Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thought

by Westphal, Merold

• ISBN13: 9780253213365
• ISBN10: 0253213363
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-12-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

Are postmodern philosophy and Christian thought so diametrically opposed that "never the twain shall meet"? Or are various postmodern philosophies, in spite of their secular provenance, open to religious appropriation? These thirteen lively, original essays awaken secular postmodernisms and various modes of Christian thinking from their ideological complacency. An open space for passionate dialogue emerges from conversations that powerfully engage both intellectual and religious points of view.

Author Biography

Merold Westphal is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. He has served as president of the Hegel Society of America and the Soren Kierkegaard Society and as co-director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. His works include History and Truth in Hegel's Phenomenology (3rd edition; Indiana University Press) and God, Guilt, and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion (Indiana University Press). He is co-editor (with Martin Matu_t+¡k) of Kierkegaard in Post/Modernity (Indiana University Press).

Table of Contents

Appropriating Postmodernism	p. 1
Placing Postmodernism
On the Uses and Advantages of an Epistemology for Life	p. 13
Postmodernism as a Kind of Modernism: Nietzsche's Critique of Knowledge	p. 28
Is the Postmodern Post-Secular? The Parody of Religious Quests in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and Don De Lillo's White Noise	p. 44
Against Appropriation: Postmodern Programs, Claimants, Contests, Conversations	p. 69
Theological Issues
The Hermeneutics of Difference: Barth and Derrida on Words and the Word	p. 91
The Bitterness of Cain: (Post)modernity's Flight from Determinacy	p. 109
Sketch of a Phenomenological Concept of Gift	p. 122
Against Idolatry: Heidegger and Natural Theology	p. 144
Yearning for Home: The Christian Doctrine of Creation in a Postmodern Age	p. 169
Toward a Postmodern Theology of the Cross: Augustine, Heidegger, Derrida	p. 202
Ethical and Social Issues
Emmanuel Levinas and Hillel's Questions	p. 229
Love's Reason: From Heideggerian Care to Christian Charity	p. 246
Between Exclusivity and Plurality: Toward a Postmodern Christian Philosophy of Other Religions	p. 268
Contributors	p. 287
Index	p. 289
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