Visar resultat för..."Via negativa"

A heartfelt, daring, divinely hilarious debut novel about an old priest looking back on his life and grappling with his mistakes as he hits the highways of the American midwest with a pistol in his pocket and an injured coyote in his backseat.Father Dan is homeless. Dismissed by the church for eccentricity and insubordination, he''s tried to transform his exile into a kind of pilgrimage, to make his Toyota Camry into a mobile monk''s cell. But even this master of self-denial--and straight-up denial--knows when he''s lying to himself: "I am a retired priest living out of his car. I am a retired priest, kicked out of his rectory and living in his car with a coyote and a bucket he shits in."Ahh, yes: the coyote. Alert to signs and wonders, Dan is swift to stop when he sees a coyote get hit by a minivan. The injured animal becomes Dan''s unexpected traveling companion as he wends his way through the heartland of America, nursing the coyote back to health and stopping to take in the occasional roadside attraction (MARTIN''S HOLE TO HELL, WORLD FAMOUS BOTTOMLESS PIT NEXT EXIT!). The farther he travels and the more people he meets, the more he is forced to reckon with a lifetime of regrets: the friendships he let dissolve, his gradual alienation from the church, and his fierce hatred of a particular predatory priest. And as his true quest starts to take shape, he will have to decide if penance is better paid with a journey of redemption . . . or revenge.

In this kaleidoscopic and engrossing novella, the reader is drawn into the shifting world of Beirut, “city of whores and city of dames”, when Yusuf, an inveterate observer of his native city, is given several unfinished stories by one of his most promising students and finds that his life’s drift is about to hit rough water …

A collection of fascinating quotations from the legendary artist and graffiti pioneerFutura is a living legend—a world-renowned painter, designer, and photographer who was a pioneer of graffiti art and New York City’s “subway school.” His radical abstract work in the street and on canvas established him as a central figure in an important art movement that included Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Rammellzee, Lee Quiñones, and Dondi White. Futura-isms is a collection of essential quotations from this fascinating artist. Gathered from four decades of interviews and panel discussions, this memorable selection illuminates Futura’s thoughts on legal and illegal art, his influences, fellow artists, and the past, present, and future. He also offers colorful memories of his adventurous life—growing up in New York City, serving in the Navy, touring with The Clash—and reflects on how his experiences have shaped his art.Select quotations from the book:“Graffiti was a way for me to exist. I wanted the world to know my name. I wanted to be somebody.”“The essence of what graffiti is . . . is creating this identity and taking it to the public.”“My whole life, I think, I’ve been a nomad.”“I was always at home in the subway system.”“People say, ‘Let’s play within the rules.’ I say, ‘No—let’s break the rules a little bit.’”

An analysis of the teachings of the largely forgotten 19th-century mystic Phoebe Palmer, seeing her as a major mystical thinker in the Wesleyan tradition.Phoebe Palmer's honour was lost posthumously, for within a few decades after her death her name all but disappeared. Palmer's sanctification theology was separated from its apophatic spiritual moorings, even as her memory was lost. To this day the Mother of the Holiness Movement still awaits her place of recognition as a Christian mystic equal to Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, or Therese of Lisieux. This book locates Palmer's life and thought within the great Christian mystical traditions, identifying her importance within Methodism and the church universal. It also presents a Wesleyan theological framework for understanding and valuing Christian mysticism, while connecting it with the larger mystical traditions in Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox communions. While Palmer was a powerful revivalist in her own day, in many ways she could be the patron saint for contemporary Methodists who are drawn to the new monasticism and who long for the renewal of the church. Saint Phoebe is precisely the one who can help Methodists envision new forms of Christian community, mission, and witness in a postmodern world.

