Postmodernity's Transcending: Devaluing GodIn Postmodernity's Transcending: Devaluing God, Laurence Paul Hemming grapples with the philosophical weakness that characterizes postmodern theory, its privileging of the visual, and its reductive description of the self. He offers a profound challenge to many theologians and philosophers currently articulating questions concerning God, value, and the supposed "nihilism" of the postmodern situation. He does this by examining the origin and trajectory of the aesthetic sublime, beloved of postmodern theologians, philosophers, and theorists of art. Hemming's work undertakes on one hand a history of the concept of the sublime; on the other, it explores the limits of theological thinking, where theology is understood either as a practice arising from faith or from thinking alone. By examining concepts like soul, experience, analogy, and truth, Hemming provokes contemporary Christian theology to a more serious engagement with philosophy. Hemming gives an authoritative genealogy of the predominance of the visual, beginning with the Presocratics and ending in the present. He examines the confrontation with God and the gods to be found in Protagoras, Longinus, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Zizek, and Derrida, and, in the process, offers innovative readings of these thinkers. A highly original study, Postmodernity's Transcending: Devaluing God will stimulate considerable discussion about postmodernity, representation, and subjectivity and, in particular, philosophical and theological discussions of the sublime and transcendence. |
Contents
Introduction I | 1 |
Postmodernitys Transcending | 12 |
Rhetor and Rhetoric | 34 |
Copyright | |
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absolute ahead already analogia entis analogy Anima appears Aquinas arises Aristotle Aristotle's attain basis becomes being-human body bring Brontosaurus cause cinekinetic cogito concerned cosmos death of God demonstrate Descartes determined devaluation disclosed divinity encounter essence eternal experience fragment fundamental Geist genuine geometrical gods Greek ground Hegel Heidegger Heidegger's Heraclitus human imagination indicates infinite insofar intellect interpretation Kant Kant's kind Kritik der Urteilskraft Longinus Martin Heidegger mathematical means Metaphysics motion Nachlaß names nature negation negative theology Nietzsche Nietzsche's nihilism object ontological ontotheology original outermost Parmenides particular philosophy Plato possible postmodernity present prior Protagoras question read-off reading-off relation representation respect rhetor sense soul speaking St Thomas sublime substance Summa Summa Contra Gentiles Summa Theologiae takes for granted temporal term Theaetetus theology things thinking Timaeus tion transcendence translated truth understanding understood unfolding unity unmoved upliftment voûç words Žižek δὲ καὶ τὸ