Immortal Longings: Versions of Transcending Humanity

by Fergus Kerr

For all its thoroughly secular form, religious motifs play a much more significant part in a good deal of recent philosophy than might at first appear. Fergus Kerr's study – which is derived from his highly regarded Stanton lectures, delivered in the University of Cambridge in 1994/5 - focuses on the more or less obvious theological commitments of several much-discussed contemporary philosophers. By so doing, the author daringly extends the agenda of what is usually considered to be 'philosophy of religion'. Examining in turn Martha Nussbaum, Martin Heidegger, Iris Murdoch, Luce Irigaray, Stanley Cavell and Charles Taylor - and reading their respective stories in the light of Karl Barth's notion that 'transcending our humanity only makes us more human than ever' - Kerr shows that they all, to a greater or lesser degree, are concerned with the issue of human transcendence: the 'immortal longings' of the title. The ramifications of his study are extensive: even if philosophy is not at bottom theology, as von Balthasar once claimed, the theological preconceptions in much modern philosophy would seem to deserve considerably more attention that they have received hitherto.

Genres: Philosophy

213 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1997

About the author

Fergus Kerr OP is a Dominican friar, theologian, and philosopher known primarily for his work on Thomas Aquinas and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Reviews

[Matthew Wojda · Rating 4 out of 5]

The mystery is self evident. That it is unattainable has already been said. Existentially, and for a theory of knowledge, it is at once a menace to man and his blessed peace. It can make him chafe and protest, because it compels him to leave the tiny house of his ostensibly clear self-possession, to advance into the trackless spaces, even in the night. It forces upon him the dilemma of either throwing himself into the uncharted, unending adventure where he commits himself to the infinite, or- despairing at the thought, and so embittered – of taking shelter in the suffocating den of his own finite perspicacity”

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty unremarkable attempt at excavating the theological commitments of a more or less random assortment of philosophers (Iris Murdoch, anyone?).