Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan

1182 Pages·2016·5.82 MB·English

by  Anthony T. Kronman

Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan
Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan
Anthony T. Kronman
Published with assistance from the Mary Cady Tew Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 2016 by Anthony T. Kronman.
All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015955523
ISBN 978-0-30020853-5 (hardcover: alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Matt, Emma, Hope, and Alex
The earth is not an echo.
WALT WHITMAN, Leaves of Grass
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
Part One GRATITUDE
1 The Good of Gratitude
Dependence, Acceptance and Being at Home in the World
2 A World of Rights
The Expulsion of Love and Gratitude from Public Life
3 “Endless Gratitude So Burdensome”
Christian Theology and Western Civilization
Part Two PRIDE
4 Greatness of Soul
Aristotle’s Philosophy of Pride
5 Givers and Takers
The Good of Self-Sufficiency
6 The Eternal and Divine
What Everything Desires
7 The Best Life of All
Politics and Contemplation
8 Friendship
Gratitude and Human Fulfillment
9 The First Cosmopolitan
Plato’s Discovery of an Invisible Self
10 Preparatio Evangelica
Stoicism on the Way to Christian Thought
Part Three SALVATION
11 Creation
Making, Begetting and Creating
12 Will
Human Freedom and the Problem of Evil
13 Grace
Divine Omnipotence and the Augustinian Dilemma
14 “Not a Sparrow Falls”
The Abolition of the Distinction between Form and Matter
15 The Contingency of the World
That Whose Essence Is to Exist
16 The Pagan Temptation
Aquinas and the Aristotelian Revival
17 God Unchained
Ockham’s Defense of Divine Freedom
18 Theology of the Cross
The Lutheran Reformation
19 The Hatred of Man
Augustine Redux
20 The Absolute Spontaneity of Freedom
Kant’s Christian Metaphysics
21 Our Better Selves
The Morality of Autonomy
22 God Becomes a Postulate
Reason, Freedom and Kant’s Defense of Divine Grace
23 Reaction
Joseph de Maistre’s Revolt against Pride
24 “Fantastic and Satanic”
The Illiberal Theology of Donoso Cortes and Carl Schmitt
25 The Oblivion of Being
Martin Heidegger’s Reconstruction of Western Philosophy
26 The Disenchantment of the World
Max Weber and the Problem of Nihilism
Part Four JOY
27 The Worm in the Blood
Spinoza’s Conception of Science
28 The God of Sufficient Reason
Physics after Spinoza
29 “Endless Forms Most Beautiful”
Darwin’s Divine Biology
30 The Navel of the Dream
Freud and the Science of the Mind
31 “Man Is a God to Man”
The Modern Research Ideal
32 The World as an Aesthetic Phenomenon
Art, Truth and Morality in Nietzsche’s Philosophy
33 The Spider in the Moonlight
Nietzsche’s Interpretation of the Will to Power as Art
34 “The Gift of Transmigration”
The Theology of the Modern Novel
35 Genius and Sublimity
Painting since the Renaissance
36 Theological, Not Political
John Rawls’ Christian Defense of Liberal Democracy
37 Democratic Vistas
Walt Whitman and the Divinity of Diversity
Epilogue
“Downward to Darkness, on Extended Wings,”
Notes
Index