Philosophy of religion Books

Book SynopsisThis unique volume of original essays presents in-depth analyses of representative periods, problems, and debates within the long and rich history of Korean philosophy. It provides the reader with a sense of the problems that motivated thinkers within the tradition and the kinds of arguments that characterize their reflections. With contributions from some of the best and most significant contemporary Korean philosophers, this volume marks an important new stage in the Western-language study and appreciation of Korean philosophy. In order for philosophy to be understood and appreciated as philosophy it must at some point be presented and evaluated as the human effort to understand problems through a process of careful and sustained analysis and argument. This anthology offers Western readers the first opportunity to meet and engage with traditional Korean Buddhist and Confucian philosophy on these terms.Trade ReviewReaders hungry for insights into Korea’s cultural history over the last six centuries need look no farther than this comprehensive survey of traditional Korean philosophy. In these pages they will meet such giants as Toegye, Yulgok and Dasan and will discover that Korean philosophy was both practical and theoretical, reflecting a moral psychology shaped by ethical concerns. -- Don Baker, Professor, Department of Asian Studies, University of British ColumbiaIn Traditional Korean Philosophy: Problems and Debates, Youngsun Back and PJ Ivanhoe have marshaled a cadre of some of our most distinguished contemporary scholars to tell their own story of Korean philosophy by engaging with it philosophically. Abjuring survey or historical vignettes, the authors of this anthology offer tightly argued essays that grapple each in its own way with some of the evolving terminologies, subversive voices, and persistent problems of the tradition that has given this narrative its distinctively Korean character. -- Roger T. Ames, Peking UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments / Conventions / Introduction / 1. From Structure to Action: The Concepts of ‘Substance’ (che 體) and ‘Function’ (yong 用) in Gwon Geun’s Philosophy Halla Kim / 2. Another Look at Yi Hwang’s Views about Li and Qi: A Case of Time-lag in the Transmission of Chinese Originals to Korea Yung Sik Kim / 3. The Li-Qi 理氣 Structures of the Four Beginnings and the Seven Emotions and the Aim of the Four-Seven Debates Hyoungchan Kim / 4. Yi Yulgok and His Contributions to Korean Confucianism: A Non-dualistic Approach Young-chan Ro / 5. Human Nature and Animal Nature: The Horak Debate and Its Philosophical Significance Richard Kim / 6. Jeong Yakyong’s Post Neo-Confucianism So-Yi Chung / 7. The Lord on High (Sangje 上帝) in Jeong Yakyong’s Thought Soon-woo Chung / 8. How do Sages Differ from the Rest of Us?: The Views of Zhu Xi and Jeong Yakyong Youngsun Back / 9. The Way to Become a Female Sage: Im Yunjidang’s Confucian Feminism Sungmoon Kim / 10. Burdens of Modernity: Baek Seonguk and the Formation of Modern Korean Buddhist Philosophy Jin Y. Park / Works Cited / Index

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Book SynopsisThis unique volume of original essays presents in-depth analyses of representative periods, problems, and debates within the long and rich history of Korean philosophy. It provides the reader with a sense of the problems that motivated thinkers within the tradition and the kinds of arguments that characterize their reflections. With contributions from some of the best and most significant contemporary Korean philosophers, this volume marks an important new stage in the Western-language study and appreciation of Korean philosophy. In order for philosophy to be understood and appreciated as philosophy it must at some point be presented and evaluated as the human effort to understand problems through a process of careful and sustained analysis and argument. This anthology offers Western readers the first opportunity to meet and engage with traditional Korean Buddhist and Confucian philosophy on these terms.Trade ReviewReaders hungry for insights into Korea’s cultural history over the last six centuries need look no farther than this comprehensive survey of traditional Korean philosophy. In these pages they will meet such giants as Toegye, Yulgok and Dasan and will discover that Korean philosophy was both practical and theoretical, reflecting a moral psychology shaped by ethical concerns. -- Don Baker, Professor, Department of Asian Studies, University of British ColumbiaIn Traditional Korean Philosophy: Problems and Debates, Youngsun Back and PJ Ivanhoe have marshaled a cadre of some of our most distinguished contemporary scholars to tell their own story of Korean philosophy by engaging with it philosophically. Abjuring survey or historical vignettes, the authors of this anthology offer tightly argued essays that grapple each in its own way with some of the evolving terminologies, subversive voices, and persistent problems of the tradition that has given this narrative its distinctively Korean character. -- Roger T. Ames, Peking UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgments / Conventions / Introduction / 1. From Structure to Action: The Concepts of ‘Substance’ (che 體) and ‘Function’ (yong 用) in Gwon Geun’s Philosophy Halla Kim / 2. Another Look at Yi Hwang’s Views about Li and Qi: A Case of Time-lag in the Transmission of Chinese Originals to Korea Yung Sik Kim / 3. The Li-Qi 理氣 Structures of the Four Beginnings and the Seven Emotions and the Aim of the Four-Seven Debates Hyoungchan Kim / 4. Yi Yulgok and His Contributions to Korean Confucianism: A Non-dualistic Approach Young-chan Ro / 5. Human Nature and Animal Nature: The Horak Debate and Its Philosophical Significance Richard Kim / 6. Jeong Yakyong’s Post Neo-Confucianism So-Yi Chung / 7. The Lord on High (Sangje 上帝) in Jeong Yakyong’s Thought Soon-woo Chung / 8. How do Sages Differ from the Rest of Us?: The Views of Zhu Xi and Jeong Yakyong Youngsun Back / 9. The Way to Become a Female Sage: Im Yunjidang’s Confucian Feminism Sungmoon Kim / 10. Burdens of Modernity: Baek Seonguk and the Formation of Modern Korean Buddhist Philosophy Jin Y. Park / Works Cited / Index

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Book SynopsisOnce a prophet of critical, "other" thought, Heidegger has now for many become the epitome of the unthinkable, in the light of the Black Notebooks controversy. The unthinkable here is anti-Semitism. The encounter between Heidegger and the Jews has thus come to signify – very much in the spirit of Heidegger's own anti-Judaism – the end of thought. The present volume resists this view by positing not only Heidegger but also the Jewish people as representing thought. The encounter between Heidegger and various traditions of Jewish thought is conceived here as a conversation inter alia, an exchange between real or perceived "others": others to the philosophical tradition, to mainstream modernity, to Western Christian metaphysics, to each other, and even to themselves. The conversation takes shape in this volume as a symposium of seventeen essays by leading scholars both of Heidegger's philosophy and of Jewish Studies.Trade Review. . . . this volume as a whole lives up to its own standard of being an “intervention” in the spirit of polemos. By assembling a wide array of approaches, it inter-venes in the most literal sense: It comes between dominant discursive positions that, while masquerading as neutral analyses of the ideological implications of Heidegger’s thinking, too often are deeply factional in character. Without attempting to mediate between or reconcile said positions, let alone Heidegger and the Jewish intellectual tradition, it attests to the possibility of productive dialogical dispute between modes of thought generally deemed incompatible. In doing so, it opens up the space for alternative ways of accessing the complex relation between these modes that go beyond collecting evidence for or against Heidegger’s anti-Semitism. * Journal of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition *“Difficult otherness” is how Elad Lapidot names and frames the chasm, the aggrieved juxtaposition of these two names, markers of traditions, and “figures of thought”: Heidegger, the Jews. The expert scholars here assembled have collectively taken on the arduous and audacious task of looking into the abyss, this difficult alterity, reading and measuring it, exploring it, contesting or even bridging it. A remarkable and indispensable achievement. -- Gil Anidjar, Professor in the Departments of Religion, the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS), and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS), Columbia Universitya creative and useful addition to conversation on the relation between Heidegger’s legacy and Judaism. * ID: International Dialogue, A Multidisciplinary Journal of World Affairs *Table of ContentsIntroduction, Elad Lapidot / Part I: Heidegger Thinks the Jews / 1. Beyond Apocalyptic Logos, Joseph Cohen & Raphael Zagury-Orly / 2. Heidegger and Marx: A Phantasmatic Dialectic, Peter Trawny / 3. Everyday Life, Hatred of Jews, and the Identitarian Movement, Micha Brumlik, translated by Daniel Fischer / 4. ‘Whitewashed with Moralism’: On Heidegger’s Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism, Gregory Fried / 5. Being and the Jew: Between Heidegger and Levinas, Donatella Di Cesare, translated by Richard Polt / Part II: Heidegger and Jewish Thinkers / 6. Den Anderen Denken – Being, Time and the Other in Emmanuel Lévinas and Martin Heidegger, Eveline Goodman-Thau / 7. Groundlessness and Worldlessness: Heidegger’s Anti-Semitism and Jewish Thought, Dieter Thomä / 8. Heidegger’s Judenfrage, Babette Babich / 9. Heidegger as a Secularized Kierkegaard: Martin Buber and Hugo Bergmann Read Sein und Zeit, Daniel Herskowitz / Part III: Heideggerian and Jewish Thought / 10. Heidegger’s Seyn/Nichts and the Kabbalistic Ein Sof, Elliot Wolfson / 11. Fruits of Forgetfulness: Politics and Nationalism in the Philosophies of Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger, Yemima Hadad / 12. How Else Can One Think Earth? The Talmuds and Pre-Socratics, Sergey Dolgopolski / 13. Of Dwelling Prophetically: On Heidegger and Jewish Political Theology, Michael Fagenblat / 14. People of Knowers on the Political Epistemology of Heidegger and R. Chaim of Volozhin, Elad Lapidot

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Book SynopsisOnce a prophet of critical, "other" thought, Heidegger has now for many become the epitome of the unthinkable, in the light of the Black Notebooks controversy. The unthinkable here is anti-Semitism. The encounter between Heidegger and the Jews has thus come to signify – very much in the spirit of Heidegger's own anti-Judaism – the end of thought. The present volume resists this view by positing not only Heidegger but also the Jewish people as representing thought. The encounter between Heidegger and various traditions of Jewish thought is conceived here as a conversation inter alia, an exchange between real or perceived "others": others to the philosophical tradition, to mainstream modernity, to Western Christian metaphysics, to each other, and even to themselves. The conversation takes shape in this volume as a symposium of seventeen essays by leading scholars both of Heidegger's philosophy and of Jewish Studies.Trade Review. . . . this volume as a whole lives up to its own standard of being an “intervention” in the spirit of polemos. By assembling a wide array of approaches, it inter-venes in the most literal sense: It comes between dominant discursive positions that, while masquerading as neutral analyses of the ideological implications of Heidegger’s thinking, too often are deeply factional in character. Without attempting to mediate between or reconcile said positions, let alone Heidegger and the Jewish intellectual tradition, it attests to the possibility of productive dialogical dispute between modes of thought generally deemed incompatible. In doing so, it opens up the space for alternative ways of accessing the complex relation between these modes that go beyond collecting evidence for or against Heidegger’s anti-Semitism. * Journal of the Pacific Association for the Continental Tradition *“Difficult otherness” is how Elad Lapidot names and frames the chasm, the aggrieved juxtaposition of these two names, markers of traditions, and “figures of thought”: Heidegger, the Jews. The expert scholars here assembled have collectively taken on the arduous and audacious task of looking into the abyss, this difficult alterity, reading and measuring it, exploring it, contesting or even bridging it. A remarkable and indispensable achievement. -- Gil Anidjar, Professor in the Departments of Religion, the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS), and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society (ICLS), Columbia Universitya creative and useful addition to conversation on the relation between Heidegger’s legacy and Judaism. * ID: International Dialogue, A Multidisciplinary Journal of World Affairs *Table of ContentsIntroduction, Elad Lapidot / Part I: Heidegger Thinks the Jews / 1. Beyond Apocalyptic Logos, Joseph Cohen & Raphael Zagury-Orly / 2. Heidegger and Marx: A Phantasmatic Dialectic, Peter Trawny / 3. Everyday Life, Hatred of Jews, and the Identitarian Movement, Micha Brumlik, translated by Daniel Fischer / 4. ‘Whitewashed with Moralism’: On Heidegger’s Anti-Americanism and Anti-Semitism, Gregory Fried / 5. Being and the Jew: Between Heidegger and Levinas, Donatella Di Cesare, translated by Richard Polt / Part II: Heidegger and Jewish Thinkers / 6. Den Anderen Denken – Being, Time and the Other in Emmanuel Lévinas and Martin Heidegger, Eveline Goodman-Thau / 7. Groundlessness and Worldlessness: Heidegger’s Anti-Semitism and Jewish Thought, Dieter Thomä / 8. Heidegger’s Judenfrage, Babette Babich / 9. Heidegger as a Secularized Kierkegaard: Martin Buber and Hugo Bergmann Read Sein und Zeit, Daniel Herskowitz / Part III: Heideggerian and Jewish Thought / 10. Heidegger’s Seyn/Nichts and the Kabbalistic Ein Sof, Elliot Wolfson / 11. Fruits of Forgetfulness: Politics and Nationalism in the Philosophies of Martin Buber and Martin Heidegger, Yemima Hadad / 12. How Else Can One Think Earth? The Talmuds and Pre-Socratics, Sergey Dolgopolski / 13. Of Dwelling Prophetically: On Heidegger and Jewish Political Theology, Michael Fagenblat / 14. People of Knowers on the Political Epistemology of Heidegger and R. Chaim of Volozhin, Elad Lapidot

