The Critique of Religion and Religion’s Critique

This impressive volume brings together numerous essays honouring the life and work of the Critical Theorist, Rudolf J. Siebert. His ‘dialectical religiology’ rooted in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School—especially the work of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, Leo Löwenthal, and Jürgen Habermas—is both a theory and method of understanding religion’s critique of modernity and modernity’s critique of religion.
According to the Enlightenment and its most important thinkers, i.e. Kant, Hegel, and Marx religion is understood to be dialectical in nature. It contains within it both revolutionary and emancipatory elements, but also reactionary and regressive elements, which perpetuate mankind’s continual debasement, enslavement, and oppression. Thus, religion by nature is conflicted within itself and thus stands against itself. Dialectical Religiology attempts to rescue those elements of religion from the dustbin of history and reintroduce them into society via their determinate negation. As such, it attempts to resolve the social, political, theological, and philosophical antagonisms that plague the modern world, in hopes of producing a more peaceful, justice-filled, equal, and reconciled society. The contributors to this book recognize the tremendous contributions of Dr. Rudolf J. Siebert in the fields of philosophy, sociology, history, and theology, and have benefited from his long career. This book attempts to honour his life and work by engaging with and expanding upon it.
Contributors include: Edmund Arens, Gregory Baum, Francis Brassard, Dustin J. Byrd, Denis R. Janz, Gottfried Küenzlen, Mislav Kukoč, Michael, R. Ott, Rudolf J. Siebert, Hans K. Weitensteiner, and Brian C. Wilson.

Dustin J. Byrd, Ph.D. (2016), Michigan State University, is Professor of Humanities at Olivet College, where he teaches religion, philosophy and Arabic. He has published monographs and articles on both Islam and Critical Theory, including Ayatollah Khomeini and the Anatomy of the Islamic Revolution in Iran: Toward a Theory of Prophetic Charisma (University Press of America, 2011) and A Critique of Ayn Rand’s Philosophy of Religion: The Gospel According to John Galt (Lexington Books, 2015).

ISBN: 9781642596076

Publication date: August 31, 2021