Philosophy and Salvation: An Essay on Wisdom, Beauty, and Love as the Goal of Life

by Carlos Blanco

Overview

We all seek salvation, claims Blanco, because we all become prisoners of negativity. Humanity wants to be saved, we want to overcome the negativity that so often enslaves us. But, where is the saviour to be found, and where is the source of salvation? In Philosophy and Salvation Blanco argues that salvation may only come from the infinite springs of the word. 'The word saves us: the word of science, the word manifested in art, the word of a society which promises something for itself . . . Humanity understands itself through language: human beings use words in order to know each other and to cooperate in the edification of something that may transcend them. The word invites us, and in fact leads us to transcendence. This is salvation: to inaugurate a new world in which the former negativity may be overcome'. Blanco looks back over the history of philosophical and theological thought to bring his argument to life for all seeking salvation today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780718892937
Publisher:	The Lutterworth Press
Publication date:	01/31/2013
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x (d)

About the Author

Carlos Blanco is the author of El pensamiento de la apocaliptica judia, Why Resurrection? (Pickwick Publications), and Mentes maravillosas que cambiaron la humanidad. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University, and he is currently a researcher and professor at Instituto de Cultura y Sociedad (Spain).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Salvific Dimension of Thought
Part 1: In Search of Fundamentum
1 Philosophy beyond Science
2 The Senses of Being
3 The Dynamism of Being
Excursus: On the Dimensions of Being and the Limitations
of the Principle of Non-contradiction
Part 2: Fundamentum in History
4 Consciousness beyond the World: Freedom
5 Freedom beyond Itself: Solidarity
6 Solidarity beyond Itself: Creation
Excursus: ASalvific History forAll
Excursus: From the “Thrownness” into the World to the
Kingdom of Ends
Excursus: The Concept of Religion and the Scope of
Theology
Excursus: The Names of Humanity and the Utopia of a
Redeemed Past
Part 3: Questioning as Salvation
7 Death as Challenge
8Wisdom, Love, and Beauty
Epilogue: Only a God Can Still Save Us
Appendices
AppendixA:Hegel:History, Theodicy,Art, and Redemption
Appendix B: Dilthey and the Legitimacy of the “Sciences of
the Spirit”
Appendix C: Religion as Illusion in Sigmund Freud
Appendix D: The Conception of God as Das Ganz-Andere
in Rudolf Otto
Appendix E: God, the Future, and the Fundamentum of
History in Wolfhart Pannenberg
Appendix F: The Rose and Its Reason
Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Can we still conceive of philosophy as thinking oriented toward the future? Can philosophy reassume the right to ponder a human novum? Furthermore, can it do so without incurring in the sort of mysticism that is foreign both to the life and the human sciences? In sum, can we substitute expectation for melancholy? These are some of the questions tackled by this book. . . . Carlos Blanco trails a path that leaves behind the times of deconstruction and the hermeneutics of suspicion."
—Jose Luis Villacanas Berlanga, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Editorial Reviews

""Philosophy and Salvation is an intellectual cum insightful well researched book which explores humanity in an engaging approach of classical, modern, continental philosophy and philosophers."-Romero D'Souza, Theological Book Review, Vol. 26 No. 2, 2015"

From the Publisher