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Book SynopsisTheopoetics names the notion that the divine (theos) manifests itself as creative making (poiesis). Anatheism expresses the attendant claim that this making takes the form of a second creation – re-creation or creation again (ana) – where humanity and divinity collaborate in the coming of the Kingdom. The Art of Anatheism brings together philosophers, theologians, and artists to open up the question of the relationship between artistic creation and the divine. The book asks the question – how can God happen again after the death of God? It answers it by proposing an 'art of anatheism' which attends to the recreation and return of the divine through certain forms of literature, painting, liturgy, music, and performance. Engaging students, scholars, and interested readers across a wide range of disciplines – philosophy, theology, aesthetics, literary criticism, poetics – the volume includes contributions from both practising artists and professional academics. As such it brings together examples from ancient religious wisdom traditions and cutting-edge contemporary cultural practices to suggest that the sacred is often most potent and persuasive when recreating the everyday world of our secular experience.Trade ReviewWe have known anatheism as a concept; now comes anatheism as the site of a debate. We measure the genius of an author or an idea, said Kant, by its capacity to “found a school.” The Art of Anatheism, convoking the greatest authors of the Continental (Jean-Luc Nancy) and Anglo-Saxon (John Caputo) traditions, here proves that anatheism, invented by Richard Kearney, is not an obscure idea. Anatheism becomes for today a new way of thinking transcendence in order to not reduce it to silence. Not confronting it would be to flee the challenges posed by our contemporary world. -- Emmanuel Falque, Professor of Philosophy, Catholic Institute of ParisWhat have the muses to do with theology? This collection of vibrant and sensitive essays attends to tremors of the divine in literature and the arts. The space of theopoetic meditation thus opened challenges theology at its base, summoning it to embrace a larger and more richly human outlook. -- Joseph S. O'Leary, Sophia University and Surugadai UniversityThe anatheist “return to God after God” takes on new dimensions in this remarkable collection, exploring how the divine (theos) manifests itself in the sacred activity of making (poiesis), and how making helps us to retrieve and re-experience the originary experiences of the call of the other and the risk of hospitality after the “death of God.” The essays—by artists as well as philosophers and theologians—sparkle with insight on how we might experience “God after God” in our concrete, lived existence. -- Brian Treanor, Charles S. Casassa Chair and Professor of Philosophy, Loyola Marymount UniversityAlways the good teacher, Kearney explains himself clearly and concisely: [anatheism] is a return to God after God. That is, an invitation to rethink “God” after a very long period of withering criticism of theistic religion…. As one of Kearney’s most revered teachers in phenomenology, Levinas, used to say (in a slightly different context), one must be contre-dieu before one can be à-dieu, against God (or, better, a certain concept of God) before one can truly go toward him. It is a lesson that Kearney has learned well. * LA Review of Books, 25 November 2018 *… as someone that finds this [the anatheist] project to have powerful theological and philosophical significance, this volume only expanded my appreciation for the project Kearney began in his Anatheism volume. If any religious hermeneutics worth its salt has explanatory power for religious art, then Anatheism has salt to spare. Those interested in aesthetics, religious art , or the phenomenology of religion will benefit greatly from reading the essays in this volume. * Pneuma, No. 40 *The success of the Art of Anatheism lies in its exclusion of exclusions, its lowercase ecumenism, its ability to walk the walk of Anatheism’s talk of hospitality. The diversity of the contributors—artists, philosophers, theologians, poets, and pastors—and the vertiginous range of their discussion topic, from Buddhist art all the way to the Beatles, testify to the arrival of an idea with a universal application achieved only by true and timeless insight. * Reading Religion, 7 January 2019 *Table of ContentsIntroduction, Richard Kearney and Matthew Clemente / PART I: ANATHEISM AND THEOPOETICS / 1. God Making: Theopoetics and Anatheism, Richard Kearney / 2. Theopoetics: A Becoming History, Catherine Keller / 3. Theology, Poetry, and Theopoetics, John Caputo / 4. Cracked: The Black Theology of Anatheism, John Panteleimon Manoussakis / PART II: PAINTING ANATHEISM / 5. Anatheism and Judeo-Christian Art, Mark Patrick Hederman / 6. Paradise Gardens and the Anatheism of Art, Sheila Gallagher / 7. The Everyday Art of Theopoiesis: Good-for-Nothing Slaves, Alexandra Breukink / 8. One Hand Clapping: Anatheism and Contemporary Buddhist Art, Kate Lawson / 9. The Annunciate and the Self-Deconstruction of Mon-a-theism, Jean-Luc Nancy / PART III: PERFORMING ANATHEISM / 10. Sacred Songsters: Anatheist Themes in Dylan, Beatles, Cohen, and U2, Murray Littlejohn / 11. More Fully to the Risk: Hip-Hop as Anatheistic Resistance, Callid Keefe-Perry / 12. Performing Anatheism in Syriac Liturgical Poetry, Christina M. Gschwandtner / 13. American Anatheism: the Art of Narrative Healing, Maxwell Pingeon / 14. Materiality and the Sacred in Anatheism, Daniel Bradley / PART IV: SCREENING ANATHEISM / 15. The God of the Lost Ones: Anatheism in Three Contemporary Films, Stephanie Rumpza / 16. After God: Screening the Passion as Ana-Liturgy, Mirella Klomp and Danie Veldsman / 17. The Still Born God, Again, Chris Doude van Troostwijk / PART V: WRITING ANATHEISM / 18. Marilynne Robinson and Anatheism, Andrew Cunning / 19. Anatheism and a New Apocalyptic Poetics, Thomas Altizer / 20. Anatheism for One, Fanny Howe / Notes on Contributors / Bibliography

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Book SynopsisIt has been 25 years since Dominique Janicaud derisively proclaimed the “theological turn” in French phenomenology due to the return of God to philosophy through the influence of “religious” thinkers such as Lévinas, Ricoeur, and Marion. Since then, the “theological turn” has flowered into a fully-fledged movement on both sides of the Atlantic. But, what will be the shape and direction of the second generation of the “theological turn”? In this important new book, Emmanuel Falque engages with all the major twentieth-century French phenomenologists—something heretofore unavailable in English. He argues that rather than being content to argue for the return of God to philosophy, something fought for and developed by the foregoing generation of the “theological turn,” it is necessary to stage a philosophical confrontation, or disputatio, with them and their work in order to ensure the ongoing vitality of the unexpected contemporary relationship between philosophy and theology. Drawing on the legacies of Jaspers and Heidegger, who both staged their own “loving struggles” to arrive at defining philosophical conclusions, Falque confronts, interrogates, and learns from his most influential philosophical forebears to steer the “theological turn” in a new direction. Offering a novel and creative philosophy of the body, Falque argues for a reorientation of philosophy of religion generally and the “theological turn” specifically from a philosophy of revelation from above to a philosophy of the limit from below.Trade ReviewThis book provides an excellent introduction to the major French phenomenologists of the 20th century by a preeminent thinker of the younger generation of French philosophers, personally acquainted with many of them. Falque not only gives a lucid introduction to his predecessors, but brings a unique critical perspective to their work and puts them into productive conversation with each other. -- Christina M. Gschwandtner, Professor of Philosophy, Fordham UniversityIn a time when philosophy is too often oriented toward the conversion of the other, Emmanuel Falque invites us to see genuine philosophy as a conversation with others such that we might be transformed ourselves. Modeling how criticism is a form of care, Falque opens French phenomenology to itself and opens us up to it. -- J. Aaron Simmons, Furman UniversityTable of ContentsOpening: The Loving Struggle / Part I: Limitation / 1. Khôra, or the Grand Bifurcation in Derrida / 2. A Phenomenology of the Underground in Merleau-Ponty / Part II: Revelation / 3. The Face without a Face in Lévinas / 4. The Phenomenology of the Extraordinary in Marion / Part III: Incarnation / 5. Is there Flesh without the Body in Michel Henry? / 6. Adam, or the Arch of the Flesh in Chrétien / Part IV: Experience / 7. Visited Facticity in Lacoste / 8. A Phenomenology of Experience in Romano / Epilogue: The Hedgehog and the Fox / Index

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Book SynopsisIt has been 25 years since Dominique Janicaud derisively proclaimed the “theological turn” in French phenomenology due to the return of God to philosophy through the influence of “religious” thinkers such as Lévinas, Ricoeur, and Marion. Since then, the “theological turn” has flowered into a fully-fledged movement on both sides of the Atlantic. But, what will be the shape and direction of the second generation of the “theological turn”? In this important new book, Emmanuel Falque engages with all the major twentieth-century French phenomenologists—something heretofore unavailable in English. He argues that rather than being content to argue for the return of God to philosophy, something fought for and developed by the foregoing generation of the “theological turn,” it is necessary to stage a philosophical confrontation, or disputatio, with them and their work in order to ensure the ongoing vitality of the unexpected contemporary relationship between philosophy and theology. Drawing on the legacies of Jaspers and Heidegger, who both staged their own “loving struggles” to arrive at defining philosophical conclusions, Falque confronts, interrogates, and learns from his most influential philosophical forebears to steer the “theological turn” in a new direction. Offering a novel and creative philosophy of the body, Falque argues for a reorientation of philosophy of religion generally and the “theological turn” specifically from a philosophy of revelation from above to a philosophy of the limit from below. to the return of God to philosophy through the influence of “religious” thinkers such as Lévinas, Ricoeur, and Marion. Since then, the “theological turn” has flowered into a fully-fledged movement on both sides of the Atlantic. But, what will be the shape and direction of the second generation of the “theological turn”? In this important new book, Emmanuel Falque engages with all the major twentieth-century French phenomenologists—something heretofore unavailable in English. He argues that rather than being content to argue for the return of God to philosophy, something fought for and developed by the foregoing generation of the “theological turn,” it is necessary to stage a philosophical confrontation, or disputatio, with them and their work in order to ensure the ongoing vitality of the unexpected contemporary relationship between philosophy and theology. Drawing on the legacies of Jaspers and Heidegger, who both staged their own “loving struggles” to arrive at defining philosophical conclusions, Falque confronts, interrogates, and learns from his most influential philosophical forebearers in order to steer the “theological turn” in a new direction. Offering a novel and creative philosophy of the body, Falque argues for a reorientation of philosophy of religion generally and the “theological turn” specifically from a philosophy of revelation from above to a philosophy of the limit from below.Trade ReviewThis book provides an excellent introduction to the major French phenomenologists of the 20th century by a preeminent thinker of the younger generation of French philosophers, personally acquainted with many of them. Falque not only gives a lucid introduction to his predecessors, but brings a unique critical perspective to their work and puts them into productive conversation with each other. -- Christina M. Gschwandtner, Professor of Philosophy, Fordham UniversityIn a time when philosophy is too often oriented toward the conversion of the other, Emmanuel Falque invites us to see genuine philosophy as a conversation with others such that we might be transformed ourselves. Modeling how criticism is a form of care, Falque opens French phenomenology to itself and opens us up to it. -- J. Aaron Simmons, Furman UniversityTable of ContentsOpening: The Loving Struggle / Part I: Limitation / 1. Khôra, or the Grand Bifurcation in Derrida / 2. A Phenomenology of the Underground in Merleau-Ponty / Part II: Revelation / 3. The Face without a Face in Lévinas / 4. The Phenomenology of the Extraordinary in Marion / Part III: Incarnation / 5. Is there Flesh without the Body in Michel Henry? / 6. Adam, or the Arch of the Flesh in Chrétien / Part IV: Experience / 7. Visited Facticity in Lacoste / 8. A Phenomenology of Experience in Romano / Epilogue: The Hedgehog and the Fox / Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume is a guide to the legacy of the philosophical work of Jean-Luc Marion. A leading phenomenologist and philosopher of religion, Marion's work addresses questions on the nature and knowledge of God, love, consciousness, art, psychology, and spirituality. Here, leading Marion scholars explain the development of his key concepts, while critically mining the philosopher's ideas for relevant implications and applications to contemporary issues in various fields of study, including philosophy, theology, art, psychology and literature. The first volume to cover Marion's wider corpus, this book opens with an original essay by Marion himself, and goes on to present a comprehensive view of Marion's ideas. Though largely anchored in philosophy, the essays are interdisciplinary and explore the various questions central to Marion's work, including the visibility and invisibility of God, the constitutive force of the horizon of consciousness, the gift and givenness, eroticism and love, art and painting, psychology, literature, memory, iconography, and spirituality.Trade ReviewThe contributions in this book significantly engage the important work of Jean-Luc Marion, one of the most distinguished voices in current discussion of religion in contemporary Continental philosophy. Together they offer a wide-ranging exploration of Marion’s work and its significance, and not least with openness to its interdisciplinary relevance. In helpfully informative and thoughtful manners the contributors chart many of the diverse themes of Marion’s work and its contemporary relevance and influence. We are offered deft interpretations of this work, and a thoughtful and engaging map of Marion’s work, from both philosophical and theological perspectives. The book touches on many of the significant issues in recent discussion of religion in current Continental thought. The contributions are well informed and informative in this engaging, illuminating and recommended work. -- William Desmond, David Cook Chair in Philosophy, Villanova University; Thomas A.F. Kelly Visiting Chair in Philosophy, Maynooth University, Ireland; and professor of philosophy emeritus, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, BelgiumTable of ContentsAbbreviations of Primary Works by Jean-Luc Marion / Editor’s Introduction: Traversing the Beyond with Jean-Luc Marion, Rachel Bath and Kathryn Lawson, How Jean-Luc Marion Gives Himself, Kevin Hart, The Question of the Reduction, Jean-Luc Marion / Part 1. Reflections on the Past / 1. Amor et Memoria, Ugo Perone / 2. Givenness, Grace, and Marion’s Augustinianism, Felix Ó Murchadha / 3. Ways of Being Given, Pierre-Jean Renaudie / 4. On the Threshold of Distance, Ryan Coyne / Part 2. Present Openings / Reading Textual Dramatics, Stephen Lewis / 5. The Moving Icon, Jodie McNeilly / 6. Love Without Bodies, Cassandra Falke / 7. As an Orpheus of Phenomenality, Kevin Hart / Part 3. Breaching Future Horizons / 8. Discovering Human Insufficiency with Marion, Jennifer Rosato / 9. Jean-Luc Marion’s Spirituality of Adoration and its implications for a Phenomenology of Religion, Christina Gschwandtner / 10. Seeing the Invisible, Claudio Tarditi / 11. An Excess of Happiness, Jeffrey Kosky / 12. Flight from the Flesh, Brian Becker

