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

Wynn, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521549892 ISBN 13: 9780521549899

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2005

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.

Review:

'This is a brave, interesting and thought-provoking book which shows Mark Wynn's authorial voice to be possessed of a sensitive moral sensibility. ... I read the book with much gratitude for its having been written, and I am sure that many others will do so too. ... can be recommended to all who are concerned with the epistemology of the religious life, as well as to those who sense a lack in much contemporary philosophy of religion of a properly human sense of why religion might matter in the first place.' Religious Studies

Book Description:

Wynn argues that the landscape of philosophical theology looks rather different from the perspective of a re-conceived theory of emotion. He uses this perspective to forge a distinctive approach to a range of established topics in philosophy of religion, and to examine the connection of 'feeling' to doctrine and tradition.