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Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture
Anatheism: Returning to God After God
Has the passing of the old God paved the way for a new kind of religious project, a more responsible way to seek, sound, and love the things we call divine? Has the suspension of dogmatic certainties and presumptions opened a space in which we can encounter religious wonder anew? Situated at the split between theism and atheism, we now have the opportunity to respond in deeper, freer ways to things we cannot fathom or prove.
Distinguished philosopher Richard Kearney calls this condition ana-theos , or God after God-a moment of creative "not knowing" that signifies a break with former sureties and invites us to forge new meanings from the most ancient of wisdoms. Anatheism refers to an inaugural event that lies at the heart of every great religion, a wager between hospitality and hostility to the stranger, the other—the sense of something "more." By analyzing the roots of our own anatheistic moment, Kearney shows not only how a return to God is possible for those who seek it but also how a more liberating faith can be born.
Kearney begins by locating a turn toward sacred secularity in contemporary philosophy, focusing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur. He then marks "epiphanies" in the modernist masterpieces of James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. Kearney concludes with a discussion of the role of theism and atheism in conflict and peace, confronting the distinction between sacramental and sacrificial belief or the God who gives life and the God who takes it away. Accepting that we can never be sure about God, he argues, is the only way to rediscover a hidden holiness in life and to reclaim an everyday divinity.
Distinguished philosopher Richard Kearney calls this condition ana-theos , or God after God-a moment of creative "not knowing" that signifies a break with former sureties and invites us to forge new meanings from the most ancient of wisdoms. Anatheism refers to an inaugural event that lies at the heart of every great religion, a wager between hospitality and hostility to the stranger, the other—the sense of something "more." By analyzing the roots of our own anatheistic moment, Kearney shows not only how a return to God is possible for those who seek it but also how a more liberating faith can be born.
Kearney begins by locating a turn toward sacred secularity in contemporary philosophy, focusing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Paul Ricoeur. He then marks "epiphanies" in the modernist masterpieces of James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf. Kearney concludes with a discussion of the role of theism and atheism in conflict and peace, confronting the distinction between sacramental and sacrificial belief or the God who gives life and the God who takes it away. Accepting that we can never be sure about God, he argues, is the only way to rediscover a hidden holiness in life and to reclaim an everyday divinity.
248 pages, Paperback
First published October 16, 2009
45 people are currently reading
758 people want to read
About the author
Richard Kearney
93 books74 followersRichard Kearney is the Charles Seelig professor of philosophy at Boston College and has taught at many universities including University College Dublin, the Sorbonne, and the University of Nice.
He studied at Glenstal Abbey under the Benedictines until 1972, and was a 1st Class Honours graduate in Philosophy in the Bachelor of Arts graduate class of 1975 in UCD. He completed an M.A. at McGill University with Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, and a PhD with Paul Ricœur at University of Paris X: Nanterre. He corresponded with Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida and other French philosophers of the era. He was also active in the Irish, British, and French media as a host for various television and radio programs on literary and philosophical themes. His work focuses on the philosophy of the narrative imagination, hermeneutics and phenomenology.
He studied at Glenstal Abbey under the Benedictines until 1972, and was a 1st Class Honours graduate in Philosophy in the Bachelor of Arts graduate class of 1975 in UCD. He completed an M.A. at McGill University with Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, and a PhD with Paul Ricœur at University of Paris X: Nanterre. He corresponded with Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida and other French philosophers of the era. He was also active in the Irish, British, and French media as a host for various television and radio programs on literary and philosophical themes. His work focuses on the philosophy of the narrative imagination, hermeneutics and phenomenology.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
May 20, 2017
I am always hesitant to review books written for a conversation for which I lack basic accord. After all, any effective dialogue or debate requires shared goals and premises. In that respect, this book is a tough one to comment on. The further I got in Anatheism, the more I realized how little I agreed with Kearney’s whole approach. I am not especially familiar with Ricouer, Merleau-Ponty, Kristeva, or the Death of God theologians Kearney celebrates. As an orthodox (if somewhat latitudinarian) Christian, I either do not agree with or do not find particularly damning most of the critiques he flings so casually at traditional religious beliefs and attitudes.