How can the psychotherapist think about not knowing? Is psychoanalysis a contemplative practice? This book explores the possibility that there are resources in philosophy and theology which can help psychoanalysts and psychotherapists think more clearly about the unknown and the unknowable. The book applies the lens of apophasis to psychoanalysis, providing a detailed reading of apophasis in the work of Pseudo-Dionysius and exploring C.G. Jung's engagement with apophatic discourse. Pseudo-Dionysius brought together Greek and biblical currents of negative theology and the via negativa, and the psychology of Jung can be read as a continuation and extension of the apophatic tradition. Henderson discusses the concept of the transcendent function as an apophatic dynamic at the heart of Jung's thought, and suggests that apophasis can provide the key to understanding the family resemblance among the disparate schools of psychoanalysis. Chapters consider:-Jung’s discussion of opposites, including his reception of Nicholas of Cusa’s concept of the coincidence of opposites-Jung's engagement with Neoplatonism and Pseudo-Dionysius-the work of Jung in relation to Deleuze, Derrida and other writers-how motifs in Pseudo-Dionysius’ Ecclesiastical Hierarchy resonate with contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy.The in-depth examination of primary sources in this comprehensive volume provides a platform for research into apophasis in the wider field of psychoanalysis. It will prove valuable reading for scholars and analysts of Jungian psychology studying religion and mysticism.

How can the psychotherapist think about not knowing? Is psychoanalysis a contemplative practice? This book explores the possibility that there are resources in philosophy and theology which can help psychoanalysts and psychotherapists think more clearly about the unknown and the unknowable. The book applies the lens of apophasis to psychoanalysis, providing a detailed reading of apophasis in the work of Pseudo-Dionysius and exploring C.G. Jung's engagement with apophatic discourse. Pseudo-Dionysius brought together Greek and biblical currents of negative theology and the via negativa, and the psychology of Jung can be read as a continuation and extension of the apophatic tradition. Henderson discusses the concept of the transcendent function as an apophatic dynamic at the heart of Jung's thought, and suggests that apophasis can provide the key to understanding the family resemblance among the disparate schools of psychoanalysis. Chapters consider:-Jung’s discussion of opposites, including his reception of Nicholas of Cusa’s concept of the coincidence of opposites-Jung's engagement with Neoplatonism and Pseudo-Dionysius-the work of Jung in relation to Deleuze, Derrida and other writers-how motifs in Pseudo-Dionysius’ Ecclesiastical Hierarchy resonate with contemporary psychoanalytic psychotherapy.The in-depth examination of primary sources in this comprehensive volume provides a platform for research into apophasis in the wider field of psychoanalysis. It will prove valuable reading for scholars and analysts of Jungian psychology studying religion and mysticism.

Jaime Saenz is arguably the greatest Bolivian writer of the twentieth century. His poetry is apocalyptic, transcendent, hallucinatory, brilliant--and, until recently, available only in Spanish. Forrest Gander and Kent Johnson's translations of Saenz's work have garnered much-deserved attention and acclaim. Here for the first time in English they give us his masterpiece, The Night, Saenz's most famous poem and the last he wrote before his death in 1986. An unusual man, Saenz lived his whole life in La Paz, Bolivia, seldom venturing far from the city and its indigenous culture that feature so prominently in his writings. He sought God in unlikely places: slum taverns, alcoholic excess, the street. Saenz was nocturnal. He once stole a leg from a cadaver and hid it under his bed. On his wedding night he brought home a panther. In this epic poem, Saenz explores the singular themes that possessed him: alcoholism, death, nightmares, identity, otherness, and his love for La Paz. The poem's four movements culminate in some of the most profoundly mystical, beautiful, and disturbing passages of modern Latin American poetry.They are presented here in this faithful and inspired English translation of the Spanish original. Complete with an introduction by the translators that paints a vivid picture of the poet's life, and an afterword by Luis H. Antezana, a notable Bolivian literary critic and close friend of Saenz, this bilingual edition is the essential introduction to one of the most visionary and enigmatic poets of the Hispanic world.

