The Increasing Role of History in the Philosophy of Religion: The Case of Hegel on Faith and Reason

Abstract

Lewis seeks to show why history is relevant to the philosophy of Religion. He argues that understanding how outstanding figures in the history of philosophy of religion has sought to reinterpret the concept of religion proves simultaneously the relevance of history to the philosophy of religion and the centrality of the philosophy of religion to religious studies as a whole. In the article, we shall try to show how a revision of Lewis's idea based on the insights from Neville's notion of "Normative Comparative Philosophy" proves the relevance of the history of different traditions in philosophy of religion to cope with each other's issues. Besides, we shall study the Hegelian notion of the relation between faith and reason along with the Islamic concept of faith as a case, to show how such an idea might be reified. The study shows that reading the comparative history of the philosophy of religion will help in what Lewis is willing to achieve.

Keywords

• hegel
• history of philosophy of religion
• comparative philosophy of religion
• faith and reason