Thomas Pfau's study of images and visual experience is a tour de force linking Platonic metaphysics to modern phenomenology and probing literary, philosophical, and theological accounts of visual experience from Plato to Rilke.Incomprehensible Certainty presents a sustained reflection on the nature of images and the phenomenology of visual experience. Taking the "e;image"e; (eikon) as the essential medium of art and literature and as foundational for the intuitive ways in which we make contact with our "e;lifeworld,"e; Thomas Pfau draws in equal measure on Platonic metaphysics and modern phenomenology to advance a series of interlocking claims. First, Pfau shows that, beginning with Plato's later dialogues, being and appearance came to be understood as ontologically distinct from (but no longer opposed to) one another. Second, in contrast to the idol that is typically gazed at and visually consumed as an object of desire, this study positions the image as a medium whose intrinsic abundance and excess reveal to us its metaphysical function-namely, as the visible analogue of an invisible, numinous reality. Finally, the interpretations unfolded in this book (from Plato, Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, John Damascene via Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, and Nicholas of Cusa to modern writers and artists such as Goethe, Ruskin, Turner, Hopkins, Cezanne, and Rilke) affirm the essential complementarity of image and word, visual intuition and hermeneutic practice, in theology, philosophy, and literature. Like Pfau's previous book, Minding the Modern, Incomprehensible Certainty is a major work. With over fifty illustrations, the book will interest students and scholars of philosophy, theology, literature, and art history.
Presenting with moving insight the relations between man, as a person and as an individual, and the society of which he is a part, Maritain's treatment of a lasting topic speaks to this generation as well as those to come. Maritain employs the personalism rooted in Aquinas's doctrine to distinguish between social philosophy centered in the dignity of the human person and that centered in the primacy of the individual and the private good.
In Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad, Michael Walzer revises and extends the arguments in his influential Spheres of Justice, framing his ideas about justice, social criticism, and national identity in light of the new political world that has arisen in the past three decades. Walzer focuses on two different but interrelated kinds of moral argument: maximalist and minimalist, thick and thin, local and universal. This new edition has a new preface and afterword, written by the author, describing how the reasoning of the book connects with arguments he made in Just and Unjust Wars about the morality of warfare.Walzer's highly literate and fascinating blend of philosophy and historical analysis will appeal not only to those interested in the polemics surrounding Spheres of Justice and Just and Unjust Wars but also to intelligent readers who are more concerned with getting the arguments right.
The Treatise on Happiness and the accompanying Treatise on Human Acts comprise the first twenty-one questions of I-II of the Summa Theologiae. From his careful consideration of what true happiness is, to his comprehensive discussion of how it can be attained, St. Thomas Aquinas offers a challenging and classic statement of the goals of human life, both ultimate and proximate. This translation presents in accurate, consistent, contemporary English the great Christian thinker's enduring contributions on the subject of man's happiness.
In his Treatise on the Virtues, Aquinas discusses the character and function of habit; the essence, subject, cause, and meaning of virtue; and the separate intellectual, moral, cardinal, and theological virtues. His work constitutes one of the most thorough and incisive accounts of virtue in the history of Christian philosophy. John Oesterle's accurate and elegant translation makes this enduring work readily accessible to the modern reader.
This eagerly awaited study brings to completion Louis Dupre'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. Dupre 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, Dupre examines the principal Romantic poets of England (Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats), Germany (Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Holderlin), 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.
Winner of the Richard Sullivan Prize in Short Fiction, Acid is a collection of short stories that entertain and engage us and, in the end, make new again some of the oldest and most intractable human struggles.
