Apophasis has become a major topic in the humanities, particularly in philosophy, religion, and literature. This two-volume anthology gathers together most of the important historical works on apophaticism and illustrates the diverse trajectories of apophatic discourse in ancient, modern, and postmodern times. William Franke provides a major introductory essay on apophaticism at the beginning of each volume, and shorter introductions to each anthology selection. Franke is an excellent guide. In the introductions to both volumes, he traces ways in which the selections are linked by common concerns and conceptions, rhetorical strategies, and spiritual or characteristic affinities. The selections in both volumes explore, in one way or another, a fundamental challenge: how can human beings talk about a God who defies language, and more generally, how can they use their limited language to express the unlimited, open nature of their existence and relations to others? In the first volume, "Classic Formulations", Franke offers excerpts from Plato, Plotinus, Damascius, the Bible, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, Maimonides, Rumi, Thomas Aquinas, Marguerite Porete, Dante, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross, among others. The second volume, "Modern and Contemporary Transformations" contains texts by Holderlin, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Dickinson, Rilke, Kafka, Rosenzweig, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Weil, Schoenberg, Adorno, Beckett, Celan, Levinas, Derrida, Marion, and more. Both volumes of "On What Cannot be Said" underscore the significance of the apophatic tradition. Scholars and students in all branches of the humanities will find these volumes instructive and useful.

The Reading Augustine series presents concise, personal readings of St. Augustine of Hippo from leading philosophers and religious scholars. John Rist takes the reader through Augustine's ethics, the arguments he made and how he arrived at them, and shows how this moral philosophy remains vital for us today. Rist identifies Augustine's challenge to all ideas of moral autonomy, concentrating especially on his understanding of humility as an honest appraisal of our moral state. He looks at thinkers who accept parts of Augustine's evaluation of the human condition but lapse into bleakness and pessimism since for them God has disappeared. In the concluding parts of the book, Rist suggests how a developed version of Augustine's original vision can be applied to the complexities of modern life while also laying out, on the other hand, what our moral universe would look like without Augustine's contribution to it.

In 1906, American humorist Mark Twain published a sixty-page essay entitled "What is man?" Consisting of an interminable dialogue between a senior citizen (who believes that man is just a machine) and a young man (who believes nothing in particular but is open to persuasion), it wasn't one of his finest books. But at least he tried. Authors since then seem to have avoided the subject like the plague, often tackling the respective roles of men and women in society but seldom asking deeper questions about what it means to be human. When the psalmist asked, "What is man?" (Psalm 8 v.4) he was, I think, seeking an altogether more profound answer. Avoidance of the subject is all the more strange because there has never been a time like our own when curiosity about human origins and destiny has been greater, or the answers on offer more hotly disputed. It's a safe bet that any attempt to give the "big picture" on the origin, nature and specialness of mankind will be contentious -which might explain why writers have generally fought shy of it. Yet at heart it is the question most of us really do want answered, because the answer defines that precious thing we call our identity, both personally and as a race. The Psalmist did, of course, offer his own answer three millennia ago. Man, he claimed, was created by God for a clearly defined purpose - to exercise dominion over planet earth and (by implication) to ultimately share something of the glory of the divine nature. The rest, as they say, is history, but it's not a happy tale. As Mark Twain says in another essay; "I can't help being disappointed with Adam and Eve". Not surprisingly, then, a large proportion of humanity today are looking for alternative solutions, accepting the challenge of the Psalmist's question without embracing the optimism of his answer. In this book we are going to consider the alternative solutions on offer by considering what it means to be human against the backgrounds of cosmology (man's place in the universe), biology (man's place in the animal kingdom), and psychology (man's consciousness and mind). Finally, we return to the biblical context, arguing that the Psalmist got it right after all.Don't let the science-sounding stuff put you off. Like its popular prequel, "Who made God? Searching for a theory of everything", this book is written with a light touch in a reader-friendly and often humorous style. It is intended specifically for the non-expert, with homely verbal illustrations designed to explain and unpack the technicalities for the lay-person. As Dr. Paul Copan (Pledger Family Chair of Philosophy and Ethics, Palm Beach Atlantic University) says, "Edgar Andrews has a way of making the profound accessible. His scholarship informs the reader about key questions of our time, offering wise guidance and illumination."

