Nicholas Wolterstorff

Biographic Data

ID978156
NAMENicholas Wolterstorff
GIVEN NAMESNicholas
FAMILY NAMEWolterstorff
SIGNATUREWOLTERSTORFF N
AFFILIATIONSYale University
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS51
TOTAL CITATIONS27
AUTHOR COUNT52
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1960
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2022
H-INDEX4

  • Liturgy and Biblical Interpretation

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffARTICLEJournal of the American Academy…2022

    A liturgy, the author notes, is not words on a page but a performance of a certain sort. In the case of Jewish and Christian liturgies, a liturgical performance “is, among other things, an [enacted] biblical interpretation” (2). And the interpretation that the performers enact shapes their own subsequent interpretation of biblical texts. “The main argument of this book [is] that liturgy influences the way we read biblical texts” (124). Traditiona…

  • Art Rethought

    Nicholas Wolterstorff, Nicholas P WolterstorffBOOKArt Rethought2015

    Most philosophers of art of the modern period have concentrated their attention on engaging works of the arts as objects of disinterested aesthetic attention, and on the works that reward that modern of engagement, virtually ignoring the many other ways in which we engage works of the arts. The argument of this book is that it is important for philosophers to expand their attention and discuss as well the more important of those other ways in whi…

  • Art Rethought

    Nicholas WolterstorffBOOKArt Rethought2015

    Human beings engage works of the arts in many different ways: they sing songs while working, they kiss icons, they create and dedicate memorials. Yet almost all philosophers of art of the modern period have ignored this variety and focused entirely on just one mode of engagement, namely, disinterested attention. In the first part of the book Nicholas Wolterstorff asks why philosophers have concentrated on just this one mode of engagement. The ans…

  • The Inapplicability of the Grand Narrative to Recent Art

    Nicholas WolterstorffCHAPTERArt Rethought2015

    This chapter and the next offer reasons for rejecting the grand narrative. This chapter employs Hans Belting’s book, Art History after Modernism, to argue that the grand narrative is inapplicable to a good deal of the art that has emerged in recent years within the visual art world. In many cases, the works presented for viewing are not works of the arts. And there have been deliberate attempts to break down the divide between art and ordinary li…

  • The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism

    Open AccessSteven A Wall, Richard Arneson et al.BOOKCambridge Companion to Liberalism2015

    The political philosophy of liberalism was first formulated during the Enlightenment in response to the growth of the modern nation-state and its authority and power over the individuals living within its boundaries. Liberalism is now the dominant ideology in the Western world, but it covers a broad swathe of different (and sometimes rival) ideas and traditions and its essential features can be hard to define. The Cambridge Companion to Liberalis…

  • All Justice is Social but it’s not all Social Justice

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffARTICLEphiloSOPHIA2013

  • Is It Possible and Sometimes Desirable for States to Forgive

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffARTICLEJournal of Religious Ethics2013

    After discussing at some length the nature of interpersonal forgiveness and its relation to punishment, the author addresses the main question of the essay: are states the sorts of entities that can forgive; and if they are, is it sometimes desirable that they forgive? The author argues that states can forgive and very often do; and that sometimes it is desirable that they do so. The essay closes by considering the complexities that arise when th…

  • Miroslav Volf on Living One’s Faith

    Nicholas WolterstorffARTICLEPolitical Theology2013

    In this essay the author reflects on Miroslav Volf’s discussion, in A Public Faith, of Christianity as properly a prophetic religion. The author focuses especially on the two main malfunctions that Volf cites as accounting for the fact that the faith of individual Christians is often not prophetic, namely, what he calls “idleness of faith” and what he calls “coerciveness of faith.”

  • The Paradoxical Role of Coercion in the Theory of Political Liberalism

    Nicholas Wolterstorff, Terence CuneoCHAPTERUnderstanding Liberal Democracy2012

    What is the proper role, in a liberal democracy, of religious reasons for and against proposed laws or abolition of laws? The various positions taken on the issue have come to be classified as “exclusivist” or “inclusivist.” This chapter identifies and critiques what may be the deepest component in the line of thought of those who espouse the exclusivist position. Instead of focusing on respect, this line of thought focuses on coercion. It tells …

  • Do Christians Have Good Reasons for Supporting Liberal Democracy?

    Nicholas Wolterstorff, Terence CuneoCHAPTERUnderstanding Liberal Democracy2012

    This paper traces the history of Christian political thought, noting that it has shifted from a perfectionist understanding of government to a protectionist understanding. A protectionist understanding places a very high priority on the government's preventing (and itself avoiding) the great evil of violating persons. Liberal democracy is fundamentally protectionist in its orientation. If one attends to the nature and worth of the person and reco…

  • Liberal Democracy as Equal Political Voice

    Nicholas Wolterstorff, Terence CuneoCHAPTERUnderstanding Liberal Democracy2012

    This essay moves beyond critique of public reason liberalism to propose an alternative interpretation of the governing idea of liberal democracy. At the heart of that idea is a commitment to not public reason, as Rawls understands that, but to the equal right of citizens to full political voice – this voice to be exercised within an explicit or implicit constitution that imposes limits and guarantees on government, and within a legal order that p…

