God, the Gift, and Postmodernism (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion) [Paperback]

John D. Caputo (Editor), Michael J. Scanlon (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 22, 1999 | Series: Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion

Pushing past the constraints of postmodernism which cast "reason" and"religion" in opposition, God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, seizes the opportunity to question the authority of "the modern" and open the limits of possible experience, including the call to religious experience, as a new millennium approaches. Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, engages with Jean-Luc Marion and other religious philosophers to entertain
questions about intention, givenness, and possibility which reveal the extent to which deconstruction is structured like religion. New interpretations of Kant, Heidegger, Husserl, and Derrida emerge from essays and discussions with distinguished philosophers and theologians from the United States and Europe. The result is that God, the Gift, and Postmodernism elaborates a radical phenomenology that stretches the limits of its possibility and explores areas where philosophy and religion have become increasingly and surprisingly convergent.

Contributors include: John D. Caputo, John Dominic Crossan, Jacques Derrida, Robert Dodaro, Richard Kearney, Jean-Luc Marion, Frangoise Meltzer, Michael J. Scanlon, Mark C. Taylor, David Tracy, Merold Westphal
and Edith Wyschogrod.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John D. Caputo is David R. Cook Chair of
Philosophy at Villanova University. He is author of The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida, Against Ethics, and Demythologizing Heidegger.

Michael J. Scanlon is Josephine C. Connelly Chair of Theology at Villanova University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press; New edition edition (December 22, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253213282
• ISBN-13: 978-0253213280
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #696,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John D. Caputo, the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion (Syracuse University) is a hybrid philosopher/theologian who works in the area of radical theology. Prof. Caputo is working on a theory of "theo-poetics," by which he means a poetics of the "event" harbored in the name of God, a notion that depends upon a reworking of the notions of event in Derrida and Deleuze. His past books have attempted to persuade us that hermeneutics goes all the way down ("Radical Hermeneutics"), that Derrida is a thinker to be reckoned with by theology ("The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida"), and that theology is best served by getting over its love affair with power and authority and embracing what Caputo calls, following St. Paul, "The Weakness of God." His notion of the weakness of God, an expression that needs to be interpreted carefully by following what he means by "event," is reducible neither to an orthodox notion of kenosis nor to a death of God theology (Altizer, Zizek), although it bears comparison to both. He has also addressed wider-than-academic audiences in "On Religion," "Philosophy and Theology," and "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?" and has an interest in interacting with working church groups like Ikon and the Emergent Church. He is currently working in a book on the weakness of our frail and mortal flesh, probably to be entitled "The Fate of all Flesh: A Theology of the Event, II." At Syracuse, Professor Caputo specializes in continental philosophy of religion, which means both working on radical approaches to religion and theology in the light of contemporary phenomenology, hermeneutics and deconstruction, and tracking down the traces of radical religious and theological motifs in contemporary continental philosophy.