-
2The Death of God as Source of the Creativity of HumansPhilosophies 9 (3): 55. 2024.Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its …Read more
-
8Dante's Interpretive JourneyUniversity of Chicago Press. 1996.Franke reads the Divine Comedy through the insights into interpretation developed by hermeneutics, and at the same time uses Dante's poem, with its interpretive praxis based on a theological vision, to challenge prevailing assumptions about interpretation today. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.
-
1480Self-reflection, as the hallmark of the modern age, originates more profoundly with Dante than with Descartes. This book rewrites modern intellectual history, taking Dante’s lyrical language in Paradiso as enacting a Trinitarian self-reflexivity that gives a theological spin to the birth of the modern subject already with the Troubadours. Dante’s thought and work indicate an alternative modernity along the path not taken. This alternative shows up in Nicholas of Cusa’s conjectural science and in…Read more
-
46Apocalypse and the breaking-open of dialogue: A negatively theological perspectiveInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 47 (2): 65-86. 2000.
-
35Equivocations of “Metaphysics”Philosophy and Theology 20 (1-2): 29-52. 2008.Western intellectual tradition is brought to focus through the lens of Dante’s Comedia around the idea of the identity of being and intellect. All reality is dependent on God as pure Being, pure actuality of self-awareness (“thought thinking itself ”); everything else is or,equivalently, has form by its participation in this Being which is Intellect. The human soul can experience itself as divine by realizingthis identity of Being with Intellect through its own being refined to pure intellect an…Read more
-
16Franz Rosenzweig and the Emergence of a Postsecular Philosophy of the UnsayableInternational Journal for Philosophy of Religion 58 (3): 161-180. 2005.
-
58Involved Knowing: On the Poetic Epistemology of the HumanitiesThe European Legacy 16 (4). 2011.The humanities represent a type of knowledge distinct from, and yet encompassing, scientific knowledge. Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics in the tradition of the Geisteswissenschaften, as well as on the Latin rhetorical tradition and on Greek paideia, this essay presents humanities knowledge as "involved knowing." Science, in principle, abstracts from the subjective, psychological conditions of knowing, including its emotional and willful determinants, as introducing personal biases, and it …Read more
-
67Metaphor and the making of sense: The contemporary metaphor renaissancePhilosophy and Rhetoric 33 (2): 137-153. 2000.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 33.2 (2000) 137-153 [Access article in PDF] Metaphor and the Making of Sense: The Contemporary Metaphor Renaissance William Franke Metaphor has gained a new lease on life through the revival of rhetoric in recent decades. For promoters of "la nouvelle rhétorique," such as Gérard Genette and Roland Barthes, rhetoric came to coincide with a total science of language that is practically coextensive with all socia…Read more
-
31Praising the UnsayableEpoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 11 (1): 141-171. 2006.This essay represents a contribution to rewriting the history metaphysics in terms of what philosophy never said, nor could say. It works from the Neoplatonic commentary tradition on Plato’s Parmenides as the matrix for a distinctively apophatic thinking that takes the truth of metaphysical doctrines as something other than anything that can be logically articulated. The hymn is taken to epitomize the kind of discourse that arises in the wake of apophatic negation and witnesses to what the Logos…Read more
-
23Psychoanalysis as a Hermeneutics of the SubjectDialogue 37 (1): 65-82. 1998.RésuméLa connaissance herméneutique est généralement définie comme un savoir engagé, par opposition au savoir détaché que produit la méthode scientifique. La tension entre ces deux modèles dans la théorie psychanalytique de Freud est ici mise en évidence avec l'aide de Ricœur: cette théorie interprète des intentions conscientes, mais explique en même temps la vie psychique d'une façon mécaniste en termes depulsions somatiques. On montre ensuite comment le développement lacanien de la psychanalys…Read more
-
7Transcendence, Immanence, and Intercultural Philosophy (edited book)Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan. 2016.This book presents detailed discussions from leading intercultural philosophers, arguing for and against the priority of immanence in Chinese thought and the validity of Western interpretations that attempt to import conceptions of transcendence. The authors pay close attention to contemporary debates generated from critical analysis of transcendence and immanence, including discussions of apophasis, critical theory, post-secular conceptions of society, phenomenological approaches to transcenden…Read more
-
12Apophatic paths from Europe to China: regions without bordersSUNY Press. 2018.All or nothing? Nature in Chinese thought and the apophatic occident -- Nothing and the poetic making of sense -- Immanence: the last word? -- Universalism, or the nothing that is all -- An extra word on originality -- Intercultural dia-logue and its apophatic interstices -- Analytic table of contents.
