The Other Calling Theology, Intellectual Vocation and Truth [Hardcover]

What is the true calling of the intellectual? In this provocative new book, Andrew Shanks presents a distinctive fresh answer. The Other Calling is a systematic riposte both to the elitism of philosophy in the heritage of Plato, and to the typical individualism of Plato's philosophic opponents. Here, instead, intellectual integrity is identified with a form of priesthood.

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• Asserts that intellectuals are critical to bringing together the common aspirations of a community
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• Offers a strikingly original approach to the moral and political aspects of theology’s relationship with philosophy, exploring the perspectives of both disciplines
  
• Draws on the work and thought of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Agnostics, and Atheists
  
• Argues for a new, religiously multicultural “priesthood of all thinkers”, considering how once, all intellectuals were as a matter of course also priests
  
• Published in the new and prestigious Illuminations series

Introduction: Why Theology? / What is an Intellectual?.

PART I: PHILOSOPHY.

1. The Incompleteness of Philosophy Alone.

2. Philosophy and Folk Religion: Two 'Forms' for a Single 'Content'.

3. 'Philosophic Politics' (i): Strauss amongst 'the Moderns' and 'the Postmoderns'.

4. 'Philosophic Politics' (ii): Strauss and 'the Ancients'.

5. Anti-Philosophical Philosophy (i): Kojève's Critique of the 'Cloistered Mind'.

6. Anti-Philosophical Philosophy (ii): Epicurus, Rousseau.

PART II: THEOLOGY.