ABSTRACT

This book expounds and analyses notions of transcendence, creation and incarnation reflectively and personally, combining both philosophical and religious insights. Preferring tender-minded approaches to reductively materialistic ones, it shows some ways in which reductive approaches to human affairs can distort the appreication of our lives and activities.

In the book’s first half it examines a number of aspects of human life and experience in the thought of Darwin, Ruskin, and Scruton with a view to exploring the extent to which there could be intimations of transcendence. The second half is then devoted to outlining an account of divine creation and incarnation, deriving initially, though not uncritically, from the thought of Simone Weil. The text concludes by examining the extent to which grace is needed to engage in religious practice and belief.

Taking in art, literature, music and classical Greek writings, this is a multifaceted thesis on transcendence. It will, therefore, will be of keen interest to any scholar of Philosophy of Religion, Theology, Aesthetics and Metaphysics.

part I|114 pages

Transcendence

chapter 1|20 pages

The scope of philosophy

chapter 2|39 pages

Darwinian tensions

chapter 3|14 pages

Epistemology and the anthropic principle

chapter 5|15 pages

The great absence

Scruton’s cognitive dualism

part II|100 pages

Creation and incarnation

chapter 6|68 pages

Why? Creation and incarnation?

chapter 7|20 pages

This is the place

Reflections on the reality of incarnation

chapter 8|10 pages

Conclusion