Also by Robert Arp (selected)

Transcription

1 The Concept of Hell

2 Also by Robert Arp (selected) SCENARIO VISUALIZATION: An Evolutionary Account of Creative Problem CRITICAL THINKING: An Introduction to Reasoning Well ( co-authored with Jamie Watson ) PHILOSOPHY DEMYSTIFIED ( co-authored with Jamie Watson ) WHAT S GOOD ON TV: Understanding Ethics through Television ( co-authored with Jamie Watson ) BUILDING ONTOLOGIES WITH BASIC FORMAL ONTOLOGY ( co-authored with Barry Smith and Andrew Spear ) 1001 IDEAS THAT CHANGED THE WAY WE THINK ( editor ) PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY: An Anthology ( co-edited with Alex Rosenberg ) CONTEMPORARY DEBATES IN PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY ( co-edited with Francisco Ayala ) CONTEMPORARY DEBATES IN BIOETHICS ( co-edited with Art Caplan ) INFORMATION AND LIVING SYSTEMS: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives ( co-edited with G. Terzis ) Also by Benjamin W. McCraw PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES TO THE DEVIL ( co-edited with Robert Arp ) THE PROBLEM OF EVIL: New Philosophical Directions ( co-edited with Robert Arp )

3 The Concept of Hell Edited by Benjamin McCraw University of South Carolina, Upstate, USA and Robert Arp Independent Researcher

4 Selection, introduction and editorial matter Benjamin McCraw and Robert Arp 2015 Chapters Individual authors 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN DOI / ISBN (ebook) This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The concept of hell / [edited by] Robert Arp, Independent Researcher, Benjamin McCraw, University of South Carolina, USA. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Hell. I. Arp, Robert, editor. II. McCraw, Benjamin, 1984 editor. III. Jensen, Randall M. Choosing hell. BL545.C dc

5 Contents Notes on Contributors vii Introduction 1 Benjamin W. McCraw and Robert Arp Part I The Nature of Hell 1 Choosing Hell 15 Randall M. Jensen 2 Hell Is Others and Paradise Is Others: Hell in the Existential Paris of Sartre and Berdyaev 32 James M. McLachlan 3 A New Defense of the Strong View of Hell 49 Andrew Rogers and Nathan Conroy 4 The Temporality of Damnation: Examining Linear and Non-Linear Responses to the Puzzle of Eternal Experience 66 Frank Scalambrino Part II Justifying Hell? 5 Hell as Punishment: Pitfalls for the Pit 83 Galen A. Foresman 6 Leibniz s Stoic and Spinozistic Justification for Eternal Damnation 99 Charles Joshua Horn 7 Kant, Morality, and Hell 113 James Edwin Mahon 8 Hell Is For Children? Or the Violence of Inculcating Hell 127 Jeffrey E. Stephenson and Jerry S. Piven Part III Hell and Others 9 Damnation as Marginalization 149 Nicolas Michaud v

6 vi Contents 10 Whom We Resist: Subjectivity and Resistance at the Infernal Periphery 169 S. Jonathon O Donnell 11 Eternal Damnation as Exploitation s Last Defense: Marx, Religion, and the Concept of Hell 184 Jeffrey Ewing 12 (All) politics (Are) from the Devil: Taking Agamben to Hell (and Back?) 208 Kristof K. P. Vanhoutte Bibliography 223 Index 233

