Two conflicting tendencies characterize the intellectual atmosphere of our time: the expansion of a naturalized world picture and religious orthodoxy. On one side, advances in biogenetics, neuroscience, and robotics permeate our conception of self with a sense of scientific objectivity, even in the context of regular activities.

For philosophy, this tendency amounts to the challenge of equating, or perhaps reducing, the mental to the physical. Here, the fact that mental activity is dependent upon an organic substrate is not in question. The heart of the controversy pertains to what the right kind of a naturalized understanding of cultural evolution might be.

This tendency has been met, on the other side, with an unexpected revitalization of religious traditions and a world-wide politicization of religious communities. This resurgence of a religious force poses a challenge to the post-metaphysical and nonreligious image of the self currently maintained in Western philosophy. Contested here is not the fact that political conceptualizations can exist only within the constraints of a universe that has been fashioned to be without alternatives, namely that within the bounds of the infrastructures of science, technology, and the economy. In this case, the controversy centers much more around what the correct analysis of this cultural and societal rationalization might be.

This volume is a collection of essays that speak to these themes. Each has the clear intention of confronting the contrasting yet complimentary challenges that are posed by naturalism and religion with the normative self-will that results from detranscendentalized reason in the post-metaphysical age.

The Divided West