This is not to say I am altogether unable to appreciate what Kearney is doing. After all, the introduction hooked me enough to make me decide to read the full work. Kearney is a surprisingly good writer for a contemporary philosopher, and his project, to recover God “after God,” seems prima facie a necessary one in a disillusioned secular age. Few would object to his argument for a religious attitude of hospitality over hostility. I am sympathetic to the idea of a purgative or clearing motion (apophasis) in order to return more fully and freely to He Who Is, though I must question whether such motion must always be through functional agnosticism.
And it is there that I am left cold by this book. Ironically for a book about opening oneself to receive the divine stranger, Kearney makes it clear that the anatheist will accept “religion” (that dangerous generality) only on his or her own terms--privately reworked, reinterpreted, and syncretized. Making significant concessions to New Atheist caricaturists, he bifurcates the entire history of “religion” as tending to one of two poles, perhaps most vividly represented in his phrase “genocide or justice.” Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad chose the latter, even as the institutions (and texts) founded on their revelations often went maniacally after the former. This paradigm acts as a hard filter on the Abrahamic traditions, producing religious insights that are not always banal but generally presupposed.
Kearney is undoubtedly knowledgeable in the traditions he is seeking to either preserve or subvert, depending on one’s perspective. On the same page, Kearney may quote Hafiz, Kierkegaard, and the Desert Fathers. Yet dogmas are uniformly passed over as dry, oppressive, and outmoded. According to Kearney, the old God of commandments, creeds, institutions, and ontotheology is somehow responsible for all the horrors inflicted on the world by religious people like Torquemada and Bin Laden—but would he deny that his inspirations like St Francis, Ibn Rushd, and Dorothy Day also (and arguably with more genuine devotion) believed in just such a God as part and parcel of their transforming faith? Does this not create a tension with his appropriation of classical Christian concepts like kenosis, as if he is trying to squeeze or deduce his own preferred meaning out of vastly richer and more complex traditions?
Helpfully, Kearney does assert that he does not wish for “some unitary fusion [of religions] but mutual disclosure and enhancement.” And he staunchly defends the need for particularity even in the midst of dialogue and individual, eclectic synthesis. But in order to make his vision or radical receptivity possible, Kearney must put all religions on a ground he regards as prior, perhaps more aboriginal than any of them. The “Master God must die so that the God of interconfessional hospitality can be born.” Only this can preserve diversity from alleged religious tendencies toward absolutism and violence.
This leads to some major reservations I have with his approach. I am entirely in agreement that religious dialogue is healthy, even necessary, but I question the validity of his preconditions. Why must we affirm this abstract “religion before religion,” a shared “genesis point,” in order to properly apprehend and learn from one another? I do not think he is totally off base, but his premises about the nature of true humility and what “religion” is about in the first place seem to me highly questionable.
Likewise, I have no problem personally with his assaults on depictions of God as some kind of anthropomorphic, super-powered being within the comprehensible universe; that is a fetish worth demolishing, as is (in my opinion) the occasionalist’s master-puppeteer. Nevertheless, Kearney’s apophasis is necessary not because God is infinite and transcendent but because He is perpetually ambiguous or conditioned. Kearney describes God as helpless, passibilist, and contingent on his cosmos. Additionally, he conflates classical language of a sovereign, omnipotent God with the (for Christianity) heterodox teaching that God predetermines good and evil alike, and uses his distaste for the latter to dismiss the former. He rejects the traditional picture of God for several reasons, the problem of evil being high on the list, but perhaps the most curious and frustrating objection he raises is that the classical God must be “acosmic,” opposed to embodiment and feeding hostility to flesh and the “other.”
To me this begs the question, and even tends to incoherence. Why must the kenosis of incarnation, to truly affirm creation, involve a renunciation of the metaphysically necessary divine role as eternal Logos sustaining all things? Yet this assumption is critical to his anatheist project, and he repeatedly returns to the idea that classical theism is hostile to quotidian realities, just as militant atheism is hostile toward sacred realities, requiring us to find a middle way. If this matches your experience, you may find this book helpful in your journey to recover God. But it does not mine, at least in this stage of my life. To me, awareness of sacramental epiphany in ordinary reality and the face of a stranger is simply orthodox, requiring great practice in holiness, and perhaps disentanglement from corruptions of religious teaching, but no leap through disbelief per se to achieve.