This book explores the co-dependency of monotheism and idolatry by examining the thought of several prominent twentieth-century Jewish philosophers—Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas. While all of these thinkers were keenly aware of the pitfalls of scriptural theism, to differing degrees they each succumbed to the temptation to personify transcendence, even as they tried either to circumvent or to restrain it by apophatically purging kataphatic descriptions of the deity. Derrida and Wyschogrod, by contrast, carried the project of denegation one step further, embarking on a path that culminated in the aporetic suspension of belief and the consequent removal of all images from God, a move that seriously compromises the viability of devotional piety.The inquiry into apophasis, transcendence, and immanence in these Jewish thinkers is symptomatic of a larger question. Recent attempts to harness the apophatic tradition to construct a viable postmodern negative theology, a religion without religion, are not radical enough. Not only are these philosophies of transcendence guilty of a turn to theology that defies the phenomenological presupposition of an immanent phenomenality, but they fall short on their own terms, inasmuch as they persist in employing metaphorical language that personalizes transcendence and thereby runs the risk of undermining the irreducible alterity and invisibility attributed to the transcendent other.The logic of apophasis, if permitted to run its course fully, would exceed the need to posit some form of transcendence that is not ultimately a facet of immanence. Apophatic theologies, accordingly, must be supplanted by a more far-reaching apophasis that surpasses the theolatrous impulse lying coiled at the crux of theism, an apophasis of apophasis, based on accepting an absolute nothingness—to be distinguished from the nothingness of an absolute—that does not signify the unknowable One but rather the manifold that is the pleromatic abyss at being's core. Hence, the much-celebrated metaphor of the gift must give way to the more neutral and less theologically charged notion of an unconditional givenness in which the distinction between giver and given collapses. To think givenness in its most elemental, phenomenological sense is to allow the apparent to appear as given without presuming a causal agency that would turn that given into a gift.

This book explores the co-dependency of monotheism and idolatry by examining the thought of several prominent twentieth-century Jewish philosophers—Cohen, Buber, Rosenzweig, and Levinas. While all of these thinkers were keenly aware of the pitfalls of scriptural theism, to differing degrees they each succumbed to the temptation to personify transcendence, even as they tried either to circumvent or to restrain it by apophatically purging kataphatic descriptions of the deity. Derrida and Wyschogrod, by contrast, carried the project of denegation one step further, embarking on a path that culminated in the aporetic suspension of belief and the consequent removal of all images from God, a move that seriously compromises the viability of devotional piety.The inquiry into apophasis, transcendence, and immanence in these Jewish thinkers is symptomatic of a larger question. Recent attempts to harness the apophatic tradition to construct a viable postmodern negative theology, a religion without religion, are not radical enough. Not only are these philosophies of transcendence guilty of a turn to theology that defies the phenomenological presupposition of an immanent phenomenality, but they fall short on their own terms, inasmuch as they persist in employing metaphorical language that personalizes transcendence and thereby runs the risk of undermining the irreducible alterity and invisibility attributed to the transcendent other.The logic of apophasis, if permitted to run its course fully, would exceed the need to posit some form of transcendence that is not ultimately a facet of immanence. Apophatic theologies, accordingly, must be supplanted by a more far-reaching apophasis that surpasses the theolatrous impulse lying coiled at the crux of theism, an apophasis of apophasis, based on accepting an absolute nothingness—to be distinguished from the nothingness of an absolute—that does not signify the unknowable One but rather the manifold that is the pleromatic abyss at being's core. Hence, the much-celebrated metaphor of the gift must give way to the more neutral and less theologically charged notion of an unconditional givenness in which the distinction between giver and given collapses. To think givenness in its most elemental, phenomenological sense is to allow the apparent to appear as given without presuming a causal agency that would turn that given into a gift.

