Effing the Ineffable: Existential Mumblings at the Limits of Language

by Wesley J. Wildman

Overview

A meditation on how religious language tries to limn the liminal, conceive the inconceivable, speak the unspeakable, and say the unsayable.

In Effing the Ineffable, Wesley J. Wildman confronts the human obsession with ultimate reality and our desire to conceive and speak of this reality through religious language, despite the seeming impossibility of doing so. Each chapter is a meditative essay on an aspect of life that, for most people, is fraught with special spiritual significance: dreaming, suffering, creating, slipping, balancing, eclipsing, loneliness, intensity, and bliss. These moments can inspire religious questioning and commitment, and, in extreme situations, drive us in search of ways to express what matters most to us. Drawing upon American pragmatist, Anglo-American analytic, and Continental traditions of philosophical theology, Wildman shows how, through direct description, religious symbolism, and phenomenological experience, the language games of religion become a means to attempt, and, in some sense, to accomplish this task.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781438471242
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	07/02/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Wesley J. Wildman is Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics at Boston University. His many books include Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion and Fidelity with Plausibility: Modest Christologies in the Twentieth Century, both also published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments

Part I. Ultimacy Talk

1. Dreaming
2. Suffering
3. Creating

Part II. Ultimacy Systems

4. Slipping
5. Balancing
6. Eclipsing

Part III. Ultimacy Manifestations

7. Loneliness
8. Intensity
9. Bliss

The Treachery of Words (This Is Not a Conclusion)
Works Cited
Index

Editorial Reviews

This is a fine example of Wildman’s way of doing philosophy of religion. It demonstrates the importance, if not necessity, of religious philosophers working comparatively and also the benefits of multidisciplinary inquiry.” — Stephen Dawson, Lynchburg College

From the Publisher