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Book SynopsisThe world is increasingly polarized along religious, ethnic, race, gender, class, and ideological lines. But must such diversity necessarily breed suspicion, fear, or violence? Richard Kearney invites us to consider another path. He wagers that the cause of our divisions often lies not in difference but in a lack of creative imagination. Ever in a spirit of dialogue, he shows how poetics and narrative imagination can break the hold of hostility and open new possibilities of reconciliation, accomplishing what moral arguments alone cannot. Now, more than ever, there is an urgent need for Kearney’s work, which addresses our current moment of crisis and division, providing pathways of creative response and healing. This book follows Kearney’s journey through the fields of philosophy of the imagination, hermeneutics, philosophy of religion, ethics, psychology, practical philosophy, and politics. The selection of writings in this volume offers to the specialist and the general reader a concise, well-rounded entry into one of the most prolific and wide-ranging thinkers in contemporary philosophy.Trade ReviewMurray E. Littlejohn has prepared a gift for those new to Richard Kearney’s work and a valuable compendium for those already familiar. It is an exceptional constellation of essays that map the contours of Kearney’s ranging conversations and comprehensive writings on the imagination. More than this, it is a catalyst for further reflections on the imagination with Kearney and the philosophical hermeneutical tradition from which he was formed. Such reflections are vital for our times disciplined by imaginations contained, embraced, and subjected by economic and technological rationalities, wherein nothing and no one remains exempt from the market or the machine. Kearney’s writings, as this collection has gathered, offer help—help to imagine again, to imagine differently. -- Ashley Moyse, McDonald Postdoctoral Fellow in Christian Ethics and Public Life, University of OxfordAn invaluable resource for anyone interested in Richard Kearney’s continuous impact and influence on the fields of philosophy and religion, not least because of its helpful introduction to Kearney’s work, his background, and the philosophical legacy that he was schooled in and continues to advance. -- Michael Oliver, Departmental Lecturer in Modern Theology, University of OxfordTable of ContentsIntroduction: Reading Richard Kearney / Part I: Thinking Imagination (Poetics, Literature, Culture) / Introduction / 1. Imagination Now / 2. Narrative Matters / 3. Writing Trauma and Narrative Catharsis / 4. Post-Modern Mirrors of Fiction / 5. The Narrative Imagination / Part II: Reading Life (Hermeneutics, Semiotics, Psychoanalysis) / Introduction / 6. Welcoming the Stanger / 7. Strangers, Gods and Monsters / 8. Diacritical Hermeneutics: Reading Between the Lines / 9. Carnal Hermeneutics / 10. Hermeneutics of Wounds / Part III: The Religious Wager (Philosophy of Religion, Phenomenology of God, Inter-Religious Dialogue) / Introduction / 11. Anatheism: God After God / 12. Possiblizing God / 13. Epiphanies of the Everyday / 14. Eros Ascending and Descending / 15. Making God: A Theopoetic / Part IV: Philosophy in Action (Ethics, Politics, Critical Theory) / Introduction / 16. Between Poetics and Ethics / 17. On Terror / 18. Aliens and Others / 19. Towards a Post-Nationalist Archipelago / 20. The Wager of Hospitality / Epilogue: Richard Kearney Now / Bibliography / Index

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Book SynopsisJacques Lacan is a seminal figure in the history of thought, whose radical contributions to thinking on subjectivity, sexuality and language are hugely influential. However, Lacan's engagements with religion – and specifically with traditions beyond the hegemonic European tradition – have not received the attention they deserve. Lacan himself translated Taoist texts, studied Maimonides' The Guide for the Perplexed and engaged with occultism, Sufism and the Kabbalistic tradition. This book offers the first in-depth exploration of his work in this area, asking: how did the different discourses on 'religion' influence Lacan's own thinking? And what can Lacanian theory offer when it comes to the study of non-European religious beliefs? Can it help us to step outside of the Western Christian framework that still organizes the academic knowledge of what religion should be? This collection critically examines how Lacan helps us to question how far the European understanding of these texts and traditions is tied to the universal drive of capitalism and to the psychological internalization of the history of colonialism.Trade ReviewCan psychoanalysis be useful to cure anything more than the neuroses created by the European bourgeois family structure? This book finally tackles this most important issue by exploring the resources available for this task with Lacan's thinking. As such, it is a must read to deepen the much needed process of de-provincializing psychoanalysis. -- Chiara Bottici and Benoit Challand, New School for Social Research, authors of The Myth of the Clash of CivilizationsTable of ContentsIntroduction / Part I: Modern Occultism and Immemorial Monotheism / 1. Jacques Lacan, Wilfred Bion and the Kabbalah, Bruce Rosenstock / 2. The Will of an Anti-Black Idol: An Insatiable Drive, Calvin Warren / 3. Freedom and Nothingness, Between Theodicy and Anthropodicy: Lacan and (Un)Orthodox Perspectives, Davor Džalto / 4. Experiences of Transcendence in the Borromean Knot, Janina M. Hofer / Part II: Capitalism and the Occult Drive of the Master / 5. Capitalist Exceptionalism: Discourse, Sexuation and Mysticism, John Holland / 6. Last Judgment, Miroslav Griško / 7. The Occult Presence of Slavery: A Dialogue on the Logic of the Vel, Jared Sexton and Sora Han / 8. Violence by Any Other Name: The Impasse of Black Female Sexuality, Selamawit Terrefe / Part III: Stepping Outside of Colonial Religiosities / 9. Lacan and Judaism, Agata Bielik-Robson / 10. Lacan and Sufism: Paths for Moving Beyond Pre- and Post-Modern Subjectivities, Mahdi Tourage / 11. Learning to Desire Through the Desire of the Other: Lacan and Maximus the Confessor in Dialogue, Dionysius Skliris / 12. On a "Mysterious Effusion": The Presence of Lacan in Benny Lévy, Gilles Hanus / 13. Decolonizing Ibn'Arabī with Jacques Lacan or Why Ibn'Arabi is Not a Neoplatonist, Philipp Valentini / Conclusion / Index

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Book SynopsisThis book aims to put modern continental philosophy, specifically the sub-fields of phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, critical theory and genealogy, into conversation with the field of contemporary theology. Colby Dickinson demonstrates the way in which negative dialectics, or the negation of negation, may help us to grasp the thin (or non-existent) borders between continental philosophy and theology as the leading thinkers of both fields wrestle with their entrance into a new era. With the declining place of "the sacred" in the public sphere, we need to pay more attention than ever to how continental philosophy seems to be returning to distinctly theological roots. Through a genealogical mapping of 20th-century continental philosophers, Dickinson highlights the ever-present Judeo-Christian roots of modern Western philosophical thought. Opposing categories such as immanence/transcendence, finitude/infinitude, universal/particular, subject/object, are at the center of works by thinkers such as Agamben, Marion, Vattimo, Levinas, Latour, Caputo and Adorno. This book argues that utilizing a negative dialectic allows us to move beyond the apparent fixation with dichotomies present within those fields and begin to perform both philosophy and theology anew.Trade ReviewDickinson argues for more fluid fertile borderlands between philosophy and theology. Deploying a dialectics of 'double negation' he critiques the mega-narratives of modernity in order to open a new 'logics' of transfusion between faith and reason. This allows for a positive revisiting of the roots of theological inquiry while embracing the most robust resources of postmodern thinking. A timely, bold and engaging work. -- Richard Kearney, Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy, Boston CollegeThis book is more than a masterful mapping of a huge swath of contemporary theology and continental philosophy. Dickinson’s negative dialectic is also a cookbook of risky strategies—so many spiritual exercises on offer to us-- which situate living thought along a precarious fault line of disenchantment and hope that neither philosophy nor theology can successfully manage. -- Ward Blanton, Reader in Biblical Cultures and European Thought, University of KentDickinson is one of our best guides to the leading edges where continental philosophy and theology intersect. In Theology and Contemporary Continental Philosophy, he offers a concise, accessible overview of this interaction. The negative dialectics of philosophy are entangled with negative theology to generate a weakened but transformative discourse that opens up both to other, nondualist ways of thinking. -- Clayton Crockett, Professor and Director of Religious Studies, University of Central ArkansasTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Chapter One: On the Relationship of Continental Philosophy to Theology Chapter Two: Toward a Negative Dialectic Chapter Three: The Gap within Existence as Theological Motif Chapter Four: The Phenomenological (Re)turn Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis book aims to put modern continental philosophy, specifically the sub-fields of phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, critical theory and genealogy, into conversation with the field of contemporary theology. Colby Dickinson demonstrates the way in which negative dialectics, or the negation of negation, may help us to grasp the thin (or non-existent) borders between continental philosophy and theology as the leading thinkers of both fields wrestle with their entrance into a new era. With the declining place of "the sacred" in the public sphere, we need to pay more attention than ever to how continental philosophy seems to be returning to distinctly theological roots. Through a genealogical mapping of 20th-century continental philosophers, Dickinson highlights the ever-present Judeo-Christian roots of modern Western philosophical thought. Opposing categories such as immanence/transcendence, finitude/infinitude, universal/particular, subject/object, are at the center of works by thinkers such as Agamben, Marion, Vattimo, Levinas, Latour, Caputo and Adorno. This book argues that utilizing a negative dialectic allows us to move beyond the apparent fixation with dichotomies present within those fields and begin to perform both philosophy and theology anew.Trade ReviewDickinson argues for more fluid fertile borderlands between philosophy and theology. Deploying a dialectics of 'double negation' he critiques the mega-narratives of modernity in order to open a new 'logics' of transfusion between faith and reason. This allows for a positive revisiting of the roots of theological inquiry while embracing the most robust resources of postmodern thinking. A timely, bold and engaging work. -- Richard Kearney, Charles Seelig Professor of Philosophy, Boston CollegeThis book is more than a masterful mapping of a huge swath of contemporary theology and continental philosophy. Dickinson’s negative dialectic is also a cookbook of risky strategies—so many spiritual exercises on offer to us-- which situate living thought along a precarious fault line of disenchantment and hope that neither philosophy nor theology can successfully manage. -- Ward Blanton, Reader in Biblical Cultures and European Thought, University of KentDickinson is one of our best guides to the leading edges where continental philosophy and theology intersect. In Theology and Contemporary Continental Philosophy, he offers a concise, accessible overview of this interaction. The negative dialectics of philosophy are entangled with negative theology to generate a weakened but transformative discourse that opens up both to other, nondualist ways of thinking. -- Clayton Crockett, Professor and Director of Religious Studies, University of Central ArkansasTable of ContentsAcknowledgements Introduction Chapter One: On the Relationship of Continental Philosophy to Theology Chapter Two: Toward a Negative Dialectic Chapter Three: The Gap within Existence as Theological Motif Chapter Four: The Phenomenological (Re)turn Conclusion Bibliography

