God and the Liberation of Reason in French Philosophy

Providing a fresh perspective on recent philosophical developments in France, this exciting collection introduces Anglophone readers not only to a different side of well-known voices in the phenomenological debate around the divine but also highlights a number of important thinkers whose texts are less frequently translated into English. Focused on the question of reason, the collection demonstrates the philosophical rigor at work in contemporary French philosophy. Ably introduced and edited by Rumpza and Littlejohn, this collection will provide a wholly new way of engaging with the crucial work of current thinkers to broaden the field and activity of reason. * Christina M. Gschwandtner, Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University, USA * This is the most remarkable and comprehensive collection on recent trends in French philosophy of religion since the much-debated publication of Phenomenology and the Theological Turn a quarter of a century ago. While the latter volume inspired an at once intense and critical debate, triggered at around the same time by concerns first voiced by Mikel Dufrenne's adamant defense of a resolutely non-theological philosophy, the terrain has significantly shifted since and the need for polemics subsided. From a somewhat greater distance and on second thought, as it were, the name and concept of ""God"" can be seen as ""coming to mind,"" as Emmanuel Levinas had aptly put it. Moreover, ""God"" can now be treated as a historical motif and theme, whose semantic, axiological, affective, and imaginative repository allows contemporary thinkers to conceive of philosophical reason not only more deeply and broadly, intensively and extensively, but, thereby, also more freely. Competently selected and lucidly presented, the editors of the state of the art collection of essays are in our debt for making the most noteworthy contributors to what French phenomenology has currently on offer accessible to a wider reading public for the first time. * Hent de Vries, Paulette Goddard Professor of the Humanities, New York University, USA *