Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen

Ulrik Houlind Rasmussen studied philosophy and history of religion at the University of Copenhagen. He studied philosophy at l'Université de la Sorbonne in Paris from 1999-2000 and systematic theology at Philipps-Universität Marburg in 2002. In 2003 he received his master in philosophy from the University of Copenhagen. He is now doing his Ph.D. in philosophy of religion at the University of Copenhagen. In 2007 he studied at the University of Zürich by Professor Ingolf U. Dalferth and Dr. Philipp Stoellger.

My research work deals with the relation between religion and modernity. Moreover, it represents an investigation into the question of how to think about God in an alleged 'post-metaphysical' era where traditional metaphysics has been called in question. The expectation that God would eventually die away as the more or less necessary result of a process of modernization seems to have faded and lost its persuasiveness. The question of God therefore must be raised in a new way. The aim of my dissertation is to reassess this question through studies in the philosophy of Hans Blumenberg (1920-1996) and Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005). I wish to argue that the category of memory makes a philosophical reconsideration of God possible that avoids the widespread but regrettably misleading alternative between the "death of God" one the one hand and his alleged "return" on the other. That God is dead does namely not necessarily imply that he is forgotten. Rather, his death makes the need to remember him even more inevitable. Thus God can be said to live in our memory as a metaphorical potential that helps us understand ourselves and our world.