Toward an Alternative Theology: Confessions of a Non-Dualist Christian is the spiritual and intellectual autobiography of Sara Grant, a Roman Catholic Scottish nun, who, until her death in 2000, established herself as one of the leading twentieth-century figures in Indian Christian theology and the contemplative life. In this slim volume, Grant recounts her search not only for God, but for a right understanding of God, as well as for a way of rethinking Christian teachings on the mystery of God¿s relation to the world that could overcome widespread popular dualisms.Grant¿s odyssey begins with experiences from her childhood and follows her entrance into the novitiate of the Society of the Sacred Heart, where she began an intensive study of Aquinas. After training in classics and philosophy at Oxford University, Grant traveled to India, where she spent the remainder of her life, first as a professor of philosophy at Sophia College, Bombay, and later in Pune in the dual role of professor at Jnana-Deepa-Vidyapeeth and head of a Christian monastic community.Grant studied Sanskrit and became an expert on Sankara (ca. 700 c.e.), the authoritative Hindu exponent of the doctrine of non-duality. Reading Aquinas and Sankara in a method of mutual illumination led Grant to discover that the non-dualistic, or advaitic, insight was compatible with Christian theology, and in fact is present, though underdeveloped, in all authentic Christian doctrine.Appearing for the first time in the United States, this engrossing book eloquently recounts the life of a remarkable woman and shows how Christian theology and spirituality can be enriched by encountering the experiences and concepts of advaita. This updated edition includes a new introduction by Bradley J. Malkovsky.
The Rivers Are Inside Our Homes handles themes of loss and exile, aging generations, fable and fairy tale, marriage and hurt, with the island of Cuba at its heart.These incandescent poems by Cuban American poet Victoria María Castells explore how we can salvage our notion of paradise in an overspent Eden. In thwarted homes located in Havana and Miami, Rapunzel and her prince, persecuted nymphs, Morgause, and Bluebeard¿s wife speak to us directly, all in need of returning to safety. Confronting machismo, illness, heartbreak, and isolation, the poems depict how women are at the mercy of men, either husband or oligarch. Yet all generations of Cubans are bombarded with this need to return or to leave, to have both, to have neither.Meanwhile, hurricane seasons add further instability to shelter and family, growing fiercer every year. Exile and displacement are accepted as permanent conditions. Latin America will mirror Cubäs violent struggles as conquered land and despotic object. From the colonial desecrations to fraught revolutionary aftermath, the search for home is lyrically charted by this contradictory land of suffering and dreams. Through these poems, dictators, grandmothers, mythical characters, and buccaneers are given voices of equal strength, challenging what constitutes truth under a prism of fantasy and desire.
"Behind the wheel of this book is an insistent, humorous voice whose experiences have lent themselves to a deep, intimate knowledge of survival, driven by the pursuit of joy and exalted pleasure. Raised in and near auto body shops, Vickie Vâertiz remembers visiting them to elevate the family car to examine what's underneath, to see what's working and what's not. The poetry in this book is also a body shop, but instead we take our bodies, identities, desires, and see what's firing. In this shop we ask: What needs changing? How do our bodies transcend ways of being we have received so that we may become more ourselves?"--Page 4 of cover.
The Danish theologian-philosopher K. E. Løgstrup is second in reputation in his homeland only to Søren Kierkegaard. He is best known outside Europe for his The Ethical Demand, first published in Danish in 1956 and published in an expanded English translation in 1997. Beyond the Ethical Demand contains excerpts, translated into English for the first time, from the numerous books and essays Løgstrup continued to write throughout his life. In the first essay, he engages the critical response to The Ethical Demand, clarifying, elaborating, or defending his original positions. In the next three essays, he extends his contention that human ethics "demands" that we are concerned for the other by introducing the crucial concept of "sovereign expressions of life." Like Levinas, Løgstrup saw in the phenomenon of "the other" the ground for his ethics. In his later works he developed this concept of "the sovereign expressions of life," spontaneous phenomena such as trust, mercy, and sincerity that are inherently other-regarding. The last two essays connect his ethics with political life.Interest in Løgstrup in the English-speaking academic community continues to grow, and these important original sources will be essential tools for scholars exploring the further implications of his ethics and phenomenology.
