Religion, Reality, and a Good Life

In this book, Eberhard Herrmann deals with the problem of realism, which is one of the central issues in the philosophy of religion. Do we as human beings have access to a reality in itself, assuming that such an idea makes sense, or only to reality as it is conceptualized by us? The author rejects the approaches of metaphysical realism and of postmodern relativism. In their place, he develops and presents an alternative approach called pragmatic realism, which embodies two main lines of thought, the first being that reality is always reality as we conceptualize it, the second being that this does not rule out objectivity. In the case of a good life, that is to say a fulfilling life, a notion of objectivity is presented on the basis of certain reflections about how conceptualized reality can be said to offer us resistance in certain respects.