Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God

by Thomas A. Carlson

Overview

How can one think and name an inconceivable and ineffable God? Christian mystics have approached the problem by speaking of God using "negative" language—devices such as grammatical negation and the rhetoric of "darkness" or "unknowing"—and their efforts have fascinated contemporary scholars. In this strikingly original work, Thomas A. Carlson reinterprets premodern approaches to God's ineffability and postmodern approaches to the mystery of the human subject in light of one another. The recent interest in mystical theological traditions, Carlson argues, is best understood in relation to contemporary philosophy's emphasis on the idea of human finitude and mortality.

Combining both historical research in theology (from Pseudo-Dionysius to Aquinas to Eckhart) and contemporary philosophical analysis (from Hegel and Nietzsche to Heidegger, Derrida, and Marion), Indiscretion will interest philosophers, theologians, and other scholars concerned with the possibilities and limits of language surrounding both God and human subjectivity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226092935
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	02/02/1999
Series:	Religion and Postmodernism
Edition description:	1
Pages:	322
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Thomas A. Carlson is professor of religious studies and founding director of the Humanities and Social Change Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Indiscretion: Finitude and the Naming of God and The Indiscrete Image: Infinitude and Creation of the Human, both also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Abbreviations of Main Texts Cited
Introduction: Finitude and the Naming of God
1: The Deaths of God in Hegel: Overcoming Finitude and Religious Representation
2: The Temporal Experience of Consciousness: Hegel's Difference of Consciousness and Heidegger's Ontological Difference
3: The Naming of God in Hegel's Speculative Proposition: The Circle of Language and Annulment of the Singular
4: The Mortal Difference: Death and the Possibility of Existence in Heidegger
5: Transcending Negation: The Causal Nothing and Ecstatic Being in Pseudo-Dionysius's Theology
6: The Naming of God and the Possibility of Impossibility: Marion and Derrida between the Theology and Phenomenology of the Gift
Conclusion: The Apophatic Analogy
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Merold Westphal

Any list of the best three books on postmedernism and theology would have to include Indiscretion. With a masterly knowledge of the relevant literatures and a graceful, lucid style, Carlson presents the question of naming God out of the radical finitude described by Heidegger and Derrida in its full force along with its own challenging response.

Edith Wyschogrod

With exemplary erudition and an unerring eye for what is new and significant in the philosophy of religion, Thomas Carlson analyzes God, finitude, the impossibility of the gift, and the language of negative theology.

Editorial Reviews

Carlson (religious studies, U. of California) combines historical research in theology and contemporary philosophical analysis to discuss the unknowability of God. He integrates the thought of such philosophers as Pseudo-Dionysius, Aquinas, Eckhart, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, and Marion. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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