Böcker av Jean-Yves Lacoste

Jean-Yves Lacoste is one of the best known French philosophers alive today. Along with Jean-Luc Marion, Jean-Louis Chrétien, and Michel Henry, Lacoste is hailed as a leading figure in the revival of French phenomenology in its engagement with Christian theology. In this highly readable and stylish translation by Oliver O'Donovan, Lacoste's In Search of Speech considers how linguistic events are precisely what enable us to escape the threat of nihilism and to survive in a world now cynically regarded as having entered a phase of 'post-truth.' In recent decades, language has been reduced by various philosophers, both Anglo-American and European, in treatments that render it abstract, flat, or distant from life. In Search of Speech seeks to do justice to speech in the various ways in which we perform it and in which it confronts us as one or more events. Speech always occurs in the world: it makes things present to us or it makes them absent from us. Speaking, reading, and even being silent, are never wholly free from anxiety, babble, boredom, humour, and concern for others. Liturgical speech deserves particular attention, and even here speech is in danger; for speech can conceal as well as reveal. Lacoste begins with very weak assumptions and slowly, using many examples, and clarifying as he goes along, builds up a rich picture of human speech and the forces that seek to drain it of meaning.

"e;Christian philosophy"e; is commonly regarded as an oxymoron, philosophy being thought incompatible with the assumptions and conclusions required by religious faith. According to this way of thinking, philosophy and theology must forever remain distinct.In From Theology to Theological Thinking, Jean-Yves Lacoste takes a different approach. Stepping back from contemporary philosophical concerns, Lacoste-a leading figure in the philosophy of religion-looks at the relationship between philosophy and theology from the standpoint of the history of ideas. He notes in particular that theology and philosophy were not considered separate realms until the high Middle Ages, this distinction being a hallmark of the modern era that is coming to an end. Lacoste argues that the intellectual task before us now is to work in the frontier region between or beyond these domains, work he identifies as "e;the task of thinking."e; With this argument, Lacoste resets our understanding of Western Christian thought, contending that a new way of thinking that is at once philosophical and theological will be the lasting discourse of Christianity.

Does the philosophy of Heidegger represent the emergence of a secular anthropology that requires religious thought to redefine the religious dimension in human existence? In this critical response, Lacoste confronts the ultimate definition of human nature, the humanity of the human.