Redeeming the Enlightenement: Christianity and the Liberal Virtues (Radical Traditions) [Paperback]

Bruce Ward (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2010 | Series: Radical Traditions

As we move further away from the historical period known as the Enlightenment, it seems the debate about its impact becomes increasingly polarized. Arguments focus on either rejecting or claiming its legacy. In this book Bruce Ward contends that the concern should be neither to reject or claim, but to see how it can be redeemed. / Ward sets up a three-sided dialogic encounter among primary thinkers and critics of modernity — philosophical, theological, and literary — using Rousseau, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky to focus the discussion. Ward does not neglect other significant thinkers — notably Kant, Heidegger, Tolstoy, Charles Taylor, Locke, Kafka, Ren� Girard, and Martha Nussbaum — but uses them to illumine the questions at issue among the primary three. Though each chapter of this book can be treated as a relatively independent reflection, the book as a whole offers innovative redemption of the Enlightenment values of equality, authenticity, tolerance, and compassion.

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About the Author

Bruce Ward is professor in and chair of the Joint Department of Religious Studies at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario.

Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (February 15, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802807615
• ISBN-13: 978-0802807618
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,579,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Is the enlightenment redeemable?, March 10, 2010

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Joseph M. Hennessey (Weston, MA, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Redeeming the Enlightenement: Christianity and the Liberal Virtues (Radical Traditions) (Paperback)

This book's content can be summarized in three propositions. First, the values which are known as liberal, or enlightenment, find their more profound source in Christianity. Secondly, Christians can and have either totally reject the enlightenment, totally surrender to it, or best in Ward's eyes, redeem, rescue from the trash, the good which did not ultimately derive from Spinoza, Rousseau or Locke, but from Christ. Thirdly, the thinker/writer who has most successfully performed such redemption is not from the Catholic or Protestant West, but the Orthodox Fyodor Dostoevsky. In fact, a quick scan of this fine book's index show references to Dostoevsky and Rousseau in a dead heat for numerical supremacy, understandable since Ward has previously published on D.

Ward devotes chapters to "equality," "authenticity," "tolerance" and "compassion" as virtues allegedly derived from the enlightenment, but which are actually secularized, even watered down versions of Christian virtues. I was surprised that "freedom" was not treated individually, but Ward explained that freedom or liberty is woven into each of the other four as a necessary pre-condition. On p.34, Ward shows how liberalism puts rights before duties/responsibilities in an individualistic way, whereas Christianity has always emphasized that rights flow from prior responsibilities, to God and others. On p. 115 he highlights the all too odd but true specter of intolerant or illiberal liberalism. On p. 119, Ward uses the phrase "Enlightenment fundamentalism," which i had never heard before, but will use frequently in the future.

One of the many things i enjoyed about this book was the footnotes to many other books which sound as if they will also be helpful to me, and to others, to comprehend the USA, which has roots in both Christianity and the enlightenment.