The Palgrave Handbook of Radical Theology is the definitive guide to radical theology and the commencement for new directions in that field. For the first time, radical theology is addressed and assessed in a single, comprehensive volume, including introductory and historical essays for the beginner, essays on major figures and their thought, and shorter articles on various themes, concepts, and related topics. This book is a seminal work for the radical theology movement. It clarifies origins and demonstrates the exigency and utility of current figures and issues. A useful and essential guide for newcomers and veterans in the field, this volume serves as both a reference work and an introduction to omitted or forgotten topics within contemporary discussions.

An examination of the doctrine of God in the theological construction of Stephen Charnock, exploring his use of reason and his commitment to experiential faith. This study explores Charnock's doctrine of the knowledge of God to discover his contributions to the Restoration English Puritan understanding of a balance of head and heart. Charnock paved a distinctive trail in the midst of diverse paths the Restoration Puritans were taking, but he also maintained certain characteristics, which were common to the Puritan way.

The Hegel Lectures Series Series Editor: Peter C. Hodgson Hegel's lectures have had as great a historical impact as the works he himself published. Important elements of his system are elaborated only in the lectures, especially those given in Berlin during the last decade of his life. The original editors conflated materials from different sources and dates, obscuring the development and logic of Hegel's thought. The Hegel Lectures series is based on a selection of extant and recently discovered transcripts and manuscripts. Lectures from specific years are reconstructed so that the structure of Hegel's argument can be followed. Each volume presents an accurate new translation accompanied by an editorial introduction and annotations on the text, which make possible the identification of Hegel's many allusions and sources. Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God Hegel lectured on the proofs of the existence of God as a separate topic in 1829. He also discussed the proofs in the context of his lectures on the philosophy of religion (1821-31), where the different types of proofs were considered mostly in relation to specific religions. The text that he prepared for his lectures in 1829 was a fully formulated manuscript and appears to have been the first draft of a work that he intended to publish and for which he signed a contract shortly before his death in 1831. The 16 lectures include an introduction to the problem of the proofs and a detailed discussion of the cosmological proof. Philipp Marheineke published these lectures in 1832 as an appendix to the lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with an earlier manuscript fragment on the cosmological proof and the treatment of the teleological and ontological proofs as found in the 1831 philosophy of religion lectures. Hegel's 1829 lectures on the proofs are of particular importance because they represent what he actually wrote as distinct from auditors' transcriptions of oral lectures. Moreover, they come late in his career and offer his final and most seasoned thinking on a topic of obvious significance to him, that of the reality status of God and ways of knowing God. These materials show how Hegel conceived the connection between the cosmological, teleological, and ontological proofs. All of this material has been newly translated by Peter C. Hodgson from the German critical editions by Walter Jaeschke. This edition includes an editorial introduction, annotations on the text, and a glossary and bibliography.

Jesus the Radical: The Parables and Modern Morality connects the lessons of six parables of the New Testament with philosophical issues structured around contemporary morality and the art of leading a good human life. In this manner, Raymond Angelo Belliotti highlights just how radical was the historical Jesus' moral message and how enormous a challenge he raised to the conventional wisdom of his time. More important, this book demonstrates how deeply opposed is Jesus' moral message to the dominant moral understandings of our time. Although our conventional morality is generally profoundly influenced by Judeo-Christianity, several of Jesus' revolutionary insights have been marginalized. By imagining how our world would appear if those insights were highlighted, we can perceive more clearly the people we are and the people we might become. Belliotti's analysis of the parables will be of keen interest to professional philosophers, theologians, and educated lay people interested in the connections between religion and philosophy.

