Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan

by Anthony T. Kronman

Overview

In this passionate and searching book, Anthony Kronman offers a third way—beyond atheism and religion—to the God of the modern world

We live in an age of disenchantment. The number of self-professed “atheists” continues to grow. Yet many still feel an intense spiritual longing for a connection to what Aristotle called the “eternal and divine.” For those who do, but demand a God that is compatible with their modern ideals, a new theology is required. This is what Anthony Kronman offers here, in a book that leads its readers away from the inscrutable Creator of the Abrahamic religions toward a God whose inexhaustible and everlasting presence is that of the world itself. Kronman defends an ancient conception of God, deepened and transformed by Christian belief—the born-again paganism on which modern science, art, and politics all vitally depend. Brilliantly surveying centuries of Western thought—from Plato to Augustine, Aquinas, and Kant, from Spinoza to Nietzsche, Darwin, and Freud—Kronman recovers and reclaims the God we need today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300224917
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	10/28/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	1176
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Anthony T. Kronman served as dean of the Yale Law School from 1994 to 2004. He currently divides his time between the Law School and the Directed Studies Program in Yale College. He is the author of Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life and The Assault on American Excellence..

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Prologue 1

Introduction 19

Part 1 Gratitude

1 The Good of Gratitude: Dependence, Acceptance and Being at Home in the World 49

2 A World of Rights: The Expulsion of Love and Gratitude from Public Life 68

3 "Endless Gratitude So Burdensome" Christian Theology and Western Civilization 88

Part 2 Pride

4 Greatness of Soul: Aristotle's Philosophy of Pride 115

5 Givers and Takers: The Good of Self Sufficiency 130

6 The Eternal and Divine: What Everything Desires 142

7 The Best Life of All: Politics and Contemplation 160

8 Friendship: Gratitude and Human Fulfillment 179

9 The First Cosmopolitan: Plato's Discovery of an Invisible Self 193

10 Preparatio Evangelica: Stoicism on the Way to Christian Thought 208

Part 3 Salvation

11 Creation: Making, Begetting and Creating 229

12 Will: Human Freedom and the Problem of Evil 240

13 Grace: Divine Omnipotence and the Augustinian Dilemma 256

14 "Not a Sparrow Falls": The Abolition of the Distinction between Form and Matter 272

15 The Contingency of the World: That Whose Essence Is to Exist 293

16 The Pagan Temptation: Aquinas and the Aristotelian Revival 309

17 God Unchained: Ockham's Defense of Divine Freedom 336

18 Theology of the Cross: The Lutheran Reformation 363

19 The Hatred of Man: Augustine Redux 378

20 The Absolute Spontaneity of Freedom: Kant's Christian Metaphysics 394

21 Our Better Selves: The Morality of Autonomy 417

22 God Becomes a Postulate: Reason, Freedom and Kant's Defense of Divine Grace 434

23 Reaction: Joseph de Maistre's Revolt against Pride 469

24 "Fantastic and Satanic": The Illiberal Theology of Donoso Cortes and Carl Schmitt 488

