Details

Subject(s)

• Prayer [Browse]
• Prayer—Philosophy [Browse]

Series

Perspectives in continental philosophy [More in this series]

Summary note

"The book offers an exploration of prayer within the perspective of post-Kantian philosophy. Against a background of traditional sources, including Augustine, The Cloud of Unknowing, and the seventeenth century French School of spirituality, the book uses Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, Berdyaev, Tillich, Marcel, Simone Weil, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Louis Chrétien to provide an interpretation of what is meant by the passivity and self-annihilation of the praying self, suggesting an 'apophatics of the personality'. Particular attention is given to the question of language and the implications of the role given to silence in traditional texts. It is argued that language remains a defining element of the human God-relationship and that silence is not to be construed as the negation of language but as the revelation of the depth of language itself. The basic structure of prayer is shown to be implicitly eschatological, oriented towards a coming Kingdom of justice and peace while, at the same time, expressing a deep desire for ontological homecoming, a tension manifest in, respectively, Levinas and Heidegger. Prayer calls for and develops a particular orientation of the self towards existence, corresponding to the virtue of humility, long understood as the basic Christian virtue. This is shown to be in tension with modernity's commitment to strong versions of autonomy. However, the choice of humility is not presented as the reinstatement of religious heteronomy but as a free choice of the praying self. Correlating with the contemporary resurgence of interest in mysticism and in existentialism and using a unique range of references, the book develops an understanding of prayer that aligns it with modern phenomenological explorations of the self and thus vindicates prayer as an existential possibility for the modern and postmodern self"-- Provided by publisher.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN

• 1531506836
• 9781531506834 (hardcover)
• 1531506828
• 9781531506827 (paperback)

OCLC

1393243566

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