Transforming Philosophy and Religion Love's Wisdom [Paperback]

Norman Wirzba, Bruce Ellis Benson, and an international group of philosophers and theologians describe how various expressions of philosophy are transformed by the discipline of love. What is at stake is how philosophy colors and shapes the way we receive and engage each other, our world, and God. Focusing primarily on the Continental tradition of philosophy of religion, the work presented in this volume engages thinkers such as St. Paul, Meister Eckhart, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Derrida, Marion, Zizek, Irigaray, and Michele Le Doeuff. Emerging from the book is a complex definition of the wisdom of love which challenges how we think about nature, social justice, faith, gender, creation, medicine, politics, and ethics.

Norman Wirzba is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Georgetown College. He is author of The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age and editor (with Bruce Ellis Benson) of The Phenomenology of Prayer.

Bruce Ellis Benson is Associate Professor and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Wheaton College. He is author of Pious Nietzsche (IUP, 2007). He is editor (with Kevin Vanhoozer and James K. A. Smith) of Hermeneutics at the Crossroads (IUP, 2006).

. . . these essays in Transforming Philosophy and Religion offer a resounding affirmation of St. Paul's proclamations about the emptiness of knowledge without love (I Corinthians 13). Given its contributors (esp. Caputo and Wirzba) and the topics that they engage (e.g., Paul, Zizek, etc.), it will be of particular interest to the aspiring theologians of the emerging church.Dec. 5, 2008The strength of this collection of essays, all sharing in their continental-philosophical bent, lies mainly in its extreme relevance and its apparent 'call to action' for thinkers of philosophical and religious thought.

Introduction Norman Wirzba and Bruce Ellis Benson
Part 1. The Nature of the Quest
1. The Primacy of Love Norman Wirzba