Prophets of Extremity


Book Description

In this book, the author presents an interpretation of four thinkers: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida. In an attempt to place these thinkers within the wider context of the crisis-oriented modernism and postmodernism that have been the source of much of what is most original and creative in twentieth-century art and thought.




A Primer on Postmodernism


Book Description

Grenz examines the topography of postmodernism, a phenomenon everyone acknowledges, but has difficulty describing with precision. Of particular significance is his discussion of the challenges this cultural shift presents to the church.




The Prostitute and the Prophet


Book Description

The only consensus that has been reached on Hosea 1-3 is that it is a notoriously 'problematic' text. Sherwood unpicks this rather vague statement by examining the particular complexities of the text and frictions between the text and reader that conspire to produce such a disorientating effect. Four dimensions of the 'problem' are considered: the conflict between text and reader over the 'improper' relationship between Hosea and Gomer; the bizarre prophetic sign-language that conscripts people into a cosmic charade; the text's propensity to subvert its central theses; and the emergent tensions between the feminist reader and the text. Aiming to bring together literary criticism and biblical scholarship, this book provides lucid introductions to ideological criticism, semiotics, deconstruction and feminist criticism, and looks at the implications of these approaches not only for the book of Hosea but for biblical studies in general.




George Herbert's Christian Narrative


Book Description




Telling Stories


Book Description

Asks important questions about the very nature of stories and examines why we read stories rather than just learning the endings.




Foucault's Nietzschean Genealogy


Book Description

This is the first full-length study of the impact of Friedrich Nietzsche's writings on the thought of French philosopher Michel Foucault. Focusing on the notion of genealogy in the thought of both Nietzsche and Foucault, the author explores the three genealogical axes--truth, power, and the subject--as they gradually emerge in Foucault's writings. This complex of axes into which Foucault was drawn, especially as a result of his early history of madness, called forth his explicit adoption of a Nietzschean approach to his future work. By interpreting Foucault's Histoire de la folie in the light of Nietzsche's genealogy of tragedy, Mahon shows how the moral problematization of madness in history provides the historical conditions from which the three axes emerge. After tracing the gradual emergence of the three axes through Foucault's writings of the remainder of the 1960s, especially Les Mots et les choses, Mahon turns to Foucault's explicit methodological statements and his notion of genealogy and offers a reading of Foucault's L'archeologie du savoir, arguing that there is no chasm between Foucault's archaeological writings and his genealogies. The work concludes with an analysis of Foucault's final writings on the genealogy of modern subjectivity and an examination of how truth, power, and the subject operate for the modern psychoanalytic subject of desire.




Coleridge's Progress to Christianity


Book Description

"Best known as a romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge also mounted a strong challenge to the skepticism and relativism we inherit from the Enlightenment. Ronald C. Wendling shows Coleridge, modern in his critical spirit and chronic anxiety, nevertheless progressing toward a total head-and-heart acceptance of Church of England orthodoxy. The tension between Coleridge's poetic feeling for the divinity of the sensible world and his reverential sense of God's personality and transcendence stimulated this development." "Adopting a personalist approach to the study of Coleridge's thought, Wendling explains how the circumstances contributing to his addictive personality helped shape his spiritual and intellectual life."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




The Greatness of God


Book Description

With each passing day, our world seems to drift further and further away from the God of the Bible, divine creation, and Christian belief. This societal shift toward postmodernism and secularism is not a new development, however; the expanding and intensifying revolt against the biblical God and Christianity traces its roots back to the modern philosophies of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, which have given rise to many divergent views during the past three centuries, and become even more extreme in recent postmodernism. The Greatness of God: How God Is the Foundation of All Reality, Truth, Love, Goodness, Beauty, and Purpose stands as an intellectual counterweight to the prevailing winds of a secular postmodern world. Author Charles Frank Thompson argues that the consequences of this rejection of God and divine creation have not been benign. He traces the modern revolution in detail and describes its deleterious consequences, including the loss of the ultimate basis for universal truth, knowledge, meaning, and purpose. In The Greatness of God, Thompson explores a wide range of topics, including Christian theology, metaphysical philosophy, and an analysis of modern thought and art. He examines the rich history of Christian poetry, prose, and art and takes a look at recent scientific discoveries that help us understand Christian teachings about God’s creation. He concludes with an exploration of the millennium, the eternal kingdom of God, and the spiritual state of America and Europe today.




Nietzsche and Soviet Culture


Book Description

This 1994 pioneering study documents the extent and diversity of the impact of Nietzschean ideas on Soviet literature and culture. It shows how these ideas, unacknowledged and reworked, entered and shaped that culture and stimulated the imagination of both supporters and detractors of the regime.




Historical Knowledge, Historical Error


Book Description

In the past thirty years, historians have broadened the scope of their discipline to include many previously neglected topics and perspectives. They have chronicled language, madness, gender, and sexuality and have experimented with new forms of presentation. They have turned to the histories of non-Western peoples and to the troubled relations between “the West” and the rest. Allan Megill welcomes these developments, but he also suggests that there is now confusion among historians about what counts as a justified account of the past. In Historical Knowledge, Historical Error, Megill dispels some of the confusion. Here, he discusses issues of narrative, objectivity, and memory. He attacks what he sees as irresponsible uses of evidence while accepting the art of speculation, which incomplete evidence forces upon historians. Along the way, he offers succinct accounts of the epistemological road historians have traveled from Herodotus and Thucydides through Leopold von Ranke and Alexis de Tocqueville, and on to Hayden White, Natalie Zemon Davis, and Lynn Hunt.