ABSTRACT

Is the affirmation or intensification of life a value in itself? Can life itself be thought? This book breaks new ground in religious and philosophical thinking on the concept of life. It captures a moment in which such thinking is regaining its force and attraction for scholars, and the relevance of thought to social, cultural, political and religious dilemmas about how and why to live. Bringing together original contributions by highly distinguished authors in the field of Continental philosophy of religion, including John D. Caputo, Pamela Sue Anderson, Philip Goodchild, Alison Martin and Don Cupitt, this book has a distinctiveness based on its refusal to sit easily within either secular philosophical or theological approaches. The concept of life mobilizes a thinking that crosses narrow disciplinary boundaries, whilst retaining philosophical rigour. Three sections explore the various dimensions of the question of life: The Politics of Life'; 'Life and the Limits of Thinking'; and 'Life and Spirituality'. This book will be of interest to a broad range of readers in the humanities, particularly to philosophers, theologians, cultural theorists and all those interested in philosophical or theological debates on the concept of life.

chapter |18 pages

Introduction

Irritating Life

part Section One|57 pages

The Politics of Life

chapter Chapter 1|18 pages

Believing in This Life

French Philosophy after Beauvoir

chapter Chapter 3|14 pages

Entangled Fidelities

Reassembling the Human

chapter Chapter 4|10 pages

Grace Jantzen

Violence, Natality and the Social

part Section Two|59 pages

Life and the Limits of Thinking

chapter Chapter 5|16 pages

Bodies without Flesh

Overcoming the Soft Gnosticism of Incarnational Theology

chapter Chapter 6|22 pages

From World to Life

Wittgenstein's Social Vitalism and the Possibility of Philosophy

chapter Chapter 7|20 pages

‘A Weariness of the Flesh'

Towards a Theology of Boredom and Fatigue

part Section Three|39 pages

Life and Spirituality

chapter Chapter 9|12 pages

Two Philosophies of Life

chapter Chapter 10|12 pages

Thinking and Life

On Philosophy as a Spiritual Exercise