I’m Nicholas Adams, Professor of Philosophical
Theology at the University of Birmingham in
the Department of Theology and Religion. My
research is in modern philosophy in a continental
tradition, so contrasting with the other two
major areas of philosophical theology, ancient
and medieval thought or late modern analytic
philosophy. That means that the sources I’m
working to tend to be in German and to a lesser
extent, French as opposed to the Latin and
Greek of the ancient traditions and the English
of the later analytic traditions.
My focus of my research is in German philosophy
between Kant and Hegel and particularly in
the relationship between freedom and constraint
or freedom and order, which also plays out
as expansion and contraction or spontaneity
and limitation, kind of, guiding metaphors
of German philosophy and looking at its impact
on 20th Century and our 21st Century Christian
theology. I’m also really inspired by the
Frankfurt School, a later development of the
German idealist tradition and its dogged refusal
to ignore contradictions in real lived life.
So they and I are suspicious of forms of philosophy
which very quickly solve contradictions and
philosophy without addressing the underlying
contradictions.
So what are the kind of contradictions that
I am interested in researching? Well, one
of them would be in relation to freedom and
order, which in today’s society could be
a diagnosis of, kind of, illusory freedom
and a concealed order. We’re offered the
choices between various things which don’t
give us that much freedom and we’re always
subject to hidden forms of ordering, but I’m
also interested in big metaphysical questions
in the earlier tradition. So contradictions,
so kinds of false oppositions between thinking
and being, subject and object, individual
and community and these are false oppositions
because they belong together, but are often
separated in philosophy. The other area would
be, if you like, in false contradictions,
so things which look contradictory, but which
aren’t. So, for example in 1820’s Hegel
and Schleiermacher had a big fight and it
turns out that Schleiermacher and Hegel are
asking different questions. So Schleiermacher
complains that Hegel gives bad answers and
Hegel complains that Schleiermacher gives
bad answers, but just answering different
questions and so part of the diagnostic kit
that I work with is in diagnosing those kinds
of false oppositions as well.
I welcome enquiries from students into all
areas of impact of idealism on theology, but
I’m also interested in questions of truth
in the midst of these kinds of contradictions
and it seems to me the most urgent questions
of truth now arise in the interplay of different
religious traditions. We have different texts,
different traditions, different contradictions,
even different logics in play. I think that
philosophical problems in interreligious engagement
are a really severe test of theories of truth
and I would welcome study with students who
wish to join me in addressing those urgent
questions of today.
