Reimagining the Sacred: Richard Kearney Debates God with James Wood, Catherine Keller, Charles Taylor, Julia Kristeva, Gianni Vattimo, Simon Critchley, Jean-Luc Marion, John Caputo, David Tracy, Jens Zimmermann, and Merold Westphal

by Richard Kearney (Editor), Jens Zimmermann (Editor)

Overview

Contemporary conversations about religion and culture are framed by two reductive definitions of secularity. In one, multiple faiths and nonfaiths coexist free from a dominant belief in God. In the other, we deny the sacred altogether and exclude religion from rational thought and behavior. But is there a third way for those who wish to rediscover the sacred in a skeptical society? What kind of faith, if any, can be proclaimed after the ravages of the Holocaust and the many religion-based terrors since?

Richard Kearney explores these questions with a host of philosophers known for their inclusive, forward-thinking work on the intersection of secularism, politics, and religion. An interreligious dialogue that refuses to paper over religious difference, these conversations locate the sacred within secular society and affirm a positive role for religion in human reflection and action. Drawing on his own philosophical formulations, literary analysis, and personal interreligious experiences, Kearney develops through these engagements a basic gesture of hospitality for approaching the question of God. His work facilitates a fresh encounter with our best-known voices in continental philosophy and their views on issues of importance to all spiritually minded individuals and skeptics: how to reconcile God's goodness with human evil, how to believe in both God and natural science, how to talk about God without indulging in fundamentalist rhetoric, and how to balance God's sovereignty with God's love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231540889
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2015
Series:	Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Richard Kearney holds the Charles H. Seelig Chair of Philosophy at Boston College. He is the author of more than twenty books, including Strangers, Gods, and Monsters, The God Who May Be, and Anatheism: Returning to God After God.

Jens Zimmermann holds the Canada Research Chair for Interpretation, Religion, and Culture at Trinity Western University. He has published widely on philosophy, theology, and literary theory. He is the author of Humanism and Religion: A Call for the Renewal of Western Culture and Hermeneutics: A Very Short Introduction.

Table of Contents

Preface, by Richard Kearney
Introduction, by Jens Zimmermann
1. God After God: An Anatheist Attempt to Reimagine God, by Richard Kearney
2. Imagination, Anatheism, and the Sacred, by Richard Kearney and James Wood
3. Beyond the Impossible, by Richard Kearney and Catherine Keller
4. Transcendent Humanism in a Secular Age, by Richard Kearney and Charles Taylor
5. New Humanism and the Need to Believe, by Richard Kearney and Julia Kristeva
6. Anatheism, Nihilism, and Weak Thought, by Richard Kearney and Gianni Vattimo
7. What's God? "A Shout in the Street, by Richard Kearney and Simon Critchley
8. The Death of the Death of God, by Richard Kearney and Jean-Luc Marion
9. Anatheism and Radical Hermeneutics, by Richard Kearney and John Caputo
10. Theism, Atheism, Anatheism, by David Tracy, Merold Westphal, and Jens Zimmermann
Epilogue: In Guise of a Response, by Richard Kearney
Artist's Note, by Sheila Gallagher
Index

Editorial Reviews

10/12/2015
Kearney (Anatheism), philosopher and phenomenologist at Boston College, provocatively asks, what is still sacred after the death of God? Expanding German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s notion of a “nonreligious interpretation of Christianity,” Kearney seeks a philosophy of God that can resacralize a postreligious English-speaking world. With philosopher and theologian Jens Zimmermann, Kearney engages nearly a dozen philosophers and cultural theorists, including Julia Kristeva, Jean-Luc Marion, and Catherine Keller, in conversation over his highly esoteric hermeneutic of “anatheism” (described as the study of God after God). The book garners the results of their exchanges about Kearney’s hypothesis that, in the postmodern age, we are approaching a moment of radical encounter with the Divine, one that flourishes not only within religious structures but also in meeting the Other, an experience of dialogue rather than dogma. “Anatheism’s call to hospitality in order to recover God after the death of God is a vital initiative for our current cultural and political climate,” Zimmermann summarizes. This rigorous, forward-thinking intellectual treatise opens new space for religious humanism amid cacophonous secular, political, and religious debate. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

A remarkable book of conversations. We learn about the influential ideas of Kearney's interlocutors. Moreover, the impressive voice of Kearney himself offers its own singular contribution and is very worthy of being honored among his peers.

William Desmond

Few will read this book without being challenged to clarify their ideas on God and their attitude to faith.

Los Angeles Review of Books - Joseph S. O'Leary

A welcome addition... for anyone unfamiliar with the work of Richard Kearney, this could be an excellent first introduction to anatheism and the God-who-may-be.

Philosophischer Literaturanzeiger

I would recommend this volume both to those familiar with the . . . more continental school of the philosophy or religion, hermeneutical or otherwise, and those looking for an introduction. The ranging conversations offer both insight to the seasoned reader, as well as an excellent bibliography from which to wade into the deep waters of the present state of art.

Tijdschrift voor Filosofie

A lucid introduction to contemporary Continental philosophy of religion and a guide through the contested terrain between theists, atheists, and those who search for a credible ana-theist option to articulate the sacred in everyday life.

Dermot Moran

With an infectious spirit of intellectual generosity, Kearney and his dialogue partners parse critical points of connection and divergence on the question of God and the meaning of religion in our time. For readers coming to this topic for the first time, this book provides a working bibliography for critical works in this tradition of philosophy and theology. For insiders, it adds new layers to longstanding conversations about 'great, inherited texts.'

Shelly Rambo

This unique collection of interviews stages a critical debate among some of the most respected voices in continental thought around key aspects of Kearney's thesis. This exploration of non-fundamentalist religious belief by a group of prominent philosophers will be considered a significant contribution to the field.

William Egginton

A profound, timely compendium of contemporary phenomenon of the sacred, seen and discussed with an urgency that is implicitly shown.

Prabuddah Bharata

A genuinely fascinating read...

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