7 Notes on Contributors Robert Arp works on models and simulations projects as a research analyst for the US Army at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. He has interests in philosophy of religion, philosophy of science, and ontology in the information science sense. See robertarp.com. Nathan Conroy is from Lubbock TX and is a graduate student in Mathematics at Texas Tech University. His interests include philosophical theology, Christian apologetics, and ancient philosophy. Jeffrey Ewing is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Oregon. His primary academic research interests focus on critical approaches to the connections between the state and economic processes under capitalism, informed by Marxian and feminist theory. His current project is a study of the role of states in (re)creating a marketdependent labor force (who need to sell their labor power for wages to survive) through a variety of strategies. He has written a number of chapters critically analyzing popular culture at both the academic level (such as in The Philosophy of J.J. Abrams) and popular level (such as in Psych and Philosophy, 2013 and Terminator and Philosophy, 2009). Galen A. Foresman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. His research interests include ethics, philosophy of punishment, philosophy of religion, and philosophy as it applies to pop culture. He edited Supernatural and Philosophy (2013) and is a co-author of The Critical Thinker s Toolkit ( forthcoming ). Charles Joshua Horn is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point. He specializes in the history of early modern philosophy and contemporary analytic metaphysics, and has particular interests in the thought of Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant. In addition to primarily working on issues related to the metaphysics of modality, he is also committed to making philosophy accessible to a wide range of interlocutors and sometimes publishes articles related to popular culture. Randall M. Jensen is Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa. He teaches a wide range of courses and has written quite a few chapters in books on philosophy and popular culture. vii

8 viii Notes on Contributors James Edwin Mahon is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Philosophy at Washington and Lee University. He has been a visiting scholar in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and a visiting fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University. During , he was a lecturer in the Program on Ethics, Politics, and Economics at Yale University, and a visiting researcher at Yale Law School. His research interests are in moral philosophy, the history of moral philosophy, and early modern philosophy. Benjamin W. McCraw is an instructor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina, Upstate. His articles have appeared in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Logos & Episteme, and Social Epistemology. His research centers on epistemology and philosophy of religion: especially their intersection in religious epistemology. James M. McLachlan is Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Western Carolina University. He is the author of The Desire to Be God: Freedom and the Other in Sartre and Berdyaev (1992) and articles on Sartre, Levinas, Berdyaev, Marcel, Process Theology, and Mormonism. He was co-founder and co-chair of the Mormon Studies Group at the American Academy of Religion. He is currently working on a book on Hell in Heterodox Traditions. Nicolas Michaud teaches philosophy in Jacksonville Florida. He focuses on issues of marginalization, disabilities studies, and gender. S. Jonathon O Donnell is a doctoral researcher in the Department of the Study of Religions at SOAS, University of London. His doctoral thesis, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, analyzes the relationship between sovereignty and demonology in spiritual warfare and apocalyptic discourses in contemporary America. His broader research interests include the relationship between religion and politics, poststructuralist critical theory, gender studies, and the utilization of religious symbolism in popular culture and the secular public sphere. Jerry S. Piven has taught at New York University, New School University, and Case Western Reserve University, where his courses focused on the psychology and philosophy of religion, metaphysics, and evil. He is the editor of The Psychology of Death in Fantasy and History (2004) and Terrorism, Jihad, and Sacred Vengeance (2004), and author of Death and Delusion: A Freudian Analysis of Mortal Terror (2004), The Madness and Perversion of Yukio Mishima (2004), and Nihon No Kyoki (Japanese

9 Notes on Contributors ix Madness, 2007). He has recently completed Slaughtering Death: On the Psychoanalysis of Terror, Religion, and Violence. Andrew Rogers is a graduate student in Philosophy at Texas Tech University. He received a BS in Philosophy from Kansas State University. He is primarily interested in metaethics and philosophical theology. Frank Scalambrino is a visiting professor at the University of Dallas, Texas. He regularly teaches courses in Metaphysics and the History of Philosophy. He has taught graduate courses in both philosophy and psychology departments in Illinois and Texas. He has presented his research internationally. His forthcoming book is titled Full Throttle Heart: Nietzsche, Beyond Either/Or. Jeffrey E. Stephenson is an adjunct instructor of Philosophy in the Department of History, Philosophy and Religion at Montana State University, Bozeman. His research interests include character and cognitive science, akrasia and medical care compliance, religion and ethics, classical and modern virtue theory, ethics and law, and ethical issues in biotechnology. Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte is an invited professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical University Antonianum, Rome, Italy. He studied philosophy at the Higher Institute for Philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and obtained his PhD in Philosophy at the Pontifical University Antonianum. He also studied Spiritual Theology at the Pontifical University Gregoriana. In 2008 he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Edinburgh and in 2010 he was awarded the European Philosophy from Kant to the Present Prize, issued by the University of Kentucky.