Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1999. If religion once seemed to have played out its role in the intellectual and political history of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. In Philosophy and the Turn to Religion, Hent de Vries argues that a turn to religion discernible in recent philosophy anticipates and accompanies this development in the contemporary world. Though the book reaches back to Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and earlier, it takes its inspiration from the tradition of French phenomenology, notably Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, and, especially, Jacques Derrida. Tracing how Derrida probes the discourse on religion, its metaphysical presuppositions, and its transformations, de Vries shows how this author consistently foregrounds the unexpected alliances between a radical interrogation of the history of Western philosophy and the religious inheritance from which that philosophy has increasingly sought to set itself apart. De Vries goes beyond formal
Trade ReviewA quasi-magisterial work, both insofar as its phenomenological rigor gives the reader a comprehension of Derrida's religious writings that transcends their quotability and also insofar as it goes beyond Derrida in its treatment of the relationship between philosophy and religion.
—Martin Kavka,
MLNTable of ContentsPreface
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1. Revealing Revelations
Chapter 2. Hypertheology
Chapter 3. Formal Indications
Chapter 4. The Generous Repetition
Chapter 5. The Kenosis of Discourse
Chapter 6. Apocalyptics and Enlightenment
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