This classic of Christian apologetics seeks to persuade the skeptic that there are good reasons to believe in God even though it is impossible to understand the deity fully. First written over a century ago, the Grammar of Assent speaks as powerfully to us today as it did to its first readers. Because of the informal, non-technical character of Newman's work, it still retains its immediacy as an invaluable guide to the nature of religious belief. A new introduction by Nicholas Lash reviews the background of the Grammar, highlights its principal themes, and evaluates its philosophical originality.
The poems in Santa Tarantula grant an urgent and haunting voice to the voiceless, explore ancient narratives, delve into Cuban history and identity, and confront trauma and violence.Jordan Pérez explores the tension between fear and reprieve, between hopelessness and light, in her debut collection, Santa Tarantula, the tenth winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Pérez lends voices to the forgotten: to the political dissidents, gay men, and religious minorities imprisoned in the forced-labor camps of 1960s Cuba; to biblical women who were deemed unworthy to name; to survivors of sexual violence who grapple with paralyzing fear and isolation.With rich detail, these poems weave together the stories of those who go unheard with family memories, explore moments of unspeakable tragedy with glimpses of a life beyond the trauma, and draw out what it means to be vulnerable and the strength it takes to endure. Santa Tarantula pushes through the darkness, cataloging unspoken pain and multigenerational damage, and revealing that, sometimes, survival is in the telling.
This latest book from veteran O'Neillian Edward L. Shaughnessy examines the influence of the Irish playwright's Catholic heritage on his moral imagination. Critics, due to O'Neill's early renunciation of faith at age 15, have mostly overlooked this presence in his work. While Shaughnessy makes no attempt to reclaim him for Catholicism, he uncovers evidence that O'Neill retained the imprint of his Irish Catholic upbringing and acculturation in his work.Shaughnessy discusses several key plays from the O'Neill cannon, such as Long Day's Journey into Night, The Iceman Cometh, and Mourning Becomes Electra, as well as the lesser-known Ile and Days Without End.Winner of the Irish in America Manuscript competition, Down the Days and Down the Nights: Eugene O'Neill's Catholic Sensibility is a compelling investigation into the psyche of one of the most brilliant, internationally honored playwrights of our time.
Recent changes imposed by the Vatican may redefine the Chilean and Peruvian Church's involvement in politics and social issues. Fleet and Smith argue that the Vatican has been moving to restrict the Chilean and Peruvian Church's social and political activities. Fleet and Smith have gathered documentary evidence, conducted interviews with Catholic elites, and compiled surveys of lay Catholics in the region. The result will help chart the future of the Church and Chile and Peru.
In The Contemplative Self after Michel Henry: A Phenomenological Theology, Joseph Rivera provides a close and critical reconstruction of the philosophical anthropology of Michel Henry (1922-2002) while also addressing the question of how theology contributes to Henry's phenomenology. In conversation with other French figures such as Derrida, Marion, Lacoste, and Barbaras, Rivera undertakes a global thematic study of Henry's work. He shows how, for Henry, the theological debate is shifted onto a phenomenological problem, with a coincident will to pursue the epistemological efforts of Husserl and Heidegger.The chapters tackle some of the most pressing debates in contemporary Continental philosophy, such as the "e;modern ego,"e; the nature and experience of temporality, and the constitution of the body and otherness, and how a theological discourse may illumine those anthropological structures. The book expands on the modern narrative of the self from Descartes to Nietzsche, opens up the particular lines of inquiry Henry advances in dialogue with those figures and phenomenology in particular, and highlights the surprising theological turns in Henry's late work on Christianity.Because Henry's work is difficult, it is often misunderstood; Rivera's own vision of the self, one that is shaped by Henry but not in full agreement with him, advances insights internal to Henry but also brings into sharp focus many problematic points in Henry's phenomenological theology. An array of classical theological voices appear in the final chapters, such as St. Augustine, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Gregory of Nyssa, all of whom are set in dialogue with Henry. A fresh and creative articulation of contemplation and selfhood, the volume is a valuable addition to the continuing conversation that seeks to build bridges between phenomenology and theology.
