;
SECONDLY, is religion in principle (in its totality and essence) committed to an other-wordly, supra historical (i.e. beyond or above historical, or simply indifferent to material existence) understanding of salvation as Marx claimed? In other words, is religion only a tool for legitimation of the status quo; or, secondly, are there voices within at least some of these traditions that either command transformation of historical-material existence for the sake of humanity, or are susceptible to modification and revision that allows them to integrate action-in-the-world within without doing violence to their fundamental assumptions (against Marx's interpretation of religion). (For this question you need to read, in addition to Marx in Pals, Livingston chapters 10, 11 and 13 and both of my handouts; Peter Berger's selection on Blackboard is important for understanding the concept of "legitimation" in religion).
6. Although there is a wide gulf separating E. W. Hengstenberg's Biblicist Confessionalism (i.e., Conservative Christianity, holding on the claims and concepts of the Bible interpreted literally) and the Liberal tradition stemming from Schleiermacher to Ritschl and Troeltsch(Handout I: Schleiermacher to Troeltsch),
QUESTION: Do they have anything common? In particular, in how both points of view, liberal and conservative well into the late 19th century, deal with Christianity's encounter with the world religions, the status of Christianity as compared with the non-Christian religions, the rise of the sociological-anthropological understanding and interpretation of religion (Marx, Durkheim, Tylor, Frazer), and the naturalistic-reductionist assumptions informing these disciplines? (For this question you should read carefully Handout I: Schleiermacher to Troeltsch, and should have read the Pals chapters on Marx, Durkheim, Tylor/Frazer).