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Book SynopsisThis volume is a guide to the legacy of the philosophical work of Jean-Luc Marion. A leading phenomenologist and philosopher of religion, Marion's work addresses questions on the nature and knowledge of God, love, consciousness, art, psychology, and spirituality. Here, leading Marion scholars explain the development of his key concepts, while critically mining the philosopher's ideas for relevant implications and applications to contemporary issues in various fields of study, including philosophy, theology, art, psychology and literature. The first volume to cover Marion's wider corpus, this book opens with an original essay by Marion himself, and goes on to present a comprehensive view of Marion's ideas. Though largely anchored in philosophy, the essays are interdisciplinary and explore the various questions central to Marion's work, including the visibility and invisibility of God, the constitutive force of the horizon of consciousness, the gift and givenness, eroticism and love, art and painting, psychology, literature, memory, iconography, and spirituality.Trade ReviewThe contributions in this book significantly engage the important work of Jean-Luc Marion, one of the most distinguished voices in current discussion of religion in contemporary Continental philosophy. Together they offer a wide-ranging exploration of Marion’s work and its significance, and not least with openness to its interdisciplinary relevance. In helpfully informative and thoughtful manners the contributors chart many of the diverse themes of Marion’s work and its contemporary relevance and influence. We are offered deft interpretations of this work, and a thoughtful and engaging map of Marion’s work, from both philosophical and theological perspectives. The book touches on many of the significant issues in recent discussion of religion in current Continental thought. The contributions are well informed and informative in this engaging, illuminating and recommended work. -- William Desmond, David Cook Chair in Philosophy, Villanova University; Thomas A.F. Kelly Visiting Chair in Philosophy, Maynooth University, Ireland; and professor of philosophy emeritus, Institute of Philosophy, KU Leuven, BelgiumTable of ContentsAbbreviations of Primary Works by Jean-Luc Marion / Editor’s Introduction: Traversing the Beyond with Jean-Luc Marion, Rachel Bath and Kathryn Lawson, How Jean-Luc Marion Gives Himself, Kevin Hart, The Question of the Reduction, Jean-Luc Marion / Part 1. Reflections on the Past / 1. Amor et Memoria, Ugo Perone / 2. Givenness, Grace, and Marion’s Augustinianism, Felix Ó Murchadha / 3. Ways of Being Given, Pierre-Jean Renaudie / 4. On the Threshold of Distance, Ryan Coyne / Part 2. Present Openings / Reading Textual Dramatics, Stephen Lewis / 5. The Moving Icon, Jodie McNeilly / 6. Love Without Bodies, Cassandra Falke / 7. As an Orpheus of Phenomenality, Kevin Hart / Part 3. Breaching Future Horizons / 8. Discovering Human Insufficiency with Marion, Jennifer Rosato / 9. Jean-Luc Marion’s Spirituality of Adoration and its implications for a Phenomenology of Religion, Christina Gschwandtner / 10. Seeing the Invisible, Claudio Tarditi / 11. An Excess of Happiness, Jeffrey Kosky / 12. Flight from the Flesh, Brian Becker

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Book SynopsisContinental philosophers of religion have been engaging with theological issues, concepts and questions for several decades, blurring the borders between the domains of philosophy and theology. Yet when Emmanuel Falque proclaims that both theologians and philosophers need not be afraid of crossing the Rubicon – the point of no return – between these often artificially separated disciplines, he scandalised both camps. Despite the scholarly reservations, the theological turn in French phenomenology has decisively happened. The challenge is now to interpret what this given fact of creative encounters between philosophy and theology means for these disciplines.In this collection, written by both theologians and philosophers, the question “Must we cross the Rubicon?” is central. However, rather than simply opposing or subscribing to Falque’s position, the individual chapters of this book interrogate and critically reflect on the relationship between theology and philosophy, offering novel perspectives and redrawing the outlines of their borderlands. Table of ContentsForewordRichard Kearney (Boston College)IntroductionMartin Koci and Jason W. Alvis (University of Vienna), Transgressing the Boundaries: Introducing Emmanuel FalqueI. Interpreting Emmanuel Falque Emmanuel Falque (Institut Catholique de Paris), Philosophy and Theology: New Boundaries Bruce Ellis Benson (St Andrews), Where is the Philosophical/Theological Rubicon?: Toward a Radical Rethinking of “Religion” Jakub Čapek (Charles University, Prague), Philosophy and Theology: What Happens When We Cross the Boundary? William C. Woody (Boston College), Foreign Exchange or Hostile Incursion Tamsin Jones (Trinity College Hartford), The Geography of the Rubicon: Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies in the American Context II. Emmanuel Falque in Comparison William L. Connelly (Institut Catholique de Paris), At the Confluence of Phenomenology and Non-Phenomenology: Maurice Blondel and Emmanuel Falque Katerina Kočí (Charles University, Prague), A Friendly Tussle between Hermeneutics and Phenomenology: From Ricoeur to Falque and Beyond Lorenza Bottacin Cantoni (University of Padova), Hoc est corpus meum: Kenosis, Responsibility and the Ethics of the Spread Body between Levinas and Falque Francesca Peruzzotti (Institut Catholique de Paris/San Carlo College Modena), God’s word and the human word. Philosophy and theology in Emmanuel Falque’s phenomenology III. Constructive-Critical Engagements Carla Canullo (University of Macerata), Oportet transire: How “Crossing” becomes a questio de homine Andrew Sackin-Poll (University of Cambridge), Phenomenology and the Metaphysics of Conversion Barnabas Asprey (University of Cambridge), Transforming Heideggerian Finitude? Following Pathways Opened by Emmanuel Falque Victor Emma-Adamah (University of Cambridge), The Sense of Finitude: A Blondelian Engagement Steven DeLay (Woolf University), The Power at Work Within Us ConclusionEmmanuel Falque, To Die of Not Writing

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Book SynopsisTruth is increasingly marginalized. Powerful news interests, social media and political orators all seem to point to the idea that the days of absolute Truth are past. Religions have always claimed to stand for a transcendent dimension to reality and to the idea of an absolute claim to Truth but, in the West, religion has been and is declining in influence. Fundamentalism is on the rise and this, combined with relativism, contributes to the current malaise. Peter Vardy has a passionate commitment to helping people think about key issues deeply, yet writes in a lucid and clear style. In Beyond the Cave he explains why claims to absolute Truth have become severely eroded but he also charts a way forward.

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Book SynopsisPaul Tillich and Religious Socialism: Towards a Kingdom of Peace and Justice argues that the Kingdom of God—the reign of God over all human affairs via God’s manifestations in love, power, and justice—can be fragmentarily achieved through a religious socialism that creatively integrates the early Tillich’s socialist thinking with later insights throughout Tillich’s theological career and with contemporary developments in just peacemaking. The resulting religious socialism is defined by economic justice and a recognition of the sacred reality in all human endeavors. It employs Christianity to furnish the necessary depth for warding off materialism and affirming the spiritual dimension of both labor and acquiring material goods. The unbridgeable Marxist chasm between expectation and reality is bridged through new being, already historically inaugurated in the Christhood of Jesus. New being is fundamentally oriented toward bringing justice to the poor, the disenfranchised, and the marginalized. It affirms the individual and equal value of all persons and thus, in Kantian terms, promotes a kingdom of intrinsically worthwhile ends rather than a kingdom of instrumentally worthwhile means of things.Table of ContentsDedicationAcknowledgmentsIntroduction Historical Backdrop to Tillich’s Religious Socialism Politics and Ultimate Reality The Idolatrous Nature of Political Romanticism The Demonic Structure of Capitalism The Socialist Principle of Expectation Power and Ethics Socio-Economic Features of a Religious Socialist Government Building a Kingdom of Peace and Justice ConclusionBibliography

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Book SynopsisIt is widely accepted that moral education is quintessential to facilitating and maintaining prosocial attitudes. What moral education should entail and how it can be effectively pursued remain hotly disputed questions. In Confucian Ritual and Moral Education, Colin J. Lewis examines these issues by appealing to two traditions that have until now escaped comparison: Vygotsky’s theory of learning and psychosocial development, and ancient Confucianism’s ritualized approach to moral education. Lewis argues first, that Vygotsky and the Confucians complement one another in a manner that enables a nuanced, empirically respectable understanding of how the Confucian ritual education model should be construed and how it could be deployed; and second, just as ritual education in the Confucian tradition can be explicated in terms of modern developmental theory, this ancient notion of ritual can also serve as a viable resource for moral education in a contemporary, diverse world.Trade Review"Confucian Ritual and Moral Education explores ways in which Confucian ritual can augment and enhance contemporary moral education. Drawing upon modern developmental theory and theory of education, it provides an original and revealing account of how Confucian ritual achieves its aim to reshape character. Through a sympathetic, creative, and careful application of Confucian ritual to the challenges of moral improvement, it shows how ritual theory and practice constitute valuable resources for the modern world. The author demonstrates a masterful command of a wide range of disciplines and approaches and has produced a book that will be of interest to anyone concerned with the practical challenges of moral education." -- Philip J. Ivanhoe, Georgetown UniversityTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1: Adaptation and Education: (Non)nativism and Moral DevelopmentChapter 2: Education and Moral Education: Vygotsky’s Incomplete AccountChapter 3: Confucian Ritual: A DefinitionChapter 4: The Ritual Cultivation Model: A Nuanced InterpretationChapter 5: Ritual and Moral Education: How and Why it WorksChapter 6: Is it New? Is it Needed? Ritual’s Place Alongside Other ToolsChapter 7: Orthopraxy and Intuition: The Importance of a Ritual FrameworkChapter 8: Developing Promoral Classrooms: Adding Ritual to the ToolkitBibliography

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Book SynopsisAugustine identified reason and authority as complementary ways of learning the truth, and he employed both to explore such perennial questions as the rationality of faith, the nature of the good life, the problem of evil, and the relation of God and the soul. Eight writings of Augustine represent his application of these two methods to these four topics: On the True Religion, On the Nature of Good, On Free Choice of the Will, On the Teacher, On the Usefulness of Believing, On the Good of Marriage, Enchiridion, and Confessions. In Reason, Authority, and the Healing of Desire in the Writings of Augustine, Mark Boone explains Augustine’s theology of desire in this cross-section of his works. Throughout his writings and in many ways, Augustine develops a Platonically informed, yet distinctively Christian account of desire. Human desire should respond to the goodness inherent in things, loving the greatest good above all and great goods more than lesser goods. Above all, we should love God and souls. Sin, an inappropriate desire for lesser goods, is healed by the redemption of Christ.Trade Review"Desires occupies a central place in Augustine’s philosophical theology and is the lynchpin for almost every topic that he treats. In Reason, Authority, and the Healing of Desire in the Writings of Augustine, Dr. Mark Boone provides a fresh look at this sometimes neglected and often misunderstood aspect of Augustine’s thought. Through a careful examination of eight works, Boone persuasively shows how Augustine has a Platonically informed yet distinctively Christian theology of desire, a theology that is evident in his writings that rely mainly on reason and in his writings that rely mainly on authority.This book makes a valuable contribution to our historical understanding of Augustine’s pioneering work in the field of desire as well as to our contemporary conversations about human eros."--Michael P. Foley, Baylor University -- Michael P. Foley, Baylor University"Even by itself, Boone's introduction makes his whole book required reading -- especially by people who haven't read Augustine and don't know what they are missing. In the eight chapters, Boone undertakes a brilliant retrieval of eight Augustinian treatises, most of them now the province solely of specialists. Reading these treatises through the lens of Augustine's theology of desire, Boone shows why all Christians should be 'Augustinians' -- called by Christ to a conversion of desire." -- Matthew Levering, James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary -- Matthew Levering, James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology, Mundelein SeminaryTable of ContentsAbbreviations Introduction: Two Ways of Discovering a Good Theology of Desire Part One: Reason Chapter 1: Defense of the Faith According to Reason: De Vera Religione Chapter 2: Ethics According to Reason: De Natura Boni Chapter 3: Metaphysics and the Problem of Evil According to Reason: De Libero Arbitrio Voluntatis Chapter 4: God and the Soul According to Reason: De Magistro Part Two: Authority Chapter 5: Defense of the Faith According to Authority: De Utilitate Credendi Chapter 6: Ethics According to Authority: De Cono Coniugali Chapter 7: Metaphysics and the Problem of Evil According to Reason: Enchiridion Chapter 8: God and the Soul According to Authority: Confessiones Bibliography

