Finite Transcendence Existential Exile and the Myth of Home [Hardcover]

Finite Transcendence: Existential Exile and the Myth of Home is a readable and moving analysis of Camus's absurdity in terms of exile.In this dark yet optimistic book, Steven Burr demonstrates that exile is more than simply a condition of bodily displacement; it is also something basic to the ontological structure of all human existence. Every one of us is in existential exile, longing to find home in a world that rebuffs our desires. Burr not only challenges us to confront this ontological truth but also draws on the work of Albert Camus in order to suggest a strategy to find happiness within the limits of our finitude. Penetrating, thorough and clearly argued, Finite Transcendence will be of interest to readers concerned with existential issues related to nihilism, human alienation and the religious quest for wholeness.Finite Transcendence: Existential Exile and the Myth of Home introduces and situates existential exile as an experience of the fundamental finitude of human existence and demonstrates how a particular way of responding in faith may enable one to find home in exile. Using the literary and philosophical oeuvre of Albert Camus as a model, this book demonstrates the manner in which mythic literature can both present and engage the condition of exile toward its possible transcendence.Absurdity, time, deatheach poses a profound threat to Being, compelling us to face our limits and our finitude. Yet what does it mean to fully realize and experience these threats? Finite Transcendence: Existential Exile and the Myth of Home presents a thoughtful and thorough examination of these challenges and questions, arguing the universality of the realization of finitude in the experience of exile. By tracing the historical presence and experience of notions of faith and exile in Western thought from the Ancient Greeks to the present, Steven A. Burr demonstrates the character of each as fundamental constitutive components of what it means to be human. The bookl#(