Theology and Contemporary Continental Philosophy

This book aims to put modern continental philosophy, specifically the sub-fields of phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, deconstruction, critical theory and genealogy, into conversation with the field of contemporary theology. Colby Dickinson demonstrates the way in which negative dialectics, or the negation of negation, may help us to grasp the thin (or non-existent) borders between continental philosophy and theology as the leading thinkers of both fields wrestle with their entrance into a new era. With the declining place of the sacred in the public sphere, we need to pay more attention than ever to how continental philosophy seems to be returning to distinctly theological roots.

Through a genealogical mapping of 20th-century continental philosophers, Dickinson highlights the ever-present Judeo-Christian roots of modern Western philosophical thought. Opposing categories such as immanence/transcendence, finitude/infinitude, universal/particular, subject/object, are at the center of works by thinkers such as Agamben, Marion, Vattimo, Levinas, Latour, Caputo and Adorno. This book argues that utilizing a negative dialectic allows us to move beyond the apparent fixation with dichotomies present within those fields and begin to perform both philosophy and theology anew.

Colby Dickinson is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University, Chicago. He is the author of Agamben and Theology (2011), Between the Canon and the Messiah (2013) and Words Fail: Theology, Poetry, and the Challenge of Representation (2016), as well as numerous articles on contemporary continental philosophy and theology. He is editor of The Postmodern Saints of France (2013) and The Shaping of Tradition: Context and Normativity (2013).

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter One: On the Relationship of Continental Philosophy to Theology

Chapter Two: Toward a Negative Dialectic

Chapter Three: The Gap within Existence as Theological Motif

Chapter Four: The Phenomenological (Re)turn

Conclusion

Bibliography