From an Existentialist God to the God of Existence. The Theological Conjectures of Hans Jonas

Hans Jonas developed in ‘Past and Truth’ (1991) a demonstration of the existence of God based on the ‘truth of past things’. And in ‘The Concept of God after Auschwitz’ (1984) he created a new myth of divine self-alienation in order to take away God’s responsibility for human misery. Both these text...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Suárez Müller, Fernando (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Springer Netherlands 2013
In: Sophia
Year: 2013, Volume: 52, Issue: 4, Pages: 657-672
Further subjects:B Robert Spaemann
B Theological existentialism
B Objective idealism
B ATTRIBUTES of God
B transcendental philosophy
B God after Auschwitz
B Hans Jonas
B Proofs of God
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Summary:Hans Jonas developed in ‘Past and Truth’ (1991) a demonstration of the existence of God based on the ‘truth of past things’. And in ‘The Concept of God after Auschwitz’ (1984) he created a new myth of divine self-alienation in order to take away God’s responsibility for human misery. Both these texts were conceived as an alternative to a more Hegelian, objective idealist perspective on theology. This article shows that Jonas’s alternative does not fully succeed in this respect because his arguments bring him back to an idealist perspective. His proof of God is revisited and explained using new insights recently developed by Robert Spaemann, whose interpretation of the proof makes it clear that many important critics of Jonas are too quick to reject his claims. The arguments of Jonas now seem to show a new strength even though they still fail to give an alternative to an objective idealist theological framework.
ISSN:1873-930X
Contains:Enthalten in: Sophia
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s11841-013-0368-y