Perspectives in Continental Philosophy
4 total works
A leading philosopher and theologian, Jean-Louis Chretien uses poetry and painting to explore a theme that runs through all of his work: how human life is shaped by the experience of call and response. For Chretien, we live by responding to the call of experience with words, gestures, expressions, and silence.
In luminous meditations on Rembrandt, Delacroix, Manet, Verlaine, Keats, and other artists, Chretien shows how "talking hands of painters" and the "secretly lucid" voices of poets confront the finitude of the human body. Hand to Hand is a deeply cultured renewal of art in all its provocative, transforming, spiritual presence.
In the aptly titled The Call and the Response, renowned philosopher and theologian Jean-Louis Chrétien revisits a favorite theme: how human life is shaped by the experience of call and response, explored using art as a context.
For Chrétien, art is about acts in response to what the artist sees or hears and how these acts provoke responses from viewers. Deeply spiritual and intellectual without being academic, his arguments are unique, in both style and content.
Chretien’s essays on reading sacred scripture are enriched by his immersion in the classics of ancient philosophy and theology, as well as his poetic sensibility. He is as likely to quote Claudel as Aquinas or Origen. His intimate acquaintance with Patristic writings combines with a sympathetic understanding of such Protestant sources as Luther, Calvin, and Barth to yield an admirably ecumenical perspective.
The book’s title refers to James 1:23–24, which portrays the Word of God as a mirror into which one gazes. The concomitant notion of not only examining the text but also being examined by the Word is a fruitful one for learning how to be more fully nourished by one’s study of the Bible.