Given the challenge of anti-realism, anti-foundationalism, and post-modernism, is rational argument concerning religious belief still possible? This collection provides a broad range of perspective on the contemporary discussion of the place of argument in philosophical discussion on God and, more generally on religious belief. Bilingual edition.

The philosophical theology of St. Thomas Aquinas is the crowning piece of his metaphysics. Leo J. Elders studies it against the background of the attempts of the great philoso- phers of the past to penetrate deeper into the knowledge of God. While the Introduction treats the nature of philosophical theology according to Aquinas, Chapter One presents a concise history of the idea of God in Western philosophical thinking. Chapters Two and Three deal with the question of the cognoscibility of God and the Five Ways of St. Thomas. New solutions are proposed of some difficulties in the Third and Fourth Ways. The attributes of God are studied in the order of the Summa theologiae I . Chapter Seven considers the grammar of God-language. The following chapters examine divine knowledge, foreknowledge of future events, divine will and providence as well as creation. The last chapter deals with the problem of the co-existence of God and finite creatures. This study shows that the philosophical theology of St. Thomas Aquinas is a coherent whole of impressive depth and beauty. It has its basis in our daily experience of the world and the general principles of being, but its conclusions reach the summits of negative theology.

It has always been thought difficult, if not impossible, to define what the philosophy of Carlyle was. Ever since the publication of Sartor Resartus in 1833-1834, the view that Carlyle had a theistic conception of the universe has been defended as well as opposed. At a time, therefore, when Carlyle's work as a whole is being reappraised, his philosophy should first and foremost be dealt with. Carlyle's life-philosophy is based on the inner experience of a process of 'conversion', which set in with an incident that occurred to him at Leith Walk, Edinburgh. This study – which settles the old question of the date of the incident – demonstrates that the inner struggle, the dynamics of which are described most fully in Sartor, is analogous to the Jungian process of individuation. For the first time in critical literature, the basic ideas of Carlyle's philosophy are thus linked to depth psychology and shown to be analogous to the fundamental concepts of Analytical Psychology. In recent criticism, it has been asserted that the crisis recorded in Sartor is akin to the crisis of doubt said to underlie Jean Paul's “Rede des todten Christus” (1796), which is probably the first poetic expression of nihilism in European literature and has become a classic. Apart from demonstrating that, in the last fifty years at least, the “Rede” has erroneously been interpreted as a dream of annihilation, this book invalidates the view of Jean Paul as victim of the skepticism of his age, and argues that, contrary to what is usually maintained, the “Rede” is not the document of a crisis, but of a belief which had become antiquated and obsolete for Carlyle.