Reimagining the Sacred

Reimagining the Sacred

Richard Kearney Debates God with James Wood, Catherine Keller, Charles Taylor, Julia Kristeva, Gianni Vattimo, Simon Critchley, Jean-Luc Marion, John Caputo, David Tracy, Jens Zimmermann, and Merold Westphal

Contemporary conversations about religion and culture are framed by two reductive definitions of secularity. In one, multiple faiths and nonfaiths coexist free from a dominant belief in God. In the other, we deny the sacred altogether and exclude religion from rational thought and behavior. But is there a third way for those who wish to rediscover the sacred in a skeptical society? What kind of faith, if any, can be proclaimed after the ravages of the Holocaust and the many religion-based terrors since?

Richard Kearney explores these questions with a host of philosophers known for their inclusive, forward-thinking work on the intersection of secularism, politics, and religion. An interreligious dialogue that refuses to paper over religious difference, these conversations locate the sacred within secular society and affirm a positive role for religion in human reflection and action. Drawing on his own philosophical formulations, literary analysis, and personal interreligious experiences, Kearney develops through these engagements a basic gesture of hospitality for approaching the question of God. His work facilitates a fresh encounter with our best-known voices in continental philosophy and their views on issues of importance to all spiritually minded individuals and skeptics: how to reconcile God's goodness with human evil, how to believe in both God and natural science, how to talk about God without indulging in fundamentalist rhetoric, and how to balance God's sovereignty with God's love.
  • Table of Contents
  • Preface, by Richard Kearney
  • Introduction, by Jens Zimmermann
  • 1. God After God: An Anatheist Attempt to Reimagine God, by Richard Kearney
  • 2. Imagination, Anatheism, and the Sacred, Dialogue with James Wood
  • 3. Beyond the Impossible, Dialogue with Catherine Keller
  • 4. Transcendent Humanism in a Secular Age, Dialogue with Charles Taylor
  • 5. New Humanism and the Need to Believe, Dialogue with Julia Kristeva
  • 6. Anatheism, Nihilism, and Weak Thought, Dialogue with Gianni Vattimo
  • 7. What’s God? “A Shout in the Street”, Dialogue with Simon Critchley
  • 8. The Death of the Death of God, Dialogue with Jean-Luc Marion
  • 9. Anatheism and Radical Hermeneutics, Dialogue with John Caputo
  • 10. Theism, Atheism, Anatheism, a Panel Discussion with David Tracy, Merold Westphal, and Jens Zimmermann
  • Epilogue: In Guise of a Response, by Richard Kearney
  • Artist’s Note, by Sheila Gallagher
  • Notes
  • Index