  • Understanding Liberal Democracy

    Nicholas Wolterstorff, Terence CuneoBOOKUnderstanding Liberal Democracy2012

    This book collects Nicholas Wolterstorff's papers in political philosophy. While this collection includes some of Wolterstorff's earlier and influential work on the intersection between liberal democracy and religion, it also contains nine new essays in which Wolterstorff stakes out novel positions regarding the nature of liberal democracy, human rights, and political authority. The overall position is one that is intended to be an attractive alt…

  • The Mighty and the Almighty

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffBOOKMighty and the Almighty2012

    For a century or more political theology has been in decline. Recent years, however, have seen increasing interest not only in how church and state should be related, but in the relation between divine authority and political authority, and in what religion has to say about the limits of state authority and the grounds of political obedience. In this book, Nicholas Wolterstorff addresses this whole complex of issues. He takes account of tradition…

  • Justice

    Nicholas WolterstorffBOOKJustice2010

  • How Philosophical Theology Became Possible within the Analytic Tradition of Philosophy

    Nicholas WolterstorffCHAPTERAnalytic theology2009

    This chapter examines how developments in the analytic tradition during the 20th century not only made room for analytic philosophical theology, but contributed to its flourishing. The flowering of philosophical theology was made possible by the surrender, by analytic philosophers, of certain assumptions characteristic of philosophy in the modern period, and by the emergence of a new understanding of the task of philosophy and its role in culture…

  • Justice as Inherent Rights

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffARTICLEJournal of Religious Ethics2009

    The critical comments by my fellow symposiasts on my book, Justice: Rights and Wrongs , have provided me with the opportunity to clarify parts of my argument and to correct some misunderstandings; they have also helped me see more clearly than I did before the import of some parts of my argument. In his comments, Paul Weithman points out features of the right order conception of justice that I had not noticed. They have also prodded me to clarify…

  • Justice

    Nicholas WolterstorffBOOKJustice2008

    Wide-ranging and ambitious, Justice combines moral philosophy and Christian ethics to develop an important theory of rights and of justice as grounded in rights. Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses what it is to have a right, and he locates rights in the respect due the worth of the rights-holder. After contending that socially-conferred rights require the existence of natural rights, he argues that no secular account of natural human rights is succe…

  • Pain and Its Transformations

    Judith Becker, John C M Brust et al.BOOKPain and Its Transformations2008

  • How Social Justice Got to Me and Why It Never Left

    Nicholas WolterstorffARTICLEJournal of the American Academy…2008

    In september, 1976, the college where I was teaching, Calvin College, sent me to a conference at the University of Potchefstroom in South Africa—this being one of the old Afrikaner universities. There were a fair number of Dutch scholars present at the conference. They were well acquainted with the South African situation, much better than were any of us who came from North America. And they very angry with the Afrikaners. For two days they explo…

  • Justice

    Nicholas WolterstorffBOOKJustice2008

    "Wide-ranging and ambitious, Justice combines moral philosophy and Christian ethics to develop an important theory of rights and of justice as grounded in rights. Nicholas Wolterstorff discusses what it is to have a right, and he locates rights in the respect due the worth of the rights-holder. After contending that socially-conferred rights require the existence of natural rights, he argues that no secular account of natural human rights is succ…

  • What Sort of Epistemological Realist was Thomas Reid

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffARTICLEJournal of Scottish Philosophy2006

    Reid's theory of perception has long been cited as a paradigmatic example of direct realism; and the term “direct” undoubtedly carries the connotation that external objects are items in “the manifold of intuition.” There are important ways in which perception, on Reid's analysis, undoubtedly is immediate and direct. Nonetheless, this paper contends that, with the exception of his account of our perception of visible fi gure, Reid's theory is not …

  • Jeffrey Stout on Democracy and Its Contemporary Christian Critics

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffARTICLEJournal of Religious Ethics2005

    Jeffrey Stout addresses two of the main criticisms of liberal democracy by its contemporary neotraditionalist Christian critics: that liberal democracy is destructive of social tradition, and thereby of virtue in the citizenry, and that liberal democracy is inherently secular, committed to expunging religious voices from the public arena. I judge that Stout effectively answers these charges: liberal democracy has its own tradition, it cultivates …

  • Why Philosophy of Art Cannot Handle Kissing, Touching, and Crying

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffARTICLEJournal of Aesthetics and Art…2003

    I being the date, in 2001, that a terrorist attack destroyed the Twin Towers in New York City. From Friday, March 15 through Sunday, March The review was headed A Somber Memorial 17, 2002, the Vienna Philharmonic performed from the Vienna Philharmonic. The reviewer, four concerts in New York City, three in another of the Times regulars, James R. Oestreich, Carnegie Hall, and one, on Sunday evening, in wrote, St. Patrick's Cathedral. Two of the th…

  • An Engagement with Rorty

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffARTICLEJournal of Religious Ethics2003

  • Response to Helm, Quinn, and Westphal

    Open AccessNicholas WolterstorffARTICLEReligious Studies2001

    Before beginning my response, let me express the honour I feel in having these three friends and distinguished philosophical colleagues comment so thoughtfully on my ideas in Divine Discourse . I warmly thank them for their ‘labours’. I propose mirroring the general structure of the book itself in my response. First, I'll consider what Helm says about my delineation of the topic, second, what Quinn says about my discussion of God speaking; third,…