Anatheism has plenty of good points, as those to whose spiritual condition it directly speaks may testify. It is clear, accessible, and undoubtedly the product of much careful thought. I liked many of Kearney’s aspirations for lived faith and enjoyed his analysis of other authors. And again, I can readily assent to his imperative in its most basic sense, that we suspend arrogant certitude and humbly allow reality to transform our concepts from the outside, or that we allow our faith to be renewed by deeper and deeper insight.
But if Kearney’s purpose is to persuade his readers to embrace the “anatheistic wager,” he failed for me, for at least four reasons. First, I simply am not convinced of the obsolescence of traditional faith, Holocaust or no, secular age or no. Second, I regard as a false dichotomy his conviction that “God as sovereign” (properly understood) is incompatible with “God as guest.” Third, I remain unpersuaded that the perpetual doubt-trust oscillation of anatheism can more effectively nourish our spirits than the deep roots of religious traditions on their own terms. And finally, I must wonder if Kearney’s anatheist God is, in the end, defined chiefly by that which seems useful to our humanity and measured to our capacities. Could it not be that God, the divine stranger, will appear to us more real than ourselves, piercing the darkness of ignorance as its contrary and calling us by one baptism to our universal end in Himself?
This is not to say I am altogether unable to appreciate what Kearney is doing. After all, the introduction hooked me enough to make me decide to read the full work. Kearney is a surprisingly good writer for a contemporary philosopher, and his project, to recover God “after God,” seems prima facie a necessary one in a disillusioned secular age. Few would object to his argument for a religious attitude of hospitality over hostility. I am sympathetic to the idea of a purgative or clearing motion (apophasis) in order to return more fully and freely to He Who Is, though I must question whether such motion must always be through functional agnosticism.
And it is there that I am left cold by this book. Ironically for a book about opening oneself to receive the divine stranger, Kearney makes it clear that the anatheist will accept “religion” (that dangerous generality) only on his or her own terms--privately reworked, reinterpreted, and syncretized. Making significant concessions to New Atheist caricaturists, he bifurcates the entire history of “religion” as tending to one of two poles, perhaps most vividly represented in his phrase “genocide or justice.” Abraham, Jesus, and Muhammad chose the latter, even as the institutions (and texts) founded on their revelations often went maniacally after the former. This paradigm acts as a hard filter on the Abrahamic traditions, producing religious insights that are not always banal but generally presupposed.
Kearney is undoubtedly knowledgeable in the traditions he is seeking to either preserve or subvert, depending on one’s perspective. On the same page, Kearney may quote Hafiz, Kierkegaard, and the Desert Fathers. Yet dogmas are uniformly passed over as dry, oppressive, and outmoded. According to Kearney, the old God of commandments, creeds, institutions, and ontotheology is somehow responsible for all the horrors inflicted on the world by religious people like Torquemada and Bin Laden—but would he deny that his inspirations like St Francis, Ibn Rushd, and Dorothy Day also (and arguably with more genuine devotion) believed in just such a God as part and parcel of their transforming faith? Does this not create a tension with his appropriation of classical Christian concepts like kenosis, as if he is trying to squeeze or deduce his own preferred meaning out of vastly richer and more complex traditions?
Helpfully, Kearney does assert that he does not wish for “some unitary fusion [of religions] but mutual disclosure and enhancement.” And he staunchly defends the need for particularity even in the midst of dialogue and individual, eclectic synthesis. But in order to make his vision or radical receptivity possible, Kearney must put all religions on a ground he regards as prior, perhaps more aboriginal than any of them. The “Master God must die so that the God of interconfessional hospitality can be born.” Only this can preserve diversity from alleged religious tendencies toward absolutism and violence.
This leads to some major reservations I have with his approach. I am entirely in agreement that religious dialogue is healthy, even necessary, but I question the validity of his preconditions. Why must we affirm this abstract “religion before religion,” a shared “genesis point,” in order to properly apprehend and learn from one another? I do not think he is totally off base, but his premises about the nature of true humility and what “religion” is about in the first place seem to me highly questionable.
