Monotheism and Tolerance: Recovering a Religion of Reason
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Why are religious tolerance and pluralism so difficult to achieve? Why is the often violent fundamentalist backlash against them so potent? Robert Erlewine looks to a new religion of reason for answers to these questions. Drawing on Enlightenment writers Moses Mendelssohn, Immanuel Kant, and Hermann Cohen, who placed Christianity and Judaism in tension with tolerance and pluralism, Erlewine finds a way to break the impasse, soften hostilities, and establish equal relationships with the Other. Erlewine's recovery of a religion of reason stands in contrast both to secularist critics of religion who reject religion for the sake of reason and to contemporary religious conservatives who eschew reason for the sake of religion. Monotheism and Tolerance suggests a way to deal with the intractable problem of religiously motivated and justified violence.
Pt. 1 Overcoming the Current Crisis1 Monotheism, Tolerance, and Pluralism: The Current Impasse 32 Learning from the Past: Introducing the Thinkers of the Religion of Reason 29Pt. 2 Mendelssohn: Idolatry and Indiscernibility3 Mendelssohn and the Repudiation of Divine Tyranny 434 Monotheism and the Indiscernible Other 69Pt. 3 Kant: Religious Tolerance5 Radical Evil and the Mire of Unsocial Sociability 856 Kant and the Religion of Tolerance 106Pt. 4 Cohen: Ethical Intolerance7 Cohen and the Monotheism of Correlation 1318 Rational Supererogation and the Suffering Servant 150Conclusion: Revelation, Reason, and the Legacy of the Enlightenment 177Notes 183Works Cited 229Index 239
