Emotional Experience and Religious Understanding: Integrating Perception, Conception and Feeling

by Mark Wynn

• ISBN13: 9780521840569
• ISBN10: 0521840562
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-07-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In this book Mark Wynn argues that the landscape of philosophical theology looks rather different from the perspective of a re-conceived theory of emotion. In matters of religion, we do not need to opt for objective content over emotional form or vice versa. On the contrary, these strategies are mistaken at root, since form and content are not properly separable here - because 'inwardness' may contribute to 'thought-content', or because (to use the vocabulary of the book) emotional feelings can themselves constitute thoughts; or because, to put the point a further way, in religious contexts, perception and conception are often infused by feeling. Wynn uses this perspective to forge a distinctive approach to a range of established topics in philosophy of religion, notably: religious experience; the problem of evil; the relationship of religion and ethics, and religion and art; and in general, the connection of 'feeling' to doctrine and tradition.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Acknowledgements	xiv
Religious experience and the perception of value	1	(29)
Love, repentance, and the moral life	30	(29)
Finding and making value in the world	59	(30)
Emotional feeling: philosophical, psychological, and neurological perspectives	89	(34)
Emotional feeling and religious understanding	123	(26)
Representation in art and religion	149	(30)
The religious critique of feeling	179	(16)
Bibiliography	195	(6)
Index	201