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Book SynopsisUltimate reality is often characterized in terms of a variety of what are thought to be incompatible concepts, like God, Dao, Brahman, śūnyatā, etc. Matthew S. LoPresti suggests that if we shift to a process metaphysics, our horizon of pluralistic understanding shifts as well, allowing multiple religious ultimates, effective religious practices, and their respective salvific projects to simultaneously exist without contradiction. Religious Pluralism: Towards a Comparative Metaphysics of Religion examines the plausibility of a genuine religious pluralism, arguing in favor of the authenticity of a plurality of the world’s major religious traditions. Many philosophical responses to the challenges of religious diversity have been misidentified as forms of relativism or religious pluralisms, so a more robust taxonomy is provided to encourage the field to be more uniform and precise. John B. Cobb, Jr.’s Whiteheadian-based approach, known as “Deep Religious Pluralism,” is argued to function as a non-relativistic basis for a meta-theology of world religions. After discussing classical and contemporary South Asian philosophy, Western analytic philosophy, and process philosophy, in addition to the writings of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), LoPresti argues that a proper engagement with religious pluralism requires intimate knowledge of Western and non-Western traditions.Table of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: Re-Examining “Pluralism” and “Pluralistic” Theologies in Contemporary Philosophy of ReligionChapter 2: The Ontological Basis of Deep Religious Pluralism: A Plurality of UltimatesChapter 3: The Metaphysical Lineage of Deep Religious Pluralism: A Primer on the Process Philosophy and Theology of Alfred North WhiteheadChapter 4: Taking Mystics Seriously: Ultimate Reality and the Prejudice of Mutual Exclusivity of Religious UltimatesChapter 5: Pluralistic Responses to Religious Diversity in Classical and Contemporary Indian Philosophy of ReligionChapter 6: Absolutism, Dialogue, and PluralismConclusion: The Necessity of Comparative Philosophy

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Book SynopsisEthical Silence: Kierkegaard on Communication, Education, andHumility examines a new area of Kierkegaard scholarship: the ethical value of silence. Through exegesis of Kierkegaard’s later writings, works in what is known as his second authorship, Sergia Hay argues that silence is an essential element of his Christian ethics. Starting with an overview of Kierkegaard’s ideas concerning ethics and communication, Hay builds a case for a Kierkegaardian notion of ethical silence by showing how silence contributes to the fulfillment of ethical imperatives by halting chatter, setting the “fundamental tone” for ethical activity, curbing excessive self-love, and providing another mode for educating and expressing love. Most importantly, silence can be used to humble the self and elevate the neighbor, creating conditions of Christian equality. Ethical silence is not the silence of the ineffable or what cannot be said, this is the silence of what can be said but should not.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments IntroductionChapter 1: Silence in Kierkegaard’s StagesChapter 2: Kierkegaard’s EthicsChapter 3: Language and CommunicationChapter 4: SilenceChapter 5: Ethical SilenceChapter 6: Exemplars of CommunicationConclusion: Consequences of Ethical Silence: Teaching, Freedom, and ResponsibilityBibliographyAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisEthical Silence: Kierkegaard on Communication, Education, andHumility examines a new area of Kierkegaard scholarship: the ethical value of silence. Through exegesis of Kierkegaard’s later writings, works in what is known as his second authorship, Sergia Hay argues that silence is an essential element of his Christian ethics. Starting with an overview of Kierkegaard’s ideas concerning ethics and communication, Hay builds a case for a Kierkegaardian notion of ethical silence by showing how silence contributes to the fulfillment of ethical imperatives by halting chatter, setting the “fundamental tone” for ethical activity, curbing excessive self-love, and providing another mode for educating and expressing love. Most importantly, silence can be used to humble the self and elevate the neighbor, creating conditions of Christian equality. Ethical silence is not the silence of the ineffable or what cannot be said, this is the silence of what can be said but should not.Trade Review"In her Ethical Silence, Professor Sergia Hay bestows a compelling and much-needed analysis of Kierkegaard’s axial concept of a 'second ethic.' In addition, the author lays out a groundbreaking account of the connections between this second ethic and Kierkegaard’s pronouncements on both indirect communication and the ethical value of silence. Remarkably, this erudite volume is so clearly and gracefully composed that it warrants a space on the bookshelves of both novice and advanced students of the Danish firebrand." -- Gordon Marino, St. Olaf College"Kierkegaard wrote that freedom, and by extension goodness, is always 'communicating.' Sergia Hay points to the many ways in which silence shapes Kierkegaard’s communications to us. She highlights the power of the silence that so permeates the authorship, its ambiguities and paradoxes, and probes its aims. This is a wise, frank, and persuasive text—one that locates silence not only in the hiding places of the aesthetic, nor in the sublime reaches of religious transcendence, but at the core, and the limit, of our ethical striving." -- Vanessa Rumble, Boston CollegeTable of ContentsAcknowledgments IntroductionChapter 1: Silence in Kierkegaard’s StagesChapter 2: Kierkegaard’s EthicsChapter 3: Language and CommunicationChapter 4: SilenceChapter 5: Ethical SilenceChapter 6: Exemplars of CommunicationConclusion: Consequences of Ethical Silence: Teaching, Freedom, and ResponsibilityBibliographyAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisGiven recent work in quantum physics suggesting that our world is just one world in a series of many, Leland Royce Harper calls for a shift in our concept of the monotheistic God of Judeo-Christian tradition. In Multiverse Deism: Shifting Perspectives of God and the World, Harper argues that those who wish to maintain that the Judeo-Christian God exists ought to revise how they define this God and what they expect of Him so as to maintain consistency between modern theism and the growing body of scientific knowledge. While this revision entails several concessions by the theist, the overall result is a stronger and more coherent account of who God really is. By removing the expectation that God will act in the natural world, Harper argues that we are left with a concept of God that maintains all of the traditional divine attributes, is consistent with current scientific advances, remains compatible with contemporary and historical arguments for the existence of God, and better refutes contemporary and historical arguments for atheism than the traditional, active God.Trade ReviewThis book fits very well into the discussion of science and theology/religion and opens up interesting debates. * European Society for the Study of Science and Theology *"Deism is a fascinating, though neglected, alternative to traditional theism. In Multiverse Deism: Shifting Perspectives of God and the World, Leland Harper revives this view in a novel way by considering the metaphysical implications of cutting-edge research on the multiverse. I highly recommend this book to students and scholars in science, religion, and philosophy." -- Yujin Nagasawa, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom"Wouldn't divine goodness create immensely many universes? Harper provides an impressivelywide-ranging discussion of this question and of how it might influence our concept of God." -- John Leslie, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada"In Multiverse Deism, Leland Royce Harper makes a significant contribution to the growing body of work on alternatives to classical theism. He develops and explores the implications of a deistic metaphysics of the divine, making a strong case for taking such an alternative seriously. Anyone working on the metaphysics of the divine—especially those interested in alternatives to classical theism—should read this book." -- Andrei Buckareff, Marist College"Harper explores and clarifies the various logical and conceptual connections that hold between deism and free will, the divine attributes, natural theology, the problem of evil, the problem of divine hiddenness, and divine action. This is an engaging and clearly written book, one that belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who is interested in the interface between contemporary cosmology, the philosophy of religion, and philosophical theology. I highly recommend it." -- Colin Ruloff, Kwantlen Polytechnic UniversityTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgments Chapter 1IntroductionChapter 2The Case for the MultiverseChapter 3The Theist and the MultiverseChapter 4Attributes of a Deistic GodChapter 5Why Being a Deist May Not Be So BadChapter 6Possible Alternative Version of DeismChapter 7Potential Difficulties and Further Lines of Inquiry for the Multiverse DeistChapter 8Practical Considerations and Concluding ThoughtsReferencesAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisThe great narratives of religion and nationhood were battered in the twentieth century by the dual forces of globalization and postmodernism. In the uncertainty of broken traditions, many people looking for God retreated into a regressive fundamentalism, and others abandoned themselves to nihilism and cynicism. But is there another way? In this volume, esteemed sociologist and therapist Mark W. Teismann offers a fresh approach to spiritual pursuits, one that neither relies upon absolutes nor leaves seekers in a void of disbelief. This approach is to consider the exercise of spirituality as a type of play. Teismann takes the reader on a whirlwind ride through the different aspects of play and how they relate to spirituality. Teismann draws on classical philosophers, memories of childhood, developmental science, poets, and his long career as a psychotherapist to create a deep understanding of how the spirit of play informs our moral pursuits and spiritual yearnings. A conclusion and epilogue summarize the book’s tenets and touch on Mark Teismann’s battle with cancer and how the practices of meditation and play accompanied him on his spiritual journey in the context of an incurable disease. The book’s appendix gives interested readers a detailed description of how to approach the practice of meditation.Table of ContentsPreface, Lynn Weber Introduction 1 Everyday Play 2 Possibility Play 3 Dark Play 4 Flanking Play 5 Bright Play 6 Meditation—The Ultimate Play 7 Conclusion 8 Epilogue: The Final Hole Appendix: How to Meditate Bibliography Index About the Author

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Book SynopsisThe great narratives of religion and nationhood were battered in the twentieth century by the dual forces of globalization and postmodernism. In the uncertainty of broken traditions, many people looking for God retreated into a regressive fundamentalism, and others abandoned themselves to nihilism and cynicism. But is there another way?In this volume, esteemed sociologist and therapist Mark W. Teismann offers a fresh approach to spiritual pursuits, one that neither relies upon absolutes nor leaves seekers in a void of disbelief. This approach is to consider the exercise of spirituality as a type of play. Teismann takes the reader on a whirlwind ride through the different aspects of play and how they relate to spirituality. Teismann draws on classical philosophers, memories of childhood, developmental science, poets, and his long career as a psychotherapist to create a deep understanding of how the spirit of play informs our moral pursuits and spiritual yearnings. A conclusion and epilogue summarize the book’s tenets and touch on Mark Teismann’s battle with cancer and how the practices of meditation and play accompanied him on his spiritual journey in the context of an incurable disease. The book’s appendix gives interested readers a detailed description of how to approach the practice of meditation.Table of ContentsPreface, Lynn Weber Introduction1Everyday Play2Possibility Play3Dark Play4Flanking Play5Bright Play6Meditation—The Ultimate Play7Conclusion8Epilogue: The Final HoleAppendix: How to MeditateBibliographyIndexAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisThe famed thinker and writer, C.S. Lewis, addressed issues that were paramount and pressing for religious persons in his time. In this volume, and in honor of Lewis, experts in their fields examine topics and challenges that face Christians living their faith today. Originally delivered as invited public lectures in a decade-long series--The Annual C.S. Lewis Legacy Lectures at Westminster College in Missouri--they include faith and reason, theological imagination, religion and ecology, the life and thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, antisemitism, Native American spirituality, science and religion, racism and poverty in the ministry and social action of Martin Luther King, Jr., misconceptions of Islam, religious pluralism, and religion and violence. The authors argue that these issues must be acknowledged and confronted in order for Christianity to remain, or to become relevant, in the current century.Trade ReviewAn impressive group of thought-leaders offering fascinating insights on an eclectic array of topics relevant for Christians today. An ideal book for any who appreciate C.S. Lewis as well as all who want to go further and deeper in their faith. -- C. K. Robertson, priest, professor, and author/editor of A Dangerous Dozen, Barnabas vs. Paul, and Theology and Batman.I join Cliff Cain in thanking the Harrods for providing the C.S. Lewis Professorship and lecture series. It was an honor to have such a vibrant lecture series on our campus, and the quality and range of speakers Dr. Cain invited to campus was phenomenal. How good to have the lectures bundled together in this volume, which will be treasured by so many. -- Carolyn Perry, Westminster CollegeThe C.S. Lewis Lectures brought some of the world’s top scholars and religious leaders to Westminster College to discuss the relevance of Lewis’ work to contemporary religion, politics, and culture. This engaging and insightful anthology, which covers the lecture series in its entirety, is an essential resource for anyone interested in Lewis’ life and thought. -- James McRae, Westminster CollegeTable of ContentsChapter One: Between Athens and Jerusalem: The Necessary Dilemma of Being a Thinking Christian, by Clifford Chalmers CainChapter Two: Who are We? Whence, Whither, and Why? By Katharine Jefferts SchoriChapter Three: The Theological Imagination of C.S. Lewis, by Michael WardChapter Four: We Are All Related: The Relevance of Native American Spiritual Traditions, by William A. YoungChapter Five: Religion, Politics, and Violence: Hope for the Perilous Journey in the Twenty-First Century, by Charles KimballChapter Six: To Serve This Present Age: Addressing Racism, Poverty, and Militarism Fifty Years after the Death of Martin Luther King, Jr., by Marvin A. McMickleChapter Seven: From Other to Brother: An Unprecedented Rapprochement in Our Time, by Philip A. CunninghamChapter Eight: Faith in the Face of Fascism: Learning Again from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, by Larry G. BrownChapter Nine: Faith Faces the Future: Contemporary Challenges for Christianity, by Clifford Chalmers Cain

