Faith and Philosophy The Historical Impact

This book examines how Christian faith has historically impacted the notion of Nous or divine mind in Western thought up to and including the present. Christian faith is seen to have inaugurated an essential transformation over time of the ancient notion of divine mind and of thought in general. Beginning with an examination of Aristotle’s notion of essence, Plato’s creation myth in the Timaeus, and Plotinus’ One, it is shown how faith in the hands of Augustine and Aquinas fundamentally reshaped Western thought and made possible in the modern period the radical subjectivity of Descartes brought to perfection by Kant and Hegel. The strenuous counter-thinking of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Levinas is closely compared to its disarming alternative, the thinking of Jefferson, Emerson, and C. S. Peirce, the father of American pragmatism.

Contents: Preface; Creation ex nihilo and the Aristotelian essence; Descartes and the image of God; Kant, Hegel and the proof of God; Kierkegaard and the absurdity of faith; Jefferson, Emerson and the incarnate word; Nietzsche, Levinas and the death of God; The logic of faith, or, beyond modernity; Appendix: Thinking in the third millennium: looking without the looking glass; Index.

D.G. Leahy, Loyola College in Maryland, USA