Description
Book SynopsisWe are haunted, Samuel Kimbriel suggests, by a habit of isolation buried, often imperceptibly, within our practices of understanding and relating to the world. In this volume he works through the complexities of this disposition to contest its place within contemporary philosophical thought and practice. He focuses on the human activity of friendship. Chapters one and two examine friendship to unearth the contours of this habit towards isolation and to reveal certain ills that have long attended it. Chapters three through seven place these isolated ways of relating to the world into critical dialogue with the tradition of late-antique and early-medieval Johannine Christianity, in which intimacy and understanding go hand in hand. This tradition drew the human activities of friendship and enquiry into such unity that understanding itself became a kind of communion. Kimbriel endorses a return to an antique and particularly Christian philosophical habit--the befriending of wisdom.
Trade ReviewA very valuable work...Among the book's many virtues is its balanced combination of careful exegetical scholarship and complex philosophical argument...Kimbriel's writing style is patient, subtle, and engaging, and his achievements here will be useful to a wide range of scholars -- in historical philosophy, for sure, but also in those interested in friendship, the self, knowledge, and theology. * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
This book will be of interest to a great variety of scholars in theology and philosophy ... elegantly proportioned [and] constructive. * Guido de Graaff, Studies in Christian Ethics *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ; Abbreviations ; Introduction ; Part I - Friendship and disengagement ; 1: Friendship and isolation ; 2: Friendship, virtue and contemplation ; Part II - Friendship and enquiry: Beyond disengagement ; 3: Sacred knowing and indwelling love ; 4: The porous enquirer ; 5: The veiled path: Enquiry, agency and desire ; 6: Human finitude and the paradox of enquiry ; 7: Friendship and deification ; Conclusion ; Bibliography ; Primary texts ; Secondary texts ; Index