-
9The Divine Vision of Dante's Paradiso: The Metaphysics of RepresentationCambridge University Press. 2021.In Canto XVIII of Paradiso, Dante sees thirty-five letters of Scripture - LOVE JUSTICE, YOU WHO RULE THE EARTH - 'painted' one after the other in the sky. It is an epiphany that encapsulates the Paradiso, staging its ultimate goal - the divine vision. This book offers a fresh, intensive reading of this extraordinary passage at the heart of the third canticle of the Divine Comedy. While adapting in novel ways the methods of the traditional lectura Dantis, William Franke meditates independently on…Read more
-
373Thinking in the Gap between the Cultures of Greece and ChinaProceedings of the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy 47 45-49. 2018.Are there deep differences between these cultures in their ways of thinking? How can they be described? There is no neutral language for doing so. One can doubt all claims to deep essence as being metaphysical illusions and figments. However, the differences are certainly experienced. They can be characterized negatively. This is where Chinese and Western viewpoints meet. Whereas Jullien finds the cultural Other enabling him to think otherwise and effectively to keep the recursive self-negating …Read more
-
8Equivocations of “Metaphysics”Philosophy and Theology 20 (1-2): 29-52. 2008.Western intellectual tradition is brought to focus through the lens of Dante’s Comedia around the idea of the identity of being and intellect. All reality is dependent on God as pure Being, pure actuality of self-awareness (“thought thinking itself ”); everything else is or,equivalently, has form by its participation in this Being which is Intellect. The human soul can experience itself as divine by realizingthis identity of Being with Intellect through its own being refined to pure intellect an…Read more
-
27Professional Dantology and the Human Significance of Dante StudiesDiacritics 42 (4): 54-71. 2014.
-
27Apophatic pathsAngelaki 17 (3): 7-16. 2012.Theology, particularly negative theology (which maintains that we can know only what God is not), has taken the lead historically in developing reflection on the limits of language and the beyond o...
-
36Dante's Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Prophetic Voice and Vision in the Malebolge (Inferno XVIII–XXIII)Philosophy and Literature 36 (1): 111-121. 2012.By exposing itself as fiction, Dante’s poetry becomes true. Especially the Malebolge stages a relentless self-critique by Dante of his prophetic voice and the presumption of a human poet who imitates divine prophecy through merely human counterfeits. This self-deconstruction opens the poem to being informed from above and beyond itself by an authority not its own: divine grace can work the revelation of truth directly within interpretive acts of readers focused on the “doctrine hiding beneath …Read more
-
270Virgil, history, and prophecyPhilosophy and Literature 29 (1): 73-88. 2005.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 29.1 (2005) 73-88 [Access article in PDF] Virgil, History, and Prophecy William Franke Vanderbilt University Virgil has been very widely acclaimed as a prophet, but the grounds of this acclaim have shifted in the course of history. From ancient and especially from medieval times, this recognition was traditionally accorded him first and foremost, if not exclusively, on the basis of a passage from the Fourth …Read more
-
34On the Poetic Truth that is Higher than HistoryInternational Philosophical Quarterly 50 (4): 415-430. 2010.Porphyry‘s “On the Cave of the Nymphs” inaugurates a style of philosophicoallegorical interpretation of literary texts that flourished in antiquity and finds analogues in criticism down to the present. It is distinguished by its use of literary interpretation to think through speculative problems of philosophy and theology. Although it became suspect in terms of Enlightenment philological principles prescribing interpretation of the text “on its own terms,” this kind of criticism reveals the ori…Read more
-
5A Philosophy of the UnsayableUniversity of Notre Dame Press. 2014.In _A Philosophy of the Unsayable_, William Franke argues that the encounter with what exceeds speech has become the crucial philosophical issue of our time. He proposes an original philosophy pivoting on analysis of the limits of language. The book also offers readings of literary texts as poetically performing the philosophical principles it expounds. Franke engages with philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion in the debate over negative theology and shows how apophaticism infilt…Read more