Jacques Maritain was one of the most profound and far-ranging thinkers in the wave of Thomism that gained momentum after World War I and crested just before Vatican II. His career makes manifest the intellectual, cultural, and spiritual liveliness of the pre-Conciliar period, and his thought is crucial to our understanding of the Church today. Art and Prudence highlights the social, political, and aesthetic achievements of the great French Catholic intellectual.In this collection of essays Ralph McInerny portrays Maritain as a devoted Thomist, convinced that faith could never be divorced from reason and that reason without faith was shallow and devoid of meaning. His eclectic tastes and penetrating intellect led him to scrutinize many topics, and although McInerny concedes that he cannot discuss all of Maritain 's ideas, he shows their inherent unity and underlying current of devotion.Taking as a starting point Maritain's Art and Scholasticism, Mclnerny investigates a number of Maritain's ideas. He explicates Maritain's paradoxical defense of the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, as well as the philosophical ramifications of the dispute over the common good. In addition, Mclnemy discusses Maritain's deployment of Thomistic doctrines into surprising new applications and pays tribute to the man as the best Thomistic writer on art in this century.
The author of this book develops a theoretical framework and demonstrates that Hauerwas's claim about the relation between religion and ethics only makes sense within the wider framework of his attempt to set aside Kantian moral tradition.
Aaron Alexander Zubia argues that the Epicurean roots of David Hume's philosophy gave rise to liberalism's unrelenting grip on the modern political imagination.
How do we judge whether we should be willing to follow the views of experts or whether we ought to try to come to our own, independent views? This book seeks the answer in medieval philosophical thought.In this engaging study into the history of philosophy and epistemology, Peter Adamson provides an answer to a question as relevant today as it was in the medieval period: how and when should we turn to the authoritative expertise of other people in forming our own beliefs? He challenges us to reconsider our approach to this question through a constructive recovery of the intellectual and cultural traditions of the Islamic world, the Byzantine Empire, and Latin Christendom.Adamson begins by foregrounding the distinction in Islamic philosophy between taqlid, or the uncritical acceptance of authority, and ijtihad, or judgment based on independent effort, the latter of which was particularly prized in Islamic law, theology, and philosophy during the medieval period. He then demonstrates how the Islamic tradition paves the way for the development of what he calls a "e;justified taqlid,"e; according to which one develops the skills necessary to critically and selectively follow an authority based on their reliability. The book proceeds to reconfigure our understanding of the relation between authority and independent thought in the medieval world by illuminating how women found spaces to assert their own intellectual authority, how medieval writers evaluated the authoritative status of Plato and Aristotle, and how independent reasoning was deployed to defend one Abrahamic faith against the other. This clear and eloquently written book will interest scholars in and enthusiasts of medieval philosophy, Islamic studies, Byzantine studies, and the history of thought.
This study locates Aquinas's theory of infused and acquired virtue in his foundational understanding of nature and grace.Aquinas holds that all the virtues are bestowed on humans by God along with the gift of sanctifying grace. Since he also holds, with Aristotle, that we can create virtuous dispositions in ourselves through our own repeated good acts, a question arises: How are we to understand the relationship between the virtues God infuses at the moment of grace and virtues that are gradually acquired over time? In this important book, Angela McKay Knobel provides a detailed examination of Aquinas's theory of infused moral virtue, with special attention to the question of how the infused and acquired moral virtues are related. Part 1 examines Aquinas's own explicit remarks about the infused and acquired virtues and considers whether and to what extent a coherent "e;theory"e; of the relationship between the infused and acquired virtues can be found in Aquinas. Knobel argues that while Aquinas says almost nothing about how the infused and acquired virtues are related, he clearly does believe that the "e;structure"e; of the infused virtues mirrors that of the acquired in important ways. Part 2 uses that structure to evaluate existing interpretations of Aquinas and argues that no existing account adequately captures Aquinas's most fundamental commitments. Knobel ultimately argues that the correct account lies somewhere between the two most commonly advocated theories. Written primarily for students and scholars of moral philosophy and theology, the book will also appeal to readers interested in understanding Aquinas's theory of virtue.