Likewise, I have no problem personally with his assaults on depictions of God as some kind of anthropomorphic, super-powered being within the comprehensible universe; that is a fetish worth demolishing, as is (in my opinion) the occasionalist’s master-puppeteer. Nevertheless, Kearney’s apophasis is necessary not because God is infinite and transcendent but because He is perpetually ambiguous or conditioned. Kearney describes God as helpless, passibilist, and contingent on his cosmos. Additionally, he conflates classical language of a sovereign, omnipotent God with the (for Christianity) heterodox teaching that God predetermines good and evil alike, and uses his distaste for the latter to dismiss the former. He rejects the traditional picture of God for several reasons, the problem of evil being high on the list, but perhaps the most curious and frustrating objection he raises is that the classical God must be “acosmic,” opposed to embodiment and feeding hostility to flesh and the “other.”
To me this begs the question, and even tends to incoherence. Why must the kenosis of incarnation, to truly affirm creation, involve a renunciation of the metaphysically necessary divine role as eternal Logos sustaining all things? Yet this assumption is critical to his anatheist project, and he repeatedly returns to the idea that classical theism is hostile to quotidian realities, just as militant atheism is hostile toward sacred realities, requiring us to find a middle way. If this matches your experience, you may find this book helpful in your journey to recover God. But it does not mine, at least in this stage of my life. To me, awareness of sacramental epiphany in ordinary reality and the face of a stranger is simply orthodox, requiring great practice in holiness, and perhaps disentanglement from corruptions of religious teaching, but no leap through disbelief per se to achieve.
Anatheism has plenty of good points, as those to whose spiritual condition it directly speaks may testify. It is clear, accessible, and undoubtedly the product of much careful thought. I liked many of Kearney’s aspirations for lived faith and enjoyed his analysis of other authors. And again, I can readily assent to his imperative in its most basic sense, that we suspend arrogant certitude and humbly allow reality to transform our concepts from the outside, or that we allow our faith to be renewed by deeper and deeper insight.
But if Kearney’s purpose is to persuade his readers to embrace the “anatheistic wager,” he failed for me, for at least four reasons. First, I simply am not convinced of the obsolescence of traditional faith, Holocaust or no, secular age or no. Second, I regard as a false dichotomy his conviction that “God as sovereign” (properly understood) is incompatible with “God as guest.” Third, I remain unpersuaded that the perpetual doubt-trust oscillation of anatheism can more effectively nourish our spirits than the deep roots of religious traditions on their own terms. And finally, I must wonder if Kearney’s anatheist God is, in the end, defined chiefly by that which seems useful to our humanity and measured to our capacities. Could it not be that God, the divine stranger, will appear to us more real than ourselves, piercing the darkness of ignorance as its contrary and calling us by one baptism to our universal end in Himself?
July 18, 2013
Wow. At different points I wanted to argue, to sing doxologies, and mostly to understand better. I'm new to Kearney, but the spirit of the thing is right on. Probably too difficult a book for those without some knowledge of contemporary continental philosophy, but even for such people, the central theses are probable graspable: the Sovereign God who justifies violent action (whether in word or via institutions) is/should be dead. The God who makes him/herself known in the stranger, the weak, in the last and least, in the kenotic gesture, in the material world is waiting to be discovered. This second God is one we can return to when we have (for whatever reason) stopped believing in the first. Since losing my first God--Calvin's sovereign master of all destinies--I've been searching. Maybe this is it.
June 3, 2015
Kearny’s Anatheism offers philosophical (perhaps theological as well) sustenance for the bewildered, exiled atheist who have left the land that nurtures itself predominantly off the thin certitude of an overly sovereign, metaphysical God; and offers hope (possibility) when all may seem impossible (such as in the words of RS Thomas, (I emerge from the mind’s / cave into the worse darkness / outside, where things pass and / the Lord is none of them.”) By way of mapping rich examples from the religion of Books—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Kearney lays out for us “equiprimordial aspects of a single hermeneutic arc” (Fivefold Motion) or multilayered motions that over time re-text or refigure the self that wagers (metaphor used by Kearney sprung from various ancient religious characters) by opening one up to other possibilities of being that come via atheism and can lead to anatheism. Kearney is most comfortable with the “bracing oscillation between doubt and faith, withdrawal and consent” for they are “the aperture which preceded and follows each wager” and hence opens up promise of a better hope and imagination to transmigrate between one religion and another or “interconfessional hospitality” (Ricoeur). Anatheism discloses the Way or path to what dominant Western religions cannot risk, movement toward the Stranger via “linguistic and eucharistic hospitality.” Kearney’s text is amazing territory that puts animating flesh on the bones of Jesus sayings as refusal of exclusivist power and summons to endless kenosis.