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Book SynopsisIn Whitehead's Radically Temporalist Metaphysics: Recovering the Seriousness of Time, George Allan argues that Whitehead’s introduction of God into his process metaphysics renders his metaphysics incoherent. This notion of God, who is the reason for both stability and progressive change in the world and who is both the infinite source of novel possibilities and the everlasting repository for the finite values, inserts into a reality that is supposedly composed solely of finite entities an entity both infinite and everlasting. By eliminating this notion of God, Allan draws on the temporalist foundation of Whitehead’s views to recover a metaphysics that takes time seriously. By turning to Whitehead’s later writings, Allan shows how this interpretation is developed into an expanded version of the radically temporalist hypothesis, emphasizing the power of finite entities, individually and collectively, to create, sustain, and enhance the dynamic world of which we are a creative part.Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgementsChapter One: The God That FailedChapter Two: The Power of the PresentChapter Three: The Power of the PastChapter Four: The Shadow of TruthChapter Five: Erotic PowerChapter Six: Metaphoric PowerChapter Seven: The Solemnity of the WorldBibliographyAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisIn Whitehead's Radically Temporalist Metaphysics: Recovering the Seriousness of Time, George Allan argues that Whitehead’s introduction of God into his process metaphysics renders his metaphysics incoherent. This notion of God, who is the reason for both stability and progressive change in the world and who is both the infinite source of novel possibilities and the everlasting repository for the finite values, inserts into a reality that is supposedly composed solely of finite entities an entity both infinite and everlasting. By eliminating this notion of God, Allan draws on the temporalist foundation of Whitehead’s views to recover a metaphysics that takes time seriously. By turning to Whitehead’s later writings, Allan shows how this interpretation is developed into an expanded version of the radically temporalist hypothesis, emphasizing the power of finite entities, individually and collectively, to create, sustain, and enhance the dynamic world of which we are a creative part.Trade Review"The appearance of any new book from George Allan is cause for celebration, but this one is particularly important for the way it distills the wisdom of a lifetime. Beautifully written and closely reasoned, Whitehead’s Radically Temporalist Metaphysics accomplishes exactly what its subtitle suggests: Recovering the Seriousness of Time. If everything that comes to be also perishes, what, then, is the ultimate meaning of life? Allan’s concluding meditations on totality, tragic beauty, and peace strike me as better Whitehead than Whitehead himself." -- Nancy Frankenberry, Dartmouth College"Without doubt, this is absolutely the best book to make the case that Whitehead should have left God out of his system. This book is a beautifully crafted expression of Allan’s view of Whitehead without God, or, simply, a completely temporal process philosophy. Allan writes with such clarity that the most complex notions are explained and illustrated perfectly. Allan shows, conclusively, that Whitehead can be interpreted completely temporally." -- Robert Cummings Neville, Boston University, emeritus"By arguing on the basis of Whitehead’s own temporalist commitments against his position regarding eternal objects and a divine entity (an entity at once eternal and everlasting), and then revising the Whiteheadean approach in light of this twofold rejection, George Allan has more fully achieved what Whitehead himself aimed, but failed, to accomplish: a logically coherent, empirically adequate, and humanly relevant understanding of becoming in its full sweep and bottomless depths. No one has done more to show, in detail, his relevance to our time. George Allan has done so with a philosophical rigor and hermeneutic sensitivity matched by an eloquence hardly ever encountered in philosophical writing." -- Vincent Colapietro, Pennsylvania State University"In this work Allan mounts an unrelenting protest on behalf of the ‘ragged edges’ and ‘shadows’ that Whitehead’s temporalized metaphysics should more consistently embrace in its description of contingent, particular, perishing processes of coming-to-be. Leveraging Whitehead’s own creative ambiguities, Allan offers illuminating reflections on the role of metaphor and myth in Whitehead's later work that will move readers towards both a deeper appreciation of consistency in metaphysical propositions and a healthy skepticism about excess exactitude in speculative philosophy" -- Judith Jones, Fordham UniversityTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgementsChapter One: The God That FailedChapter Two: The Power of the PresentChapter Three: The Power of the PastChapter Four: The Shadow of TruthChapter Five: Erotic PowerChapter Six: Metaphoric PowerChapter Seven: The Solemnity of the WorldBibliographyAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisSuffering and Evil in Nature: Comparative Responses from Ecstatic Naturalism and Healing Cultures, edited by Joseph E. Harroff and Jea Sophia Oh, provides many unique experiments in thinking through the implications of ecstatic naturalism. This collection of essays directly addresses the importance of values sustaining cultures of healing and offers a variety of perspectives inducing radical hope requisite for cultivating moral and political imaginings of democracy-to-come as a regulative ideal. Through its invocation of “healing cultures,” the collection foregrounds the significance of the active, gerundive, and processual nature of ecstatic naturalism as a creative horizon for realizing values of intersubjective flourishing, while also highlighting the significance of culture as an always unfinished project of making discursive, interpretive and ethical space open for the subaltern and voiceless. Each contribution gives voice to the tensions and contradictions felt by living participants in emergent communities of interpretation—namely those who risk replacing authoritarian tendencies and fascist prejudices with a faith in future-oriented archetypes of healing to make possible truth and reconciliation between oppressor and oppressed, victimizers and victims of violence and trauma. These essays then let loose the radical hope of healing from suffering in a ceaseless community of communication within a horizon of creative democratic interpretation.Trade Review“Suffering and Evil in Nature: Comparative Responses from Ecstatic Naturalism and Healing Cultures furnishes us with fresh and provocative insights on the relevance of nature and entry points for queries on individual subjectivities, communal agency, and emergence of beauty at the edges of natural and societal destruction. In a comparative, constructive, and innovative manner, the philosophical ruminations of Roberto Corrington’s trope of nothingness are interwoven and serve as a basis for dialog on the sublime and terrifying aspects of unconscious and conscious experiences of 'holes in nature.' Nature, as an actor in collaboration with the human, assumes a complex and ambiguous role in the rise and ongoing presence of evil and suffering in our contemporary scene of racism, sexism, technocracy, nationalism, and ecosystemic annihilation. This collection of essays is a rare gift to any reader who is also seeking to courageously and resolutely co-create natural openings of breath within deterministic constructs of being in the world.” -- Elaine Padilla, University of La Verne“If you think Robert Corrington’s philosophy is a little wild, with its appeal to the unconscious of nature and human selving, wait until you read this book. Corrington and . . . : ancient middle Platonism, experience of values, Lovecraftian horror stories, being sunk, transformation in religious education, political feminism, world loyalty, ecofeminism and patriarchal metaphysics, the Great Mother and yin-yang thinking, story-telling and evil, the posthuman and advaya, Korean posthumanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and evil in the anthropocene.” -- Robert Cummings Neville, Boston University“Suffering and Evil in Nature: Comparative Responses from Ecstatic Naturalism and Healing Cultures is a collection of creative responses to perennial human problems of evil and suffering. The authors expand Robert S. Corrington’s vision of ecstatic naturalism into diverse realms of thinking including metaphysical, phenomenological, feminist, relational, posthuman, Confucian and so on. This book is a vital contribution to the ongoing emergence of a creative community of interpretation seeking to make sense and ultimately transform pressing contemporary problems from an ecstatic naturalist perspective via East-West dialogues.” -- Hyun-Shik Jun, Yonsei University“What convivial teamwork by Jea Sophia Oh and Joseph Harroff that has called forth this munificent set of essays! Improbably, the problem of suffering and evil, freed of its pattern of theodicies and dichotomies, gains--as question--a fresh, even mesmerizing, disclosive force. With historical depth and ethical pragmatism, with subtle Western autocritique and multi-vocal Asian augmentation, the demanding intensities of race, gender, democracy and ecology come into a philosophical solidarity of untamed difference. Its multivocality, however, does not explode and fragment. Rather its intensities tune to the hospitable tradition of 'ecstatic naturalism.' Indeed this anthology performs the 'communicating community of creatively democratic interpretation' that its editors brilliantly frame.” -- Catherine Keller, Drew UniversityTable of ContentsForeword Robert S. Corrington Acknowledgements IntroductionJoseph E. Harroff and Jea Sophia Oh Part 1: A Deep Opening of Nothingness: Some Metaphysical Resoundings 1. Providence and Providingness: On Platonic and Ecstatic Naturalist Good, Evil, and InfinityMarilynn Lawrence2. The Experience of Values and the Possibility of Ordinal Phenomenology in Corrington’s Deep PantheismJames Edward Hackett3. Dwelling with the Deep Ones: Lovecraftian Horror and the Selving ProcessThomas MillaryPart 2: Facing Suffering and Violence: Ecstatic Difference and Educational Healing4. On Being Sunk?Desmond Coleman5. Racism, Religious Education and TransformationMoon Son and Ji Young Park6. A Phenomenological Study of Feminist Political ConsciousnessSusan Erck Part 3: Ecological World Horizons: Comparative Philosophy and Relational Responding7. Recapturing World-Loyalty: A Relational Response to Ecological ViolenceKatelynn E. Carver8. Fecundity and Healing of the Great Mother Reading Corrington’s Nature and Nothingness via Yin-Yang ThinkingJea Sophia OhPart 4: Nurturing Nature and Posthumanism 9. Evil as Human Resistance to the Indifferent Force of the Primal Nature: An Essay on Story-Telling AnimalsIljoon Park10. The Posthuman and an Advaya Dialectic of SacrificeIck-Sang Shin11. Education for the Symbiosis of Humans and Machines in a Post-Human AgeEunkyoung Lee Part 5: (A)theodicy through the Anthropocene 12. Selving in a Dangerous World: William James, Buddhism, and Ecstatic NaturalismJonathan Weidenbaum13. Redemptive Suffering with Tianming 天命: An Ecstatically Naturalist Reading of Sacred Selving in Confucian EthicsJoseph Harroff14. We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us: The Nature of Evil and the Evil of Nature in the AnthropoceneRobert King

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Book SynopsisPhilosophical concepts are influential in the theories and methods to study the world religions. Even though the disciplines of anthropology and religious studies now encompass communities and cultures across the world, the theories and methods used to study world religions and cultures continue to be rooted in Western philosophies. For instance, one of the most widely used textbooks used in introductory courses on religious studies, introduces major theoreticians such as Edward Burnett Tylor, James Frazer, Sigmund Freud, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Mircea Eliade, William James, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and Clifford Geertz. Their theories are based on Western philosophy. In contrast, in Indic philosophical systems, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, one of the common views on reality is that the world both within one self and outside is a flow with nothing permanent, both the observer and the observed undergoing constant transformation. This volume is based on such innovative ideas coming from different Indic philosophies and how they can enrich the theory and methods in religious studies.Table of ContentsPart I. Epistemological Encounters: East and West The Dialogical and Therapeutic Paradigms in Indian Philosophy, by Karl-Stéphan Bouthillette Sāṁkhya and Yoga as an Indian Religious and Cultural Science, by Al Collins The Notion of Play (Līlā) in Gaudiya Vaiṣṇavism and Its Implications for the Western Understanding of Play, by Carl Olson Part II. Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain Theories for Religion Dharma: A Short History, by Pankaj Jain Anthropology and Religious Studies through Buddhist Lens: Dissolution of the Observer and the Observed in Emptiness, by Soraj Hongladarom Non-Reductive Integral Pluralism: Anekāntavāda as a Methodology for the Study of Religions, by Jeffery D. Long Mahayana Buddhism and the Social Sciences, by John Clammer

