Ebook
Bringing together thinkers from philosophy of religion, religious studies, music, art, and film, while drawing on a wealth of phenomenological resources and methods, a team of renowned scholars provide new vantages on the question of how art is an expression of the human desire for God.
In three interrelated parts, chapters employ phenomenological tools to propose new ways for speaking of the desire for God. Scholars first draw upon music, sculpture, film, and painting to develop ways of expressing diverse philosophical and religious aspects characteristic of aesthetic experience. The discussion then opens up to examine the mystical and wounded aspects of embodied interface with God. The final part investigates embodied aesthetic praxis in philosophy of religion and religious studies.
With several contributions engaging with the embodied, aesthetic experience of underrepresented voices, Art, Desire, and God offers constructive phenomenological bridges across divides of disciplines, aesthetic experiences, and embodied actions.
Explores the significance of art as an expression of the human desire for God, drawing on multiple phenomenological perspectives.
Uses phenomenological methods in an interdisciplinary treatment of art, desire and God
Draws on a diversity of aesthetic experiences and modes of art
Elevates underrepresented voices in religious studies and philosophy of religion
List of Colour Plates
Acknowledgements
Introduction, Kevin Grove, Christopher Rios, and Taylor Nutter (all of University of Notre Dame, USA)
Part I: Embodied Experience in Art and Film
1. Call and Response: Negation and the Configuration of Desire, Férdia Stone-Davis (Lady Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, University of Cambridge, UK)
2. Making Sense in the Midst of Non-Sense: Félix Ravaisson and George Rickey as a Way Forward for Emmanuel Falque, Tyler Holley (University of Aberdeen, UK)
3. Perspective in Nicholas of Cusa and the Rise of the Transcendental Subject, Nathan G. Pedersen (Loyola University Chicago, USA)
4. Desirous Seeing: Sol LeWitt, Vision, and Paradox, Daniel Lightsey (Southern Methodist University, USA)
5. Memory and Desire for God in Terrence Malick's To the Wonder, Jake Grefenstette (University of Cambridge, UK)
6. Life in the Heart of Cinema: Michel Henry's New Phenomenology and Cinematic Form, Joseph Kickasola, (Baylor University, USA)
Part II: Carnal Encounter
7. Scandal in the Cornaro Chapel: Desire for God and the Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, Martha Reineke (University of Northern Iowa, USA)
8. Art and Desire in the Song of Songs, Richard Kearney (Boston College, USA)
9. The Touch of God: Woundedness and Desire in James Baldwin and Jean-Louis Chrétien, Thomas Breedlove (Baylor University, USA)
Part III: Incarnate Performance
10. Of God and Trout Fishing: A Phenomenology of Reeligious Life, J. Aaron Simmons (Furman University, USA)
11. The Prescription of Liturgy for the Problem of Blindness in the Thought of Jean-Luc Marion, Christina George (Sterling College, USA)
12. Beauty, Sacrament, and the Road to Emmaus, Wendy Theresa Crosby (Siena Heights University, USA)
13. The Saturated Flesh of Christ: Christology, Aesthetics, and Subjectivity in Jean-Luc Marion and M. Shawn Copeland, David de la Fuente (Fordham University, USA)
List of Contributors
Index
Art and art practice necessarily involve the phenomenological. However, scholarly introductions to this inherent aspect (or requirement) of the arts rarely engage this reality with sufficient depth, let alone creativity and attention. Art, Desire, and God sets a high standard for studies in aesthetics, showing how art, phenomenology, and theology are mutually donative, helping us become better at seeing things in and of themselves.
Kevin G. Grove is Assistant Professor of Systematic (Philosophical) Theology at the University of Notre Dame, USA.
Christopher C. Rios holds a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Notre Dame, USA.
Taylor J. Nutter holds a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Notre Dame, USA.