Is it actually such an easy thing to know oneself? Was it some simpleton who inscribed those word... more Is it actually such an easy thing to know oneself? Was it some simpleton who inscribed those words on the temple wall at Delphi?' 1 'You shall see gods for yourself, Orual. […] There must be a way.' 2 In his memoir, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis recounts a pivotal conversation with Owen Barfield and Bede Griffiths. Lewis was hosting the two men for lunch in his rooms at Oxford, and their conversation turned to topics philosophical. Lewis taught literature but had studied philosophy as an undergraduate and remained actively interested in the subject, and that is how he viewed philosophyas a subject. When Lewis referred to it as such, Barfield replied, 'It wasn't a subject to Plato, […] it was a way.' 3 Lewis notes the effect this remark had on him: 'The quiet but fervent agreement of Griffiths, and the quick glance of understanding between these two, revealed to me my own frivolity.' 4 Lewis describes this exchange as a turning point in his own religious conversion. He had been playing with big philosophical and religious questions, and Barfield's remark made him realize his investigations were not truly serious. The time for change had come. It was time to live the truth. Lewis was not alone in thinking of philosophy like this. We moderns tend to think of philosophy as an academic subject. In antiquity, however, the various
The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology. Edited by Gareth Jones; The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology. Edited by Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Christianity and the Postmodern Turn: Six Views. Edited by Myron B. Penner
The Heythrop Journal, Mar 1, 2007
Strangers, Gods, and Demons: Toward a Carnal Hermeneutics of the Demonic
Routledge eBooks, Sep 13, 2022
In Vivo: A Phenomenology of Life-Defining Moments by Gabor Csepregi
I develop in this paper a phenomenological ethics of the erotic. I do not attempt to establish no... more I develop in this paper a phenomenological ethics of the erotic. I do not attempt to establish norms for its proper practice, nor do I use the erotic as aportal to ethics, a la Levinas. Rather, I consider the perhaps more fundamental question of how an ethics of eros is possible, and suggest that any such ethics requires the capacity to respond to the beloved as truly other. Eros can easily succumb to the objectifying impulse to overcome otherness, because the erotic brings the irreducible alterity of the beloved to the fore with an urgency that most types of intersubjectivity do not-hence Kant's stringent account of the objectifying tendencies of eros. After considering Kant's lectures on sexual ethics, I argue that eros is not necessarily objectifying and employ the resources of phenomenology to do so. This requires adeparture from traditional Husserlian phenomenology, since an eros that preserves alterity must relinquish intentionality and constitution of the other. The transcendentalphenomenological mirrors of analogy are insufficient to constitute the other as truly other, but instead render the other as another me. Such is the contention of Levinas, whose ethical critique of phenomenology enhances our appreciation for the radical alterity of the other. We see this in Levinas's account of eros in Totality and Infinity, which describes the experience of the beloved in terms of an "intentionality without vision." I explore this notion further using Jean-Luc Marion's work on the topic, incorporating his discussion of the counter-intentional gaze of the other, the saturated phenomenon, and his treatment of the distinction between Leib (flesh) and Körper(objective body). This distinction is essential to our discussion, for a non-objectifying erotic gaze requires one to attend to the beloved as irreducible, invisible, and invisable flesh. Seen in this unseeing regard, the other as flesh functions iconical-Iy, whereas the other as eroticized body functions idolatrously. My ability to respond to the other non-intentionally, as flesh, depends on my personal character. As Paul Ricoeur shows, I can only hear, understand, and respond to the other's call if I have developed a measure of ethical resources. My proper response to the specifically erotic call thus requires the development of an ethically and erotically sensitive character. This development, I argue, is better accounted for by Ricoeur's ontology of the self-other relation than in Levinas's asymmetrical ethics. This ethical response also reveals the fundamentally hermeneutical nature of the erotic. In order to encounter the beloved as irreducible flesh, I must have the ethical and hermeneutical resources to
On Religion: The Revelation of God as the Sublimation of Religion. By Karl Barth
The Heythrop Journal, Dec 27, 2007
Ricoeur at the Limits of Philosophy: God, Creation, and Evil. By BarnabasAspray. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. x, 251. £75.00
The Heythrop Journal, Mar 1, 2023
Ontology and Revelation: Heidegger’s Influence on Bonhoeffer’s Theology
Heidegger Studies, 2022
Kierkegaard and the Quest for Unambiguous Life: Between Romanticism and Modernism: Selected Essays. By George Pattison
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2013
Review of Philosophical Myths of the Fall, by Stephen Mulhall
Essays in Philosophy, 2007
Bonhoeffer's Intellectual Formation. Edited by Peter Frick
The Heythrop Journal, Apr 7, 2011
The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education. By Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann
The Heythrop Journal, Sep 1, 2008
Ricoeur, Paul. The Course of Recognition
Journal of interdisciplinary studies, 2006
Toward the Outside: Concepts and Themes in Emmanuel Levinas. By Michael B. Smith, Levinas and Theology. By Michael Purcell and Levinas Studies: An Annual Review (Volume 1). Edited by Jeffrey Bloechl and Jeffrey L. Kosky
The Heythrop Journal, May 1, 2007
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. By Immanuel Kant. Translated and edited by Robert B. Louden
The Heythrop Journal, Mar 1, 2009
Authentic Faith: Bonhoeffer's Theological Ethics in Context. By Heinz Eduard Tödt. Eds. Ernst-Albert Scharffenorth and Glen Harold Stassen London: 1933-1935. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 13. By Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Ed Keith Clements Dietrich Bonhoeff
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