-
10Dante's Inferno as Poetic Revelation of Prophetic TruthPhilosophy and Literature 33 (2): 252-266. 2009.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dante's Inferno as Poetic Revelation of Prophetic TruthWilliam FrankeIDante's Inferno demands to be understood as the culmination of a series of visits to the underworld in ancient epic tradition. Dante's most direct precedent is Aeneas's journey to meet his father in Hades, as told by Virgil in Book VI of the Aeneid. Aeneas's voyage is modeled in turn on Odysseus's encounter with shades of Hades in Book XI of the Odyssey. The epic q…Read more
-
268Varieties and valences of unsayabilityPhilosophy and Literature 29 (2): 489-497. 2005.Examples of unsayability of the most disparate sorts are cited from literature (Shakespeare, Melville, James, Aeschylus, and others) in order to suggest the uncircumscribable diversity of motives for unsayability. The question is whether they all have anything in common. When something cannot be said because of politeness or obscenity or deceit or strategy, does this have anything to do with the metaphysical motives for unsayability? These things are not per se unsayable but only conditionall…Read more
-
138Dante's inferno as poetic revelation of prophetic truthPhilosophy and Literature 33 (2). 2009.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dante's Inferno as Poetic Revelation of Prophetic TruthWilliam FrankeIDante's Inferno demands to be understood as the culmination of a series of visits to the underworld in ancient epic tradition. Dante's most direct precedent is Aeneas's journey to meet his father in Hades, as told by Virgil in Book VI of the Aeneid. Aeneas's voyage is modeled in turn on Odysseus's encounter with shades of Hades in Book XI of the Odyssey. The epic q…Read more
-
On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts: Volume 2: Modern and Contemporary Transformations (edited book)University of Notre Dame Press. 2007.“Any writer worth his salt knows that what cannot be spoken is ultimately the thing worth speaking about; yet most often this humbling awareness is unsaid or covered up. There are some who have made it their business, however, to court failure and acknowledge defeat, to explore the impasse of words before silence. William Franke has created an anthology of such explorations, undertaken in poetry and prose, that stretches from Plato to the present. Whether the subject of discourse is All or Nothi…Read more
-
20Augustine’s Confessions and the Transcendental Ground of Consciousness, or How Literary Narrative Becomes Prophetic RevelationPhilosophy and Literature 38 (1): 204-222. 2014.The generic paradigms for Augustine’s discourse include not only autobiography but also theology, philosophy, exegesis, and “confession.” However, most importantly of all, Augustine’s discourse is cast into the form of a dialogue with God. His life story, unfolding in a succession of anecdotes, forms a horizontal axis that is traversed by and wholly subsumed under a vertical axis, along which he converses directly with God. The point of view evoked through this dialogue is not a temporally finit…Read more
-
2Warren Ginsberg, Dante's Aesthetics of Being. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1999. Pp. xv, 175. $42.50 (review)Speculum 76 (3): 727-729. 2001.
-
Hermeneutics, Historicity, and Poetry as Theological Revelation in Dante's Divine ComedyIn Jan Lloyd Jones (ed.), Art and Time, Australian Scholarly Publishing. pp. 39. 2007.The classical is defined by Gadamer, following and adapting Hegel, as “self-significant” and “self-interpretive”. By its power of interpreting itself, the classic reaches into the present and addresses it. In so doing, the classical precedes, encompasses and anticipates latter-day interpretations within its own already-in-progress self-interpretation: “the classical preserves itself precisely because it is significant in itself and interprets itself; that is, it speaks in such a way that it is n…Read more
-
Vanderbilt UniversityProfessor
Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Philosophical Traditions |