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Book SynopsisThis book examines biographical and textual connections between sociologist-theologian Jacques Ellul and philosopher-phenomenologist Paul Virilio. Through an examination of Ellul and Virilio’s embeddedness in the socio-historical context of postwar France, the book identifies a relationship between these critics of technology which constitutes a nascent theological tradition. The author shows from various vantage points how Ellul and Virilio’s nascent tradition exposes technology as modernity’s primary idol; and, how it uses multiple disciplines—including history, sociology, philosophy, phenomenology, theology, and ethics—to resist the perilous consequences of the modern world’s worship of power and the kinds of technologies this misdirected worship produces. Jacques Ellul’s death in 1994 and Paul Virilio’s death in 2018 may have prevented the maturation of this nascent theological tradition, but Theology, Ethics, and Technology in the work of Jacques Ellul and Paul Virilio aids this tradition’s ripening through the presentation of an illuminating way to read these two unique, and at times quixotic, intellectuals.Table of ContentsChapter 1: War, Modernity, and TechnologyChapter 2: The Construction of IdolsChapter 3: Combatting Myth with MythChapter 4: Technology’s OriginsChapter 5: Power, Powers, and TechnologyChapter 6: Ethics for Modern Thought, Action, and Making

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Book SynopsisReading Scripture with Paul Ricoeur is a unique volume in which twelve diverse contributors illuminate and analyze Paul Ricoeur’s personal religious faith and intellectual passion for Scripture. The co-editors, Joseph A. Edelheit and James F Moore, each studied with Ricoeur at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago and bring the perspectives of a rabbi and of a Lutheran pastor and theologian, respectively. This book engages topics such as translation, biblical hermeneutics, and prophecy, as well as specific scriptural passages: Cain and Abel, the Epistles, and a feminist reading of Rahab. It provides both students and scholars alike a new resource of reflections using Ricoeur’s scholarship to illuminate and model how Ricoeur read and taught. Trade Review"Ironically, the Bible has become a stumbling block, to the Jew and the Greek and just about everyone else. It's used as a cudgel when it should be a text of healing and reconciliation. So now, more than ever, we need the hermeneutical vision of Paul Ricoeur, for he reminded us that the eschatological horizon of scripture implicates us, embraces us, and, most importantly, helps us to understand ourselves. In the capable hands of Edelheit and Moore and their collaborators, readers of this book will be rewarded with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the text that Ricoeur loved above all others." -- Tony Jones, author of "Did God Kill Jesus? Searching for Love in History's Most Famous Execution""For readers new to Ricoeur, these essays offer a way into his thought and contributions to philosophy, ethics, and biblical interpretation. To the already familiar, they pose challenges to dig deeper and apply Ricoeur's insights to texts that impact common assumptions regarding gender, politics, and biblical authority. In the spirit of Ricoeur, they invite readers to find and see themselves among other creatures inside the world of biblical texts, which are both created by a community and in turn perpetually recreate that community. Finally, they summon readers of every generation to engage in genuine dialogue from which they dare never walk away." -- Fred Niedner, Valparaiso University"This brilliant compilation of essays by leading literary, philosophical, and theological lights showcases the fecundity of Paul Ricoeur's interpretations of the Bible. Neither a biblical literalist nor a secular fundamentalist, Ricoeur was a philosopher who sought to listen to the summons of the scriptural texts. This cutting-edge collection--both comprehensive in its philosophical range and focused in its attention to particular biblical stories--will delight readers who have learned, as Ricoeur famously put it, that 'it is by interpreting that we can hear again.'" -- Mark Wallace, Swarthmore CollegeTable of ContentsIntroductionJoseph Edelheit and James MooreChapter 1: Reading Scripture with Paul Ricoeur: Homage Andres LaCocqueChapter 2: Resistance and Recognition: Paul Ricoeur on Translation Kathleen BlameyChapter 3: From Exegesis to Allegory: Ricœur’s Challenge to Biblical ScholarshipBarnabas AsprayChapter 4: Biblical Hermeneutics, the Art of Interpretation, and Philosophy of the Self: A Tribute to Paul Ricœur and Paul Beauchamp Alain Thomasset, S.J.Chapter 5: From a Called to a Responsive Self: Ricoeur and Prophecy Timo HeleniusChapter 6: Ricoeur’s Biblical Hermeneutics: From Aesthetics to Theology Steven KepnesChapter 7: Challenging the Male Gaze: The Unabashed Rahab Emerges Through Paul Ricoeur’s HermeneuticsStephanie ArelChapter 8: Paul Ricoeur and the Parable of the Lost Son Brad DeFordChapter 9: Ricoeur’s Paradigmatic Challenge to American Evangelical Biblical Hermeneutics Dan R. StiverChapter 10: Epistles as Revelation: Expanding Ricoeur’s Account of Biblical Discourse Brian GregorChapter 11: An Authentic Ricoeurian Dialogue ProjectJoseph Edelheit and James Moore

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Book SynopsisHow God relates to the world lies at the heart of the most intense debates in modern theological and philosophy. Movements of Nouvelle Théologie, process theology, radical orthodoxy, modern Trinitarian theology and postmodern theology (i.e. Jean-Luc Marion) all seek to reconsider God’s relation to the world as a corrective of what they perceive as problematic. Of particular significance is the recent revival of the theology of participation, as promoted by Radical Orthodoxy in UK and Hans Boersma in North America. Facing excessive secularism and fragmentation of the modern Western world, Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma resort to the pre-modern theology of participation as the way forward. Relying heavily on Platonism, however, their participatory theology, as critics pointed out, tends to compromise the intrinsic goodness of the creation. In this book, Ge proposes that a distinctively Christian theology of participation anchored in creatio ex nihilo, developed by Augustine and brought to the fore by Aquinas, provides a more promising solution which not only secures the unity of things in God but also the goodness of creaturely plurality. Since participation in its origin is a solution to the problem of the One and the Many, Ge employs Gunton’s framework of the one and the many in her discussion of Augustine and Aquinas’s theologies of participation. By reshaping their concepts of participation in the light of the doctrine of creation, Ge argues, these thinkers have profoundly transformed the metaphysics of participation, making it finally more suitable for describing the unique relationship between God’s unity and creaturely plurality. This Christian metaphysics of participation is not only an advance on Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma, but also superior to competing theories of reality such as pluralism and reductionist physicalism. The book will also bring out implications for modern science-religion dialogues, the core of which concerns how God relates to the world.Trade ReviewA renewed focus on the metaphysics of participation is one of the most striking features of Christian theology over recent decades. Against the background of Radical Orthodoxy and the sacramental ontology of Hans Boersma, Yonghua Ge offers a fresh reading of participatory metaphysics in relation to creation ex nihilo and the classical problem of the One and the Many. This is a significant contribution to one of the most lively debates in contemporary theology and philosophy. -- Simon Oliver, Durham UniversityTable of ContentsIntroduction Part One: Augustine’s Participatory Ontology Chapter One: Augustine’s Participatory Ontology and the Question of Unity Chapter Two: Multiplicity and Matter in Augustine’s Participatory Ontology Chapter Three: Transcendence and Immanence in Augustine’s Participatory OntologyPart Two: Aquinas’s Participatory Ontology Chapter Four: Aquinas’s Theology of Participation and the Concept of Unity Chapter Five: Multiplicity in Aquinas’s Theology of Participation Chapter Six: Transcendence and Immanence in Aquinas’s Participatory Ontology Conclusion

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Book SynopsisHow God relates to the world lies at the heart of the most intense debates in modern theological and philosophy. Movements of Nouvelle Théologie, process theology, radical orthodoxy, modern Trinitarian theology and postmodern theology (i.e. Jean-Luc Marion) all seek to reconsider God’s relation to the world as a corrective of what they perceive as problematic. Of particular significance is the recent revival of the theology of participation, as promoted by Radical Orthodoxy in UK and Hans Boersma in North America. Facing excessive secularism and fragmentation of the modern Western world, Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma resort to the pre-modern theology of participation as the way forward. Relying heavily on Platonism, however, their participatory theology, as critics pointed out, tends to compromise the intrinsic goodness of the creation. In this book, Ge proposes that a distinctively Christian theology of participation anchored in creatio ex nihilo, developed by Augustine and brought to the fore by Aquinas, provides a more promising solution which not only secures the unity of things in God but also the goodness of creaturely plurality. Since participation in its origin is a solution to the problem of the One and the Many, Ge employs Gunton’s framework of the one and the many in his discussion of Augustine and Aquinas’s theologies of participation. By reshaping their concepts of participation in the light of the doctrine of creation, Ge argues, these thinkers have profoundly transformed the metaphysics of participation, making it finally more suitable for describing the unique relationship between God’s unity and creaturely plurality. This Christian metaphysics of participation is not only an advance on Radical Orthodoxy and Boersma, but also superior to competing theories of reality such as pluralism and reductionist physicalism. The book will also bring out implications for modern science-religion dialogues, the core of which concerns how God relates to the world.Trade ReviewA renewed focus on the metaphysics of participation is one of the most striking features of Christian theology over recent decades. Against the background of Radical Orthodoxy and the sacramental ontology of Hans Boersma, Yonghua Ge offers a fresh reading of participatory metaphysics in relation to creation ex nihilo and the classical problem of the One and the Many. This is a significant contribution to one of the most lively debates in contemporary theology and philosophy. -- Simon Oliver, Durham UniversityGod has been pushed to the edges in western modernity as either an unnecessary hypothesis or an intrusive meddler, yet the world bereft of God is bereft of meaning and integrity. The recent resurgence of interest in the theology of participation reopens the question of God’s relation to the world. In this incisive and beautifully clear study, Dr. Ge (himself both a theologian and scientist) both provides introduction to some of the most exciting recent work on the theology of participation, especially that of Hans Boersma and of the ‘Radical Orthodoxy’ movement, at the same time putting challenges to both. Following Augustine and Aquinas, Dr. Ge suggests that the transformative effect of the Christian doctrine of creation ‘ex nihilo’, takes us to a less platonic and deeply Christian vision of God’s intimacy and love for the created order. -- Janet Soskice, University of CambridgeYonghua Ge’s exposition of the meaning of participation, approached here largely in terms of creation and the relation of creatures to God, shows a keen eye for the central lineaments of that perennially fascinating and important topic: in unity, multiplicity, transcendence and immanence. The treatment of participation in Augustine is particularly welcome, addressing a surprising gap in scholarship in a way that is at once both accessible and deeply grounded in Augustine’s texts. -- Andrew Davison, University of CambridgeTable of ContentsIntroduction Part One: Augustine’s Participatory Ontology Chapter One: Augustine’s Participatory Ontology and the Question of Unity Chapter Two: Multiplicity and Matter in Augustine’s Participatory Ontology Chapter Three: Transcendence and Immanence in Augustine’s Participatory OntologyPart Two: Aquinas’s Participatory Ontology Chapter Four: Aquinas’s Theology of Participation and the Concept of Unity Chapter Five: Multiplicity in Aquinas’s Theology of Participation Chapter Six: Transcendence and Immanence in Aquinas’s Participatory Ontology Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThe idea of a Jewish Church has been banned from the Christian horizon for almost two millennia. But things are changing. Since the middle of the 70s the Messianic Jewish movement has strived to build an ecclesial home for all Jewish believers in Christ. This new phenomenon brings to life issues that had disappeared since the first centuries of the Church. What does it mean to be a Jew in the Church? Should there be a distinction between Jews and non-Jews among believers in Christ? Is such a distinction compatible with the unity of the whole Body of Christ so ardently preached by Paul? What lifestyle should this Church promote? In his various works, Mark Kinzer, a prominent Messianic Jewish theologian, has attempted to provide substantial answers to these questions. Antoine Lévy is a Dominican priest. With Kinzer, Lévy has launched the “Helsinki Consultation”, a cross-denominational gathering of Jewish theologians. In Jewish Church: A Catholic Approach to Messianic Judaism, Lévy examines Kinzer’s positions critically, bringing forward an alternative vision of what a “Jewish Church” could and should be. This is only the beginning of what promises to be a fascinating discussion.Trade ReviewLévy, a Catholic Jew, is facing the most crucial challenge of a fully catholic Ekklesia head-on: how do the two parts of humanity, the Jew and the non-Jew, come in the one fully restored catholic church of Jesus Christ? This book is a timely celebration of the 'coming home” of Jewish believers in the living Body of the Messiah. -- Benjamin Berger, Shepherd of the Jerusalem Messianic Congregation “Kehilat ha'Seh al Har Zion”Fr. Lévy has written an important book. With his critical analysis of various positions, he has profoundly and convincingly presented a case for continued Jewish identity and practice in Jesus. A challenge to church leaders and to Messianic Jews on the ecclesial unity of the Church. -- Daniel Juster, Founding President of Tikkun International and the Union of Messianic Jewish CongregationsFr. Lévy enters into a critical conversation with the Messianic Jewish theology of Mark Kinzer and addresses the ecclesial status of the Jewish people within the Catholic Church. Lévy’s masterful presentation puts flesh on the bones of Elias Friedman OCD’s thesis in his book ‘Jewish identity’ and introduces critical considerations in the ongoing and vital theological discussions concerning the Jewish people and the Church. -- David Moss, President, Association of Hebrew CatholicsFr. AntoineLévy has written a very important book in which he engages in an intensive ecumenical dialogue with the ecclesiology of Mark Kinzer, perhaps the most articulate and profound exponent of the theology of Messianic Judaism. What makes this dialogue so fruitful is that Lévy Levy shares the foundational conviction of Kinzer on the need for a corporate Jewish presence in the Church that is structurally called from the circumcision and from the Gentiles. Lévy differs quite substantially, however, on the ecclesial and liturgical forms that ought to shape this Jewish dimension of the Church, so that it may remain in a catholic communion of faith, sacramental life, and hierarchical governance. -- Lawrence Feingold, Assistant Professor of Theology at Ave Maria UniversityTable of ContentsForeword by Mark KinzerTechnical ForewordIntroduction: The Purpose of a Critical Conversation with Mark KinzerSalvation (From Post-Missionary to Pre-Patristic Messianic Judaism)II. TorahIII. EkklesiaConclusion: The Wider Fence