April 20, 2021
Just too hard for me to grasp. Not sure if that was clunky writing or my lack of philosophical skill or interest. The main point that we move beyond theism and atheism and then back again to anatheism seems useful. There are depths that our commitment to a specific system prevent us from achieving. But it was so hard and painful to read and I couldn’t recommend it.
July 3, 2014
To me, the idea of God "after" God is simply Fiction "after" Fiction. I do realize that we humans love story, and we especially love to escape this world by reading fictional novels and watching fictional movies. Thus, I do understand the appeal for wanting a continuing story after we realize there is no God. I just think that if we are to survive as a species, we can no longer afford to understand ourselves with with another fiction or a 3,000 year old story. We need to use all the science we can in order to find a way towards living in peace.
April 25, 2014
As I have not studied in theology and phylosophy I found this book hard to read. Thankfully I read it as an ibook and my dictionary was thus close at hand! However, I find myself agreeing with his argument(s), and I feel less alone in my own spiritual journey.
July 15, 2019
I mostly knew what I was getting with this book – an academic paper on a "middle way" between fundamentalist theism and militant atheism. I expected to be challenged by the reading level, and "Anatheism" did not disappoint! If you would like to read this book, be prepared for a steep climb. I had to look up some words, and there were phrases in foreign languages (French, Latin, German, etcetera) throughout.
Putting the reading level aside, I was not able to adequately comprehend some portions of this book, as I have not thoroughly studied "death of god theology." I don't consider myself "well read," just a guy who likes to read different books. I'm always up for a challenge, but this was a real slog for me.
I was very interested in the subject matter. However, the book (divided into three sections) presented several challenges to me as a reader. In fact, I found the entire middle section nearly incomprehensible. In this section, the author finds "anatheism" in the work of several authors, none of which I previously knew. The book suddenly launches into dissecting literary works without sufficient contextual support for those unfamiliar with them.
The final section of "Anatheism" was the most enjoyable. The author did a good job bringing everything together. The reading level came down a bit (a very welcome adjustment).
Ultimately, I find it hard to dock a book's rating on account of my own deficiencies, but some responsibility must be placed upon the author in making their work comprehensible to the willing (but wanting) reader!
I would recommend this book only to those who have sufficiently studied the subject matter previously.
Putting the reading level aside, I was not able to adequately comprehend some portions of this book, as I have not thoroughly studied "death of god theology." I don't consider myself "well read," just a guy who likes to read different books. I'm always up for a challenge, but this was a real slog for me.
I was very interested in the subject matter. However, the book (divided into three sections) presented several challenges to me as a reader. In fact, I found the entire middle section nearly incomprehensible. In this section, the author finds "anatheism" in the work of several authors, none of which I previously knew. The book suddenly launches into dissecting literary works without sufficient contextual support for those unfamiliar with them.
The final section of "Anatheism" was the most enjoyable. The author did a good job bringing everything together. The reading level came down a bit (a very welcome adjustment).
Ultimately, I find it hard to dock a book's rating on account of my own deficiencies, but some responsibility must be placed upon the author in making their work comprehensible to the willing (but wanting) reader!
I would recommend this book only to those who have sufficiently studied the subject matter previously.
