Merold Westphal
Biographic Data
| ID | 3873857 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Merold Westphal |
| GIVEN NAMES | Merold |
| FAMILY NAME | Westphal |
| SIGNATURE | WESTPHAL M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Fordham University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 4 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 26 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1967 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Response to Ken Archer's Review
"Response to Ken Archer's Review." Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, 36(2), pp. 185–186
Society, Politics, and Modernity
The welcome wound
The Importance of Overcoming Metaphysics for the Life of Faith
This essay proceeds, first, with an analysis of the theme of overcoming metaphysics in Kant and Heidegger to see just what it is that needs overcoming and how this might be of service to the life of biblical, ecclesial faith. This is followed by an account of how Jean‐Luc Marion sees the right kind of phenomenology as performing this task and of John Milbank's counterclaim that “only theology overcomes metaphysics”. Marion's position is then defe…
Christian Philosophers and the Copernican Revolution
This chapter suggests that Christian philosophers should be favorably disposed toward Kantian idealism, that there are important affinities between Kantian idealism and Christian theism—important resources in the former for expressing themes essential to the latter. After discussing four kinds of Kantian idealism, it turns briefly to three versions that differ in important ways from Kant's own. All of them reflect the fact that the history of the…
Overcoming Onto-Theology
'Overcoming Onto-theology' is a collection of essays by Merold Westphal, one of America's leading continental philosophers of religion, in which he carefully explores the nature and the structure of a postmodern Christian philosophy.
On reading God the author
The first part of the essay explore's three features of Wolterstorff's account of God as a performer of speech acts: (1) the claim that God literally speaks, suggesting that this claim needs something like a Thomistic theory of analogy as an alternative to univocity and mere metaphor; (2) the claim that speaking is not reducible to revealing; and (3) the political implications of these claims, especially in relation to Habermasian theory. The sec…
Dialetic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel's Thinking. Stephen Crites
Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak
Suspicion and Faith
Marx, Nietzche, and Freud are among the most influential of modern atheists. The distinctive feature of their challenge to theistic and specifically Christian belief is expressed by Paul Ricoeur when he calls them the "masters of suspicion." While skepticism directs its critique to the truth or evidential basis of belief, suspicion asks two different, intimately intertwined questions: what are the motives that lead to this belief? and what functi…
Levinas and the “Logic” of Solidarity
Kierkegaard and Hegel
The story of German idealism is the story of Kant and the aftermath. By aftermath I mean the Aufhebung of critical philosophy in the speculative idealisms of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The latter, of course, took himself to be the Aufhebung of Fichte and Schelling as well as Kant, to say nothing of Plato and Aristotle, Anselm and Aquinas, Descartes and Spinoza, and so forth. The gods are jealous and do not tolerate such hubris. So German ideal…
Nietzsche as a Theological Resource
If theology interprets itself onto‐theo‐logically and God is the highest being, it will have no use for Nietzsche as a resource. Such a theology would demand that God should always make sense to our intellects in their present (finite and fallen) condition — thus subjecting itself to Feuerbach’s objections. Nietzsche is a resource, not like Scripture and tradition, but like a prophet whose perspectivisic hermeneutics of finitude illuminates our c…
Appropriating Postmodernism
Once upon a time-not yesterday, but not so very long ago, I am toldthere was a minister in the Reformed tradition whose sermons all had three points.In itself that is not unusual, but in this case they were the same three points, regardless of the text.Each text was expounded in terms of ( 1) what it said against the Arminians, (2) what it said against the papists, and (3) what it said against the modernists.It would no doubt be going too far to …
Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice
Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Theological Task
Studies in the Philosophy of J. N. Findlay
Academic Excellence
History and Truth in Hegel's Phenomenology
History and Truth in Hegel's Phenomenology
Kierkegaard's Politics
Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Jean Hyppolite produced the first French translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. His major works--the translation, his commentary, and Logique et existence (1953)--coincided with an upsurge of interest in Hegel following World War II. Yet Hyppolite's influence was as much due to his role as a teacher as it was to his translation or commentary: Foucault and Deleuze were introduced to Hegel in Hyppolite's classes, and Derrida studied under …
Hegel, Tillich, and the Secular
Kierkegaard and The Logic of Insanity
Feigned madness can be a valuable asset. King David once used it to escape from the Philistines (I Sam. 21), and a twentieth century king, Pirandello's Henry IV pulled much the same trick on a modern philistine culture. Thrown from his horse and struck on the head while on his way to a masquerade party dressed as the Henry of Canossa's chill repentance, he had for twenty years insanely identified himself with the eleventh century monarch. At leas…