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Book SynopsisThe idea of a Jewish Church has been banned from the Christian horizon for almost two millennia. But things are changing. Since the middle of the 70s the Messianic Jewish movement has strived to build an ecclesial home for all Jewish believers in Christ. This new phenomenon brings to life issues that had disappeared since the first centuries of the Church. What does it mean to be a Jew in the Church? Should there be a distinction between Jews and non-Jews among believers in Christ? Is such a distinction compatible with the unity of the whole Body of Christ so ardently preached by Paul? What lifestyle should this Church promote? In his various works, Mark Kinzer, a prominent Messianic Jewish theologian, has attempted to provide substantial answers to these questions. Antoine Lévy is a Dominican priest. With Kinzer, Lévy has launched the “Helsinki Consultation”, a cross-denominational gathering of Jewish theologians. In Jewish Church: A Catholic Approach to Messianic Judaism, Lévy examines Kinzer’s positions critically, bringing forward an alternative vision of what a “Jewish Church” could and should be. This is only the beginning of what promises to be a fascinating discussion.Trade ReviewLévy challenges the accepted Christian tradition of excluding Gospel-derived eschatology, soteriology, and theology from Jews as Jews. Lévy asserts this in dialogue with leading messianic Jewish thinker Mark Kinzer, who provides the foreword and who shares the conviction of the need of Israel qua Israel presence in the church, albeit with major differences: i.e., for Kinzer (a messianic Jew) bilateral ecclesiology, Jewish and non-Jewish; for Lévy (Catholic Jew) acceptance of a global ecclesia defined by the magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church, which sees theological significance in the emergence of a Jewish corporate entity that contributes to the reconciliation between Yeshua and his people. Lévy respects yet sees limitation in messianic Judaism that insists that Jewish believers remain and live Jewishly. Recommended. * Choice *Lévy, a Catholic Jew, is facing the most crucial challenge of a fully catholic Ekklesia head-on: how do the two parts of humanity, the Jew and the non-Jew, come in the one fully restored catholic church of Jesus Christ? This book is a timely celebration of the 'coming home” of Jewish believers in the living Body of the Messiah. -- Benjamin Berger, Shepherd of the Jerusalem Messianic Congregation “Kehilat ha'Seh al Har Zion”Fr. Lévy has written an important book. With his critical analysis of various positions, he has profoundly and convincingly presented a case for continued Jewish identity and practice in Jesus. A challenge to church leaders and to Messianic Jews on the ecclesial unity of the Church. -- Daniel Juster, Founding President of Tikkun International and the Union of Messianic Jewish CongregationsFr. Lévy enters into a critical conversation with the Messianic Jewish theology of Mark Kinzer and addresses the ecclesial status of the Jewish people within the Catholic Church. Lévy’s masterful presentation puts flesh on the bones of Elias Friedman OCD’s thesis in his book ‘Jewish identity’ and introduces critical considerations in the ongoing and vital theological discussions concerning the Jewish people and the Church. -- David Moss, President, Association of Hebrew CatholicsFr. AntoineLévy has written a very important book in which he engages in an intensive ecumenical dialogue with the ecclesiology of Mark Kinzer, perhaps the most articulate and profound exponent of the theology of Messianic Judaism. What makes this dialogue so fruitful is that Lévy Levy shares the foundational conviction of Kinzer on the need for a corporate Jewish presence in the Church that is structurally called from the circumcision and from the Gentiles. Lévy differs quite substantially, however, on the ecclesial and liturgical forms that ought to shape this Jewish dimension of the Church, so that it may remain in a catholic communion of faith, sacramental life, and hierarchical governance. -- Lawrence Feingold, Assistant Professor of Theology at Ave Maria UniversityTable of ContentsForeword by Mark KinzerTechnical ForewordIntroduction: The Purpose of a Critical Conversation with Mark KinzerSalvation (From Post-Missionary to Pre-Patristic Messianic Judaism)II. TorahIII. EkklesiaConclusion: The Wider Fence

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Book SynopsisThe principal thesis that the author advances in this book is that paradox and contradiction constitute the two ways of the world. Paradox represents the way of the people of the Bible, and contradiction represents the way of all peoples who, having lived without knowledge of the Bible, have traditionally been known as gentiles or pagans. The two ideas that are central to the biblical way of life (as known historically by Jews, Christians, and Muslims) are creation and covenant, while the contradictory way of paganism has precisely been marked by the absence of these two concepts.In his book the author distinguishes the paradoxical way of the world from the contradictory way of the world through the examination of principal texts of four of the most significant early modern, European thinkers from the later sixteenth century to the earlier eighteenth century: Montaigne, Descartes, Spinoza, and Vico. He shows that each of these four authors, in distinctive yet fundamentally interrelated fashion, provides us with profound insight into how absolutely different the paradoxical way of the world as biblical is from the contradictory way of the world as found, primarily and specifically, in Greek and Roman antiquity. Table of ContentsIntroduction: God and the Truth of InterpretationChapter 1: Montaigne: God and the Self--What Do I Know?Chapter 2: Descartes: God and Existence--I think, ergo I amChapter 3: Spinoza: God and Democracy--The Covenantal Love of Interpretation Chapter 4: Vico: God and Poetic Wisdom--The Providential History of HumanityConclusion: God and the Interpretation of Truth

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Book SynopsisAnne Carson (b. June 21, 1950, in Toronto, Canada) is one of the most versatile of contemporary classicists, poets and translators in the English language. In this book, Ruprecht explores the role played by generic transgressions on the one hand, and by embodied spirituality on the other, throughout Carson’s ambitious literary career. Where others see classical dichotomies (soul versus body, Classical versus Christian), Carson sees connection. Like Nietzsche before her, Carson decries the image of the Classics as merely bookish, and classicists as disembodied intellects. She has brought religious, bodily erotics back into the heart of the classical tradition.Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Quest for a Genre, or, Where Boundaries Touch Then Blur Chapter 1. Eros the Bittersweet, or, The Poetics of DesireChapter 2. Translation as Criticism, Creation and Conjuring, or, The Musing ScholarChapter 3. Poetry, Madness and Markets, or, The Ancients and the ModernsChapter 4. Hybrid Genres Between Body and Spirit, or, Righting the Self and Writing GodConclusion: Dreaming in the NightEpilogue: Six Questions and an AfterwordAppendix: The Works of Anne Carson

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Book SynopsisAnne Carson (b. June 21, 1950, in Toronto, Canada) is one of the most versatile of contemporary classicists, poets, and translators in the English language. In Reach without Grasping, Louis A. Ruprecht Jr. explores the role played by generic transgressions on the one hand, and by embodied spirituality on the other, throughout Carson’s ambitious literary career. Where others see classical dichotomies (soul versus body, classical versus Christian), Carson sees connection. Like Nietzsche before her, Carson decries the images of the Classics as merely bookish and of classicists as disembodied intellects. She has brought religious, bodily erotics back into the heart of the classical tradition.Trade ReviewRuprecht examines in impressive scholarly depth the classical influences on Anne Carson (b. 1950), anti-genre poet/ philosopher/dramatist/translator, who traded her early position as a classics professor for a position as writer/artist in residence…. Ruprecht convincingly insists that for Carson there is no separation between Christian and classical themes and that in all her work, reach is emphasized over grasp—desire over sex. She is transgressive just as Socrates and Jesus were transgressive—upending expectations and creating new genres. Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. * Choice Reviews *Nimbly straddling the fields of Classics, Philosophy, and Religious Studies, Louis Ruprecht takes on the multi-faceted, genre-bending work of Anne Carson. With an eye focused on her images and an ear attuned to her language, Ruprecht explores Carson's poetry, translations, and essays, demonstrating how her meditations on the classical world are relevant for us today. -- Gregory Jusdanis, The Ohio State UniversityIn the spirit of Carson's own genre-bending work, Ruprecht artfully threads the ancient and modern, the literary, philosophical, and religious, to introduce Carson and her work to a wide audience. A study in eros, Ruprecht's book paints a portrait of Carson as a philosopher, poet, and (perhaps) mystic, for whom embodied desire manifests most fully in the space between words and the worlds they create. -- Wesley N. Barker, Mercer UniversityTable of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Quest for a Genre, or, Where Boundaries Touch Then Blur Chapter 1. Eros the Bittersweet, or, The Poetics of DesireChapter 2. Translation as Criticism, Creation and Conjuring, or, The Musing ScholarChapter 3. Poetry, Madness and Markets, or, The Ancients and the ModernsChapter 4. Hybrid Genres Between Body and Spirit, or, Righting the Self and Writing GodConclusion: Dreaming in the NightEpilogue: Six Questions and an AfterwordAppendix: The Works of Anne Carson

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the norms we have and where we want to go with them. The project began by asking people what they think is the central value in society today. The responses point to notions of what seems “right” to people. We can move forward with these intuitions about the main tenet of our moral lives. Respondents named values regarding freedom of the Self, and concern for the Other. Indeed with freedom, we can respect others. And we must. People’s lives are intertwined, and so freedom as a concept cannot be understood without taking account of this reality. The author suggests that the value to be taken as central is the moral freedom of respect. It ought to guide us in designing the society we want to build. The law can be a bridge towards that normative world. Jewish ethics may illuminate the path. Trade ReviewIn this brave and unusual book, Kim Treiger-Bar-Am takes a leaf from Socrates’ notebook and engages a wide variety of Jews on the street, as it were, in order to understand the moral intuitions that inform their lives. Moving on from this empirical base, Treiger-Bar-Am then brings the moral positions thus uncovered into conversation with the texts and teachings of Judaism. This engaging and accessible book is not a philosophical work about ethics, but a work of Jewish ethics. The first-person nature of the book’s narrative adds to its charm. -- Menachem Kellner, professor emeritus, Shalem College and University of HaifaThe crux of this book is in the title. Rather than a property that describes individuals acting in isolation from one another, freedom requires respect for other people. This claim is both true and important. What is unique about this book is that rather than demonstrate her claim by appeal to abstract principles, Kim Treiger-Bar-Am has interviewed people to get their views of what it means to be free. She is widely read in contemporary ethical theory as well as the specifics of Jewish ethics. Her passion for her subject is evident on practically every page. -- Kenneth Seeskin, Northwestern UniversityIn Freedom and Respect in Jewish Ethics, Treiger-Bar-Am highlights deep connections between ideas and ideals integral to Jewish tradition and to modern liberal democracy. Freedom and respect inform both traditions at a fundamental level—and they can be seen as mutually reinforcing as each continues to develop through engagement with numerous contemporary challenges. The interconnection of freedom and respect emerges vividly from starting points in people’s perspectives on society, values, and what matters about being a human being. The discussion brings out the common resonances in Judaism and liberal democracy in an especially timely articulation. -- Jonathan Jacobs, Professor and Chair of Philosophy, John Jay College/CUNYTable of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionChapter 1Values Chapter 2FreedomChapter 3MoralsChapter 4LawConcluding RemarksGlossary BibliographyIndexAbout the Author

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