November 18, 2025
«Anatheism: Returning to God after God» is Richard Kearney’s attempt to answer a simple but urgent question: what comes after the death of God, after the collapse of old certainties and inherited metaphysics? Instead of choosing between nostalgia for traditional religion and the flatness of pure atheism, Kearney proposes a third path he calls anatheism: a return to God after God, a renewed openness to the sacred that emerges only after doubt, rupture, and disillusionment have done their work. This return is not a recovery of past beliefs but a second, humbler faith born on the far side of uncertainty. For Kearney, the divine no longer arrives through authority or dogma; it appears in the stranger, the vulnerable, the fragile moment where hospitality is chosen over fear. Drawing on Levinas, Derrida, Ricoeur, and a wide constellation of literary voices, from Dante to Joyce, Kearney presents spirituality not as a system to defend but as an ethical gesture, a way of meeting the Other with presence rather than control. The book is dense at times, rooted in continental philosophy, and offers no final answers. Instead, it opens space: for mystery without superstition, for faith without rigidity, for transcendence that lives in human encounter rather than distant metaphysics. It is a profoundly human exploration of what remains when the old structures fall, and why meaning, love, and the sacred can still return, quietly, differently, after everything else has been stripped away.
November 16, 2022
A philosophical approach to the problem of theism – as a philosophical, not theological one – the book reads like a doctoral thesis, rife with jargon and footnotes. Nonetheless, the somewhat repetitive argument that philosophically, a modern person can and probably should jettison the traditional understanding of God in the standard, logical sense inherited from the Western intellectual historys. Modern philosophy in its excursions into epistemology and understandings of science have suggested the need for a fresh "philosophy of God" that both goes back to basics about the creator and engages with modern philosophy and its interpretation of reality. Rightly, he finds that atheism is a kind of faith in an ideology that simply reflects negatively to an outdated ideology. I suspect the author finds the current crop of hostile atheists are evidence of the need to get rid of that outdated view of God.
He tries--and I think succeeds--in his ana-theistic "apology" partly demonstrating the paradigm from James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf – how their characters come to a kind of appreciation of "the sacred."
He tries--and I think succeeds--in his ana-theistic "apology" partly demonstrating the paradigm from James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Virginia Woolf – how their characters come to a kind of appreciation of "the sacred."
May 21, 2023
Kearney take on one of the most prevalent commands in both the Hebrew and Christian Bible ("Welcome the stranger") is unique and compelling. In this light, it might be reasonable to characterize the methods, formation, and execution of God's Incarnation in Christ as very strange! He presses the point by suggesting that perhaps even still God intends to make himself known through what we consider strange. Strange ideas. Strange cultures. Strange events. And yet, rather than welcome in the stranger, it is often the case that we kill him.
Perhaps with as much, if not greater force, the author reasserts the idea that what we have of God is really an image of God. For many, this image, with the passage of time, undergoes some change which might be characterized by disenchantment and even disillusionment. Unable to shake our intuitive grasp and need for God, we revisit those images and find that our disenchantment has been transformed into renewal. Along this path, we might have more in common with the atheist than we ever imagined!
Perhaps with as much, if not greater force, the author reasserts the idea that what we have of God is really an image of God. For many, this image, with the passage of time, undergoes some change which might be characterized by disenchantment and even disillusionment. Unable to shake our intuitive grasp and need for God, we revisit those images and find that our disenchantment has been transformed into renewal. Along this path, we might have more in common with the atheist than we ever imagined!
August 7, 2024
There are many interesting things in here and I did highlight a lot. However, there is an extensive portion of the book reviewing other literature that either went over my head or offered a lot of jargon without substance. I found myself skimming the rest of that section.
The author purports to present an alternative perspective on theism vs atheism. They have done that. Although if you want to get into the weeds of argumentation, I don’t think the book offers that. Really, the book is more literary and artful over hammering home an argument. I kinduv wish it would have more clearly and forcefully argued though, given that I’m still confused how the author views the “anatheistic wager” as a wager.
It may be innovative, yet my feelings toward the book are mixed or average.
The author purports to present an alternative perspective on theism vs atheism. They have done that. Although if you want to get into the weeds of argumentation, I don’t think the book offers that. Really, the book is more literary and artful over hammering home an argument. I kinduv wish it would have more clearly and forcefully argued though, given that I’m still confused how the author views the “anatheistic wager” as a wager.
It may be innovative, yet my feelings toward the book are mixed or average.
May 2, 2020
A fascinating and informative read. For those who have let go or want to let go of the ideas of the Divine that we were given, this book offers experience and language for those on that journey. It is not offering the new way, but A way forward for those that are curious explorers. One of my favorites.
