The Essential Caputo


Book Description

This landmark collection features selected writings by John D. Caputo, one of the most creative and influential thinkers working in the philosophy of religion today. B Keith Putt presents 21 of Caputo's most significant contributions from his distinguished 40-year career. Putt's thoughtful editing and arrangement highlights how Caputo's multidimensional thought has evolved from radical hermeneutics to radical theology. A guiding introduction situates Caputo's corpus within the context of debates in the Continental philosophy of religion and exclusive interview with him adds valuable information about his own views of his work.




The Essential Caputo


Book Description

This landmark collection features selected writings by John D. Caputo, one of the most creative and influential thinkers working in the philosophy of religion today. B Keith Putt presents 21 of Caputo's most significant contributions from his distinguished 40-year career. Putt's thoughtful editing and arrangement highlights how Caputo's multidimensional thought has evolved from radical hermeneutics to radical theology. A guiding introduction situates Caputo's corpus within the context of debates in the Continental philosophy of religion and exclusive interview with him adds valuable information about his own views of his work.




Truth


Book Description

In the first in a new series of easily digestible, commute-lengthbooks of original philosophy, renowned thinker John D. Caputo explores the many notions of 'truth', and what it really means Riding to work in the morning has has become commonplace. We ride everywhere. Physicians and public health officials plead with us to get out and walk, to get some exercise. People used to live within walking distance to the fields in which they worked, or they worked in shops attached to their homes. Now we ride to work, and nearly everywhere else. Which may seem an innocent enough point, and certainly not one on which we require instruction from the philosophers. But, truth be told, it has in fact precipitated a crisis in our understanding of truth. Arguing that our transportation technologies are not merely transient phenomena but the vehicle for an important metaphor about postmodernism, or even constitutive of postmodernism, John D. Caputo explores the problems posited by the way in which science, ethics, politics, art and religion all claim to offer us (the) "truth", defending throughout a "postmodern", or "hermeneutic" theory of truth, and posits his own surprising theory of the many notions of truth. John D. Caputo is a specialist in contemporary hermeneutics and deconstruction with a special interest in religion in the postmodern condition. The Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova University, he has spearheaded an idea he calls weak theology.




Cross and Cosmos


Book Description

John D. Caputo stretches his project as a radical theologian to new limits in this groundbreaking book. Mapping out his summative theological position, he identifies with Martin Luther to take on notions of the hidden god, the theology of the cross, confessional theology, and natural theology. Caputo also confronts the dark side of the cross with its correlation to lynching and racial and sexual discrimination. Caputo is clear that he is not writing as any kind of orthodox Lutheran but is instead engaging with a radical view of theology, cosmology, and poetics of the cross. Readers will recognize Caputo's signature themes—hermeneutics, deconstruction, weakness, and the call—as well as his unique voice as he writes about moral life and our strivings for joy against contemporary society and politics.




There's More to Life Than This


Book Description

For fans of TLC’s Long Island Medium and anyone interested in the big questions of life, death, and finding out what’s important in between, New York Times bestselling author and medium Theresa Caputo shares how she discovered her gift and her many encounters with Spirit. Beloved medium Theresa Caputo, star of the hit television show Long Island Medium, opens the door to her world and invites you to experience her exceptional gift of communicating with those who’ve crossed over to the Other Side. The always funny, frank, and down-to-earth medium—whether she’s talking to her family, the local butcher, or the souls of those who’ve passed on—began communicating with Spirit at the age of four, but didn’t fully accept her gift until she was thirty-three years old. She had a good life as a busy wife and working mom, but also suffered from chronic anxiety that, as it turned out, came from ignoring her abilities. Once Theresa began channeling, she realized that she felt much better after delivering a message from Spirit and releasing that energy. Since then she’ s used her extraordinary gift to help people heal from the loss of their loved ones. Theresa feels that it’s her purpose to make us all aware that there is more to life than what we see here in the physical world. She wants you to know that your deceased loved ones are safe and at peace, and that they’re now with you in a different way—watching over you, loving you, and assisting you from the Other Side. She also wants you to realize that the unexplainable things you sense and feel from these souls are real, and that it’s healthy and essential to acknowledge them. There’s More to Life Than This lends insight on how Theresa’s mediumship works, what happens to your soul when you die, what Spirit says Heaven is like, what the deceased want you to know, the importance of living a positive life, and the many roles that your family, friends, angels, guides, souls of faith, and God play here and in the afterlife. It also explores how to safely connect with Spirit, so that you can recognize when your loved ones are reaching out. Through Theresa’s personal story, compelling anecdotes, and fascinating client readings, she teaches us about how she communicates with Spirit and helps us to understand and appreciate the important lessons and touching messages that we’re meant to embrace every day.




