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142Of Miracles and Special EffectsInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 50 (1-3). 2001.
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131From “ghost in the machine” to “spiritual automaton”: Philosophical meditation in Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Levinas (review)International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60 (1): 77-97. 2006.This essay discusses Stanley Cavell’s remarkable interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought against the background of his own ongoing engagement with Wittgenstein, Austin, and the problem of other minds. This unlikely debate, the only extensive discussion of Levinas by Cavell in his long philosophical career sofar, focuses on their different reception of Descartes’s idea of the infinite. The essay proposes to read both thinkers against the background of Wittgenstein’s model of philosophical me…Read more
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76“A greatest miracle”: Stanley Cavell, moral perfectionism, and the ascent into the ordinaryModern Theology 27 (3): 462-477. 2011.
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66The antinomy of death: Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno on utopia and hopeAngelaki 27 (1): 110-127. 2022.This article discusses the remarkable conversation between Ernst Bloch and Theodor W. Adorno regarding the relationship between utopia and death. It unpacks the antinomy of death and analyzes the m...
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49A religious canon for europe? Policy, education, and the Postsecular challengeSocial Research: An International Quarterly 80 (1): 203-232. 2013.
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44Minimal theologies: critiques of secular reason in Adorno and LevinasJohns Hopkins University Press. 2005.What, at this historical moment "after Auschwitz," still remains of the questions traditionally asked by theology? What now is theology's minimal degree? This magisterial study, the first extended comparison of the writings of Theodor W. Adorno and Emmanuel Levinas, explores remnants and echoes of religious forms in these thinkers' critiques of secular reason, finding in the work of both a "theology in pianissimo" constituted by the trace of a transcendent other. The author analyzes, systematize…Read more
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39Philosophy and the turn to religionJohns Hopkins University Press. 1999.If religion once seemed to have played out its role in the intellectual and political history of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. In this engaging study, Hent de Vries argues that a turn to religion discernible in recent philosophy anticipates and accompanies this development in the contemporary world. Though the book reaches back to Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and earlier, it takes its inspiration from the tradition of French phenomenology, notably Emmanuel …Read more
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26Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World (edited book)Columbia University Press. 2015.One can love and not forgive or out of love decide not to forgive. Or one can forgive but not love, or choose to forgive but not love the ones forgiven. Love and forgiveness follow parallel and largely independent paths, a truth we fail to acknowledge when we pressure others to both love and forgive. Individuals in conflict, sparring social and ethnic groups, warring religious communities, and insecure nations often do not need to pursue love and forgiveness to achieve peace of mind and heart. T…Read more
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20Paul and the Philosophers (edited book)Fordham University Press. 2021.The apostle Paul has reemerged as a force on the contemporary philosophical scene. Some of the most powerful recent affirmations of nonrepresentational, materialist, and event-oriented philosophies repeat topics and tropes of the ancient apostle. Paul is appropriated both for and against Kantian cosmopolitanism, psychoanalytic models of subjectivity and power, Schmittian political theologies, Derridean messianism, political universalism, and an ongoing refashioning of identity politics within po…Read more
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19In der Gewalt des theologisch-politischen DilemmasDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 52 (5). 2004.
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19Conversion and Renewal: Epitomising Phenomenology's Anti‐Naturalist Attitude 1Heythrop Journal 64 (2): 188-204. 2023.
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18LevinasIn Simon Critchley & William Ralph Schroeder (eds.), A Companion to Continental Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 1998.In sharp contrast with Heidegger's insistence that the metaphysics of presence, in particular the objectivation of beings in terms of their being “ready at hand” culminating in the techno‐scientific world‐view, be destructed and overcome in light of a more fundamental thinking of “presencing” or “coming into presence” (Anwesen), the philosophy of the infinitely Other introduced (or should we say: rearticulated) by Emmanuel Levinas marks a radical rupture with all ontology. Indeed, it breaks away…Read more
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17Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination (edited book)Stanford University Press. 1997.With the collapse of the bipolar system of global rivalry that dominated world politics after the Second World War, and in an age that is seeing the return of "ethnic cleansing" and "identity politics," the question of violence, in all of its multiple ramifications, imposes itself with renewed urgency. Rather than concentrating on the socioeconomic or political backgrounds of these historical changes, the contributors to this volume rethink the _concept_ of violence, both in itself and in relati…Read more
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17Chapitres à écrire : Jacques Derrida et la méditation sceptiqueRue Descartes 82 (3): 154-157. 2014.
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17Tiefendimension von SäkularitätDeutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 57 (2): 301-318. 2009.To analyse and explain Charles Taylor′s understanding of secularity in terms of optionality or plurality and to illuminate the nature of the hypothetical stance and the virtuality of beliefs it entails requires one to engage in a larger than empirical and, as it were, deeper than merely historical inquiry, one that is, if not metaphysical, then at least ontological or pre-ontological. The conditions of the secular age should, on this view, not be confused with the epistemological or, more br…Read more
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15Post-Theism: Reframing the Judeo-Christian Tradition (edited book)Peeters. 2000.What, if anything remains of religion after the demise of traditional theism and the theologies based upon it? What are the consequences of so-called Post-theism for the modern scholarly study of religion (in Religionswissenschaft and philosophical theology or church dogmatics, in the philosophy of religion as well as in the more recent phenomenon of comparitive religious studies)? This volume collects some thirty articles written in honor of Professor Hendrik Johan Adriaanse whose intellectual …Read more
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14Das Schibboleth der Ethik. Derrida und CelanIn Michael Wetzel & Jean-Michel Rabaté (eds.), Ethik der Gabe: Denken Nach Jacques Derrida, De Gruyter. pp. 57-80. 1993.
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13From “ghost in the machine” to “spiritual automaton”: Philosophical meditation in Wittgenstein, Cavell, and LevinasInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 60 (1-3): 77-97. 2006.This essay discusses Stanley Cavell’s remarkable interpretation of Emmanuel Levinas’s thought against the background of his own ongoing engagement with Wittgenstein, Austin, and the problem of other minds. This unlikely debate, the only extensive discussion of Levinas by Cavell in his long philosophical career sofar, focuses on their different reception of Descartes’s idea of the infinite. The essay proposes to read both thinkers against the background of Wittgenstein’s model of philosophical me…Read more
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11Violence and Testimony: On Sacrificing SacrificeIn Hent de Vries & Samuel Weber (eds.), Violence, Identity, and Self-Determination, Stanford University Press. pp. 14-43. 1997.
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105 Must We Mean What We Say? Seriousness and Sincerity in the Work of J. L. Austin and Stanley CavellIn Ernst van Alphen, Mieke Bal & Carel Smith (eds.), The Rhetoric of Sincerity, Stanford University Press. pp. 90-118. 2008.
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8Peeters 1989