Fragments
The Existential Situation of Our Time: Selected Essays, Volume 1
9780226584508
Fragments
The Existential Situation of Our Time: Selected Essays, Volume 1
David Tracy is widely considered one of the most important religious thinkers in North America, known for his pluralistic vision and disciplinary breadth. His first book in more than twenty years reflects Tracy’s range and erudition, collecting essays from the 1980s to 2018 into a two-volume work that will be greeted with joy by his admirers and praise from new readers.
In the first volume, Fragments, Tracy gathers his most important essays on broad theological questions, beginning with the problem of suffering across Greek tragedy, Christianity, and Buddhism. The volume goes on to address the Infinite, and the many attempts to categorize and name it by Plato, Aristotle, Rilke, Heidegger, and others. In the remaining essays, he reflects on questions of the invisible, contemplation, hermeneutics, and public theology. Throughout, Tracy evokes the potential of fragments (understood both as concepts and events) to shatter closed systems and open us to difference and Infinity. Covering science, literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and non-Western religious traditions, Tracy provides in Fragments a guide for any open reader to rethink our fragmenting contemporary culture.
In the first volume, Fragments, Tracy gathers his most important essays on broad theological questions, beginning with the problem of suffering across Greek tragedy, Christianity, and Buddhism. The volume goes on to address the Infinite, and the many attempts to categorize and name it by Plato, Aristotle, Rilke, Heidegger, and others. In the remaining essays, he reflects on questions of the invisible, contemplation, hermeneutics, and public theology. Throughout, Tracy evokes the potential of fragments (understood both as concepts and events) to shatter closed systems and open us to difference and Infinity. Covering science, literature, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and non-Western religious traditions, Tracy provides in Fragments a guide for any open reader to rethink our fragmenting contemporary culture.
408 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2020
Philosophy: Ethics, Philosophy of Religion
Religion: Christianity, Philosophy of Religion, Theology, and Ethics
Reviews
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part 1: The Existential Situation of Our Time
1 Fragments: The Spiritual Situation of Our Time
2 The Ultimate Invisible: The Infinite
3 Responses to Horror and Suffering: The Responses of Tragedy and Some Religions
4 Christianity and Suffering
5 Metaphysics, Theology, and Mysticism
Part 2: Hermeneutics
6 Hermeneutical Reflections in the New Paradigm of Theology
7 Western Hermeneutics and Interreligious Dialogue
8 The Dialogical Turn of Contemporary Thought
9 Paul Ricoeur: Hermeneutics and the Dialectic of Religious Forms
Part 3: Publicness and Public Theology
10 Theology, Critical Social Theory, and the Public Realm
11 Religion in the Public Realm: Three Forms of Publicness
12 Practical Theology: Its Mystical-Prophetic Character
13 Argument, Dialogue, and the Soul in Plato
Part 4: Religion, Theology, and Dialogue
14 Metaphor and Religion: The Test Case of Christian Texts
15 Mystics, Prophets, Rhetorics: Religion and Psychoanalysis
16 Contemplation, Speculation, Action: Reflections on Orthodox Theology
Acknowledgments
Index
Part 1: The Existential Situation of Our Time
1 Fragments: The Spiritual Situation of Our Time
2 The Ultimate Invisible: The Infinite
3 Responses to Horror and Suffering: The Responses of Tragedy and Some Religions
4 Christianity and Suffering
5 Metaphysics, Theology, and Mysticism
Part 2: Hermeneutics
6 Hermeneutical Reflections in the New Paradigm of Theology
7 Western Hermeneutics and Interreligious Dialogue
8 The Dialogical Turn of Contemporary Thought
9 Paul Ricoeur: Hermeneutics and the Dialectic of Religious Forms
Part 3: Publicness and Public Theology
10 Theology, Critical Social Theory, and the Public Realm
11 Religion in the Public Realm: Three Forms of Publicness
12 Practical Theology: Its Mystical-Prophetic Character
13 Argument, Dialogue, and the Soul in Plato
Part 4: Religion, Theology, and Dialogue
14 Metaphor and Religion: The Test Case of Christian Texts
15 Mystics, Prophets, Rhetorics: Religion and Psychoanalysis
16 Contemplation, Speculation, Action: Reflections on Orthodox Theology
Acknowledgments
Index
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