Speech and Theology: Language and the Logic of Incarnation

by Smith,James K.A.

• ISBN13: 9780415276955
• ISBN10: 0415276950
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This important contribution to the ground-breakingRadical Orthodoxyseries revisits the works of Husserl, Heidegger, Augustine and Derrida to reconsider the challenge of speaking of God through predication, silence, confession and praise. James K. A. Smith argues for God's own refusal to avoid speaking as well as for our urgent need of words to make Him visible to us. This leads to a radical new "incarnational phenomenology" in which God's love endows imperfect signs with the means to indicate true states of infinitude, and in which we may ultimately discover a new theology of the arts.

Author Biography

James K. A. Smith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Abbreviations	xi
PART ONE Horizons	1	(64)
Introduction: how to avoid not speaking	3	(13)
The violence of concepts and the possibility of theology	3	(1)
Method and the question of justice	4	(3)
Phenomenology's other: the French challenge to phenomenology	7	(2)
Towards a new phenomenology	9	(7)
Phenomenology and transcendence: genealogy of a challenge	16	(49)
Transcendence in early phenomenology	16	(10)
Three phenomenological reductions: an heuristic	16	(4)
First reduction: the possibility of transcendent knowledge in Husserl	20	(4)
Second reduction: Heidegger's critique of Husserl	24	(2)
The violence of immanence: the French critique	26	(16)
A third reduction to unconditioned givenness	26	(1)
The same and the other: Levinas	27	(5)
The ``Saturated Phenomenon'': Marion's critique of Husserl	32	(10)
Incommensurability and transcendence: the violence of the concept	42	(23)
A formalization of the question	42	(2)
Phenomenology as respect: Derrida	44	(6)
Thinking the concept otherwise: towards an incarnational phenomenology	50	(15)
PART TWO Retrieval	65	(86)
Heidegger's ``new'' phenomenology	67	(47)
Towards a new phenomenology with the young Heidegger	67	(3)
Taking Husserl at his word: a phenomenology of the natural attitude	70	(12)
Horizons: Husserl's phenomenological worlds	70	(5)
Critique: Heidegger's factical world	75	(7)
Finding words for facticity: formal indication as a ``grammar''	82	(32)
``Words are lacking'': the demand for new ``concepts''	82	(4)
A factical grammar: the logic of formal indications	86	(8)
Religious experience, the religious phenomenon, and a phenomenology of religion	94	(8)
The return of the concept: Destrukting Being and Time	102	(12)
Praise and confession: how (not) to speak in Augustine	114	(37)
Lost for words?: the challenge of speaking for Augustine	114	(2)
Between predication and silence: how (not) to speak of God	116	(18)
Words and things: the incommensurability of signa and res	116	(4)
Use, enjoyment, and reference: Augustine's phenomenology of idolatry	120	(7)
How (not) to speak of God: the icon of praise	127	(7)
How (not) to tell a secret: interiority and the strategy of ``confession''	134	(17)
Interior secrets: on not knowing who we are	134	(2)
Silence and secrets: interiority and the problem of communication	136	(4)
Confession: the strategy of the interior self	140	(11)
PART THREE Trajectories	151	(32)
Incarnational logic: on God's refusal to avoid speaking	153	(30)
The problem of theology	153	(4)
On (not) knowing the Wholly Other: a critique of revelation in Levinas and Marion	157	(4)
The appearance of the paradox: revelation in Kierkegaard	161	(2)
Analogy and respect: retrieving analogy in a French context	163	(7)
The specter of Platonism: reconsidering participation and incarnation	170	(13)
Index	183