Recent conflagrations over atheism, creationism, and religion have sparked wide discussion of the existence and character of the divine and how best to conceive of God in light of current science, philosophy, and theology. This timely, lively new book from renowned theologian and philosopher Keith Ward tells us what Western philosophy’s greatest thinkers – from Plato and Aquinas to Kant and Hegel – thought about such questions as the existence of God, the nature of reality and humanity’s meaning, value, and purpose. Far from being the enemy of religion, philosophy has more often than not supported a non-materialist view of the universe, argues Ward. Based on Ward’s 2008 Sarum Lectures, God and the Philosophers adapts his theme for a wide readership and will be seen as both a brilliant armchair philosophers’ primer on the history of religious thought and a staunch defense of some of the less fashionable themes in Western philosophy. ~ Product Description

Table of Contents

• • Introduction     1
  • 1   Why Plato Was Not a World-Hating Totalitarian     4
  • 2   Why Aquinas’ ‘Five Ways’ Are Not So Bad After All     14
  • 3   Why Does Everybody Hate Cartesian Dualism?     29
  • 4   Why Kicking Stones Cannot Refute Bishop Berkeley     41
  • 5   Why David Hume Is Odder than You Think     54
  • 6   David Hume’s Un-Natural Theology     64
  • 7   How Kant Did Not Undermine All Possible Arguments for God     76
  • 8   Whatever Happened to Hegel?     89
  • 9   Why Schopenhauer Was Not Quite an Atheist     102
  • 10   Was Nietzsche a Bad Thing?     115
  • 11   Materialism and Its Discontents     130
  • Notes     148