June 19, 2017
Thanks Richard Kearney for exploring the subject honestly. If you don't like to look at doubt don't read this book. I appreciate that Kearney shows how studying other's spiritual experiences often brings insight to one's own path.
October 26, 2022
Not quite on the Caputo scale for me but lots of food for thought, especially re: hospitality.
Read
December 31, 2024Academic pain in the ass to read but it is also vital to my senior thesis so thank you dr kearney ☃️☃️☃️
January 3, 2019
Richard Kearney very creatively opens a unique space between militant atheism which is driven by materialist absolutism and dogmatic theism which is plagued by divine absolutism, he calls it Ana-theism.
He also proposes a dialectical approach between atheism and theism, the secular and the sacred, as it is only the enlightened religions that can save the world from amoral nihilism, and its only secularism that can free the religions from dogmatic absolutisms, the secular and sacred must have a symbiotic relationship with each other for humanity to progress.
Overall I enjoyed the book, but as it is very academic, it gets harder to consume in some parts, but Kearney still does a good job in making most of his writing accessible. This is a very solid project that uses philosophy, theology and hermeneutic phenomenology to open up an honest discussion between atheists and theists; and rethinking of how we understand God and the premodern religions and the future of secularism..
He also proposes a dialectical approach between atheism and theism, the secular and the sacred, as it is only the enlightened religions that can save the world from amoral nihilism, and its only secularism that can free the religions from dogmatic absolutisms, the secular and sacred must have a symbiotic relationship with each other for humanity to progress.
Overall I enjoyed the book, but as it is very academic, it gets harder to consume in some parts, but Kearney still does a good job in making most of his writing accessible. This is a very solid project that uses philosophy, theology and hermeneutic phenomenology to open up an honest discussion between atheists and theists; and rethinking of how we understand God and the premodern religions and the future of secularism..
August 26, 2014
A most excellent explication of the revolving door between theism and atheism, telling us that this activity of not-knowing, reaching out, then not-knowing again, when done with a certain intention, bears the best chance of bringing us to an understanding of God that makes moral sense and to a willingness to offer an olive branch to those who are different from ourselves.
The author recaps toward the end:
More quotes and such on Disruptive Dissertation.
The author recaps toward the end:
If peace is ever achieved on our planet, it will not, I suspect, be brokered solely by global politicians and constitutional lawyers. It will also be a peace brought about by what Karl Jaspers called a ‘loving combat’ (liebender Kampf) between different faiths and nonfaiths. Anatheism is not about a facile consensus that ignores the reality of conflicting convictions. It is an effort to retrieve a unique hospitality toward the Stranger at the inaugural scene of each belief. In thus exposing ourselves to the Gods of other traditions we take the risk of dying unto our own. And in such instants of kenotic hospitality, where we exchange our God with others — sometimes not-knowing for a moment which one is true — we open ourselves to the gracious possibility of receiving our own God back again; but this time as a gift from the other, as a God of life beyond death. In losing our faith, we may gain it back again: first faith ceding to second faith in the name of the stranger. That is the wager of anatheism. And the risk. For in surrendering our own God to a stranger God no God may come back again. Or the God who comes back may come back in ways that surprise us.
More quotes and such on Disruptive Dissertation.
February 26, 2015
Do you doubt the existence of God or are uncertain? If so, this book may be for you. If you are a militant atheist, the author also has a few words for you (most notably in the "Epilogue"). Note also that, if you are turned off to God because of the events of the Holocaust (and other major evils), there is a special chapter discussing that.
Advice: Read the "Conclusion" chapter first. It is possible that, after the arduous reading of the rest of the book, this chapter, which is more comprehensible, was a relief and so, perhaps, I am giving that chapter more credit than it is worth. Still, I suggest reading that chapter first, then you can read the rest of the book.
As for the rest of the book, I would give it a 1 or 2 stars. It was like reading a philosophy textbook with an immense amount of obscure terminology (unless you are already a philosopher or theologian and are maybe familiar with the words) and barely and incomprehensible concepts. I only glimpsed the rest of the book through distorted, muddy glasses. The "Conclusion" chapter was lucid in comparison.
