Project Details
Projekt
Freedom - A Key Concept in Theology? A Critical Examination of Libertarism, Determinism and Compatibilism
Subject Area
Roman Catholic Theology
Term
from 2015 to 2019
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 280557507
The notion of human freedom is a key concept for Christian dogmatics and fundamental theology. Hence, the reflection of this concept is an original task of theology, provided that it claims rational acceptability for its use. However, this task has been neglected or even ignored in contemporary theological discourse. It seems uncertain if and how the often implicit conceptions of freedom could be sustained in a systematic analysis. The research project aims at filling this gap with a new reflection of the theological uses of the concept of freedom, with special emphasis on contemporary philosophical debates. The main goal of the project is to compare and evaluate concepts of human freedom from transcendental philosophy and theology with the insights and objections of analytic philosophy, thereby achieving a wide and at the same time thorough engagement with different concepts of freedom, which thus far have been considered little or not at all in theological discourses. On such basis, it seems possible to critically evaluate the use of a libertarian concept of freedom in comparison to the dominating trend towards compatibilism, physicalism and naturalism. This new conception of freedom is then to be examined in concrete theological applications such as the relation between faith and reason as well as theological concepts of God.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
