Augustine and Postmodern Thought

Augustine and Postmodern Thought

Author: Lieven Boeve

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789042921207

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On November 9-11, 2006, the Research Group 'Theology in a Postmodern Context' (K.U.Leuven) organised an expert symposium on the return of Augustine in current postmodern philosophical-theological debates. The North-African Church Father, or at least the thinking patterns or intuitions borrowed from him, are often invoked in discussions on the relation between Christian faith and the contemporary postmodern context. On the one hand, one observes the retrieval of rather premodern approaches in order to remedy the so-called (post-)modern crisis, which is said to result in nihilism, relativism, etc. For what seems to attract some theologians in Augustinian thinking is the (apparent) marriage between Greek (neo-Platonic) philosophy and Christian faith. Such a combination of premodern metaphysics and Christian faith would serve as a necessary presupposition for every legitimate theological epistemology. On the other hand, there are theologians and philosophers who are increasingly trying to reread Augustine from a postmodern stance, stressing the role of particularity, narrativity, historicity, and the decentring of subjectivity, which they see present in Augustine's approach, or from which they deconstruct Augustine's thinking. Central questions discussed during the symposium were: Are the analyses, offered by authors who are re-introducing Augustine with respect to the contemporary context, correct? To what diagnosed problems, and on what basis, do they propose Augustine as a remedy? Are their presentations of other theological and philosophical responses to the present situation correct and which 'Augustine' do they claim to represent? More fundamentally: what would a genuine Augustinian epistemology look like, and what can we gain from it? In what way can it be normative for a theological epistemology in our day? In answering these questions, the symposium focused explicitly on contemporary philosophical and theological evaluations of both modernity and postmodernity, and theological responses to them.


Augustine and Postmodernism

Augustine and Postmodernism

Author: John D. Caputo

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2005-03-10

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0253217318

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Scanlon, and Mark Vessey.Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion--Merold Westphal, general editor


Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thought

Postmodern Philosophy and Christian Thought

Author: Merold Westphal

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 1999-11-22

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9780253213365

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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.


Postmodernism Rightly Understood

Postmodernism Rightly Understood

Author: Peter Augustine Lawler

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 9780847694266

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Postmodernism Rightly Understood is a dramatic return to realism--a poetic attempt to attain a true understanding of the capabilities and limitations of the postmodern predicament. Prominent political theorist Peter Augustine Lawler reflects on the flaws of postmodern thought, the futility of pragmatism, and the spiritual emptiness of existentialism. Lawler examines postmodernism by interpreting the writings of five respected and best selling American authors--Francis Fukuyama, Richard Rorty, Allan Bloom, Walker Percy, and Christopher Lasch. Lawler explains why the alternatives available in our time are either a "soulless niceness," which Fukuyama, Rorty, and Bloom described as the result of modern success, or a postmodern moral responsibility that accompanies love in the ruins, as articulated by Percy and Lasch. This is a fresh and compelling look at the crisis of the human soul and intellect accompanied by the onset of postmodernity.


Augustine's Political Thought

Augustine's Political Thought

Author: Richard J. Dougherty

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1580469248

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This important collection reveals that Augustine's political thought drew on and diverged from the classical tradition, contributing to the study of questions at the center of all Western political thought.


Augustine and the Limits of Politics

Augustine and the Limits of Politics

Author: Jean Bethke Elshtain

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Pess

Published: 2018-04-30

Total Pages: 129

ISBN-13: 0268161143

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Now with a new foreword by Patrick J. Deneen. Jean Bethke Elshtain brings Augustine's thought into the contemporary political arena and presents an Augustine who created a complex moral map that offers space for loyalty, love, and care, as well as a chastened form of civic virtue. The result is a controversial book about one of the world's greatest and most complex thinkers whose thought continues to haunt all of Western political philosophy. What is our business "within this common mortal life?" Augustine asks and bids us to ask ourselves. What can Augustine possibly have to say about the conditions that characterize our contemporary society and appear to put democracy in crisis? Who is Augustine for us now and what do his words have to do with political theory? These are the underlying questions that animate Jean Bethke Elshtain's fascinating engagement with the thought and work of Augustine, the ancient thinker who gave no political theory per se and refused to offer up a positive utopia. In exploring the questions, Why Augustine, why now? Elshtain argues that Augustine's great works display a canny and scrupulous attunement to the here and now and the very real limits therein. She discusses other aspects of Augustine's thought as well, including his insistence that no human city can be modeled on the heavenly city, and further elaborates on Hannah Arendt's deep indebtedness to Augustine's understanding of evil. Elshtain also presents Augustine's arguments against the pridefulness of philosophy, thereby linking him to later currents in modern thought, including Wittgenstein and Freud.


Foucault and Augustine

Foucault and Augustine

Author: J. Joyce Schuld

Publisher:

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13:

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Using Augustine as a conversation partner, this text explores the value of Michel Foucault's controversial writings for theologians, ethicists, philosophers and cultural theorists. It demonstrates the possibilities and difficulties of applying Foucault's social criticisms within Christian contexts.


In the Self's Place

In the Self's Place

Author: Jean-Luc Marion

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2012-10-24

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 0804785627

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In the Self's Place is an original phenomenological reading of Augustine that considers his engagement with notions of identity in Confessions. Using the Augustinian experience of confessio, Jean-Luc Marion develops a model of selfhood that examines this experience in light of the whole of the Augustinian corpus. Towards this end, Marion engages with noteworthy modern and postmodern analyses of Augustine's most "experiential" work, including the critical commentaries of Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Marion ultimately concludes that Augustine has preceded postmodernity in exploring an excess of the self over and beyond itself, and in using this alterity of the self to itself, as a driving force for creative relations with God, the world, and others. This reading establishes striking connections between accounts of selfhood across the fields of contemporary philosophy, literary studies, and Augustine's early Christianity.


Augustine and Kierkegaard

Augustine and Kierkegaard

Author: Kim Paffenroth

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2017-09-20

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1498561853

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This volume is a continuation of our series exploring Saint Augustine’s influence on later thought, this time bringing the fifth century bishop into dialogue with 19th century philosopher, theologian, social critic, and originator of Existentialism, Soren Kierkegaard. The connections, contrasts, and sometimes surprising similarities of their thought are uncovered and analyzed in topics such as exile and pilgrimage, time and restlessness, inwardness and the church, as well as suffering, evil, and humility. The implications of this analysis are profound and far-reaching for theology, ecclesiology, and ethics.