In this essay, I provide an introduction to the so-called 'theological turn' in recent French, 'new' phenomenology. I begin by articulating the stakes of excluding God from phenomenology (as advocated by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger) and then move on to a brief consideration of why Dominique Janicaud contends that, by inquiring into the 'inapparent', new phenomenology is no longer phenomenological. I then consider the general trajectories of this recent movement and argue that there are five main themes that unite (...) the work of such varied thinkers as Levinas, Derrida, Marion, Henry, Chrétien, Lacoste, and Ricœur. I conclude by outlining points of overlap between new phenomenology and contemporary analytic philosophy of religion and suggest that the two stand as important resources for each other. (shrink)

The enterprise of Messrs Desclée is promoting a fresh and handsome series of tracts upon the essential theses of Christian theology in the searching light of present-day reflection and with the rich benefit of the past half-century’s probing research into Scripture, patristic and liturgical sources of belief and the current aggiornamento of its official Church statement. Composed in collaboration by a distinguished group of French-speaking theologians, they are addressed not merely to the technical interest of clerics and seminary students but (...) also to the cultivated layman, whose faith should be personally intelligible in proportion to his intellectual rigour and actual human problems. The scholastic tradition of a developing fides quaerens intellectum is realistically put in the publisher’s terms of reference. (shrink)

The enterprise of Messrs Desclée is promoting a fresh and handsome series of tracts upon the essential theses of Christian theology in the searching light of present-day reflection and with the rich benefit of the past half-century’s probing research into Scripture, patristic and liturgical sources of belief and the current aggiornamento of its official Church statement. Composed in collaboration by a distinguished group of French-speaking theologians, they are addressed not merely to the technical interest of clerics and seminary students but (...) also to the cultivated layman, whose faith should be personally intelligible in proportion to his intellectual rigour and actual human problems. The scholastic tradition of a developing fides quaerens intellectum is realistically put in the publisher’s terms of reference. (shrink)

The relations of comparison and contrast among the viewpoints of characters and between the viewpoints of authors and characters is one of the most important dimensions of meaning in literary texts.... It is for this reason that the analysis of irony, as a central tonal medium for registering differences in point of view, occupies a position of singular importance in the interpretation of literary meaning.Irony stings. Among friends it might be playful, its target joining in the fun. But it is (...) hard to see irony figuring into any how-to guide for making friends in the first place. Indeed, the word is absent from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. More often irony is divisive, driving a wedge... (shrink)

A Book Review of J. Aaron Simmons and Bruce Ellis Benson's The New Phenomenology: A Philosophical Introduction.