Theo-Philosophical Reflections on History

This special issue of Thesis Eleven examines the relationships between history, philosophy, theology and politics. The authors reopen a debate that centers on the questions of secularization – the historical roots of modernity in religious thought and structures – and of historicity – the evolving, sublating embodiment of that history in living forms. Wayne Cristaudo, guest coordinating editor of this issue, explains that

The recognition that social thought must be cognizant of the religious and theological roots of our social and political institutions stands in the closest relationship to the recognition of the historicity of human existence.

Thus the impetus behind this collection of papers is to offer some theoretical recognition of the theological, or rather the ‘theo-political’, something largely overlooked in social theory for the bulk of the 20th Century:

In this respect social theorists have simply been catching up with what thinkers who had emerged from the penumbra of the First World War such as Franz Rosenzweig, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin (who, with Schmitt, has become hugely influential in social thought today) had already demonstrated in their own analyses of the crises surrounding them.

Readers can expect to find superb essays on

some of the more important, if not always well known, Theo-philosophical reflections upon history in the last hundred or so years, from figures as disparate as Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, Eric Voegelin, Hans Blumenberg, Jan Patočka to more theologically familiar figures such as Ernst Troeltsch, Rudolf Bultmann and Bernard Lonergan.

Table of Contents

Preface Wayne Cristaudo History, Theology and the Relevance of the Translatio Imperii Wayne Cristaudo Theology and Historicism Wayne Hudson Diagnosis and Salvation: Revolution, History and Augustine in Rosenstock-Huessy and Eric Voegelin Wayne Cristaudo Philosophy of History and a Second Axial Age: Bernard Lonergan and the differentiation of Interiority Thomas J. McPartland A Philosopher and His History: Patočka’s Reflections on the End of Europe & the Arrival of the Post-European Epoch Martin Palouš Book reviews All at Sage