Strange Wonder

The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe

Bibliographic Data

ID8204951
AuthorsOleg V Bychkov (St. Bonaventure University, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume81
Issue1
Pages269-272
Publication date2013-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jaarel/lfs097
OpenAlexW2013076923
LanguageEN
Citations received3

According to a simple scientific model, wonder is a neural reaction at the threshold between complete correspondence to an expected pattern (relaxation) and an extreme lack of correspondence to pattern (stress) when neural circuits remain continuously stimulated. However, this reductionist model does not cover all the phenomenological richness of one's experience of wonder, so the author chooses to engage the corpus of phenomenological and postmodern writers to examine this phenomenon “from the inside” and let phenomenologists weave their eidetic lacework. Wonder is indeed an important starting point for ancient philosophy, but it is also crucial for the phenomenological tradition, starting as far back as Husserl, whose phenomenological endeavor was characterized in terms of “wonder” in the face of the world by his assistant Eugen Fink. Merleau-Ponty, in the Phenomenology of Perception, considers wonder an important element, given the “unfinished” or “inchoative” nature of phenomenology, which is not a sign of its failure but is inevitable. Finally, a regretful omission in this book, the idea of “keeping open” one's wonder in the face of Being all but founds much of twentieth-century theological aesthetics, as exemplified by von Balthasar who traces this idea to the Neoplatonic tradition.

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Phenomenology (philosophy) · Phenomenon · Postmodernism · Reductionism · Wonder · Paranormal Experiences and Beliefs · Philosophy · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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