He did an immense amount of etymological discursions. The author also seemed to adore the words "wager" and "hermeneutic" as one or both of those words appeared on almost every page.
Major point I got was attention to the divine in the stranger with an emphasis on a weak and suffering God (rather than a dominating, powerful God) and a focus on a secular (in the world) God of life and enabling (rather than of guilt and sin).
Something else I appreciated: The author uses a variety of modes to discuss God: paintings, scripture, poetry, novels, philosophy, stories, music.
Advice: Read the "Conclusion" chapter first. It is possible that, after the arduous reading of the rest of the book, this chapter, which is more comprehensible, was a relief and so, perhaps, I am giving that chapter more credit than it is worth. Still, I suggest reading that chapter first, then you can read the rest of the book.
As for the rest of the book, I would give it a 1 or 2 stars. It was like reading a philosophy textbook with an immense amount of obscure terminology (unless you are already a philosopher or theologian and are maybe familiar with the words) and barely and incomprehensible concepts. I only glimpsed the rest of the book through distorted, muddy glasses. The "Conclusion" chapter was lucid in comparison.
He did an immense amount of etymological discursions. The author also seemed to adore the words "wager" and "hermeneutic" as one or both of those words appeared on almost every page.
Major point I got was attention to the divine in the stranger with an emphasis on a weak and suffering God (rather than a dominating, powerful God) and a focus on a secular (in the world) God of life and enabling (rather than of guilt and sin).
Something else I appreciated: The author uses a variety of modes to discuss God: paintings, scripture, poetry, novels, philosophy, stories, music.
March 23, 2016
Great insight into the future of Western spirituality. And well worth the read, especially when so many popular atheists express themselves in militant negations. It is inspirational and well reasoned.
The book does however fall short on two accounts:
First, though being a work rooted in hermeneutics, it fails to assess the impact of a religions early history in its dogma and theodicy. I believe this reveals itself most in that the tradition from which Kearney most heavily draws is the Christian tradition (a tradition where God suffers, and which has an early history marked by the suffering of its faithful). Meanwhile uses of Islam are sporadic and somewhat forced. This could however be due to the lack of scholarship and free thought in Muslim theology in the West.
Second, although mentioned, Kearney never fully deals with the problem of a violent Other. Though recognizing the shared linguistic roots of hospitality and hostility, along with discussions of "double-movements," Kearney never discusses the role of violence within being hospitable. That to create a hospitable environment, one must commit a certain level of violence to provide security to the stranger who has been invited in. I would have liked to see this discussed.
Otherwise it was well worth the read for those who are not creedal, but can sense the sanctity of the people and the world surrounding them.
The book does however fall short on two accounts:
First, though being a work rooted in hermeneutics, it fails to assess the impact of a religions early history in its dogma and theodicy. I believe this reveals itself most in that the tradition from which Kearney most heavily draws is the Christian tradition (a tradition where God suffers, and which has an early history marked by the suffering of its faithful). Meanwhile uses of Islam are sporadic and somewhat forced. This could however be due to the lack of scholarship and free thought in Muslim theology in the West.
Second, although mentioned, Kearney never fully deals with the problem of a violent Other. Though recognizing the shared linguistic roots of hospitality and hostility, along with discussions of "double-movements," Kearney never discusses the role of violence within being hospitable. That to create a hospitable environment, one must commit a certain level of violence to provide security to the stranger who has been invited in. I would have liked to see this discussed.
Otherwise it was well worth the read for those who are not creedal, but can sense the sanctity of the people and the world surrounding them.
Want to read
January 12, 2017A respected reader friend suggested this book. I read the author's introduction and decided to table it for future read. It requires a solid grounding in Continental philosophies, particularly the hermeneutics of Ricoeur, Phenomenology, and modern literary works by Proust, Joyce, and Woolf, in addition to other major religious traditions. I am too limited to take on this work itself.
Read
March 13, 2011Thought it'd be more mind-blowing.
July 12, 2012
A stimulating view on spirituality--of course, I appreciated the fine handling of Merleau-Ponty's philosophy of the flesh and hwo that is key to another sense of spirituality
September 16, 2012
Wonderful!
April 21, 2017
One of the most insightful books on the philosophy of religion. I recommend this book.
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