PHILOSOPHY
FEBRUARY2018
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Liturgical Theologyafter Schmemann An Orthodox Reading of Paul Ricoeur Brian A. Butcher, Foreword by Andrew Louth, FBA
336 pages 9780823278756, Paper, $45.00 Orthodox Christianity and Contemporary Thought
While only rarely reflecting on liturgy, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913?2005) gave sustained attention to several themes pertinent to the interpretation of worship, including metaphor, narrative, subjectivity, and memory. Inspired by his well-known aphorism ?The symbol gives rise to thought,? Liturgical Theology after Schmemann offers an exploration of the symbolic world of the Byzantine Rite, culminating in a Ricoeurian analysis of its Theophany ?Great Blessing of Water.? The book examines two fundamental questions: (1) What are the implications of the philosopher?s oeuvre for liturgical theology at large? and (2) How does the adoption of a Ricoeurian hermeneutic shape the study of a particular rite? Taking the legacy of Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann as its point of departure, Butcher contributes to the renewal of contemporary Eastern Christian thought by engaging a spectrum of current theological and philosophical conversations. Brian A. Butcher is Assistant Professor in the Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at the University of St. Michael?s College, in the University of Toronto.
PHILOSOPHY
APRIL2018
Table of Contents
PlatoandtheInventionof Life Michael Naas Though the question of life (whether bios or z??) is not the explicit focus of any Platonic dialogue, it is, this book argues, an absolutely central and structuring question for all of Plato?s thought. This is nowhere more evident than in the Statesman, where the central myth of the two ages sketches out two very different kinds and valences of life and being. Plato and the Invention of Life offers a reading of Plato?s Statesman in order to ask about the question of life and being in Plato?s thought more generally. By characterizing being in terms of life, Plato in many of his later dialogues, including the Statesman, begins to discover? or, better, to invent? a notion of true or real life that would be opposed to all merely biological or animal life, a form of life that would be more valuable than everything we call life and every life that can actually be lived. Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. His books include The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments: Jacques Derrida?s Final Seminar and Miracle and Machine: Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media (both Fordham). 288 pages 9780823279685, Paper, $32.00
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