Philosophy of Religion

John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading; Professorial Research Fellow at Heythrop College, University of London; and an honorary fellow of St John's College, Oxford. He has served as chairman of the British Society for the History of Philosophy, president of the Mind Association, president of the Aristotelian Society and president of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion. He was also editor of Ratio, the international journal of analytic philosophy, from 1993 to 2012. Professor Cottingham's books include Descartes (1986), The Rationalists (1988), Reason, Will and Sensation (1994), Western Philosophy: An Anthology, 2nd edition (2007), Philosophy and the Good Life: Reason and the Passions in Greek, Cartesian and Psychoanalytic Ethics (Cambridge, 1998), On the Meaning of Life (2003), The Spiritual Dimension (Cambridge, 2005), Cartesian Reflections (2008) and Why Believe? (2009). He is co-translator of the standard three-volume Cambridge edition of The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (1985–91). The Moral Life, a collection of essays honoring his work on moral philosophy and philosophy of religion, was published in 2008.

• 1. Method; 2. Metaphysics; 3. Meaning and modes of access; 4. Morality; 5. Misfortune and misery; 6. Mortality and meaningfulness; 7. Mathesis; 8. Conclusion: humane philosophizing about religion.

'This insightful and beautifully clear book shows us how to think philosophically about religion - not just religious beliefs but also the habits, practices and transformations that constitute religious life. Cottingham combines careful, rigorous analysis and exemplary scholarship with rare sensitivity to the spiritual questions which animate the philosophy of religion but are too often obscured by it. Everyone interested in the philosophy of religion needs to read this elegant, compelling book.' Clare Carlisle, King's College London