Coming in the wake of momentous changes in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, Germany and the movement for democracy in China, Celebrating Peace presents original essays by thinkers and writers to provide reflections on peace that go beyond current events and point towards extending and building peace. This volume intends not only to celebrate peace but to contribute to an understanding of it through philosophical, theological and literary explorations.Contributors include: Part I: Just War, Perpetual Peace, and the Nation-StateJohn J. Gilligan, John H. Yoder, Sissela Bok, and Stephen ToulminPart II: Christian Conceptions of PeaceTrutz Rendtorff, Jurgen Moltmann, and Paul S. MinearPart II: Hindu and Buddhist Views of PeaceGerlad J. Larson, Ninian Smart, and Bhukhu ParekPart IV: Making Peace: Prophecy, protest and poetryDaniel Berrigan, S.J., and Denise Levertov
Scholarly and popular interest in Dorothy Day has grown steadily during the past decade. Widely acclaimed as a pioneer of American social Catholicism, as well as for co-founding the Catholic Worker and the movement by the same name, Day's religious vision and lifework have played a dramatic role in modern American Catholic history, profoundly influencing consciences. In this perceptive new study, Brigid O'Shea Merriman, O.S.F., examines the development of Day's spirituality, astutely relating it to twentieth-century intellectual and cultural history. After her conversion to Catholicism in 1927, Dorothy Day met the French peasant-philosopher Peter Maurin in 1932 and together they founded the Catholic Worker newspaper and movement. In this work Day discovered a vocation that would combine her journalistic skills with her long-standing desire for sweeping social change and love of the poor. Merriman demonstrates that Day's leadership of this radical Catholic movement served as the locus for the development and fruition of her spirituality. A work of intellectual or spiritual history rather than biography, Searching for Christ explores Day's spiritual roots in literature, especially the Scriptures, along with her sensibility and her aesthetic vision, all of which have received too little attention up to now. The impact of Christian personalism, monasticism, and the retreat movement on Day's spirituality are also examined, including new material on Day's association with Thomas Merton and a critical analysis of the Lacouture retreat movement. Friendship remained a necessary component of Day's spirituality, and Merriman's final chapter discusses Day's devotion to and enduring friendship withthe saints, as well as her warm relationships with a number of her contemporaries.
Leading theological ethicist Stanley Hauerwas shows how discussions of Christology and the authority of scripture involve questions about what kind of community the church must be to rightly tell the stories of God. He challenges the dominant assumption of contemporary Christian social ethics that there is a special relation between Christianity and some form of liberal democratic social system.
In Yeats and Afterwords, contributors articulate W. B. Yeats's powerful, multilayered sense of belatedness as part of his complex literary method. They explore how Yeats deliberately positioned himself at various historical endpoints--of Romanticism, of the Irish colonial experience, of the Ascendancy, of civilization itself--and, in doing so, created a distinctively modernist poetics of iteration capable of registering the experience of finality and loss. While the crafting of such a poetics remained a constant throughout Yeats's career, the particular shape it took varied over time, depending on which lost object Yeats was contemplating. By tracking these vicissitudes, the volume offers new ways of thinking about the overarching trajectory of Yeats's poetic engagements.Yeats and Afterwords proceeds in three stages, involving past-pastness, present-pastness, and future-pastness. The first, "The Last Romantics," examines how Yeats repeats classic motifs and verbal formulations from his literary forebears in order to express the circumscribed cultural options with which he struggles. The essays in this section often uncover Yeats's relation to sources and precursors that are surprising or have been relatively neglected by scholars. The second section, "Yeats and Afterwords," looks at how Yeats subjects his own past sentiments, insights, and styles to critical negation, crafting his own afterwords in various ways. The last section, "Yeats's Aftertimes," explores how, thanks to the stature Yeats achieved through its invention, his style of belatedness itself comes to be reiterated by other writers. Yeats is a towering figure in literary history, hard to follow and harder to avoid, and later writers often found themselves producing words that were, in some sense, his afterwords.
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