The aim of this study is to present, as far as possible, a general description of the theory of the sign and signification in Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), with a view to its evaluation and implications for the study of semiotics. Accurate studies for subject, discipline, and significance have not yet given an organic and systematic vision of Augustine's theory of the sign. The underlying aspiration is that such an endeavour will prove to be beneficial to the scholars of Augustine's thought as well as to those with a keen interest in the history of semiotics. The study uses Augustine's own accounts to investigate and interpret the philosophical problem of the sign. The focus lies on the first decade of Augustine's literary production. The De dialectica, is taken as the terminus ad quo of the study, and the De doctrina christiana is the terminus ad quem. The selected texts show an explicit engagement with poignant discussion on the nature and structure of the sign, the variety of signs and their uses. Although Augustine's intention never was to establish a theory of meaning as an independent field of study, he largely employed a theory of signs. Thus, Augustine's approach to signs is intrinsically meaningful.

Augustine's dialogue De libero arbitrio (On Free Choice) is, with his Confessions and City of God, one of his most important and widely read works. It contains one of the earliest accounts of the concept of 'free will' in the history of philosophy. Composed during a key period in Augustine's early career, between his conversion to Christianity and his ordination as a bishop, it has often been viewed as a an incoherent mixture of his 'early' and 'late' thinking. Simon Harrison offers an original account of Augustine's theory of will, taking seriously both the philosophical arguments and literary form of the text. Relating De libero arbitrio to other key texts of Augustine's, in particular the City of God and the Confessions, Harrison shows that Augustine approaches the problem of free will as a problem of knowledge: how do I know that I am free?, and that Augustine uses the dialogue form to instantiate his 'way into the will'.

William James has long been recognized as a central figure in the American philosophic tradition, and his ideas continue to play a significant role in contemporary thinking. Yet there has never been a comprehensive exploration of the thought of this seminal philosopher and psychologist. In Experiencing William James, renowned scholar James Campbell provides the fuller and more complete analysis that James scholarship has long needed. Commentators typically address only pieces of James's thought or aspects of his vision, often in an attempt to make the task of understanding James seem easier than it is or else to dismiss him as a philosophically unprepared if well-meaning amateur. The isolated nature of these examinations, too often divorced from the original contexts, badly hinders and even distorts their conclusions. Focusing on James's own ideas rather than his critiques of others, and drawing from a wealth of scholarship that includes the completed editions of his writings and correspondence, Experiencing William James provides an invaluable, comprehensive view of James as he participates in and advances the pragmatic spirit that is at the core of American philosophy. Taking the whole of the man's thinking into account, this book offers the richest perspective so far on this great but not fully comprehended intellectual.

This book explores the philosophical writings of Gerda Walther (1897-1977). It features essays that recover large parts of Walther's oeuvre in order to show her contribution to phenomenology and philosophy. In addition, the volume contains an English translation of part of her major work on mysticism. The essays consider the interdisciplinary implications of Gerda Walther's ideas. A student of Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Alexander Pfander, she wrote foundational studies on the ego, community, mysticism and religion, and consciousness. Her discussions of empathy, identification, the ego and ego-consciousness, alterity, God, mysticism, sensation, intentionality, sociality, politics, and woman are relevant not only to phenomenology and philosophy but also to scholars of religion, women's and gender studies, sociology, political science, and psychology. Gerda Walther was one of the important figures of the early phenomenological movement. However, as a woman, she could not habilitate at a German university and was, therefore, denied a position. Her complete works have yet to be published. This ground-breaking volume not only helps readers discover a vital voice but it also demonstrates the significant contributions of women to early phenomenological thinking.