Hegel, pannenberg, and hermeneutics
Religion and Judgment
Kierkegaard and The Logic of Insanity
Feigned madness can be a valuable asset. King David once used it to escape from the Philistines (I Sam. 21), and a twentieth century king, Pirandello's Henry IV pulled much the same trick on a modern philistine culture. Thrown from his horse and struck on the head while on his way to a masquerade party dressed as the Henry of Canossa's chill repentance, he had for twenty years insanely identified himself with the eleventh century monarch. At leas…
Hegel, pannenberg, and hermeneutics
Hegel, Tillich, and the Secular
Genesis and Structure of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Jean Hyppolite produced the first French translation of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. His major works--the translation, his commentary, and Logique et existence (1953)--coincided with an upsurge of interest in Hegel following World War II. Yet Hyppolite's influence was as much due to his role as a teacher as it was to his translation or commentary: Foucault and Deleuze were introduced to Hegel in Hyppolite's classes, and Derrida studied under …
History and Truth in Hegel's Phenomenology
History and Truth in Hegel's Phenomenology
Kierkegaard's Politics
Academic Excellence
Studies in the Philosophy of J. N. Findlay
Levinas, Kierkegaard, and the Theological Task
Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice
Kierkegaard and Hegel
The story of German idealism is the story of Kant and the aftermath. By aftermath I mean the Aufhebung of critical philosophy in the speculative idealisms of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The latter, of course, took himself to be the Aufhebung of Fichte and Schelling as well as Kant, to say nothing of Plato and Aristotle, Anselm and Aquinas, Descartes and Spinoza, and so forth. The gods are jealous and do not tolerate such hubris. So German ideal…
Nietzsche as a Theological Resource
If theology interprets itself onto‐theo‐logically and God is the highest being, it will have no use for Nietzsche as a resource. Such a theology would demand that God should always make sense to our intellects in their present (finite and fallen) condition — thus subjecting itself to Feuerbach’s objections. Nietzsche is a resource, not like Scripture and tradition, but like a prophet whose perspectivisic hermeneutics of finitude illuminates our c…
Appropriating Postmodernism
Once upon a time-not yesterday, but not so very long ago, I am toldthere was a minister in the Reformed tradition whose sermons all had three points.In itself that is not unusual, but in this case they were the same three points, regardless of the text.Each text was expounded in terms of ( 1) what it said against the Arminians, (2) what it said against the papists, and (3) what it said against the modernists.It would no doubt be going too far to …
Suspicion and Faith
Marx, Nietzche, and Freud are among the most influential of modern atheists. The distinctive feature of their challenge to theistic and specifically Christian belief is expressed by Paul Ricoeur when he calls them the "masters of suspicion." While skepticism directs its critique to the truth or evidential basis of belief, suspicion asks two different, intimately intertwined questions: what are the motives that lead to this belief? and what functi…
Levinas and the “Logic” of Solidarity
Adriaan Theodoor Peperzak
Dialetic and Gospel in the Development of Hegel's Thinking. Stephen Crites
Christian Philosophers and the Copernican Revolution
This chapter suggests that Christian philosophers should be favorably disposed toward Kantian idealism, that there are important affinities between Kantian idealism and Christian theism—important resources in the former for expressing themes essential to the latter. After discussing four kinds of Kantian idealism, it turns briefly to three versions that differ in important ways from Kant's own. All of them reflect the fact that the history of the…
Overcoming Onto-Theology
'Overcoming Onto-theology' is a collection of essays by Merold Westphal, one of America's leading continental philosophers of religion, in which he carefully explores the nature and the structure of a postmodern Christian philosophy.
On reading God the author
The first part of the essay explore's three features of Wolterstorff's account of God as a performer of speech acts: (1) the claim that God literally speaks, suggesting that this claim needs something like a Thomistic theory of analogy as an alternative to univocity and mere metaphor; (2) the claim that speaking is not reducible to revealing; and (3) the political implications of these claims, especially in relation to Habermasian theory. The sec…
The welcome wound
The Importance of Overcoming Metaphysics for the Life of Faith
This essay proceeds, first, with an analysis of the theme of overcoming metaphysics in Kant and Heidegger to see just what it is that needs overcoming and how this might be of service to the life of biblical, ecclesial faith. This is followed by an account of how Jean‐Luc Marion sees the right kind of phenomenology as performing this task and of John Milbank's counterclaim that “only theology overcomes metaphysics”. Marion's position is then defe…
Society, Politics, and Modernity
Philosophy (24 works) · Epistemology (19 works) · Hegelianism (9 works) · Theology (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Sociology (5 works)