Suspicion and Faith : : The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism / / Merold Westphal.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Fordham University Press Complete eBook-Package Pre-2014
• VerfasserIn: Westphal, Merold,
• MitwirkendeR: Clark, Kelly James,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : Fordham University Press, , [2021]; ©1998
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (296 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Foreword --; Preface --; I The Hermeneutics of Suspicion --; 1 Atheism for Lent --; 2 On Learning When Not to Refute Atheism --; 3 Help from Gilbert and Sullivan --; 4 Religious Fictions Too? --; II Freud and the Psychoanalysis of the Believing Soul --; 5 Freud's Pessimism --; 6 Freud's Scientism --; 7 Freud's Suspicion I: Dreams and Wish Fulllment --; 8 Freud's Suspicion II: Doctrines and Wish Fulfillment --; 9 On Remembering When Not to Refute Atheism --; 10 Freud's Suspicion III: Doctrines and Distortion --; 11 The Paranoid Dr. Schreber as Victim --; 12 The Paranoid Dr. Schreber as Redeemer --; 13 The Atheist Dr. Freud as Theologian of Original Sin --; 14 Ceremonial as Defense --; 15 Ceremonial as Compromise --; 16 They Know Not What They Do --; 17 Of Savages and Salieri --; 18 Of Obedience and Sacrifice --; 19 Willful Renunciation and the One-Way Covenant --; III Marx and the Critique of Religion as Ideology --; 20 Feuerbach' s Bourgeois Atheism --; 21 Feuerbach's Radical Atheism --; 22 Marx's Radical Atheism --; 23 Religion and the Christian State --; 24 Religion and the Secular State --; 25 Marxian Materialism --; 26 Religion as Ideology --; 27 Religion as Critique --; 28 Techniques of Neutralization --; 29 More Techniques of Neutralization --; 30 One Last Technique of Neutralization --; 31 Mixing Religion and Politics --; 32 Who Is the God of the Bible? Ask Pharaoh! --; 33 Third Commandment Idolatry --; 34 A "Marxist" Sermon Against the Baalization of Yahweh --; IV Nietzsche and the Critique of Religion as Resentment --; 35 Squintingly Yours, Friedrich Nietzsche --; 36 Distinctively Yours, Friedrich Nietzsche --; 37 The Big Lie --; 38 Jews and Priests --; 39 Glittering Vices --; 40 Justice and the Fascists --; 41 Pity and the Pharisees --; 42 Jesus and the Pharisees I: The Sinners --; 43 Jesus and the Pharisees II: Sabbath --; 44 In Conclusion: Dangers of Suspicion --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9780823296699; 9783111189604; 9783110743296
• DOI: 10.1515/9780823296699
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Merold Westphal.

Marx, Nietzche, and Freud are among the most influential of modern atheists. The distinctive feature of their challenge to theistic and specifically Christian belief is expressed by Paul Ricoeur when he calls them the "masters of suspicion." While skepticism directs its critique to the truth or evidential basis of belief, suspicion asks two different, intimately intertwined questions: what are the motives that lead to this belief? and what function does it play, what work does it do for the individuals and communities that adopt it.What suspicion suspects is that the survival value of religious beliefs depends on satisfying desires and interests that the believing soul and the believing community are not eager to acknowledge because they violate the values they profess, as when, for example, talk about justice is a mask for deep-seated resentment and the desire for revenge. For this reason, the hermeneutics of suspicion is a theory, or group of theories, of self-deception: ideology critique in Marx, genealogy in Nietzsche, and psychoanalysis in Freud.Suspicion and Faith argues that the appropriate religious response ("the religious uses of modern atheism") to these critiques is not to try to refute or deflect them, but rather to acknowledge their force in a process of self-examination.