The Weakness of God


Book Description

The author of What Would Jesus Deconstruct? makes “a bold attempt to reconfigure the terms of debate around the topic of divine omnipotence” (Choice). Applying an ever more radical hermeneutics—including Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology, Derridian deconstruction, and feminism—John D. Caputo breaks down the name of God in this irrepressible book. Instead of looking at God as merely a name, Caputo views it as an event, or what the name conjures or promises in the future. For Caputo, the event exposes God as weak, unstable, and barely functional. While this view of God flies in the face of most religions and philosophies, it also puts up a serious challenge to fundamental tenets of theology and ontology. Along the way, Caputo’s readings of the New Testament, especially of Paul’s view of the Kingdom of God, help to support the “weak force” theory. This penetrating work cuts to the core of issues and questions—What is the nature of God? What is the nature of being? What is the relationship between God and being? What is the meaning of forgiveness, faith, piety, or transcendence?—that define the terrain of contemporary philosophy of religion. “Caputo comes out of the closet as a theologian in this work.” —Catherine Keller, Drew University “Caputo has a gift for explaining Continental philosophy’s jargon succinctly and accurately, and despite technical and foreign terms, this book will engage upper-level undergraduates. Includes scriptural and general indexes . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice




The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida


Book Description

The Prayer and Tears of Jacques Derrida takes its point of departure from Derrida's more recent, sometimes autobiographical writings and closely examines the religious motifs that have emerged in his later works. John D. Caputo's provocative interpretation of Derrida's thinking also makes an original contribution to the question of the relevance of deconstruction for religion. Caputo's Derrida is a man of faith who bridges Jewish and Christian traditions. The deep messianic, apocalyptic, and prophetic tones in Derrida's writings, Caputo argues, bespeak his broken covenant with Judaism. Through its startling exploration of Derrida's impossible religion, the book sheds light on the implications of deconstruction for an understanding of religion and faith today--from back cover.




What Would Jesus Deconstruct? (The Church and Postmodern Culture)


Book Description

This provocative addition to The Church and Postmodern Culture series offers a lively rereading of Charles Sheldon's In His Steps as a constructive way forward. John D. Caputo introduces the notion of why the church needs deconstruction, positively defines deconstruction's role in renewal, deconstructs idols of the church, and imagines the future of the church in addressing the practical implications of this for the church's life through liturgy, worship, preaching, and teaching. Students of philosophy, theology, religion, and ministry, as well as others interested in engaging postmodernism and the emerging church phenomenon, will welcome this provocative, non-technical work.




Against Ethics


Book Description

A brilliant and witty postmodern critique of ethics, framed as a contemporary restaging of Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling. John D. Caputo undertakes a passionate, poetic, and satiric search for the basis of an ethics in the postmodern situation. Restaging Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, Caputo defends the notion of obligation without ethics, of responsibility without the support of ethical foundations. Retelling the story of Abraham and Isaac, he strikes the pose of a postmodern-day Johannes de Silentio, accompanied by communications from such startling figures as Johanna de Silentio, Felix Sineculpa, and Magdalena de la Cruz. In dialogue with the thought of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Derrida, and Lyotard, Caputo forges a challenging, original account of what is possible and what is not possible for a continentalist ethics today. “Against Ethics is a bold work. . . . A counterethics whose multiple voices will be heard long after the trivializing arguments of many analytic ethicists have vanished and the arcane formulations of many postmoderns have been jettisoned.” —Edith Wyschogrod “Caputo provides a brilliant new analysis of the limits of ethics. . . . Essential reading for anyone concerned with the philosophical issues raised in postmodernity.” —Drucilla Cornell “One of the most important works on philosophical ethics written in recent years. . . . Caputo speaks with a passion and concern that are rare in academic philosophy.” —Mark C. Taylor “Against Ethics is beautifully written, clever, learned, thought-provoking, and even inspiring.” —Theological Studies “Writing in the form of his ideas, Caputo offers the reader a truly exquisite reading experience. . . . His iconic style mirrors a truly refreshing honesty that draws the reader in to play.” —Quarterly Journal of Speech




Good Mourning


Book Description

Theresa Caputo, TLC’s Long Island Medium and the three-time New York Times bestselling author, teaches us how to ritualize and recover from the daily losses in our lives. Life on earth comes with losses that often go unrecognized, unacknowledged, and un-mourned. This invisible pain causes deeper emotional damage— devastation that Theresa Caputo has witnessed in many of her clients. Though they are suffering, they rarely understand where the anguish is coming from—or how to deal with it. Theresa’s clients often confuse their emotional distress with depression or anxiety. But it’s more than that. It’s grief, deep and profound, and it consumes the soul. The only relief, according to Theresa’s special gift she calls Spirit, is to pay more attention to how we experience, ritualize, and recover from the hurt in our lives. Once we name these feelings of grief, recognize the losses for what they are, and create mourning rituals around them, we can move through the pain and begin to heal. It isn’t just a good idea to mourn these types of upsets; it’s essential, so that we can then enjoy a fresh beginning.