Overcoming Onto-Theology: Toward a Postmodern Christian Faith

by Merold Westphal

Overview

Overcoming Onto-theology is a stunning collection of essays by Merold Westphal, one of America’s leading continental philosophers of religion, in which Westphal carefully explores the nature and the structure of a postmodern Christian philosophy. Written with characteristic clarity and charm, Westphal offers masterful studies of Heidegger’s early lectures on Paul and Augustine, the idea of hermeneutics, Schleiermacher, Hegel, Derrida, and Nietzsche, all in the service of building his argument that postmodern thinking offers an indispensable tool for rethinking Christian faith. A must read for every student and professor of continental philosophy and the philosophy of religion, Overcoming Onto-theology is an invaluable collection that brings together in one place fourteen provocative and lucid essays by one of the most important thinkers working in American philosophy today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823221295
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	08/25/2009
Series:	Perspectives in Continental Philosophy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	306
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Merold Westphal is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University and author of Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Uses of Modern Atheism.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	Introduction	ix
1.	Overcoming Onto-theology	1
2.	Heidegger's "Theologische" Jugendschriften	29
3.	Hermeneutics As Epistemology	47
4.	Appropriating Postmodernism	75
5.	Christian Philosophers and the Copernican Revolution	89
6.	Totality and Finitude in Schleiermacher's Hermeneutics	106
7.	Positive Postmodernism As Radical Hermeneutics	128
8.	Father Adam and His Feuding Sons: An Interpretation of the Hermeneutical Turn in Continental Philosophy	148
9.	Deconstruction and Christian Cultural Theory: An Essay on Appropriation	176
10.	Laughing at Hegel	197
11.	Derrida As Natural Law Theorist	219
12.	Faith As the Overcoming of Ontological Xenophobia	229
13.	Divine Excess: The God Who Comes After	256
14.	Nietzsche As a Theological Resource	285
	Index	303

Editorial Reviews

...A welcome addition to Christian philosophy and to the interpretation of religious themes in contemporary Continental thought.

Philosophia Christi

Westphal here brings together his discussions over the last decade of how Christianity can and should engage and appropriate post-modernism….it’s easily the best contribution to the discussion that I know of.”——Nicholas Wolterstorff, Yale University

From the Publisher

Westphal's arguments are illuminating and provocative...

Academic Printing and Publishing

Westphal here brings together his discussions over the last decade of how Christianity can and should engage and appropriate post-modernism….it’s easily the best contribution to the discussion that I know of.

Yale University - Nicholas Wolterstorff