Experience and the Absolute Disputed Questions on the Humanity of Man

by Lacoste, Jean-Yves; Raftery-Skehan, Mark

• ISBN13: 9780823223763
• ISBN10: 0823223760
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-10-01
• Publisher: Fordham University Press

Summary

Does the philosophy of Martin Heidegger represent the emergence of a secular anthropology that requires religious thought to redefine the religious dimension in human existence? In this critical response, Lacoste confronts the ultimate definition of human nature, the humanity of the human. He explores that definition through an analysis of the "absolute" as a phenomenological datum.Lacoste establishes a conception of human nature that opens possibilities for religious experience and religious identity in view of Heidegger's profound challenge. He develops a phenomenology of the liturgy, and subjects the categories of "experience," "place," and "human existence" to careful examination. Making a strong case for the affective nature of religious experience, he sides with Schleiermacher against Hegel in associating religion with affectivity rather than logic. Such affectivity, he claims, can be more rational than reason as framed in Hegelian logic.

Author Biography

Jean-Yves Lacoste is also the author of Notes sur le temps and Le Monde et l'absence d'oeuvre.

Table of Contents

Tranelators Note and Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(4)
PART ONE: MAN AND HIS PLACE	5	(94)
1 Topology and Liturgy	7	(16)
§ 1 Place	7	(1)
§ 2 World	8	(2)
§ 3 "Disclosure"	10	(1)
§ 4 "Foreignness"	11	(2)
§ 5 World and Earth	13	(2)
§ 6 The Infinite Relation	15	(3)
§ 7 The Dialectic of World and Earth	18	(2)
§ 8 Liturgy as Transgression	20	(3)
2 Place and Nonplace	23	(17)
§ 9 The Vision of Saint Benedict: Exclusion	23	(3)
§10 Reclusion	26	(3)
§11 Dépaysement	29	(3)
§12 Liturgy Prior to World and Earth	32	(2)
§13 Building Dwelling Praying	34	(3)
§14 Corporeality and Eschatology	37	(2)
§15 From Being-There to Being-Toward	39	(1)
3 Nonexperience and Nonevent	40	(15)
§16 Opening and Exposition	40	(2)
§17 Dwelling at the Limit	42	(2)
§18 Existing before He Who Is to Come	44	(2)
§19 The Nonevent	46	(2)
§20 Nonevent and the Critique of Experience	48	(1)
§21 History Bracketed	49	(4)
§22 Nonplace and Verification	53	(2)
4 The Absolute Future: Anticipation and Conversion	55	(22)
§23 History and the Interval	55	(2)
§24 Existing from the Future Onward	57	(4)
§25 Consciousness and the Soul	61	(3)
§26 Dialectic of Duplicity	64	(2)
§27 The Liturgical Unhappiness of Consciousness	66	(4)
§28 Distance and Conversion	70	(5)
§29 The Relation between Ethical and Liturgical Reason as Circularity	75	(2)
5 Existence as Vigil	77	(22)
§30 The Nocturnal Site of Liturgy	77	(3)
§31 The Necessary and the Surplus	80	(2)
§32 Care and Restlessness	82	(4)
§33 Doubting Facticity Philosophically	86	(2)
§34 The Hermeneutics of the Initial and the Heuristic of the Originary	88	(2)
§35 Patience	90	(3)
§36 Freedom at the Initial and at the Origin	93	(4)
§37 World, Earth, and Kingdom	97	(2)
PART TWO: FUNDAMENTAL EXPERIENCE	99	(110)
6 The Disparity with the Initial as a Hermeneutic Principle	101	(11)
§38 Return to Questioning	101	(1)
§39 Phenomenology and Liturgy: "Life"	102	(2)
§40 Phenomenology and Liturgy: Facticity	104	(2)
§41 Contingency and Manifestation	106	(1)
§42 The Manifest Absolute	107	(2)
§43 The Human and the Definitive	109	(3)
7 Hegel and the Eschaton This Side of Death	112	(25)
§44 The End at the Beginning	112	(2)
§45 Knowledge and Eschatology	114	(3)
§46 The Definitive in Its Place	117	(3)
§47 From History to Nature	120	(2)
§48 Existing after History	122	(4)
§49 Oblivio Mortis	126	(3)
§50 The Eshaton and the Present	129	(2)
§51 Religion, Mediation, and the Humanity of Man	131	(24)
§52 The Salvational Meaning of the Cross	155
8 The Preeschatological Site of the Question of Man	137	(31)
§53 The Next to Last	137	(3)
§54 Knowledge and Inexperience	140	(5)
§55 The Night	145	(4)
§56 The Disoriented Consciousness	149	(4)
§57 Being and Act: Elements of' a Problematic	153	(4)
§58 The Primal Scene	157	(3)
§59 Abnegation	160	(3)
§60 The Will to Powerlessness	163	(5)
9 Toward a Kenotic Treatment of the Question of Man	168	(41)
§61 Being-in-the-World and Appropriation	168	(1)
§62 Death and Disappropriation	169	(1)
§63 Nonappropriation Prior to Death	170	(2)
§64 Asceticism and Dispossession	172	(1)
§65 Liturgy and Dispossession	173	(4)
§66 Mad about God/God and Madness	177	(3)
§67 The Humor of the Fool	180	(2)
§68 Toward a Liturgical Critique of the Concept	182	(3)
§69 The Minimal Man	185	(2)
§70 Man in His Place: Reprise	187	(2)
§71 Anthropologia Crucis	189	(2)
§72 Religious Experience: A Final Critique	191	(2)
§73 Perfect Joy	193	(16)
Index	209