文档介绍：Wainwright, William J. (Editor), Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, University of
Wisconsin, Milwaukee
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion The Oxford Handbook of
Philosophy of Religion
Publication date 2005 (this edition)
Print ISBN-10: 0-19-513809-0
Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-513809-2
doi:.0001
Abstract: The philosophy of religion as a distinct discipline is an innovation of the last
200 years, but its central topics—the existence and nature of the divine, humankind’s relation
to it, the nature of religion, and the place of religion in human life—have been with us since
the inception of philosophy. Philosophers have long critically examined the truth of and
rational justification for religious claims, and have explored such philosophically interesting
phenomena as faith, religious experience, and the distinctive features of religious discourse.
The second half of the twentieth century was an especially fruitful period, with philosophers
using new developments in logic and epistemology to mount both sophisticated defenses of,
and attacks on, religious claims. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Religion contains
missioned chapters by twenty-one prominent experts who cover the field in a
comprehensive but accessible manner. Each chapter is expository, critical, and representative
of a distinctive viewpoint. The Handbook is divided into two parts. The first, “Problems,”
covers the most frequently discussed topics, among them arguments for God’s existence, the
nature of God’s attributes, religious pluralism, the problem of evil, and religious
epistemology. The second, “Approaches,” contains four essays assessing the advantages and
disadvantages of different methods of practicing philosophy of religion—analytic,
Wittgensteinian, continental, and feminist.
Keywords: Analytic (philosophy of religion), arguments for God’s existence,
existence and nature of the divine, continental (philo