R380: Faith, Revelation and Reason (3 cr) TR 2:30-3:45 SY004 (Hart)
TOPIC: Kierkegaard and Blondel **Counts for COAS Intensive Writing
Credit

Kierkegaard my be said to be the most influential Protestant
philosopher of the past 160 years; and Blondel may be said to be the
most influential Roman Catholic philosopher of the past 107 years.
What is a Protestant or Catholic philosopher?  What is a religious
philosophy?  Are these not square circles?  What does revelation and
faith have to do with philosophy ?  Is there a kind of reflection on
human existence which can lay bare an openness to religious questions?
Or is religion not primarily a superstition and way of denying the
more noble and courageous requirements of what it means to be human.
Both these thinkers wrestle with these issues in an
"existential-phenomenological" manner.  Typically, Kierkegaard's
answers are regarded as Protestant; Blondel's as Roman Catholic. For
Kierkegaard we will read his Philosophical Fragments (1844) (underline
or italicize) and parts of his massive Concluding Unscientific
Postscript (1846) (underline or italicize). For Blondel we will read
sections of his Action (1893) (underline or Italicize) and his "Letter
on Apologetics" (1906).