25 The Oblivion of Being: Martin Heidegger's Reconstruction of Western Philosophy 513

26 The Disenchantment of the World: Max Weber and the Problem of Nihilism 549

Part 4 Joy

27 The Worm in the Blood: Spinoza's Conception of Science 589

28 The God of Sufficient Reason: Physics after Spinoza 620

29 "Endless Forms Most Beautiful": Darwin's Divine Biology 661

30 The Navel of the Dream: Freud and the Science of the Mind 702

31 "Man Is a God to Man": The Modern Research Ideal 755

32 The World as an Aesthetic Phenomenon: Art, Truth and Morality in Nietzsche's Philosophy 779

33 The Spider in the Moonlight: Nietzsche's Interpretation of the Will to Power as Art 811

34 "The Gift of Transmigration": The Theology of the Modern Novel 861

35 Genius and Sublimity: Painting since the Renaissance 926

36 Theological, Not Political: John Rawls' Christian Defense of Liberal Democracy 993

37 Democratic Vistas: Walt Whitman and the Divinity of Diversity 1024

Epilogue: "Downward to Darkness, on Extended Wings" 1067

Notes 1077

Index 1131

Editorial Reviews

09/26/2016
Situating his book between the spiritual polarities of atheist and true believer, Kronman (Education’s End) focuses on a third way of thinking about the afterlife: born-again paganism. Critiquing the loss of love and gratitude that comes with what he calls the self-defeating doctrine of Christian salvation and the disenchanted “loveless world of rights” it has created (“the poisonous fruit of the Christian religion”), Kronman recommends a religion that “reconciles the longing to be close to God with the ideals of our secular age.” Part intellectual history and part doctrinal statement, this massive confessional work is concerned with humans making their way in the modern world with joy and gratitude. In order to make his case, Kronman seeks to dissolve what he sees as Aristotle’s errors and to deconstruct the disenchanting philosophy of Christian salvation. Furthermore, he explores the practical implications of born-again pagan theology, specifically through the writings of Baruch Spinoza (the book’s hero), Walt Whitman, and Friedrich Nietzsche. The book is daunting in length (over 1,000 pages), and its unapologetic emphasis on Western philosophy (to the neglect of philosophies stemming from other worldviews) limits it from being truly universal in scope. However, what the book diligently provides is an intellectual history of neo-paganism and a commendable attempt at navigating the practical ethics of what a post-Christian society would look like. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"An astonishing, . . . epically ambitious book. . . . An intellectual adventure story based on the notion that ideas drive history, and that to dedicate yourself to them is to live a bigger, more intense life."—David Brooks, New York Times

“[This] beautifully written book is illuminating and inspiring. It shows that all of us can try, in our own ways, to solve the riddle of existence.”—Joshua Rothman, New Yorker (from ‘Books We Loved in 2017’)
 

"The book diligently provides . . . an intellectual history of neo-paganism and a commendable attempt at navigating the practical ethics of what a post-Christian society would look like."—Publishers Weekly

"Impressive and thought provoking."—Choice​

"Classical theists, atheists, and agnostics alike would be foolish not to take seriously the complex argument of this immensely erudite, rigorous, and readable essay in 'pagan theology.'"—Miroslav Volf, author of Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World

"Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan is a monumental and profound achievement in re-enchanting the world by embracing the religious sensibility of such ‘heretics’ as Spinoza and Nietzsche. But the book is also a re-enchantment of philosophy. With immense erudition Kronman has restored philosophy to its classical role of addressing the innermost concerns of human existence and humanity’s ongoing struggle to reconcile itself with the world."—Moshe Halbertal, author of Maimonides: Life and Thought

"An extraordinary work of scholarship. There is no comparable work of such universal ambition and theological depth."—José Casanova, Georgetown University

"Anthony Kronman’s Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan is a big book about the largest of themes—theology and philosophy, science and psychology, ethics and politics, friendship and art. It is above all an attempt to work out a coherent and attractive theology suited to the modern world. It takes up questions of the deepest human importance and is beautifully written. A rich and ambitious work.”—Michael J. Sandel, author of What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

From the Publisher

“Anthony Kronman’s Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan is a big book about the largest of themes—theology and philosophy, science and psychology, ethics and politics, friendship and art. It is above all an attempt to work out a coherent and attractive theology suited to the modern world. It takes up questions of the deepest human importance and is beautifully written. A rich and ambitious work.”—Michael J. Sandel, author of What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets

Michael J. Sandel

“Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan is a monumental and profound achievement in re-enchanting the world by embracing the religious sensibility of such ‘heretics’ as Spinoza and Nietzsche. But the book is also a re-enchantment of philosophy. With immense erudition Kronman has restored philosophy to its classical role of addressing the innermost concerns of human existence and humanity’s ongoing struggle to reconcile itself with the world.”—Moshe Halbertal, author of Maimonides: Life and Thought

Moshe Halbertal

“Classical theists, atheists, and agnostics alike would be foolish not to take seriously the complex argument of this immensely erudite, rigorous, and readable essay in ‘pagan theology.’”—Miroslav Volf, author of Flourishing: Why We Need Religion in a Globalized World

Miroslav Volf

“An astonishing, . . . epically ambitious book. . . . An intellectual adventure story based on the notion that ideas drive history, and that to dedicate yourself to them is to live a bigger, more intense life.”—David Brooks, New York Times

New York Times - David Brooks