Covering the new OCR course specification for the Philosophy of Religion at AS Level, this book offers a basic level introduction to the subject. Addressing core and background materials, biographies and examination notes this is an essential textbook.This textbook covers the new OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA Requirement) course specification for the Philosophy of Religion at A2 Level. The book will be published in time for the first teaching of the new specification in September 2009.Following the AS Level book already commissioned, the next natural step forward would be an A2 text. At present there are 8000 candidates for the revised A2 at OCR, and it is at year 2 that the greatest need for an accurate text exists. Among rivals, there is no specific A2 Philosophy of Religion book, and in recent years there have been significant problems for candidates because of errors in other works. It is also at A2 that there is the need for developed 'Stretch and Challenge' material - this is not available in other texts which tend simply to suggest what candidates might read for themselves. This material is clearly highlighted as additional to the text.Given that the majority of teachers of this subject are not themselves philosophers, there is a need for a readable text which provides sufficient background for both teachers and students.The fundamental concepts covered include arguments for the existence of God, including the Ontological, Cosmological, Moral and Teleological Arguments, as well as challenges to faith from the Problem of Evil and other sources. Background material from ancient philosophy and the Judaeo-Christian tradition is explained, and there are specially developed sections on Verification and Meaning, The Falsification Debate, Language Games and the Afterlife. The section on Divine Attributes covers an area that is new to the course specification. The authors have focused on original sources to ensure that errors which creep into textbooks by repetition are avoided.The book will carry three important appendices: guidance on how to write a philosophy essay; revision notes, examination advice; and suggestions for further reading.The authors are well-known as past and present Principal Examiners of the subject.

​This book explores ‘nothingness’, the negative way found in Buddhist and Christian traditions, with a focused and comparative approach. It examines the works of Nagarjuna (c. 150 CE), a Buddhist monk, philosopher and one of the greatest thinkers of classical India, and those of John of the Cross (1542-1591), a Carmelite monk, outstanding Spanish poet, and one of the greatest mystical theologians. The conception of nothingness in both the thinkers points to a paradox of linguistic transcendence and provides a novel insight into via negativa. This is the first full-length work comparing nothingness (emptiness) in Nagarjuna (Mahayana Buddhism) and John of the Cross (Christianity) in any language. It augments the comparative approach found in Buddhist-Christian comparative philosophy and theology.  This book is of especial interest to academics of Buddhist and Christian studies searching for avenues for intellectual dialogue.

​This book explores ‘nothingness’, the negative way found in Buddhist and Christian traditions, with a focused and comparative approach. It examines the works of Nagarjuna (c. 150 CE), a Buddhist monk, philosopher and one of the greatest thinkers of classical India, and those of John of the Cross (1542-1591), a Carmelite monk, outstanding Spanish poet, and one of the greatest mystical theologians. The conception of nothingness in both the thinkers points to a paradox of linguistic transcendence and provides a novel insight into via negativa. This is the first full-length work comparing nothingness (emptiness) in Nagarjuna (Mahayana Buddhism) and John of the Cross (Christianity) in any language. It augments the comparative approach found in Buddhist-Christian comparative philosophy and theology.  This book is of especial interest to academics of Buddhist and Christian studies searching for avenues for intellectual dialogue.

In this monograph, two of the most complicated theoretical topics confronting the scholar of mysticism (apophasis and infinity) are tackled. Writing about apophasis presents a unique dilemma as the term itself connotes the inability of language to name the namelessness of ultimate reality. Yet, the apophatic is a gesture of speaking-not, which entails saying the unsayable, as opposed to not speaking, which is the reticence appropriate to silence. The exploration of infinity presents an equally daunting demand as the intellect embarking on this path is summoned to circumscribe the uncircumscribable. Just as communicating the incommunicable is an endless enterprise of speaking the unspeakable, so mapping infinity is an unremitting pursuit of delimiting the limitless. The two subjects thus intersect at the vanishing point where the human mind reaches its limit by confronting the limitlessness that can be described only as indescribable.