This powerful collection of essays focuses on the representation of God in the Book of Ezekiel. With topics spanning across projections of God, through to the implications of these creations, the question of the divine presence in Ezekiel is explored. Madhavi Nevader analyses Divine Sovereignty and its relation to creation, while Dexter E. Callender Jnr and Ellen van Wolde route their studies in the image of God, as generated by the character of Ezekiel. The assumption of the title is then inverted, as Stephen L. Cook writes on 'The God that the Temple Blueprint Creates', which is taken to its other extreme by Marvin A. Sweeney in his chapter on 'The Ezekiel that God Creates', and finds a nice reconciliation in Daniel I. Block's chapter, 'The God Ezekiel Wants Us to Meet.' Finally, two essays from Christian biblical scholar Nathan MacDonald and Jewish biblical scholar, Rimon Kasher, offer a reflection on the essays about Ezekiel and his God.

The present book is a sequel to Ephraim Chamiel's two previous works The Middle Way and The Dual Truth-studies dedicated to the "middle" trend in modern Jewish thought, that is, those positions that sought to combine tradition and modernity, and offered a variety of approaches for contending with the tension between science and revelation and between reason and religion. The present book explores contemporary Jewish thinkers who have adopted one of these integrated approaches-namely the dialectical approach. Some of these thinkers maintain that the aforementioned tension-the rift within human consciousness between intellect and emotion, mind and heart-can be mended. Others, however, think that the dialectic between the two poles of this tension is inherently irresolvable, a view reminiscent of the medieval "dual truth" approach. Some thinkers are unclear on this point, and those who study them debate whether or not they successfully resolved the tension and offered a means of reconciliation. The author also offers his views on these debates.This book explores the dialectical approaches of Rav Kook, Rav Soloveitchik, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Samuel Hugo Bergman, Leo Strauss, Ernst Simon, Emil Fackenheim, Rabbi Mordechai Breuer, his uncle Isaac Breuer, Tamar Ross, Rabbi Shagar, Moshe Meir, Micah Goodman and Elchanan Shilo. It also discusses the interpretations of these thinkers offered by scholars such as Michael Rosenak, Avinoam Rosenak, Eliezer Schweid, Aviezer Ravitzky, Avi Sagi, Binyamin Ish-Shalom, Ehud Luz, Dov Schwartz, Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, Lawrence Kaplan, and Haim Rechnitzer. The author questions some of these approaches and offers ideas of his own. This study concludes that many scholars bore witness to the dialectical tension between reason and revelation; only some believed that a solution was possible. That being said, and despite the paradoxical nature of the dual truth approach (which maintains that two contradictory truths exist and we must live with both of them in this world until a utopian future or the advent of the Messiah), increasing numbers of thinkers today are accepting it. In doing so, they are eschewing delusional and apologetic views such as the identicality and compartmental approaches that maintain that tensions and contradictions are unacceptable.

How exactly could God achieve infallible foreknowledge of every future event, including the free actions of human persons? How could God exercise careful providence over these same events? Byerly offers a novel response to these important questions by contending that God exercises providence and achieves foreknowledge by ordering the times. The first part of the book defends the importance of the above questions. After characterizing the contemporary freedom-foreknowledge debate, Byerly argues that this debate has focused too narrowly on a certain argument for theological fatalism. This argument attempts to show that the existence of infallible divine foreknowledge poses a unique threat to the existence of creaturely libertarian freedom. The author argues, however, that bare existence of infallible divine foreknowledge cannot threaten freedom in this way; at most, the mechanics whereby this foreknowledge is achieved might so threaten human freedom. In the second part of the book, Byerly develops a model for understanding the mechanics whereby infallible foreknowledge is achieved which would not threaten creaturely libertarian freedom.According to the model, God infallibly foreknows every future event because God has placed the times which constitute the history of the world in primitive earlier-than relations to one another. After defending the consistency of this model of the mechanics of divine foreknowledge with creaturely libertarian freedom, the author applies the model to divine providence more generally. A novel defense of concurrentism is the result.