Search results for ""author louis dupré""

This eagerly awaited study brings to completion Louis Dupré's planned trilogy on European culture during the modern epoch. Demonstrating remarkable erudition and sweeping breadth, The Quest of the Absolute analyzes Romanticism as a unique cultural phenomenon and a spiritual revolution. Dupré philosophically reflects on its attempts to recapture the past and transform the present in a movement that is partly a return to premodern culture and partly a violent protest against it. Following an introduction on the historical origins of the Romantic Movement, Dupré examines the principal Romantic poets of England (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats), Germany (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Hölderlin), and France (Lamartine, de Vigny, Hugo), all of whom, from different perspectives, pursued an absolute ideal. In the chapters of the second part, he concentrates on the critical principles of Romantic aesthetics, the Romantic image of the person as reflected in the novel, and Romantic ethical and political theories. In the chapters of the third, more speculative, part, he investigates the comprehensive syntheses of romantic thought in history, philosophy, and theology. The Quest of the Absolute is an important work both as the culmination of Dupré's ongoing project and as a classic in its own right. The book will meet the expectations of the specialist as well as appeal to more general readers with philosophical, cultural, and religious interests.

Read more less

Religion and the Rise of Modern Culture describes and analyzes changing attitudes toward religion during three stages of modern European culture: the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Romantic period. Louis Dupré is an expert guide to the complex historical and intellectual relation between religion and modern culture. Dupré begins by tracing the weakening of the Christian synthesis. At the end of the Middle Ages intellectual attitudes toward religion began to change. Theology, once the dominant science that had integrated all others, lost its commanding position. After the French Revolution, religion once again played a role in intellectual life, but not as the dominant force. Religion became transformed by intellectual and moral principles conceived independently of faith. Dupré explores this new situation in three areas: the literature of Romanticism (illustrated by Goethe, Schiller, and Hölderlin); idealist philosophy (Schelling); and theology itself (Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard). Dupré argues that contemporary religion has not yet met the challenge presented by Romantic thought. Dupré’s elegant and incisive book, based on the Erasmus Lectures he delivered at the University of Notre Dame in 2005, will challenge anyone interested in religion and the philosophy of culture.

Read more less

In this revised edition of a longtime best selling anthology of Christian mysticism, editors Louis Dupré and James Wiseman bring together selections from the writings of twenty-three of the most important Christian mystics, from Origen of Alexandria in the third century to Thomas Merton in the twentieth. This edition retains most of the authors included in the first addition, but has replaced some authors from that edition with ones that will be of greater interest to readers today, e.g., Francis and Clare of Assisi, Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal, and Evelyn Underhill. A general introduction discusses the place of mysticism within the Christian life as a whole, while individual chapter introductions place the mystical writers in their historical context and relate their works to others in the anthology. In addition, the editors have completely updated the bibliographies at the end of each chapter. Students and teachers of spirituality, as well as persons interested in their own spiritual growth, will welcome this popular revised resource, because it makes readily available in one volume major works by important Christian mystical writers. Like its predecessor, it is sure to be welcomed in the academic world and spiritual and devotional circles. †

Read more less

This volume brings together for the first time some of the most helpful and insightful essays on the four most influential and discussed philosophers in the history of existentialism: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre. The contributors write on such topics as Kierkegaard's knight of faith and his diagnosis of the 'present age;' Nietzsche's view of morality and self-creation; Heidegger's accounts of worldhood and authenticity; and Sartre's ontology, ethics, and conception of the cogito. The essays have been selected for their higher level of scholarship and for their ability to illuminate various aspects of their subject's work. The volume is enhanced by the editor's introduction and extensive bibliography to aid further study.

Read more less