More Radical Hermeneutics: On Not Knowing Who We Are (Studies in Continental Thought) [Paperback]

John D. Caputo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 22, 2000 | Series: Studies in Continental Thought

In these spirited essays, John D. Caputo continues the project he launched with Radical Hermeneutics of making hermeneutics and deconstruction work together. Caputo claims that we are not born into this world hard-wired to know Being, Truth, or the Good, and we are not vessels of a Divine or other omnipotent supernatural force. Focusing on how various contemporary philosophers develop aspects of this fragmented view of the life world in areas such as madness, friendship, democracy, gender, science, the "end of ethics," religion, and mysticism, this animated study by one of America's leading continental philosophers shakes the foundations of religion and philosophy, even as it gives them new life.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

John D. Caputo holds the David R. Cook Chair in Philosophy at Villanova University. He is author of The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida; Against Ethics; Demythologizing Heidegger; and Radical Hermeneutics (all published by Indiana University Press). He is editor of Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida and co-editor (with Michael J. Scanlon) of God, the Gift, and Postmodernism (published by Indiana University Press).

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: Indiana University Press (July 22, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0253213878
• ISBN-13: 978-0253213877
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #103,093 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.