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10 Religion within the Limits of the Penultimate? We have seen how the cruciform self fits and conflicts with a number of themes of philosophical anthropology, such that we can understand the sense in which the cruciform self is also a homo capax, a responsible self, and a self-reflexive, self-interpreting animal. In this final chapter we will see whether we should think of the cruciform self as a homo religiosus. Once again we will bring Ricoeur and Bonhoeffer into dialogue. Religion, and the sacred, is a significant aspect of Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology, since he argues that religion plays a pivotal role in the convergence of human capability and self-understanding. Religion is also a significant issue for Bonhoeffer, who famously argues for a nonreligious interpretation of Christian faith. We will see that Ricoeur and Bonhoeffer complement each other in certain ways, but we will also highlight some fundamental differences, which become apparent in Ricoeur’s interpretation of resurrection. By considering Christ’s resurrection and its ontologically transformative potency, we will show the difference between Ricoeur’s philosophical hermeneutics of religion and our own model of cruciform philosophy. In the final section I discuss the hope for one’s own resurrection and respond to Ricoeur’s critique of this hope, arguing (contra Nietzsche) that the promise of resurrection allows the world to be the world and the self to be fully human. Interpreting Religion A Post-Hegelian Kantian: Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of Religion In this section I will argue that Ricoeur offers a hermeneutics of religion within the limits of the penultimate. The allusion to Kant here is deliberate, since Ricoeur articulates his project with explicit reference to Kant. First of all, Ricoeur exhibits a very Kantian caution regarding the limits of philosophical discourse, denying the impulse to make pronouncements about the ultimate and arguing instead that the eschatological horizon is one of hope rather than knowledge. In our introduction we noted that Ricoeur cites the theologia crucis in defense of this methodological asceticism, but his primary influence on this point is Kant rather than Luther. Like Kant, Ricoeur is self-consciously not a theologian, and for similar reasons Ricoeur refuses the label of “Christian philosopher.” This is not, however, to say that Ricoeur’s philosophy is devoid of theological presuppositions, for we will see that his account of religion is far from theologically neutral. Religion within the Limits of the Penultimate? 177 Ricoeur’s debt to Kant is evident in his philosophy of religion. Kant gives a philosophical soteriology, in which conversion is a matter of moral regeneration . Where the self is bound by radical evil, the task of religion is to regenerate the self and restore its capacity to act in accord with moral obligation. Ricoeur follows Kant on this point, reading Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone as a proto-hermeneutics of religion. But Ricoeur takes Kant’s nascent hermeneutics and gives it a more robust expression, arguing that Kant does not pay sufficient attention to the religious imagination. On this point Ricoeur echoes Hegel’s view that we cannot bypass religious representations (Vorstellungen ),1 but after his appropriation of Hegel’s point he returns to Kant, maintaining that faith and hope are not aufgehoben by knowledge, just as the religious imagination is not aufgehoben by the philosophical concept (Begriff). With Kant, we must respect the limits of human cognition and see that religious truth is given in the mode of hope rather than knowledge. According to Ricoeur, the religious imagination acts as a schematism of hope, since religious discourse—i.e., symbols, metaphors, narratives—discloses new possibilities of meaning and action. In Ricoeur’s words, “all religions are different attempts in different language games to recover the ground of goodness , to liberate, so to say, the enslaved freedom, the enslaved capability.”2 Although radical evil binds capability, it does not eliminate the human capacity for goodness altogether. Ricoeur appeals to an ontology of originary, created goodness that is “rooted in the ontological structure of the human being.”3 As the text of Genesis testifies, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed , it was very good” (FS 298). Ricoeur argues that despite the reality of radical evil, this created goodness has not been completely erased. There is a theological wager here, with Ricoeur’s emphasis on created goodness echoing his Reformed heritage and its notion of common grace.4 The purpose of religion is therefore to regain contact with this...

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