Incomprehensible Certainty

Thomas Pfau is the Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of English at Duke University, with a secondary appointment on the Duke Divinity School faculty. He is the author, editor, and translator of twelve books, including Minding the Modern: Human Agency, Intellectual Traditions, and Responsible Knowledge (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013, 2015).

"A new and refreshing reading of the tradition-rich debate about the relationship between appearance and being." —The Review of Metaphysics"By examining the role of images in ordinary life, Pfau is able to show how his book's genealogy of modernity is true, as compared to other books in this genre. Happily, the book is lavishly illustrated so that the reader can directly see the changes in ways that Western people have seen the world. It is a marvelous history of Western visual culture, packed with fascinating analyses of artworks, and of philosophical texts about them, from Plato and Plotinus to Paul Cézanne and Pablo Picasso." —Law and Liberty"Incomprehensible Certainty might . . . be understood as the positive response to the necessarily critical project of Minding the Modern. Like a good architect, Pfau cleared the ground before constructing his cathedral." —The Hedgehog Review"There has perhaps never been written a more definitive rebuttal to the heresy of iconoclasm, which constantly recurs in novel forms, than Incomprehensible Certainty. With his nearly incomparable breadth and depth of learning, Pfau is uniquely positioned to fashion a response that is at once historical, literary, cultural, philosophical, and theological. This is a breakthrough book, not just because of its brilliant content but also because of the boldness of its approach, which quite evidently bears valuable fruit. It is not possible to read this book without coming to see the world with new eyes." —D. C. Schindler, author of Freedom from Reality"Thomas Pfau approaches the philosophical question of images and their significance not abstractly but via forms of textual engagement with images. Incomprehensible Certainty amounts to a full appraisal of our culture's life with images." —Judith Wolfe, co-editor of The Oxford History of Modern German Theology"Incomprehensible Certainty promises to be one of the most comprehensive accounts of the image and image theory to date. With an extraordinary command of art-historical, philosophical, and theological sources, Pfau proposes a highly ambitious treatment of the image that will push contemporary understanding to a new level of sophistication." —Mark McInroy, co-editor of The Christian Theological Tradition, 4th Edition**"A very impressive work . . . . Written with lucidity and attentiveness, being both extensive in its range over a great field, while never lacking mindfulness of particulars encountered in the whole undertaking." —Modern Theology"Anyone working in the field of religion and literature will find Thomas Pfau's learned, capacious book to be both challenging and illuminating." —Religion & Literature

• AcknowledgmentsList of Images & PermissionsAbbreviationsIntroduction: Writing the Image: Reading – Reflection – ArgumentPART I – Image-Theory as Metaphysics and Theology: the Emergence of a Tradition1. A Brief Metaphysics of the Image: Plato – Plotinus2. Theology and Phenomenology of the Byzantine Icon3. The Eschatological Image: Augustine – Bonaventure – Julian of Norwich4. The Speculative Image: Platonism and Mysticism in Nicholas of Cusa PART II – The Image in the Era of Naturalism and the Persistence of Metaphysics5. The Symbolic Image: Visualizing the Metamorphosis of Being in Goethe6. The Forensic Image: Paradoxes of Realism in Lyell, Darwin, and Ruskin7. The Sacramental Image: G. M. Hopkins 8. The Epiphanic Image: Husserl – Cézanne – Rilke Epilogue & Conclusions