Jens Trusheim

Jens Trusheim studied at the Universities of Giessen, Marburg and Uppsala/Sweden and graduated in Philosophy and in Protestant Theology. He works for the "Menschenbild"-Project (Image of Human Being) at the University of Marburg until June 2008 and received a scholarship for the time thereon.

The name of his PhD project is called “Bedeutung und Bedeutsamkeit religiöser Metaphern in der Sicht hermeneutischer und analytischer Religionsphilosophie”. The project investigates on two aspects of “meaning” in religious metaphors, “Bedeutung” and “Bedeutsamkeit” (a made-up word, sometimes used in hermeneutical philosophy). Though both terms can be translated with “meaning” the first focuses on the meaning of religious metaphors while the later one on the aspect what they mean to somebody. Very simplified you can compare it with the distinction between “objective” and “subjective” meaning though the difference lies not in the certainty of truth claims but in the direction of reference. On the one hand religious metaphors seem to refer to religious “entities” and their properties that exist independent of the believer’s truth claims. On the other hand they refer to the religious individual (and her or his historical, biographical, sociological, or psychological background) insofar as they claim to articulate the ultimate meaning of the individual’s life. While analytical philosophy of religion often stresses the “objective” aspect the more hermeneutical orientated philosophers mainly underline and examine the preconditions and consequences on the part of the individual. It is the main thesis of the project that both aspects cannot be understood if they are separated (for example into religious realism and its mere psychological consequences). If religious metaphors refer to religious “entities” as “objective” as to houses or trees than God is reduced to a mere object that cannot be “present” in the believers life. If those metaphors are solely understood “subjectively” their contents and truth claims seem to become dependent on the religious individuals – in clear contradiction to their content and this is exactly what the important critics of religion like Feuerbach, Marx and Freud were arguing for. Positively speaking: It is part of the “objective” content of religious metaphors to be “subjective” relevant to the individual’s life.