ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out to elucidate some of Bakhtin's themes from philosophy of religion, drawing on knowledge of the ground from which they grew, and starting with an overview of his conception of religion as a category. Bakhtin touches upon religion as a philosophical object domain in his early works Toward a Philosophy of the Act (TPA) and Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity. When Bakhtin speaks about religion, he speaks about it as a philosophical problem, that is, as a problem to be made sense of within the bounds of philosophy as a secular discipline. In order to establish the strength of Liapunov's claims make a short detour into the realm of Kantian philosophy of religion. Cohen radically revised Kant's philosophy of knowledge, but retained Kant's position of God as an idea that is necessary for ethics. Scheler's philosophy of empathy is found in his major work, with the title translated into English as The Nature of Sympathy.
