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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Following the argument where it leads

The Dialectical Tradition in South Africa
By Andrew Nash

This book brings into view the most enduring and distinctive philosophical current in South African history—one often obscured or patronized as Afrikaner liberalism. It traces this current of thought from nineteenth-century disputes over Dutch liberal theology through Stellenbosch existentialism to the prison writings of Breyten Breytenbach, and examines related themes in the work of Olive Schreiner, M. K. Gandhi, and Richard Turner. At the core of this tradition is a defence of free speech in its classical sense, as a virtue necessary for a good society, rather than in its modern liberal sense as an individual right.

Out of this defence of free speech, conducted in the face of charges of heresy, treason, and immorality, a range of philosophical conceptions developed—of the self constituted in dialogue with others, of freedom as transcendence of the given, and of a dialectical movement of consciousness as it is educated through debate and action. This study shows the Socratic commitment to "following the argument where it leads," sustained and developed in the storm and stress of a peculiar modernity. ISBN: 9780415975308 Published June 15 2009 by Routledge.

Climacus on the Uniqueness of Christianity as a Transcendent Religion
from Per Caritatem by Cynthia R. Nielsen

Johannes Climacus, whose view often overlaps with Kierkegaard’s own view yet is never to be simply identified with the latter, emphasizes Christianity as a transcendent religion. By this he doesn’t mean to suggest that there is no continuity whatsoever between nature and grace or that grace destroys nature. Rather, his point is to stress the uniqueness of Christianity in comparison with what he calls “immanent” religions, religions that do not require any kind of divine revelation but which arise from the human mind itself and are, as you might guess, obtainable by unaided human reason or via religious experience.

1 comment:

  1. I find the well researched evidence and arguments featured on this site tell us exactly where the power and control seeking insitution created in the image of the arguments propagandized by "Paul" really did lead.

    www.jesusneverexisted.com/cruelty.html

    What is also remarkable in 2009 is that anyone can really pretend otherwise

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